On the German Cultural Nation

Abstract

When I speak of the German cultural nation, I am trying to say, firstly, that cultural ties are far more stable than political ones (which is quite obvious) and, secondly, that I find culture more honorable and more important than the state. It is true that the state can protect, preserve, nurture, or oppress culture (which was there before the state and would be there without it), but it cannot create culture; it is the state which existsfor culture, not culture which exists for the state. In view of the state's usurpatory omnipotence, the concept of the cultural nation has become important for me in the last two decades, because it was an expression of the fact that culture in the widest sense (from the Ninth Symphony to the way we celebrate Christmas) still connected the inhabitants of the two German states. I had relatives, friends, and readers in both parts of Germany; my life-long interest in German history and literature constantly showed me the artificiality of the border line drawn in 1945, and whenever I was able to make comparisons on journeys, I found the correctness of the concept verified by inspection: the mutual similarities of the two states thought to be so different were always popping up from under the surface. History has no meaning; a meaning is given to it. We give history a meaning in accordance with our wishes for the future. Our goals for the present determine our evaluations made of the past. And since evaluation also means the determination and selection of crucial points, every present writes history anew. Every present asserts: this is the way history was, and we can draw these and those lessons from it. I went to school in an era when people still valued the knowledge of historical numbers, perhaps because the sober numbers seemed almost as objective as simple arithmetic. And so as a child I think it was in 1942 I had a teacher who was not a Nazi but a strict German nationalist. He made me learn the so-called Prussian Line, also known as