The Apocalypse in Germany Klaus Vondung University of Missouri Press The Apocalypse in Germany The Apocalypse in Germany Klaus Vondung Translated from the German by Stephen D. Ricks University of Missouri Press Columbia and London © 1988 Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich/Germany © 2000 for the English language translation: Stephen D. Ricks © 2000 for the English language edition by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 54321 0403020100 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vondung, Klaus. [Apokalypse in Deutschland, English] The apocalypse in Germany / Klaus Vondung; translated from the German by Stephen D. Ricks. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8262-1292-1 (alk. paper) 1. Germany—History—Philosophy. 2. History (Theology) 3. Nationalism—Germany—History. 4. German literature—History and criticism. 5. Apocalyptic art—Germany. I. Title. DD97.V6613 2000 943'.001—dc21 00-032558 ⅜ϱ ™This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Text design: Elizabeth K. Young Jacket design: Susan Ferber Typesetter: BOOKCOMP, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typefaces: Helvetica, Goudy Old Style Frontispiece: Ludwig Meidner, Apocalyptic Landscape I (1912), © Ludwig Meidner-Archiv, Judisches¨ Museum der Stadt, Frankfurt am Main, 2000. This book is published with the generous assistance of the Eric Voegelin Institute in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Contents List of Illustrations vii Introduction 1 Part One: Approaches 1. How Exciting the Vision of the New World Is! Or, What Ernst Toller Connects with John of Patmos 11 2. Is the New Jerusalem a Utopia? 19 3. Can the Apocalypse Be Secularized? 36 4. Symbols and Experiences 50 Part Two: The Apocalyptic View of History A. Structures 67 5. History Has No Meaning; Therefore, It Must Be Destroyed 68 6. History Must Have Meaning, So Meaning Is Created 87 7. “World History Is the Last Judgment” 106 B. Movements 120 8. The Birth of Nationalism from the Spirit of the Apocalypse 123 9. From Holy Spirit to National Spirit 130 10. Protest and Futility 142 11. “Our Army and Navy Are Also a Spiritual Power”: The Apocalypse of 1914 154 12. An Epilogue—“German Spirit: Sieg Heil!” 169 13. The Spirit of Utopia 184 Part Three: Aesthetics of the Apocalypse C. Forms 213 14. Images: Torrents of Mud and Crystal 217 15. Style: Dramatic 237 16. Rhetoric: Consolation and Agitation 259 D. Representations 275 17. Dreams of Death and Destruction 277 18. “If War Came! Oh, for Something Higher . .”: Visions of the New Man 293 19. Shaping the Shapeless 308 20. “Paradise Is Won in Every Form”: Redemption through Art 321 21. Surrender of the Imagination? 337 Part Four: The Existential Apocalypse 22. Transformation and Revolt 363 23. Lust for Power and the Spirit of Sacrifice 375 24. The Last and the First 397 Bibliography 419 Index 425 Illustrations Ludwig Meidner, Apocalyptic Landscape I frontispiece A Scheme of the Lives of the Patriarchs from Adam to Moses 25 Lucas Cranach the Elder/Atelier, The Babylonian Whore 94 AW,The Assault of Gog and Magog on the Beloved City 95 Johnson, The New Phoenix 181 Max Beckmann, Scene from the Destruction of Messina 221 Max Beckmann, The Sinking of the “Titanic” 222 Franz von Stuck, War 289 Arnold Böcklin, War 290 Alfred Kubin, War 291 Ludwig Meidner, Horrors of War 304 Ludwig Meidner, Vision of a Trench 305 George Grosz, Authorities 306 Elk Eber, The Last Hand Grenade 319 vii This page intentionally left blank The Apocalypse in Germany This page intentionally left blank Introduction The apocalypse is omnipresent. No one can fail to recognize that the apocalyptic fears of the last decades have receded only momentarily with the disintegration of the communist regimes and the Soviet Union, and with the independence achieved by the Eastern European states. Only for a short time did it appear that a new, peaceful world order would be possible. Meanwhile there are more trouble spots than ever before, as though—paradoxically—the previous balance of terror would have taken care of peace and stability. Since 1989 death and destruction have been the daily fare of news reports on television: in Kuwait and Iraq, in Somalia and Rwanda, in the former Yugoslavia, and in the Caucasus. The desolate situation of the successor states of the Soviet Union may hold even greater terrors. Ever since the bombing of Hiroshima, the destruction of mankind through war has become not only imaginable, but also possible. As early as the fifties and sixties, there were individuals who warned of the “apocalyp- tic danger” of a nuclear war, for instance, Günther Anders, who used this expression as early as 1959.1 But it was a while before everybody became aware of this danger. The possibility that mankind could destroy itself had become obvious in the seventies and eighties with the nuclear arms race between the superpowers and in view of the SS 20 and Pershing-2 missiles that were threateningly directed against each other. The disarmament of the medium-range missiles and, above all, the collapse of the Soviet Union made the fear of a nuclear war recede but not disappear: the future of the successor states of the Soviet Union and of their nuclear potential is still too uncertain, while too many other states are attempting to obtain nuclear weapons or already possess them. As if the danger that results from nuclear weapons for mankind were not bad enough—meanwhile another danger appears even larger and less avoidable: the self-destruction of mankind by the elimination of the bases of life. Indeed, even earlier critics of modern technological civilization warned about its dangerous effects, long before the Club of Rome, the 1. Günther Anders, “Thesen zum Atomzeitalter,” in Die atomare Drohung: Radikale Überlegungen, 95. 1 2 The Apocalypse in Germany Cousteau Society, Greenpeace, and the Greens, but the deadly seriousness of the situation was perceived only when the destruction of forests and the increasing poisoning of rivers and seas came to everyone’s attention. Meanwhile, ecological disasters began to amass, warning us ever more clearly of the prospect of an uninhabitable world. The nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl has made us all acquainted with the incalculable dangers of even the peaceful use of atomic energy. Since then we have heard again and again of “irregularities” and “breakdowns” in nuclear reactors. Reports have multiplied about accidents in chemical works that poison our rivers, about crippled oil tankers that pollute the seas, and even about criminal actions. Scandals about the dumping of extremely radioactive or dangerous chemical wastes show again and again what a deadly threat we have made for ourselves and how poorly we deal with it. The daily poisoning of our atmosphere continues to increase. The hole in the ozone layer is growing, and the sun, the greatest life-giving power, is increasingly associated with cancer. The exploitation of natural resources continues. The world’s human population is exploding. With all of this, the end of mankind appears to be near. The danger of the end of the world is a global phenomenon. An all-out nuclear war between the superpowers would presumably have destroyed mankind. Similarly, the destruction of the environment is a threat that is not restricted solely to the industrialized nations. Third World countries increasingly damage their resources through overfertilization, overgrazing, excessive clearing of land, and other types of environmental exploitation. The fear of global destruction, however, is not equally universal. One can hardly deny the fact that it is particularly rife among the Germans—even their neighbors have noted it. In 1986 a major article in the French period- ical Documents, which concerns itself primarily with “German questions,” characterized the different reactions to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl as an example of the contrast between “German emotions and French indifference.” Without attempting to determine which response is the appropriate one, the article claimed that German discussions concerning nuclear arms and nuclear power are fixated on the idea of destruction and that this obsession has predominated since 1945. Similarly, in the New Republic, Walter Laqueur asserted that Germans spend more sleepless nights than other people; that they constantly speak about their anxieties in newspapers articles and books, in television talk shows, and from the pulpit; and that they apparently suffer from the obsession that the world is coming to an immediate end.2 2. “L’apocalypse atomique: Émotions allemandes, indifférences françaises?”Documents: Introduction 3 The threat to our environment is one thing, while the fear of global destruction is quite a different matter, as is the manner in which one articulates this fear and seeks to overcome it. Discussions about this fear in newspaper articles, novels, and theater productions generally characterize the impending global catastrophe as the “apocalypse” and use apocalyptic images. The Germans appear to be leaders in this regard. The apocalypse is discussed in other countries as well—films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and novels by Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Gabriel García Marquez´ recount disasters of an apocalyptic nature, and Jacques Derrida, the theoretician of postmodernism, has noted the “apoc- alyptic tone” in which the threat of nuclear war is discussed. But that apocalyptic tone is sounded particularly loudly and often in Germany. It is symptomatic of this tendency that the almanac of the Cousteau Society, An Inventory of Life on Our Water Planet, appeared in German under the title Die Reiter der Apokalypse (“The Horsemen of the Apocalypse”). In Germany, anything that provides even the slightest hint of global destruction is viewed as apocalyptic.