Cultural Politics

Special Section on Friedrich Kittler and War

AUTO BAHNEN / FREE WAYS

Friedrich Kittler
Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young

Abstract Taking issue with many official accounts, the essay traces
the origins of the German autobahn back to the Battle of Verdun (1916).
The military necessity to organize rigidly enforced, intersection-
free two-way traffic becomes the model for the construction of the
autobahn. Kittler further elaborates its martial character by connecting
the movement of military equipment during war to the tourist
invasions in peacetime.
Keywords autobahn, Battle of Verdun, Heinz Guderian, Friedrich
Kittler, war

The country offers ways because it is country. It gives way, moves us. We
hear the words give way in this sense: to be the original giver and founder
of ways.
Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language

T ragedy, as we all know, began at the three-way crossing

of Daulis with the chance encounter between a mule cart
and a pedestrian, a tyrant named Laius and his unrecognized
son. It would have been averted had Delphi and Corinth been
connected by an intersection-free, median stripeequipped
highway. Which is why Heiner Mller is not Sophocles, and
why all op-ed laments about the disappearance of dra-
matic encounters miss the point. Where the god of chance
(whose herma once graced every Greek crossroad) has left
the stage, runways and their centaurs take over. There is no
drama anymore, only the movement of tanks, from Verdun to

376
Cultural Politics, Volume 11, Issue 3, by permission of the
rightsholder, Susanne Holl
DOI: 10.1215/17432197-3341972

Published by Duke University Press

 Cultural Politics
Volokolamsk and on: Only empty tanks
which crash / Into each other on this
scorched earth.1
At the end of Gravitys Rainbow, a final
news flash from PNS Los Angeles reaches
you, the reader of the novel. Seconds
before the first or last V2 explodes over
LA, a Managerial Volkswagen takes you
on a trip along the Santa Monica Freeway,
the freeway of freaks and traditionally
the scene of every form of automotive
folly known to man (Pynchon 1987: 755).
On the oncoming lane, the citys garbage
trucks are all heading north toward the
Ventura Freeway (767). In downtown LA
you are surrounded by increasingly con
gested truck traffic. Heading up the
Hollywood Freeway, you are passed by
a mysteriously canvassed trailer rig and a
liquid-hydrogen tanker (756)precisely techno-freak, continued to focus on large-
the type of convoy or motorized rocket bri-
gade Waffen-SS Lieutenant-General Hans
Kammler used to send along the autobahn
between September 1944 and March
1945. And when the electric off-ground
detonator, thought up by Hitler himself, is
triggered by the rocket closing in on the
LA of the early 1970s, youll be able to see
for a millisecond in the blinding light of its
payload what they are, all the freeways and
Reichsautobahnen of this world ...
Which leaves the question who
thought up the automotive folly called
autobahn. As is frequently the case with
inventions, there are two versions. The
first is feudal and famous, the other a for-
gotten matter of war. The autobahn, the
roads of Adolf Hitler, are said to be from
their very outset a thoroughly German
affair. Hence a historiography that is spear-
headed, not coincidentally, by a former
press relations officer of the HAFRABA,
erases all foreign traces.2
This official version is quickly told. In
that unimaginable past when only general
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AUTO BAHNEN / FR EE WAYS
staffs and major corporations owned fleets
of vehicles, certain high-ranking drivers
were upset by the dust and clamor that
prevailed on roads. According to the last
crown prince of Prussia, this dust pre-
vented the setting of new records at the
Hamburg car race of 1904 and therefore
made concrete surfaces all the more desir-
able. A lot of hue and cryracecar driver
Manfred von Brauchitsch recallsthreat-
ened drivers who dared defy it and make
full use of his engine. In the cities they
had to contend with pedestrians, cyclists,
carts, and carriages; in the country, with
hay wagons, children, cattle, and free-
run poultry. Unacceptable conditions,
no doubt, whose termination lead to an
agreement between the emperor and
his first-born. While Wilhelm II, a major
scale projects and basic research such as
[Alfred von] Tirpitzs shipbuilding program
or the army telegraph, which he discussed
with his chief engineers on walks across
the Brandenburg Schorfheide or over
dinner at his Hubertusstock hunting lodge,
Crown Prince Wilhelm received permission
to further indulge in his racing hobby that
he had already pursued with great success
in Indianapolis and Los Angeles.
And so it came pass that in 1907 a
command was issued from the the very
highest place to construct a paved road
able to accommodate parallel traffic. Two
years later, members of the Berlin sports
and finance world created the office of the
CULTURAL POLITICS
Automobil-Verkehrs und bungs- Strae
(Automobile Traffic and Training Road),
better known by its acronym Avus. Ten
kilometers between Charlottenburg and
Wannsee, or the road of the future: for
cars only, with no intersections, but featur-
ing raised curves, bleachers for sporting
events, and (not to forget) two lanes sepa-
377
rated by a median stripe.
 Cultural Politics
Friedrich K ittler
Its hard to imagine what people had
been willing to put up with. From mule
tracks to Roman roads, from cobble-
stone to asphaltmillennia of walking,
riding, and driving on any possible type
of path, track, or way, and all without
median stripes or dividers. While random
encounters persisted, Hermes, god of
roads, retained his power over boulevards
and lidos. It was the autobahn that finally
delivered traffic (both work and thing)
from its obscene double meaning, which
already long before Freud was celebrated
in countless puns.3 To be sure, right-hand
traffic had been decreed by Napoleon
as part of his joint creation of marching
infantry divisions and a national road sys-
tem, but regulations on their own cannot
guarantee that nobody will ever bump into
anybody else. It is the autobahns median
divider that, once and for or all, separates
the two snakes or streams that pass each
other and vanish beyond different horizons.
Wannsee and Charlottenburg ...
All the more sad, then, that the initiator
of this automotive folly was never able to
act out his obsession. Only in his imagina-
tion did the exiled crown prince race along
the Avus unencumbered by dust goggles
and oncoming traffic. A world war, the
CULTURAL POLITICS 11:3 November 2015
first of two, interrupted its construction.
Financed by industrialist Hugo Stinnes and
built with the help of new cement mixers,
the Avus was not completed until 1921as
a leisure track for gentlemen drivers. And
the latter, though recently democratized,
had not increased in number. In any case,
endless traffic jams, bumper to bumper
by day, headlight on headlight by night, are
no German invention. To turn gentlemen
drivers into responsible citizens of the road
(the twentieth centurys character mask)
required greater resources than Hohen-
zollern hobbies. The car as a means of
378
mass transportation emerged at a time
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when weeds were covering the unfinished
Avus: during the First World War. This is
the strategic secret studiously avoided
by the heroic epics of German autobahn
construction.
September 1914: an anthroposophic
member of the German General Staff has
a better grasp on bearers of bad tidings
than on Schlieffen plans. Instead of simply
connecting frontline units by telegraph,
Helmut von Moltke the Younger sends
an automobile-equipped lieutenant-
colonel, Richard Hentsch, to the Marne.
Hentsch, head of the intelligence section
at Supreme Headquarters, communicates
reports of wide-open fronts and French
attacks. Yes, only a thin cavalry line
(whose heavy radio equipment is under
the command of none other than a certain
Captain [Heinz] Guderian) is covering the
gap between [Alexander] von Klucks First
and [Karl] von Blows Second Army. And
yes, General [Joseph] Gallieni, military
commander of Paris, commandeers all
the citys cabs to rush his 62nd Infantry
Division to the front at Nanteuil. But impro-
vised prophecies in the shape of historys
first motorized division do not decide
battlesfor that you need the blind gentle-
man driver Hentsch. And so the Miracle of
the Marne came about.
February 1916: the armies have long
since dug themselves in and buried the
Schlieffen Plan. Trench warfare from Ypres
to Belfort. The hapless Younger Moltke is
succeeded by [Erich von] Falkenhayn, who
stands in front of his sandbox (an innova-
tion, incidentally, introduced by Heinrich
von Kleists circle of military friends) and
ponders the situation. Ever since the Battle
of the Marne, breakthroughs and thrusts,
encirclements and annihilation, are out of
the question. Clausewitz is obsolete. But
what if the French were to be bled dry
by applying a suction pump? At a place
 Cultural Politics
where they would be forced to join battle,
but where the Germans would not be
required to ship materials? His cartographic
eyes fixed on the front line, Falkenhayn
identities the only possible point: the
string of forts called Verdun. Even failed
Schlieffen Plans have their upside: as the
hub for the large move to the right under-
taken in 1914, Verdun is cut off from the
French hinterland and connected only by
one railway line and a road. (One world
war later, the German Army Command will
note that the planned advance toward the
Ural Mountains by eight panzer and four
infantry divisions is generally determined
by rail and road connections.)
And Falkenhayn acts. Crown Prince
Wilhelm, in command of Fifth Army, is
given the order to attack on February 12,
1916. A racing aficionado, of all people,
is ordered to set in motion Falkenhayns
grinding blood mill. But owing to their
own transportation problems, the Ger-
mans are forced to postpone their opening
barrage, which provides the French with
a crucial reprieveand the opportunity to
make global traffic history. On February 19,
German deserters betray the new date of
the attack. General [Camille] Ragueneau
and Major [Aim] Doumenc, head of the
military automobile service, instantly rec-
ognize the gravity of the situation. It boils
down to a simple problem of securing sup-
plies. Once the Germans sever the railroad
connection, Verdun will depend on one
last umbilical cord, the route nationale to
Bar-le-Duc. Forty-five Napoleonic kilome-
ters will determine the fate of France.
But for the Direction des services auto
mobiles that is no reason for despair.
Even before the German barrage opens
on February 21 at 7 a.m., Doumenc
had converted the old-fashioned Route
nationale 109 into the first autobahn.
Bar-le-Duc becomes the headquarters of
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AUTO BAHNEN / FR EE WAYS
the Commission regulatrice automobile
(CRA), which relegates all pedestrians,
cyclists, and horse carts to rural dirt roads
and reserves the RN 109 for the exclusive
use of trucks. Europes ambiguous traffic
comes to an end.
[Jacques] Lacan explained what he
called the urinal segregation of Occidental
man by telling the story of a little boy and a
little girl, brother and sister, seated across
from each other in a railway compartment
watching the station platforms going by
as the train comes to a stop. Look, says
the brother, we are at Ladies! Imbecile,
replies his sister, Dont you see were at
Gentlemen (2006: 417). And because
according to Lacan the rails materialize
the bar in the Saussurian algorithm, they
need not be materially present. As long as
they feature two sets of rails, even railway
lines destroyed by German shock troops
can become the model for automotive
segregation.
Major Doumenc issues orders that
Route nationale 109 is to be used like
a double-track railroad. The way trains
had been passing each other since 1830
becomes standard procedure for roads
in 1916. From now on, an improvised
divider separates the input and output of
large-scale modern battles. In the course
of seven months, 350,000 dead need to
be removed and replaced. Wheels are
rolling or victoryon the right, cannon
fodder from Bar-le-Duc to Verdun, on
the left, cannon victims from Verdun to
CULTURAL POLITICS
Bar-le-Duc. Two endless chains, in
the words of Doumenc, but without
any contact between them. Random
encounters between trucks and carts
caused enough damage, those between
cannon fodder and corpse convoys
would lead to catastrophes and mutinies.
Militarily, the median stripe is a cordon
379
sanitaire (and to be removed only in
 Cultural Politics
Friedrich K ittler
emergencies when highways have to dou-
ble as runways).
Even if Falkenhayns suction pump
were not in itself already a declaration
of bankruptcy, a capitulation of operative
leadership in the face of static warfare, it
is overcome by Doumencs double-truck
pump. Verdun holds out for seven months,
then the crown princes bloodied army
gives up. The fortress hexagon manages
to retain its cruelly exposed part because
every day 13,600 trucks (or one truck
every six seconds) secure the connection.
Cest la route qui mne la bataille, notes
the CRA, and bestows upon its improvised
autobahn the proudest name empires have
been able to award since Roman days: La
Voie sacrevia sacra.
The Collection des cahiers de la
victoire, a series of French war propaganda
pamphlets, dedicates an issue and a title
to the Voie sacre. The autobahn, hardly
invented, becomes literature. Long before
Tyrone Slothrop and Thomas Pynchon,
soldiers of the (barely neutral) United
States, come to Europe and take note of
how the old world is inventing the future.
A nameless GI, witness to Verdun, extols
for the Cahiers de la victoire what night has
come to mean from the Avus to the Santa
CULTURAL POLITICS 11:3 November 2015
Monica Freeway, from Charlottenburg to
California: headlights upon headlights, a
luminous ribbon stretching across the hills
and valleys of the Argonnes, quelque
gigantesque et lumineux serpent.
The defense of Verdun came to
depend on the operability of vehicular
traffic on the Voie sacre. And so, from the
beginning to the end of the battle, fresh
blood pulsed into the almost severed link
of the French front and kept it alive. No
American world war tourist could have
phrased it more poetically, but this is in
fact Captain Guderian speaking. In one of
380
the ironies of history, Guderian, a signals
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officer (and thus one of Schlieffens favor-
ite sons), was always in the thick of things:
1914 at the Marne and 1916 at Verdun.
He remained on the spot even after the
Treaty of Versailles had left the Reich
an army of only one hundred thousand
men without a single armored vehicle.
This, however, was to underestimate the
inventiveness of Prussian staff officers. As
early as the winter of 192324, Guderian
and the later commander-in-chief of the
German Army, Walther von Brauchitsch
(not to be confused with racecar-driving
nephew Manfred), organized blitzkrieg
maneuvers whose tank units consisted
of highly poetic mock-ups: staff vehicles
with glued-on cardboard turrets. According
to Hans von Seeckt, chief of the German
General Staff during the Weimar Republic,
the motorization of the army was one of
the most important issues. Small wonder,
then, that the very same Guderian writes
the first text on the autobahn. The January
1925 issue of the Miltrwochenblatt (The
Military Weekly) contains, as part of a
section on the armored vehicle, his
epochal essay The Lifeline of Verdun.
While the solitary author of Mein Kampf
can merely dream of an autobahn, Gude-
rian clearly spells out Doumencs lesson:
ever since February 1916, giant snakes of
light and steel are our lifelines.
In short, you learn from your enemy.
The tactics of World War X become the
strategies of World War X + 1. Tanks, used
by the British in 1917 at Cambrai for infan-
try support only, and still as late as 1940
restricted to tactical employment in the
Allied armies (with the notable exception
of de Gaulle), are turned by Guderian into
a decisive weapon. Deployed by the high
command in surprising numbers and depth
on a broad front, independently operating
panzer divisions drive the blitzkrieg. The
autobahn, a purely defensive measure at
 Cultural Politics
Verdun and not pursued in postwar Europe
(with the exception of Italys Dr. [Piero]
Puricelli, who, however, did not implement
the two-way traffic with clearly divided
lanes), is turned by Hitler into the lifeline
of the Third Reich. (Only one of Guderians
ten panzer divisions is already a 110-
kilometer column.)
The two creators first met at the
1933 Berlin Automobile Exhibition. In his
memoirs, Guderian recounts that it was
unusual for the Chancellor himself to
open the exhibition. And what he had to
say was in striking contrast to the custom-
ary speeches of Ministers and Chancellors
on such occasions. He announced the abo-
lition of the tax on cars and spoke of the
new national roads that were to be built
and of the Volkswagen, the cheap Peo-
ples Car, that was to be mass-produced story in which one only need replace
(1952: 28).
Said and done. The Reich came to
experience what even sober economic
historians of the Kuczynski School can only
describe in psychiatric terms: the motor-
ization psychosis. The 1932 traffic volume
of 522,943 cars and 162,073 lorries
certainly did not require any autobahn, but,
as Hitler put it, just as the horse carriage
once paved its way and the railroad built
the necessary tracks, motor traffic must
receive the necessary road system.
The movement of 33, then, was
always already a moving (Be-wegung). It
awakened peoples desires to acquire a
drivers licensein German, Fhrerschein. must not turn into mouse trap from which
And the Fhrer granted them their wish military vehicles cannot escape.5 Thus
as tank commanders (Panzerfhrer) on the
autobahn.
A short story, published by the head-
quarters of VII Army Corps, may serve as
a miniature model: In the last days of the
1940 blitzkrieg against France, two Ger-
man soldiers on reconnaissance enter the
village of Sy. They discover two, three,
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AUTO BAHNEN / FR EE WAYS
fourfifteen motorcycles, five of them
equipped with sidecars. An entire signal
squadron, whose drivers must have fled
from our artillery. One thing is clear:
the bikes are going back with us. While
Private A goes looking for reinforcements,
Private B enviously inspects the loot. He
doesnt know much about motorbikes,
he has only now and then watched
cyclists and the staffs gentlemen driv-
ers. But war is wish fulfillmentalso
and especially for those without a drivers
license. Private A returns with a motor
cycle expert. Then, suddenly, the sound
of an approaching engine. Everybody
takes cover, but only to witness Private B
return at top speed, stop with squealing
brakes and report to his commander: Sir,
Sy liberated from the enemy! A short
motorbikes by cars and country roads by
the autobahn in order to arrive at the Kraft-
werk song.4
For the autobahn is aesthetics. For
motorized traffic, notes the 1937 gov-
ernmental publication Bauten der Bewe-
gung, the Reichsautobahn constitutes a
veritable artery: It is not a foreign body in
the landscape but an harmonious part.
The somewhat less public reason: unlike
autostradas and autoroutes, the autobahn
avoids unnecessarily deep embankments
that would separate them from the
landscape. In the words of Fritz Todt and
his constant army contacts, the autobahn
CULTURAL POLITICS
peacetime planning paves the way for
Kammlers brigades, who spent the final
months of the war rushing along the auto-
bahn to launch V2 rockets toward London
and World War X + 1.
Unlike their foreign imitations, Ger-
manys autobahn is surrounded by green.
381
State Secretary and later Field Marshal
 Cultural Politics
Friedrich K ittler
Erhard Milch of the Reich Aviation Ministry
provided Todts engineers with aircraft in
order for them to see their autobahn from
above and assess how advantageously
planted vegetation could at least in part
obscure the road when approached from
the side. Eichendorffs question who
put the forest so high above can thus be
answered in part.6 It was the supreme
command of the German Wehrmacht,
spurned by the all-too-prophetic con-
cern that enemy aircraft could follow the
uncamouflaged autobahn all the way to
Berlin. World War X + 1 casts it shadow on
all thorough planning.
And when the soloist of the Fhrers
Table Talk dreams of driving along the
Reichsautobahn all the way to Kiev and
Odessa in a car with an inbuilt camera, the
modern landscape movie has been shot
and the identity of aesthetics and blitzkrieg
is beyond all doubt.
To this day, Americans, who had to
wait until February 9, 1938, for the Senate
to officially recommend the construction
of express highways, drive their cars as
if they were covered wagons heading
west. Speed limits and front bench seats,
that stubborn relic from horse wagon
days, do not bother pioneers. On a broad,
CULTURAL POLITICS 11:3 November 2015
well-behaved front, with nobody passing
anyone, they all trek together toward the
last frontier. But German panzer divisions
moving at combat speed, to quote Colonel
General [Werner] von Fritsch of the Ger-
man Supreme Command, need the auto-
bahn from Halle to Berlin to themselves.
Which also indicates who, if anybody, is
allowed to pass said divisions. Germany
forgoes twelve-or fourteen-lane Santa
Monicat ype freeways. There is only one
passing lane for staff officers and engi-
neers, the gentlemen drivers in motion.
And every time summer comes
382
around, as it did in 39, when the autobahn
Published by Duke University Press
is cloaked in green and its soft embank-
ments are navigable, peoples wishes are
granted: tourist division upon tourist divi-
sion sallies forth. Motorization psychosis.
Six-cylinder engines roar. Not to mention
stereos. Until Europes borders capitulate.
Blitzkrieg tous azimuts. And everyone
passes everyone.
Peace is the continuation of war with
the same means of transportation.
Acknowledgments
This essay first appeared in kultuRRevolution 5 (1985):
424 4. Duke University Press and Cultural Politics wish
to thank Susanne Holl for the permission to translate
and publish this essay. The German original contains
no notes.
Translators Notes
1. See Mller 1989: 129; translation amended.
Volokolamsk refers, by way of Heiner Mllers
poem Volokolamsk Highway, which draws on
Alexandr Beks eponymous 1944 novel, to events
that occurred during the failed German advance
on Moscow in late 1941.
2. The acronym HAFRABA originally stood for
Hamburg-Frankfurt-Basel, the name of the
association founded in 1926 for the preparation
of the construction of a motorway connecting
these cities. HA later came to refer to
Hansestdte (Hanseatic cities), in order to include
Bremen and Lbeck.
3. In German, Verkehr can refer both to traffic and
(sexual) intercourse.
4. A reference to the 1974 Kraftwerk hit
Autobahn featuring the refrain Wir fahren
fahren fahren auf der Autobahn (We drive drive
drive on the autobahn).
5. Fritz Todt (18911942) was appointed inspector
general for german roadways in 1933.
6. An ironic reference to the opening lines of
Joseph von Eichendorffs romantic poem Der
Jger Abschied (The Hunters Farewell): Wer
hat dich, du schner Wald, / Aufgebaut so hoch
da droben? (Oh beautiful forest so high above, /
who put you there?).
 Cultural Politics

AUTO BAHNEN / FR EE WAYS

References
Guderian, Heinz. 1952. Panzer Leader. Translated by
Constantine Fitzgibbon. London: Michael Joseph.
Lacan, Jacques. 2006. crits. The First Complete Edition
in English. Translated by Bruce Fink. New York:
Norton.
Mller, Heiner. 1989. Explosions of a Memory. Edited
and translated by Carl Weber. New York: PAJ
Publications.
Pynchon, Thomas. 1987. Gravitys Rainbow. New York:
Viking.

CULTURAL POLITICS

Friedrich Kittler (19432011) studied German, philosophy, and romance studies at

the University of Freiburg. He completed his PhD in 1976 and his habilitation, Discourse
Networks, in 1984. He was professor of German at the Ruhr University in Bochum (19879 3)
and subsequently appointed chair in media aesthetics and history at the Humboldt University
in Berlin (19932008). The key representative of German media theory, Kittler was at the
forefront of the German reception of French poststructuralism and is now considered one of
the most important media theorists. His work ranges from the early Greek vowel alphabet to
the study of computer hardware. Several of his books have been widely translated, including
383

Discourse Networks, 1800/1900; Gramophone, Film, Typewriter; and Optical Media.

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