Abstract
Author(s): Pan, D | Abstract: Botho Strauss's (1993) attempts to resurrect a premodern approach to German culture centered on themes such as the sacred a myth is defended against those who see it as a resurgence of Nazi themes. This attempt to reintroduce the power of a traditional religion-based culture is based on three claims about culture: (1) A crisis of values is inevitable for a society organized around economic prosperity. (2) Tradition-based authority is essential for the building of individuals. (3) Violence against scapegoats is necessary for the maintenance of social order. The idea of the sacred a its relation to myth, imagination, a the sublime are made central to political organization. On all these issues, Strauss is invoked as an alternative to the standard liberal positions derived from Immanuel Kant. Strauss is criticized for privileging German language over concrete interpersonal relations, which serves to render his notions of sacred a community into a contrived nationalism that removes art from the everyday. A reading of Strauss's works provides an example of how myth can provide meaning to recent German history. H. von Rautenfeld
Highlights
Since the end of communism and the reunification of Germany, writers from both the former East and West Germany have sounded the alarm against the materialism of German culture, the dangers of capitalist homogenization, and the decline of values
An entire generation of "leftwing" writers, including Heiner Muller, Botho Straufi, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Martin Walser ' have attempted to defend German culture against the perceived threat of American capitalism and Western rationalism. Their concerns have led to another call to arms launched by critics, who see in such rhetoric an ominous return to themes already taken up by far Right intellectuals during the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and more recently within the German New Right of the 1990s
The new interest in myth, traditions, and the sacred is the harbinger of an epochal change in German culture which has been brewing all through the 1980s and which, like the social changes leading to the end of communism, did not begin with the fall of the Wall but were only revealed by it
Summary
Since the end of communism and the reunification of Germany, writers from both the former East and West Germany have sounded the alarm against the materialism of German culture, the dangers of capitalist homogenization, and the decline of values. Powered by the California Digital Library University of California
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