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Speculations on German History erman history never loses its fascination. It is exceptionally G S P varied, contradictory, and raises difficult problems for the E historian. In a material sense, there have been a E RMAN HISTORY RMAN great many Germanies, so that it was long unclear what ON CULATIONS “Germany” would amount to geopolitically, while German intellectuals fought constantly over the idea(s) of Germany. Provocative and spiced with humor, Speculations tackles Germany’s successes and catastrophes in view of this fraught relationship between material reality and ideology. Concentrating on the period from Friedrich the Great until today, the book is less a conventional history than an extended essay. It moves freely within the chosen period, and because of its cultural studies disposition, devotes a great deal of attention to German writers, artists, and intellectuals. It looks at the ways in which German historians have attempted to come to terms with their own varying notions of nation, culture, and race. An underlying philosophical assumption is that history is not one dominant narrative but a struggle between competing, simultaneous narratives: like all those Germanies of the past and of the mind, history is plural. Barry Emslie pursues this agenda into the present, arguing that there has been an unprecedented qualitative change in the Federal Republic in the quarter century since unification. EMSLI BARRY EMSLIE lives and teaches in Berlin. He is the author SPECULATIONS ON of Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love (Boydell Press, 2010) and Narrative and Truth: An Ethical and Dynamic Paradigm for the GERMAN HISTORY Humanities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). E C ULTURE AND THE S TATE Cover image: Hermann Wislicenus, Germania oder Die Wacht am Rhein (Germania or the Watch on the Rhine), 1873. Courtesy of the German Historical Museum, Berlin. Cover design: Frank Gutbrod BARRY EMSLIE Speculations on German History EEmslie.inddmslie.indd i 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:01:52:01 AAMM Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture EEmslie.inddmslie.indd iiii 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:40:52:40 AAMM Speculations on German History Culture and the State Barry Emslie Rochester, New York EEmslie.inddmslie.indd iiiiii 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:40:52:40 AAMM Copyright © 2015 Barry Emslie All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2015 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.camden-house.com and of Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-929-0 ISBN-10: 978-1-57113-929-X Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Emslie, Barry, author. Speculations on German history : culture and the state / Barry Emslie. pages cm.—(Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-929-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)— ISBN-10: 1-57113-929-X (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Germany—History—Philosophy. 2. Germany—History. 3. Germany— Intellectual life. 4. Germany—Historiography. 5. Historians—Germany. I. Title. DD97.E47 2015 943.0072—dc23 2014046500 This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America. EEmslie.inddmslie.indd iivv 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:40:52:40 AAMM Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1: The Problem(s) 9 2: A Plethora of Germanies 18 3: Culture, Language, and Blood 28 4: The Gemeinschaft 46 5: Marx, the Proletariat, and the State 60 6: Hegel and the State 65 7: German Historians and the State 69 8: Meinecke and the State 81 9: The Lingering Ambiguities of the State 103 10: Materialism 110 11: Militarism and Death 118 12: Providence and Narration 132 13: Guilt and Innocence 143 14: The Indispensable Jews 159 15: The Historians’ Debate 171 16: The State Today 188 Notes 215 Index 239 EEmslie.inddmslie.indd v 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:40:52:40 AAMM EEmslie.inddmslie.indd vvii 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:40:52:40 AAMM Acknowledgments WOULD LIKE, in particular, to thank two Berlin friends: Herta Frenzel I and Christian Koehler. The former was invaluable during the prepara- tion of the manuscript, while the latter’s advice and criticisms were a con- stant stimulus. Both are protected by the usual disclaimers. The remaining shortcomings of this book are all my own work. EEmslie.inddmslie.indd vviiii 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:40:52:40 AAMM EEmslie.inddmslie.indd vviiiiii 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:40:52:40 AAMM Introduction HIS BOOK IS AN EXTENDED ESSAY, freely structured, that concentrates Ton the last 250 years of Germany history. It does not sit comfort- ably within the parameters of conventional historiography. For instance, it does not pretend to tell a story, let alone a singular, authoritative story. Nonetheless, stories are central to its explanatory program. More than that even, a privileged notion of narration determines the theoretical assump- tions on which that program rests. Therefore this text consciously engages both with theory and with the particular interpretations of historical events when they are placed within the framework of that theory. I should also add that while the German case has been chosen for idiosyncratic reasons (I find it interesting and stimulating), I also believe it illustrates to an exceptional degree the advantages of the theoretical approach taken here. First, then, the theoretical assumptions. This takes us into the epis- temology and philosophy of history itself. There is, of course, no lack of theoretical work on history on the part of German thinkers. Indeed one might well regard their contributions in this field as manifold, enlight- ening, and dangerous. However the position taken up here is not born of a specifically German historical or philosophical school. It is based on the fundamental assumption that history is best seen as a problem- atic struggle between simultaneous conflicting or competing narratives. History is plural. If one were to look for a German intellectual who most exemplifies this approach it would be Bertolt Brecht. Dramatizing conflicting narrative strands is the fundamental agenda of his “epic” (by which he means narrative) theater. It defines his concept of “real- ism.” However, while the Brechtian notion of narrative (or narratives) is self-evidently of the utmost relevance to what follows, it takes us out of the specific field of the philosophy of history. And despite the large role German artists and intellectuals will play in the following pages, we should stick for the moment with historians, or at least with intellectuals who saw themselves as historians. For instance, in contradistinction to Brecht we might consider Hegel, whose influence in the field of German historiography was once massive. Hegel claims that the “Philosophy of History” (his so-called third form) is itself the highest form of history. And, happily, he can account for it in self-evident, simple, and tauto- logical language. The “Philosophy of History means nothing but the thoughtful consideration of it.”1 This is all based on the axiom that the real (and thereby the world) is rational, a truth to be applied across the EEmslie.inddmslie.indd 1 11/17/2015/17/2015 88:52:40:52:40 AAMM 2 INTRODUCTION board. Therefore the fact that “Reason is the Sovereign of the World,” as well as being ubiquitous, means that the historical endeavor is likewise rational.2 But the unhappy result of this is an account of world history, teleologically focused on the beneficent rise of “modern” (nineteenth- century) Prussia, that is debilitatingly singular in its form. It is wholly unproblematized by the question of narrative plurality. At it happens Hegel will be dealt with specifically in chapter 6, not least because his influence was so great, but it should be made clear now that the theo- retical argument of this book is designed to establish a notion of history radically contrary to his. Which is to say that the matter of competing simultaneous narratives is always implicit, at the very least, in the follow- ing pages, although it is explicitly addressed in chapters 12 and 13. Now to the interpretation of particular events when examined within this framework. Of course historical events and how they are interpreted constitute the guts of the book, and they are dealt with chapter by chap- ter. However, they should be seen collectively as the product of another tension, a tension that itself reflects the wider dialectic made up of gen- eral historical theory and specific historical analysis. This is the friction between materialism and ideology. By materialism all that is meant, in the first instance, is material reality, or (seemingly) objective facts on the ground, no matter that those facts cannot be perceived or described in a manner wholly uncontaminated by the subject who examines them. Ideology, on the other hand, deals overtly with what is imagined to be the case, and with what is desired, or feared. Not surprisingly, ideological schemes and structures proliferate freely, depending on the degree and rigor with which they make contact with material reality, and the strin- gent, or otherwise, thinking of the theorists who promulgate them. They are unstable and inevitably evolve, becoming more insightful or more deluded, more complex or more (dangerously) simplistic. They have, after all, a great many functions to fulfill and limitless desires to satisfy. One can readily see that an instability and abundance in ideological schemes, ranging from the benign to the inimical, is present to an excep- tional and extreme degree in German history.
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