George was painfully aware of the ways in which Nietzsche had been appropriated, misinterpreted and exploited. He was scathing in his condemnation, while, at the same time, commiserating with the dead philosopher, whom he acknowledged as a ‘Führer’ and explicitly linked with Jesus:
The rule of fervent silence shall continue
Until the brutes who soil him with their praise
And fatten further on the reek of rotting
Which helped to strangle him, at last are stifled.
But you shall live in glory through the ages
With crowned and bleeding brow like other
leaders.25
That he himself would soon suffer a fate similar to Nietzsche’s was becoming, to George, only too bitterly apparent.
In actual fact, he loathed and despised the Nazis, who represented ‘ghastly caricatures of his elusive ideal’.26 They gradually began to assume for him a status even more loathsome than his antipathies and ‘pet peeves’ of longer standing. Aloof, patrician, aristocratic and elitist as he was, George had always recoiled from ‘the mob’ and everything associated with it, including, of course, such mass movements as Communism—which, in seeking a lowest common denominator, reduced all humanity to the level of ‘the mob’. He had always recoiled from ‘das Leichte’, the ‘Facile’—the ersatz, the shoddy, the spurious, the vulgar, the tacky, everything that resulted from spiritual and creative laziness and the quest for a ‘short cut’. He had always recoiled from what he called ‘Prussianism’, by which he meant not just militarism, but also conformity, uniformity, regimentation, stodginess, bureaucracy, straight-laced complacency, philistinism, materialism and an arid lack of imagination.
The Nazis, for George, combined all of these things in a new nadir of human and spiritual degradation. National Socialism effectively fused mob mentality with both the ‘Facile’ and ‘Prussianism’. And the Party’s adherents were guilty, too, of an even more grievous transgression—of tramping into the sacred domain of George’s own rarefied thought, appropriating it as their own and, in the process, reducing it to a gauche and grotesque travesty. In Nazism, George saw elements of his own exalted and supernal vision reflected as in a trick mirror at a fun fair, warped and twisted perversely out of shape. To that extent, his grievance with National Socialism was more intensely personal than, say, Thomas Mann’s, whose detached, Olympian yet unequivocal hostility was proof against any attempt to co-opt it. The Nazis, George felt, had plundered and sullied sacrosanct aspects of his most private self—the very inspiration and sense of mission that sustained him. And thus, though he was never threatened as Mann was, his only option was exile—exile dictated not by self-preservation, but by an overwhelming disgust.
If George’s attitude towards Nazism was misunderstood—both by the Nazis themselves and by subsequent commentators—so, too, were certain of his other attitudes. He has sometimes been accused, for example, of anti-Semitism. Yet he spurned the so-called ‘Cosmics’ and the racial theoreticians associated with them precisely because he recoiled from anti-Semitism. His attitude towards anti-Semitism was one of lofty, almost weary, contempt:
A racial policy is no new thing: it is no more than an evil legacy from the nineteenth century. Only the spirit, not some breeding establishment, is capable of producing a good new race of men.27
George’s grievance was not with Jews or with Judaism, but, like Lawrence’s, with Judaeo-Christian thought and tradition, with values and attitudes rather than with people. So far as people were concerned, George made no distinction whatever between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Aryan’ Germans. There were a number of Jewish members in his circle, one of whom later joined the German resistance in Holland and died in a concentration camp. In the summer of 1933, shortly after the Nazi accession to power, another Jewish member of George’s circle, a woman named Edith Landmann, wrote an essay entitled ‘To the German Jews who belong to the Secret Germany’.28 In this essay, Frau Landmann endeavoured to raise support for an ambitious scheme—an exodus of German Jews and the creation of ideal communities, based on George’s thinking, abroad.
In his attitude towards Judaism as such, George characteristically sought deeper, more subterranean dynamics than were apparent to the naked eye. He took pains to discern latent connections between Germans and Jews. For George, the hatred and prejudice involved in German anti-Semitism displayed an intensity only possible in instances of blood kinship and self-recognition—the relationship, ultimately of Cain and Abel. If Jews were guilty of anything, it was of being too akin to the Germans.
You, the extremes: the one from barren snowdrifts
And wave-swept cliffs, the other from the glowing
Wastes of a spectral god, are both at equal
Remove from radiant seas and fields where mortals
Live out their lives and shape themselves and gods.
Fair-haired or dark, the selfsame womb begot you.
Each hates and seeks and does not know his
brother,
And always roams and never is fulfilled.29
Behind these ostensibly straightforward lines, there is what the jargon of current literary criticism would label a complex ‘sub-text’. The same sub-text was also being explored and developed by Thomas Mann, who addressed it in his massive tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers. Like Mann, George was aware of how extremes of climate encouraged altered states of consciousness and thereby religious experiences. The primary agent in the relationship between climate and consciousness was wind.
The Greek word ‘pneuma’ combines a number of associated meanings. It denotes ‘spirit’, and ‘breath’ or ‘exhalation’, and also ‘wind’. As George was aware, the association of these, as exemplified by the word ‘pneuma’, had been a commonplace since biblical times, if not indeed before, and had figured prominently throughout esoteric thought. Wind was taken to be, quite literally, the breath of God, God’s spirit, the closest approximation God ever assumed to physical manifestation. For Joachim de Fiore, wind functioned as symbolic herald for the coming age of the Holy Spirit; and the same theme has more recently been developed by Michel Tournier.
In Ecclesiastes 12:7, the ‘Ruach’, the fiercely hot desert wind, is equated with the spirit that returns to God after the body has died and returned to dust. For the ancient Israelites, however, the ‘Ruach’ was the literal breath of their god of wrath. Indeed, as Thomas Mann has argued, there are etymological grounds for believing that the very word ‘Ruach’ evolved into ‘Yahweh’ and thence into ‘Jehovah’. In much the same fashion, Wotan, whose name evolves from ‘Wode’, an archaic Germanic word for ‘rage’, derived from the shrill Valkyrie-like shrieking of the Arctic wind sweeping through the ancient Germanic forests.
In their later development, both Wotan and Jehovah were essentially gods of wrath, of power, of majesty, of pageant and spectacle, of battle and conquest, of Cecil B. De Mille special effects and casts of thousands. Both trafficked in the particular kind of fear, or ‘sacred awe’, engendered by grandeur and sheer physical ferocity, yet in their origins both were gods of wind and, as such, essentially formless. For George, form was of paramount importance; and the sculpted, anthropomorphic divinities of the classical world were thus immeasurably more congenial to him than the abstraction of wind-born deities.
If allegations of pro-Nazi sympathies and anti-Semitism on George’s part have been misplaced, so, too, have allegations of his homosexuality. His relationship with Maximilian Kronberger, despite assumptions to the contrary, was never homo-erotic in character or in practice; and the love expressed in the poems postdating Maximilian’s death could hardly be described as amorous idolatry. It is, rather, a paternal tenderness and solicitude fused with a rarefied platonic soul kinship. There is no evidence that any other relationships in George’s life were homosexual. And although he displayed little interest in women, during the 1890s he maintained a lengthy affair with Ida Coblenz, who later married a member of his circle. Ultimately, it would seem, George wa
s not so much either homosexual or heterosexual as simply ‘sexless’. He appears to have sublimated his sexuality entirely into an exalted idealisation of ‘pure’ beauty and ‘pure’ form.
George’s asexuality is illuminated by Gustave von Aschenbach, the protagonist of Thomas Mann’s nouvelle Death in Venice. Contrary to the impression conveyed by Visconti’s film, Mann’s nouvelle is most emphatically not a psychological ‘case study’ of homosexuality, latent or of any other kind. The real theme in Death in Venice is the toll exacted on the personality by a life dedicated, with a single-minded and religious sense of vocation, to the spirit and to art. Such monomaniacal dedication inevitably involves a cost to other aspects of the personality, which, rigorously suppressed and denied all expression, fester in a neglected recess of the psyche, turn rancid and depraved.
In his monklike devotion to art, Aschenbach, Mann tells us, has lived his life like a perpetually clenched fist. The nouvelle depicts how, fatigued by the incessant pressure it has sustained, this fist, under the influence of almost any catalyst, can inadvertently relax—and how aspects of human experience, repudiated for so long and consequently corrupted, can then suddenly erupt with obsessive power and usurp the foreground of consciousness. Aschenbach has devoted his life religiously to beauty of form. When he is seduced, it is not by sexuality, nor by eroticism, but by a human embodiment of what he has always worshipped—a pure, classically Grecian beauty of form. The youth by whom he is besotted conforms precisely to George’s concept of an ‘avatar’, but this youth could just as easily have been a girl, or an animal, or a tree, or a landscape. In human form, however, beauty becomes more seemingly attainable—and in masculine human form, more potent as a metaphor.
Homosexuality in Death in Venice is essentially a metaphor rather than a psychological phenomenon explored for its own sake. The real issue is Aschenbach’s self-abandonment and the ‘depravity’ that follows. Homosexuality was simply the most shocking metaphor that Mann, writing in 1911, could find for self-abandonment and ‘depravity’, but Aschenbach could just as readily have succumbed to heterosexual dissipation, to gambling, to alcoholism, to drug addiction or to any of numerous possible manifestations of a hitherto rigorously controlled psyche losing control of itself and being overwhelmed by its own neglected aspects.
Aschenbach is often said to have been based, at least in part, on Gustav Mahler, a suggestion reinforced, obviously, by his Christian name. Yet there are reasons for suggesting that he was also based on Stefan George, whom Mann described as ‘this proud and priestly temperament’. Certainly Aschenbach’s life—lived like a clenched fist which makes him a ‘culture hero’, a beacon and ‘rôle model’ for generations of youth—has much in common with George’s. It is clear that George recognised something of himself in Aschenbach and took umbrage. He pronounced Death in Venice, as Mann ruefully and sympathetically acknowledged, to be ‘the highest drawn down into the realm of decadence’.30 For George, then, writing in 1911, adoration of classical beauty in human form was commendably lofty and worthy, but homosexual attraction, even if never actualised in practice, was decadent and reprehensible. Like Aschenbach, George lived his life like a clenched fist. In George’s case, however, the fist remained firmly clenched.
When asked what constituted his greatest work, George, in words now famous, replied: ‘My friends.’ His concept of friendship was rather different from what most people would associate with the word. For George, it entailed warmth, trust, intimacy and loyalty, but it also entailed aloofness, remoteness and detachment—the relation, again, of a magus or guru to his deferential disciples. He drew sustenance from their adulation and fidelity, but kept himself deliberately distant and mantled in mystery. Discussion in his circle revolved primarily around ‘ideas’ and ‘issues’. If it ever became personal at all, it became so in connection with his protégés’ lives rather than his own. George ultimately saw his ‘friends’ as sources of inspiration for himself, and as malleable raw material to be shaped and groomed, as if his relationship to them were itself a work of art.
Yet it is doubtful whether any of George’s disciples would have seen that relationship as in any sense one-sided or selfish. Nor can one deny the element of altruism in his attitude. Although he himself was hardly a man of action—he conveys an impression of physical inertia worthy of the Buddha, if not, indeed, of full-fledged godhood—he insisted, emphatically and repeatedly, on the necessity for action by his disciples. They were to be the custodians of Germany’s future, an exclusive and elite cadre meticulously nurtured and honed for the task of leadership. The training and refinement of this cadre was something George regarded as a mission, a sacred duty, a discharging of his own personal responsibility to Germany—and, beyond Germany, to humanity as a whole, to the life of the spirit, to the cosmos and whatever gods or governing principles presided over it.
There are, of course, illustrious classical precedents for the rôle George, perhaps arrogantly, assumed. In many respects his circle suggests an updated version of the ancient Platonic academy, with George himself playing the part of Socratic mentor, guide and sage. George himself would probably not have welcomed this comparison. For one thing, Platonic thought was rather too abstract for his taste; for another, the academy, as it appears in its Platonic manifestation, was too divorced from mundane practical reality, from the world of action.
For George, the real classical antecedents of his circle were the schools associated (at least according to esoteric tradition) with Pythagoras. Pythagorean teaching was, if anything, even more spiritual and mystical than Platonic thought, but it was also more concrete, emphasising a network of interlocking connections between the phenomenal world and the numinous. Most important of all, the prevailing image of the Pythagorean schools was not one of quietism and isolation from secular life. The schools were generally seen as mystically and magically oriented precursors of, say, Harrow and Eton, preparing and grooming hand-picked cadres of young men for active rôles of service in public life, in government, administration, the military and other spheres of civic responsibility.
Whatever the fine points of difference between the Platonic and the Pythagorean, the prototype for George’s circle lay, so far as he was concerned, in ancient Greece. Such a classical point of reference was thoroughly in keeping with his classical sympathies in other respects, and with his paganism and antipathy towards Judaeo-Christian tradition. Yet despite his antipathy towards that tradition, George nevertheless grafted one supremely crucial aspect of it on to his own essentially pagan Weltanschauung. This was the necessity for self-sacrifice as a vehicle to spiritual salvation and redemption. However inimical George felt Judaeo-Christian tradition to be, his concept of sacrifice is recognisably, and emphatically, Judaeo-Christian. And in order to articulate his concept, he had no compunction about plundering Judaeo-Christian terminology, imagery and symbolism.
Referring to Claus and himself, Berthold von Stauffenberg stated that ‘We are not really what are called Catholic believers in the proper sense. We did not go to church very often, nor to confession: my brother and I feel that Christianity is unlikely to produce anything creative.’31 Yet the Stauffenbergs had been born and raised as Catholics. However tepid their faith, they also, all their lives, considered themselves to be Catholic. How did they accommodate their Christianity, nominal though it may have been, with George’s unique hybrid of esotericism and paganism? One answer to this question would seem to be George’s concept of sacrifice. For the Stauffenbergs, as well as for other members of George’s circle, the concept of sacrifice appears to have been a connecting link between conventional established religion and the ‘Master’s’ thought. Through the concept of sacrifice, Christian believers could draw from paganism a new energy and vitality for their faith. And through the concept of sacrifice, George’s paganism acquired an element of acceptability, respectability and legitimacy. It could not be branded ‘subversive’, ‘immoral’ or ‘anti-social’, as, for example, D. H. Lawrence’s was.<
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By July 1944, it had become apparent that Claus von Stauffenberg could no longer just direct and coordinate the conspiracy against the hierarchy of the Third Reich. He would have to act personally, taking upon himself the responsibility of assassinating Adolf Hitler—and this, needless to say, would in all likelihood mean an act of self-sacrifice. Towards the beginning of July, Stauffenberg conceived the idea of an oath of mutual intent to bind the inner circle of the conspiracy together—quite possibly to ensure their cohesion and continued dedication of purpose in the event of his death. He discussed the matter with his brother, Berthold, and with Rudolf Fahrner, and asked them to draft a preliminary text. This was accordingly drawn up, and Berthold’s secretary typed it out. The original copy disappeared, having probably been destroyed in the aftermath of 20 July, but Rudolf Fahrner kept a photocopy, with hand-written amendments by Stauffenberg, which a woman friend hid until after the war. Parts of it were published in 1952, the whole of it in 1992. The document echoes much of Stefan George’s teachings and many of his poems. One particularly central passage reads:
We want a new order which makes all Germans responsible for the state and guarantees them law and justice; but we despise the lie that all are equal and we submit to rank ordained by nature. We want a people with roots in their native land, close to the powers of nature, finding happiness and contentment in the given environment, and overcoming, in freedom and pride, the base instincts of envy and jealousy. We want leaders who, coming from every section of the nation, are in harmony with the divine powers and set an example to others by their noble spirit, discipline and sacrifice.32
Secret Germany: Stauffenberg and the True Story of Operation Valkyrie Page 31