The Power of the Weak. Imperialism and Resistance in Anna Seghers’ "Der Führer"

Introduction

Politics and literature are linked by a complex relationship. Aside from the fact that political leaders have always made use of the fine arts – for example, for representational purposes – literary texts have, ever since ancient times, consistently addressed political issues and constellations. However, from my perspective, it is not self-evident that (geo)politics can be represented in literature, since both social systems operate with different means on different levels. While politics and particularly geopolitics includes collective ideas and abstract political entities, literature is concerned with individual characters and specific situations. Politics deals with power and decisions; literature operates with language and ambiguity. But – despite all their differences – one could argue that both of them refer to form. Both the political order and literary narrative give form to the originally chaotic and amorphous – to what one might call human life. 

In this article, I will approach the matter of how (geo)politics can enter literary discourse both theoretically and by referring to a specific literary text, that is, the novella Der Führer (1965) by GDR writer Anna Seghers. Seghers is particularly relevant to this project because of her transnational writing (Bernstorff 2025), not only in the context of exile and her own refugee's story as a Jew and a Communist, but also in terms of a global perspective on slavery and anti-colonial resistance: “Seghers was one of the great modernists of her time, who from the start wrote with a deliberately global context in mind” (Fehervary 2001, 1). Her story Der Führer deals with the conquest of Abyssinia by Fascist Italy in 1935/36. It is an example of how literature can weave geopolitical dynamics into a narrative about an individual character while at the same time exploring broader concepts such as asymmetric resistance and imperialism.

1. Literature and Politics

It is my basic assumption that the literary or media representation of political ideas has had a considerable influence on their dissemination. The image and critique of political concepts such as revolution, raison d'état, or sovereignty are particularly shaped by their embedding in literary discourse. This is related to literature's previously mentioned ability to create aesthetic and narrative forms. From Shakespeare to Schiller, Tolstoy to Brecht, Dostoevsky to Orwell, but also from “The West Wing” to “House of Cards”: The history of political ideas is also the history of their representation in fictional media. Literature, however, not only represents political ideas, but also engages with them in creative and productive ways. In other words: What I am particularly interested in is how literary texts pursue a form of political theory themselves – for example by bringing political ideas literally to the stage, critically examining them, or investigating them in terms of their anthropological assumptions. 

Methodologically, the concept of “model” might be helpful to approach the interrelationship between literature and politics. According to the semiotician Yuri Lotman “artistic creation is one of the ways of modelling reality”. This process produces necessarily only fragments: “The model never reproduces the entire object, but rather certain aspects, functions, and states of it, whereby the act of selection itself appears as an essential part of recognition” (Lotman 1972, 34). A model is, one might say, the artwork’s approach to reality and therefore a specific interpretation of it. This is not an uncommon perspective in Post-war German-language literature. For example, Max Frisch noted in the preface to his drama Andorra from 1961, which deals with anti-Semitic stereotyping, that “Andorra” is “the name of a model” and has “nothing to do with the real small state of that name” (Frisch 1976, 584). A model refers to a general structure and reveals general social psychological mechanisms. I think that what Frisch explicitly states here is implicitly underlying all literary texts and must be reconstructed by the reader.

That means, although using individual names as well as specific plots literary texts also model general structures through analogy and allegory. This is a very Aristotelian notion of poetics. Even when literature uses the proper names of historical figures, Aristotle's Poetics argues that “its statements are of the nature rather of universals,” and it is therefore something “more philosophic and of graver import than history” (Aristotle 1995, 2323; Poet. 1451b, 5–10). As readers we have to work out, which model of the world (and in this case: of geopolitics) is processed in the respective text based on the story of an individual character.

2. Anna Seghers’ Der Führer

Anna Seghers’ novella Der Führer is part of her 1965 collection of stories “The Power of the Weak” (in German, “Die Kraft der Schwachen”). This collection includes stories about possible ways of resistance against overwhelming odds and about the power of ordinary people or of the socially marginalized. The rarely discussed but aesthetically impressive novella “Der Führer”, is, as already stated, concerned with the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the former Ethiopia, in 1935/36. This war by Fascist Italy has been fought with chemical weapons from the air. It was – by the way – one of the military operations that proved the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations in preventing violence and war after World War One.

The story begins with a condensed description of the Italian invasion, their superior weaponry, and their use of poison gas. The inferiority of the local population is emphasized by the repetition of the expression that ‘everything was in vain.’

Alles war umsonst. Gebete in Kirchen und in Moscheen, umsonst. Beschwörungen, Anrufungen längst vergeßner, sich selbst überlassener Götter – umsonst. Und auch der letzte Widerstand mit Messern und Zähnen – umsonst. Die Feigheit war genauso umsonst. Verstecken, Abwarten, alles umsonst. Umsonst Versprechungen, Hoffnungen, unerwartete Hochherzigkeit von Unbekannten. Ob der Vater gestern mit Pflügen begonnen hatte oder der Vorvater vor zweitausend Jahren – umsonst. […] Alles war unbegreiflich geworden, was vorher gewesen. Das ganze Leben, weil es auf einmal umsonst war. […]

Everything was in vain. Prayers in churches and mosques – in vain. Incantations, invocations of long-forgotten, abandoned gods – in vain. And even the final resistance with knives and teeth – in vain. Cowardice, too, was in vain. Hiding, waiting – all in vain. In vain were promises, hopes, unexpected generosity from strangers. Whether the father had begun plowing yesterday or the forefather two thousand years ago – in vain. […] Everything that had been before had become incomprehensible. All of life, because it was suddenly in vain. […] 

However, this description of the invasion is not entirely historically accurate. The local population resisted for six months. And partisans were active throughout the occupation (see Brandes 2020a, 410 and Albrecht 1998, 145). The beginning of the narrative thus aims to emphasize the power imbalance. The rest of the passage, then, makes clear that the invaders seek land as well as gold and other kinds of metal. Farmers are supposed to cultivate and reclaim the land. An initial expedition two years ago suggested large deposits of gold, silver, and iron. This invasion is obviously part of an Italian imperial strategy. The novella describes the war as one intended to gain territory and mineral resources.

The main story is about three Italian geologists who, in addition to their official mission, try to find gold for their personal enrichment. But they are led deeper and deeper into the desert by their young local guide, named Ato, where they all meet their deaths. On the surface, the Italians appear to be far superior. But, as the novella shows, the conquerors with all their machines and weapons are also vulnerable, as they are unable to cope with forms of asymmetric resistance through sacrifice and the inhospitable nature.

The confrontation of an imperial logic and the local logic is pointed out by the fact that the German word “Führer” has two different meanings that are utilized in the novella. On the one hand, it means “guide” and could refer to Ato; on the other hand, it means “leader” and refers to the “Duce,” Mussolini, and – considering Seghers as a German writer – to the “Führer,” Hitler. The story includes both meanings, remarkably, only four paragraphs apart in one passage of the text, referring to Mussolini and to a local guide who leads the Italians before they meet Ato. The political reading thus goes right through the title word.

Militär und Straßenarbeiter hatten sie stürmisch in ihren Camps bewillkommt. Sie waren bewirtet worden, sie hatten getrunken, mit Hochrufen auf den Führer und auf ihren eigenen Wagemut. 

[…]

Der eingeborene Führer hatte die Pferde genau gekannt, und die Pferde kannten genau den Weg. (192) 

The military and road workers had welcomed them enthusiastically into their camps. They had been treated to a meal, they had been drinking, raising toasts to the leader and to their own daring.

[…] 

The local guide knew the horses well, and the horses knew the way perfectly. 

Young Ato’s plan to kill the geologists in the desert is based on seduction. In German the word “Führer” and the word “Verführung,” which means seduction, share the same root. In the context of the novella, it is also significant that the German verb “verführen” in older stages of the language referred to the physical act of leading someone away or guiding someone to the wrong place (see Grimm 2025). The young guide Ato makes himself the desired object. His beauty is mentioned several times, and it is of great importance especially for one of the Italians, Colonel Rossi. He keeps asking if the others have noticed how beautiful the boy was and if they have seen anything like it before:

Als der Knabe fort war, sagte Rossi: „Habt ihr gemerkt, wie schön der war?“ (193)

After the boy had left, Rossi said, “Did you notice how beautiful he was?” 

Rossi legte den Arm um seine Schulter, er fragte seine Freunde rasch: „Habt ihr schon mal so was Schönes gesehen?“ (194)

Rossi put his arm around his shoulder and quickly asked his friends, “Have you ever seen anything this beautiful?” 

Der Junge war wirklich beinah vollkommen. Ein Schimmer Gold aus der Haut heraus, aus dem Haar, aus den Augen. Und dieser niemals geknickte Schwung in jeder seiner Bewegungen von den Brauen bis in die Fingerspitzen. (194)

The boy was truly almost perfect. A glimmer of gold from the skin, from the hair, from the eyes. And there was that unbroken grace in every one of his movements, from his eyebrows to his fingertips. 

With his almost ethereal, floating beauty, Ato appears like an angel – and is indeed referred to as such (195). The novella contains many other religious allusions (more on that later). This reference is deepened by the importance of the colour gold. On the one hand, in Judaism, gold is a positive symbolic colour representing divine light (see Kappeler 2023, 473-74; Weiher-Arbeithuber 2025, 112). On the other hand, it connects the golden landscape, the coveted mineral resource, that the Italians are after, and the boy. He appears not to be just a native who knows the landscape; he is part of the environment. And the force that keeps the geologists looking for gold is the same force that binds Rossi to Ato.

With Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” (1912) in mind, the beautiful boy and the desire he produces in the tension between Eros and Thanatos is kind of a longing place for Europeans. His beauty ensures that the geologists follow him into the desert. At the same time, the “Führer” and his ability to seduce the people, allegorically, refer – as mentioned before – to Mussolini and Hitler, whom millions also followed into ruin. That points out to the erotic aspect of politics – once again referring to Thomas Mann, this time to his novel “Mario and the Magician” (1930).

Cornelia Weiher-Arbeithuber identifies stereotypical characterizations and a clearly Eurocentric perspective in another story from the collection “Die Kraft der Schwachen”. Even though Seghers reverses the evaluations of stereotypically portrayed identities, she still participates in processes of stereotyping and ‘othering’ (Weiher-Arbeithuber 2025, 113). Of course, one could state the same for the story “Der Führer”. It would be easy to point to the widespread criticism that Seghers thereby “perpetuates” exoticizing prejudices. However, what is special about the situation in the novella is precisely that the cliché becomes a weapon. From my perspective, the image of the beautiful boy implies an inversion of power: Those who are actually powerless achieve a more powerful position by actively playing on a stereotype – that seems harmless but turns out to be fatal. It can be interpreted primarily as a warning to Europeans not to follow their own clichés, as these lead only to ruin. One might call this Seghers’ ‘poetics of the dead end’.

Friedrich Albrecht describes the novella as a peculiar mixture of historical narrative and legend (Albrecht 1998, 146). In his article on “Der Führer” he emphasizes that the young character Ato is basically a mystery, since the reader is not given any information about him, his motives or thoughts. They must be deduced from his actions and gestures (Albrecht 1998, 146; see also Köhler 2020, 133). And Albrecht also recognizes the role of the space and the conception of the landscape as a metaphor for the amorphous and chaotic (“eine einzige Metapher des Wüsten, Amorphen, Chaotischen, einer ihres inneren Zusammenhangs beraubten Welt”; Albrecht 1998, 152). But in contrast to Albrecht, who underlines the universal human and religious topics, I propose a more political reading, which I would say is also justified by the title of the novella. From my perspective, Ato is less a medium between up and down, heaven and hell, but a third figure similar to a partisan or a suicide bomber. He uses the local conditions and his own beauty as a trap. With their greed for treasures and their sense of superiority, the Italians cannot imagine that someone would sacrifice their own life. Ato’s actions elude the utilitarianism of the conquerors. The novella, thus, confronts an imperial logic with the asymmetric resistance of the locals. It is therefore – considering Seghers as an Eastern German writer who was chairwoman of the German Writer’s Union at that time – to be read as a comment not only to Italian imperialism but also to wars during the Cold War.

Furthermore, with regard to geopolitics one must take the “geo-” in “geologists” seriously. In my view, it is significant that the three Italian characters are not only soldiers or technical staff members but geologists who have the order to investigate the conquered land. Geopolitics operates in spatial categories and attempts to use space as a political tool. The boy, however, weaponizes the landscape against the supposedly civilised Europeans. The space turns against the conquerors. This is because geopolitics does not operate in just any space, but rather in a specific environment. The novella, thus, shares the focus of geopolitics “on the representation of geographical space.” It refers to geopolitics in the sense of “a way of seeing the world in which a great deal of emphasis is placed on exploring and explaining the role of geographical factors (such as territorial location and/or access to resources) in shaping national and international politics” (Dodds 2103, 1). In the novella, it is first characterized as harsh and inhospitable. The Italians don’t know the real conditions and the way out and so they get lost. Secondly, it is characterized as a highly symbolic and religious space. As sculptures of the apostles deep in the desert demonstrate, it is a space where ancient cultures and also Christian cultures are at home (see Albrecht 1998, 155). Besides the figures of the apostles in the desert, the comparisons of the boy to an angel, and his self-sacrifice, the novella also has numerous references to the Bible on a linguistic level, such as to the creation story: “Es ward Morgen. Der letzte Tag” (205) – “Morning came. The last day” (see Köhler 2020, 136; Jäckel 1974, 72). Politics is thus confronted with religion and poetry, which means symbols and images that are not compatible with the political and economic logic. This also refers to the seduction by beauty and Ato’s self-sacrifice, both of them turned out to be stronger than the military superiority. 

The desert, this locus terribilis, is a space that only appears to be empty. Contrary to what one might assume, a centuries-old culture can be found here. The geologists, thus, underestimate the second category they should actually be focusing on as geologists: time. The story confronts imperialism and an abstract geopolitical strategy with real life conditions and the local culture. It confronts space and landscape, politics and religion, economic greed and the absence of any resource. It shows the limits of (geo)politics and the fallacies of imperial ambitions. 

3. Conclusion

Anna Seghers' novella Der Führer is not an essay on political theory. As a literary text, however, it offers a different way of understanding geopolitical dynamics. The story about Ato and the three geologists is a tale of revenge and self-sacrifice, a story about specific characters. But at the same time, it is a story about imperialism and asymmetric resistance. At the heart of the political model outlined in the novella lies the concept of space. On the one hand, it is a geopolitical category since the invaders want to control the area and exploit its natural resources. On the other hand, the landscape, with its natural and cultural features, serves as a weapon for the locals in their defensive struggle. It is both the goal of imperial ambitions and the limit to them. In the novella, these structures of meaning are tightly condensed to a narrative.

The plot confronts (geo)political logic with theological and poetic imagery and – paradoxically – with reality. It shows that power depends on context; that the most powerful become the most powerless in an unfamiliar environment. The novella therefore ends with the same sentence with which it began, only this time it refers not to the natives, but to the conquerors: “Everything was in vain.”

References

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