History of Germany, Week 8

1
History of Germany, Week 8

• Teutonic Cultural Pessimism

2
Eliass Kultur/Zivilisation antithesis

• Culture
• German
• Natural
• Middle-class
• Virtue
• German
• Individual
• Community
• Artistic
• Inwardness

• Civilisation
• French
• Artificial
• Aristocratic
• Courtesy
• Anglo-Saxon
• Mass
• Society
• Political
• Superficiality

Norbert Elias, The Civilising Process (1939/60)
3
Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, philosopher

• Rationality as means of self-determination
  (Bildung)
• Idealism (only reality is that of mental states)
• Phenomenology can only perceive world of
  appearances

4
Romanticism

• The Passions of Young Werther (1774) love affair
  leading to suicide
• Cult of individualism and emotionality
• Sturm und Drang (storm and stress)

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, writer

5
Romanticism and Nature

• Symbolic interior landscapes
• Religious mysticism pantheism (cathedrals of
  nature)
• Quest for sublime infinite
• Emotion of viewer

• Caspar David Friedrich, 1774-1840, painter

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Caspar David Friedrich

• Cross in the Mountains, 1812

• Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

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Romanticism and Music

• Gesamtkunstwerk music, stage effects in The Ring
  of the Nibelungen, 1876
• Chromatic overlayering of harmony to create
  emotional wall of sound
• Teutonic myths of Siegfried
• Anti-industrialism
• Anti-semitism in political writings

• Richard Wagner, 1813-83, operatic composer

8
Stefan George

• Aestheticist poet believing in art for arts sake
• Symbolist poetry espouses aristocracy
  self-sacrifice
• Main symbols of stone or unnatural (the black
  flower) connote death sacred
• Artist as elite of new society
• Made into posthumous Nazi national poet

• Stefan George, 1868-1933, poet

9
Stefan George, Algabal, 1892

• Mein garten bedarf nicht luft und nicht wärme
• Der garten den ich mir selber erbaut
• Und seiner vögel leblose schwärme
• Haben noch nie einen frühling geschaut.
• Von kohle die stämme, von kohle die äste
• Und düstere felder am düsteren rain
• Der früchte nimmer gebrochene läste
• Glänzen wie lava im pinien-hain.
• Ein grauer schein aus verborgener höhle
• Verrät nicht wann morgen wann abend naht
• Und staubige dünste der mandel-öle
• Schweben auf beeten und anger und saat.
• Wie zeug ich dich aber im heiligtume
• -So fragt ich wenn ich es sinnend durchmass
• In kühnen gespinsten der sorge vergass -
• Dunkle grosse schwarze blume?

• My garden needs not air nor warmth
• The garden which I built myself
• And its lifeless flights of birds
• Have never seen a spring.
• Of coal the trunks, of coal the branches
• And dark fields on the dark margin
• Of burdens never breaking fruit
• Glitter like lava in the pine grove.
• A grey glow from hidden cave
• Hints not when morn, nor evening draws nigh
• And dusty wreaths of almond oils
• Hang on flowerbeds and common and seed.
• How do I grow you in the sanctuary
• - So I asked when I paced it out in thought
• Forgetting in bold cocoons of care -
• Great dark black flower?

10
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, philosopher

• The World as Will and Idea, 1818
• Humans part of cosmic, evil will
• Main driving force in mankind will to life

11
Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-72, philosopher

• The Essence of Christianity, 1841
• Divinity as social, human construct
• God outward projection of human consciousness

12
Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900, philosopher

• Classical philologist
• Medical metaphors of sick civilisation
• Attacks Christian morality of meekness
• Supports aristocratic values of power
• Will to power
• Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883-85

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Thoughts Out of Season, 1873-76

• Nietzsche attacks cultural philistines
• Journalism
• Democratic politics
• Genealogy of Morals
• Deconstruction of language
• Perspectivism
• Existence as becoming rather than being

14
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 1873

• Apollo
• God of music, art order
• Rationality

• Dionysos
• God of chaos, dance drinking

15
Paul Anton de Lagarde, 1827-91, theologist

• German Writings, 1878-81
• God has destiny for each nation
• Germanic nation modelled on family artisans
• Germanic religion with pagan overtones
  (Christianity too Judaic)

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Julius Langbehn, 1851-97, art critic

• Rembrandt as Educator, 1890
• Rembrandt as honorary German
• Germanic art folk art in touch with Volk
• Artistic truth more significant than scientific

17
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, 1876-1925, literary
critic

• The Third Reich, 1923
• Rise of young nations (Germany, Russia) against
  enfeebled older nations (France, Britain)
• Culture is of the spirit and civilisation of the
  stomach

18
Oswald Spengler, 1880-1936, cultural critic

• Decline of the West, 1918
• Cyclical view of history
• "high cultures" Indian, Babylonian, Egyptian,
  Chinese, Mayan-Aztec, Arabian, Greece Rome,
  Euro-Western

19
Spengler

• The prime symbol of Western culture is the
  "Faustian Soul" (from the tale of Doctor
  Faustus), symbolizing the upward reaching for
  nothing less than the "Infinite." This is
  basically a tragic symbol, for it reaches for
  what even the reacher knows is unreachable. It is
  exemplified, for instance, by Gothic architecture
  (especially the interiors of Gothic cathedrals,
  with their vertical lines and seeming
  "ceilinglessness").
• High Cultures are "living" things -- organic in
  nature -- and must pass through the stages of
  birth-development-fulfillment-decay-death. Hence
  a "morphology" of history. All previous cultures
  have passed through these distinct stages, and
  Western culture can be no exception. In fact, its
  present stage in the organic development-process
  can be pinpointed.
• The high-water mark of a High Culture is its
  phase of fulfillment -- called the "culture"
  phase. The beginning of decline and decay in a
  Culture is the transition point between its
  "culture" phase and the "civilization" phase that
  inevitably follows.
• Civilisation witnesses descent into mammon and
  democracy

20
Thomas Mann, 1875-1955, novelist

• Buddenbrooks, 1901 bourgeois family decaying
• Death in Venice, 1912 cholera epidemic as
  metaphor for decline
• Magic Mountain, 1924 set in sanatorium