Table Of ContentGERMAN INCERTITUDES,
1914–1945
Cathedral by Paul Klee. Used by permission of The Phillips Collection.
GERMAN INCERTITUDES,
1914–1945
The Stones and
the Cathedral
KLEMENS VON KLEMPERER
To Otto and Fritz Molden
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
VonKlemperer,Klemens,1916–
Germanincertitudes,1914–1945 : thestonesandthecathedral / KlemensvonKlemperer.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0–275–97017–5(alk.paper)
1. Historians—Germany—Biography. 2. VonKlemperer,Klemens,1916– 3.
Germany—Intellectuallife—20thcentury. 4. Authors,German—19thcentury—Political
andsocialviews. 5. Authors,German—20thcentury—Politicalandsocialviews. 6.
Nationalsocialism. I. Title.
DD86.7.V66A3 2001
943.085—dc21 00–061129
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationDataisavailable.
Copyright(cid:1)2001byKlemensvonKlemperer
Allrightsreserved.Noportionofthisbookmaybe
reproduced,byanyprocessortechnique,without
theexpresswrittenconsentofthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:00–061129
ISBN:0–275–97017–5
Firstpublishedin2001
PraegerPublishers,88PostRoadWest,Westport,CT06881
AnimprintofGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.
www.praeger.com
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
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CopyrightAcknowledgments
Theauthorandpublishergratefullyacknowledgepermissionforuseofthefollowingmaterial:
ExcerptsfromPatrickBridgwater,PoetofExpressionistBerlin:TheLifeandWorkofGeorgeHeym
(London,1991),212–220.UsedbypermissionofLibris.
FromTheWorksofStefanGeorgetranslatedbyOlgaMarxandErnstMorwitz.Copyright(cid:1)1974
bytheUniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.Usedbypermissionofthepublisher.
ExcerptsfromWilliamButlerYeats,“AnIrishmanForeseesHisDeath,”CollectedPoemsofW.B.
Yeats(NewYork,1964),133f.UsedbypermissionofSimon&SchusterandA.P.WattLtd.,on
behalfofMichaelB.Yeats.
ExcerptsfromSiegriedSassoonDiaries(1915–1918).UsedbypermissionofBarbaraLevy:Literary
Agency.
Everyreasonableefforthasbeenmadetotracetheownersofcopyrightmaterialsinthisbook,but
in some instances this has proven impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive
informationleadingtomorecompleteacknowledgmentsinsubsequentprintingsofthebookandin
themeantimeextendtheirapologiesforanyomissions.
Contents
Preface ix
1. Introduction: Tradition and Modernity in German Thought
and Society 1
2. The Great War: Experience and Memory 13
3. Heroic and Not-so-Heroic Pessimism: Max Weber and
Oswald Spengler 29
4. The Adventurer: Ernst Ju¨nger Reconsidered 45
5. The Call for Allegiance: Hugo von Hofmannsthal 61
6. The Lure and Limits of Gemeinschaft 77
7. Fragments, Abstraction and a Vision: The German
Expressionists 87
8. Authenticity: Martin Heidegger and the Temptation of National
Socialism 105
9. Maturity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Faith and the “World Come
of Age” 123
10. Conclusion: The German Mind between Disenchantment and
Reenchantment, and the Spectre of National Socialism 139
viii Contents
Select Bibliography 155
Index 169
Preface
“Men die for a cathedral,not for stones.”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupe´ry
“The essenceof being human is that one does not seek perfection.”
—GeorgeOrwell
This volume of essays should be considered both a personal and a scholarly
document. Since the time seems to have come for me to take stock of my past,
of my experiences and my thoughts, my daughter Catharine has urged me to
write my autobiography. I have lived, after all, during most interesting, if not
dramatic,timesinwhichIhaveplayedthepartsofbothobserverandparticipant,
and in which by good fortune I have survived. Whether or not I have satisfied
my daughter’s prescription remains, however, to be seen. What follows in this
volume is not literally an autobiography, but it represents a gathering and or-
dering of my thoughts, personal and scholarly, that have engaged me for de-
cades.
My very first recollection is of a revolution, when as a small child I peeped
through a curtain of my parents’ homein Berlin to findamachinegunpointing
in my direction. Subconsciously, at least, my whole attitude towards the revo-
lutionary events I have witnessed may have been shaped by that early expe-
rience. I have learned to understand the wisdom of the observation that
revolutions, like the god Saturn, devour their own children. Some revolutions,
to be sure, are inescapable, in particular if they areamatterofbroadsocialand
x Preface
technologicalchange.TheGermanRevolutionofNovember1918whichpointed
that machine gun in my direction turned out to be abortive. However, the rev-
olutions which fundamentally affected just about all my contemporariesaswell
as myself, the Socialist-Communist one and the Fascist-National Socialist one,
shook the world with close to apocalyptic expectations and promises, and left
behind ruins.
I shall begin by projecting the story of my own life against that of Hans
Scholl and his sister Sophie and their encounter with the National Socialist
revolution. They belonged to my age cohort. These two youngsters from Ulm
insouthernGermanywereattractedbytheflagsanduniformsandsongsoftheir
Hitler Youth days until they saw the light and came to understand that all this
was but a cover for a brutal tyranny. They then formed with their friends an
oppositionalgroup,theso-called“WhiteRose,”distributedillegallyprintedleaf-
lets calling on the public to resist, and, after beingdetected,wereexecutedfour
days thereafter in February 1943. I am keenly aware of the fact that they, born
in 1918 and 1921, were younger than I, born in 1916.
Certainly, compared with the lives of these extraordinarily brave people, my
life has been less heroic, less remarkable. Like all of my age cohort I had to
make my own way through a landscape of ideologies. The friendships of my
youth were conspiracies of sorts in which we set out with boundless idealism
to form a brave new world of our own. Wewerebeneficiariesofnodemocratic
tradition, and indeed the “Weimar” democracy, and forthatmattertheAustrian
one, did not mean much to us. But we all were in search of some order that
would satisfy our youthful vision and our unwavering commitmenttothecause
of freedom. Faced with a reality thatseemedtousfragmentedandindeed“bro-
ken,” we at no moment abandoned our search for cohesion and wholeness.But
the Nazi revolution, the so-called seizure of power of January 1933, awakened
us from our dreams. It opened our eyes to the fact that the search for cohesion
and wholeness, inocuous and indeed legitimate as it was in our case, caneasily
be derouted, as it was by the Nazis, to serve evil ends.
Beforelong,IwentintoexiletotheUnitedStateswhichgavemesafehaven.
Myfriendswhostayedbehindwent—againsttheirwill—intotheGermanarmy,
prisons and concentration camps, and some eventually joined the German and
Austrian resistance. No doubt theirs was the harder lot, and a number of them
did not survive to tell their story.
I am fortunate, then, in being in a position to tell my story. Indeed the story
I wish to relate here has become enriched by my occupation and by my expe-
riences. Soon after coming to the United States I took up the study of history
which allowed me to view my life through the prism of a broader scholarly
investigation. My studies were interrupted during the Second World War by
three and a half years in the U.S. Army. Perhaps I should not say“interrupted”
since my service took me back to Germany, helping me to clarify my thoughts
on German history, in particular in those times of German stocktaking in the
