German Prophets of Doom and Hope

Of all peoples, Germany reveals in its history sharpest contrasts between rapid rises and precipitous declines. For centuries her soil has been physical and spiritual battleground for many decisive issues. The marks of Reformation and of its gruesome aftermath, Thirty Years' War, as well as those of uprising against Napoleon and spirit of Western revolutions, are indelibly engraved upon her mental physiognomy. For her more than for any other nation, problem of Decline with all its implications has always pressed upon her very being sense of tragic irony of life. No wonder that her thinkers have taken issue to heart; that in hour of danger they have searched their souls and raised their voices with stern reproofs and passionate pleas to their countrymen. Moreover, most great German art and thought has been essentially directed inward upon itself: it has been, in a peculiar degree, a long endeavor of individual to fathom his own inner nature and deeper significance of his own existence. And this persistent self-searching has been accompanied by an intense racial self-consciousness; to know oneself has meant, for a German, to know what is essential and distinctive in the German spirit. Thus from Luther, through Goethe and Fichte and Hegel and Wagner, to Nietzsche and Spengler, favorite theme has always been: what is German, and what am I? -and, as corollary to these questions: what is specific r8le, vocation and destiny, of German mind and German people in world-history? In present century, with its disillusionments, its vast chaos of conflicting ideas and ideals, its immensely accelerated tempo of historic change, these questions have become for reflective Germans more pressing and poignant than ever. We may take as representatives of differing reactions of German minds-differing, and yet all expressive of tendencies having their roots deep in past experience and historical characteristics of German people -to trend of present age, four figures, Oswald Spengler and Thomas Mann, Count Keyserling and Stefan George, with men like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as forerunners of more

Aesthetics · Art · Destiny (ISS module) · Epistemology · German · Hegelianism · Literature · Physiognomy · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Theme (computing) · Wonder · Art, Aesthetics, and Perception · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Scientific and Historical Analyses