Considerations of an apolitical

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First edition 1918

The Reflections of a Non-political wrote Thomas Mann from 1915 to 1918. He supported, unlike his brother Heinrich Mann , the First World War . The almost 600-page book served to justify and delimit his political stance. Shortly after going to press, however, Mann distanced itself more and more from this earlier phase of his thinking.

Emergence

Thomas Mann was - like many of his fellow writers - positive about the First World War. In three essays that he wrote after the outbreak of war - Thoughts in War (August / September 1914), Friedrich and the Grand Coalition (September to December 1914) and Thoughts on War (July 1915) - he defended the war and especially the German attack neutral Belgium , which he compared to the Prussian attack on neutral Saxony in the Seven Years' War in 1756. Heinrich Mann responded with an essay on Émile Zola , which appeared in René Schickele's pacifist magazine Die Weißen Blätter in autumn 1915 . This essay contained aggressive swipes at the brother who was not named as well as the central statement: “Spirit is deed that happens for people; - and so be the politician spirit, and the spiritual act! "

Thomas Mann then interrupted his work on the magic mountain . Since October 1915 he has been writing on the observations of an apolitical person , in which he repeatedly referred to "civilization literary figures" as a hostile figure - the older brother who was not named. The first three, still short, chapters were written by January 1916. The second work phase lasted from April 1916 to 1918, so that the printed book was available for the armistice at the end of 1918.

Considerations of an Apolitical is a long, difficult, and polemical book. There are records "which merge a revision of my personal foundations with all sorts of current and time-critical issues in a very daring way". This “amalgamation” runs through the whole book. But comments on current politics remain quite rare and only try to reject the attacks and accusations of the “civilization literary” (Heinrich Mann) based on his patriotic attitude. Political issues of the day, on which he speaks, are: A reform of the Prussian three-class suffrage , which he rejects, although he believes that it is inevitable; or the invasion of the German troops in Belgium, which he defends as well as the sinking of the Lusitania and the unrestricted submarine war . The more important aspect of the work, however, is the attempt to explain the historical and intellectual German special path and to justify a “ Germanness ” that is incompatible with the democratic principles of France, England and the USA.

The fact that Thomas Mann's perception of political and historical reality is primarily shaped by literature can also be seen in his ability to find and quote eideshelpers for his work in literature in order to substantiate his theses. Mann sees himself confirmed above all by the works of Nietzsche , as well as Dostoevsky and Goethe . Other authors who are often cited are Wagner and Schopenhauer , as well as the völkisch authors Julius Langbehn and Paul Anton de Lagarde , who were widely read and noted during the Empire, and Tolstoy and Turgenew from Russian literature .

content

The first chapter, called “Preface” and the last, is a reflection on the work that was written over three years. He cites the main reason why he wrote the huge work: "The insight from which it grew, which made its production seem inevitable, was above all that every work would otherwise have been intellectually overloaded". The magic mountain is meant . The subject of the following chapters of the book is briefly explained. Thomas Mann realizes that, contrary to his intention and title, he has written a very political book. He formulates the fundamental intellectual conflict that he wants to deal with and that he considers to be the cause of the world war as follows:

“The difference between spirit and politics includes that between culture and civilization, between soul and society, between freedom and the right to vote, between art and literature; and Germanness, that is culture, soul, freedom, art and not civilization, society, voting rights, literature. "

In doing so, he is "irrefutably" committed to the conspiracy theory , according to which "the international Illuminati , the Freemason World Lodge " not only prepared the "war of 'civilization' against Germany ", but actually unleashed it. In the following three very short chapters, The Protest , The Unliterary Country and The Civilization Literature, he refers to Dostoevsky . Like him, he describes Germany as the country that has always protested against the Roman Catholic, Western and literary world. As he emphasized several times, Luther gave this protest the “most powerful expression”. As a non-literary country, Germany could only oppose western civilization with its stubborn special will, because it has no word, it is not “word-loving and word-believing”. According to his thesis: "In Germany's soul the spiritual contradictions of Europe are carried out", it is the goal of the civilization writer to assert the ideals of democracy and western civilization against the inner being of Germany.

Thomas Mann explains the meaning of the "triumvirate" Schopenhauer , Wagner and Nietzsche in the chapter Einkehr and shows their influence on his previous work. He interprets your statements, some of which contradict one another, in a “general revision” in accordance with the new conditions in his own way.

In the chapter bourgeoisie he tries to combine artistry and bourgeoisie. Another topic of this chapter is civic life and politics. Like the German citizen, he himself is apolitical and national . The revolution of 1848 he was not regarded as a revolt for democracy, but as a "national storm surge" of the same kind as in August 1914 .

Against law and truth is a reckoning with his brother Heinrich Mann and Romain Rolland , who have both been on the side of the pacifists from the beginning of the war . Thomas Mann defends his war essays in great detail and very polemically against them.

The politics chapter is by far the longest. At first he defines politics as the opposite of aestheticism and names Schiller , Flaubert , Schopenhauer, Tolstoy and Strindberg as examples of aesthetes . Aestheticism means that "everything that is merely said is conditional and vulnerable, however absolute and apodictic it is felt at the moment" and that "the spiritual, the intellectual is never taken very seriously". Nevertheless, he sees democracy asserting itself all over the world, including Germany. By Nietzsche he means that Germany was politicized and nationalized through Bismarck's unification. He rejects any further democratization of the state constitution on the basis of the victims of the people in the war.

Von der Virtue turns against the arrogant use of civilization's literary writers of catchphrases such as freedom, justice or truth, which the latter alone consider virtuous.

Thomas Mann praises suffering, humility, service and obedience under the heading Some About Humanity . For him, humanity means knowing about the “weakness, helplessness and wretchedness” of human beings, whereas the politician tries to “ruin life in all seriousness, all dignity, all gravity and responsibility” when, for example, he opposes the death penalty. He praises war as “refining” and “refining” people in the face of death.

In the section On Faith , he presents another contrast: the faith of the civilization literary against the doubts of the citizen. The bourgeois age began with doubts about the authoritarian Christian Middle Ages. True belief is not belief in any principles, words and ideas such as freedom, equality, democracy, civilization and progress, but belief in God, i. H. the belief in love, in life and in art.

The chapter on Aesthetic Politics expands the opposition between the politician and the aesthetic already discussed under Politics . He also describes the political artist as an esthete, because it is a matter of being an artist, albeit a false one, "half, intellectual, wanted and artificial". Such an artist demands that art must have political consequences, which, however, is only a means to the end of his success. Basically, the political artist also knows that opinions do not count in the artistic, so in case of doubt he withdraws with his politics behind art.

Finally, in the last chapter Irony and Radicalism , Thomas Mann defends his own irony-shaped work against the sentimental and intellectual art of civilization literary. The ideas of aesthetics developed here remain valid for all of Thomas Mann's work, even after he had overcome the polemical glorification of war.

Reflections on Tonio Kröger and Buddenbrooks

Thomas Mann classifies his works Tonio Kröger and Buddenbrooks as follows: “If 'Tonio Kröger' is ' Immensee ' transformed into the modern problematic , a synthesis of intellectualism and mood, of Nietzsche and Storm , as I said, Lukacs speaks in that study It appears that in the case of Buddenbrooks' late consciousness (which has nothing to do with rank) made possible the monumentalization of the mood of decay that surrounds Storm's bourgeois world. Ethics, middle-class decay; they belong together, they are one. Doesn't music also belong to it? I remember the words with which, according to oral tradition, Stefan George rejected my 'Buddenbrooks':' No 'he said,' That is nothing for me. It's still music and decay. ' Yet! Late, even belated bourgeoisie made me a decline analyst; and that 'ethical air', the moral pessimism (with music) that I claimed to have received from Schopenhauer and Wagner, it was rather what I found in these European Germans as myself and my own, what made me think of him from the start pulled and led. "

The "Conservative Revolution"

The considerations of a non-political can be assigned to a current of intellectual history called the Conservative Revolution . After the defeat in World War I and the collapse of the monarchy, many intellectuals shared the idea that only through something revolutionary new could the old conservative ideals, which often stemmed from Romanticism and its defense against the French Revolution , can be preserved. There was agreement in the rejection of the Weimar Republic .

Until his speech Von deutscher Republik , Thomas Mann was also one of the supporters of this “conservative revolution”. He even used this formula as one of the first, as well as the term “third empire” (as early as the end of 1912 in the essay Zu Fiorenza ). In his considerations , he speaks of the future people's state that needs to be realized, beyond Western democracy and the capitalism associated with it, and beyond socialism as it was about to develop in Russia. With these considerations he wants to prove the special position of Germany between East and West, so there are several thoughts of "German center".

In the context of the conservative revolution, the considerations continued - if only marginally. So refers Georg Quabbe explicitly to the work and it recommends the German National to read.

expenditure

  • Considerations of an apolitical . S. Fischer, Berlin 1918; first new edition 1920.
  • Considerations of an apolitical . With an introduction by Erika Mann. Version of the first edition from 1918 (Stockholm Complete Edition. Volume 11). S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1956.
  • Considerations of an apolitical (Political Writings and Speeches. Volume 1). S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main / Hamburg 1968.
  • Considerations of an apolitical . Afterword by Hanno Helbling (Frankfurt edition). S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1983 (reprint 2001).
  • Considerations of an apolitical. With a foreword by Hanno Helbling. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2001 (4th edition 2009).
  • Considerations of a non-political (large commented Frankfurter edition. Works, letters, diaries), Vol. 13. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009.
    • Volume 1: Text volume. Edited and critically reviewed by Hermann Kurzke . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009.
    • Volume 2: Commentary. From Hermann Kurzke. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009.

Translations

  • Considerazioni di un impolitico . Presentazione, traduzione e note from Marianello Marianelli. De Donato Editore, Bari 1967.
  • Considérations d'un apolitique . Trad. by Louise Servicen et Jeanne Neujac. Introd. de Jacques Brenner. Grasset, Paris 1975.
  • Consideraciones de un apolítico . Trad. by León Mames. Grijalbo, Barcelona 1978.
  • Reflections of a nonpolitical man . Translated, with an introduction, by Walter D. Morris. Ungar, New York 1983.
  • En opolitisk mans betraktelser . Translation by Per Landin and Urban Lindström , Bokförlaget Atlantis , Stockholm 2012.

Secondary literature

  • Michael Ansel (ed.): The invention of the writer Thomas Mann . De Gruyter, Berlin 2009.
  • Michael Vollmer : Against the Mésalliance. Thomas Mann's image of Russia in the “Considerations of an Unpolitical” . Lit-Verlag, Berlin [u. a.] 2009.
  • Michael Vollmer: The power of pictures. Thomas Mann and the First World War . be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2014.
  • Thomas Assheuer : War ennobles people . Is it all just a game of words? Thomas Mann's notorious “Considerations of an Apolitical” in a new edition. In: The time . No. 10 , March 4, 2010, p. 44 ( zeit.de ).

Web links

Wikibooks: Thomas Mann's remarks on art in “Considerations of the Apolitical”  - learning and teaching materials

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Herbert Wiesner: Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann. Bourgeois culture and social civilization - approaches and divergences of a brother couple. In: The Great , ed. v. Kurt Fassmann, Vol. X, Zurich 1978, pp. 54–79, here pp. 61ff.
  2. ↑ Hans Wysling: For the introduction. In: Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann: Briefwechsel 1900–1949 , ed. v. Hans Wysling, Frankfurt am Main 1975, p. Lf.
  3. ↑ Preface, p. XXXIII.
  4. ↑ Preface, p. XXXV, emphasis in the original; Michael Butter : "Nothing is what it seems". About conspiracy theories . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2018, p. 149 f.
  5. ↑ Chapter “Bürgerlichkeit”, in: Considerations einer Unpolitischen , with a foreword by Erika Mann , Frankfurt am Main 1956, p. 98.
  6. ↑ Georg Quabbe, Tar a Ri. Variations on a conservative theme , Berlin 1927 (reprint 2007), p. 5f.