The lust for doom

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The lust for downfall (self-talk at the federal level) is the title of a collection of culturally critical essays by Friedrich Sieburg . In the work published in 1954 he dealt with the conditions in post-war Germany and went into detail on the role of the writer and intellectual.

In addition to the analysis of time, Sieburg looked for general German characteristics and repeatedly came across a lack of national identity. The vacillation between extreme conditions - megalomania and self-hatred, provincialism and cosmopolitanism - was for him a sign of a lack of maturity, which could have an effect on the political as well as the spiritual.

Sieburg was faced with the question of how to carry out reconstruction work based on spiritual traditions in a country that had been morally and politically disqualified by the lost Second World War .

The title of the work developed into a catchphrase .

content

For Sieburg, Germany lost itself after the war between indifference and egoism. Instead of mutual accusations, internal political conflicts of conscience and attempts to regain reputation abroad, a new modus vivendi had to be found. Because of the intellectual climate after the catastrophe of National Socialism , it was not easy to look for a new national identity.

The conditions in the Federal Republic are detrimental to intellectual life and leveled out the qualitative differences in such a way that the majority of the state-organized "incapable" are entitled to join in a lament that the able only "hesitantly says."

For the cultural pessimist Sieburg, there were hardly any intellectuals left in Germany; most of them have been replaced by the "strange folk" of cultural workers, a species that is preoccupied with despising or envying one another.

His hope to humanize people is basically a presumptuous dream because of the envy of the Germans. The Germans suffered from a constitutional inability to maintain moderation and stumbled between the extremes, such as extreme humanity and the no less pronounced tendency to violence.

The crowd adjust their way of life to the upper class , listen to their posture and movement and adorn themselves with their symbols. Nothing is more mendacious than the imitation of the upper class, disguised with egalitarian idioms, who themselves do not have the courage to acknowledge their height.

The social position is mainly felt to be unnatural because the “spirit of denunciation” that dominates the social mood rejects the segregation of an upper class; not because there is no difference. Sieburg's lamented envy created its own jargon and a subtle form of hypocrisy. It is directed less against material overweight than against the expression of internal and external independence, "beauty, elegance and joie de vivre". The hatred of culture that legitimized Adolf Hitler follows a resentment against individual development, is directed against the individual as well as against "happier peoples" and also brings every German into discord with himself. For a humanistically oriented person it is "impossible to be happy in Germany."

The book was published at a time that was marked on the one hand by fears of doom during the Cold War , on the other hand by the optimism of the economic rise, which, under the "fatal name" economic miracle, is the origin of puzzling research. For example, Sieburg commented on the tendency of the media to constantly predict the end of the world through a nuclear war as tearful, almost unbearable loquacity. It is also absurd because you work on external representation on the other side. Society has no remedy against pessimism and allows the press to manipulate it. On the other hand, there was the decadent consumerism, which found a strange mixture with pessimism. Sieburg lamented the lack of tradition of the Germans, who devoted themselves to the present without reservation, succumbed to the lure of consumption and, through conformity, found themselves in new dependencies.

Sieburg also interpreted the national feeling against the common critical interpretation. The lack of reference to history, combined with political immaturity, is responsible for the susceptibility to National Socialism. The prevailing interpretation, however, leads to the robbery of all role models. This has already led to a unique German self-hatred - the real gods have also been driven out with the wrong ones. Trying to avoid making the same mistakes was precisely what prevented us from learning from the past. Basically, the Germans are overwhelmed by the burden of recent German history. The astonishingly quick success of the reconstruction creates the illusion that one can escape responsibility. Germany has no identity, neither spiritually nor geographically.

Clear references to Thomas Mann's “Leiden an Deutschland” (the title of the published diary pages from 1933 and 1944) are clear from the title of a chapter in which Sieburg outlined the painful lot of the creative man, suffering from Germany and it "But not to be able to do without." As Thomas Mann at the end of his lecture did not want to divide Germany and the Germans Germany into good and bad, Sieburg stated that one could not participate in the good of German cultural affiliation without at the same time acknowledging the dark . The German essence is indivisible.

The "refugee existence" of the Germans can only be endured thanks to the hope of a European community within which Germany can get over the loss of territory and separation. The dream of Europe has become a necessity for Germany.

In view of the contradictory character of the Federal German, who strictly organize the carnival and make it subservient to consumption, only look up to representatives of sunken royal houses or movie stars and feel destined for doom in the face of the nuclear threat, the fears of Europe and the world would not evaporate . The problematic dual character of the “German genius” shows itself in the destruction as well as the creation, and before the German economic miracle, which is inherent in the tendency to go up in flames after a few decades, the world remains worried.

background

In Hugo von Hofmannsthal , the Praeceptor Germaniae, the "brightness of the German educational age is reflected."

Sieburg's conservative-aristocratic image of man and his resulting criticism is shaped by Friedrich Nietzsche's pathos of distance as well as by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann , whose work he classified as the greatest cultural-critical achievement that the “German spirit produced”.

Although Sieburg broke away from the George School at an early stage , its aestheticism , an intellectual aristocratism and a solemn literary concept that was always directed towards the extraordinary of the individual achievement remained formative . To the culturally conservative critic, the Federal Republic appeared to be a zone devoid of tradition, whose citizens had devoted themselves to conformism and in which the masses dictated brutal taste. For him, an expression of conformity was a lack of morality and manners, good taste and politeness. Sieburg described the dilemma of succumbing to the zeitgeist without being aware of tradition and thus not being able to deal with the past sufficiently, which, on the other hand, was difficult to face after 1945.

With his reflections, Sieburg took up a problem that he had already dealt with in his book Let There Be Germany in 1930 : The Germans' lack of identity awareness, the “people without a center”. The lack of “German wholeness” in comparison to the English or French situation and the untraceable core of one's own - a state that could be expressed in the words of Dolf Sternberger “We don't know who we are”.

Twenty years earlier Sieburg had described the astonishment at the astonishingly complex, at the same time elusive “German essence”, which, if one tries to research it, turns out to be nebulous, with partly identical words. The contradictions came to light for him in the moral and cultural realms. One is still "barbaric, now refined and vicious", "yesterday chaotic, today pedantic ... sometimes a demon, sometimes a philistine ... sometimes danger, sometimes hope." Sieburg had also asked about the essence of Germany in view of the "enormous [cultural] achievements" of Germany - and reached into the void. There was talk of a myth with contradicting, almost eerie features and also of the moral dangers that arose from it.

Four years after the work was published, Sieburg published an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in which he predicted the end of national thought. The self-determination of the peoples is about to lose its meaning. The historical deficit of Germany is less important and the European idea is promoted.

In 1961 he described the loss of "good company", a not undisputed but appropriate term because of the correct appearance. The upper class had merged into the faceless "gray crowd" through its own fault. She did not offer enough resistance, possessed too little taste and mastery, dignity and manners to set standards and establish lasting norms . Today's social ambition is limited to a few upstarts who want to be seen “at cocktail parties” and who try to fake a certain style.

classification

After the devastation of World War II, the reconstruction work, which Sieburg's literary criticism must be regarded as up to the 1950s, should only start with the “spiritual”.

The diagnosis of a lack of German national identity can be seen as the background to his journalism critical of literature. His work saw itself primarily as a contribution to national identity . With literary essays and critical reviews he endeavored to draft an intellectual national history, to sound out national sensitivities and in this way to operate a time criticism .

For him literature was a medium that should enable Germans to make sure of themselves; with it as a “national cause” he wanted to work out the outlines of the complex, elusive nature of German culture.

Sieburg's assessment of social cohesion corresponded to the tenor of intellectual development work. What connects people is not the political institutions or the borders with their “violent randomness”, but the “spiritual charisma that German is capable of from time to time”.

Karl Jaspers , who urged the examination of conscience, had already pointed out shortly after the war that politically unhappy Germany could at least build on its intellectual achievements in its attempt to become a member of the family again. Like Sieburg, Jaspers had extolled the heights of German culture.

While many conservative intellectuals were working on a re-education program that was based on the intellectual peaks of German culture, despite the obvious connection point in Goethe's work, there was ultimately a disagreement as to whose tradition one should fall back on in order to convey democratic awareness. Many writers and publicists wanted to stick to the “German inwardness” in order to “immerse themselves in the essentials, far from the course of the world.” This tendency was accompanied by a preference for authors of inner emigration such as Werner Bergengruen and Hans Carossa . Sieburg, however, rejected this attitude and turned against the political ivory tower of German inwardness. Literature should not be removed from the overall area of ​​public life.

In the "Lust am Untergang" (Lust for Downfall) Sieburg once again oriented himself towards France by - like Hofmannsthal in his literary speech - emphasizing and praising the social inclusion of literature. Germany also needs "literature as an institution, as a national matter."

Inability to form and language decay , disregard for convention and taste resulted for Sieburg from a primeval German, dialectical problem: the inability for a pragmatic way of life on the one hand and the tendency towards the absolute on the other. With this diagnosis Sieburg stands in the tradition of a criticism of the German special consciousness , which is described by characteristics such as inwardness, escape from the world and profound systematic thinking and is of romantic origin.

reception

For Sieburg, Thomas Mann's work was the greatest cultural critical achievement of the German spirit

In a letter to his daughter Erika , Thomas Mann described the critic Sieburg, who had recently written an enthusiastic review of Felix Krull , as a “peculiar head”, but praised his “lust for downfall” as a book that “expresses itself find clever and stylistically superior things ”. Everything was shaped by Sieburg's un-German motto of viewing literature as criticism. He must have criticized himself a lot and "doesn't speak affectionately of the Federal Republic."

Joachim Fest characterized Sieburg as the most influential literary critic of the first post-war phase, as an authority founded on extensive education and brilliant art of formulation.

The proverbial formula of the "lust for downfall" is more than a cynical punch line that has been suspected across all political rifts behind it. The work was intended as an analysis of “symptoms and backgrounds of federal German disaffections”, but it was more of a reflection of the author's moods and depressions. For all the diagnostic joke, it brought fewer pieces of thought than rationalized sighs to the present. The author's personal injuries would have darkened the objects and influenced Sieburg's infallible perception. It is true that the personal style and the individual color of his reflections have always been the determining force, and writing itself is an expression of narcissism that has become stylish . In previous years, style and objective description of the condition had always been balanced, while now the increased vulnerability was described rather than the existing situation.

literature

Text output

Secondary literature

  • Tilman Krause : With France against the German special consciousness. Friedrich Sieburg's ways and changes in this century (= Diss. FU Berlin 1990). Academy, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-002385-6
  • Cecilia von Buddenbrock: Friedrich Sieburg (1893–1964). A German journalist facing the challenge of a century . Societätsverlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-7973-1031-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cecilia von Buddenbrock, Friedrich Sieburg, A German Journalist Before the Challenge of the Century, Die Lust am Untergang, Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 2007, p. 235
  2. ↑ Cecilia von Buddenbrock, Friedrich Sieburg, A German Journalist Before the Challenge of the Century, Die Lust am Untergang, Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 2007, p. 236
  3. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Abmarsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Ed. Klaus Harpprecht, Stuttgart 1983, p. 212
  4. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Abmarsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Ed. Klaus Harpprecht, Stuttgart 1983, p. 212
  5. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Marsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1983, p. 216
  6. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Abmarsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Ed. Klaus Harpprecht, Stuttgart 1983, p. 215
  7. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Abmarsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Ed. Klaus Harpprecht, Stuttgart 1983, p. 215
  8. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Abmarsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Ed. Klaus Harpprecht, Stuttgart 1983, p. 215
  9. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Abmarsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Ed. Klaus Harpprecht, Stuttgart 1983, p. 220
  10. ↑ Cecilia von Buddenbrock, Friedrich Sieburg, A German Journalist Before the Challenge of the Century, Die Lust am Untergang, Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 2007, p. 237
  11. ↑ Cecilia von Buddenbrock, Friedrich Sieburg, A German Journalist Before the Challenge of the Century, Die Lust am Untergang, Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 2007, p. 240
  12. ↑ Thomas Mann, Collected Works in Thirteen Volumes, Volume 12, speeches and essays, “Leiden an Deutschland”, p. 84, Fischer, Frankfurt, 1974
  13. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Marsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1983, p. 215
  14. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Peace with Thomas Mann, On Literature 1924–1956, DVA, Stuttgart 1981, p. 217
  15. ↑ Joachim Fest , Friedrich Sieburg, A Portrait Without Reason, Fleeting Size, Collected Essays on Literature and Art, Rowohlt, Hamburg 2008, p. 156
  16. ↑ Cecilia von Buddenbrock, Friedrich Sieburg, A German Journalist Before the Challenge of the Century, Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 2007, p. 227
  17. ↑ Friedrich Sieburg, Marsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1983, p. 217
  18. ↑ Cecilia von Buddenbrock, Friedrich Sieburg, A German Journalist Before the Challenge of the Century, Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 2007, p. 227
  19. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Marsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1983, p. 221
  20. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Abmarsch in die Barbarei, Let Germany, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 80-81
  21. ↑ Cecilia von Buddenbrock, Friedrich Sieburg, A German Journalist Before the Challenge of the Century, Die Lust am Untergang, Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 2007, p. 241
  22. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Lauter last days , Do we have a social style ?, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1963, p. 340
  23. ↑ Friedrich Sieburg, Lauter last days , Do we have a social style ?, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1963, p. 342
  24. ^ Tilman Krause , With France against the German special consciousness, Friedrich Sieburgs ways and changes in this century, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 191
  25. ^ Tilman Krause, With France against the German special consciousness, Friedrich Sieburgs ways and changes in this century, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 191
  26. ^ Friedrich Sieburg, Marsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1983, p. 329
  27. ^ Tilman Krause, With France against the German special consciousness, Friedrich Sieburgs ways and changes in this century, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 193
  28. ^ Tilman Krause, With France against the German special consciousness, Friedrich Sieburg's ways and changes in this century, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 201
  29. ↑ Thomas Mann, Letters 1948–1955 and review, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1968, p. 383
  30. ↑ Joachim Fest, Friedrich Sieburg, A Portrait Without Reason, Fleeting Size, Collected Essays on Literature and Art, Rowohlt, Hamburg 2008, p. 152
  31. ↑ Joachim Fest, Friedrich Sieburg, A Portrait Without Reason, Fleeting Size, Collected Essays on Literature and Art, Rowohlt, Hamburg 2008, p. 171