Die Intellektuellen und die nationale Frage

Abstract

Langguth, Gerd, ed. Die Intellektuellen and die rationale Frage. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1997. 346 pp. DM 29.80 paperback. Ever since the opening of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of Germany, the nationale Frage, identity, and related issues have been a staple of intellectual debates and have spawned a considerable number of publications, among them the present volume. Although the portraits of Gunter Grass and Martin Walser, Grass's antipode in the unification controversy, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Botho Strauss-authors who significantly shaped postwar (West) German literature-grace the cover of the paperback, its focus is not of a purely literary nature owing to contributors from a variety of disciplines such as literary studies, history, political science, and politics-all of whom bring different perspectives to bear on the subject. As is to be expected, the contributions, which are divided in three parts, do not follow a uniform approach, but lack of space prevents a detailed discussion of individual essays. The first part (three contributions) seeks to clarify the terminological and historical basis of the question. Thomas Sparr explores the history of the term intellectual, a term that remains ambiguous and is subject to change; Peter Alter advocates the acceptance of the term Staatsnation that would signify the rejection of the ultimately ethnocentric Kulturnation (a term that figured prominently in Grass's anti-unification arguments); and Werner Weidenfeld discusses the challenges of reconciling German identity with aspirations for continued European integration. The eleven contributions ofthe second part, Literarische Entwurfe zur Nation, constitute the major, chronologically oriented part of the volume; they are devoted to periods or individual authors. The substantial essay by Ernst Weber on the national idea during romanticism and the Vormarz emphasizes the significance of all-German celebrations for the development and affirmation of a consciousness. Weber singles out the first anniversary in 1814 of Napoleon's defeat at the Volkerschlacht near Leipzig and the Hambacher Fest in 1832. In a somewhat different vein, Hugo Aust concentrates on texts by Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane, and Gerhart Hauptmann that express an ambivalent attitude towards nationalism rather than on those by bards such as Emanuel Geibel, Ernst von Wildenbruch, and Gustav Freytag (Aust neglects to mention the enormously popular Felix Dahn). The latter writers preferred to dwell on grandeur during the period of Wilhelminismus when, as a consequence of the failure of the 1848 revolution, democratic ideals had been abandoned in favor of nationalist fervor. In fact, the tension between democracy and nationalism is a pervasive phenomenon of the Weimar Republic, Erwin Scheuer argues. At the same time, he is at pains to provide a sampling of the full spectrum of opinions- from the ideologues of Blut and Boden to Bertolt Brecht-rather than a reductive bipolar pattern. Christoph H. Werth seeks to defend Ernst Junger-not entirely convincingly- against the charge of having paved the way for Nazism by examining his essay Der Arbeiter (1932) as a document advancing a particular brand of right-wing intellectualism. …