Friedrich Sieburg, a Twentieth-Century German Francophile
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UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations 1-1-1997 Friedrich Sieburg, a twentieth-century German francophile Frederick Matthew Sommer University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/rtds Repository Citation Sommer, Frederick Matthew, "Friedrich Sieburg, a twentieth-century German francophile" (1997). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 3302. http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/ja05-sc2o processed, response: 201 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. 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FRIEDRICH SIEBURG, A TWENTIETH-CENTURY GERMAN FRANCOPHILE by Frederick M, Sommer A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in History Department of History University of Nevada, Las Vegas December, 1996 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Mumber: 1385200 UMI Microform 1385200 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. COPYRIGHT 19 97 FRED SOMMER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The thesis of Fred Sommer for the degree of Master of Arts in History is approved. chairperson, Ëïsp^ÇhWhlWhitney, Ph.D. Examining Committee Member, Co^n T . Loader, Ph.D. / 3 Examining Committee Member, Lawrence E. Jciein, Ph.D. ■e ù. Graduate Faculty RepresentatdrVg^l-Ralph W. Buechler, Ph.D. ri __________________ -^<r-/ / ________________________ Dean of the Graduate Collège, Ronald W. Smith, Ph.D. University of Nevada, Las Vegas December, 1996 11 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Friedrich Sieburg achieved renown as a German literary critic in the years following World War II. His career in journalism and diplomacy prior to 1945, largely ignored in the 1950s and 1960s, has come under a new scrutiny since 1980. The connection between Sieburg's writings, many of which dealt with France, and his work with the German Foreign Office in wartime Paris has been a particular object of this scrutiny. The study FRIEDRICH SIEBURG. A TWENTIETH-CENTURY GERMAN FRANCOPHILE builds on the work of Joachim Pest, Margot Taureck and others, and argues that Sieburg was a romantic nationalist who became a National Socialist. He constructed a theory, from elements in the German literary tradition, which posited French form in opposition to German mass. This theory makes intelligible his praise of the German 193 3 as a national awakening and as the workings of a mythic destiny. Journalism and diplomacy served Sieburg's historic role as national publicist. After 1945, Sieburg was generally silent about the Hitler regime; his was a common response in a nation unwilling to assess its past. Attached to this study is a translation of the greater part of the memoir of Paris, OUR MOST BEAUTIFUL YEARS. which Sieburg published in 1950. Ill Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My greatest debt in the making of this thesis is to my advisor Dr. Colin Loader, who was patient and helpful in many ways. I also owe thanks to Lawrence Klein, Ellen Cronan Rose and Ralph W. Buechler for comments following their critical reading of the manuscript. Frances Honour, Heather Radlein and Martin Gordon freely gave me valuable assistance in difficult stages of the word processing. The staff of the Dickinson Library, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, was generous in the time and care they devoted to my requests. I also want to express my special gratitude to Heide Radkowitz of the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Stuttgart, who has been encouraging me for several years to pursue my interest in Friedrich Sieburg. IV Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................... i ü ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................... iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................... 1 CHAPTER 2 FRIEDRICH SIEBURG'S LIFE AND CAREER IN BRIEF. 14 CHAPTER 3 SIEBURG AS THEORETICIAN OF FRENCH-GERMAN DUALITY IN THE YEARS AROUND 1930 26 CHAPTER 4 SIEBURG AND THE ADVENT OF THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP 3 9 CHAPTER 5 SIEBURG'S PARISIAN JOURNALISM, 1933-1939 . 58 CHAPTER 6 SIEBURG AS GERMAN DIPLOMAT, 1939-1945 ......... 66 CHAPTER 7 OUR MOST BEAUTIFUL YEARS: A LIFE WITH PARIS. SIEBURG'S MEMOIR ............................. 76 APPENDIX I A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION 84 APPENDIX II OUR MOST BEAUTIFUL YEARS: A LIFE WITH PARIS. BY FRIEDRICH SIEBURG, TRANSLATION BY FRED SOMMER .................. 86 APPENDIX III PERMISSION TO QUOTE COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL . 187 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................... 189 V Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The German writer Friedrich Sieburg lived from 1893 to 1964, and in the years between 1933 and 1945 he supported National Socialism and did important work for the Nazi government. This compromised him profoundly and led to the "bitterness and misanthropy"^ of his final years, in spite of his newfound repute as literary critic in those same years. On one level Sieburg's chronology of allegiances was common to many nationalist Germans of his generation: loyal service to the militarist empire in youth, opposition to the prosaic republic in early adulthood, spirited support of the Third Reich in the most productive years of middle adulthood, and finally, in the postwar years, a burdensome awareness of the wasted past coexisting with a reluctance to discuss that past. All this was Friedrich Sieburg, and he was typical in so far as there were thousands of other Germans whose lives illustrated a similar pattern toward Germany's successive regimes. But the extraordinary, atypical thing about this writer was the degree to which the literary success of his final fifteen years tended to dim the memory of his earlier ^ Joachim Fest, "Joachim Fest über Friedrich Sieburg," Journalisten über Journalisten (Munich: Kindler, 1980), 259. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. cultural and political role as articulator of Germany's relation to France. For Sieburg, France and Germany were radically opposing essences. The measured rational form of France, though its contribution to past civilization was great, would in destiny's grand design for the twentieth century be superseded by the mythic, primal energy that was Germany's essence. The German upheaval of 1933 appeared to Sieburg a charismatic wave of national self-realization, a mythic deliverance to a primal, German temporal order freed of Western, rational elements. After Hitler's millenial Reich ended, Sieburg sensed his own and Germany's 1933-1945 existence as trancelike, as epistomologically inaccessible to, and undefinable within