During the Allied bombing of Germany, Hitler was more distressed by the
loss of cultural treasures than by the leveling of homes. Remarkably,
his propagandists broadcast this fact, convinced that it would reveal
not his callousness but his sensitivity: the destruction had failed to
crush his artist's spirit. It is impossible to begin to make sense of
this thinking without understanding what Wolf Lepenies calls The
Seduction of Culture in German History.
This fascinating and unusual book tells the story of an arguably
catastrophic German habit--that of valuing cultural achievement above
all else and envisioning it as a noble substitute for politics. Lepenies
examines how this tendency has affected German history from the late
eighteenth century to today. He argues that the German preference for
art over politics is essential to understanding the peculiar nature of
Nazism, including its aesthetic appeal to many Germans (and others) and
the fact that Hitler and many in his circle were failed artists and
intellectuals who seem to have practiced their politics as a substitute
form of art.
In a series of historical, intellectual, literary, and artistic
vignettes told in an essayistic style full of compelling aphorisms, this
wide-ranging book pays special attention to Goethe and Thomas Mann, and
also contains brilliant discussions of such diverse figures as Novalis,
Walt Whitman, Leo Strauss, and Allan Bloom. The Seduction of Culture in
German History is concerned not only with Germany, but with how the
German obsession with culture, sense of cultural superiority, and scorn
of politics have affected its relations with other countries, France and
the United States in particular.
