Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians?
- “In the Exile of Internment” or “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen”: German-Speaking Women Interned by the British during the Second World War
- “Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: Literature and Politics in Germany 1933–1950
- “Das habe ich getan, sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben, sagt mein Stolz! …” History and Morality in Hochhuth's Effis Nacht
- Stefan Heym and GDR Cultural Politics
- Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel's Liedertheater
- Living Without Utopia: Four Women Writers' Responses to the Demise of the GDR
- A Worm's Eye View and a Bird's Eye View: Culture and Politics in Berlin since 1989
- Remembering for the Future, Engaging with the Present: National Memory Management and the Dialectic of Normality in the “Berlin Republic”
- “Wie kannst du mich lieben?”: “Normalizing” the Relationship between Germans and Jews in the 1990s Films Aimée und Jaguar and Meschugge
- Models of the Intellectual in Contemporary France and Germany: Silence and Communication
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians?
- “In the Exile of Internment” or “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen”: German-Speaking Women Interned by the British during the Second World War
- “Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: Literature and Politics in Germany 1933–1950
- “Das habe ich getan, sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben, sagt mein Stolz! …” History and Morality in Hochhuth's Effis Nacht
- Stefan Heym and GDR Cultural Politics
- Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel's Liedertheater
- Living Without Utopia: Four Women Writers' Responses to the Demise of the GDR
- A Worm's Eye View and a Bird's Eye View: Culture and Politics in Berlin since 1989
- Remembering for the Future, Engaging with the Present: National Memory Management and the Dialectic of Normality in the “Berlin Republic”
- “Wie kannst du mich lieben?”: “Normalizing” the Relationship between Germans and Jews in the 1990s Films Aimée und Jaguar and Meschugge
- Models of the Intellectual in Contemporary France and Germany: Silence and Communication
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
A Short History of “Geist” and “Macht”
IN HIS BOOK on France Vom Glück, Franzose zu sein, the popular journalist and author Ulrich Wickert makes the following claim:
Die Vorstellung — Helmut Kohl oder Helmut Schmidt — käme auf die Idee, einen Roman, gar über Liebe (!) zu schreiben, würde das deutsche Publikum verwirren. Selbst Gerhard Schröder nähme das deutsche Volk einen literarischen Ausbruch — leider nicht ab.
(1999: 200)While it is tempting to speculate on why Wickert should ascribe greater literary potential to the current chancellor than his two predecessors, this is not the issue here. What is interesting is the assumption that the worlds of literature and politics are entirely distinct for the German people — and also the other assumption, not included in the passage quoted but already latent in the location of the statement within a book on France, that this is not the case with Germany's neighbor. In fact, to underline the point, Wickert goes on to quote the response attributed to General de Gaulle at the time of the May 1968 events when it was suggested to him that Jean-Paul Sartre should be arrested: namely “Voltaire verhaftet man nicht” (201).
It is not particularly difficult to find similar expressions of this view of the relationship between the world of “Geist,” from which literature, or at least serious literature, emanates, and that of “Macht,” the exercise of which is a major part of political activity.
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- Politics and Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany , pp. 43 - 62Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003