Curtius and the position of the intellectual in German society

Christophe Charle , Naissance des 'intellectuels' 1880-1900 (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1990), id., Histoire socinle de la France au XIXe siècle (Paris: Seuil , 1991), 267-75: 'Une nouvelle élite: les "intellectuels"'; Joseph Jurt, 'Status und Funktion der Intellektuellen in Frankreich - im Vergleich zu Deutschland', in: Henning Krauss (ed.), Offerre Gefiige. Festschrift Fritz Nies ( Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1994), 329-45.

On this topic see M. Paléologue , Journal de l'Affaire Dreyfus (Paris: 1955),92 f.

M. Barrès , Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme (Paris: 1902), 45. Pascal Ory states that the term 'intellectual' began to establish itself in its current sense at the beginning of the decade of the 1890s 'in the easily located milieu of writers, artists and militants in revolt against established society who at the time orientated themselves towards anarchism'. It is notably Barrès who, in his work Les DéracÎnés lets his spokesman Sturel define 'the true hero' as possessing the traits 'of an intellectual avid of all the taste of life'. At this time, the term does not yet have a negative connotation for Barrès, who seeks to create with his daily La Cocarde a force in which 'socialists and intellectuals' gather (5 September 1894) in opposition to the regime. 'Thus one cannot exclude the possibility', holds Pascal Ory, 'that something of a reckoning up of the writer with a certain image and a certain logic of himself, which are henceforth redundant, and something of the anger of an intimate breach enter into the vivacity of Barrès's denunciation of 1898' (Pascal Ory/Jean-Francois Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France, de l'Affaire Dreyfus à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1986), 7).

Christophe Charle , Histoire sociale, 272.

Christophe Charle , 'Les intellectuels en France depuis un sièclc: naissance perpétuelle ou mort annoncée?' Noroit, NO 319 (nov.-déc. 1991), 7-9; Pascal Ory/Jean-François Sirinelli: op. cit., 10-14.

The press developed after 1870 thanks to new technical inventions (rotation), progress in organization, and the promulgation of the liberty of the press in 1881. 'The Dreyfus affair', remarks Pierre Miquel, 'is historically the appearance of the press as a force of opinion - which is connected with, and yet has become equal to, that of money - in the liberal context of the republican parliamentary order, now finally instituted.' ( Pierre Miquel: L'Affaire Dreyfus (Paris: P.U.F., 1961), 119).

7. See Pascal Ory/Jean-François Sirinelli, op.cit., llf.

Christophe Charle, Histoire sociale, 271.

On this topic see Régis Debray, Le Pouvoir intellectuel en France (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1979), 51-114, who distinguishes three cycles of the history of the intellectuals: the university cycle (1880-1930), the editorial cycle (1920-1960), and the media cycle (from 1968 on). See too John Flower , 'Wherefore the Intellectuals?' French Cuftural Studies, ii (1991 ), 275-88.

On this topic see Gangolf Hübinger , 'Die Intellektuellen im wilhelminischen Deutschland', in: Gangolf Hübinger/Wolfgang J. Mommsen (eds), Intellektuelle im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1993), 201f. and Fritz Ringer, Fields of Knowledge. French Academic Culture in Comparative Perspective. 1890-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992), 40.

On the topic of German university professors from 1870 to the first World War see Charles E. McLelland, 'In the field of political leadership, then, the German universities tend to move in the same direction as in their relationship to society at large - into a vaguely defensive and conservative posture. Just as they were unable and unwilling to accommodate themselves to the need of certain rising sectors of society, notably the economic sector, they were unable to continue giving Germany the type of critical political advice that had characterized the professoriate of the decades before and after 1848.' (Charles McLelland: State, Society and University in Germany 1700-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 320-1).

See Norbert Elias, Die höfische Gesellschaft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1969), 238--55.

Following Norbert Elias; Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, I. (Frankfurt : Suhrkamp, 1976), 7-36.

Thomas Mann , Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 272. See Daniel Argelès, ' Thomas Mann et la France. Politique et représentations' , in: M.Trebitsch/H. M. Bock/ R. Meyer-Kalkus (eds), Entre Locarno et Vichy. Les Relations culturelles franco-allemandes dans les années 1930 (Paris: C.N.R.S. , 1993), 675-88.

Ibid., 44.

Wolf Lepenies , Die drei Kulturen. Soziologie zwischen Literatur und Wissenschaft (Munich: Hanser , 1985), 265-81: 'Eine deutsche Besonderheit: Der Gegensatz von Dichtung und Literatur' (A German Peculiarity: The Opposition between Poetry and Literature). In the following, we summarize Lepenies's argument.

See Dietz Bering , Die Intellektuellen. Geschichte eines Schimpfwortes (Stuttgart : Klett Cotta, 1977), 263-320.

Jürgen Habermas , 'Heinrich Heine und die Rolle der lntellektuellen in Deutschland'. Merkur. 40th year, nr.6 (June 1986), 453-68. On this topic, also see; Joseph Jurt , 'Autonomie ou hétéronomie: Le champ littéraire en France et en Allemagne', in: Regards sociologiques, nr.4 (1992), 3-16.

Included in Max Weber, Soziologie, universalgeschichtliche Analysen, Politik (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1973), 167-185.

Gangolf Hübinger has recently introduced nuances into Habermas's theses on the topic of Max Weber. Weber's reproach (the 'ethics of conviction') was not directed at the intellectuals as such but rather against the ideal type which he characterized by the term of 'Literat', i.e. all those who distanced themselves from the model of rationality in politics, which included the political revolutionaries with utopian ends and the flight from politics dear to cultural criticism, the anti-rationalism of life-philosophy, and the aestheticism of élite communities such as the Stefan George circle. (Gangolf Hübinger: "'Journalist" und "Literat". Vom Bildungsbürger zum Intellektuellen', in G. Hübinger/W. J. Mommsen, op.cit., 100-19.)

See Fritz K. Ringer , Die Gelehrten. Der Niedergang der deutschen Mandarine 1890-1933 (Stuttgart: Klett, 1987).

Christoph Dröge , 'Ernst Robert Curtius: Europäer und Romanist '. In: Exhibition Catalogue of the Bonn University Library (1986), 5.

lbid., 5; and Heinrich Lausberg , Ernst Robert Curtius (1886-1956) (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1993), 21.

Hans Helmut Christman , Ernst Robert Curtius und die deutschen Romanisten. Mainz, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur (1987), 11.

Ernst Robert Curtius : Kritische Essays zur europäischen Literatur (Bern: Francke, 1963 (3)), 223, 22.

Ibid., 100-16.

Letter of March 17, 19107 published in: Lothar Helbing / Claus Victor Bock (eds), Friedrich Gundolf. Briefwechsel mit Herbert Steiner und Ernst Robert Curtius (Amsterdam 1962/63), 151. Cited in: Hans Manfred Bock: 'Die Politik des "Unpolitischen". Zu Ernst Robert Curtius ' Ort im politisch-intellektuellen Leben der Weimarer Republik', lendemains, 59 (1990), 19. Also see H. Lausberg , op.cit., 25-31.

28. Ibid., 19 .

E. R. Curtius, Kritische Essays, 112.

Ibid., 112.

Ibid., 114.

George/Gundolf, Briefwechsel, 286. Cited by Wolf Lepenies, op.cit., 393.

E.R. Curtius , Die literarischen Wegbereiter des neuen Frankreich (Potsdam: Kiepenhauer, 1919), 14.

Ibid., 17. Curtius intended to show, through the literary precursors, the representatives of a Young France 'beyond decadence and spirit', cultivating the values of 'life', of the Bergsonian é/an vital, of fervour, of the idealism of the will and of action which would, finally, correspond to the German tradition and to its life-philosophy. The new French spirit 'clears the decks of the Latin tradition and awakens within itself the latent powers, hitherto hidden, with the Germanic and Slav music of the soul' (p.242). Curtius thus thinks, as he writes in the preface, that his book will contribute 'to a spiritual renewal of Germany'. See on this topic Harald Weinrich, 'Ernst Robert Curtius: Das Deutschlandbild eines grossen Romanisten', in: Walter Berschin/Arnold Rothe (eds), Ernst Robert Curtius: Werk, Wirkung, Zukunftsperspektiven; Heidelberger Symposion zum hundertsten Geburtstage 1986. (Heidelberg: Winter, 1989), 140-7; and Gérard Raulet, 'Gescheiterte Modernisierung. Kritische Uberlegungen zur deutschen Frankreichkunde der Zwischenkriegszeit', in Begegnung mit dem 'Fremden', Teil II: Theorie der Alterität. Akten des VIII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses (Tokyo,1990), 299.

Kritische Essays, 439.

Ibid., 7.

Ibid., 109.

Ibid., 109.

'Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation', in Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Prosa IV (Frankfurt: S. Fischer , 1977), 390-413.

Ibid., 119.

41. Ibid.

E.R. Curtius , 'Restauration der Vernunft'. Neue Schweizer Rundschau, xxxii ( 1927), 859. Cited by Lothar Hönnighausen , 'Curtius, Eliot und der konservative Beitrag zum Modernismus', in W.-D. Lange (ed.) 'In Ihnen begegnet sich das Abendland'. Bonner Vorträge zur Erinnerung an Ernst Robert Curtius (Bonn: Bouvier,1990), 255.

Ibid., 255. This aristocratic attitude is brought forth also in this letter of 3 January 1948, addressed to Eliot by Curtius: 'I dream of a secret directorate for western cultural politics, just 3, 4, 5, who were of the same opinion, could mean something today.' And Peter Godman comments: 'Little ingenuity is required to guess who two of its members were to be. Eliot approved of this idea, which finds parallels in his own reflection on "The Class and the Elite" in Notes Towards a Definition of Culture [...] The thought of both men on this subject was deeply influenced by the sense they shared of being part of a small community of creative individuals that had transformed the course of European Literature during the 1920's'. (Peter Godman, 'T. S. Eliot and E. R. Curtius. A European Dialogue'. Liber, Year 1, N° 1 (October 1989), 7.)

Cited according to Raimund Theis, Auf der Suclre nach dem besten Frankreich. Zum Briefwechsel von Ernst Curtius mit Andre Gide und Charles du Bos (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann,1984), 33.

Cited in ibid., 34.

In H. and J. M. Dieckmann (eds), Deutsch-französische Gespräche 1920-1950. La correspondance de Ernst Robert Curtius avec André Gide, Charles du Bos et Valéry Larbaud (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1980), 30.

Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 31.

Charles Péguy, L'Argent (1913), 1259. Also see Joseph Jurt; 'Sprache, Literatur, Nation, Kosmopolitanismus, Internationalismus. Historische Bedingungen des deutsch-französischen Kulturaustausches', in: Le Français aujourd'hui: une langue à comprendre. Mélanges offerts à Jürgen Olbert (Frankfurt: Diesterweg,1992), 230-41.

Cited in Walter Berschin/Arnold Rothe (eds), Ernst Robert Curtius, 161.

See R. Theis, Auf der Suche, 35.

See Gérard Raulet, 'Esprit/Geist', in: J. Leenhardt/Robert Picht (eds), Esprit-Geist (Munich: Piper, 1989), 148-60. In his rectoral address of 1933, Heidegger takes up the word Geist again, which he had determined should be avoided, and suspends the quotation-marks in which he had enclosed it. According to Jacques Derrida, in celebrating the liberty of the spirit, Heidegger's elevation resembles other European types of discourse (spiritualist, religious, humanist) which were in general opposed to Nazism. 'In taking the risk of spiritualizing Nazism he could have wanted to redeem or to save it by marking it with this affirmation (spirituality, science, questioning, etc.) [...] This discourse seems no longer to belong simply to the 'ideological' camp in which one appeals to obscure forces, to forces which would not be spiritual but natural, biological, racial, following an interpretation which is precisely not spiritual of "earth and blood".' In having recourse to Geist, Heidegger capitalized two wrongs simultaneously, 'the pledge for Nazism and the gesture which is still metaphysical' (Jacques Derrida, De l'esprit. Heidegger et la question (Paris: Galilée, 1987),64-6).

See Gérard Raulet , op.cit., 289-321. Ibid: 'Les Lumières françaises et leur fonction idéologique dans la romanistique allemande des annees vingt et trente', in Entre Locarno et Vichy. Les Relations culturelles franco-allemandes dans les années 1930 (Paris, C.N.R.S., 1993),317-42.

Deutscher Geist, 39.

Ibid., 18.

Ibid., 73

Ibid., 76.

Ibid., 48.

Ibid., 49. Dirk Hoeges thus judges that one cannot find an emphatic plea for democracy in Deutscher Geist in Gefahr, despite Curtius's plea for humanism. (Dirk Hoeges,'Emphatischer Humanismus. Ernst Robert Curtius, Ernst Troeltsch und Karl Mannheim: Von Deutscher Geist in Gefahr zu Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter', in Wolf-Dieter Lange (ed.), In ihnen begegnet sich das Abendland, 52.) In the same volume, Kurt Sontheimer emphasizes that Curtius, whose point of departure was the primacy of culture and who underestimated politics, sought in Deutscher Geist in Gefahr a midway position between radical socialism and revolutionary nationalism, attempting to ally the belief in Germany with universal values - which was not sufficient to make him a true opponent of National Socialism. Deutscher Geist was thus not a text against National Socialism but against the danger of a reduction of the spirit brought about by nationalism and relativism. (Kurt Sontheimer, 'Ernst Robert Curtius' unpolitische Verteidigung des deutschen Geistes'. Ibid., 59f.)

On this topic see Frank-Rutger Hausmann, 'Ernst Robert Curtius et Leo Spitzer: deux romanistes face à la prise de pouvoir par les national-socialistes'. In Entre Locarno et Vichy. Les Relatious culturelles franco-allemandes dans les années 1930 (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1993), 343-62. Also see idem: 'Aus dem Reich der seelischen Hungersnot'. Briefe und Dokumente zur Fachgeschichte der Romanistik im Dritten Reich (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1993), 45-70.

Les Cahiers de la petite Dame. Tome II:1929-1937.

Did not Albert Béguin, who had been a lector of French at the University of Halle, mean this tradition when he wrote in his Confession d'un germaniste in April, 1941: 'The German élites are absolutely responsible for this state of affairs. Don't listen to the intellectuals from over there who lament the fact that they are without influence and that they are oppressed. If they have not had a wide effect, this is because they have not tried to do so. The fact is that the more they increased their cultivation the more they separated themseves from their people. They looked down on it and formed a caste of specialized beings who were closed off from the surrounding world and who were irresponsible outside their study [...] Germany presents us the spectacle of an absolutely amorphous mass, a small class which is cultivated but which lacks a political, social, or national consciousness, and which hence obeys in the domain of politics all the commands which issue forth from the mass' (Albert Béguin, Création et destinée (Paris: Seuil, 1973), 76).