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# THE GERMAN CULTURAL SITUATION

## I

### The Break in Historic Continuity

Any examination of cultural problems and trends in the present West German Federal Republic must begin with the fact that the year 1945 constitutes a decisive turning point in Germany's cultural -- as well as political -- history. Nazism had carried to extremes certain tendencies which had played an important role in German history for about a hundred years: a narrow, self-centered nationalism which was contemptuous of the "philistine, decadent, bourgeois West" as well as the "primitive Slavic East"; the belief that Germany had a special mission to regenerate the world, a fuzzy notion which easily provided the basis for ideologies of imperial expansion; contempt for the liberal, democratic, and egalitarian ideas of 1789, which were despised in the name of distinctively German hierarchic-authoritarian principles; and the exaltation of romantic idealism as contrasted with the rationalism, materialism, skepticism and hedonism of Western Europe and the United States.

It should be emphasized that all these tendencies, while strong, did not monopolize the German outlook before 1933: the Germany of Bismarck, William II and the Weimar Republic included many cosmopolitans, liberals, democrats, socialists, rationalists and skeptics. For this reason it is quite erroneous to view the "Nazi revolution" as the natural or predestined culmination of earlier German history; it rather constituted, under the stress of extremely unhappy external circumstances, the triumph of certain elements of the national tradition over others. One must avoid

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the common fallacy of viewing German history in too Manichean a fashion as the
perennial struggle between the incompatible forces of Darkness and Light. The fact
that nationalism (including a sense of national mission), authoritarianism, the belief
in hierarchy, and romantic idealism contributed to the triumph of Nazism does not
mean that all manifestations of these forces in earlier periods of German history
deserve blanket condemnation; when properly counterbalanced by other forces they had
made important contributions to the flowering of German society and culture before
the blight of Nazism descended upon Germany. It may be added that no society can in
fact dispense altogether with some national consciousness, some authority, some
social differentiation, and some idealism of a more or less romantic nature; the
comparative absence of these forces in contemporary Germany has proved by no means
an unmixed blessing.

What was needed in 1945 was a purification of these forces from Nazi dross, and
a revival of the liberal-democratic-humane tradition interrupted in 1933. This
double process had substantially taken place since 1945; but the shock produced by
Nazism was certain to lead to more than just a purification and a restoration of
balance. It led, in fact, to basic changes of attitude which come close to a
transformation of the national character. Many Germans went from one extreme to
another as they repudiated the entire authoritarian-nationalistic-militarist-romantic
tradition; the result was one of the sharpest breaches in continuity experienced by
any nation in recent history.
1

One must recall the "opening situation" of 1945. The exposure of Nazi crimes,
and the suffering which Nazi folly had imposed upon Germany, brought most Germans to
a revulsion against Nazism and a resolve to break with all institutions and attitudes
which had contributed to the triumph of Nazism. Nationalism had led Germany into

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tragic isolation; it was now superseded by a revived European and cosmopolitan outlook. The belief in a distinctive German world mission had been exploited by Hitler for primitive and criminal ends; Germans were now only too eager to emphasize their country's participation in the common Christian-humane traditions of the Western world. Hostility to the ideas of 1789 had led to tyranny, racialism and genocide; many Germans now discovered much merit in liberty, equality and fraternity. Military traditions -- once the country's special pride and glory -- stood utterly condemned since they had led Germany into two disastrous World Wars. Idealism and romanticism -- once the source of Germany's feeling of superiority over the West -- were discredited by Nazi exploitation. Young men returning from the war resented the service they had been called upon to perform for a cause now seen to be criminal. They wanted above all to settle down to marrying, raising children, and building their own careers; in short, in sharp contrast to many veterans in 1919, they demanded a "privatization" of life -- a patriotic self-sacrifice though, alas, *not* the public spirit of active citizenship. There were other examples of a "transvaluation of values." The struggle for sheer survival in the cold and hungry Germany of 1945 made materialism and hedonism not only dominant but comparatively reputable attitudes towards life. The terrible disillusionment with Nazi ideology often led to contempt for *all* ideology and opened the way to a prosaid, empiricist and pragmatic outlook.

These changes in national values and attitudes constitute -- in the opinion of this writer -- the key to the understanding of contemporary West Germany. They have led to what almost all Germans now desire -- integration into the Western community of nations -- whereas many Germans had earlier stressed whatever *separated* them from the Western nations. The result is that many of Germany's contemporary problems are

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no longer her *peculiar* problems but are rather the *typical* problems confronted by any industrialised, Western community.

It is also true, however, that the confrontation with modern problems is complicated in the German case by the fact that the country's only *recent* entry into the "Atlantic community" has permitted Reactionaries to denounce as "Americanization" a process that is more accurately described as "modernization"; that there is among some Germans an inevitable hankering after the "restoration" of earlier conditions, which in turn arouses deep-seated fears among the champions of modernity; and that the "coming to terms" with the legacy of a Nazi system which ended twenty years ago is a major national imperative. We will now examine these three *special* problems in some detail.

## II

### The Americanization of Germany -- Fact and Slogan

The shift in "national character" just described provided the prerequisite for the much discussed "Americanization" of Germany, which is certainly one of the most notable phenomena of the post-1945 period. In many ways Western Germany is today the most "Americanized" country in Europe in such matters as the high prestige of the business executive, the achievement of the "affluent society," and a tendency towards mass culture and alienated intellectuals. To these should be added the quasi-unanimous acceptance of liberal democracy though Germany's unhappy history precludes that common pride in a libertarian heritage which provides such a powerful buttress to American democracy. It should also be noted that some of the most important elements of the "American mix" -- such as spontaneous, extraverted

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friendliness, a tradition of public-spirited voluntary activities, and the high
value placed in childhood training upon "cooperativeness" and "fair play" -- are still
underdeveloped in Germany.

There can be no question about the pervasive impact of American ways and the
widespread popularity of America in Germany in the years after 1945. The American
soldier who helped defeat Hitler's armies was evidently not quite the effete
decadent pictured by Dr. Goebbels as the natural product of a materialist
civilization; American science and technology showed its caliber by the development
of the atomic bomb. The American occupation proved -- at least after the termination
of the initially vindictive "Morgenthau period" -- generous in intention and
benevolent in results. A genuine German-American solidarity developed during the
Berlin blockade of 1948-9. American determination in the face of obstacles and skill
at improvization was demonstrated by the Berlin air lift of 1948. General Clay was
widely admired as a supremely efficient no-nonsense type of organizer, while his
successor, High Commissioner John C. McCloy, became the very model of a benevolent
proconsul. The political alliance between America and the Federal Republic against
the common Communist danger is based upon mutual self-interest as reinforced by
sentimental and personal ties. The latter were fostered by a well-administered
program of sending Germans with leadership ability -- or potential -- on visits to
America. It is rare today to encounter a West German of "the ruling class" -- unless
embarrassed by an unusually "brown" or "red" past -- who has not been to America
since the Second World War and liked much of what he saw there.

It may be added that American culture (more especially literature) has enjoyed
very great prestige in post-war Germany. Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Thornton

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Wilder and William Faulkner were among the most widely read authors in Germany. There was a special interest in the American South with its unresolved racial problems; on the popular level this led to many misguided comparisons between the American treatment of Negroes and the Nazi treatment of Jews. The similarity between the South after 1865 and postwar Germany was frequently noted, and was responsible for Margaret Mitchell's *Gone with the Wind* becoming a national best-seller in a German translation published in 1947. American jazz became a general craze, and movie houses were for years dominated pretty exclusively by Hollywood products (which incidentally did much to stir the appetite for the "American way of life").

The German "economic miracle," originally primed by the generously planned, gratefully received, and skillfully used Marshall Plan aid created in a remarkably short time the beginnings of a broadly-distributed prosperity reminiscent of American mass consumption. Automobile ownership, before World War II a status symbol of the rich, is becoming widespread and constitutes the aspiration of nearly every German family. The exodus from old urban areas to burgeoning suburbs is changing traditional patterns of life and creating new "neighborhood communities" with their -- to Americans all-too-familiar -- problems. Domestic servants are increasingly hard to find, a fact which has given impetus to the introduction of labor-saving devices. The buying of household appliances on the installment plan is a major feature of nearly every family budget.

The concentration upon material well-being -- perhaps the most distinctive hallmark of the "American way of life," and of modernity in general -- is reinforced in Germany by the vivid memory of the extreme misery of the years 1945-49 and by apprehension fostered by direct confrontation with Communism. The vulgar and

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ostentatious habits of consumption of today's Germans -- so often deplored by foreign visitors -- are due in part to a gnawing doubt whether the newly acquired prosperity will really last. Older Germans can remember two runaway inflations (1921-23 and 1945-48) which were followed by drastic currency reforms; this cannot fail to leave many with at least a residual sense for the transitoriness of material goods. Many Germans instinctively feel that "things are too good to last," and they think back to the "good times" experienced during the Wilhelmine and Hitlerite Germany, both apparently stable and prosperous societies which yet ended in catastrophe. The feeling of being the victim rather than the master of fate -- long a major theme of German thought -- is much enhanced by the fact of Germany's partition. The political system under which particular Germans live -- and their degree of prosperity -- depends for all except the refugees upon the geographical accident of where they happened to live in 1945. The beneficiaries of West German freedom and prosperity know that their sociological equivalents in East Germany are living under Communist poverty and tyranny through no fault of their own -- a fact which easily gives rise to a feeling of uneasiness.

The fear and hatred of Communism found in today's West Germany -- which differs in both its intensity and its unanimity from that of Britain or France, here being more similar to America's -- is primarily a natural revulsion against the Communist tyranny which the Russians have clamped upon East Germany. Other factors are, however, also important. Some residues of Goebbels' wartime propaganda and even earlier notions of German racial superiority over the Slavs survive; the atrocious misconduct of Russian troops in 1945 lingers in memory; while the threat of direct Communist military aggression is ever present in a country partitioned by the Iron Curtain. Whatever the reasons, the result is a somewhat hysterical anti-Communism and a

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flourishing of McCarthyite techniques of defamation; all Left-wing groups and individuals are readily accused of "doing the work of the Communists" or even receiving their money; even the Democratic Socialists, with their impeccable anti-Communist record, are often tarred with the Red brush; while East Zone publications are prohibited in a manner which shows too little confidence in West Germany's immunity to Communist propaganda.

The positive side of the universal rejection of Communism -- when paired with the absence of neo-Nazism, to be discussed below -- is to provide the Federal Republic with a political system free of extremist elements. Germany has achieved, for the first time since the breakup of the eighteenth century _ancien regime_, the kind of _consensus on political fundamentals_ which has characterized American society since its foundations (if one excepts the slavery controversy of the middle of the nineteenth century). The result has been that the Bonn Republic lacks intense political controversy of the kind which the Weimar Republic had with such brilliant cultural -- and disastrous political -- results. The Bonn Republic is not confronted by a galaxy of distinguished intellectual opponents from either the Right or the Left. There is no "Conservative Revolution" headed by men of the calibre of Oswald Spengler, Ernst Junger, and Moeller van den Bruck, to criticize the liberal-democratic foundations of the Federal Republic; also no Leftist criticism, headed by men of the calibre of Carl Ossietsky, Kurt Tucholsky, and Bertolt Brecht, to expose the evasions and hypocrisies of the men in power (though this function is performed, albeit with little success, by the writers of Group 47 discussed below).

Many aspects of the "Americanization" of Germany have not remained unchallenged by Conservative and traditionalist groups. The latter suffer from the comforting illusion that the evils they deplore are _distinctively_ American in their origin and

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nature, whereas they are, of course, the general characteristics of any modern industrial and urban society. The indistinguishable mixture of "Americanization" and "modernization" has, however, often led to the undesirable result of making many Conservatives explicitly anti-American. A few examples may serve to illustrate the point. German Conservatives assert that juvenile delinquency (inevitable in any modern society with its combination of diverse stimuli, tensions, and affluence) is due to the introduction of American educational methods; that the decline of the ascetic working ethos of the factory worker (the result of full employment and enlarged horizons) is due to the introduction of the American trade union mentality; and that comic books and Coca-Cola would not exist if Columbus had never discovered the New World. It would be easy to multiply examples of this type of Conservative contention.

The striking similarity between "patterns of life" in the United States and Germany is on balance a factor making for cordial relations between the two countries; American businessmen, diplomats, and tourists easily feel quite "at home" in Germany. It also, however, gives particular groups in each country occasion for antipathy that sometimes approaches the bitterness of a family quarrel. Thus American Left wing circles usually hate German businessmen not only as left-over Nazis but also as caricatures of the American businessmen they dislike at home; German Right wing circles brand what they dislike in contemporary Germany with the "Made in America" label. German Leftists, on the other hand, tend to blame America -- and more especially Right wing elements in the American military occupation -- for having frustrated the post-1945 hopes for a Germany completely reborn, and having set the stage for a "German restoration." The fear of "restoration" -- the main bogey of German Left wing groups -- is at least as important as the fear of

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"Americanization" -- the main bogey, apart from Communism, of the German Right; it merits a separate treatment of its own.

## III

### The Fear of Restoration

The German discussion about the phenomenon of "restoration" is conducted in terms of the contrast between the hopes of 1947 and the reality of 1965. It is intelligible, moreover, only on the basis of the specific circumstances of the first post-war years. The period after 1945 was for most Germans a struggle for sheer survival. For a select minority of students it was, however -- at least in retrospect -- a golden period since the crust of tradition had broken and all things appeared possible in the future. These students had usually returned from years of war and viewed their survival as a kind of miracle since millions of their comrades had remained behind on the battlefields of the Second World War. They were deeply shaken by the revelation of the emptiness and barbarism of Nazism, to which they had devoted "the best years of their lives"; they were exhilarated by the vast range of ideas which suddenly converged upon them. They experienced at thirty -- as emotionally mature men who had known suffering, looked death in the eye, and been shaken completely out of the routine of daily life -- the intellectual adolescence which bright youngsters experience between twelve and eighteen in open societies during "normal times." Today's successful Germans of forty-five, on the rare occasions when they take out time to think about the past, become nostalgic as they reminisce about the passionate discussions, frequently lasting until dawn, of their university years. The student elite of that period was determined to build a better

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Germany which would transcend the evil past; while the long-standing sense of
national mission -- where it still survived -- expressed itself in the ambition to
distill and synthesize whatever was valuable in every contemporary political and
social system. There was a naive but generous hope, even as the shadow of partition
descended upon the country, that Germany might somehow form a bridge -- politically
and culturally -- between the contending sides of the Cold War in an increasingly
polarized world.

The ideals of this oldish "young generation" were best expressed by an
independent periodical published in Munich in 1946-47: *Der Ruf-Unabhängige Blätter
der jungen Generation*. Its main editor was Hans Werner Richter (born in 1908), later
destined to fame as the founder and informal president of the "Group 47" (see below).
He called for a democratic socialism that would synthesize the individualist values
of American democracy with the collectivist achievements of Soviet Russia, while
avoiding the horrors of American "business civilization" and Soviet "police state
methods." He called for the unconditional purge of every trace of Nazism from
German life, the abandonment of authoritarian traditions and the breakup of the
concentrations of economic power which had helped make Nazism possible. He expected
a spiritual rebirth in a Germany where men were conscious of national guilt and had
experienced in their own lives the vanity of all material goods. His hope was that
far-reaching reforms in the economy, the social structure and the educational
system could create the foundations of a completely new Germany.

These ideas were much "in the air" at the time, though it must always be
remembered that only a small minority of Germans had either the inclination or the
opportunity to worry about the national future during the first years after 1945.
The Social Democratic Party supported the kind of program outlined by Richter,

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though it lacked the latter's illusions about avoiding a confrontation with Communism, and had in its leadership enough men with a bureaucratic mentality to be restrained in its hopes about the reconstruction of humanity. Its leader, the fiery Kurt Schumacher, was the idol of the younger generation because of his suffering under the Nazis, his indomitable spirit in a broken body, his sarcastic irreverence, and his brilliant intellectuality. Even the Christian Democratic Union, in which Left wing leaders like Jakob Kaiser (a survivor of the July 20, 1944 conspiracy) and Karl Arnold (soon to be Premier of North-Rhine Westfalia) initially played an influential role, succumbed to this mood when it supported socialist reforms in a program drafted at Ahlen (Westfalia) in February 1947. (The CDU quickly forgot about this program after the restoration of "normalcy"; but it long survived in the taunting rhetoric of Socialist orators.) Catholic intellectuals like Walter Dirks were seeking a synthesis of Catholicism and socialism in such journals as the *Frankfurter Hefte*. The discussion about a new socialist Germany sometimes went beyond mere talk. Some of the new state constitutions drafted in the first years after 1945 (for example, that of Hessen) specifically called for the socialization of key industries. Is it surprising that many Germans believed a completely-new Germany to be in the making?¹

The Germany of 1965 is certainly a far different Germany from that of the pre-1945 period, but it is far from being the Germany sought by Richter and his contemporaries in 1947. While Nazism is dead there has been (and, in view of the numbers involved, could not be) any systematic purge of ex-Nazis in the fields of public administration, education, and business life; this retention of Nazi holdovers, or -- in many cases -- their return after some years of dismissal, has, however, made a convincing and total *national* repudiation of Nazism impossible.

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The spiritual rebirth anticipated in 1945 has failed to occur, with Germans being far too busy enjoying the fruits of economic prosperity and political stability to spend their time upon the pursuit of regeneration through suffering. A remarkably viable democracy has been established, though it is still marred by residues of earlier traditions of authoritarianism and civic apathy. The dream of finding a synthesis between East and West -- whether in domestic or foreign policy -- has been shattered by the hard realities of the Cold War. The plans for far-reaching reforms in traditional social, economic, and educational structures have remained unimplemented. Worst of all -- in the eyes of the critics -- is the formidable spirit of complacency prevalent in West Germany; it has turned critical intellectuals into a marginal group on the edge of society, one which is either ignored or -- worse still -- patronized without being taken seriously.

The disappointment resulting from this development is expressed in the slogan that Germany is suffering from the evils of a "restoration." It is not always clear, to be sure, exactly what has been "restored" or which period of German history (Wilhelmine Germany? Nazi Germany?) is being taken as a model for restoration. The slogan's appeal to intellectuals lies in the fact that it expresses the disappointment that there has not been a total break with earlier German institutions and attitudes; while those who use it usually have little understanding of the far-reaching break (outlined at the beginning of this essay) with earlier traditions which in fact has occurred. The slogan has a specific justification, however, when one sees that certain tendencies and institutions -- believed dead beyond recall in the first years after 1945 -- have reappeared for better or worse. The Allied Powers, and most Germans as well, were resolved in 1945 that Germany should never again possess military power; today Germany is the strongest conventional military power in Europe

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West of the Iron Curtain, and rearmament has inevitably been accompanied by some "restoration" of militarism (or at least the cherishing of military values). There was a general resolve in 1945 that Nazi party members should never again hold any leading posts in Germany society; yet in the 1950's ex-Nazis held conspicuous posts in the Federal Cabinet (for example, Refugee Minister Theodor Oberlander, whose dismissal was finally brought about by foreign clamor in 1960), and a former commentator upon the anti-Semitic Nürnberg Laws, Hans Globke, even served as Staatssekretär in Adenauer's Chancellery. It was expected in 1945 that the power of German heavy industry -- which had played so nefarious a role in facilitating Hitler's accession to power -- would be curbed through decartellization, if not socialization; by the 1950's decartellization was a failure and socialization forgotten, while the business community exercised greater power than during any earlier period of Germany history because of the elimination of its only major competitor, the Junker aristocracy. The class snobbery of German university education, symbolized by the duelling student fraternities, had disappeared in the first years after 1945; it is again very evident today, especially in such "university towns" as Marburg and Göttingen. It was thought in 1945 that arbitrary government and intimidation of news media were matters of the past; the Spiegel affair of October 1962 showed that this was unhappily not the case. It would be easy to multiply instances to give substance to the charge that many of the dreams of 1945 have remained unrealized -- as is, indeed, the case with most political dreams at most times.

There are, or course, many specific reasons why the dreams of 1947 remained unrealized. American military government gave solid support to Conservative forces in German life; German capitalism showed an unexpected capacity to restore prosperity without major social changes; and socialist ideals suffered an eclipse throughout

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Europe and were unfairly associated with Soviet tyranny. The main explanation lies, however, in the fact that they were dreams of a highly utopian character. The unregenerate Adam in man defies any kind of collective rebirth, whether through suffering, propaganda, or even an intelligent understanding of self-interest. The experience of abnormal conditions can spiritualize an elite; for ordinary men it will promote a desperate craving for the return to "normalcy." The agonies of war, expulsion, and material hardship led most Germans to desire above all prosperity and security; as soon as they had a measure of both, and Adenauer's election slogan, "No Experiments," perfectly fitted the national mood. This mood also proved hostile to a thorough-going confrontation with Nazism and its evil legacy.

## IV

### The Confrontation with Nazism

The single most important -- and most controversial -- problem of the current German cultural scene is that of coming to grips with Nazism: the fact that Germany was governed by the most criminal government known to history only a bare twenty years ago. In examining German attitudes to this problem one must distinguish between an alert elite and an apathetic majority of the population. An articulate elite -- which dominates politics, journalism, radio and public opinion generally -- is acutely aware of the importance of "overcoming" (bewaltigen) Germany's ugly past. It is not surprising, however, that this elite is far outnumbered by the vast group of "ordinary Germans" who are weary of the unpleasant subject, and that popular interest -- when aroused -- easily assumes a defensive and apologetic tone; for one must always remember that all Germans over forty were involved, voluntarily or involuntarily, in Nazism. Facing the problem of Germany's Nazi past involves for

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them a chapter of autobiography, and frequently one they would prefer to forget. What makes the situation so complicated is that the simple dichotomy, pro-Nazi or anti-Nazi, does not cover the real situation of most Germans during the years 1933 to 1945. The great majority of Germans were at some time, to some degree, supporters of Nazism; at other times, and to some degree, many dissociated themselves (privately at least) from some Nazi policy, or even helped to sabotage it. These considerations preclude most Germans, when they look at Nazism, from developing objectivity on the *intellectual*, or unconditional condemnation on the *moral*, plane.

The doctrinaire and pedantic denazification policy of Military Government after 1945 suppressed a good many guilt feelings among Germans; so did the emergence of several people with a "brown past" in conspicuous positions in the Bonn government. Adenauer's policy of accepting all latter-day conversions to democracy at face value no doubt contributed to the political stability of the Federal Republic by preventing the development of overt neo-Nazism -- but it also made uncompromising confrontation with the Nazi past impossible. Yet this past obstinately refused "to go away" or be covered up; it still plays a role today, spoken or unspoken, in the most diverse interpersonal relationships of the affected age group. It is widely believed that a good many middle-aged Germans with political interests refuse to enter active political life because their opponents would ferret out something discreditable done during the Nazi years. It is often murmured that the threat of blackmail in connection with some pre-1945 action explains some otherwise incomprehensible personnel decisions in fields as variegated as business and academic life. Protestant churchmen are categorized in accordance with whether they supported -- and at what time -- the anti-Nazi Confessional Church. Free conversation about the German past is inhibited by the fact that almost everyone has

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something to hide or at least something in his record which requires explanation.

The utopian character of the resolve of 1945 -- that no one tainted with Nazism should ever again hold a high political, military, judicial, or economic position -- has led to a situation where Nazism is officially repudiated, yet more or less reformed ex-Nazis play an important role in every sector of German society. The great majority of these are free of Nazi attitudes today, but their psychological self-respect requires at least some whitewashing of Germany's recent history. This whitewashing takes a variety of forms; let it be noted, however, that it only very rarely degenerates into outright defense of Nazism. The most that is asserted is that not everything was bad under Hitler -- after all, he _did_ conquer unemployment, build _Autobahnen_ and (temporarily) check the Communist menace, etc.;¹ and that some of the charges frequently levied against the Nazis are exaggerated, e.g., the precise _number_ of Jews killed, the accusation of having laid fire to the _Reichstag_, etc.² Even more popular is the pastime of "spreading the guilt," that is, weighing the crimes of the Allied Powers against those of the Nazis. The genocide of six million Jews is deplored, but its enormity is relativized by pointing to the 130,000 casualties (mostly women and children) of the fire bomb raid upon Dresden in 1945; the expulsion of some 12 million Germans from Eastern Europe in 1945, of whom hundreds of thousands died on their way to the West; the dropping of the two atomic bombs upon Japan; and the sufferings caused by the "Morgenthau Plan mentality" during the first period of American occupation. These considerations are almost always advanced with an obviously apologetic purpose; they all fail to distinguish between the Nazi crimes wrought in pursuance of a deliberately launched aggressive war and a perverse racial theory, and the Allied crimes incidental to a defensive struggle after the passions of war had eroded civilized standards in all belligerent countries.³

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Two books which exculpate (though in varying degrees) Hitler from the charge of having deliberately provoked the war (thereby repudiating the distinction just made) have enjoyed considerable vogue in Western Germany despite the rejection of their thesis by all prominent German historians:⁴ A.J.P. Taylor, *The Origins of the Second World War* (London, 1961), and David Hoggan, *Der erzwungene Krieg* (Tübingen, 1962). This is not the place to examine the untenable thesis of Taylor (that Hitler stumbled into war without any plans for long-range conquests) or the crazy thesis of Hoggan (that the bellicose British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax forced an essentially pacific Hitler into the Second World War); suffice it to say that both books have made a great stir among unregenerate neo-Nazis and confirmed them in their most incorrigible opinions.⁵

It is time to turn to the outlook of younger Germans towards the Nazi past. Their attitude is far from uniform, stretching from indifference towards, or even disgust with, the entire subject matter to the expression of a deep sense of vicarious guilt (as in the pilgrimages of contrition to the former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, where Anne Frank was killed). A frequently encountered attitude is one of sheer incredulity that the horrible crimes of the Nazis *did* occur only twenty years ago, and that they were committed (or at least not prevented) by the generation of their parents and teachers. The latter group is often visibly embarrassed when Nazism is covered in history instruction in school; there are strong directives from all Ministers of Culture ordering a stress upon recent history and Nazi crimes, but it is impossible to say how these are actually implemented on the local level.⁶ Young Germans often resent the anti-German prejudices which they encounter when they travel abroad; they feel that they are being victimized for Nazi crimes for which they are in no way personally responsible.

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They resent the fact that skeletons from the Nazi past (like the Eichmann trial in 1961 and the Auschwitz trial in 1964) periodically revive intense anti-German feelings throughout the world. Their exposure to foreign opinion stirs some into a more thorough examination of Germany's past; others succumb to a sense of sullen frustration followed by a resolve to think about more pleasant things.

In probably no country of the world is the gap between generations as great as in today's Germany -- a fact which indicates continuity within discontinuity, for it must be remembered that the youth movement of Wilhelmine Germany, with its intense hostility towards its elders, had no real parallel among youth movements in other countries. The vicissitudes of recent German history have led to sharply different experiences during the crucial formative years (say from fourteen to twenty-four) of men separated by only a few years in age. Those over sixty-five were still formed in the pre-1914 world; their immediate juniors by the atmosphere of the First World War; those between fifty and sixty by the Weimar Republic; those between thirty-five and fifty by Nazism; those between twenty and thirty-five by the post-1945 world.

The situation is further complicated by the existence of subgroups within each group, for it made a great deal of difference whether, for example, Nazism was first consciously experienced during the exhilarating "national revolution" of 1933 or amidst the bombs and privations of the Second World War. The result of this situation is both a remarkable degree of self-consciousness and solidarity between men of any given Jahrgang (year of birth) and special obstacles to communication between people separated little in years but much in life experience. Where there is a large gap, the distance is often unbridgeable. Thus grandfathers raised on an intellectual diet of Goethe and Schiller cannot understand adolescents for whom Weimar is a remote town in the alien world of the East Zone; while, to give another

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example, the rebellion of sons against fathers is sometimes rationalized by the formers' professed inability to forgive the latter for their toleration of Nazi crimes.

It should be stressed by way of summary that the wide-spread attitudes of evasion and half apologia towards Nazism previously outlined exercise remarkably little influence upon "influential" public opinion as expressed in national newspapers, radio programs, or university lectures -- and that it is eminently respectable for Germans to castigate their fellow-countrymen for failing to come to grips adequately with the Nazi past.⁸ The existence of evasive and half-apologetic attitudes does not prevent their holders from _acquiescent_ participation in Germany's new democratic life. Any open expression of neo-Nazi views has been insignificant since 1945, partly because Nazism was guilty of the greatest crime conceivable in the eyes of its votaries -- namely failure; partly because of sincere revulsion against the atrocities exposed in 1945; and partly because Germany's dependence upon the West made any kind of overt neo-Nazism a serious liability which the country simply could not afford and repressed by severe laws. (There are, for example, constitutional provisions for outlawing anti-democratic parties and stringent laws against anti-Semitism.) Much credit must also be given to the devoted work of a large group of German historians who have not hesitated to explore the details of the darkest period in German history. Their work has been loosely coordinated by the _Institut für Zeitgeschichte_ in Munich, and it is widely publicized in such national journals as _Die Zeit_, the _Rheinischer Merkur_ and _Der Spiegel_. These publications also have an admirable record of castigating every residual symptom of neo-Nazism which has the temerity to show itself in public.

The scholarly exploration of the "causes" of Nazism in Germany's past is

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understandably marked by resentment, especially on the part of members of the older generation, against the theory -- still supported by some foreign historians -- that German history is a one-way road from Luther to Hitler with the Frederick the Great, Bismarck, William II and perhaps even Stresemann as connecting links. The reaction against this primitive theory has often gone to the opposite extreme of minimizing German pre-1933 proto-Nazi tendencies and stressing the _general_ modern roots of Nazism, such as the "revolt of the masses," "the death of God," and the "escape from freedom," instead of the _specifically_ German roots. Even a great historian like Gerhard Ritter, a man with an anti-Nazi record who was imprisoned by the Gestapo after the July 20, 1944 conspiracy, slips frequently into this _de facto_ apologetic approach; the stress placed in his work upon Nazism as the natural culmination of the "ideas of 1789" tends to distract attention from specific causes closer home.⁹

Most members of the older generation among German historians have a nostalgic regard for the Wilhelmine Empire which gave them a sheltered childhood and which they defended in the trenches of World War I. When a young historian demonstrated recently that high Imperial officials contemplated the mass expulsion of Poles from "a Polish frontier strip" in 1916 he was widely denounced as a traitor to the Fatherland.¹⁰ When Fritz Fischer, Hamburg professor of history, published an important book on the war aims of Germany during World War I -- showing that nearly all influential German groups were madly annexationist -- he was subjected to social ostracism and an American lecture tour planned for him by the German Information Agency was abruptly cancelled.¹¹ Criticism of Bismarck is generally taboo, and the commonplace judgment of foreign historians -- that the Iron Chancellor, though brilliant in foreign policy had a disastrous impact upon Germany's domestic development -- is only reluctantly conceded, if at all. Criticism directed against

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the "Conservative Revolution" of the 1920's -- which bears a heavy responsibility for undermining the democratic Weimar state, and thereby helping to prepare, albeit unintentionally, the triumph of Nazism -- is resented by many older historians who participated in this movement themselves; a brilliant recent study dealing with the subject had considerable difficulty in finding a publisher.¹²

It should be clear from these observations that the problem of "overcoming Germany's past" is unresolved if one probes beyond the generally admitted faults of Nazism to the problem of its roots in German history. There can be no end to the debates about the principles and practice of *Zeitgeschichte* (contemporary history) and its pedagogic treatment on the school level. There is no prospect in the forseeable future that Germans will arrive at any kind of "historical consensus" comparable to the dominant "Jefferson-Jackson" orthodoxy in the United States or the "Whig interpretation of history" in Great Britain. The tragic history of Germany precludes the development of that common pride in the national heritage which constitutes such a valuable element of social integration in old-established democracies like England and the United States.

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## V. The Literary Scene

### (1) Publishers and Authors

Before entering upon an examination of literary trends, a few observations should be made about publishers and authors. The world of publishing has been almost completely transformed since 1945. Leipzig, the old publishing capital, lies behind the Iron Curtain; West German publishing is -- like all aspects of cultural life -- highly decentralized now, although Frankfurt, the scene of an important annual book fair, claims a certain preeminence. Pre-Hitler Germany was notable for publishers with "profile," i.e., publishers who brought out books with a certain point of view and appealed to a definable section of the reading public (Eugen Diederichs of Jena, to give only one example, was the leading publisher of more or less "respectable" Right-wing literature). Today publishers try to "play it safe" by issuing diverse items for an amorphous and unpredictable public. They were initially frightened by the onset of the "paperback revolution" in serious books in the late 1950's, but it was soon shown that paperbacks competed with hard-covers only to a small extent, and indeed tended to enlarge the "serious" reading public. It should be added that the nature of German university instruction, with the absence of courses with assigned reading lists and regular written examinations, puts a certain limit to the profitability of publishing "serious" paperbacks.

The profession of authorship is as insecure and unpredictable in Germany as in other countries. Only some dozen "established" bestselling authors (most notable Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass) can earn a living through publishing a major work every two or three years. The difficulty of making a living through "pure literature" forces German authors into becoming movie script writers and producers of ephemeral TV and radio dramas (Hörspiele); while many seek security by becoming

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publishers' readers (Verlagslektoren) or journalists specializing in cultural affairs. The unpredictability of a literary career is enhanced by the completely haphazard character of German book reviewing; there are no publications comparable to our New York Times Book Review or Saturday Review of Literature where nearly everything of "general interest" is reviewed, although Die Welt der Literatur (begun in 1964) constitutes a promising attempt to fill this gap. It may be added that "literary politics," working through factions and feuds, probably play a greater role in determining literary reputations than is the case in America.¹

## (2) The Literature of Criticism.

The best known, best hated, and most self-conscious literary group in Germany is the "Group 47," founded by Hans Werner Richter in 1947 after American Military Government had suppressed his journal, Der Ruf, because of its independence of outlook. Richter has always been a man of political engagement: he hoped passionately for a democratic and socialist reconstruction in 1947; founded the abortive "Grünwald Circle" as a kind of "democratic fire department" to douse out the embers of Nazism in 1955; has headed the European Committee against Atomic Armaments since 1958 and is today deeply disillusioned about the "restoration" tendencies sketched out above. He presides over the annual three day meetings (held usually in October) of the authors and critics loosely united in the Group 47. Participation, which is eagerly sought by budding authors, depends upon Richter's personal invitation (not necessarily repeated from year to year) and "Dutch Treat" is the recognized method of finance.²

The participants, usually numbering around 100, attend sessions for about ten hours a day during which authors, famous and obscure, read from unpublished manuscripts and are subjected to free and uninhibited criticism. When Richter, as

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presiding officer, thinks that a prize should be given to some young performer, he puts the matter up to a secret ballot; he thus is in complete control of nominations, though the system allows for plebiscitarian assent or dissent. The winning of the "prize of the Group 47" has launched several literary careers, most notably those of Heinrich Böll (1951), Ingeborg Bachmann (1953), Martin Walser (1955), and Günter Grass (1958). The subsequent success of many authors first "discovered" by Group 47 has led to much criticism directed against its allegedly dictatorial position in the German literary scene. Günther Blöcker, a Berlin critic who has led the attack against the group, has denounced

authors who through conferences, pronunciamentos and prizes seek to monopolise criticism and to dominate public opinion concerning literature. They are by no means sincerely devoted to a common set of principles (Gesinnungsgemeinschaft) but constitute rather a clique of demagogic managers with commerical interests that operate with prefabricated successes . . . The auxiliaries and followers of this group are to be found among publishers' readers and radio station directors.³

Other critics make the rather opposite complaint that the Group 47 does have principles which happen to be false and dangerous principles. They view the group as a Leftist conspiracy against the German status quo, and point to the socialist origins of the group in 1947. When Martin Walser, a leading member, edited a collaborative work in 1961 (just before the Federal elections of that summer) which called for an end to the Adenauer Era,⁴ some CDU orators engaged in their too frequent confusion between Communism and criticism. The prominence of Richter in

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the anti-atomic campaign has added further grist to the mill, despite the fact that the CDU has never publicly committed itself to atomic armaments. Heinrich Dufhues, the main party manager of the CDU, went so far as to compare the Group 47 with the notorious *Reichsschriftumkammer* (Nazi organization of authors) set up by Dr. Goebbels in 1933; an insulting and inaccurate comparison which led to an immediate libel suit.

Members of the group like to mock their critics by insisting upon the completely unorganized and amorphous character of Group 47. Writes Hans Magnus Enzensberger:

> The Group 47 has no honorary president, no charman with defined powers to conduct business, no secretary and no treasurer. It does not have regular members. It does not possess a bank account. It cannot be found in the list of recognized associations (*Vereinsregister*). It has neither a permanent headquarter nor statutory by-laws.
> 
> Foreigners may have difficulty in assessing the importance of these facts in a country where mass murder cannot dispense with bureaucratic formalities and even anarchists keep carefully filed membership lists.⁵

When Enzensberger added, however, that the Group 47 was nothing but a loose grouping of Hans Werner Richter's personal friends he definitely erred on the side of understatement. The group has without question become the focus of much of the "significant literature" in contemporary Germany, and it certainly establishes a network of personal contacts with influence upon the criticism of works and the general reputation of authors.

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The group has shown its vitality by not being confined in personnel to those that founded it in 1947. It has attracted young talents who were still children or adolescents in 1947, such as Hans Magnus Enzensberger (born in 1929) and Uwe Jonson (born in 1934). While criticizing the vulgarity of the Federal Republic, the Group 47 has shown a fine sense of adaptation to modern publicity techniques. The first gathering in 1947 was held in seclusion in the rural retreat owned by authoress Ilse Schneider-Lengyel near Füssen in the Allgäu mountains; by contrast the 1960 meeting was held in the town hall of Aschaffenburg where bypassers stumbled over television wires laid specially for the occasion.

It should be stressed, however, that none of these changes in externals have changed the serious work of the group. The annual meetings continue to be characterized by a vigor of criticism rare in the modern literary world. While lacking any uniformity of outlook -- let alone program -- it is generally true that the group is critical of the development of the Federal Republic and tends to judge and condemn it with reference to the ideals of 1947. Many of its members contributed to a collaborative work edited by Hans Werner Richter in 1962 under the title *Bestandsaufnahme: Eine deutsche Bilanz 1962*,⁶ a general indictment of the Federal Republic at the end of the Adenauer Era. The volume has much to say about the failure to achieve unification, little about the success of Western integration; much about the callousness and materialism of the German "economic miracle," little about its achievement in leading the country from ruins to riches; much about the residues of Nazi and authoritarian thought and behavior, little about the achievement of a viable democracy; much about spiritual and cultural failings, little understanding for the natural craving of Germans for "normalcy" after a generation of catastrophes. The volume shows, however, for all its one-sidedness,

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that a considerable number of German intellectuals are performing the valuable task of social criticism and opposing the complacency which tends to afflict any successful society.

The critical attitude of many authors towards the contemporary German scene may be illustrated by a brief look at the recent best-selling works of three much discussed authors: Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Uwe Jonson. Heinrich Böll, a native of Cologne born in 1917, originally made his reputation as a chronicler of the senseless brutality of war (Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa, 1950); the bitter struggle for existence in postwar Germany as illustrated by the problems of a young couple (Und sagte kein einziges Wort, 1953); and the tragic position, leading to moral degeneration, of war widows who cannot cope with the problem of raising their children without the help of husbands (Haus ohne Hütter, 1954). Böll surpassed all his earlier work by his *Irisches Tagebuch* published in 1957. It is ostensibly a travel diary describing the backward agrarian society of Ireland, but the author's obvious purpose is to attack the artificial, bloated and parvenu society of postwar Germany by contrast. Böll maintained his momentum in 1959 with a much discussed novel, *Billard um halb Zehn*, which is part criticism of contemporary German society, part political sermon, and part allegory concerning recent German history. The recurring thread in Böll's miscellaneous and rather uneven work is the demand that his fellow-citizens confront their ugly past instead of blithely succumbing to the sense of "normalcy" so prevalent in the Federal Republic.

Günter Grass (born in 1927) deserves more extended treatment because he is probably the greatest -- certainly, the most discussed -- German author of the post-war period. His picaresque novel *Die Blechtrommel* (The Tin Drum), published in 1959, has been phenomenally successful. 300,000 copies were sold in Germany, 60,000

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in France, 90,000 in America in hardcover and more than 100,000 in paperback. The story purports to be the autobiography -- written while confined in an asylum at age 30 -- of a misshapen dwarf named Oskar Matzerath, who has gone through life beating a shrill tin drum and squealing so noisily that he can break glass and cause consternation among his fellow-men. Following a lower-middle-class childhood in his native Danzig, Oskar has adventures as he travels through much of Germany during the Nazi and post-war period in a variety of roles as stone-mason, jazz musician etc. The dwarfs-eye view provides him with the perfect perspective for examining life's seamy side and studying the sordidness and pettiness of his fellow-Germans. Grass is bent upon unmasking the shadowsides of German society, whether they be national arrogance and brutality during the Nazi era or the selfish pursuit of pure material gain during the Adenauer era. The almost photographic character of the descriptive scenes of the book reveal Grass' earlier career as a sculptor and pointer and provide a plausible framework for many intrinsically implausible scenes. There is much disagreement among the critics whether the book has a specific message. Oskar generally enjoys life despite its vicissitudes and the rather sordid milieu in which he moves; the over-all mode is one of nihilism which expresses itself in both hedonism and occasional stirrings of cosmic despair (a combination which accurately mirrors the outlook of a good many post-war Germans). Grass appears to have no other purpose than to make his countrymen poignantly aware of the twisted, ludicrous, and criminal sides of Germany's past and present.

Grass confirmed his reputation as a trenchant critic of German society in a long second novel, *Hundejahre (The Dog Years)*, published in 1963. It deals explicitly with the relationship between German and Jew during the Nazi and post-Nazi era in the lives of Walter Matern, a German S. A. man, and Eduard Amsel, a half-Jew

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who can only be described as a "prevented" Nazi. (It is characteristic of Grass that he does not hesitate to explore this distressing and rarely talked about aspect of the attitude of some Jews under the shadow of Nazism.) The fantastic and chaotic plot of the _Hundejahre_ need not be narrated here; suffice it to say that Matern takes a part in the clobbering of his Jewish ex-friend Amsel by a Nazi gang of toughs but manages to suppress this fact from his consciousness as he becomes a thoroughly respectable, anti-Nazi radio commentator after the war. He finally is confronted, however, by his own past, and the tale ends symbolically with his descent into a potash mine which is the forecourt of damnation. The author's main objective is to castigate the failure of present-day Germans to confront Nazism squarely; he looks back rather nostalgically to the immediate post war years of misery, from the end of the war to the currency reform of 1948, as a period of "lost opportunity" before the triumph of the guilt-drugging "economic miracle" of the Adenauer era.

Uwe Jonson, a novelist born in 1934 and therefore only a child of eleven at the end of the Nazi era, is naturally less concerned with Nazism than with the main political legacy bequeathed by Hitler to Germany: the partition of the country between East and West. A native of East Germany, he fled to West Berlin when he found that his literary talents could not develop in the stifling intellectual climate of the Communist regime; yet he has resolutely refused to identify himself in any way with the society or intellectual climate of West Germany. His _Mutmassungen über Jakob (Surmises Concerning Jakob)_ published in 1959, describes the life and death of an East German railroad employee who seemingly dies the victim of an accident but becomes in reality a victim of the fact that he cannot cope with the problem of his country's division. Jonson's second novel, _Das dritte Buch über Achim (The Third Book about Achim)_ (1961), deals with a Hamburg journalist commissioned to write a book about an East German bicycle racer named Achim. The

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book never gets written and the entire novel is fragmentary, episodic, and confused
in plot. Some critics have seen profundity in this seeming failure of craftsmanship;
they say that the unstructured character of the novel mirrors the complexity of the
problem of Germany's partition which cannot be described (much less solved) in any
intelligible manner.

While Germany's most widely read authors are generally affiliated with the "Group 47" one must not exaggerate its influence upon West German life. The group does not form a party with a clear-cut program, as did -- to give only one historical example -- the authors affiliated with the Encyclopedia in eighteenth century France; the members of the group often differ in their specific views and in the extent of their political commitment. Still more important in limiting their influence is the fact that literature *per se* plays a rather small role in contemporary Germany -- certainly a far smaller role than it did during the Weimar Republic. At that time figures such as Thomas Mann, Ernst Wiechert, Hermann Hesse, Ernst Jünger, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George and Hugo von Hofmannsthal aroused the interest of all people with culture or at least pretentions to culture. There are probably fewer people of both kinds today among businessmen, lawyers, and doctors -- professional groups all swamped by the ever increasing, harassing pressures of modern life and therefore eager for recreations less strenuous than cultural pursuits. They are less likely to read "good" contemporary literature than their grandfathers and fathers; one gets the impression that serious modern authors are compelled to write -- not just in Germany -- primarily for an audience of fellow-intellectuals.

An additional reason for the comparative lack of influence of post-war German
literature may be the absence of authors of really commanding stature (it appears
probable that, of the authors treated in this essay, only Günter Grass and Bertolt

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Brecht will be read fifty years from now). The opportunity of the "point zero,"
created by the total collapse of 1945, was less well used than the lesser opportunity
of 1918; it appears that a limited challenge often leads to a more creative response
than a total challenge. The writers of the Weimar Republic -- whether Neo-Conservative,
like Moeller van den Bruck or pro-Weimar, like Thomas Mann -- experienced in 1918 an
exhilarating sense of the dawning of a new age with new problems to be approached
in a new language: the breaking of the shackles of the philistine, conventional world
of the Wilhelmine Empire was felt to be an emancipation. The problem was one of
synthesizing the old with the new, whereas 1945 required a completely new beginning
in a ruined and demoralized country. The initial response of authors was the
"rubble-literature" (Trümmerliteratur) usually characterized by a low level of
literary craftsmanship which rarely rose above a strictly realistic reportage of a
world out of joint. The need for a new beginning was the main theme of the
"deforestation literature" (Kahlschlagliteratur) which was emphatic in its
repudiation of Nazism, while being uncertain about the future direction of German
culture. Both genres exercised little influence upon a general public preoccupied
with the stark struggle for survival; while the "normalization of life" after 1949
was not conducive to either the creation or the reception of great literature.⁷

(3) The Attack upon the Left and the Literature of Escapism

A further reason for "The Impotence of German Literature" was recently
analyzed by Johannes Gaitanides, a Greek who has chosen to live in Germany and
suffers from over-identification with his new milieu.⁸ Gaitanides accused the
authors associated with Group 47 of a lack of proportion in their indictment of West
German society and a snobbish contempt for the great material gains made by the
Federal Republic. He condemned their application of perfectionist standards to a
necessarily imperfect world, more especially a German world barely recovered from the

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greatest catastrophe of modern history. Their worst fault -- and one that led to their instinctive repudiation by most Germans who did not treat them with indifference -- was their misunderstanding of the "social function of literature." Gaitanides asserted that literature should always serve as a **corrective** to society: in a static situation it should serve as a gadfly, in a dynamic situation as the custodian of the permanent values embodied in tradition. He thought that the criticism leveled against the complacency and callousness of the society of the Federal Republic was based on a faulty diagnosis of Germany's troubles and the consequent inability to apply the right kind of therapy. Gaitanides admitted that there was much callousness in contemporary Germany, but added:

> Symptoms are never unambiguous, for they may be caused by a variety of diseases. There is a callousness resulting from exaggerated complacency, conceit and self-confidence. There is another callousness which serves as an armor against weakness. The defence is put up to hide an excess of anxiety, a sense of insecurity and an awareness of the dubious quality of all existence. One withdraws into oneself like the snail, conscious of its defencelessness, draws into its protective shell when attacked. It is this type of callousness which we are dealing with in Germany today. It is the result of an over-exposure to disturbing experiences. We are dealing with a phenomenon akin to a frightened boy who builds up his flagging courage by boisterous whistling as he walks through a dark forest at night, with the dancing on the rim of a volcano, with the attitude "after us the deluge,"

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with petrification as a reaction to fear -- not to well-being.⁹

The last thing needed by this kind of society -- argued Gaitanides -- was literary attack upon its show of confidence and its desperate desire to restore at least a surface "normalcy." Such a society must seek links with its more stable predecessors, and little harm could be done by the _selective_ restoration of Germany's not inglorious earlier cultural traditions. Gaitanides called for a literature which cherished traditional values and a Conservatism which sought to gradualize man's necessary -- but painful -- adjustment to the modern world. His emphasis was definitely upon gradualism rather than adjustment, and his program could easily lead to a simple acceptance of the status quo or an aesthetic escapism which ignored modern problems.

The high priest of escapism in postwar German literature has been Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), a man of great literary talent whose career spans the half century from expressionism to the chaotic world of the 1950's. His enthusiastic acceptance of Nazism in 1933, which included an inexcusable diatribe against intellectual freedom in _Der neue Staat und die Intellektuellen_, had been sufficiently notorious to prevent a literary comeback during the first years after 1945. Benn bided his time while attending to his "other life," that of a dermatologist with a flourishing practice in Berlin. Beginning in 1948 he reemerged with a series of aggressive and brilliantly formulated essays on the eternal value of art as contrasted with the ephemeral character of man's political and social creations. His _Probleme der Lyrik_, originally a speech delivered at Marburg in 1951, became an influential work of literary criticism: it urged concentration upon the problems of God, Nature and the hidden recesses of personality -- in short, anything removed from contemporary social and political problems. Benn's autobiography, published under the title of _Doppelleben (Double Life)_ in 1950, tells much about five decades of German cultural

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life, and has aroused the interest of a broad public not ordinarily concerned with the life experiences of lyrical poets. His view of history as a cyclical phenomenon, independent of human will and influence, could easily be used in apologies for Nazism; while his call to transcend history by the appreciation of supra-historical works of art was well suited to survivors among the thousands of culture-conscious Germans, traditionally contemptuous of politics, who had been able to read Sophocles in the original, but proved unable to identify Hitler as a tyrant in 1933.¹⁰

### (4) Existentialist and Christian Currents.

The stress in this survey has hitherto been upon authors who seek to cope with (or deliberately escape from) the German realities of the present and recent past. It must be remembered, however, that German problems constitute only one case -- though an especially difficult one -- of the cultural crisis of modern man in an increasingly chaotic world. This cultural crisis has everywhere led to concern about the decline of religious faith and collapse of moral certainties; about urbanization's uprooting man by giving him increased geographical and social mobility; about depersonalization through mechanization and the dizzying variety of stimuli; and about the loss of all standards resulting from the "revolt of the masses." This seemingly unmanageable array of general modern problems has led to a variety of literary responses, of which the Communist, the existentialist and the Christian may be considered the major types.

The utter disrepute of Communism in West Germany precluded the development of any significant Marxist literature comparable to the work of Aragon in France; though two East German figures with a broad public in West Germany have served as a substitute: the playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956) and the philosopher Ernst Bloch (born 1885). Brecht, who incidentally was given great freedom by the

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Communist rulers because of his value as an "exhibition piece" when he returned from his American exile, wrote a series of powerful plays in accordance with his theory of the "epic theater." His primary purpose was social criticism directed against the callous complacency of much of modern -- more especially capitalist -- civilization; though in his *Galileo* he quite obviously intended to criticize the arid dogmatism of Stalinist Communism as well. Bloch, whose seven years spent in America (1940-47) had no detectable influence upon his outlook, taught philosophy at Leipzig University from 1947 until conflict with the East Zone rulers finally forced him to flee in 1961 at age seventy-five. He quickly received a lectureship at Tübingen University though he remains a unrepentant Marxist and refused to apologize for his political past. Bloch asserts that rational *planning* -- however perverted and discredited by Communist bungling -- remains the key to man's future happiness, *not* the laissez-faire principles ascendant in the Federal Republic. The philosopher's life has been devoted to exploring, in all its secular and religious forms, the "principle of hope"; and nothing that has occurred in a long life marked by many political and personal vicissitudes has shaken Bloch's conviction that mankind is headed for a glorious future.¹¹

The German treatment of modern problems in a existentialist or Christian spirit was significantly influenced by two Western authors, the Frenchman Sartre and the Anglicized American T. S. Eliot. The existentialist view of the world as a purposeless chaos, full of insoluble riddles, in which man is an insignificant plaything of anonymous powers, has inspired a number of post-war novels of which Hermann Kasacks' *Die Stadt hinter dem Strom (The City behind the River)* (1947) has been the most widely acclaimed. The story describes an archivist named Lindhoff who explores a mysterious devastated city lying "on the other side of the river." Its life appears utterly senseless until Lindhoff makes the discovery that he has

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entered a world whose inhabitants died prematurely before fulfilling their potentiality. Life is a series of "might have beens," and the author evidently believes that this is the condition of modern man. When Lindhoff is offered a chance to return to "real life" in the "real world" he refuses because the world has become totally senseless to him; he deliberately prefers to enter a passive, contemplative world patterned upon the Buddhist Nirvana. The construction of the novel shows the influence of Franz Kafka, whose reception in Germany before 1945 had been precluded by the blight of Nazism.

The champions of the Christian point of view in German postwar literature hailed T. S. Eliot as a fellow-spirit. They admired Eliot's vigorous advocacy of Christianity against irreligion and Conservatism against mass democracy. It may be added that Germans -- whether Christian or non-Christian -- have always been impressed by sheer erudition and never lose their surprise that it can be presented with literary grace. The leading explicitly Christian authors since 1945 have been Elisabeth Langgasser (1899-1950) and Stefan Andres (born 1906). They all affirm that not only the salvation, but also the earthly welfare of man, require a return to Christian standards of belief and conduct. A few examples of their work may illustrate this tendency.

Langgasser, *Das unauslüschliche Siegel* (*The Indelible Seal*) (1947) describes the career of a Jewish shopkeeper named Lazarus Belfontaine in a small Rhenish town. He received the "seal" of baptism without, however, initially changing his mode of life. He spends many years in a curiously Faustian existence marked by mystical yearnings, political vicissitudes (including life with a group of Russian partisans during World War II) and the pursuit of sensual pleasure. He finds peace for himself and a positive relationship to his fellow men only

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after his return to Western Germany after 1945, when the seal of baptism becomes efficacious. Stefan Andres, though he is less explicitly Christian than Langgasser, is certainly preoccupied with the problems of sin and salvation. His great postwar trilogy *Die Sintflut* (1950-59) is an allegory which wrestles with modern man's relationship to God while also having much to say about the specific problems encountered by the religious man in Nazi Germany. The hero of the novel, a renegade priest who originally established a totalitarian pattern of rule in a South Italian city, goes to Berlin in the 1930's only to encounter opposition from "true Christians" and persecuted Jews before their forced emigration to Switzerland.

Returning to Germany after 1945, they were soon disappointed in their hopes for a truly new beginning. Their spiritual disappointment was similar in intensity -- though very different in specific character -- from the secular disappointment which was sketched above as the main characteristic of the Group 47. But whereas members of the latter have become despairing, the characters of Andres' novel persist in maintaining a Christian optimism based upon the belief that man remains perennially free to turn to God and will do so whenever God believes that the time has come.

## VI

### *The Religious Situation*

The gap between the expectations of 1947 and the reality of 1964 -- so marked in every field of German life except the economic -- is especially striking in the field of religion. The material deprivation after 1945, the widespread sense of collective and individual guilt, and above all the discrediting of competing secular ideologies appeared to open the way for a genuine religious revival. The prestige of the Churches stood remarkably high: they had provided, however belatedly and inadequately, some opposition to Nazism; allegiance to them often was the best

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way of combining an old-fashioned traditionalism with a recently acquired anti-Nazism; their international contacts initially appeared as the only way of taking Germany out of the ghetto position created by Nazism; and the immensely popular "European Idea" was closely associated in many minds with a return to Europe's pre-nationalist common Christian heritage. To these factors must be added the response to the bitter fact of national partition; the Lutheran Church remained the only major institutional link between the two Germanies and thereby made it a natural outlet for national feelings.

Another promising sign was the virtual burial of the long-standing confessional quarrel between Protestant and Catholic. Both confessions had suffered persecution under Nazism and saw that what divided them was far less important than their common opposition to modern barbarism. The refugee inundation of 1945, while initially compounding friction as Catholics arrived in Protestant areas (for example, Schleswig-Holstein) and Protestants in Catholic areas (for example, Bavaria), contributed in the long run to the abandonment of sectarian prejudices and the furthering of a "live and let live" atmosphere. Another important fact was the shift in the Catholic-Protestant ratio resulting from the partition of Germany. In pre-1945 Germany Protestants numbered about 60 per cent, Catholics about 35 per cent of the population, a ratio which meant that the latter often felt and acted a self-conscious minority "defending" itself against real or alleged dangers. In post-1945 West Germany the ratio was around 50 per cent Protestant to 47 per cent Catholics. When one allows for the far superior organization of the Catholic fold this meant -- at least in Protestant eyes -- a _de facto_ Catholic domination. The Protestants retained, however, their traditional sense of cultural superiority over their Catholic fellow citizens. The result was a rough condition of equality

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conducive to a better relationship between the two confessions than has existed at
any time since the Reformation.

The most important example of Catholic-Protestant cooperation was the creation
of the Christian Democratic Union. Whether Christianity benefits from being claimed
by a single party in a pluralistic political system may well be doubted, but the
advantage of inter-confessional political cooperation for Germany's religious
climate cannot be gainsaid. The CDU has taken over the entire old Zentrum (Catholic)
vote, which had bridged class barriers by ranging from the Catholic aristocrat to the
Catholic worker and peasant; the strongly Protestant vote of the former
Deutschnationale Volkspartei ranging from Protestant landlord and peasant to
significant strata of the urban lower middle class; and much of the Nazi vote, which
was about equally divided between "alienated" Catholics and Protestants. The
Catholic hierarchy has given strong support to the CDU, with pre-election pastoral
letters urging support for the Christian party being common; so has a large group
of Lutheran pastors, including Otto Dibelius, the leading figure in German
Protestantism until his partial retirement in 1961. The dictates of party unity
require the application of the much-controverted "confessional ratio" in public
employment, no doubt an irrelevant (and hence undesirable) principle so far as top
level appointments are concerned. It is common knowledge that confessional
considerations have frequently handicapped able men on the threshold of Cabinet
rank because their advancement did not fit the current needs of "confessional
arithmetic."

There can be no question that Catholics -- who could legitimately complain
about job discrimination in earlier periods of German history -- are now treated on
an equal and sometimes "more than equal" basis. One possible exception to this rule

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is appointment to university professorships, where Catholics apparently compose less
than 15 per cent of the incumbents (at least so far as the social sciences and
humanities are concerned). The reason for this may in part be confessional prejudice,
since the German professorate remains a self-perpetuating group in which Protestants
have traditionally enjoyed ascendancy. Other considerations appear, however, to be
more important. A good many Catholic intellectuals teach at Church institutions,
thus becoming unavailable for secular professorships; many enter the clergy and
therefore do not have children. The importance of these two considerations can be
appreciated if one considers the academic wasteland which would be created if all
sons of professors and Protestant ministers were suddenly eliminated from university
chairs. The often heard complaint concerning the dearth of "promising young Catholic
scholars" has some substance and is not merely a rationalization for making
Protestant appointments.

The role which confession plays in public employment is only one example of the
influence of religion upon non-religious areas of life in contemporary Germany. The
too frequent prostitution of religion for secular ends is deeply deplored by a
religious elite which continues to call for the spiritual rebirth which many expected
in the years immediately after 1945. At that time a representative Lutheran group
assembled at Stuttgart issued a declaration of "collective guilt" concerning Nazi
crimes and called for a repudiation of secularism, materialism, and hedonism. Yet it
was very soon thereafter that Lutheran bishops (especially the venerable Bishop Wurm
of Württemberg) became sharp critics of the denazification program, and used their
virtual immunity to punishment by Military Government to voice views which ordinary
Germans were in no position to utter. When "normalcy" returned to Germany, the
Protestant Church deemphasised the call for a spiritualized and repentant Germany and
sank back into its customary role of an "established church," comfortably supported

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by public funds (the Kirchensteuer), which reflected rather than elevated public attitudes.

The Lutheran Church has played a surprisingly small role in the political life of post-war Germany -- a welcome change, certainly, from the Weimar period when it provided continuous aid and comfort to the enemies of the Republic. Many Germans have deplored, however, that it has failed to take a public stand on public questions which clearly involve moral issues, such as the recent debate concerning the lifting of the statute of limitations on war crimes. A considerable number of ministers has, to be sure, spoken out in an individual capacity against German rearmament -- a prominent layman in synodal affairs, Gustav Heinemann, went so far as to resign from Adenauer's Cabinet as Minister of Interior over this issue in 1950, arguing that God had twice (that is, after both World Wars) taken arms away from the Germans and that it would be presumptuous to defy God a third time. Heinemann's critics said that the minister confused God with the victorious Allied Powers, and found his argument an irrelevant theological intrusion into an essentially political question.

A considerable minority among Protestant ministers declared themselves "nuclear pacifists" when the issue of nuclear armaments for Germany began to be discussed in the late 1950's. Their leader was the always controversial Martin Niemöller, Kirchenpräsident (he rejects the title of bishop) of Hessen and longtime gadfly of the Federal Republic -- a man whose courageous opposition to Nazism had made him a world figure in 1937. His prestige gradually eroded, however, in the years after 1945 because he showed an uncanny ability -- in the words of a benevolent friend who must remain anonymous -- "to say the right thing (sometimes!) at the wrong time on the wrong occasion as provocatively as possible." His most celebrated remark at the time of the founding of the Federal Republic had been that it was conceived

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in the Vatican and born in Washington" -- a Niemöllerian way of stating that Catholicism had too strong a position in a divided Germany, and that the US had played a considerable role in the consolidation of the three Western zones into the Federal Republic. Niemöller's leadership gave publicity rather than prestige to the nuclear pacifists; the controversies surrounding his personality unfortunately distracted attention from the significant fact that a considerable section of the Lutheran Church -- once not unfairly criticized as the "spiritual guard" of the House of Hohenzollern with a special fondness for the God of battles -- had turned pacifist. The arguments for this new position were provided by the indefatigable Karl Barth. It may be added that the new found pacifism led in many cases to unusually cordial relations with the small, traditionally pacifist sects of Quakers and Mennonites, which had long been ignored by the militant Lutheran Church.

While exercising comparatively little influence upon Germany's spiritual life the Protestant Churches have built up a truly impressive external record. Nazi influences -- which had unhappily been very strong in the first years after 1933 -- were purged after what is sometimes called quasi-satirically the "seizure of power" (Machtergreifung)¹ by the Confessional Church -- the organization of those resolutely hostile to Nazism -- in 1945. The Churches created a new, loosely federal governing body on the national level, the Rat der evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), presided over by the magisterial Bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg, Otto Dibelius, until his retirement in 1961. The participation of elected laymen in synodal organizations was a notable innovation in a Church traditionally characterized by an extremely authoritarian structure. A program for building new churches, neglected by the Nazi government and made all the more necessary by war damage and the redistribution of the population, was a brilliant success. Close intellectual contact between clergy

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and educated laity was established through the work of *Evangelische Akademien* (such as Loccum near Hannover), where churchmen organized discussion meetings dealing with current religious, political and ethical problems. Prominent laymen from all professions and parties are invited for sessions lasting several days or even weeks.

The Church also proved extremely efficient in organizing charitable work, beginning with the *Evangelisches Hilfswerk*, a very effective social agency, founded by Eugen Gerstenmaier (now president of the *Bundestag*) in 1945. The Church's greatest organizational achievement was, however, the at first annual (and now bi-annual) mass rallies of the *Kirchentag*, patterned upon the *Katholikentage* going back to the 1890's. These rallies -- devoted to sermons, prayer, and discussion in small groups -- have sometimes attracted up to 300,000 participants, a number which creates nightmare problems of housing and feeding. Until 1961, when the East Zone government prohibited the participation of East Germans, these rallies were a demonstration of national as well as religious solidarity; they were used by tens of thousands of families divided by the Iron Curtain to meet without fear of police surveillance. There has been much recent discussion about whether these mass gatherings possess genuine spiritual value, but they have certainly become an established feature of German Protestantism. Leading German public figures can no more afford to miss them than American public figures the annual meeting of the American Legion.

The unchallenged respectability of West German Protestantism is viewed by a small religious elite as a danger to spiritual life. They talk of the desirability of disestablishment and making the church a purely voluntary organization based upon free individual contributions (at present those born as Lutherans -- or Catholics -- have to go to some legal trouble if they wish to "contract out" of the church of

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their parents). They are often intensely interested in liturgical reform and wish to increase the sacramental aspects of Protestantism. They dislike the "exploitation of Christianity" for purely political ends by the CDU. They are intensely concerned with the agony of the East German Church, and frequently accept the necessity of accommodation to the East Zone rulers which has been championed, for example, by the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. (The latter has aroused immense controversy by making a fundamental distinction between Nazism -- of which he was a resolute opponent -- and Communism, which he hopes to humanize through accommodation.)²

The predominant advice given by West German Lutherans to their struggling co-religionists in the East is, however, one of "no accommodation," though this leads to the morally unfortunate position of encouraging East Germans to resist while the prompters live in the safe haven of West Germany. Bishop Otto Dibelius -- who retired in 1961 -- has been an unusually outspoken champion of this policy. He is a man with a strongly Conservative past whose political views appear to be rooted in the Imperial Germany of his childhood. (He was thirty-eight when the monarchy fell in 1918 and he has obviously regretted this fall ever since.) He has been a member of the CDU and open champion of Adenauer's foreign policy, an embarrassing fact to many of his flock. (His diocese of Berlin-Brandenburg consisted predominantly of East Zone citizens though the bishop resided in West Berlin.) Dibelius gave expression to unusually strong views in 1961 on the long-controverted problem of what obedience Christians owe to secular authority -- an especially acute problem when rulers have openly proclaimed their hostility to Christianity. Taking a step which far too few Lutheran theologians (including himself) had taken in 1933, the bishop proclaimed that East German authorities had no claim to obedience whatsoever; unfortunately he weakened the force of his argument by the introduction of a singularly inappropriate concrete illustration, namely that East Germans need not obey the traffic regulations

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issued by the regime of Walter Ulbricht. Whatever the merits of this theological position, it is surely no exaggeration to say that Dibelius was the one man in all of Germany who -- because of his official position as head of the EKD embracing the Church in both Germanies, and the fact that most of his flock lived in East Germany -- and was certain to be embarrassed by his statements -- ought to have avoided advancing so contentious a thesis in so provocative a manner. ³

When Dibelius resigned as president of the EKD in 1961, the succession was expected to go the vigorous bishop of Hannover, Hanns Lilje, a man known for his rather polemical modernity and so-called American ways. (He loves nothing better than to debate religious problems with students, which many old-fashioned persons think infra dignitate for a bishop.) The fear that Lilje would prove persona non grata to the Russians led, however, to the selection of the less controversial Prüses Scharf. There was a general desire to avoid unnecessary difficulties for the Lutherans of the East Zone, or to provide the Russians with any pretext for extending the partition of Germany from the political to the ecclesiastical sphere. Scharf, however, also became persona non grata to the Russians after he criticised the building of the Berlin Wall, and he has been denied the free movement between East and West Germany so essential for the proper performing of his office.

The influence of German Protestantism has been diminished, relatively as well as absolutely, by the partition of Germany, whereas the opposite is obviously true of Catholicism. German Catholicism has today a position -- and an accompanying self-confidence -- greater than at any time since the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. The current President, Heinrich Lübke is the first practicing Catholic to be head of the German state since the unification of the country was achieved by Bismarck. The employment prospects for deserving Catholics in public

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service have never been better. The Catholic Church seeks -- with considerable success -- to place Catholic precepts of moral law onto the statute book, especially on family questions like therapeutic abortion and making divorce difficult. It insists upon the confessional segregation of primary school children even if this brings educational disadvantages in so-called "dwarf schools," (i.e. small Protestant and Catholic schools which do not meet modern educational standards but prevent the creation of a single, pedagogically superior school of sufficient size). There can be no question that the Church "never had it so good" as in the present Federal Republic, and certain Catholic groups (especially in Bavaria) have done little to conceal their indifference -- if not positive hostility to -- reunification which would *inter alia* involve the return to the Protestant predominance existing before 1945.

A small minority of West German "left-wing Catholic intellectuals" has been critical of the Catholic accommodation to the West German status quo. Their main spokesman has been Carl Amery, a Bavarian free-lance author associated with the Group 47 whose book on *Die Kapitulation* became a much discussed best seller in the summer of 1963. Amery advanced the provocative thesis that German Catholicism was in reality weak despite its imposing surface strength; a weakness documented by its constant surrender to whatever "milieu" happened to have the ascendancy in Germany. Thus it accommodated itself to the Third Reich and opposed Nazism only belatedly -- and then upon comparatively narrow points dictated by dogma. It gave unflinching and often enthusiastic support to Hitler's aggressive wars. It quickly accommodated itself in the postwar period to the capitalist "economic miracle" of the Federal Republic, abandoning the "Christian socialism" advocated by some Catholic thinkers in the first years after 1945. It readily succumbed to, or even helped to instigate, the primitive, sometimes rather anti-Communism characteristic of the Adenauer era. Amery

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and his friends feel that Catholicism must end this record of purely _passive_ accommodation and assume an _active_ role in reorganizing modern society in accordance with democratic and socialist principles.⁴

What one may loosely call the "left wing" of Catholicism has been prominent in the ecumenical dialogue. Thus the Swiss-born theologian Hans Klung (now at Tübingen University) has attempted to show that there is much less conflict between traditional Catholic dogmas and the Neo-Calvinism of Karl Barth than both religious parties used to think.⁵ Karl Rahner, professor of theology at Munich, recently appeared as a theological advisor to the Cologne Cardinal Frings, long the strongest figure in German Catholicism and generally considered a staunch Conservative. There was much surprise when Frings became the leader of the "Progressive party" at the second session of the Vatican Council through his attack upon Cardinal Otteviani and the Holy Office. The pontificate of John XXIII gave much encouragement to German left-wing Catholics, though they still remain little more than a barely tolerated minority within the Church. Carl Amery has wittily made the distinction between the "yogis" and the "commissars" within the Church. The "yogis" -- mostly left-wing intellectuals -- are allowed a surprising degree of freedom to discuss the doctrines, practices, and history of the Church. The dominate such journals as the high-brow Frankfurter Hefte and Hochland and the more proletarian Werkhefte; and they have recently founded (or revivified) Akademien which compete with the above mentioned Evangelische Akademien in establishing contact between clergy and laity. (The Munich Academy headed by Father Forster is especially renowned.) At this level there is endless Catholic self-criticism (especially in connection with the concordat of 1933), some talk of giving German politics a sharp turn to the left by establishing a "Great Coalition" between the CDU and SPD, great interest in the ecumenical dialogue, and even some questioning of Papal infallibility. (The position taken by

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Lord Acton and Ignaz DÜllinger at the time of the first Vatican Council in 1870 enjoys considerable sympathy.) These discussions have, however, very little impact upon the actual functioning of the Catholic Church on the parish level. The local priesthood is completely untouched by it, the episcopal hierarchy tolerates what it considers harmless and even finds good public relations in impressing non-Catholics. The religious, moral, and political life of ordinary Catholics continues to be guided by those whom Amery mischievously calls "commissars."⁶

A great deal of light on the problems of contemporary German Catholicism was thrown by the sensational course of Rolf Hochhuth's play, *The Deputy*, first produced in 1963. Hochhuth explains the refusal of Pope Pius XII to protest against the Nazi extermination of the Jews during the Second World War as being due to a variety of reasons, mostly unflattering: undue preoccupation with the Communist danger, fear of German postwar reactions if the Vatican contributed to Germany's defeat, and perhaps even personal cowardice. This is not the place to argue the merit of Hochhuth's contentions; suffice it to say that *The Deputy* proved intensely offensive to Catholics everywhere, and especially to German Catholics who have long venerated Pius XII, who was closely connected with German Catholicism from his long period as Nuncio in Germany, as being one of "their own."⁷

Several aspects of the "Hochhuth controversy" deserve at least brief mention for the light they throw on the current German scene. Despite much Left wing talk about West Germany as a "clerical-authoritarian state" there was no chance of the play's being suppressed, though it is significant that it has hitherto not been produced in predominantly Catholic cities. It has already stirred up more polemical writing than any other play in German history, and the printed version sold over 100,000 copies in the first year of publication. Anti-clericals throughout Germany --

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a numerous though diminishing band of Kulturkmpfer (standing in the tradition of Bismarck's struggle with the Catholic Church, the Kulturkmpf or "struggle involving the fate of modern culture") -- have been confirmed in their prejudices against Catholicism. Most interesting of all has been, however, the Catholic and what one might describe as the neo-Nazi response. The great majority of interested Catholics were stung to fury by the play, and their anger has sometimes led to picketing and rioting (although the response in "disciplined" Germany has been less violent than in France or Switzerland). An especially unfortunate consequence of Catholic anger has been the virtual termination of the above mentioned process of Catholic self-criticism -- once the Pope had been drawn into the controversy, many Catholics became notably more reluctant to criticize the conduct of their Church towards Nazism. The neo-Nazi response to the play -- which significantly has been more private than public -- has been one of relief and satisfaction. It expresses itself in the delusively plausible argument: "If Pope Pius XII could do nothing about the extermination of the Jews -- how could we 'little people' be expected to do anything about it?"

One may say in conclusion that it is obviously difficult to gauge the religious temper of contemporary Germany. The hopes of 1945 for a far-reaching religious revival have clearly not been realized; but religion -- albeit in a rather secular form -- certainly plays an important role in public and private life. The principle of religious establishment -- with its attendant prestige and financial support -- is contested only by a small band of secularist fanatics and a still smaller band of ardently religious souls, two groups which desire disestablishment for completely opposite reasons -- the former to end the relics of "religious privilege", the latter to free the Church from the despiritualizing effect of state support. Unprecedented

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confessional cooperation in politics does not prevent the persistence of a good deal of sectarian friction, especially in the appointment to governmental jobs. The security and respectability of the West German Lutheran Church is overshadowed by the agony and suffering of the East German Church. Religious problems are intensely discussed by believers and non-believers alike, but the discussion stands somewhat out of the mainstream of German cultural life. The past gives rise to endless controversies; the present is filled with complexities which often defy understanding, let alone solution; while the future looks dim in a world where secularism continues to corrode Christianity in the West, even as Communism is destroying Christianity in all but a small "community of saints" in the East.

A few words may be added at this point about the Jews in contemporary Germany. They number only 30,000, a pitiful remnant of a once flourishing community of almost half a million souls; the majority of them consists of returned emigrés, including even a small trickle of Jews discontented with life in Israel. A sufficient number of synagogues has been rebuilt with public funds to replace the hundreds burnt by Nazi-incited mobs in 1938; the same goes for several Jewish hospitals and other charitable enterprises. There are -- as already noted -- stringent laws against anti-Semitism, laws happily as unnecessary and as rarely invoked as the provision of the Basic Law prohibiting anti-democratic parties. The Jewish community is treated with almost exaggerated deference by public officials eager to atone for Nazi misdeeds, and it flourishes in an external sense; yet it is inevitably surrounded with an atmosphere of artificiality. Wealthy synagogues with few attendants; Jewish hospitals in search of patients; a world-wide outcry on the rare occasions when a few hooligans daub a swastika on a synagogue (Cologne, Dec. 1959) or gravestones in a Jewish cemetery (Bamberg, June 1965) -- all these are

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symptoms of the basically unsatisfactory character of the German-Jewish
relationship. Many German Jews cannot forgive the fact that the German government
murdered 6,000,000 Jews a bare quarter century ago without encountering significant
public opposition; many feel uneasy about living in Germany because they can never
know with absolute certainty who among their non-Jewish acquaintances did precisely
what during the "brown years." They expect expressions of contrition and
repentance from all Germans yet they simultaneously resent the attitudes of
embarrassment and painful self-consciousness which almost invariably accompany
feelings of contrition and repentance. This is but to say that "normal" relations
between Germans and Jews have been made virtually impossible by the shadow of the
Nazi past; but it would be a grave error to interpret this fact as a persistence of
Nazi anti-Semitism.

VII

The Situation of the Universities

The discrepancy between the hopes of 1947 and the reality of 1964 -- which we
have noted repeatedly as the *Leitmotiv* of all sectors of German cultural life -- also
characterizes the situation of the German universities. In 1947 there were ambitious
designs for democratizing the social composition of the student body; reversing the
trend towards excessive specialization by the introduction of *studium generale*
(i.e., "liberal education"), and reforming the internal power structure of the
university (where professors retained their traditional position of autocratic
authority). All of these aspirations fell victim to the "German restoration" already
outlined above.

The upper and middle class quasi-monopoly of German higher education is not

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directly due to economic considerations: a university education is far less expensive
in Germany than in the United States, with tuition fees and living expenses being
incomparably lower. The Federal government instituted, moreover, in 1947, a system
of full scholarships plus living expense allowances for <u>all</u> needy students, even those
possessing only average abilities (the so-called <u>Honneffer Modell</u>). The obstacle to
equality of educational opportunity lies rather in the difficulty of securing the
secondary school diploma (<u>Abitur</u>) which is the prerequisite for admission to the
university. It is safe to say that the difference between those possessing and
those lacking an <u>Abitur</u> is the greatest single social distinction in today's
Germany.

A brief list of the handicaps encountered by a lower class child on the road
to the <u>Abitur</u> (usually achieved at age nineteen after thirteen years of schooling)
runs as follows. Entry into the <u>Gymnasium</u> (secondary school) after four years of
grammar school (<u>Volksschule</u>) is the first problem: a child lacking the advantage of
a cultural background may easily fail to make the grade at age ten, when the
selection is for all practical purposes final, despite alternative roads
theoretically available for the "late bloomers." <u>Gymnasium</u> exist only in relatively
large towns, with transportation for lower class children from village and countryside
presenting formidable difficulties. (The rural upper class solves the problem by
sending its children to boarding schools.) The "secondary" school program is
generally difficult by American standards, with the first foreign language starting
in the fifth grade. Upper and middle class mothers often devote a great deal of
their time helping their less gifted offspring with homework, and private tutors are
not uncommon. Lower-class parents usually lack the time, the money, the inclination,
and the educational prerequisites to provide this kind of help and they are too
often eager to have their children join the labor market as early as possible. The

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result is that it takes an unusually able and persistent lower-class youngster,
living in the right area and blessed with sympathetic parents, to survive the
intensely competitive _Gymnasium_ system to the point of the _Abitur_. Only 6 per cent
of German nineteen year olds achieve the _Abitur_ (a figure which shows, incidentally,
that an _Abitur_ is a far greater distinction than an American high school diploma).

It is not surprising under these conditions that less than 5 per cent of the
German student population is of working class origin. To end this situation would
require revolutionary changes on the _Gymnasium_ level, and Conservatives have argued
with much plausibility that such changes would inevitably lead to a lowering of
educational standards. The class snobbishness which is bred by the _de facto_
segregation of upper- and middle-class children from the "lower orders" is
certainly deplorable, but it simply reflects the fact that culture is usually --
though there will always be individual exceptions -- transmitted in _families_, with
the children of cultured parents possessing enormous advantages even where educational
opportunity is _formally_ equalized. The fact that some lower class children do
secure the _Abitur_ -- since the obstacles on the road are _relative_ rather than
absolute in character -- diminishes popular pressure for fundamental changes in the
educational field.

The German university has long been far more specialized than the American
college, with some justification since it admits people at nineteen rather than
seventeen and with a general preparation superior to that provided by most American
high schools. Its function must, therefore, be compared with that of the last two
years of an American college followed by graduate or professional schools. The
modern "advance" of every area of knowledge makes specialization inescapable, with
students and professors inevitably "knowing more and more about less and less."
The German university system has never considered the training of character (so

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prominent in the English college system) its proper function, and it has assumed
that culture (Bildung) is already brought to the university by the student as a
result of his Gymnasium education; hence it concentrated upon professional training
(Ausbildung) and assumed too easily that the well-trained man would prove a cultured
and responsible citizen as a matter of course. The experiences of the Nazi period,
when the German university-trained elite showed a shocking want of civic
responsibility and Nobel laureates adulated the Führer, threw much doubt upon the
adequacy of this university system for coping with modern political, social, and
moral problems. One remedy attempted after 1945 was the introduction of "political
education" through the long-overdue establishment of chairs of political science.
These chairs became, however, primarily centers for the long-neglected empirical
study of political phenomena, and did not exercise any great influence upon the
political outlook of the student body as a whole. There were attempts to introduce
"studium generale," i.e., lectures dealing with problems supposedly of interest to
students of all faculties; these sometimes caused a stir when given by distinguished
men but could not be expected to leave much permanent imprint. German students --
like other students -- are primarily interested in lectures which convey information
useful in subsequent examinations. This universal utilitarian tendency -- the result
of modern competitive conditions -- is intensified in Germany by certain specific
post-war trends. The numerous veterans among the students -- a small elite apart --
were anxious to "get through" as quickly as possible to make up for lost time
professionally; the rapid expansion of the German economy put a premium upon highly
and quickly trained specialists; while the increase -- however small -- of
lower-class elements out to make a career for themselves, when combined with the
two previously mentioned tendencies, led to the virtual extinction of the
"gentleman student" whose happy and carefree existence had in the past led not only

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to drinking and duelling but -- at least occasionally -- to culture unconnected with
any narrow utilitarian purpose. For all these reasons ambitious programs for
*studium generale*, and more narrow programs for political education, won only partial
success; the tendency towards specialized professional training proved an
irreversible trend.

The authoritarian and autocratic position of the full professor (*Ordinarius*)
proved another unshakable feature of the German university structure. The number
of *Ordinarii* has always been small; and while the incumbents love to complain about
being overburdened, they made, at least until recently, few attempts to increase the
number of those admitted to the "charmed circle." The old and still surviving
pattern of ordinarily becoming eligible for a professorship only through the
*Habilitation* -- i.e., sponsorship by a professor before the Faculty after the
promising young man has written a post-doctoral book -- gives the incumbents of
professional chairs enormous power over the careers of men eager to enter academic
life. The latter usually serve as assistants to a professor while they research
for their *Habilitationsschrift*; the post of German university assistant is often one
of the last survivals of serfdom in the modern world. One is expected to do a great
deal of the menial work for an overburdened professor -- getting him books from the
library, cataloging books for departmental libraries, holding office hours for
endless numbers of students, etc. -- as well as holding *pro-seminars* i.e. "introductory
seminars" for incoming students; and while doing all this one is rarely permitted to
forget that the professor possesses complete power over one's future. (It should be
noted that German academic life is sufficiently small and cliquish to make it very
difficult to change universities in the course of working for one's *Habilitation*.)
It goes without saying that this system permits admirable patriarchal relationships
between established scholars and promising young men, and it is easy to point to many

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examples of "enlightened autocracy" in German universities. The possibilities for abuse are, however, obvious; although it should be stressed that they have certainly much diminished in recent years as an expanding group of professors has been forced to compete for the limited "assistant material" among freshly minted Ph.D.'s with many other attractive employment opportunities. It is especially regrettable that some universities retain completely irrelevant prerequisites for the *Habilitation*; for example Hamburg, attuned, one would think, to the needs of the modern world since it is a great commercial city -- requires a knowledge of Greek for *Habilitation* in any field.

The faults of the existing system include easily observable prejudices against certain categories of people. It is rare, for example, to find men of distinctively left-wing tendencies among assistants preparing for the *Habilitation* in a field like history; the type of relationship which exists between professor and assistant often makes a large measure of ideological similarity inevitable and perhaps even essential for the smooth running of university affairs. Women are considered eligible for the *Habilitation* only in exceptional cases. There is a good deal of prejudice in university circles against "outsiders" who wish to "habilitate" themselves by the submission of a book written during leisure hours while engaged in a non-academic profession: "insiders" of all ranks feel that it is not cricket to by-pass the years of drudgery and humiliation traditionally spent in the preparation for a German academic career. Fortunately it is increasingly realized how anachronistic these prejudices are in the face of urgent need to expand the number of professorships, and they are being gradually overcome.

A further example of anachronistic attitudes in university affairs is the resistance offered to new subject matters and the organization forms required by them. Political science and sociology suffer from the sneers of old-established

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disciplines far more than is the case at American universities. History was ordinarily taught, at least until recently, by three *Ordinarii* specializing, respectively, in Ancient, Medieval and Modern History. This arrangement left little scope for the teaching of Russian, Asian, North American or Latin American history -- young scholars interested in these fields were given little encouragement and automatically tagged as "outsiders." Area studies -- one of the most important developments at American universities since the Second World War -- remain virtually unknown; their development runs into the obstacle of German parochialism about world problems not to speak of the fact that the pride of an *Ordinarius* only rarely permits the kind of cooperation between equals essential in area studies. The inescapable necessity of studying the Soviet Union -- which controls, after all, the destiny of 17 million Germans in the East Zone -- has led to the founding, with money from the Ministry of the Interior, of the *Ost-Kolleg* in Cologne. This organization performs a valuable service in stimulating interest in the problems of world Communism, but it is not a research institute comparable to the American Centers at Harvard, Columbia, or Indiana.

Even while problems of the social composition of the student body, its sense of political responsibility, and the internal power structure of the university community remain unresolved, German higher education is being overwhelmed by the problem of numbers. The details of this problem will be discussed below; here it is necessary to note only that educational expansion has led to the founding of some new universities and the planning of several more. This fact has given new hopes to the small and apparently still uninfluential group of academic reformers who were defeated with remarkable ease in the first years after 1945. It is a safe bet that no daring educational experiments will be inaugurated; but the prospect of new universities has led to a revival of public interest in reform proposals. The

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Stuttgart weekly *Christ und Welt* launched an essay contest in the autumn of 1962 on the subject: "In what respects should the universities soon to be founded differ from those now established?" First prize was won by a brilliant young political scientist from Freiburg (now professor at Osnabrück), Hans Peter Schwarz, with a far-reaching suggestion for greater differentiating between professional and scholarly education in the curriculum. Students interested in professional preparation (to become a lawyer, doctor, secondary school teacher, etc.) require a far tighter program of course sequences and intermediary examinations than that traditionally offered at German universities. It is not unknown for students to waste several semesters "shopping around," sometimes at different universities, while they enjoy emancipation from parental discipline and remain unburdened by excessive attention to their studies. Most of them settle down eventually to prepare for their final examinations, but it is common knowledge that they rely -- especially in the Law Faculty -- at least as much upon "tutorial cram schools" as upon regular university instruction as they approach the end of their university years. Yet students of this kind fill seminars (the traditional institutions for scholarly training) and are responsible for their completely unmanageable size (seminars of 150 people are now unknown). The needs of the vast majority of German students would be best served by the introduction of something like the American system with its sequence of lecture courses under a "concentration program," with frequent examinations -- these appear to be the only method of securing sustained industry from all except the most highly motivated students.

Those students preparing for a scholarly career should generally be expected --
if only for their job security -- to complete a regular professional training
(usually for secondary school teaching) before beginning their specialized training

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as future scholars. It should be possible, in view of the small number of men suitable for scholarly careers, to restore vitality to the seminar system and to reestablish direct contact (now exceedingly rare) between the promising young scholar and the distinguished professor. The latter would be freed of much of what we call the "undergraduate" teaching load, a development which would require the creation of an intermediary teaching staff which would bridge the wide gap which now exists between humble assistants and omnipotent professors. The professor would be expected to divide his attention between seminar work, research, and occasional teaching of "undergraduate courses" of a survey type. It appears that curriculum reform of the type here suggested offers the best road for solving some of the qualitative and the quantitative problems of the German university at one and the same time.

The German university of the nineteenth century was extremely proud of the close connection which existed between education (Erziehung) and research (Rorschung); an ideal which made a good deal of sense before scholarship became narrowly specialized. The high prestige attached to research in Germany meant -- and still means today -- that the goal of education is too often conceived as mere training for research, whether it culminate in a Ph.D. thesis or a Staats-examensarbeit (a "baby thesis" which is the most important requirement for certification as a secondary school teacher). The emphasis upon research technique often stands in the way of securing a general education, leads to premature or undue specialization, and contributes to the deplorable fact that some 50% of German students leave the university without winning a degree. The rough American equivalent would be to center all undergraduate training upon the writing of a good (and preferably original) BA thesis, and to deny graduation to all students unable to meet this test. Yet there are, in fact, many students (probably the majority) in both Germany and America who can benefit from taking courses but lack the ability

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(or motivation) to engage in original research or to master advanced scholarship.
In America we nonetheless graduate them with a BA and sometimes encourage them to go
on to an MA; they do not feel publicly humiliated, nor lack job qualifications, if
they do not go on to a Ph.D. In Germany they have no regular, institutionalised
method of leaving the university, withoug prejudice, at 22 or 23 if they (and their
professors) come to the conclusion that they are not cut out for scholarship. The
introduction of an intermediate terminal degree, like the American M.A., is one of
the most urgently needed steps in German education; it would immediately mitigate the
deplorable overcrowding of German university facilities described below.²

Another useful step in this direction -- though one of dubious
constitutionality -- would be to terminate the present system under which every
holder of an *Abitur* secures automatic admission to any university he chooses to
enter. American admissions officers, for all their much discussed faults, do have
the merit of gearing admissions to the size of the educational plant; and of
eliminating a good number of applicants who would be misfits on campus and a sore
trial to professors, fellow-students, and themselves.

While German universities may benefit from the *selective* introduction of
American curricular practices, there is no prospect that the two very different
types of systems of higher education will become assimilated in their general
structure. The American college or university -- like the British -- seeks to be a
community, a fact emphasised by common dormitory facilities; the German university --
like other Continental universities -- consists of students renting rooms in
boarding houses scattered widely through a city. The American college contains
many students whose attendance is motivated more by social than by intellectual or
professional reasons; while this type is not unknown in Germany (especially among
the increasing numbers of women at the universities) it is proportionately less

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important. American colleges pride themselves on student extracurricular activities ranging from student government to social work to athletics; all these are at best embryonic at German universities. The idealism and political engagement of American college students, recently culminating in sit-in movements, is little evident at German universities; the protest against the impersonality of university life at the "multiversity" -- considered by many as the cause behind the recent Berkeley disorders -- is long overdue in Germany but most unlikely to break out in the foreseeable future. Students have, however, become increasingly discontented with the quantitative deficiencies of German higher education. Closely planned and synchronized demonstrations were organized in all German universities on July 1, 1965, to make these deficiencies a matter of public concern on the eve of an election campaign. These demonstrations were, however, inevitably lacking in spontaneity, and they were invariably headed by professors who addressed the assembled students on such topics as "The Crisis in German Education." This is not the stuff of which student rebellions are made -- although it is to be welcomed as part of a long overdue politicization of the post-war German student body.

VIII

Organizational Problems of German Cultural Life

A word must now be said on the quantitative problems confronting every German university. Enrollments have doubled in the last ten years to the present number of 250,000, a desirable and inevitable development similar to that taking place in all comparable countries. It is likely to continue with the increasing demand of lower-class children for higher education and the influx of students from the underdeveloped areas of the world; though it will be counteracted to some extent by

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the unfavorable demographic composition of the German population resulting from the heavy casualties of the Second World War. The result of the heavy enrollments is a scandalous over-crowding of all facilities. Classrooms do not have enough seats, and standing students complain about the impossibility of taking lecture notes (considered the supreme tragedy by German and American students alike). So-called research seminars with unmanageable numbers make a mockery of scholarly training. Inadequate eating facilities require endless waiting and preclude quiet and serious conversation. To succeed in getting a book one wants from a university library is considered a major triumph. Admission to the medical and scientific faculties has been restricted arbitrarily because of the simple unavailability of laboratory places. It will require a major public effort to tackle these problems in a realistic fashion and thereby restore a "university atmosphere" to Germany's universities.

Strong steps are also needed to remedy Germany's weaknesses in the natural sciences, once the glory of German universities and a source of their world-wide prestige. The blight of Nazism -- with the imposition of "German physics" and the emigration of Jewish scientists -- left a catastrophic situation in 1945 which the last two decades have been able to overcome only in part. The overcrowding of the universities has made heavy teaching demands and distracted men from research. The authoritarian position of the _Ordinarius_ has prevented the development of some types of teamwork essential in certain modern types of scientific research. The bad tradition of the _Ordinarius_ taking and receiving all credit for all research done in his Institute has frustrated many young researchers and led many to emigrate to America. (The "brain drain" is not only a British problem.)

There are also more general factors in the backwardness of German science. A minor (but probably not insignificant) factor is the survival of some humanistic snobbishness among the upper and middle class: the "best people" tend to send their

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children to the <u>Humanistisches Gymnasium</u> (specializing in languages, especially Latin and Greek) rather than the <u>Realgymnasium</u>, specializing in "modern" subjects; the philological emphasis of the former is likely to leave scientific talents undeveloped. Of far greater importance is the virtual absence of the military contracts, which have become the indirect method of state-financed research developed in the United States (and to a lesser extent in England and France) in recent years. Germany has voluntarily renounced the manufacture of atomic weapons, and her nuclear program is limited to cooperation with EURATOM. Germany lacks the missile and space programs which play such a great role in American and Russian science. Germany is without an adequate electronics industry, whose development in the US has been closely connected with military contracts. Germany has gone only a small distance in imitating the American practice of subsidizing the training of young scientists through generous governmental fellowships and research contracts. The combination of all of these factors throws a gloomy light upon Germany's scientific and even her industrial future.¹

It cannot be said, unfortunately, that these problems are being adequately
tackled by the present German government. The word "planning" has always been a
dirty word for Chancellor Erhard and his neo-Liberal school of economics, and there
has been too little effort to make intelligent provision for the future. The federal
structure of German government leaves the <u>Kulturhoheit</u> (i.e., jurisdiction over
cultural affairs) in the hands of the individual <u>Länder</u>, which have defended their
prerogatives with a zeal worthy of a better cause. A saying often heard in Germany
is: "The <u>Länder</u> refuse to be deprived of their right to <u>neglect</u> the development of
cultural institutions." The <u>Länder</u> viewed the creation of a Federal Ministry of
Science (<u>Wissenschaftsministerium</u>) -- arising out of the need for a national atomic
program devoted to peaceful uses -- with ill-conceived hostility, and showed their

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parochialism by initially desiring the development of ten separate atomic programs for the ten separate Länder. It must by said, however, that there is also a case for the Länder; the disadvantages of centralized uniformity were revealed under Nazism; the historic decentralization of German cultural life is deeply rooted in popular attitudes; and most of the Länder have in fact made considerable efforts to discharge effectively their cultural responsibilities. It remains true nonetheless, that a greater measure of coordination between the Länder and the more vigorous participation of the Federal government in cultural affairs, is urgently necessary if West Germany is to cope with her educational and scientific problems.

Though the present organization and administration of German cultural affairs is scarcely abreast of Germany's needs, it would be unrealistic to expect major changes in the foreseeable future. The federal principle is not only anchored in the constitution but politically untouchable. Even the SPD -- once the party of centralization -- appreciates its value since it has allowed the party to exercise considerable influence in the Länder although remaining in a permanent position of opposition in Bonn. The Länder parochialism has been mitigated to some extent by efforts at cooperative coordination through such organs as the Conference of Ministers of Culture (with a permanent secretariat), the bi-annual conference of University Rectors and the creation of the prestigious Wissenschaftsrat in 1957. The latter 39 member body (with 22 "scholarly" members and 17 public officials) was established by an administrative agreement between Bund and Länder. It has done much useful thinking about the future development of German research and education; its role has, however, remained purely advisory in character. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Society for Research), financed by Bund, Länder, and the contributions of private industry through the Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft (League of Donors to Support German Science), assigns research grants,

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individual fellowships, and funds for the purchase of scientific equipment. It is a half public, half private organization which has played an important role in pulling German science out of the worst doldrums.

The influence of the Federal Government has remained marginal in cultural matters. There is no Ministry of Culture in Bonn, though some of the functions of such a ministry are dispersed between the Ministry of Science (primarily concerned with atomic matters), the Interior Ministry (administering the national fellowship program of the _Honeffer Modell_), the Foreign Office (concerned with German cultural work abroad), and three ministries (Labor, Family and Youth, and Federal Assets) which all have a hand in vocational training (_Ausbildungsförderung_). The _Bundestag_ possesses a Committee for _Kulturpolitik_, whose right to exist is questioned by some constitutional purists of the federalist persuasion; though it certainly does not constitute any danger to the _Kulturhoheit_ of the _Länder_. There is no gainsaying that cultural affairs continue to be the nearly exclusive province of the _Länder_; that attempts at over-all planning by a meritorious body like the _Wissenschaftsrat_ remain unofficial and subject to the ratification of each individual _Land_; and that this pattern of organization is scarcely adequate to serve the needs of a big industrial country in the second half of the twentieth century.

A striking feature of the German cultural scene has been the virtual absence of any connection between the Federal government and cultural activities. This situation has certainly had its advantages: the Bonn Republic has not been cursed by the type of Wilhelmine police president who prohibited the drama of Gerhart Hauptmann because he "disapproved of the entire aesthetic tendency," (die ganze Richtung passt mir nicht) or the campaign against abstract art (and other forms of _Kulturbolschewismus_) conducted by frustrated painter Adolf Hitler. Yet there has been an unfortunate

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swing from one extreme to another, with leading figures of the Federal government showing a contemptuous indifference if not positive hostility to culture. Konrad Adenauer was probably the most philistine among the major statesmen of German history. He neither sought nor found contact with authors, professors, or artists; his speeches were devoid of literary grace or intellectual distinction; many of his close collaborators often marvelled at his lack of critical judgment about the books he found time to read while in office.² His long-time Foreign minister Heinrich von Brentano once publicly compared Bertolt Brecht, probably the greatest twentieth century dramatist writing in the German language, with Horst Wessel, the rowdy Nazi storm trooper killed in a brawl with Communists in 1931; and he questioned the appropriateness of bestowing a fellowship to Rome upon Uwe Jonson, on the ground that the author's political views might do damage to German interests in Italy. The government's indifference to culture was sometimes shown by non-representation at major cultural events. To give only one example: not a single minister appeared at the Cologne commemorative gathering on the 100th birthday of dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann (1962), though Cologne lies only a half hour's drive from the capital. It is probable that the incorrigible provincialism of Bonn, the "federal village" (Bundesdorf) of widespread ridicule, has confirmed the philistinism of the political community. There are no important theatre premieres to be graced by the presence of the Cabinet, no international exhibitions, and a deplorable absence of attractions ranging from the cultural to the gastronomic.³

The first Federal President Theodor Heuss (1949-59) was one big exception to this official indifference to culture -- he erred, if anything, in being over-preoccupied with the traditional German problem of achieving a synthesis between politics (Macht) and culture (Geist). He was not only a thoroughly unashamed

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intellectual himself, but did everything in his power to make intellectuals feel at home in the Federal Republic. His refusal to inhibit his intensely subjective opinions -- such as his hostility towards Richard Wagner (leading to refusal to attend the Bayreuth festivals) or his detestation of Gustav Stresemann (leading to his boycott of a ceremony unveiling a memorial honoring that great Foreign Minister at Mainz), gave him a distinct profile among usually colorless Heads of State. Heuss' broad cultural interests were, however, quite untypical for the Bonn scene, despite the best efforts of Eugen Gerstenmaier, president of the Bundestag, and Carlo Schmid, the main "cultural exhibit" of the SPD. It is probably no accident that none of these three men has been able to win power proportionate to his talents. Heuss was "pushed upstairs" into the largely ceremonial Presidential office; Gerstenmaier has always remained outside the "inner circle" of the CDU; Schmid has never carried much weight within the SPD.

Adenauer, who dominated the Bonn government for fourteen years, treated intellectuals as public nuisances and resented critical examination of governmental policies far more than is customary in other democratic states. The Chancellor felt nothing but contempt for the eighteen atomic physicists who signed the "Güttingen Manifesto" against atomic rearmament and the eight distinguished signers of the "Tübingen Manifesto" which dared to question some of the shibboleths of German policy.⁴ He has not hesitated to play up to the anti-intellectual instincts of the German masses; and his deep distrust of President Kennedy was certainly reinforced by the late President's surrounding himself with "intellectuals."

The distrust of intellectual activity, combined with laissez faire dogmatism, explains the failure of the Bonn government to plan for the future. The unsalutary neglect by the government has, unfortunately, not been corrected by the work of private study groups, for there is no real parallel in Germany to the research work

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done in this country by organizations like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund or the Committee for Economic Development. There are very few foundations in Germany which deliberately aim -- as do many US foundations -- at fighting conformist stereotypes and taking risks with projects which the state (operating cautiously with the taxpayer's money) hesitates to support. There has been, incidentally, too little attempt, and that too long delayed, to write tax law in such a manner as to encourage setting up foundations with a public purpose. The result has been not only too little private planning for the future but also no development of the large body of executives and intellectuals interested in public policy, yet independent of the government, which is such an important aspect of the American scene.

There have been two notable breakthroughs in the German foundation field in recent years. The Fritz-Thyssen *Stiftung* was set up in 1959 with the avowed purpose of "encouraging *Wissenschaft* (the pursuit of knowledge) at German universities and research institutes." It encourages institutions and individuals devoting themselves "to political science, sociology, and history in accordance with Christian humanistic principles."⁵ (It is to be hoped that the latter parochial restriction is not too closely observed.) Of far greater importance is the *Volkswagen-Stiftung*, set up in 1961 when the legal position of the famous Nazi-founded industrial complex was at last settled by Federal legislation. The declared purpose of this new foundation is "to promote science and technology in both research and teaching." Its annual income is estimated at DM 74 million, but not all of this can be freely used. The Land Niedersachsen (where the *Volkswagenwerk* is located) has laid claim to the entire *Volkswagenwerk* after 1945, and was bought off with a cut of 20 per cent of the income (which it uses as part of its normal budget for cultural affairs); while 25 per cent has been set aside to finance certain "super-regional" institutions. This still leaves 55 per cent of the income -- or by German standards

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the not inconsiderable sum of 43 millions -- available for foundation work. It opens the way for a promising beginning (but no more than a beginning) in the development of the urgent task of non-governmental thinking about Germany's future.⁶

## IX

### Some Aspects of Popular Culture

Although this essay is primarily devoted to the cultural preoccupations of educated Germans -- more especially their literary, religious and educational concerns -- it will round out the picture to make a few observations about the culture of lower strata of Germans. They take comparatively little interest in much that we have discussed so far, and their response to those cultural problems which are inescapable -- for example, the confrontation with Nazism -- tends to differ significantly from that of the cultural elite. Our discussion of German post-war literature, while centered upon widely discussed books, nonetheless dealt with regions relevant only to a small group of upper class and educated people. Some recently gathered figures about the nature of the German reading public show that only a very small part of the population takes a serious interest in serious literature. Poll takers have discovered that some 47 per cent of the adult German population does not possess a single book, while some 34 per cent have never bought a book in their lives. Much of the German reading public consists of rather passive book-club members who read what a selection committee finds suitable for them. Book clubs were already known during the Weimar Republic (for example, the *Büchergilde Gutenberg* founded in 1924), but their central position in determining what is read is a postwar development. The leading German club, the Bertelsmann *Lesering*, has two and one half million members who buy on the average ten books a year. The *Lesering*

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differs from its American equivalent -- such as the Book of the Month Club -- in not concentrating exclusively upon new publications: some 55 percent of the monthly Bertelsmann selections consists of reprints of pre-1940 titles. The club specializes in medium-serious fiction written for a broad audience, and it serves to deprovincialize its members by bringing many foreign works in German translation.
(Two favorite American authors have been Pearl Buck and A. J. Cronin.) Recent surveys have shown that 54 per cent of the membership consists of families earning less than DM 500 a month ($125), i.e., workers, employees, and junior civil servants. These groups were not hitherto considered parts of any recognizable German reading public; their interests and preferences are indicated by the results of a word frequency test applied to 68 recent selections: the word "love" and its various derivatives occurred most frequently in the text, followed after a long gap by "fate," "adventure," "gripping," "dramatic," "fascinating," and "passionate."¹

The sale of books is, of course, only one way in which reading matter is distributed to the German population. Many factories have in recent years established libraries for their working staff (Werkbüchereien), their main users being clerical rather than manual employees. A national system of public libraries (Volksbüchereien) is still in its infancy, with the total number of volumes owned by all public libraries (other than university libraries) being only 13 million, or one book for every four West German citizens. (By comparison, the Bertelsmann Lesering pours out nearly double that number, some 25 million books, each single year.) The primitive needs of primitive readers are served by innumerable lending libraries (Leihbüchereien) which specialize in trashy novels considerably below the level of what is offered by the various Leseringe. Still lower on the reading scale are paperback sex and crime novels that are produced seriatim by various anonymous authors writing under a single collective pen name. Each installment costs 25

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Pfennigs (a little more than a nickel), and it is estimated that some 80 million copies of this stuff are sold, read, and discarded each year.

It must be remembered that the education of the vast majority of Germans ends at age 16 and that their schooling is not calculated to develop any deep cultural tastes. The process of sharp segregation from age 10 onwards between future professionals and intellectuals going to the _Gymnasium_, and "ordinary mortals" going to ordinary schools, may be intellectually advantageous for the former, but certainly leads to the cultural deprivation of the latter. Those who remain in the ordinary schools receive largely vocational training; while the survival of the system of apprenticeship under gilds in many trades also makes for early specialization.

Numerous ministerial edicts upon behalf of some continued "general education," more especially political education, appear to have little effect. Boys and girls entering the labor market in their late adolescence in jobs with good pay (though few promotion prospects) easily become completely absorbed in a world where the thrills of sex, cars, and motor cycles become the focus of interest; one should not be surprised that little "high culture" is to be found in this group, and that few of its members take advantage of the excellent adult education opportunities provided by the _Volkshochschulen_.

The movies and (more recently) TV constitute the main link of the half-educated with the larger world. Fortunately the movie-going public is not confined to seeing German films, whose general mediocrity is widely acknowledged. The reasons for this mediocrity are easy to ascertain. The Nazis stifled the industry, famous during the Weimar period for achievements like _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_, by imposing a far reaching politicization and by driving many gifted members of the industry, especially directors and script writers who were frequently Jews, into exile. The

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rebirth of "free" production after 1945 was facilitated by the war-time survival of well-stocked studios prepared to turn out conventional films. There was little room for the kind of daring experimentation undertaken in France and Italy by many small producers. Returned emigres easily won leading position in a much denazified industry, emigrés who for reason of age and long years of unemployment were often not up to the mark in their conceptions of the aesthetic possibilities of the post-war film. The fact that the *distribution* of films was soon controlled by three big firms concerned above all to make money militated against both excellence and innovation; the distributors often went so far as to suggest themes and even particular actors for particular roles to the producers. Reference to the existing tastes of the general public instead of making an attempt to raise public tastes was the order of the day; while the snobbishness of German intellectuals towards the movies -- as revealed, for example, by the low esteem in which film critics were and are held -- also militated against any improvement. (It would be inconceivable in Germany for a distinguished historian and Presidential assistant like Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. to work as a film critic on the side.)

The most popular films of the last twenty years have been an endless series of so-called *Heimatfilme*, i.e. trashy and sentimental pictures filled with the local color of the unspoiled countryside (by preference Alpine Bavaria); *Der Fürster von Silberwalde* (*The Forester of the Silver Forest*) has been the most successful member of this genre. Escapist historical films have also been highly successful, especially the *Sissy* series dealing with the Habsburg Empress Elizabeth (wife of Franz Joseph) in which Romy Schneider, Germany's best-known actress, made her debut in the mid-1950's. The movie-going public of veterans (and their teen-age children) have been attracted by numerous pictures dealing with the Second World War. These sometimes glorify individual heroism, as in the picture, *Der Stern von Afrika* (The

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Star of Africa) celebrating the great pilot ace Marseilles; more frequently they debunk the brutality and senselessness of war, for example the series 0-8-15 based upon the anti-war novels of Hans Kirst. Of superior calibre have been several pictures attacking not war per se but the specific futility of the Nazi war effort during the Götterdämmerung of the Third Reich. Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Fraugen, Mütter, und ein General (Women, Mothers, and a General) were both powerful indictments of the crazy Nazi mobilization of untrained and illarmed fanatical adolescents against the invincible Russian juggernaut of 1945. Several much discussed pictures have sought to illuminate recent German history: one devoted to Stresemann rescued that great statesman from the danger of popular oblivion while making him appear far more liberal and pacifistic than he actually was; one devoted to Canaris, the opaque Intelligence Chief of the Nazi era who sympathized with the opposition and was executed just before the end of the Third Reich, was distributed under the inaccurate subtitle: "The Man who might have saved Germany." The two movies devoted to the conspiracy of July 20, 1944, performed a very valuable function in popularizing the heroes of the German Resistance. Finally one should mention a few films which seek to criticize conditions in the present-day Federal Republic: Wir Wirtschaftswunderkinder (We Children of the Economic Miracle) satirized the comeback of Nazis in industry, while Das Mütchen Rosemarie (Callgirl Rosemarie) assailed the connection between prostitution, organized crime, and Big Business. Such criticism is, however, rare on the German movie screen: audiences are complacent and wish to be entertained instead of being confronted with conflicts and tensions; moreover, criticism of the Federal Republic -- on the screen or elsewhere -- is easily denounced as giving aid and comfort to the Communist East.

A good deal of power is exercised over the movie industry by the so-called
**Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft** (Voluntary Commission for supervising

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films) staffed by representatives of the film industry, churches, youth groups, and the bureaucracy. Compulsory state censorship being prohibited by the Federal Constitution, its decisions are not legally binding, but observance is in fact 100%. It is frequently accused -- like all film censvisions everywhere -- of being puritanical and obscurantist. A further charge is that its powers are sometimes abused to curb foreign competition, an important matter since some 60% of the movies shown in Germany are foreign in origin. The economic position of the film industry is improved and above all stabilized by considerable subsidies administered by the Interior Ministry, both in the form of ad hoc contributions to specific film plans and generous prizes distributed to successful films at the annual Berlin film festival. The *Filmbewertungsstelle* (Film Evaluation Office) at Wiesbaden -- set up by the Länder to preclude any invasion of their precious "cultural sovereignty" -- has the authority to classify films in accordance with categories like "especially valuable," "valuable," etc.; a top classification brings not only prestige but solid financial advantages in the form of exemption from the entertainment tax. Such exemption is all the more important because the German film industry stands, exactly like Hollywood, in danger of decline: the number of films produced has gone down by 50% from 128 in 1955 to 64 in 1962 and movie attendance from 801 million in 1957 to 518 million in 1962. The latter figure is to be explained by Germany's increasing motorization, which has opened up entertainment possibilities other than the local movie theatre, and above all the rise of TV, providing the opportunity to see movies in one's own living room.

TV has not yet replaced radio as the main form of mass entertainment, although it is rapidly doing so at the time of writing. There were 16,900,000 radio sets in 1963 as compared to 7,900,000 TV sets. Both are amply financed through fees collected by the Post Office, a system which has the admirable result of preventing

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commercials. Programs are administered by "public corporations" whose directing boards include representatives of the various parties, churches, and economic pressure groups. This form of organization was developed by the Military Government after 1945 with the deliberate purpose of institutionalizing "impartiality" and preventing governmental control. The danger of this kind of set-up is that impartiality easily degenerates into non-controversiality and that log-rolling determines appointments in accordance with partisan and confessional ratios. The danger is obviated to a degree by the fact that the managing and script-writing personnel is predominantly Leftist in outlook, critical of conditions in the Federal Republic and anxious to stir up controversy, even though some very Conservative people (usually nominated by the CDU or the Catholic Church) may bear technical responsibility for programs.

German Conservatives never tire of denouncing the nefarious Radicalism (which they much exaggerate) of radio and TV; to the extent that the charge is justified one can speak, however, of a laudable pluralism built into the structure of the Federal Republic: a Conservative government confronted by Left-dominated mass media.

Both radio and TV bring a remarkably good selection of programs which easily put the American mass media to shame -- a result, primarily, of their non-commercial character and the residue of a national tradition which places a high emphasis upon culture. The musical offerings are absolutely outstanding and so-called *Hürspiele* (plays specifically written for the radio) constitute powerful competition to the regular stage. Numerous programs dealing with the Nazi period have had some success in keeping the memory of the crimes of Nazism alive in the general population. TV is probably more important in developing public opinion on political questions than the newspapers; the photogeneity and "salability" of political candidates over TV increasingly determines their career prospects. The single most popular TV program

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in Germany is the so-called _Internationale Frühschoppen_ (Beer drinking breakfast devoted to international affairs) broadcast on Sunday morning, which consists of the interviewing of a changing cast of foreign journalists (usually four in number) on the international events of the week. The program has had incalculable impact in deprovincializing Germans. The same can be said of Germany's participation in the cooperative _Eurovision_ setup of the West European countries.

The record of the German theatre is as impressive as TV's. A far greater proportion of the German population goes to the theatre than do Americans. There is, indeed, general agreement that the theatrical life of West Germany is impressive in quality and quantity alike. More than 120 stages perform every night; two thirds of the cost is covered by public subsidies (from the _Länder_ or the cities) leaving only one-third to be covered through admissions. High attendance is customary, dependable attendance is guaranteed by the national habit of regular subscriptions (under which many families go to the theatre, say, every second Thursday). German theatre critics -- like critics everywhere -- complain that the public wishes to be amused rather than forced to think (no wonder, since it consists primarily of busy people seeking recreation after a hard working day). Managers generally avoid provocative or difficult pieces in plays staged for the general public, but they satisfy their aesthetic conscience by offering such pieces to more select audiences on auxiliary stages. There is much complaint among fastidious theatre goers about the uncritical attitude of German audiences who will cheer anything; there is certainly little correlation between admissions and excellence of performance (a matter not surprising when one considers the importance of prepaid subscriptions).

The programs only rarely include plays written by contemporary German playwrights. Foreign pieces have been the craze ever since the first days following the Nazi collapse, when Germans showed an understandable urge to reestablish cultural

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contact with the Western world. Thornton Wilder's *The Skin of our Teeth*, various plays by Tennessee Willians, and Sartre's *Flies* were especially important in molding tastes after 1945. Classical pieces -- especially Schiller, Kleist, and Shakespeare in the famous Schlegel translation -- are very popular with middle class families where parents are anxious to convey *Bildung* (culture) to their adolescent offspring.

Of recent German dramatists, Gerhart Hauptmann and Bertold Brecht are frequently played, with the attraction of the latter being enhanced by bitter discussion on whether it is "appropriate" to stage the work of an East Zonal author who declared his plays to be a contribution to the forward march of world communism. (Many Germans do the right thing for the wrong reason by going to see Brecht to demonstrate that their cultural tastes could never be influenced by *mere* political considerations.)

Two Swiss dramatists, Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, have enjoyed considerable success. The former's *Andorra* (1961) caused much discussion by its frank treatment of anti-Semitism, the latter's *Marriage of Mr. Mississippi* (1952) because it ridiculed the private life of a Communist prosecuting attorney in a rather grotesque fashion. Among plays written by living German playwrights only Rolf Hochhuth's *Deputy* (1963) has been a conspicuous success, and this more for its provocative theme than because of any extraordinary artistic merit.

Germany has regained much of its traditional preeminence in musical culture. State-subsidized orchestras provide first-rate concerts throughout the country, and far more radio time is devoted to "good music" than is the case in America. Certain annual musical events -- like the Wagner *Festspiele* in Bayreuth and the *Musiktage* in Donaueschingen and Kranichstein -- are of national significance. The cultural elite (defined quite broadly) prides itself on being abreast of modern music, thereby resuming a tradition begun during the Weimar Republic when Arnold Schönberg made his reputation in Berlin after being spurned by conventional Vienna. The *Musica Viva*

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concerts in Munich, which specialize in complex, atonal music scarcely comprehensible even to the expert on first hearing, are generally sold out. The West German Radio at Cologne is known for its "sense of obligation" towards modern music, to whose production it devotes large resources untrammeled by commercial considerations. There are few protests from tax-paying radio listeners; whether this is due to an ingrained deference to "cultural experts," or perhaps reflects a sympathetic feeling towards chaotic atonality because it mirrors the confusions of modern life, it would be difficult to say. The high prestige of music is one of the constant features of German life; whereas such professions as journalism of literature remain highly suspect to many Germans, there is no question of the high repute enjoyed not just by musical performers buy by ordinary piano teachers as well. The latter, when staatlich geprüft, i.e. in possession of a state certificate of competence (duly noted on the name plate of their domicile), are members of a highly lucrative profession.<sup>4</sup>

It may be said in conclusion that the popular culture of the Federal Republic offers much that is good though little that is absolutely outstanding -- not a bad record for popular culture. The film industry cannot compare with its American, British, French, and Italian competitors, at least in its top achievements. Radio and TV have, however, a very respectable record in spreading culture and political education among large strata of the population. The staging of plays is excellent but there is remarkably little dramatic ferment as compared, for example, with England's "angry young men" -- the stress is upon the _distributing_ of culture rather than its _creation_. The performance of music is, on the other hand, the equal of any other country, while the open-mindedness of fairly broad strata of the population to modern music must be described as unique.