Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

CHAPTER 13: HEROES’ TWILIGHT

The title for this chapter is taken from Bernard Bergonzi’s book on the literature of World War I, discussed in chapter 9. As will become clear, the phrase applies a fortiori to the subject of Weimar Germany. I am particularly indebted in this chapter to Peter Gay’s Weimar Culture (see note 3 for details).

1. Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, London: Michael Joseph, 1974, page 67.

2. Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1969, pages 17–27 for Pommer’s reaction to Mayer and Janowitz.

3. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider, London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1969, page 107.

4. Ibid., page 126.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Friedrich, Op. cit., page 66.

8. Ibid. For the success of the film, see: Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, The Oxford History of World Cinema, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, page 144; and page 145 for an assessment of Plommer.

9. Friedrich, Op. cit., page 67.

10. Gay, Op. cit., pages 108–109.

11. Ibid., page 110.

12. Ibid., page 32.

13. Ibid., page 34.

14. Hughes, The Shock of the New, Op. cit., page 175.

15. Ibid., pages 192–195; Gay, Op cit., pages 102ff.

16. Friedrich, Op. cit., page 160.

17. Gay, Op. cit., page 105.

18. Hughes, Op. cit., page 195.

19. Ibid., page 195.

20. Ibid., page 199.

21. Ibid., page 199.

22. Bryan Magee, Men of Ideas: Some Creators of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978, paperback, 1982, page 44.

23. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973, paperback edition 1996, pages 152–153. Magee, Op. cit., pages 44 and 50.

24. Magee, Op. cit., page 50.

25. Jay, Op. cit., pages 86ff.

26. Magee, Op. cit., page 48.

27. Ibid., page 51.

28. Ibid., page 52.

29. Ibid.

30. Gay, Op. cit., page 49.

31. Ibid., pages 51–52.

32. E. M. Butler, Rainer Maria Rilke, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941, page 14.

33. Ibid., pages 147ff

34. Friedrich, Op. cit., page 304.

35. Gay, Op. cit., page 54.

36. Ibid., page 59.

37. Ibid., page 55.

38. Butler, Op. cit., page 317.

39. Quoted in ibid., page 327.

40. Gay, Op. cit., page 55.

41. Ibid., page 57.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid., page 59.

44. Friedrich, Op. cit., page 220, where Einstein’s predicament is spelled out. See also: Gay, Op. cit., pages 129ff

45. Hayman, Thomas Mann, Op. cit., pages 344–348.

46. Gay, Op. cit., page 131.

47. Hayman, Op. cit., page 346.

48. Gay, Op. cit., page 131.

49. Ibid., pages 132–133.

50. Ibid., page 136.

51. Bruno Walter, ‘Themes and Variations: An Autobiography,’ 1946, pages 268–269, quoted in Gay, Op. cit., page 137.

52. Schonberg, The Lives of the Great Composers, Op. cit., page 526.

53. Friedrich, Op. cit., page 178; Griffiths, Modern Music, Op. cit., page 81.

54. Schonberg, Op. cit., page 526.

55. Ibid.

56. Griffiths, Op. cit., page 82.

57. Friedrich, Op. cit., pages 155 and 181.

58. Griffiths, Op. cit., pages 36–37. Schonberg, Op. cit., page 524.

59. Schonberg, Op. cit., page 524.

60. Friedrich, Op. cit., page 183.

61. Schonberg, Op. cit., page 527.

62. Peter Conrad, Modern Times, Modem Places: Art and Life in the Twentieth Century, London: Thames & Hudson, 1998, pages 327–328.

63. Friedrich, Op. cit., page 243.

64. Ibid., page 244.

65. Ronald Hayman, Brecht: A Biography, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983, page 138.

66. Ibid., page 130.

67. Ibid., pages 131ff.

68. Ibid., page 134.

69. Ibid., page 135.

70. Griffiths, Op. cit., pages 112–113.

71. Hayman, Brecht, page 148.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid., page 149.

74. Ibid., page 148.

75. Ibid., page 147.

76. Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, London: HarperCollins, 1993, page 125.

77. Paul Hühnerfeld, In Sachen Heidegger, 1961, pages 14ff, quoted in Gay, Op. cit., page 85.

78. Magee, Op. Cit., pages 59–60; Gay, Op. cit., page 86.

79. To begin with, he was close to the existential theologian Rudolf Bultmann and the ‘crisis theology’ of Karl Barthes (see below, chapter 32). Ott, Op. cit., page 125.

80. Magee, Op. cit., page 67.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid., pages 67 and 73.

83. Ott, Op. cit., page 122ff and 332. See also: Gay, Op. cit., page 86.

84. Mary Gluck, Georg Lukács and His Generation, 1900–1918, Op. cit., page 211.

85. Johnston, The Austrian Mind, Op. cit., page 366.

86. Ibid., page 367.

87. Gluck, Op. cit., page 218.

88. Johnston, Op. cit., page 368.

89. Ibid., page 372.

90. Conrad, Op. cit., page 504.

91. Johnston, Op. cit., page 374.

92. Magee, Op. cit., page 96.

93. Ibid.

94. Ben Rogers, A. J. Ayer: A Life, London: Chatto & Windus, 1999, pages 86–87.

95. Magee, Op. cit., pages 102–103.

96. Ibid., page 103.

97. Rogers, Op. cit., pages 91–92.

98. Johnston, Op. cit., page 195.

99. Robert Musil, Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften, 1930–1943; The Man Without Qualities, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, (trans) Sophie Wilkins. In this section I am especially indebted to: Philip Payne, Robert Musil’s ‘The Man without Qualities’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, passim.

100. Johnston, Op. cit., page 335.

101. Franz Kuna, ‘The Janus-faced Novel: Conrad, Musil, Kafka, Mann,’ in Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane (editors), Modernism, Op. cit., page 449.

102. Ronald Speirs and Beatrice Sandburg, Franz Kafka, Op. cit., pages 1 and 5.

103. Speirs and Sandburg, Op. cit., page 15.

104. P. Mailloux, A Hesitation Before Birth: A Life of Franz Kafka, London and Toronto: Associated Universities Presses, 1989, page 13.

105. Ibid., page 352.

106. Speirs and Sandburg, Op. cit., pages 105ff.

107. Mailloux, Op. cit., page 355.

108. Richard Davenport-Hines, Auden, London: Heinemann, 1995, page 26.

109. Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, London: HarperCollins, 1991; Fontana Paperback, 1993, page 148.

110. Ibid., page 149.

111. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, published in English as ‘My Struggle’, London: Hurst & Blackett, The Paternoster Press, October 1933 (eleven impressions by October 1935); and see Bullock, Op. cit., pages 405–406.

112. George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, New York: Howard Festig, 1998.

113. Ibid., pages 39ff for Langbehn, pages 72ff for the Edda and pages 52ff for Diederichs.

114. Ibid., pages 102–103.

115. Ibid., page 99.

116. Ibid., page 155.

117. Werner Maser, Hitler: Legend, Myth and Reality, New York: Harper & Row, 1973, page 157.

118. Ibid., page 158.

119. Ibid., page 159.

120. Mosse, Op. cit., pages 89–91.

121. Maser, Op. cit., page 162.

122. Mosse, Op. cit., pages 95, 159 and 303.

123. Percy Schramm, Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader, London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1972, pages 77–78.

124. Maser, Op. cit., pages 42ff.

125. Ibid., page 165.

126. Ibid., page 167.

127. Mosse, Op. cit., page 295.

128. Maser, Op. cit., page 169.

129. Ibid., page 135.

130. Schramm, Op. cit., pages 84ff

131. Maser, Op. cit., page 154.