The Seduction of Culture in German

[Dave Monroe]

Lepenies, Wolf.  The Seduction of Culture in German
  History.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2006.

During the Allied bombing of Germany, Hitler was more
distressed by the loss of cultural treasures than by
the leveling of homes. Remarkably, his propagandists
broadcast this fact, convinced that it would reveal
not his callousness but his sensitivity: the
destruction had failed to crush his artist's spirit.
It is impossible to begin to make sense of this
thinking without understanding what Wolf Lepenies
calls The Seduction of Culture in German History.

This fascinating and unusual book tells the story of
an arguably catastrophic German habit--that of valuing
cultural achievement above all else and envisioning it
as a noble substitute for politics. Lepenies examines
how this tendency has affected German history from the
late eighteenth century to today. He argues that the
German preference for art over politics is essential
to understanding the peculiar nature of Nazism,
including its aesthetic appeal to many Germans (and
others) and the fact that Hitler and many in his
circle were failed artists and intellectuals who seem
to have practiced their politics as a substitute form
of art.

In a series of historical, intellectual, literary, and
artistic vignettes told in an essayistic style full of
compelling aphorisms, this wide-ranging book pays
special attention to Goethe and Thomas Mann, and also
contains brilliant discussions of such diverse figures
as Novalis, Walt Whitman, Leo Strauss, and Allan
Bloom. The Seduction of Culture in German History is
concerned not only with Germany, but with how the
German obsession with culture, sense of cultural
superiority, and scorn of politics have affected its
relations with other countries, France and the United
States in particular.

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8143.html

Introduction

BOMBS OVER DRESDEN AND THE ROSENKAVALIER IN THE SKIES 

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i8143.html

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/i8143.pdf

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