Constructions of Goethe versus Constructions of Kant in German Intellectual Culture, 1900–1925

Abstract

IN THE EARLY DECADES of the twentieth century, Goethe scholarship found itself in a charged and complex state of affairs. The defining philological undertaking of Wilhelm Scherer and his generation reached its culmination in 1919 with the completion of the monumental Weimarer Ausgabe of Goethe's works, yet for an emerging generation of critics, the driving conviction of Scherer's positivist school—namely that empirically founded philology would yield the most valid and authentic insights regarding Goethe and his work—had gradually lost much of its power to convince. “Eine Fülle von Tatsachen und Material ist aufgehäuft worden,” went one critic's response, “aber das Vermögen zur Synthese hat in keiner Weise damit Schritt halten können” (A wealth of facts and material has been amassed, but the capacity for synthesis has in no way been able to keep up). As the ethos that had produced this philological landmark was declared inadequate, a vocal set of critics in Germany began instead to embrace the diametrically opposed, highly speculative and vitalistic sensibilities of Neuromantik (neo-Romanticism). Rather than an emphasis on text, one witnessed the emergence of a post-Nietzschean interest in mythical, heroic constructions of key symbolic historical personalities—one may think, for example, of the George Circle's lionizing of individuals such as Caesar, Frederick the Great, and, of course, Nietzsche himself.