THE INTELLECTUALS AND THE STATE OF WEIMAR

Author(s): HENRY M. PACHTER

Source: Social Research , SUMMER 1972, Vol. 39, No. 2, GERMANY 1919-1932: THE
WEIMAR CULTURE (SUMMER 1972), pp. 228-253
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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 THE INTELLECTUALS
AND THE STATE OF WEIMAR
BY HENRY M. PACHTER

JLjooking back at ancient Athens or the fir

one is tempted to say that the cultural elite s
tuously of those states that give it greatest fr
at the contemporary scene in the United States
impression. Strangely enough, the intelligent
mitted to freedom, usually rejects the liberal
more structured or more communal: a state in which intellectuals

would have their assigned role. But in proclaiming their opposi-

tion, these dreamers stamp their own spirit on their age and state;
in our memory Athens now glows with the halo of Socrates, whom
she condemned. Our pious image of the Periclean Age omits the
misery, the slavery, and the imperialism of the first democracy but
glorifies its intellectual legacy, its beauty, and its humanity. In
a similar vein, the legend of Weimar's intelligentsia has grown
like ivy over the fallen pillars of the Weimar state. But the Re-
public - today still in the doghouse of historiography - may one
day share the fame of its world-renowned citizens; posterity may
revise the judgment of those contemporaries who attributed all
the glory of Weimar to its adversaries and all the infamy to the
Republic.
I

Prima facie, intellectuals had no need to feel alienated in the

Weimar Republic; they were honored and well paid. As academic
persons or teachers, they enjoyed the security and status of the
civil service. In a society which still measured a man's value by
his title, they were Herr Direktor, Herr Geheimrat, Herr Redak-
teur, Herr Architekt, Herr Rechtsanwalt, Herr Professor; anybody
who wielded a pen expected to be addressed at least as Herr Dok-
tor. Newspapers, magazines, and book publishers provided an

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 229

abundant market for every style, taste, and

Germany was one of the few countries where
by his craft. The states and cities supported t
there were prizes for poetry, drama and novels
mies of science, of belles-lettres, and of the a
arts balls, where everybody who was anybody
mighty ones, were almost state affairs, while t
differ or dissent had their own respective Gemein
sion. Virtually no one * needed to fear harm fr
popular views. On the contrary, even the stra
some group to maintain a publishing venture.
By all ordinary standards, the intellectuals ou
"gruntled." If they were disgruntled, part of t
cisely this diversity of interests which forced wr
to compete in an open market. The Republ
slogan "Gangway for talent/' but the intelle
preferred to be administrators of cultural goo
established truths rather than dowsers searching
Intellectual life was as pluralistic as politics and
most common complaint was that the Republi
an arena for contending interest groups.
German intellectuals could never approve o
defined politics as "who gets what." In their t
was an exalted realm where Geist must inform Macht. Friedrich
Meinecke, the liberal historian who rallied to the Republic,
taught that each state must have its "reason." 2 G. F. W. Hegei
had taught that the state is "the realization of the Ethical Idea"
and a manifestation of the "Objective Spirit." In such a state,
the intellectuals saw themselves as "der allgemeine Stand/' 3 com-

i The only exceptions I am aware of were the few brave men who denounced the
clandestine rearmament of Germany: Felix Fechenbach, Emil Gumbel, Carl von
Ossietzky.
2 Die Idee der Staatsräson, 1925 (Engl. tr., "Machiavellism"). Earlier, he had
written Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat (1908). In the following notes, English
titles are used where translations are available in print.
3 The universal estate, defined by Hegel as "having the general interests of society
as its business; for that purpose it must either have private means or be compensated

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 230 SOCIAL RESEARCH

parable to the guardians in Plato's R

dentally, is entitled Der Staat in th
discussed in the upper classes of hig
were invariably addressed as the n
knew, of course, Friedrich Schiller'
mit dem König gehen, Sie beide w
Höhen" 4 We shall see later that Sch
beauty, which had dominated Ger
throughout the nineteenth century,
influence on intellectuals of the W
sang, exists "only in the realm of d
dreams now was being projected on
long-past age of German glory: To
Macht in Soviet Russia; others fondly
- which means both kingdom and
Macht had seemingly been fused. Bu
whose gods had died" (Ein Volk ist
sind), Stefan George sang in Das neu
when Thomas Mann announced his
he did not accept its (admittedly ugl
mended to it "the politics of Novalis
poetical." True, the Republic needed
a spook (Geist meaning both spirit
The ideological superstructure did
suggested, behind the changes in th
duced reactions of its own: The inte
in their social status and were bewi
structure in the state. Their alienat
expressed itself in dreams of elitist
thal wrote Der Turm (1925); the Ste
into phantasies skirting Moeller van
It is true that Der Turm (The Towe
symbol of the "soul" which a merci

by the State" (Philosophy of Law, paragraph

Aufgabe und Stellung der Intelligenz in der
p. 109.
* Let the minstrel walk with the king; they both live on the summit of humanity.

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 231

deprive of its "mythical ground." But why did

for his symbol the phantasy of absolute mona
ously it not only represented his value scheme
granted that others would recognize this or
better one. Similar observations can be made on Rilke's and

George's allegedly otherworldly poetry. Their "inner self"

ways seems to be constructed after the model of the leader sta
in the "outer" world. The students understood the overt messag
Ernst Jünger imagined the beauty of a state whose workers
would be sexless termites. Others renewed the ideology of
Teutonic Order. Ortega y Gasse t's pamphlet The Revolt of th
Masses (1925) was a best-seller. As social life was being democr
tized, the idea of Stände (fixed estates) was gaining ground in t
academy.5 Hence the paradox: the one class that more than an
other claimed to live by its wits was bitterly resentful when t
Republic told it to do just that.
The youth movement, which had begun before the war b
ramified under the Republic, was also a middle-class rebelli
against middle-class society. It has often been remarked h
closely it resembled the present-day counterculture in the Uni
States.6

Unexpectedly, this elitism did not remain restricted to t

Right. Similar contempt for "mass democracy" was expressed
Professor Nelson, leader of the International Socialist Combat
League (ISK), and by the Socialist Youth leader, Hendrik de
Man.7 A steady stream of invective against the "booboisie" came
from the poisoned pen of "the Austrian Mencken," Karl Kraus -

» Heinrich von Gleichen-Russwurm, a descendant of Schiller, founded the June

Club, which in the beginning attracted intellectuals of the Right and the Left -
among others Rathenau, Blüher, Brüning, Rudolf Pechel. It promoted the ideas
of Stände and of People's Community; later it became the tool of the arch-conserva-
tive von Papen circle and changed its name to Herrenklub. The high-brow magazine
Die Tat propagated similar ideas and played host to parlor Nazis.
« See my own article on the revival of Hermann Hesse, in Salmagundi, 12 Spring
1970. Walter Laquer has shown in Commentary, June 1969, how closely the two
youth movements' vocabularies resemble each other.
7 The latter wrote Psychologie des Sozialismus (1926) and Die sozialistische Idee
(1933). Having failed to rally his native Belgium to the idea of a plan, he hailed
HiUer as the savior of civilization in 1939.

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 232 SOCIAL RESEARCH

head of another cult - who declared

he could not live in "a republic of h
salesmen." It is even more surprisin
the weekly which many considered
intellectuals, Die Weltbühne. The
that the Republic was governed by
kratie); his colleague Kurt Tuchols
Defense League (Reichsbanner) for
nized," and lacking in style and id
the Republic was "ein geistloser Sta
Democratic Party adopted a new
Heidelberg congress in 1925, Die W
whether the program could not, at l
What it missed most was style, Ha
Right and Left were contemptuous o
been, indeed, since the medieval s
gown. Otto Dix in his paintings an
toons mercilessly exposed the vulgar
ship and the urban middle class. Th
provoked anyone under thirty to ex
interviewees: "And for that we w
barricades?" 9 It did not occur to us
the Republic against Grosz's models.
with the Weimar state itself - which
we rejoiced at its demise instead of
to fill the Republic with Geist - a di
instance, Spanish anarchists underst
losophers. To the latter, the barrica
There is a further suspicion that w
intellectuals was not so much Geis
shared Macht: "Among parliament m

8 Die Weltbühne, 37, 1926. These boys were

protect Tucholsky's lecture hall, for instance;
Heinz Pol even called the Reichsbanner "fascist."
9 The Intellectual Migration, ed. by Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, Harvard
University Press, 1969, p. 21.

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 233

longer predominate; functionaries of state

unions. . . . journalists and representatives of
row down the choice of men who might be cal
and achievement. . . . The quality of statecra
people no longer believe that democracy gives th

II

Being short on power, the Republic tried to be long on Geist.

At its cradle stood the most eminent thinkers of their generation:
Max Weber, the father of modern sociology, and Ernst Troeltsch,
the philosopher of culture; n Franz Oppenheimer and Rudolf
Hilferding, economists; Alfred Döblin and Heinrich Mann, novel-
ists; Richard Dehmel, Gerhart Hauptmann, Fritz von Unruh,
poets and playwrights. The new state repudiated the imperial
flag and made every effort to become another Athens. The Consti-
tutional Assembly was convened in Goethe's town, Weimar. At
the suggestion of Friedrich Naumann, the charismatic leader of
social liberalism, several Länder adopted the name "People's
State" (Volksstaat) instead of Republic.
The Constitution, drafted by the distinguished teacher of con-
stitutional law, Hugo Preuss (see note 11), was inspired by the
noble model of 1848-49. To some extent, all of Weimar culture
was an elegy on the aborted revolution: either a renunciation of
the prewar expressionist impulses or a frenetic attempt to retain
them after the revolution had spent itself. It was difficult to un-
derstand that the revolution had not been the beginning of some-
thing new but the end of the prewar movement. René König
io Emil Franzel, Geschichte unserer Zeit, Oldenbourg (Munich, 1952), p. 297.
Similarly, Theodor Geiger: "Once the professional politicians take hold of the
arena, the fate of the people is in the hands of an elite which only knows the
techniques of politicking. . . . The substance of political decisions, however, [should
be] in possession of the social scientists . . ." (loc. cit., p. 154).
ii Cofounders of the Democratic Party, which in the beginning attracted many
intellectuals and students, among them a number who later became its most
vitriolic critics - such as Tucholsky on the Left and Hjalmar Schacht on the Right.
Its presidential candidate in 1925 was Professor Hellpach, and it produced Pro-
fessor Theodor Heuss, the first President of the Bonn Republic.

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234 SOCIAL RESEARCH

could therefore say that "the 1920s

chance to begin." 12 The Left, parad
memories of the bohemian revolt in
While the bourgeois republic failed
predecessors had not obtained sevent
intelligentsia still hankered after
ideals of democracy. Kurt Eisner he
Bavaria; after his murder the anarc
ists, under the leadership of writer
dauer, Mühsam and Silvio Gesell, p
in Munich. They celebrated festival
able to govern or to organize their
posed them, only to be bloodily sup
tionary troops. Landauer was mur
modern playwright, Tankred Dorst,
to show that he mistook the revolut
pening.
Writers, stage directors, cabaret singers, satirists and others, in
their turn, mistook happenings for the revolution. The stage
seemed to be the world once again, and wonderfully daring pro-
ductions opened a new view on the world for eager young audi-
ences.13 In poetry, this was the era of "Oh Mensch'' lyricism 14
and expressionism. It was followed by Dada - "the fanfare of a
young radical artistic intelligentsia who wished to blow bourgeois
society away." 15 To be sure, much of the revolutionary emotion
was not a new beginning but the echo of prewar upheavals. Maga-
zines such as Der Sturm and Die Aktion hardly needed to change
their tone. But they were no longer underground.
Just as the revolution had an esthetic quality, so esthetics took

12 In Die Zeit ohne Eigenschaften, Eine Bilanz der zwanziger Jahre, ed. by Leon-
hard Reinisch, Kohlhammer (Stuttgart, 1961).
is Leopold Jessner, a socialist, became director of the Prussian State Theater and
provoked scandals with his revolutionary staging of old classics. In Frankfurt and
Munich, daring new directors gave the stage over to expressionist plays. Erwin
Piscator, at the time a communist, created his famous mass scenes.
i* Collected by Kurt Pinthus in Menschheitsdämmerung, 1919.
iß Bruno E. Werner, Die zwanziger Jahre, Bruckmann (Munich, 1962).

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 235

on a revolutionary quality. Obviously, neit

long. The reality of the bourgeois republic wa
ing, compromise, but not even in its inten
Whether the poets thought they were revolut
tionaries thought they were poets, neither could
The barricades are for one day; only on Delacr
did that statuesque, light-gowned goddess of
forever to brandish her tricolor, urging the
further action. Thomas Mann spoke of "belle
ferring to those orators and enthusiasts who wa
pure, beautiful, and terrible. They saw the
Lafayettes and Carnots. They longed for new
stronger manifestations of the new Geist.
they would have liked to declare war on the o
many was represented by the Versailles Treat
the materialist West.

What they had in mind can perhaps be deduced from a similar

venture in Budapest. There a tiny group of Marxist intellectuals
was able to seize power in the name of national honor. They
abolished the middle class by closing all shops, declared war on
Czechoslovakia and Rumania, ruled by terror for a few weeks -
and after their defeat came to Germany, where they wielded
enormous influence on the flowering of the "Weimar spirit/'
Georg Lukács brought a radicalized Hegel with him; Anna Seghers
(married to a Hungarian sociologist) wrote the only communist
novels in the German language where partisan inspiration did not
stifle poetic imagination; Moholy-Nagy taught "dynamic con-
structivism"; Karl Mannheim introduced "sociology of knowl-
edge" and assured intellectuals that they were "freely floating"
above the class bias to which all other minds were subject. Fred-
erick An tal revolutionized art criticism: the rest of them - from
their other place of refuge, Moscow - directed the German Com-
munist Party.
The transfugees from the K.u.K. monarchy, who knew how to
quote from the German classics most eloquently, often exhibited

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 236 SOCIAL RESEARCH

the "Weimar spirit" with the truth

all, they lived in that state of alien
come the problem of all writers and
ing, Kafka was acquiring his strang
all prisoners/' 17 was understood af
aborted. The exiles of 1919 who stro
tion of departure throughout the 19
tion of the Left in Weimar and ant
decade later.

I shall show later why the Weimar writers could not be "con-
temporaneous" 18 and took their stand "outside" the Republic.19
The intellectuals always hated the Bürger and never meant to be
"inside" the bourgeois state, except as guests. But in a tragic sense
they became outsiders again in 1933 when a barbaric regime de-
clared modern literature and science to be "alien." At that point
an interesting inversion occurred. In retrospect, and seen from
the vantage point of exile, whatever had been great and valuable
in Weimar politics and letters seemed to have been leftist, critical,
Kulturbolschewist or Jewish. Lion Feuchtwanger, on arriving in
Hollywood, declared that all German literature was in exile; 20 by
inference, those in exile were German literature, and German
literature was based on a tradition of leftism. It was here in

i« Other representatives of the new intelligentsia included: Stefan Zweig, Franz

Werfel, Max Brod, Rainer Maria Rilke, Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, Hermann
Broch, Peter Altenberg, Arthur Schnitzler, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Karl Kraus and,
of course, Franz Kafka.
it See also Oskar Maria Graf's autobiographical Wir sind Gefangene (1927) and
Ernst Toller's letters and poems from prison. (In English: Look Through the Bars,
1936.)
is König in Reinisch, op. cit.
i» Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, The Outsider as Insider, 1970. The category of
"outsider" also appears in Geiger, op. cit., p. 75.
so Not all writers who stayed in Germany can be identified with the Nazi regime.
Fallada tried to save a realistic style while evading reality by describing idyls;
Ernst Wiechert and Guenther Weisenborn, though at first considered nationalist
writers, later found themselves in a concentration camp; Ernst Jünger and Werner
Bergengruen, shielded by the army, were even able to publish thinly-veiled attacks
on the regime. Rudolf Alexander Schroeder, Ricarda Huch, Stefan Andres, Manfred
Hausmann, Hans Nossak, Herman Kasack and Elisabeth Langgässer considered
themselves "emigrants of the interior."

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 237

exile, in the coffeehouses of Prague and Paris

Social Research and the New School for Social Research in New
York, in the small "colonies" of refugee writers on the Côte d'Azur
and the American West Coast, that the myth of the "Weimar
intellectuals" was created. The writers in exile became a moving
force in the international mobilization of culture against fascism
and lent enthusiastic help to the Popular Front. They were highly
visible at the International Writers' Congress at the Paris Mu-
tualité in 1935, and cheered the edict of the Communist Interna-
tional, at its Seventh World Congress, that the proletariat must
"inherit classical bourgeois culture."
In pursuance of this strategic change, the Communists now
created audiences for exiled writers, infiltrated reputable publish-
ing houses in Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam and Stockholm, and fi-
nanced others, appropriated German literature, and quickly ac-
quired a monopoly on labeling this writer as "progressive," that
one as "reactionary," etc.21
The Left line in letters was to emphasize the eternal dichotomy
between artists and thinkers, on the one side, as agents of human-
istic and democratic values, and the bourgeois society, on the other
side, which had helped to develop these values but was now pre-
venting their further development. In this way, a critical view
of Weimar society could be linked up with a positive evaluation
of its progressive forces. Especially to younger refugees, this vision
provided a rationale for their existence. Alienated in a foreign
country, they now were able to remember a spiritual home; to
reconquer it, they could summon the aid of the world's people of
good faith. The idea of the "Weimar intellectuals" was thus
projected backward from the Popular Front period as both a
banner and a wish. Amidst the hell that threatened to become
the future, it was comforting to believe in a past that had been
paradise. If Hegel said that it must be night when the owl of

21 The consequences of this dassificatory raid can still be read in The Destruction
of Reason by Georg Lukács (1953). On Communist infiltration in the Weimar press,
see Arthur Koestler, Arrow in the Blue, and Margret Boveri, Wir lügen alle.

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 238 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Minerva spreads his wings, one mig

1930s produced the light of the 1920

Ill

It would be a mistake, however, to confine the term "Weimar

intellectuals" to this group of the leftish-inclined, fellow travelers,
and emigrants. We can speak of a republican establishment of the
arts, letters and sciences, with its academies, universities, respected
publishing houses, newspaper feuilletons, exhibitions, theaters and
museums, where people of divergent persuasions were not enemie
but merely rivals, calling each other "Herr Kollege." Between
them, antagonistic coexistence reigned over a wide gamut of per-
sonalities, tastes and convictions. Presiding over this establish-
ment were Walter von Molo, a nationalistic hack writer now
happily forgotten; Thomas Mann, who had once propagated im-
perialism in the guise of the Unpolitische (Non-Political Man)
and was now promulgating uncommittedness in the guise of re-
publicanism; and finally, Gerhart Hauptmann, the one-time radi-
cal who was now wallowing in romantic eclecticism. As a sort of
poet laureate, he composed prologues for republican festivals -
later performing the same service for Hitler. He cultivated a
superficial resemblance to Goethe and had his picture taken in
a theater box with General von Seeckt, the monocled Chief of
Staff. (The caption does not say whether the occasion was meant
to honor the army or to legitimize poetry.)
In the political world and among social thinkers, the Republic
found itself isolated after the first few years. Of the founding
fathers, Naumann, Max Weber, and Troeltsch died; Walther
Rathenau and Matthias Erzberger were assassinated. Hugo Preuss,
having failed to dismember Prussia, was not nominated for elec-
tion or renamed Minister; and although many cabinet members
after him had academic titles, only two or three can be called
intellectuals.22 Nor did the Reichstag debates produce great ideas,
22 Rudolf Hilferding, twice Minister of Finance, was sabotaged by his staff and
did not have a Jacobin temperament to begin with; he led a double life, publicly
supporting the lame policy of his party and in private mocking his colleagues.

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 239

and great orators were few and far between.2

was the domain of politicians, not of philosop
tellectuals who rallied to the Republic - such
cken,24 Ernst Cassirer, Jaspers, Curtius, Sc
did not engage in party politics and were most
erals. The bulk of the academic intelligentsia, w
of the few who had been imposed on faculties
government, were conservative, reactionary, or e
Kelsen was the only one to engage in debate w
ideology-makers; Radbruch, as Minister of Jus
have Ludendorff convicted of participation in
Redslob, as Reichskunstwart, tried vainly to g
symbols. The memoirs of Arnold Brecht are a
to the loneliness surrounding the defenders o
the field of social policies, Hilferding develope
litical wage/* but his party failed to act on it and
an ideology of Wirtschaftsdemokratie , misapprop
Naphtali from Sidney and Beatrice Webb's
racy. While the Left and the Far Left wer
the proper interpretation of Marx's teachin
cycle or on the proletarian dictatorship, the d
had no theory of the state and not even much
the crisis of democracy, the intellectuals fell
service idea of authority, backed by the monar
and Briining.
In 1931, under the Briining government a
ante portas, Karl Jaspers published a small vo
Situation unserer Zeit, as volume 1000 of Gös
ence series. He warned that utopianism and fan
two forms of failure to "grasp the political -
23 Paul Levi, Rosa Luxemburg's favorite student and succe
the Communist Party, lived out an unhappy marriage o
Social Democratic Party, and committed suicide after ab
Other intellectuals as well - Maslow, Korsch, Scholem, Ro
from the KPJD.
24 He wrote a pamphlet on Cromwell in 1933 and was pro
university.

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240 SOCIAL RESEARCH

manly that few can be expected

recommended some vague form of
the "consciousness of a state-bound
bewusstsein, p. 90). The poverty of
with the fertility of the Right in
ticable theories and captivating i
Schmitt-Dorotic, Oswald Spengler,
ideological tools for a "revolution f
There may, however, be a more p
public's failure to attract the intel
consciousness of its own. The lit
increasing interest in psychology a
litical thought. "Privatization of
aspect of the alienation problem wh
consciences. Psychology and anthro
sciences of the age; the novel went
Much of this literature deliberatel
qua bourgeois and qua citoyen, and
the plight of the individual. But w
pean, the German authors had a sp
young Werther's sorrows into charg
sermann's young Etzel Andergast p
critical scaffolding on which his f
life; Werfel boldly entitles a novel,
is Guilty; Hermann Hesse's Stepp
become the godfather of a hundred
field looks like a worthy descend
characters.

Lukács is certainly wrong when he suggests that Thomas Mann

was "searching for the Bürger." On the contrary, his novels allow
the reader to share vicariously the experience of alienation; repu-
tations in the literary establishment were built not on conformity
but on confessions of anomie. This had been a long time coming
but was now receiving recognition: the erstwhile bohemians now
became academicians.

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 241

Obviously, members of the Academies had t

their reputations well before the first world
Thomas Mann, Gerhart Hauptmann, Bernhard
Wassermann, Alfred Döblin, Heinrich Mann,
Sternheim; the poets Rainer Maria Rilke, S
painters Kandinsky, Nolde, Liebermann, C
Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner; the sculptors Kol
lach; the physicists Planck, Einstein, Nerns
Vaihinger, Husserl, Scheler, Cohen, Rickert; t
berg, Alban Berg, Hindemith; the social scient
Weber, Dilthey, Sombart, Gumplowicz, Oppe
only a few - had done their most significant wo
of the century and actually belong to the per
expressionism rather than to the Weimar p
illustrious but waning presence could illum
shape. Peter Gay found it necessary to attr
"Weimar spirit" to the generation of its "fath
On the other hand, a number of creators w
are intimately connected with the image of W
then only to a rather narrow group of pionee
and most significant work after they had left
exile. This group includes some of the most n
artists and thinkers: Robert Musil, Hermann
Walter Benjamin, Manes Sperber, Arthur K
Brecht; the group around the Frankfurt Inst
search, notably Erich Fromm, Theodor W. Ad
cuse; among many others also E. Voegelin, Le
heim, Siegfried Kracauer. They often repr
Weimar" better than some whose most creativ
the 1920s.

Moreover, many names which became the signature of the Wei-

mar period proper were not unknown before the first world war.
Thus, Bruno E. Werner, in his superb eulogy of the Weimar
literature,25 notes that as a high-school student and a soldier in

25 In Reinisch, op. cit.

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242 SOCIAL RESEARCH

the first world war, he read Kaf

Musil, Meyrink, Heinrich Mann
Heym, Trakl. His extreme youth
including Franz Werfel, Heinric
Fritz von Unruh, Klabund, and Le
who at the time influenced many
had been acclaimed or had perform
A case could be made for placing
not in any year around 1918 but
The attack on Western middle-clas
against materialism, the critique o
ation of the senses - all these trai
had been present and fully develo
war. Neither in savagery nor in b
been surpassed in the decade th
not written anything better after
(1905) 26 and Der Untertan (1911);
novels was Wilhelminian society.
was no longer fundamental. Lik
writers, he now saw politics as a
the state to be just. "A state based
exist for a single day," he wrote
still to be fought for, but realiza
the realm of dreams.

Likewise, the materialism Stefan George attacked was that of

the imperialist age. But what, in the beginning of the century,
had seemed to be a concerted protest of all poets and writers
against the established bourgeoisie now split up into a number of
small establishments. Each writer, poet or thinker had his own
Gemeinde (following; literally, congregation) or cult, and from
Theosophists to Wagnerians, from "Georgiasts" to positivists,
from the various youth movement groups to expressionists and
other cultural Trotskyites, all could coexist in a pluralism of sects
each of which constituted a small counterestablishment. While

26 The film The Blue Angel does not quite reflect the radicalism of the book.

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 243

the intellectuals resented this cloisonné arran

them to live in a society from which they cla
to be its civil servants or academicians while
beware of its blandishments.

The republican framework of esthetic diversity allowed political

issues to appear in the form of literary and art debate; vice versa,
Jessner's use of stairs in staging mass scenes was seen by drama
critics as an attack not on their optical sensibilities but on their
deepest political and social convictions. Kulturbolschewismus,
denounced by the Nazis as a sinister plot to undermine the Ger-
man people's morale, was facetiously defined by Ossietzky as oc-
curring "when Klemperer uses faster tempi than Furtwängler,
when Kokoschka paints a sunset in colors never seen in Farther
Pomerania, when Gropius builds houses with flat roofs and people
enjoy a Charlie Chaplin movie/' The culture bolshevists claimed
to be part of the establishment by the same right as their rivals.
Vice versa, their publisher, Rowohlt, also sponsored Rathenau's
murderer, Ernst von Salomon.
In his own ironical way, Thomas Mann has pleaded indulgence
for the artists' antics and at the same time repudiated any idea of
seriousness: "An artist is a fellow who is no good at anything
serious or useful; he only desires to be free to do his antics but
will do nothing for the state or may even be subversive; inci-
dentally, he also is profoundly childish, inclined to exaggerate,
and even a little seedy. Society should treat him with quiet con-
tempt. . . . He refuses to work for a civilizing or political purpose,
to improve the world, etc. It is not fair to scold him for that. A
work of art may have moral consequences, but one must not hold
the artist responsible for them or ask him to have such intentions."
Indeed, if Marinetti could be hailed in Italy as a fascist writer,
if Céline could be cheered in France as a pioneer of letters, it is
hard to see why Emil Nolde and Gottfried Benn, who both
thought they were Nazis, were to be rebuffed by Hitler. The
totalitarian mind, however - utterly deficient in a sense of humor
- cannot allow nor even admit to the existence of any private

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244 SOCIAL RESEARCH

dream realm. The republican esta

and consists of - a variety of priva
with and within society.
These assumptions, however, cou
society itself came apart, when styles
selves to various political parties an
pluralistic Republic to pieces. Th
Schiller's realm of beautiful appear
political realities. Esthetic differen
logical irreconcilabilities. We must
to the committed writers on the Ri
nature and extent of their commitment.

IV

Considering the writer's position in the Republic, it is not

easy to understand why the image of "the Weimar intellectuals"
in the popular mind should still be that of a storming crowd of
insurgents criticizing and debunking the manners of the Republic,
deeply alienated and disgusted with its politics, militantly carry-
ing the flag of revolution at the head of the proletarian masses
who were being held down by the police clubs of the Social-
Democratic government.27 Actually, the Weimar intellectuals
were the most satisfied rebels in history. Some went beyond
tickling the bourgeois; but what they justly criticized was exactly
what the establishment itself found unpalatable in the Republic.
Proletarians could not afford to pay for seats in the Three-Penny
Opera; the socialist "People's Theater" in Berlin never performed
a Brecht work. The Kabarett der Komiker, the most outspoken
satirical venture outside communist agitprop groups - something
like TW3 - was owned by that most establishmentarian house of
Mosse whose newspapers advised their readers to vote for Briining.
The innocuous banter of Erich Kästner, Brecht, even of George
Grosz, was as tolerable to the liberal bourgeoisie as, say, Dick
27 This seems to be the view of Istvan Deak's Weimar Germany's Left Wing In-
tellectuals, California U. Press, 1969, and of Carl Schorske, NYRB, May, 1970.

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 245

Gregory is to New York Jews. Mack the Kn

Weill's pleasant melodies emasculated what
caricature of Peachum might have held. The W
denounced the reactionary courts and the power-h
- both remnants of the previous regime - and
the ordinary stupidities of the all-too-pedestria
This ability of the mature bourgeoisie to laugh
passed for subversive radicalism. In all newspa
editor was more radical than the political edito
Much of the literature dealing with contemp
political themes - say, Eric Reger's reportage n
rule in Cologne or Hans Fallada's Little Man, W
hit in 1932 - is read today only for historical
novels also are forgotten. Some exceptions are
side, the crystalline language of Ernst Jünger
(1920) and, on the pacifist side, Arnold Zw
Sergeant Grischa (1927) and Ludwig Renn's
The worldwide best-seller, All Quiet on the We
had never been intended to be an antiwar novel; its author had
no further ambition than to write honest reportage - which it is.
But since its publisher was the great Jewish house of Ullstein, the
Nazis declared the Fatherland's honor offended, and demonstra-
tions against the movie made it a cause célèbre. A similar fate be-
fell Carl Zuckmayer's play, Der fröhliche Weinberg (The Merry
Vineyard, 1925), a somewhat earthy comedy that was intended as
pure fun but became a scandal when the Nazis needed a "cause."
Nor was the cheeky Berlin comedienne, Claire Waldoff, really
offensive except to the most squeamish provincial ears. Schnitzler
was no more daring than Wedekind had been; but since he was
still alive, the prigs denounced him as dirty. Both were really
great moralists of pre- Weimar vintage. Quite generally speaking,
social criticism in republican times hit hardest the abuse of mili-
tarism, the late war, the servility of Beamte and Spiesser - all vices
of the preceding era.
The title of Theodor Plivier's novel, The Kaiser Goes, the

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246 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Generals Remain (1932), expresses t

nately, it was still necessary to att
imperial culture and institutions b
fetters on the Republic. The double
by Zuckmayer and a novel by Wilh
of Köpenick, based on a true even
confirms this deplorable state of
Hesse's Demian (1919), the book app
ment, and Thomas Mann's The M
heavily on the experience and voca
and actually end with the first wor
Authors who were truly contempo
successful: Kafka, Robert Musil and Hermann Broch, all out-
siders, have acquired higher significance only in our own genera-
tion. An exception was Alfred Döblin, whose Berlin Alexander-
platz (1930) and Giganten (1932), almost alone in Weimar
literature, combine modern imagination with a merciless observa-
tion of the modern world.

For a limited audience, Bert Brecht's didactic plays and poems

put imagination deliberately into the service of the cause. (He
never joined the Communist Party but was always at its service.)
Party members were Erich Weinert, Johannes R. Becher, Anna
Seghers, Friedrich Wolf. Though they dealt with contemporary
material, they were not contemporaneous in any real sense. They
looked at the world of 1929 from the aspect of what had been
missed in 1919, or of the contrast between the German misery
and the splendid Soviet reality. No one, neither the Left writers
nor the Left politicians, seemed to care about people who needed
new goals in a time of great distress. Brecht's movie Kuhle Wampe
(1932) and some new ventures of Vienna's Socialist Youth were
isolated attempts; the chance to mobilize a human protest during
the depression was missed by the Left. Nor could the lacunae
be filled by the following two curious occurrences. In the early
1930s, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, both students of
Heidegger, turned the program of the Frankfurt Institute for

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 247

Social Research away from social and economi

Kulturkritik. At the same time, J. P. Mayer
covered in the SPD archives a manuscript
which they felt set a new goal for the sociali
erate, not the proletarian from unemploym
alienation.28 At that moment, such a return
ism" was even less helpful than the Commun
Marxist exegeses, and was promptly hailed by
Sombart and Hendrik de Man. Proudhon alre
that the intellectuals had substituted love fo
had mocked the Germans for "operating ins
In contrast to the theoretical dearth on the Le
a considerable body of impressive works on
totalitarian side. Having mentioned the p
Oswald Spengler, Hans Freyer and Carl Sc
ideology-makers like Ernst Jünger (Der Arbe
Gestalt, 1932) and the medievalists Othma
Salin. The quality of right-wing novels may
posterity, be inferior to the best of the Left; b
they achieved larger printings. This was mo
low-brow and popular entertainment literat
novels, sentimental love stories,29 - and oth
Leaving aside the blood-and-soil enthusiasts,
reputable writers, including academicians, glo
cal past, the German nation in contrast to o
military spirit, or slandered the "Western sp
system. Such were the George-followers
Schröder, Ernst Bertram and Rudolf Borcha
Zusammenbruch des Idealismus- The Co
1919), Arthur Moeller van den Brück (Das
28 The ethical origins of Marx's thought had long be
Lukács, Karl Korsch and Max Adler, who had emphasized
socialist class struggle.
2» The most fertile and most successful writer of the
Mahler, was a pacifist and a feminist. But she separat
literary activity by an impenetrable wall. Twenty-seven
were sold.

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 248 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Gustav Frenssen (Der Glaube der N

(Schlageter, 1932), Walter von Molo
a number of movies with Otto Geb
Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer (Parac
terrorist posing as a writer, Rudol
Erich Dwinger (Deutsche Passion), W
Karl der Kühne), Hans Grimm (Vol
a former German colony - giving t
must include the considerable distribution of such older works
of German nationalism as Lagarde's Deutsche Schriften, Lang-
behn's Der Rembrandt deutsche,*0 Walter Flex's war novel, Der
Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten, Rainer Maria Rilke's Die
Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke (both
especially loved by the youth movement), and the political poetry
of Agnes Miegel and other poets better known and better loved for
their more esoteric meanings. We must further add the myth-
oriented psychology of Ernst Krieck and Ludwig Klages, the
historical works of Dietrich Schäfer and Ernst Kantorowicz, the
racist propaganda of the Goethe scholar Gustav Roethe, Hans
Giinther's race doctrines, and the hate against the Republic rife
throughout the academic establishment, culminating in Heideg-
ger's dedication of Freiburg University to "knowledge service"
(Wissensdienst) to the Nazi state.
Academic people, in particular, looked back to pre-republican
days when Germany was powerful and respected throughout the
world. High-school teachers were generally reactionary; university
professors often used the teaching of literature, history, or the
social sciences to propagate anti-democratic thought. Publishing
houses and magazines promoting racist and nationalistic ideas -
not to speak of low-brow entertainment - were numerous and well-
financed.81

so See Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, Anchor Books (New York,
1965).
8i The Nazi charge that a conspiracy of Jewish publishers and Jewish critics
favored Jewish authors, actors and singers can easily be refuted, but it has been
repeated by refugee authors who felt that culture had left Germany with them.

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 249

The aims of conservative intellectuals were m

by the word "anti": They were anti-illuminis
Semitic, anti-Socialist, anti-intellectual, anti-
parliamentarian, anti-industrial - in a word,
that had happened since 1789. They even want
Germany (Sombart's word: auflanden, 1935),
to stop the industrial revolution - that is to say,
to mention such mundane matters as industry
finance, and work. Most German intellectual
this. Rilke asserted, in a famous line, that
brilliance from within."
But we must differentiate between genuine conservatives, whom
the Nazis correctly called reactionaries, and nihilists like Spengler,
Moeller, Heidegger and Jünger, whom the Bolsheviks correctly
called "petit-bourgeois gone rabid" (wildgewordene Kleinbürger).
They raved about revolution but they meant apocalypse. Moeller
felt that "a great nation can hope for no greater ending than to
be subdued in a world war by a coalition of all other nations." 32
The further to the Right, the more obvious the similarities to
the far Left. Intellectuals at both ends of the political spectrum
were equally alienated, fanatical, and esthetically oriented. It is
not surprising to learn that the young Georg Lukács (whom
Thomas Mann met in prewar Munich long before he turned
Marxist) was the model for the fascist-nihilist Naphta in The
Magic Mountain. But Naphta also represents traits of Walther
Rathenau, the Jewish industrialist and mystic who organized the
Kaiser's war economy and became Foreign Minister of the Re-
public though he did not believe in either, and who anticipated
the rule of technocracy in Von kommenden Dingen (Things to
Come, 1917) and confided to his diary strange racist phantasies
which his Nazi murderers might have shared. Rathenau, who
signed the Treaty of Rapallo, had been among the visitors whom
Karl Radek, as secret Soviet envoy, received in his Berlin jail cell.
Another visitor had been General Schleicher, who was to admin-

52 Hermann Rauschning, The Revolution of Nihilism.

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250 SOCIAL RESEARCH

ister the death blow to the Republi

to the German nationalists in 1923
to the Enlarged Executive Committ
tional: a eulogy for Leo Schlage ter,
French occupation officers in the R
Another friend of Rathenau's w
Kessler, banker and art collector,
and Socialist discipline* ' could be "
master caste ... by the faith of K
then woe to all enemiesl" Kurt T
morality which he missed so much
all places, the Camelots du Roi. Th
illuminated by a list of intellectua
extreme Right to the extreme Lef
did in other countries (e.g., George
lini and Lenin). There also were
on the Left and the "Left people on
bine nationalism with populism, so
And finally there were some - few
would applaud any strong action o
tagonize the Bürger or stir him out
Of course it was only a minority,
that propagated nihilistic, futurist
tics. But there were more who felt
as a substitute for a policy. Their
married to a dreamy faith in the m
either wanted to conquer or be con
bolshevist groups shared an ardent
not to be confused with Willy Bran
commodation with the Soviet Union - i.e., an alliance of all the
"proletarian nations," the losers of the last war, the victims of
imperialism, "to free them from Western rule." 33
It would be nice if Professors Deak and Schorske were right in
33 Fritz Stern, op. cit., quoting Moeller van den Brück, p. 299. See also Karl O.
Paetel, Versuchung oder Chance? - Zur Geschichte des deutschen Nationalbolschewis
mus, Messerschmidt (Göttingen, 1965).

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 251

claiming that the Weltbühne authors were dis

national bolshevists by their "Western orie
nately, this was not so. Die Weltbühne pub
Heinz Pol against the Kellogg Pact and by G
carno. Nor is it true that these intellectuals found communism

incongenial with their idea of liberty. Die Weltbühne often pub-

lished communist authors; Kurt Hiller called on the readers to
vote communist - to be sure, only to ask for a "large coalition"
after the election; consistency was not his forte. Intellectuals are
notorious for being mavericks in general; if therefore some failed
to find permanent homes in the Communist and Nazi Parties,
that does not prove that they were averse to totalitarianism. Some
Weltbühne writers believed that the Third Republic was the true
heir of the Great French Revolution; others believed that the
Communists were. But their esthetic, basically pre-first-world-war
view of politics committed them to a totally mistaken image of
Jacobinism and made them irrelevant to the situation of the
Weimar Republic - even if their criticism was relevant.

Having said that the Weimar intellectuals were neither as in-

fluential as their enemies have charged, nor as leftist as memory
imagines them, that their "spirit" had been fully grown long be-
fore the 1920s began and came to flower long after they ended, I
now suggest that they were not even German. What would
Weimar culture have been without Rilke's translations from

French poetry? What German dance, without Isadora Duncan or

Mary Wigman? Every new volume of The Forsyte Saga was
literary event in Germany. Bernard Shaw had become a German
author for all practical purposes; Upton Sinclair sold more copi
in Germany than in the United States. Germans were as thrille
by Edgar Wallace as Englishmen, not to speak of the Wild West
which was every German schoolboy's dream. We looked at Tom
Mix pictures, adored Mary Pickford, danced first the Hiawatha
then the Charleston, and listened enraptured to Dixieland, which

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252 SOCIAL RESEARCH

we mistakenly called Jazz. On all le

national. The world literature, fro
ours; even our nationalists stole their ideas either from the East
or from the West. Moeller van den Brück got the Third Reich
myth from the Pan-Slavs - he translated Dostoevsky - and Ernst
Jünger never acknowledged his debt to Charles Maurras and the
French integralists. Döblin, a better writer and a better man,
did give James Joyce credit for the style and structure of Berlin
Alexanderplatz. Fischer's Neue Rundschau exchanged essays and
authors with La Nouvelle Revue Française. One saw political
implications in Charlie Chaplin movies, Mickie Mouse, Potemkin,
René Clair. Pirandello was a frequent guest at Munich and Berlin
festivals. Anatole France, Maxim Gorky, Jaroslav Hasek and
Upton Sinclair provided political ideologies for the German Left.
Eclecticism made cultural life exciting. Exotic cults captured
the European imagination. Josephine Baker and Al Jolson were
lionized. Klabund and Brecht in their parables spoke Chinese-
Hermann Hesse and Waldemar Bonsels had their protagonists
go to India. Rabindranath Tagore toured Europe and was exalted
in Germany. The curiosity of the middle-class, middle-brow fad-
dists left no foreign culture unravished. There was a Bahai temple
in Berlin. Buddhism, Hinduism, drug fetishism were fashionable;
Japanese prints graced the walls of cultured households. For
everyone hungry for spiritual bread there was always the mysteri-
ous Orient - and recently, of course, Soviet Russia, a new faith.
I have already mentioned the enormous contribution Vienna
had made to "Weimar culture," and now I must say that the little
town in Thüringen always remained a provincial backwater. The
real hustle and bustle in business, culture, politics, and amuse-
ment was in swinging Berlin. We all took part in its perpetuum
mobile of meetings, debates, parties, balls, festivals, productions.
Weimar or Berlin - no one cared any more about the place that
gave this republic its name because the spirit of its Betrieb could
be experienced only in the capital. Nor, to tell the truth, did
anyone care about "intellectuals." The true representatives of

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 INTELLECTUALS AND WEIMAR 253

the age were not its writers but its showmen: Er

Reinhardt, Leopold Jessner, Fritz Lang. Pe
Republic was not a Periclean Age after all, bu
Dietrich. We were no great innovators, we w
small scale. We did not generate the great id
led us out of the impasse in our social, eco
plight. Far from * 'freely floating/ ' we wer
coaxed and pushed. We were a generation of f
ties; never had there been so many brillian
excellent second-raters - wonderful people lik
as awful ones like Benn. We did not suffer, w
Each of us lived in his crowd and had his audience; each was a
priest of some cult or a functionary of some church. In no period
of German literature or art were the creators so well adjusted to
their environment, audiences so eager to accept whatever artists
presented as the latest chic of their own sensibilities. For indeed,
variety, an urgent sense of change, of transition, and of crisis were
the very conditions of success. In ever-accelerating rounds, literary
fashions crowded each other; excitement was found not just in
the ever more sensational content but in the very fact of rapid
change. Hermann Hesse may not have been unfair when he
charged that modern German literature had too many "journal-
istic elements"; indeed, the novel of reportage and of social
significance was much in demand. The manufacture, distribution
through mass media, and consumption of artistic and semi-artistic
products was a veritable fair, a market obeying its own laws. Art,
literature, even philosophy, had to join this dance. Few of us
knew then that it was the death dance of democracy. Too many
resented the fact that the Republic was not meant for dancing.
If Weimar was Periclean, then it was so in the sense that the
original Periclean Age, too, was a time of crisis.

City College, New York

Fall 1971/May 1972

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