Elisabeth Millän-Zaibert (Chicago) Ralf Klausnitzer: Blaue Blume unterm Hakenkreuz: Die Rezeption der deutschen literarischen Romantik im Dritten Reich. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1999. Pp. 708. ISBN 3-506-74452-6. In 1802, the blaue Blume first appea- Nazism. There is a general conception red in German literature. It was intro- of Romanticism, whereby it is seen as duced by Friedrich von Hardenberg an anti-Enlightenment movement that (Novalis) in his novel Heinrich von privileged feelings over reason, glori- Ofierdingen, and it came to have a fied the „German Spirit", endorsing the life of its own, becoming a symbol of sort of nationalism that would rear its romantic longing, an orientation ugly head in the fascism of twentieth point for a literary and philosophical Century Germany. In a recently publi- movement committed to human cul- shed collection of lectures by Isaiah tivation, unhindered creativity, and Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (Prin- democratic Ideals. What could be the ceton University Press, 1999), German fate of this delicate creature in the Romanticism is characterized as a mo­ shadows of Germany's harshest, dar- vement bent on a path of the destruction kest symbol, the swastika? In his of reason and science, culminating in a book, Blaue Blume unterm Haken­ pernicious nationalism that gave way to kreuz, Ralf Klausnitzer explores this fascism. Another, perhaps even more history. Klausnitzer's thorough and exaggerated source adding to a miscon- well-researched account of the recep- ception of Romanticism is Georg Lu- tion of German Romanticism during käcs\ The Destruction of Reason. In the Third Reich documents what hap- this study, Luckäcs goes so far as to pens when a movement is uprooted create a history which directly links and replanted in the noxious soil of Hitler to Schelling. But, as Manfred inhumanity and political oppression. Frank has shown, Lukäcs' history is Klausnitzer provides the reader with riddled with error, because Schelling Information on an irnportant, albeit dis- was no Romantic, and the Nazis, as can turbing, chapter of intellectual history be shown in detail, hated the protago- and in so doing helps to correct certain nists of early German Romanticism.1 misconceptions regarding the nature of There is no compelling evidence that German Romanticism and its relation to can link Schelling to Hitler. 1 See Manfred Frank, „Wie reaktionär war eigentlich die Frühromantik? (Elemente zur Aufstörung der Meinungsbildung)". In: Athenäum. Jahrbuch für Romantik (Pa­ derborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1997), p. 141-166. 256 Elisabeth Millän-Zaibert Given the crude caricatures that A prototypical progenitor of the plague a serious understandiBg of National Socialists' reception of Ro­ German Romanticism, causing too manticism is found in the person and many scholars to Inaccurately locate work of Hans Pyritz, who lectured the roots of Nazism in German Ro­ widely on Romanticism and whose manticism, any serious study that prejudices seriously distorted the heips to shed light on the relation movement. Pyritz demonizes Fried­ between National Socialism and Ro­ rich Schlegel because of his relation manticism is most welcome. Klaus- with Dorothea Veit, the daughter of nitzer's exhaustive study of the re- Jewish philosopher Moses Mendels­ ception of literary Romanticism sohn. According to Pyritz, the ideal during the Third Reich will undoub- romantic Community established in tedly help to correct some of the cru­ Jena at the end of the eighteenth Cen­ de caricatures of German Romanti­ tury was destroyed by Dorothea's cism that impede a proper „anmaßende und taktlose Wesen der understanding of the movement. Mo- Rassefremden" (p. 322). Pyritz's reover, Klausnitzer's study sheds shameless anti-Semitism is well do- new light on how the darkest chapter cumented by Klausnitzer: we are told of German history affected how Ro­ that „Dorothea wurde mit antisemiti­ manticism was taught, studied, writ- schen Klischees belegt" (p. 322) and ten about, published, and, in effect, then given an example of one of Py­ reinvented. ritz's disgusting descriptions: „An The book is comprised of three sich grob, aber erst einmal anpas­ parts. The first and longest part of the sungsfähig. Beschränkt, gehässig, study is dedicated to a discussion of aber Schlegel sklavisch hingegeben, literary investigations of Romanti­ abgöttisch, anbetend, alle Wege mit­ cism. This part contains seven chap- gehend, alle seine Einseitigkeiten ters, which take the reader from 1900 noch übersteigernd, Spiegel und to the period of the Third Reich, pro- Echo, und damit ihn bis zuletzt fes­ viding a reconstruction of the literary selnd. Nicht Ursache, sondern Aus­ reception of Romanticism in Ger- druck seines Schicksals" (p. 322). many. Klausnitzer focuses in particu- Only a grotesquely selective reading lar on the period from 1933-1945, in of the Romantics, which amounted order to clearly analyze and discuss to a complete deformation of the mo­ how the reception of Romanticism vement and its members, enabled an along primarily philological lines anti-Semite like Pyritz to dedicate was transformed, during a period of himself to Romanticism. One wishes political depravity, into a reception Klausnitzer had spent more time dis- that, for the most part, deformed Ro­ cussing the tensions between Pyritz's manticism, instrumentalizing its anti-Semitic views and his engage- texts to serve the purposes of the re- ment with German Romanticism, a gime's Propaganda, and selectively movement that called for the equal dismissing those texts and authors treatment of all Germans, regardless who did not fit into the claustropho- of their religion, and moreover, a bically narrow interpretative frame movement that counted many Jewish demanded by the regime. intellectuals amongst its members Blaue Blume unterm Hakenkreuz 257 and its forbearers (recall that the re- chitechts, Alfred Baeumler and Ernst vival of Spinoza in Germany can be Krieck, dismissed Romanticism as attributed to the early German Ro- too soft (p. 400). Krieck disliked, in mantics). particular, the overpowering position Klausnitzer's account in the seven that women enjoyed in the German chapters of Part I, provides abundant Romantic movement, whether the evidence of how the Forschungspoli­ women were the daughters of Göttin­ tik of the Third Reich affected the gen professors (an obvious reference Forschungslandschaft and the Por­ to Caroline Böhmer) or, even worse, trait of Romanticism that emerged. „Berlin Jews" (one thinks of Henri­ The blaue Blume became lost in the ette Herz and Rahel Varhagen, the dark shadows of the Hakenkreuz. We leaders of some of Berlin's liveliest are told of an admirable exception: salons during the late 1700s). In the Rudolf Fahrner did pen a sharp criti- eyes of Krieck, any friend of a Jew cism of Hitler, yet this is just mentio- was an enemy of the truly German ned in passing, few details are given tradition, and he saw the obvious ten- of Fahmer's work (p. 356). And whi­ sions between Romanticism and Na­ te there is solid reporting throughout tional Socialism. For the National each of the chapters of Part I, with Socialists, anything outside of the many important sources presented to German tradition was bad: all things the reader, one wishes that more que- true, good, and beautiful had to be stions would have been asked about German, in their narrow sense of that why there was not more Opposition term of course. The eigendeutsche amongst scholars who must have Tradition they hoped to create was been aware that the oppressive poli- threatened by looking for its roots in tical landscape was leading them to Romanticism, a movement that was mutilate their own field of study— open to other cultures and was very two leaders of Romantic research, much a product of the German-Je- Heinz Kindermann and Paul Kluck- wish intellectual tradition. hohn even kept Josef Körner's vo- Romanticism could only be em- lume on Friedrich Schlegel out of the braced by the Nazis when it became Deutsche Literatur in Entwicklungs­ twisted and deformed by some of the reihen series, because Schlegel was a National Socialist Movement's archi- Romantic whose arlection and ties to tects. The contradictory nature of ro­ Jews were simply not acceptable to mantic theories as they developed the Nazi regime (p. 355). Even the within the ideological and theoretical Journal Euphorion had to be re-na- discourse developed during the Na­ med: in an instance of the dark side tional Socialist period in Germany is of political correctness, it became highlighted by Klausnitzer in the Dichtung und Volkstum (p. 355). three chapters of Part II, where he In Part II of his study, Klausnitzer presents some of the leading concep- gives details concerning why Ro­ tions of Romanticism that were de­ manticism, contrary to the widely veloped and defended by Alfred Ro­ held view, was not generaliy attrac- senberg and Joseph Goebbels. tive to the National Socialists. Two Rosenberg's artverbundene Roman­ of National Socialism's leading ar- tik is contrasted to Joseph Goebbels, 258 Elisabeth Millän-Zaibert stählerne Romantik: the former ap- ideas with technical rationality (p. propriated Romanticism as an em- 487). Klausnitzer's study allows the brace of mythology and a move to reader to clearly see that throughout the past with a rejection of the heart- the period of National Socialism, less technology of the present, while Romanticism, more than being stu- the latter endorsed a view of Roman­ died, was instrumentalized and there-