Writers and Politics : Some Reflections on a German Tradition

Ralf Dahrendorf , Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland (München , 1965). "Der Unpolitische Deutsche", 359-74.

In "Die Deutsche Literatur [im Ausland seit 1933]. Ein Dialog zwischen Politik und Kunst", Aufsatze zur Literatur ( Olten/Freiburg i.B., 1963).

Kurt Sontheimer , Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik. Die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933 ( Munchen , 1964), 336.

E.g. Hajo Holborn in "Protestantismus und politische Ideengeschichte ", Historische Zeitschrift, cxxxxiv (1931), 26.

For this tentative excursus into Luther's attitudes I have drawn on the Holborn article mentioned above; on Fritz Fischer , "Der deutsche Protestantismus und die Politik im 19.jahrhundert", Historische Zeitschrift, clxxi (1951), 473-518

; A.G. Dickens , Martin Luther and the Reformation (London, 1967); A.G. Dickens , The German Nation and Martin Luther (London, 1974).

See his "Sermon on Good Works" of 1520 where he condemned social and political abuses but equally attacked the radical movements of protest (Dickens, M.L. and the Reformation, 46). And in his "Christian Nobility " Luther declared—four years before the Revolt—" I will side always with him, however unjust, who suffers rebellion, and against him who rebels, however justly" (Dickens, The German Nation..., 69).

Following in the footsteps of Engels, Georg Lukacs emphasised the significance of 1525, the turning point "wo die deutsche Entwicklung fehlging", appealing somewhat improbably to the authority of Alexander von Humboldt to reinforce his argument. Cf. Lukács, Deutsche Literatur in zwei Jahrhunderten, Werke, vii ( Neuwied/ Berlin, 1964), 40-41.

Dickens, M.L. and the Reformation, 70.

This was the notorious pamphlet "Against the Thieving and Murderous Gangs of Peasants", May 1525.

Dickens, M.L. and the Reformation, 108.

Cf. Karl Mannheim , Ideology and Utopia. An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (London, 1960), 190ff.

Dickens , The German Nation ... 221; and Fischer , loc.cit.

Mannheim, 201, 213-14.

See Werner Kohlschmidt , "Der Wortschatz der Innerlichkeit bei Novalis " in Festschrift für Paul Kluckhohn und Hermann Schneider (Tübingen, 1948); and relevant entries in Friedrich Maurer and Friedrich Stroh , Deutsche Wortgeschichte (2 Berlin, 1959-60).

Kohlschmidt , loc. cit., 43.

W.H. Bruford , Culture and Society in Classical Weimar 1775-1806 ( Cambridge , 1962), 399.

Mannheim, 205.

For the historical background, see tor example Reinhold Aris , History of Political Thought in Germany from 1789 to 1815 (London , 1936); G.P. Gooch , Germany and the French Revolution (London, 1965); Hajo Holborn , "Der deutsche Idealismus in sozialgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung", Historische Zeitschrift, clxxiv ( 1952), 359-83; W.H. Bruford , Germany in the Eighteenth Century. The Social Background of the Literary Revival (Cambridge, 1965); Leonard Krieger , The German Idea of Freedom. History of a Political Tradition ( Boston , 1957); Alan Menhennet , Order and Freedom. Literature and Society in Germany from 1720 to 1805 ( London, 1973).

Quoted by Bruford , Germany in the Eighteenth Century, 300-1.

Dahrendorf, 312. It is a political attitude which he calls "classical" as distinct from "romantic", "tragic" or "critical".

Krieger , 41.

See Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (1834).

Aris , 49-50.

See Holborn , "Der deutsche Idealismus".

Krieger , 44-45.

Krieger , 84.

See Roy Pascal . The German Sturm und Drang ( Manchester, 1953), esp. 42-86.

Quoted by Peter Stein in his introduction to Theorie der politischen Dichtung (München, 1973), 18.

The point is made by Fischer, 476.

See Aris and Gooch ; also Kant's Political Writings, ed. with an Introduction by Hans Reiss, transl. by H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge, 1970).

Aris , 101.

Kant's Political Yt'ritiugs, 123.

In Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Autklärung? ( 1784).

See Wilhelm von Humboldt , The Limits of State Action, ed. with an Introduction by J. W. Burrow (Cambridge, 1969).

See for instance the discussions in Aris and Gooch ; Bruford , Culture and Society , esp. 271-90 (on Schiller); and J.P. Stern , Reinterpretations. Seven Studies in Nineteenth Century German Literature (London, 1964 ), 30-41 (on Goethe).

He is approvingly quoted by Thomas Mann in Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918), Gesammelte Werke in zwölf Bänden, Band xii, Reden und Aufsätze 4 (Frankfurt a.M., 1960), 219-20. The original words are in the Gespräche mit Eckermann, entry of March 1832 .

Cited by Bruford , Culture and Society, 393.

"Der Antritt des neuen Jahrhunderts", quoted in Bruford, Germany..., 407.

Dahrendorf, 313-14. This attitude Dahrendorf calls "romantic" but his terminology is here misleading, as my discussion of Romantic attitudes proper will show.

For what follows, see again the works of Aris and Gooch ; also H. S. Reiss (ed.), The Political Thought of the German Romantics 1793-1815 (Oxford, 1953); Jacques Droz , Le Romantisme allemand et l'etat, Resistance et collaboration dans l'Allemagne napoléonienne ( Paris , 1966).

Mannheim, 106-7.

Mannheim, 208.

Krieger , in his chapter "National Liberation 1813-1815".

Lukács makes this point in the 1947 Preface to his essay "Goethe und seine Zeit", reprinted in Deutsche Literatur aus zwei Jahrhunderten (ref. 7); see also Dahrendorf , 62ff.

Quoted in Peter Viereck , Metapolitics : the Roots of the Nazi Mind (2New York, 1961), 4. Similarly, in 1922, Ernst Troeltsch warned his contemporaries against the peculiarly German tendency towards a "mixture of mysticism and brutality " (cited by Peter Gav. Weimar Culture (London , 1969), 96).

See the collections of essays edited by Z. A. Pelczynski , Hegel's Political Philosophy. Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge, 1971), especially the pieces by Pelczynski himself, by Ilting and by Verene.

Dahrendorf , 231.

See the two anthologies edited with a critical essay by Jost Hermand , Das Junge Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1966 ) and Der deutsche Vormärz (Stuttgart, 1967 ); also Helmut Koopmann , Das Junge Deutschland. Analyse seines Selbstverständnisses (Stuttgart, 1970 ); and Otto Rommel (ed.), Der osterreichische Vormärz 1816-1847, D.L.E.R., Reihe Politische Dichtung 4 ( Leipzig, 1931).

Hermand , " Nachwort" to Das Junge Deutschland, 385.

Krieger , 301.

For the most probing exploration of this theme, see J.P. Stern. Reinterpretations (ref. 35) and Idylls and Realities (London, 1971).

Dahrendorf , 183 and Mannheim , 93.

Krieger , 341-48.

Bruford , Culture and Society, 390-425. "The Later History of the Weimar Ideals".

Bruford , Germany, 322.

See Fritz Stern , "The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German", now in his The Failure of Illiberalism. Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (London, 1972).

Krieger , 364.

The point is made for example by Lukács (in the preamble to his essay on Gottfried Keller, ref. 7), and by Peter Stein (ref. 28), 20-21.

Quoted in Lukács, Deutsche Literatur aus zwei Jahrhunderten, 462.

Mannheim, 86.

Fritz Stern , loc.cit., 17.

Roy Pascal , From Naturalism to Expressionism : German Literature and Society, 1880-1918 (London, 1973), 86; also Harry Pross (ed.), Die Zerstorung der deutschen Politik: Dokumente 1871-1933 (Frankfurt a.M., 1959), 17.

Dahrendorf , 59.

Pascal , From Naturalism to Expressionism, 10.

The entries are reprinted in Stein, 208-18.

See Fritz Stern , The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley and Los Angeles , 1961); George L. Mosse , The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, 1966).

Gay (ref. 45), 29.

Quoted by Pascal , From Naturalism to Expressionism, 11.

Ibid 58.

Ibid. 95.

Ibid 103.

Ibid. 105.

Fritz Stern , The Politics of Cultural Despair, 208.

Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, ed.cit., 31.

Ibid 259.

Max Weber , "Politik als Beruf" (1918 in 1919 ) Gesammelte Politische Schriften, ed. J. Winckelmann (2Tübingen, 1958), 541; Heine , Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, ed. C. P. Magill (London, 1947), 174-76.

Quoted by David Caute , The Illusion: an Essay on Politics, Theatre and the Novel (London, 1971), 51.

Quoted by Sontheimer , Antidemokratisches Denken, 369.

For relevant aspects of the writing of the Innere Emigration, see Reinhold Grimm , "Innere Emigration als Lebensform" in Grimm / Hermand (eds), Exil und Innere Emigration (Frankfurt a.M., 1972); Charles W. Hoffman , Opposition Poetry in Nazi Germany (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962); H.R. Klieneberger , The Christian Writers of the Inner Emigration (The Hague/Paris, 1968).

The passage is cited in Gay (ref. 45), 68.