The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany: 1890 - 1990 Volume 2

by Steven E. Aschheim

Book Overview

Countless attempts have been made to appropriate the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche for diverse cultural and political ends, but nowhere have these efforts been more sustained and of greater consequence... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520085558
• ISBN13: 9780520085558
• Release Date: February 1994
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 337 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

All Things to All Ubermenschen

"Because both Nietzsche and Nazism are central to the twentieth-century experience and because both retain their symbolic explosiveness, the disputed nature of their relationship has become a defining part of the cultural and ideological landscape, one index to our perceptions of the modern world" (232). This brilliant quote provides in a nutshell the basic existential weight of Steven E. Aschheim's fascinating historiographical work concerning the many mis/uses of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche in Germany between 1890 and 1990. It has become customary - and for good reason, too - to see in Friedrich Nietzsche, the self-proclaimed "anti-Christ" of the late 19th century, a type of proto-Nazism, particularly in its glorification of aesthetics at the expense of any metaphysical notions of human dignity. Although this may - and perhaps even should - be the way that Nietzsche is thought of, Aschheim shows that it is by no means necessary that this should be the case. The book very much could have been titled "The Nietzsche Legacies in Germany 1890 - 1990". St. Paul exhorted the early Christians to be "all things to all people". In what Nietzsche himself would likely consider a delightful twisting of Paul's words, we can truly write that Nietzsche was, after the time of his insanity (and even more so after his death), "all things to all Ubermenschen (overmen)". Briefly, Nietzsche proclaimed "the Overman" who would lead humanity to a more Dionysian (as opposed to more Christian) "humanity". He knew that some would consider him this great human-overcoming-of-humanity, but in his greatest (or at least most literate) work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche denied it, painting himself as a type of proto-prophet, prophesying about the prophet who would truly point the way to the Ubermensch/Overman. This concept of the Overman - of being the Overman - seems to have caught on in Germany quite quickly. Perhaps as with all religions - and it does indeed seem that there really was a type of Nietzschean religion (even temples dedicated to him were designed, but not built - there were as many interpretations of Nietzsche after his death as there were followers of Nietzsche. It seems that early on, he was the most popular among the avant-garde in Germany, but by first World War, he had become a household name. During the Great War, an Englishman even dubbed it the "Euro-Nietzschean War"; it appears that by this time Nietzsche was known internationally and his influence on the Germans just as much. There is a type of subplot to this book, however, and that is the quest of certain Germans in the 20th century to subsume Nietzsche to a type of ahistoric German-ness: there were some, for instance, who would drawn a straight line from Martin Luther's longing for freedom to Friedrich Nietzsche's ultimate rejection of Christianity. The idea of a German religion and a German mysticism (which actually is at least as old Martin Luther, who polemically titled - a

Intellectual history with a definite point of view

I would like to maintain an absolute neutrality concerning the book, THE NIETZSCHE LEGACY IN GERMANY 1890-1990 by Steven E. Aschheim, Associate Professor of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1992, when this book was published. I would only wish to comment on a tiny point which concerns me greatly. The book provides a scholarly look at the manifold positions taken by those who have read Nietzsche and have expressed opinions regarding German nationalism, particularly regarding Zarathustra in the trenches in World War I, the Third Reich, National Socialism, and Nazism. Notes are at the bottom of each page, but many names and a few topics can be located in the book by using the index on pages 331-337. The index has three minor entries for music. In this season, I am concerned about music as a form of artistic expression which allows someone to communicate a message that surpasses logical forms. Overall, Nietzsche might be associated with a form of transcendental irony that throws in comments about music whenever philosophy seems to be missing the boat on which he would like to embark. A quick look in the index of THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY establishes that Nietzsche wrote about German music and German songs in sections 19, 23, and 24 in the first edition of 1872, and even more aptly in sections 6 and 7 of the "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" added at the beginning of that book (BT) in 1886. "But let the liar and the hypocrite beware of German music: for amid all our culture it is really the only genuine, pure, and purifying fire-spirit from which and toward which, as in the teaching of the great Heraclitus of Ephesus, all things move in a double orbit: all that we now call culture, education, civilization, must some day appear before the unerring judge, Dionysus." (BT, section 19, Tr. by Walter Kaufmann, p. 120). Nietzsche thought the key to culture was in its highest form, "if only it can learn constantly from one people--the Greeks, from whom to be able to learn at all is itself a high honor and a rare distinction." (BT, p. 121). In 1918, Ernst Bertram's NIETZSCHE: AN ATTEMPT AT A MYTHOLOGY appeared in Germany. In it, Nietzsche's analysis of German spirit as a link to the primitive spiritual power which Nietzsche expected music to express, seriously opposes a pallid form of civilization: "The identity of music and Germanism which the young Nietzsche sensed everywhere enabled him to perceive this Germanism as the most serious and eternal opponent of everything that was mere civilization. ... (The idea of the polarization between civilization and culture is as typically Nietzschean as it is typically German.)" (Aschheim, p. 150). As an American, I am more likely to associate rock 'n' roll with an ability to assert ultimate values, but the need for an intellectual analysis of the difference between rock's potential and the dominance of commercial forms acceptable within modern society seems to be the same as Nietzsche's prefer

Tragedian or tragic hero?

Like the battle for the body of Patroclus, conflicting interpretations of Nietzsche are strewn across the twentieth century, leaving few proofs of a triumph of the will. Between the irrationalism indicted by Lukacs and the vigorous liberal depicted by Kaufmann, we are still in search of Nietzsche. The work of Kaufmann,especially, was a critical first step to any reevaluation of this legacy. Yet its perspective fails to completely account for the record and the shadow behind the man, now too often exempted of the implications of his own savage eloquence. This work is a corrective and traces the whole history of the question from the 1890's onward, and resummons the grim stages of Nietzsche's appropriation by preposterous figures of all hues. From the not-so-discrete Nietzscheanism of the avant-garde to the Zarathustra in the trenches of World War I to the phantom of the opera during the Third Reich the horrific travesties seem too recurrent to release their author from all complicity, even as they leave the deeper Nietzsche intact. It is difficult not to swing between extremes of interpretation here, and the book carefully constructs the middle ground, as we pass on and say goodbye to all that.The book details that several hundred thousand copies of Zarathustra were printed for distribution to the soldiers in the trenches during Great War. One can begin to deduce the rest from that.