The Paradox of Weimar: Hitlerism and Goethe

Fast Capitalism, 2019

that Goethe played during the initial phase of modern society taking shape. In this regard, especially, Faust played a pivotal role, as an opportunity to address explicitly issues whose lack of resolution burdens us to this day, as well as who we moderns are exactly, and how we exist and coexist. 3 Goethe did not leave much of an intellectual and cultural imprint in most countries outside of continental Europe. Moreover, conservative and reactionary efforts in Germany to celebrate his work and thought as the contribution of utter genius have detracted from Goethe's overall importance, by avoiding and distracting from their critical content and underlying impetus. Yet, Goethe may be most noteworthy for having stood for a commitment to the prospect of an undamaged life and to the imminence of an unalienated existence as both emerged as categorical corollaries and "objective possibilities" with modernity and in modern societies, both in the sense of a person's life, and life (in the sense of nature) in general-depending on which exact form modernity and modern society was going to take, and what kind of developmental trajectory it would follow. 4 For instance, the subtitle of Rüdiger Safranski's recent book on Goethe-a minor literary event in its own right-refers to "life as a work of art," meaning Goethe's life as a successful work of art (Safranski [2013] 2017). At the beginning of his Adorno biography, subtitled "One Last Genius," Detlev Claussen addressed the problematic and paradoxical effort to write any biography, and especially a biography of a "genius," after what Horkheimer and Adorno referred to as "the decline of the individual" (Horkheimer 1947; Adorno [1951] 1974); referring to Goethe, he wrote: Readers who take a look at Adorno's last great work, his Aesthetic Theory... will not need to search far before coming across the name of Goethe. Goethe's name is intimately connected not only with the bourgeois concept of genius but also with the model of a successful life capable of being captured in a biography. For the generation that, like Adorno, was born in the long bourgeois century between 1815 and 1914, Goethe stands at the beginning of this bourgeois epoch, to which even someone born in 1903 could feel he belonged. By the end of this period, of course, Goethe's works had long been buried beneath the Goethe cult dedicated to the worship of the artistic genius. (Claussen [2003] 2008, p. 2) Continuing the theme of Goethe's importance to German culture, as well as to the members of the early Frankfurt School, Claussen turned to Horkheimer: Goethe recurs constantly in Horkheimer's writings ... as the epitome of the successful individual. ... Reverence for Goethe, which [in 1961] ... was still accompanied by a knowledge of his works, continued to play an important role among the educated German middle classes throughout the nineteenth century. The Jews in Germany, however, who took a positive view of assimilation and who experienced their social ascent into the middle classes at this time, saw in Goethe's life a promise of human community made real. ... A familiarity with Goethe's Poetry and Truth belonged to the canon of bourgeois knowledge. (ibid., p. 3) 5

Goethe Yearbook, 2014

In his later books Nietzsche repeatedly complains that philosophers have no sense of history. On a more modest level and with gentler and more respectful remonstrance, Christian J. Emden makes a similar claim. Surveying recent discussions of Nietzsche's political thought in English, he remarks that they show little awareness of the political context in which Nietzsche lived and to which his views responded. It should not be forgotten that Nietzsche lived through several of the more tumultuous turning points in German history: the Revolution of 1848, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, the creation of the new German state, and the subsequent economic boom, which brought in its train panics and a search for scapegoats.

Interpretation, 2021

Review essay of the exhibition catalog of Nietzsche and the Artists of New Weimar

Publications of the English Goethe Society, 2008

This article re-evaluates Nietzsche's view of Goethe by analyzing the function and significance of the term "Goethe" in Nietzsche’s writings. While Nietzsche's attitude to Goethe is indisputably complex, it is argued here that the image of Goethe presented in Nietzsche's writings is the exception which proves the rule that his engagements with historical figures are characterized by deliberate ambivalence and/or violent shifts in attitude. While Nietzsche's view of Goethe is not wholly uncritical, the ambivalence which characterizes Nietzsche's intellectual (and emotional) encounters with other outstanding figures in Western culture is largely absent from his engagement with Goethe. Throughout Nietzsche's writings, Goethe is associated in invariably positive ways with diagnoses of cultural health and sickness, notably with Nietzsche's assessments of Greek antiquity, "Erziehung", Classicism and Romanticism, Christianity, Wagner, decadence, the "German question", Napoleon, "Lebensbejahung", and the symbolic figure of Dionysus. Increasingly and obsessively, however, Goethe comes to be linked in Nietzsche's mind with exemplary physical and mental health, to the extent that he presents Goethe as both a promise of the posited "Übermensch" and as an idealized self-projection or self-affirmation.

Goethe Yearbook, 2021

Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought publishes new English-language books in literary studies, criticism, cultural studies, and intellectual history pertaining to the German-speaking world, as well as translations of impor tant German-language works. Signale construes "modern" in the broadest terms: the series covers topics ranging from the early modern period to the pre sent. Signale books are published under a joint imprint of Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library in electronic and print formats. Please see http:// signale. cornell. edu / .

German History

Goethe Yearbook, 1988