The German Genius

by Peter Watson

  27. Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins, p. 114.

  28. Ibid., p. 20.

  29. Ibid., pp. 34–35.

  30. Ibid., p. 60.

  31. Ibid., pp. 104–105.

  32. Ibid., pp. 126 and 140.

  33. Ibid., p. 146.

  34. Ibid., p. 212.

  35. Ibid., p. 224.

  36. Ibid., p. 247.

  37. Ibid., p. 254.

  38. Ibid., p. 423.

  39. Elias even went so far as to compose his own “Churchillian” “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech for Germans, in which he repeated Dahrendorf’s point that their conflicts needed to be settled in a democratic way, not the way of the satisfaktionsfähige Gesellschaft. See Elias, The Germans, p. 409 for the speech. See also Ringer, Decline of the German Mandarins, p. 444.

  40. Alfons Söllner, “Normative Westernisation? The Impact of Rémigrés on the Formation of Political Thought in Germany,” in Jan-Werner Müller, ed., German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 40ff.

  41. For the reopening of the universities, Heidelberg in particular, see James A. Mumper, “The Re-opening of Heidelberg University, 1945–46: Major Earl L. Crum and the Ambiguities of American Post-war Policy,” in Homer & Wilcox, eds., Germany and Europe, pp. 238–239.

  42. Edward N. Zalta, principal editor, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, entry on Karl Jaspers, p. 5 of 18. http://plato.stanford.edu/

  43. Karl Jaspers, Nachlass zur philosophischen Logik, ed. Hans Saner and Marc Hänggi (Munich: Piper, 1991).

  44. Suzanne Kirkbright, Karl Jaspers: A Biography; Navigations in Truth (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 209.

  45. Ibid., pp. 203ff.

  46. Charles B. Guignon, The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 70–96.

  47. Rüdiger Safranski, Ein Meister aus Deutschland: Heidegger und seine Zeit (Munich: Hanser, 1994), pp. 332ff.

  48. Tom Rockmore, On Heidegger’s Nazism and Philosophy (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 282 for the effect of Nazism on Heidegger’s philosophy.

  49. Richard Wolin, Heidegger’s Children (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. xii. Rockmore, On Heidegger’s Nazism, pp. 244ff. But see also John Macquarrie, An Existential Theology: A Comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 16, 18, and 84.

  50. Rockmore, On Heidegger’s Nazism, p. 204, for Nazism and technology. Guignon, ed., Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, pp. 345–372.

  51. James W. Ceaser, Reconstructing America: The Symbol of America in Modern Thought (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1997), chap. 7.

  52. Ibid., p. 187–192.

  53. Ibid., p. 195.

  54. Martin Jay, “Taking on the Stigma of Authenticity: Adorno’s Critique of Genuineness,” New German Critique 97, vol. 33, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 15–30.

  55. Safranski, Meister aus Deutschland, p. 24; and p. 407ff. for Heidegger’s debate at Davos with Cassirer. See also Michael Friedman, Parting of the Ways, pp. 129–144.

  56. Wolin, Heidegger’s Children, p. 72.

  57. Ibid., p. 81.

  58. Ibid., p. 95.

  59. Jean Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2003).

  60. Ibid., pp. 283ff.

  61. Jess Malpas, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, entry on Gadamer, p. 7/16. http://plato.stanford.edu/

  62. Safranski, Meister aus Deutschland, p. 289.

  63. Robert Bernasconi, ed., Hans-Georg Gadamer: The Relevance of the Beautiful, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 123–130.

  64. Timothy Clark, The Poetics of Singularity: The Counter-Culturalist Turn in Heidegger, Derrida, Blanchot, and the Later Gadamer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 61ff.

  65. Malpas, Stanford Encyclopaedia, p. 12/16.

  66. Robert Wuthnow, Cultural Analysis: The Work of Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas (Boston, Mass., and London: Routledge, 1984), p. 16.

  67. Deborah Cook, Adorno, Habermas, and the Search for a Rational Society (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 112–123.

  68. Wuthnow, Cultural Analysis, p. 181.

  69. Ibid., pp. 197–198.

  70. Ibid., p. 190.

  71. Cook, Adorno, Habermas, pp. 66ff.

  72. Wuthnow, Cultural Analysis, p. 195.

  73. Ibid., pp. 224–225.

  74. Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts, After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (Oxford: Blackwell: Sociological Review, 2004), pp. 131–155 considers the Internet as a public space and its prospects for a “transnational democracy.”

  75. Konrad H. Jarausch, After Hitler: Recivilising Germans, 1945–1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

  76. Ibid., p. 16.

  77. Ibid., p. 48.

  78. Ibid., p. 63.

  79. Ibid., p. 16.

  80. Müller, ed., German Ideologies, p. 122. Jarausch, After Hitler, p. 100.

  81. Müller, German Ideologies, p. 147.

  82. Jarausch, After Hitler, p. 167.

  83. Rolf Hochhuth, Täter und Denker: Profile und Probleme von Cäser bis Jünger (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1987), pp. 41f.

  84. Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland, p. 42.

  85. Ibid., p. 49.

  86. Jarausch, After Hitler, p. 186.

  87. Ibid., p. 197.

  88. Rainer Taëni, Rolf Hochhuth (Munich: Beck, 1977). Jarausch, After Hitler, p. 225.

  89. Ruth A. Starkman, ed., Transformations of the New Germany (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 133.

  90. Müller, German Ideologies, p. 192.

  91. Ibid., p. 194.

  92. Starkman, ed., Transformations, p. 37.

  93. Hans Jürgen Syberberg, Die freudlose Gesellschaft: Notizen aus dem letzten Jahr (Munich and Vienna: Hanser, 1981).

  94. Starkman, ed. Transformations, pp. 40–45.

  95. Denis Calandra, New German Dramatists: A Study of Peter Handke, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Heiner Muller, Thomas Brasch, Thomas Bernhard, and Botho Strauss (London: Macmillan, 1983), pp. 150–161.

  96. Starkman, ed. Transformations, p. 48.

  97. Ibid., p. 234.

  98. Although Martin Walser, Leben und Schreiben: Tagebücher (Reinbek bei Hamburg, Rowohlt, 2005–2007), ends in 1973, it contains poems and drawings by Walser as part of his diary. He seems to have been a Picasso manqué.

  99. Müller, German Ideologies, p. 58.

  100. Starkman, ed. Transformations, p. 60.

  101. Ibid., p. 61.

  102. Friedman, Parting of the Ways, pp. 21ff.

  103. Ibid., pp. 41ff.

  104. I have used Tracey Rowland, Ratzinger’s Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 5.

  105. Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, trans. Brian McNeill (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), pp. 25ff.

  106. Ibid., pp. 47–53.

  107. Rowland, Ratzinger’s Theology, p. 69. Ratzinger, Christianity, pp. 61–64.

  108. Rowland, Ratzinger’s Theology, p. 69.

  109. Ibid., p. 72.

  CHAPTER 42: CAFÉ DEUTSCHLAND: “A GERMANY NOT SEEN BEFORE”

  1. A. Dirk Moses, German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 58–61.

  2. Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfahigkeit zu trauern: Grundlagen kollektiven Vehaltens (Munich: Piper, 1967).

  3. Keith Bullivant, The Future of German Literature (Oxford/Providence, R.I.: Berg, 1994), p. 37.

  4. Nicholas Boyle, German Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 143.

  5. Lothar Huber and Robert C. Conrad (editors), Heinrich Böll on Page and
Screen: The London Symposium (London: Institute of German Studies, University of London, 1997), pp. 17ff.

  6. Ibid., pp. 65ff.

  7. Michael Jürgs, Bürger Grass: Biographie eines deutschen Dichters (Munich: C. Bertelsmann, 2002), pp. 138ff., for early thoughts on Oskar.

  8. Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland, p. 28.

  9. Ibid., p. 87.

  10. Jürgs, Bürger Grass, pp. 144f.

  11. In English: Martin Walser, Runaway Horse, trans. Leila Vennewitz (London: Secker and Warburg, 1980). See also Martin Walser, The Inner Man, trans. Leila Vennewitz (London: Deutsch, 1986).

  12. Bullivant, Future of German Literature, p. 30.

  13. Hans Höller, Ingeborg Bachmann: Briefe einer Freundschaft (Munich: Piper, 2004).

  14. Ingeborg Bachmann, Darkness Stolen: The Collected Poems, trans. and intro. Peter Filkins (Brookline, Mass.: Zephyr Press, 2006), p. xx. Elfriede Jelinek, Oh Wildnis, Oh Schutz vor ihr (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1985).

  15. Bullivant, Realism Today, p. 222.

  16. Fulbrook, ed., German National Identity, p. 258.

  17. Christa Wolf, Das dicht besetzte Leben: Briefe, Gespräche und Essays, ed. Angela Drescher (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2003).

  18. Sara Kirsch, Sämtliche Gedichte (Munich: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2005).

  19. Magenau, Christa Wolf, pp. 192ff. Rob Burns, ed., German Cultural Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 177. Compare with Jörg Magenau, Christa Wolf: Eine Biographie (Berlin: Kindler, 2002), pp. 328ff.

  20. Burns, ed., German Cultural Studies, p. 189.

  21. Bernd Neumann, Uwe Johnson, mit zwölf Porträts von Diether Ritzert (Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1994), pp. 269ff. for Johnson’s 1960s.

  22. Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland, p. 199.

  23. Bullivant, Future, p. 98.

  24. Ibid., p. 91.

  25. Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland, p. 100.

  26. Gitta Honegger, Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 128ff.

  27. Tom Bower, “My Clash with Death-Camp Hanna,” Sunday Times (London), February 15, 2009.

  28. Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland, p. 200.

  29. Günther Grass, Peeling the Onion, trans. Michael Henry Heim (London: Harvill Secker, 2007).

  30. Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland, p. 205.

  31. Volker Weidermann, Das Buch der verbrannten Bücher (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2008), pp. 300ff.

  32. Burns, ed., German Cultural Studies, p. 192.

  33. Boyle, German Literature, p. 145.

  34. Mark William Roche, Gottfried Benn’s Static Poetry: Aesthetic and Intellectual-Historical Interpretations (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).

  35. Ingeborg Bachmann, Briefe einer Freundschaft, ed. ans Hans Höller. Foreword by Hans Werner Henze. (Munich: Piper, 2004). Some letters in English. Henze found the English “ugly” but liked the drinks in London, p. 335. Nice solecism (or is it?) about musicians “cueing” at bus-stops.

  36. Paul Celan, Poems, trans. and intro. Michael Hamburger (Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1980). Bilingual edition; see p. 51 for “Death Fugue.”

  37. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Selected Poems, trans. author and Michael Hamburger (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1994).

  38. Johannes R. Becher, Macht der Poesie: Poetische Konfession (Berlin: Aufbau, 1951), for his views on poetry in the depths of the Cold War.

  39. Günter Kunert, Erwachsenenspiele: Erinnerungen (Munich: Hanser, 1997).

  40. Volker Braun, Lustgarten, Preussen: Ausgewählte Gedichte (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996). Wolf Biermann, Preussischer Ikarus: Lieder, Balladen, Gedichte, Prosa (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1978). Sarah Kirsch, Sämtliche Gedichte (Munich: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2005), p. 249 for “Katzenleben,” p. 405 for “Bodenlos.”

  41. Bullivant, Future, p. 167.

  42. J. Kaiser, “Die deutsche Literature war nicht serrissen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 2–3, 1990, quoted in Bullivant, Future of German Literature, p. 172.

  43. Volker Weidermann, Lichtjahre: Eine kurze Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von 1945 bis heute (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2006), p. 245.

  44. For the Fassbinder “legends” following his death at 37, see David Barnett, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the German Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 1ff.

  45. Bullivant, Future, p. 218.

  46. Kolinsky and van der Will, eds., Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, p. 223.

  47. Susan Manning, Ecstasy and the Demon: Feminism and Nationalism in the Dances of Mary Wigman (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993).

  48. Theater heute, December 1989, p. 6.

  49. Kolinsky and van der Will, eds., Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, p. 311.

  50. Ibid., p. 312.

  51. Burns, ed., German Cultural Studies, p. 317.

  52. Ian Buruma, “Herzog and His Heroes,” New York Review of Books, July 19, 2007, pp. 24–26.

  53. Alexander Graf, The Cinema of Wim Wenders: The Celluloid Highway (London: Wallflower Press, 2002), pp. 48–54.

  54. Kolinsky and van der Will, eds., Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, pp. 311–312.

  55. Ibid., p. 233.

  56. Ross, The Rest Is Noise, p. 10.

  57. Werner Oehlmann, Das Berliner Philharmonische Orchester (Kassel/Basel/Tours/London: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1974), pp. 117ff. and 127ff.

  58. Roger Vaughan, Herbert von Karajan: A Biographical Portrait (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), p. 116.

  59. Kolinsky and van der Will, eds., Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, p. 252.

  60. Hans Werner Henze, Music and Politics: Collected Writings, 1953–1981, trans. Peter Labany (London: Faber, 1982), p. 196 for “The task of revolutionary music.”

  61. Michael Kurtz, Stockhausen: A Biography, trans. Richard Toop (London: Faber, 1992), pp. 110ff.

  62. Ibid., pp. 210ff.

  63. Werner Haftmann, Wols Aufzeichungen: Aquarelle, Aphorismen, Zeichnungen (Cologne: M. Du Mont Schauberg, 1963), pp. 10 and 32, for a note by Jean-Paul Sartre.

  64. Nicolas Charlet, Yves Klein, trans. Michael Taylor (Paris: Adam Biro/Vilo International, 2000), pp. 18ff.

  65. Alain Borer, The Essential Joseph Beuys, ed. Lothar Schirmer (London: Thames & Hudson, 1996).

  66. For a discussion of Beuys’s materials, see Richard Demarco, “Three Pots for the Poorhouse,” in Joseph Beuys: The Revolution Is Us, catalog for an exhibition in Liverpool, 1993–1994, published by the trustees of the collection of the Tate Gallery, Liverpool, 1993.

  67. Götz Adriani, Winfried Konnertz, and Karin Thomas, Joseph Beuys (Cologne: Dumont Buchverlag, 1994). Definitive photographs.

  68. Günther Gereken, “Holz-(schnitt)-wege,” in Anselm Kiefer, exhibition at the Groningen Museum, Groningen, 1980–1981.

  69. A. R. Penck, “Auf Penck zurückblickend (1978),” in A. R. Penck—Y. Zeichnungen bis 1975, exhibition at the Kunstmuseum, Basel, 1978.

  70. Rainer Fetting, Holzbilder (wood paintings), exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery, New York, 1984.

  71. Kolinsky and van der Will, eds., Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture, p. 280.

  72. Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland, p. 92.

  73. Personal interview, Wolf-Hagen Krauth, Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin, April 9, 2008.

  74. History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the Third Reich. http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg. de/KWG/projects_e.htm

  75. Peter Blundell-Jones, Hans Scharoun (London: Phaidon, 1995), pp. 94–102.

  76. Christine Hoh-Slodczyk, et al., Hans Scharoun: Architekt in Deutschland, 1893–1972 (Munich: Beck, 1992), pp. 98–101.

  77. J. Christoph Bürkle, Hans Scharoun und die Moderne: Ideen, Projekte, Theaterbau (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1986), for photographs and plans.

  78. Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland, p. 115.

  79. Dietrich Schwanitz, Bi
ldung: Alles, was man wissen muss (Munich: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 2002).

  CONCLUSION: GERMAN GENIUS: THE DAZZLE, DEIFICATION, AND DANGERS OF INWARDNESS

  The quotation at the head of this chapter is taken from Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Berlin: G. Fischer, 1918/1922). Translated by W. D. Morris as Reflections of a Non-Political Man (New York: F. Ungar, 1983). The quotation appears in W. H. Bruford, The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: Bildung from Humboldt to Thomas Mann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. vii.

  1. W. H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems, 1930–1944 (London: Faber, 1950), pp. 171–175.

  2. R. P. T. Davenport-Hines, Auden (London: Heinemann, 1995), p. 157.

  3. Benjamin Nelson, ed., Freud and the 20th Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958), p. 13.

  4. Ibid., p. 14.

  5. Ibid., p. 17.

  6. Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age (London: Routledge, 2004). And see, for example, Dennis Hayes, “Happiness Drives Education from the Classroom,” Times Higher Education Supplement, September 14, 2007, p. 22.

  7. Richard Lapierre, The Freudian Ethic (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960), p. 60.

  8. Watson, Modern Mind/Terrible Beauty, p. 601.

  9. See, for example, Alexandra Blair, “Expulsion of Under-Fives Triples in a Year,” Times (London), April 20, 2007, p. 17; and Alexandra Frean, “Emphasis on Emotions Creates ‘Can’t Do’ Students,” Times (London), June 12, 2008, p. 13.

  10. I have used Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 282.

  11. Ibid., p. 309–310.

  12. Ibid., p. 314.

  13. Ibid., p. 2.

  14. Ibid., p. 4.

  15. Ibid., p. 225.

  16. Lawrence Scaff, Fleeing the Iron Cage (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1989), p. 226.

  17. Ibid., p. 230.

  18. Magnus and Higgins, eds., Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, p. 80.

  19. Ibid., p. 82.

  20. Ibid., p. 172.

  21. Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower (London: Folio Society, 1995), p. 284.

  22. Hew Strachan, The Outbreak of the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 183.

  23. James Bowen, A History of Western Education. 3 vols. (London: Methuen, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 321 and 345.