The German Genius

entitled to. “The battle for the mind of the masses as the central drama of modernity had begun and it developed in Germany with particular ferocity.” 40
    The central problem—culturally speaking—was how to create a cohesive identity of the masses in the new growing industrial conurbations, which were living entities never seen before. Germany lacked unifying symbols more than did other European nations, which made its industrial areas more disparate, more disaggregated than anywhere else. The result was a divide into “a majority which saw culture as serving the greater glory of the nation and a minority which cherished critical independence from authority, both secular and ecclesiastical.” 41
    In time, this division would come to matter. Volkskultur would acquire a mystical quality, which sustained and enriched the masses. Whereas for Herder and the Grimm brothers, culture had defined and unified Germany and helped explain her to herself, as the nineteenth century progressed, and as “Volk” and “Masse” more and more came to mean the same thing, the alternative quality of Volkskultur, the alternative to the classical Latin culture, acquired increasingly triumphal overtones. In the latter half of the century, as we shall see, Germany’s industrial achievements—involving the masses—inherited this understanding and this attitude. Germans thought of themselves (as they were) as leading the way in both high culture and mass culture, which was an expression of Volkskultur. That form of self-understanding first emerged in the Biedermeier period.

“German Fever” in France, Britain, and the United States
     
    “T HE T EMPEST IN P ETTICOATS”
     
    The raft of changes in Germany that have been the subject of the opening chapters did not go unnoticed, or unremarked, in the world outside. The first—and in many ways still the most remarkable—observer of Germany of that time was Germaine de Staël, a French-speaking Swiss writer who spent most of her time in Paris, becoming the most famous woman of her day. Rich and independent, Madame de Staël suffered the misfortune of being unattractive—an unpardonable sin in Paris. All this, plus her uncompromising intellectual brilliance and her determination to be involved actively in the affairs of her day, meant that she clashed repeatedly with Napoleon. 1 She was also a Protestant and therefore always something of an outsider. Her book De l’Allemagne (On Germany; published only with much difficulty in 1810), is nonetheless an impressive tour d’horizon of German culture, which introduced the new literature and Romantic philosophy to the attention of the French (and then to the rest of Europe). 2
    During the Revolution, she had been enthusiastic about its aims, if not all of its methods. She left Paris during the Terror but returned and, during the 1790s, became famous for her salon and her so-called duel with Napoleon. In her several novels, she championed the role of women such as herself, which the first consul/emperor objected to, and she was directed to live forty leagues from Paris. This was what provoked her visit to Germany.
    Before she left Paris, she took German lessons with Wilhelm von Humboldt, then the Prussian ambassador in France (it was he who had convinced her of the renaissance in German culture). She traveled quickly to reach Weimar. Weimar itself, for all its achievements, “trembled” at the news of her imminent arrival. It was, we should never forget, a society “which both copied and despised French culture,” and her arrival could not help but be a major event.
    To the surprise of all concerned, the grand duke and his wife hit it off with their exotic visitor, this “Tempest in Petticoats.” They were alternately charmed and intrigued by her outlandish turbans and revealing gowns, the “whiff of Parisian chic ” that such clothes brought with them. Goethe had been a bit standoffish at first. He had been friendly enough at a distance, helping to arrange the German translations of Madame de Staël’s books. But now, he said, if they were to meet, she must come to him—at Jena. The duke, however, was so enjoying her company that he instructed Goethe to return to Weimar. At first, Madame de Staël wasn’t sure the author was worth the trouble. “Goethe ruins my ideal image of Werther ; he is a fat man without distinction to look at, who likes to think he is a man of the world but only half succeeds.” She never rid