What is the connection between Turner’s ethereal paintings of the Rhine and today’s nativist stories, in Germany and across the pond? How is it that the Romantics venerated individual sensitivity and universalist ideals, and yet prominent Romantic thinkers were so often beguiled by authoritarians? Why did Fascists find it so easy to repurpose this soft, dreamy material for their own ends? Thomas Mann was scathing about it: he famously described the Nazi project as German Romanticism “breaking out into hysterical barbarism.” Whether or not the average person in Germany is aware of this line of thinking, I do think some glimmer of it echoes in the plain, functional aesthetic - a fear that next to something pretty or moving could be the abyss. This has always struck me in contrast to the British nostalgia for frills and bunting, or the catchy sentimentalism of American Country music. People in Germany flirt with the vibe of course, in the ubiquitous opera houses, at Oktoberfest and with garden gnomes - but it has to be historic or formalized or a bit silly, and so ultimately deniable. Helmut Schneider is Professor Emeritus for Modern German Literature at Bonn University (with stints abroad, explaining this material to the anglosphere), so he seemed like a good person to answer such questions. His own interest in the period was fuelled more by the beauty of the language, the poetry in particular, than by its historical or political dimensions. But I was particularly struck by one of his psychological observations: that the Romantics’ preoccupation with the internal, with feeling, particularity, mysticism, and Nature writ large made them uninterested in institution building, or the frictionful mechanics of government. As a result, they were susceptible to anyone promising them a safe container for their solipsism. Kind of obvious and tracks to the stereotype at an individual level, but I’d never thought it through. It’s a squeamischness about mixing one’s creative labor with the outside world, whether in technology, commerce or politics. But failing to participate in shaping a society that values and protects what they contribute is a problem for any sensitive free spirit. The uncategorizable Goethe provides a possible answer, in an early 19th century survey of mediveal German art (that had been looted out of Church and feudal settings by the French). Against his contemporaries’ calls for a German Louvre, Goethe argued that the art should remain distributed, embedded in its historical locals and accessible to the population. Instead of a great central insitution, he advised the Kaiser that the way to elevate regional treasures was to strengthen their connectedness, into a web of culture that would incorporate the characters of particular settings. It was through greater communicative connection that the work would become an organic whole, greater than the sum of its parts. Music outro credit: "Mondnacht" — music by Robert Schumann, text by Joseph von Eichendorff. Performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone) and Günther Weissenborn (piano). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com
