Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations of Nazi Cultural History
- Part II Blind to the Light
- 6 Classicism Romanticized
- 7 Intolerance toward Enlightenment
- 8 Forging Steel Romanticism
- 9 Romantic Music as “Our Greatest Legacy”
- Part III Modern Dilemmas
- Part IV “Holy” War and Weimar “Crisis”
- Part V Nazi “Solutions”
- Notes
- Index
8 - Forging Steel Romanticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Foundations of Nazi Cultural History
- Part II Blind to the Light
- 6 Classicism Romanticized
- 7 Intolerance toward Enlightenment
- 8 Forging Steel Romanticism
- 9 Romantic Music as “Our Greatest Legacy”
- Part III Modern Dilemmas
- Part IV “Holy” War and Weimar “Crisis”
- Part V Nazi “Solutions”
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The appropriation of the German romantic tradition – with its attendant rejection of Western attitudes toward reason and rationalist structure – is a well-known feature of National Socialism’s cultural constitution. Significantly, however, Nazis were selective in their borrowing, and resisted inclusion of certain “modernist” aspects of Romanticism that they saw as fostering luxuriation in psychological self-indulgence. Goebbels, most openly, stipulated that there were various Romanticisms and that the Nazi version was a “steely” (stählernde) variation with no room for the dreamier and even ironic aspects of the trend:
Every time has its Romanticism, its poetic presentation of life – ours does as well. It is harder and crueler than the earlier version, but it is just as romantic. The Steel Romanticism of our time manifests itself in intoxicating actions and restless deeds in service of a great national goal, in a feeling of duty raised to the level of an unbreakable principle. We are all more or less romantics of a new German form.
Neither the yearning of a young Werther nor the madness of a Kapellmeister Kreisler would survive in Goebbels’ romantic ideal:
Instead of an exhausted lassitude that capitulates to, denies, or flees from the seriousness of life, a heroic view of life steps forth and sounds out in the marching steps of brown columns, accompanying the farmer as he pulls the plowshare through fields, giving the worker meaning and higher purpose in its difficult struggle for existence, never leaving the unemployed in despair, and furnishing the great work of German reconstruction with an almost soldierly rhythm. It is a kind of Steel Romanticism that has made German life worth living: a Romanticism which does not try to escape and hide in the blue distance from the hardness of existence – a Romanticism which rather has the courage to confront problems and stare into their pitiless eyes without flinching. This new attitude gives Germany tempo and power for its constructive work . . . Only pure artistic and cultural striving, willingly and wholeheartedly filled with it, will last to conquer the future.
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- Information
- InhumanitiesNazi Interpretations of Western Culture, pp. 176 - 197Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012