When Goethe first embarked on his literary career in the 1770s, his closest friend and collaborator was the writer, aesthetician and philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803). Herder developed in the young Goethe a pantheistic love and reverence for nature and the natural world. He opened Goethe’s eyes to the beauty, power and resonance of folk tales, folk songs and folk poetry. He extolled Shakespeare, Homer and the Ossian poems of James Macpherson, and developed a concept for which he coined the term ‘Volksgeist’, usually translated as ‘folk soul’.
For Herder, history was not shaped or determined by a human agency. It was the working out, and manifestation, of divine or cosmic principles or laws. These expressed themselves through the folk soul of cultures and peoples. The folk soul was a people’s collective soul and destiny. Its relationship to the divine was ultimately analogous to that of the individual soul. It constituted a connecting link and conduit between heaven and earth. Through the folk soul, mystical energies, the vertu, the ordained destiny with which the cosmos had impregnated a particular soil could find expression in the human spirit and thence return to the cosmos, thereby closing the circle and creating—or attesting to—universal harmony. As Herder conceived it, the process amounted to a mystical or spiritual equivalent of photosynthesis.
Every people, according to Herder, had its own unique and distinctive folk soul. He did not presume to extol any one folk soul over another; for Herder, this would have seemed as absurd as ascribing an intrinsic superiority to a particular individual soul. So far as Herder was concerned, each folk soul was valid; each possessed its own traits, its own propensities, its own strengths and weaknesses, its own generic qualities; and if he himself had any personal sympathies for a specific folk soul, it was for England’s, not Germany’s. Essentially, Herder’s conception of the folk soul was not significantly different from what this book has called ‘national identity’ or ‘the collective psyche’, except that Herder attached to his conception a sacred, mystical, divinely ordained character.
If Herder accorded no intrinsic superiority to the German folk soul, other people could—and the War of Liberation offered grounds on which to do so. Herder was dead by that time, and in no position to object when his conception was appropriated and conscripted on behalf of nationalism, chauvinism and a xenophobia hostile to anything foreign. When it was yoked to these things, the conception of the folk soul provided a seemingly respectable philosophical foundation for theories of racial supremacy. Goethe’s ideas were vulnerable in the same way. Despite his insistence on the universality of culture, he himself could be cited as proof of the supremacy of Germanic culture. With the nationalistic self-confidence engendered by the War of Liberation, Germanic culture, as a manifestation of the Germanic folk soul, was soon being trumpeted as superior to others. And if, as Goethe maintained, the Germans were a people uniquely qualified to reflect or represent culture and the spirit, that too constituted a claim to superiority.
Out of this arose the nineteenth-century cult of ‘das Volk’ (‘the People’) and an elaborate ‘Volkische’ ideology. Das Volk did not mean ‘the masses’ in any socialist or Marxist sense. Neither did it imply socialist or Marxist class distinctions. And it entailed something diametrically opposed to the materialism of socialist and Marxist thought. The War of Liberation allowed das Volk to be put forward as an heroic collective entity, cosmically or divinely ordained to manifest the power of the folk, fulfil a national destiny and shatter the yoke of Napoleonic tyranny. The ‘people’ denoted by das Volk were thus imbued with a numinous quality, a mystical dimension, a status mantled with the sacred. In das Volk, nationalism acquired a religious mandate and ratification.
Idealized and transcendent, the Volk symbolized the desired unity beyond contemporary reality ... The Volk provided a more tangible vessel for the life force that flowed from the cosmos ... Volkisch thought made the Volk the intermediary between man and the ‘higher reality’.7
Unlike the urban proletariat exhorted to unite by Marx, das Volk were essentially rural and deeply rooted in the sacred national soil, to which they were inseparably bound by the folk soul.
The landscape thus became a vital part of the definition of the Volk ... Man was not seen as a vanquisher of nature, nor was he credited with the ability to penetrate the meaning of nature by applying the tools of reason; instead he was glorified as living in accordance with nature, at one with its mystical forces.8
In other words, the relationship between das Volk and the soil harked back to an archaic, atavistic and pre-Christian symbiosis—the volcanic pagan energy which, as Heine had warned, lurked latent beneath the brittle crust of German society, and was liable at any moment to erupt. For the adherents of ‘Volkische’ ideology, however, this energy was not destructive, but laudably dynamic, an assertion of strength, durability and solidarity.
What was more, the essentially ‘rooted’ nature of das Volk, the symbiotic rapport between people and soil, rendered ‘rootlessness’ reprehensible. If rootedness in the soil was a virtue, lack of roots had necessarily to be seen as a vice, testifying to lack of harmony, to something alien and artificial, to a disruption of the mystical natural order. Rootlessness became synonymous with restlessness and was stigmatised as a threat to ‘Volkische’ stability. Foreigners were one embodiment of this threat. The migratory urban proletariat was another. There were also, of course, Germany’s Jews, emancipated relatively recently and now prospering. In ‘Volkische’ ideology, the Jew was the very incarnation of rootlessness. The ‘Wandering Jew’ could only too easily be identified as the natural adversary of ‘das Volk’, the inimical outsider and stranger, the unwelcome intruder. Thus the ground was prepared for later anti-Semitism.
Prompted by an identity crisis similar to Germany’s, and equally seeking a post-Napoleonic self-definition, Russia was experiencing the same developments. A comparable version of the folk soul was being extolled, and a mystical rapport between people and soil exalted. Hostility was displayed towards foreigners, ‘alien’ influences were deplored, and a uniquely national ‘purity’, in this case Slavic, was sought. And in Russia, too, the seeds of anti-Semitism were being sown. The ‘Volkische’ movement in Germany, also known as pan-Aryanism, had a counterpart in Russia known as pan-Slavism. Like their contemporaries in Germany, adherents of pan-Slavism disseminated a kind of racial supremacy, and ascribed to their people a sacred ‘mission’ of ‘world historic’ import. Among the most prominent exponents of pan-Slavism were the mystical philosopher Vladimir Solovyov and, of course, Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In Germany, the leading early exponent of ‘Volkische’ ideology was Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, whose expositions, published between 1857 and 1863, exerted a considerable influence. But Riehl was soon overshadowed by figures of much greater artistic consequence. There was, for example, Richard Wagner, who proclaimed himself a proponent of pan-Aryanism and whose operas often focused on characteristically ‘Volkische’ themes—works such as Tannhäuser and, of course, The Ring, which drew extensively on Germanic legend, saga, folklore and pagan tradition.
The propagators of pan-Aryanism and ‘Volkische’ ideology eagerly conscripted figures of the recent past as well—Goethe’s contemporaries from the beginning of the century and luminaries of German Romanticism. Thus, Herder was repeatedly invoked, even though he would have disapproved. Another such posthumous recruit, who would also have disapproved, was the great Romantic poet and essayist Friedrich, Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801), better known by his pen name, Novalis. There were also the eminent philologists, scholars, antiquarians and collectors of folklore, the brothers Jacob Ludwig and Wilhelm Karl Grimm, whose systematic collection of folk and fairy tales, published as the War of Liberation erupted in 1812 and 1813, remains, even to this day, the supreme work of its kind. Like Herder, the Grimm brothers did not really exalt the German ‘Volk’ or folk soul over any other, but they issued such pronouncements as: ‘The eternal, invisible, towards which every noble spirit must strive, is reve
aled in its purest and most distinct form in the totality, that is, in the idea of a Volk.’9 These pronouncements provided vital sustenance to the more nationalistic and xenophobic ‘Volkische’ ideology of the mid-nineteenth century.
Later works were also press-ganged into ‘Volkische’ service. One such was Wanderings through the March of Brandenburg, a three-volume collection of travel sketches, anecdotes, folk tales and historical reflections published between 1862 and 1882 by Theodor Fontane. With the possible exception of the Austrian Adalbert Stifter, Fontane, a Prussian of Huguenot descent, was the greatest German-language novelist of the nineteenth century—a figure who warrants comparison with Turgenev and Flaubert. It would be difficult to find a man more temperamentally hostile to ‘Volkische’ attitudes: Fontane was signally unmystical and regarded ‘Volkische’ pantheism with an indifference verging on disdain. He deplored nationalism, loathed militarism and despised xenophobia. He condemned the creation of the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War. He practised and extolled an urbane cosmopolitan tolerance. He prided himself on his own French origins and even pronounced his surname in the French fashion, keeping the ‘e’ at the end silent. Notwithstanding all this, Wanderings through the March of Brandenburg became a bible of the ‘Volkische’ movement.
In addition to literary figures past and present, the ‘Volkische’ movement could muster some impressively lofty and weighty philosophical support, including Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel was contemporary with German Romanticism, with figures such as Novalis, Schelling and Hölderlin, and was personally acquainted with the latter two. He knew Goethe, and although they did not often agree, they regarded each other with a cordial mutual respect.
Hegel is probably best known today for his exposition of ‘the dialectic’, and particularly the ‘dialectic of history’, which was appropriated and adapted by Karl Marx, but there were other aspects of Hegelian thought that lent themselves readily to nationalism and ‘Volkische’ ideology. Heine had warned that only Christianity, ‘the talisman of the Cross’, stood between civilisation and atavistic Germanic barbarism. Hegel, however, was hostile to Christianity, which he described as ‘the product of an alien race and out of harmony with the Germanic soul’.10 He wrote a life of Jesus, whom he depicted as nothing more than a moral teacher, eminently mortal. But what most endeared Hegel to later proponents of pan-Aryanism and ‘Volkische’ ideology was his theory of history.
The theory had elements in common with Herder’s concept of the folk soul. For Hegel, history was ultimately a manifestation of metaphysical principles, ‘the self-actualisation of spirit’—or, more specifically, what Hegel called the ‘World Spirit’. The men who shaped history—Alexander, for example, Caesar, Frederick the Great and Napoleon—were ‘used as instruments of the World Spirit’. And the World Spirit, working through history, was the ultimate and definitive arbiter, transcending all human systems of ethics or morality. According to Hegel: ‘The actual fate of each nation constitutes its judgement.’11 In other words, there is no morality except for what is, the fait accompli. Thus, ‘if one nation succeeds in conquering another ... its action is justified by its success’.12 At any given historical moment, Hegel further maintained, there was only one dominant people, a people who reflected the workings of the World Spirit and served as its instrument. Such a people would have a brief span of pre-eminence and would then decline. The people ordained for preeminence in his own time, Hegel believed, were the Germans.
Hegel went even further. He also yoked the concrete entity of the people, ‘das Volk’, to the more abstract concept of the State, and thus to nationalism. The State, for Hegel, was not an abstract artificial structure imposed on, and presiding over, the people within it. It was, rather, a tangible manifestation of the people, their collective will and folk soul. Each people’s folk soul, or ‘national spirit’, when embodied in the State, was ‘a phase or moment in the life of the World Spirit’.13 And because the State reflected the World Spirit, it enjoyed the prerogatives traditionally reserved for the divine. The State therefore took precedence over all individual rights. True freedom existed only when the individual’s aspirations and desires concurred harmoniously with those of the State, and ‘the will of the State must prevail over the particular will when there is a clash between them’.14 In effect, Hegel contrived to deify the State. He even described it, on one occasion, as ‘this actual God’—in other words, as the only palpable embodiment of a divine principle in the phenomenal world.
On this basis, Hegel also justified war as the supreme arbiter in disputes between states resulting from the abrogation of treaties and international law. War was therefore both ‘rational and necessary’; the means whereby the World Spirit asserted its will in history. From this Hegel could go on to assert that war
is the chief means by which a people’s spirit acquires renewed vigour, or a decayed political organism is swept aside and gives place to a more vigorous manifestation of the Spirit.15
It is easy to see how Hegel could be used to reinforce the nationalism fostered by the War of Liberation and the burgeoning ‘Volkische’ movement. He provided one of the chief ingredients of a heady and intoxicating cocktail with which National Socialism would later inebriate the German people.
Yet among its ingredients were some that did not mix altogether palatably. Inevitably, contradictions here and there occurred. ‘Volkische’ ideology was rural in its orientation and enamoured of the past. It was hostile towards industrialisation, which was nevertheless essential to the war machine that would soon weld Germany into a new imperial unity. When industrialisation produced victories against Denmark, Austria and France, ‘Volkische’ ideology therefore contrived to accommodate it.
In the wake of the War of Liberation, Goethe’s and then Heine’s ideal—a nation dedicated to culture and the spirit—was disastrously undermined. It was now one of two self-definitions contending for the ‘heart and soul’ of Germany. The other was based on nationalism, militarism, ‘Volkische’ ideology and pan-Aryanism, and an espousal of political unity and the Hegelian cult of the State. After the wars of Bismarck’s era, it was this second self-definition which emerged triumphant—at least externally. With Prussia’s dramatic defeat of Denmark, Austria and especially France, the struggle for Germany’s ‘heart and soul’ effectively ended, at least in the sphere of politics. The new German Empire—the Second Reich—was created, and the monster feared by Goethe, Heine and others came into being.
Yet the Prussian political apparatus of the new imperium was ultimately only a superstructure, artificially imposed on something much less unified and homogeneous than its façade suggested. Behind this superstructure, the old identity crisis persisted. Many Germans felt themselves less ‘German’ than Bavarian, Swabian, Hannoverian or Saxon. There were also deep-seated divisions between the Protestant north and the predominantly Catholic south, which continued to look to Vienna as its real capital rather than Berlin. And Goethe’s ideal of a nation dedicated to culture and the spirit was kept alive and propagated by such literary figures as Fontane, Theodor Storm, Wilhelm Raabe and, especially, the Swabian Eduard Mörike, whom Stefan George and the Stauffenbergs esteemed almost as much as they did Hölderlin.
For outsiders, as well as for Germans themselves, a single unified self-definition and national identity remained elusive. In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, it was easy enough to characterise Germany by a spiked helmet, but developments in the south were running counter to this image. While Bismarck was making war in the north, Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, was encouraging art. Regarded as an effete fool and probably mad, Ludwig nevertheless subscribed passionately to the Goethean ideal of a nation dedicated to culture and the spirit. While Prussia burgeoned with steelworks and armaments factories, Bavaria bloomed with fairytale castles, enchanted grottoes and the supreme temple to high ‘Kultur’ at Bayreuth. Under the patronage of Bavaria’s monarch, Kultur became, in effect, the official state religion, Wagner�
��s operas assumed the status of religious rites or festivals, and Bayreuth became a pilgrimage centre. It was not uncommon, during the late nineteenth century, for educated Europeans (and especially educated Britons) to describe themselves as ‘Wagnerian’ in precisely the same way that their predecessors might have described themselves as ‘Christian’. Kultur became a creed. In France, it assumed the form of ‘l’art pour l’art’, ‘art for art’s sake’, but the focus of it all, even for its most assiduous French apostles, was Wagner and Bayreuth. And whatever Wagner’s own pan-Aryan orientation, his art was perceived at the time less as a testimony to Germanic supremacy than to that of culture and the spirit.
Given the contrasting and conflicting values of Prussia and Bavaria, the question of what it ‘meant’ to be German remained unresolved. What constituted the more accurate, more profoundly valid reflection of ‘the true Germany’? Was it the material progress of increasingly industrialised Prussia, with her cult of blood and iron, her strategically organised railway system, her state-of-the-art artillery and awesomely efficient war machine? Or was it the cultural and spiritual Mecca of Bavaria, with her rival cult of religio-aesthetic rapture, her lofty aspirations to the numinous, her investiture of art with a dimension of the sacred and supernal? Neither outsiders nor Germans themselves were altogether sure, and not even Ludwig’s mysterious death, probably at the hands of Bismarck’s agents, did much to resolve the dilemma.
It is true that Wagner’s music, so fervently embraced and patronised by Ludwig, contained many elements later adopted, embraced and revered by Hitler and National Socialism. But Ludwig, certainly, had no interest in seeing these elements translated into politics; and it is doubtful that Wagner, despite his pan-Aryanism, did either. Of course, that did not spare him from being posthumously conscripted, as was the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Yet Nietzsche, too, repudiated politics, especially in so trivial and contemptible a form as nationalism. The Nietzschean ‘Übermensch’ or ‘superman’ was hardly a political figure; and the transformation or revolution he represented was one of spirit and consciousness, not of political institutions or geographical frontiers. For Nietzsche, as for Goethe, transformation was of paramount importance; but Nietzsche’s conception of transformation, like Goethe’s, had nothing whatever to do with bureaucracy or the machinery of the Hegelian State.
Secret Germany: Stauffenberg and the True Story of Operation Valkyrie Page 24