[Juenger-list] EJ, Die Schere #67: Note

[g.rebing@t-online.de (Rebing)]

The terseness of this aphorism, in particular the generalization at its 
beginning, will make it difficult for foreigners to comprehend. Germans, 
however, will recognize in it today's prevailing opinion about what went wrong 
with Germany and its culture after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. 

The political triumphs were enormous: the unification of the German Reich. the 
proclamation of the Reich on January 30, 1871 in the Salle des miroirs at 
Versailles Castle and the instauration of its first emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm I. 
They took place even before the resounding victory over the French was 
consolidated and military operations were terminated. 

The equally gargantuan economic upsurge of the »Gründerzeit" began immediately 
after when the French Republic had to pay in gold a huge war indemnifaction.
 
Burckhardt and Nietzsche, the two professors, philosophers and Kulturkritiker 
from Basle, soon after published their diagnoses of what was happening to German 
culture now. According to them, the best energies of the German nation had 
turned away from the realm of the Geist to that of Materie, and were pouring 
into capitalism, industrialization, materialism. (Never mind that literature, 
art and music flourished nevertheless.) 

In retrospect, the turnabout seemed to have led to a World War, a ruinous 
defeat, the rise of the demon Hitler, another World War and another even worse 
catastrophe. In the wake of such cataclysmic consequences the fact that 
literature and the arts in Germany survived and continued to produce quite 
noteworthy works seemed to count little. The Burckhardt-Nietzsche theory about 
the Verflachung des deutschen Geistes is still widely accepted in Germany.
 
Obviously, EJ does not only take that theory to be correct. He even generalizes 
it as a law of history. Probably when doing so his model was the political and 
economic post-war success story of the German Federal Republic whose cultural 
development he viewed with scepticism. 

I should have wanted him to consider another success story and test his theory 
against it. After the political triumphs of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, 
ending the global predominance of Englands most dangerous enemy, and the 
consolidation of the reign of Elizabeth I the country entered a long period of 
prosperity. Now: are Shakespeare, Donne, Purcell indeed indicators of 
Verflachung?

Or how do our Spanish friends like that first sentence of #67 when they look at 
their Siglo d'oro?

It seems to me that the universal law of cultural history EJ takes for granted 
here is intrinsically a German product, and only when used at home it might to 
some degree be productive as a heuristic tool. Foreign readers might do well to 
read it as an idiosyncratic attempt at coming to terms with a unique historical 
constellation. To my mind it is hardly a universally viable explanation apt to 
improve our notion of what makes cultures develop and change.