The German Genius

Author’s Note
     
    I n The Proud Tower , her splendid book about Europe in the run up (or run down) to World War I, Barbara Tuchman, the American historian, describes an incident in which Philip Ernst, the artist father of the surrealist Max Ernst, was painting a picture of his garden when he omitted a tree that spoiled the composition. Then, “overcome with remorse” at his offense against realism, he cut down the tree.
    It is a good story. If one had to make a criticism it might be that it falls into the trap of stereotyping Germans—as sticklers for exactitude, as pedantic and literal-minded. Part of the point of the book you are holding (as with the quotations given before the Table of Contents) is to go beyond stereotypes but also to show that the stereotypes peoples have of themselves can be as misleading—and as dangerous—as the stereotypes their neighbors, rivals, and enemies have of them.
    That is far from being the only point of the book, of course, which aims to be a history of German ideas over the past 250 years, from the death of Bach. No one can be an expert on such a long period, and in the course of my research I have been helped by a number of people whose assistance I would like to acknowledge here, some of whom have read all or parts of the typescript and offered suggestions for improvement. None of the names that follow, all of whom I thank warmly, is responsible for such errors, omissions, and solecisms that remain.
    My first debt is to George (Lord) Weidenfeld, who encouraged me in this project and opened countless doors in Germany. I next thank Keith Bullivant, an old friend, now professor of Modern German Studies at the University of Florida but someone who, in 1970, with R. H. Thomas, founded the first ever Department of German Studies, at Warwick University. This is a direction now followed throughout the English-speaking world. But I also extend my gratitude to: Charles Aldington, Rosemary Ashton, Volker Berghahn, Tom Bower, Neville Conrad, Claudia Amthor-Croft, Ralf Dahrendorf, Bernd Ebert, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Joachim Fest, Corinne Flick, Gert-Rudolf Flick, Andrew Gordon, Roland Goll, Karin Graf, Ronald Grierson, David Henn, Johannes Jacob, Joachim Kaiser, Marion Kazemi, Wolf-Hagen Krauth, Martin Kremer, Michael Krüger, Manfred Lahnstein, Jerry Living, Robert Gerald Livingston, Günther Lottes, Constance Lowenthal, Inge Märkl, Christoph Mauch, Gisela Mettele, Richard Meyer, Peter Nitze, Andrew Nurnberg, Sabine Pfannensteil-Wright, Richard Pfennig, Werner Pfennig, Elisabeth Pyroth, Darius Rahimi, Ingeborg Reichle, Rudiger Safranski, Anne-Marie Schleich, Angela Schneider, Jochen Schneider, Kirsten Schroder, Hagen Schulze, Bernd Schuster, Bernd Seerbach, Kurt-Victor Selge, Fritz Stern, Lucia Stock, Robin Straus, Hans Strupp, Michael Stürmer, Patricia Sutcliffe, Clare Unger, Fritz Unger, and David Wilkinson.
    At the end of this book there are many pages of references. In addition to those, however, I would like to place on record my debt to a number of books on which I have relied especially heavily—all are classics of their kind. Alphabetically by author/editor they are: T. C. W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660–1789 (Oxford, 2002); John Cornwell, Hitler’s Scientists: Science, War and the Devil’s Pact (Penguin, 2003); Steve Crawshaw, Easier Fatherland: Germany and the Twenty-First Century (Continuum, 2004); Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried van der Will, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture (Cambridge, 1998); Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth-Century German Biology (Chicago, 1982); Bryan Magee, Wagner and Philosophy (Penguin, 2000); Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton, 1996); Peter Hanns Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley, 1975); Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (Chicago, 2002). I also wish to thank the staff of the Goethe Institute, London, as well as the staffs at the cultural and press sections of the German Embassy in London, at the London Library, the Wiener Library, and at the German Historical Institutes in London and Washington, D.C.
    A few paragraphs of this book overlap with material used in my earlier books. They are indicated at the appropriate places in the references. A handful of German