Georg Lukacs The Struggle of Humanism and Barbarism. 1943
Potsdam and Weimar: this contrast between the soulless and regressive militarization of all German national life, and the pinnacle of the flourishing of German culture, has long become commonplace in international journalism. This contrast is generated by the uniqueness of the historical fate of Germany: the peculiarities and contradictions in the worldview of the classical period of the rise of the German spirit, Goethe and Schiller, Fichte and Hegel are as much connected with Germany’s national fragmentation and socio-economic backwardness as is the Prussian military monarchy.
The specific features of Prussia, from the time of its rise and transformation into a military power, largely determine the course of German historical development. These features are as follows. Prussia, in order to be able to compete with other military powers of the 17th-18th centuries, had – to a much greater extent than its economic capabilities – concentrate its forces on creating an army that would be combat-ready at any moment. The unconditional subordination of all “private interests” to the military principle of conquest found the most striking historical embodiment in Prussia. The soulless cruelty of the mercenary troops, their inhumanity and strict discipline were nowhere developed to the same extent as here.
On the other hand, due to the economic and social backwardness of Prussia under absolutism, such a balance could not arise between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie as existed, for example, in France. The feudal independence of the Prussian nobility was, it is true, squeezed into the framework of militarism, but the Prussian Junkers nevertheless remained the undisputed dominant class of the country. Their relation with the monarchy was determined by the formula: “Let our king rule imperiously, if he does our will.”
It is clear that Prussia reacted with hostility to any serious manifestation of the national question, and the stronger the Prussian state became, the more hostile it grew to German unity. Its military power did not express the desire for the political unification of the nation: on the contrary, it was one of the strongest obstacles to the unification of the German people.
The striving for German unity was one of the important moments of the great cultural upsurge of the second half of the 18th century. And it is no coincidence that the Prussian kingdom was at best indifferent to this philosophical and literary movement, and often just hostile. German classical humanists, for their part, identified Prussia as the principal hostile force opposing national cultural aspirations. Klopstock and Lessing categorically denied the so-called “culture” of the court of Frederick II, and even Goethe, known for being diplomatically polite in such matters, made ironic allusions to the predatory claws of the Prussian eagle. And when old Prussia, in the battle of Jena, collapsed in the most miserable way under the blows of the heir to the French revolution, Napoleon, young Hegel was triumphant. Together with him, the best part of the German intelligentsia rejoiced at this collapse: not accidentally and not without reason. A hundred years later, summing up the results, Franz Mehring wittily said that the Battle of Jena was the storming of the German Bastille.
But this storming of the German Bastille was not followed by a national revolution. Prussia, despite some concessions to the spirit of the times, retained its old structure and further strengthened it during the time of the Holy Alliance. And when, in the forties, a democratic revolution ripened in Germany from within, the political leaders of different camps decided on the fate and the place of Prussia in the national unification, which was the central issue of the democratic revolution in Germany. Absorption of Prussia by Germany was the slogan of the revolutionary democrats; Prussianization of Germany was the aim of the reactionaries.
The defeat of the 1848 revolution determined the fate of Germany for many years. National unification became an inevitable economic necessity, and the Prussian Bismarck realized it through some concessions to the progressive bourgeois development of Germany (universal suffrage for the empire), but at the same time he made sure that nothing changed in the structure of the most powerful state in the German confederation, Prussia (three-class suffrage in Prussia, semi-feudal rights in relation to farm laborers for Prussian landowners). He also made sure that Prussia in the new empire was given decisive internal political power.
Capitalism in Prussia developed rapidly. But in all other respects, the “democratic” modernization of old Prussia was just a sham. Marx characterized this situation in the following way: “After her victory, did Prussia dream one moment of opposing a free Germany to an enslaved France? Just the contrary. While carefully preserving all the native beauties of her old system, she super-added all the tricks of the Second Empire, its real despotism, and its mock democratism, its political shams and its financial jobs, its high-flown talk and its low legerdemains.” [1]
So, for example, Germany was the country where the most radical and “democratic” legislation was universal military service. But officers could only be nobles or, at most, only a few bourgeois, whom the noble officers regarded as equals and accepted into their midst. According to Marx, a military system had emerged “which divides the whole able-bodied male population into two parts – one standing army on service, and another standing army on furlough, both equally bound in passive obedience to rulers by divine right.” [2]
As a result of this triumph of the Prussianization of Germany, none of the truly progressive cultural trends could win acceptable conditions for themselves. Bismarck was not only one of the most cunning diplomats of his time; in his youth he possessed versatile cultural and literary interests and therefore remained a good German stylist. But since the revolution of 1848, Bismarck had not been associated with any prominent representative of German culture. And again, it is no coincidence that the outstanding Germans of this time, from Gottfried Keller to Gerhart Hauptmann, from Virchow to Mommsen, had an aloof and negative attitude towards the Second Reich; it could only rely culturally on voluntary or paid lackeys.
Under Wilhelm II, this situation was aggravated. The empire modernized its appearance, giving it more and more luxurious and bizarre forms, but was as little connected with the most important phenomena in the development of German culture as the previous Bismarck regime. All figures of science, literature and art of Wilhelm’s Germany, from Einstein to Max Liebermann, from Thomas Mann to Rainer Maria Rilke, stood aside from it and were doomed to loneliness.
The only significant innovation was the penetration of capitalist corruption into the bureaucratic and military environment – a process that began, of course, much earlier, but had now reached its peak.
In the German empire, therefore, all the effects of the capitalist system were visible, but in the internal life of Germany, Wilhelm II did not allow even that minimum of democracy, and that freedom of criticism that could constitute at least some counterbalance to him.
In relation to the outside world, most of the German bourgeoisie lost the former provincial timidity, acquiring instead the impudent complacency with which it aroused universal antipathy. Inside the country, in relation to the state and the army, it remained humble as before and did not show civil courage. So, in the now-powerful imperialist Germany, the same old “German misery” had survived as a result of centuries of humiliation.
With this internal structure, Germany embarked on a struggle against the democratic Western powers and suffered a crushing defeat in 1918. The guns of the Western democracies helped Germany storm the monarchist Bastille a second time. Unfortunately, again to no avail. From the contradictions of Weimar democracy grew the most disgusting form of oppression in Germany – fascism.
If the essence of Prussianism lies in the unconditional subordination of all civil interests to the goals of military expansion, then fascist Germany is a more complete revival of old Prussia, based on the last word of technology. Both in peacetime and in wartime, the “total warrior” completely suppresses all forms of existence there. Fascism turned all of Germany into a barracks or into its strictly militarized auxiliary organization.
Of course, this “complete” modernization of Prussianism is very different from its model. After all, it represents its renewal on the basis of the imperialist economy. The corruption caused by capitalism has reached here – owing to the complete absence of democratic control – incredible proportions. Moreover, the place of the hypocritical morality of the former Prussia was taken by the cynical amoralism of the “teachings” of Hitler, this Smerdyakov[3] of world history, who in the most harsh and boorish form proclaimed the elimination of conscience and decency, the principle of “everything is permitted.”
In this way, the fascized Prussia returns to its worst examples in an outrageously intensified form. Again, like 150 years ago, the best writers, artists, scientists in Germany are forced to leave their homeland if they do not want to give up serving German culture. But now it is incomparably more difficult for them to find a country where they could continue their work: the plague of fascism swept over a significant part of Europe and expelled the bearers of progress and culture from many countries.
This gigantic, enlarged, diabolically barbarized Prussia, with incomparably greater power than before the Battle of Jena, took up the struggle against the great democracies of the cultural world. But on the battlefields near Moscow and Leningrad, the shadow of the new Jena appeared against this misanthropic militarism. What Napoleon I, continuing the work of the French revolution, accomplished with only partial success at Jena, will be victoriously achieved by the socialist democracy of the Soviet Union in alliance with the great democratic powers of the West. The destruction of the “Prussian spirit,” the defeat of the new barbaric rule of Potsdam over Weimar should be all the more crushing because fascism with its “total” war has degenerated into a devilishly perverted caricature of the Prussian monarchy choking in the mud.
In the near future, the third assault on the German Bastille will take place. It will free the whole world, including Germany, from the nightmare of a new form of Prussianism.
We saw that in German history Prussianism long acted as an anti-national principle, as the strongest brake on national unification, and that later, when it created a united Germany with its bayonets, it stopped its progressive development and sought to turn it into an enlarged Prussia.
Such a historical fate should have affected ideology as well. It goes without saying that the biased historians of the Bismarck empire portrayed the Prussianization of Germany as a path of national development originally intended by God. (Treitschke is a classic and frightening example of such a pseudo-historiographer.) [4].
During the first imperialist war, Plenge pompously and apologetically contrasted the “ideas of 1914” (ie, Prussian Germany of Wilhelm II) with the ideas of 1789. During the social crisis after the defeat in the war, Oswald Spengler extolled old Prussia as “socialist,” advocating the subordination of all German life to the needs of Prussian militarism and glorifying the suppression of all social and cultural freedom as “German socialism.” Spengler tries to present the abolition of individual freedom in Frederick the Great’s Germany as a “socialist” overcoming of bourgeois individualism.
We observe the same process in the field of ideology in a narrower sense of the word. German reaction has always had only very meager cultural forces. Since every great nation at the beginning of modern times had a period of cultural flourishing under an absolute monarchy (England under Elizabeth, France under Louis XIV), Germany, already for reasons of international prestige, should also have such a golden age of art and science under the monarchical auspices, under the German Medici.
Duke Karl-August of Weimar was actually associated with the work of Goethe and Schiller in Weimar, with the period of activity of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in Jena (although this connection was very doubtful in many respects). But the place of this duke in the monarchical hierarchy is too insignificant from the point of view of German sovereign claims. Moreover, Weimar was really the center of real culture – and the German reaction (before Hitler) needed the decoration of culture only to propagate an aggressive militaristic system. For these reasons, the obliging German reactionary historians proclaimed Frederick II, the only non-illiterate monarch from the Hohenzollern family, to be the “inspirer of the development of German culture.”
This was done, of course, not without a fair dose of historical falsification, which was brilliantly exposed at one time by the talented and erudite Franz Mehring. The real flourishing of German literature during the reign of Frederick is associated – let us name only the greatest names – with Lessing, Winckelmann, Herder and the young Goethe. But the only encouragement Herder received from the Prussian government was that he was forced to flee the country for life so that he would not be conscripted into the army. Winckelmann, with a curse on his lips, left his Prussian homeland forever. Lessing, thanks to the personal intervention of the “great patron” of German culture in his life, could not even get a job as a petty librarian in Berlin. And Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen received special attention from the “German Medici.” In his childishly irresponsible pamphlet against German literature, Frederick – an epigone and admirer of French classicism – burst into a torrent of curses against the work that really constituted an era in German literature.
German reactionaries are culturally undemanding indeed. Their idol Frederick II was for his time an educated and intelligent man, but exclusively in the French court style; he clearly despised the German language and culture, spoke and wrote German like a semi-literate coachman.
This complete contempt of the “initiator” of the German literary upsurge for German literature is not accidental. As we have already seen, Frederick II was in his policy a purely Prussian separatist, an ardent supporter of deepening and perpetuating the fragmentation of Germany into independent principalities. True, his policy led to an increase in Prussia, but at the same time it aggravated the national humiliation of Germany, since through his fault Tsarist Russia joined the ranks of the great powers that supported and used Germany’s political impotence.
It is not surprising, therefore, that German fascism – the most dangerous enemy that German culture has ever had – not only picks up, but also develops this falsification of history. Of course, the shameless foreign policy of Frederick II, his incessant change of allies, his well-known treachery and inconstancy, his often successful but sometimes dangerous Machiavellianism serve in a particularly grateful way for the Hitlerites. For them, he is the great embodiment of “northern cunning,” as they like to say.
But another point also links them to him. The fact is that Frederick II was the father of “lightning war.” As we know, the Seven Years War began with Frederick suddenly, without declaring war, attacking Saxony and occupying it in order to break, separate and confuse his opponents one by one. It is clear that such military tactics, trampling on international law, seem to the German fascists to be a political ideal. As everyone knows from history, Frederick II’s “lightning war” ended in failure: Frederick did not manage to upset the coalition and defeat his opponents one by one. And in the course of the war, he found himself in a desperate situation, since the Russian army completely defeated his troops, and Prussia was on the eve of complete collapse. There is a well-known reactionary historical legend about how Frederick behaved “heroically staunchly” at this time. He decided to commit suicide and lived “with poison in his pocket.” As new historical research has shown, it was all a comedy, a “northern trick” aimed at influencing the supporters of peace in France. In the end, he managed to withdraw Prussia from the war without territorial losses, albeit severely devastated. But at what cost and with what national humiliation for Germany!
After the ignominious failure of the fascist “lightning war” against the Soviet Union, after the continuous bloody losses of the German army in Russia, with the gloomy prospects and hopelessness that this inevitably gives rise to in the German people, it is natural that Hitlerite fascism in such a tragic period of its existence resorts to all new demagogic tricks. They once again presented their beloved “hero” to the German people. This was done in a film about Frederick that was shown in Berlin, accompanied by a lot of publicity and even a Goebbels’ speech.
Fascist propaganda uses two moments from this period of the life and work of its hero. On the one hand, it tries to glorify Frederick’s stubborn resistance and resilience in difficult, seemingly hopeless times, in order to thus fight against massive defeatist sentiments arising in the army and in the rear. On the other hand, it reminisces the miracle that saved Frederick. This miracle has a special appeal for Hitler and his followers.
As we know, Peter III, the son of a petty German prince and an admirer of Frederick, on becoming Tsar after the death of Elizabeth Petrovna, recalled the Russian troops and thereby saved Frederick from complete destruction. This change of fate, thanks to a “miracle,” is largely the propaganda content of the film.
“Miracles” have been Hitler’s specialty since ancient times. After all, the bible of German fascism – “Mein Kampf” – had already taken a “miracle” mindset in advance. The fascists are accustomed to speculating on the difficult situation in Germany during the years of the economic crisis, to proclaim it a “miracle” that a “savior” has appeared for the German people in the person of Hitler. And further fascist propaganda brought this shameless cult, this cynical parody of religion to ugly proportions.
Now, after the United States entered the war against Germany, after the enormous losses of the Germans on the Russian front, a salutary “miracle” was needed again. From the appeal of fascist propaganda to such an outcome, to such a perspective, one can see how deeply pessimistically the clique of the leaders of German fascism is looking at the current military situation in Germany, how little they hope to regain lasting military success in a normal way. But this “miracle” also has a somewhat more definite content. In the 18th century, it was quite clear that such an enlightened, gifted absolute monarch like Frederick of Prussia had admirers among the small German princes. Thus, then the “miracle” had a real political basis, although it was an accident that one of these admirers of Frederick happened to take the Russian throne.
But it was inevitable – and the fascist film and all Hitler’s propaganda, of course, are silent about this – that a happy accident could not last long. Peter was overthrown from the throne, and Catherine II began to vigorously pursue the policy that Tsarist Russia adhered to until the founding of the German Empire. Its essence was that, without giving Prussia real independence, it was nevertheless preserved as an element of the political decomposition and fragmentation of Germany into hundreds of small states, as a counterweight to Austria, as a provocateur for the preparation of the partition of Poland. After Catherine’s accession to the throne, Prussia became a vassal of Tsarism in Central Europe, a conductor of anti-national policies that hindered the national unification of Germany. Thus, in reality, the “miracle” may have saved Prussia and Frederick, but did not save the German people from further political squalor.
It is even more paradoxical, but it is true that the beer-hall demagogic and braggart Hitler had admirers in various countries and partially still has them. They constitute the core of that “fifth column” which made his victory possible in some countries, and which is still scheming, wishing to frustrate the resistance of freedom-loving peoples to fascism and prevent its defeat. Thus, Hitler’s appeal to the “miracle” in the career of Frederick of Prussia is at the same time an appeal to other countries, to the idiots like Peter III, who may be found somewhere, this is a desperate hope for a “miracle” – if in some country a fool like Peter III gets in power, the Munich policy will be revived. In this, Hitler quite rightly sees the only salvation for his barbaric, anti-human regime.
But miracles are not made-to-order from propagandists. We no longer live in the era of monarchical absolutism. There may still exist people in different countries who dream of reviving the Munich policy and doing the dirty work of the “fifth column.” But the peoples of the West have learned a lot from the fatal consequences of Munich, from the defeat of France; thanks to which came the strongest danger that England had been exposed to in all its history. Today Hitler’s call for a “miracle” is nothing more than a simple gesture of a desperate, unscrupulous demagogue in trouble, a call that will not find a response.
But an important symptom is the very fact that the legend of Frederick II has taken on this new form. In the famous forgery of the Emsk dispatch, which served as a pretext for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, Bismarck turned the embarrassment of William I into the source of his fame. It is no coincidence that the fascist legend of Frederick goes the other way. The barefaced falsification of the history of the Frederickian period, the Prussian-German bragging about the “lightning war” turned into an embarrassing expectation of a miracle. Of course, fascism has not yet been completely defeated. Just as it will throw more and more armies onto the battlefields to prevent or at least postpone defeat or collapse, so too will its propaganda present new versions of old legends. But the failures of the Hitlerite rulers will become increasingly difficult to hide from the German people, who have started to grasp that the war is basically lost and that the last legend of Frederick is the official recognition by the Nazis of the hopelessness of their position.
1. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France.
2. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France.
3. Half-insane character in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
4. Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896); German reactionary historian and politician, one of the originators of the Sonderweg historical narrative, which claimed that the feudal-monarchist, non-democratic development of Prussia and Germany was a “unique” and “higher order” of development superior to the bourgeois democracies of the West.
5. Johann Plenge (1874-1963); German sociologist, originally a Marxist but later a nationalist and regarded one of the most important intellectual forebears of Nazism. In his book 1789 and 1914 he contrasted the ‘Ideas of 1789’ (liberty) and the ‘Ideas of 1914’ (organization). Plenge argued: “under the necessity of war socialist ideas have been driven into German economic life, its organization has grown together into a new spirit, and so the assertion of our nation for mankind has given birth to the idea of 1914, the idea of German organization, the national unity of state socialism.”