The Enduring Interest of Germany

In his previous post, Aaron touches on one of the most fundamental points in our discussion: modern German history is a compression of all of modern Western history. But, there is one point I must add which makes German history even richer than its dramatic events already are by themselves: Germans not only made history, but they have also written history.

On the one hand, Germans have excelled at researching the minutiae of history. Although textual criticism had been around for some time (the Renaissance, for example, witnessed an upsurge in interest), it really took off in 19th-century Germany, particularly in the field of Biblical studies. But classical philology of all sorts in the 19th-century was dominated by Germans; the texts we use for reading the ancient Greek and Latin authors are in large part the texts we have inherited from German philologists. Without their painstaking scholarship, we would lack basic knowledge about many basic aspects of the ancient world. Of course, this focus on the minutiae of ancient texts, as necessary as it may be to produce an accurate text, led to a kind of scientific myopia in the German academy. Professors did not necessarily read ancient authors for their inherent interest or historical importance, but rather so they could resolve technical questions of text criticism. As a result, German professors were caricatured as pedants writing preposterously impenetrable prose both at home (e.g., Heine’s dream professor in Die Harzreise) and abroad (e.g., Carlyle’s Teufelsdröckh and Henry Adams in Democracy).

But, there are other voices in the 19th-century German academic tradition. For instance, Nietzsche, whose essay on the Use and Abuse of History we have cited before, rebelled against this academic tradition by focusing on the literary and philosophical problems posed by the Greek authors he was ready. The Birth of Tragedy was an audacious essay for a young professor to write—instead of writing a technically correct but boring essay for specialists, he dared to reinterpret the Greek spirit. On a more theoretical level, Wilhelm Dilthey initiated much of German philosophy’s interest in hermeneutics.

Outside of the academy (at least partly so), German Romanticism brought a sense of history—and a sense of historical loss—to the common people. The work of Clemens Brentanto and Achim von Arnim in compiling the folk songs contained in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, or the Grimm Brothers’ collection of folk tales—following Herder’s and Goethe’s lead—highlighted to the German people that their medieval past was still alive, yet in danger of being lost. Indeed, German Romanticism is one of the reasons for the widespread neo-medievalism throughout 19th-century Europe.

Most importantly, Germans have loved to theorize about history more than any other nation, and they have loved to apply their grand theories to the writing of history. They are the ones who taught us how to theorize about history at all. Some of the first great historians of the modern era came from the German lands, such as Leopold von Ranke and Jacob Burckhardt (who was Swiss but studied in Germany). No matter what one’s opinion of Hegel is, no one can deny that his focus on history led us to look at historical processes and their “world-historical” meaning more carefully.

But the mention of Hegel inevitably leads to the dark side of German theorizing. Germany is the heartland of modern ideology. Marxism and Nazism in particular inflicted immense suffering on the 20th century. In Germany, ideology was more than just the occupation of a small coterie of fanatical professors and revolutionaries; it spread to the educated classes as a whole. Eric Voegelin, in one of his autobiographical notes, recalls how the students he taught in Munich in the 1950’s, were usually much better academically prepared for university students than the Americans he had met in the 1940’s (e.g., they read more languages), but they were also far more ideological than American students; because they were already exposed to competing theories of history, they could not keep an open mind when studying history.

Yet, in the end, Voegelin, who reacted against the German tradition, was in so many ways the finest product of that very tradition. He was an immensely learned man in many fields, who did not shrink from dirtying his hands with detailed textual criticism, but was also intimately familiar with philosophy throughout the ages. He combined the love of minutiae with the love of theory.

The enduring interest of Germany for the modern American, then, lies not necessarily in the lessons its recent history can teach us. Dictatorships of the masses are a danger even in America. But, Germany has not only given us exciting history to learn about and extremely relevant history to learn from, but it has also given us the lenses through which to view history.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Pardon me if I do a little bragging here, but I would just like to announce that I've now finished reading a really long book: Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

How long a book is it? My single-volume edition is 1150 pages.

What makes the book so long? The book is a record of the author's six-week journey through much of Yugoslavia in 1937, including her reflections on everybody she met and everything she saw, and just about everything that popped into her head--with lots of historical background. What preoccupied West most during her travels--and what drew her attention to the Balkans in the first place--was the political situation in Europe. West could sense a new world war in the offing, and was writing to warn her British audience of the imminent threat from the Nazis and Fascists. The danger posed by Germany and Italy colors much of her account. For instance, many reviewers have remarked on her nearly pathological hatred of everything German, Austrian, or Italian. She does not encounter a single good German in the book, except for some of the (dead) classic German authors and composers. This bias is understandable, given the time when she was writing, but does become tiresome after a while (especially for a Germanophile like myself). This bias perhaps also explains why she does not bother visiting Slovenia--that region of the former Yugoslavia was the closest geographically and culturally to Austria and Italy.

Moreover, her love of everything Serbian seems misguided in light of the civil war in the 1990's, though again it is understandable, given that at the time a strong Kingdom of Yugoslavia under the direction of the Serbs might have slowed down Hitler and Mussolini. The best characters in the book are Serbs, but she also seems blind to the faults of individual Serbs. Did Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand cause problems? Of course, World War I was a disaster! West nevertheless writes in glowing terms of the young terrorist, even lamenting the poor treatment he received in prison (the Austrians did not execute him because he was under 21). West also seems to be in constant search of the "Slavic essence," which she finds in the proud, indomitable, yet mystical Serbs.

The root of these skewed views is most likely her basically Romantic outlook. The quest for national and ethnic "essences" seems quintessentially Romantic. However, one would think that some German Romantics' obsession with "authentic Germanness" would have cured West of this sloppy habit of thought. She further reveals her Romantic attitudes in her "orientalist" treatment of the Turks. Her description of the savage, yet sensuous and urbane Turks sounds like it came straight out of 1,001 Nights. Finally, she focuses--like a good Romantic--on the "magical" element in religion. I nearly put the book down during the chapters devoted to Ohrid, when she kept using the word "magic" to describe the liturgy in Serbian Orthodox monasteries (picture right).

Besides tracing some of the ethnic tensions at work in pre-war Yugoslavia, West also sought to trace the underlying spiritual causes of the European crisis between the world wars, which she locates in the black lamb and grey falcon of the title. (I was more than 800 pages into the book before I found out what the black lamb referred to, and more than 900 pages in before I came across the poem about the grey falcon.) Europeans of all religions and ethnic groups--Christians, Jews, and Muslims; Serbs, Croats, Gypsies, and Albanians--are obsessed with death, and trying to bring good out of death, especially through bloody sacrifice. She even alleges that the Christian doctrine out of the Atonement is a result of this misguided urge. Her case is not convincing, and comes across as a confused, quasi-Freudian analysis of Thanatos.

But, here is the real question: Given all the book's flaws, why did I insist on finishing it? Am I just a glutton for punishment? First, West is a wonderful writer, with a true talent for description. For example, she meets a landlady in Montenegro who is a rather stern, majestic widow, and remarks that the landlady's husband seemed "specially dead." Second, despite all the disagreements I had with her, I must admit that West often raises good questions. She may not be answering these questions correctly, but at least she is asking them. In a way, she reminds me of Faust, who must err as long as she keeps striving, and is therefore saved in the critic's eyes. Finally, this is a travel book, and a good travel book is a lot of fun. This book let me imagine that I was taking a six-week journey (because that's the time it takes to finish the book) with a friendly, intelligent author, and discussing politics, history, and culture with her. Any travel book that can achieve that is worth reading.

Sturm und Drang

So who was Johannes Brahms? Part of the difficulty is that the personality of Brahms, and thus his music as well, is somewhat enigmatic, somewhat opaque. Brahms was a difficult person to know -- "difficult" referring to both his reticence and to his somewhat abrasive personality.

In fact, these characteristics of Brahms led to problems right from the beginning. His first opportunity to enter the composing world was through Franz Liszt, who was impressed with the young man's talent and who was a frequent benefactor of young artists. However, Liszt's artistic sensibilities was not very well-suited to that of Brahms.

[Liszt's] new school... tended towards a certain loosening of the fetters of tonality, and demanded, in particular, that the musical form be dictated by the content of poetic ideas. Brahms, however, did not find it possible to become a disciple... [He] firmly rejected an artistic conception that was in some degree derived from an extra-musical point of view.

It is instructive to understand the context of the musical world at the time: Beethoven was a huge influence and overshadowed the entire musical landscape. Wagner and Liszt responded by exploding the old forms and crafting new ones upon the Romantic model; the former by embracing operatic and dramatic themes, and the latter by embracing virtuosity and poetic forms. Brahms responded by recalling and recasting the older forms, synthesizing them with the Romanticism that Beethoven championed. Perhaps it was inevitable, in this idealistic period, that the musical community began lining up behind one school or the other, and using only the most intense rhetoric.

But this "synthesizing" of Brahms gives some insight into his musical sensibilities. Though he was schooled in the Romanticism of his day, he was a classicist at heart. He had a large personal collection of music manuscripts and edited the published works of such composers as Handel, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann. He was particularly interested and versed in the contrapunctual art of Bach. Moreover, he was quite reserved and shunned dramatic outward expressions of emotion; he expressed himself openly with only his closest few friends, among whom were Robert and Clara Schumann. Thus the strong emotions characteristic of the Romantic period (and characteristic of Brahms himself) were bound and interpreted through the rigorous structure of music. At times the emotion will "break through" in his compositions but never in a way that threatens musical integrity.

Overall, then, the music of Brahms tends to be intense, introspective, complex, and very serious. It's not easy to listen to Brahms with "half an ear" or as background music. His music is also tightly edited: there's very little fluff or fat to his compositions, and demands much of the listener. After hearing a movement from his 4th symphony, a critic quipped: "I felt I was being thrashed by two very clever men."

However, this doesn't relegate his works to music theorists alone. The music of Brahms will open up to the interested ear, and will richly reward those who take the time to listen. It's not rare for me to listen to one of his compositions a couple of times in succession, in order to grasp it better. This is not to say that all of his works are uniformly serious; certainly his Hungarian Dances were and still remain extremely popular. They show as well as anything the combination of his Romantic expressionism with his desire to preserve those old rhythms in a more structured form. I had the opportunity to perform one of his choral works with a choir a couple of years ago, and I found singing the piece both intellectually stimulating and deeply emotional. Even if his symphonies leave you cold, don't let that deter you from enjoying Johannes Brahms.

(quotes and details taken primarily from Brahms: His Life and Work by Karl Geiringer. You might also listen to this NPR clip that is good, though perhaps overly-dour. He wasn't THAT depressing.)