The Graveside Orations of Carl Einstein: Who Am I To Speak On Behalf Of The Dead?

The Graveside Orations of Carl Einstein
January 2019 marks the centenary of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg by a gang of fascists in Berlin, Germany. Her body was dumped in the river and not retrieved for many months. On 13 June 1919, a memorial was held. At the ceremony, there were a number of graveside orations. One was given by the art theorist and writer Carl Einstein. Einstein’s contribution has been the subject of some confusion. The contemporary reports of the event named Carl Einstein using only his surname, leading many commentators to assume that the ‘Einstein’ of the reports was the physicist Albert Einstein. This case of misrecognition or mistaken identity is one of a number that occur across the inventory of Carl Einstein’s biography. In addition, there is no record of the content of Carl Einstein’s oration.
Collecting a broad range of contributions under the title The Graveside Orations of Carl Einstein, each contribution is a speculation on what Carl Einstein might have delivered, each as likely and as unlikely to be Carl Einstein’s as any other, each a case of mistaken identity.
Through the multiple substitutions of Carl Einstein – a practice that Einstein pursued throughout his life – the themes of masked subjectivity, mistaken identities, of persons that are substituted after the event, of orations, speeches, and texts rewritten, speculated upon and redelivered that celebrate, map and fictionalise a past life are explored in this book.