1. Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebuch, 13 August 1891. All citations from Kessler's journals refer to the unpublished diaries kept in the Kessler Nachlass at the German National Literary Archives in Marbach am Neckar, unless otherwise noted. All translations from the German are my own.

2. The “First Weimar” was dominated by Goethe; the “Second” by Franz Liszt.

3. Paret, Peter, The Berlin Secession: Modernism and its Enemies in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1980), 246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Among the recent scholarship on art and politics in Imperial Germany are Glaser, Hermann, Bildungsbürgertum und Nationalismus: Politik und Kultur im Wilhelminischen Deutschland (Munich, 1993)Google Scholar; Jelavich, Peter, Munich and Theatrical Modernism: Politics, Playwriting, and Performance, 1890–1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1985)Google Scholar; Makela, Maria, The Munich Secession: Art and Artists in Tum-of-the-Century Munich (Princeton, 1990)Google Scholar; Mommsen, Wolfgang J., “Culture and Politics in the German Empire, ” in his Imperial Germany, 1867–1918: Politics, Culture, and Society in an Authoritarian State (New York, 1995)Google Scholar; idem, , Bürgerliche Kultur und künstlerische Avantgarde: Kultur und Politik im deutschen Kaiserreich, 1870 bis 1918 (Frankfurt am Main, 1994)Google Scholar; Nipperdey, Thomas, Wie das Bürgertum die Moderne fand (Berlin, 1988)Google Scholar; Paret, Peter and Lewis, Beth Irwin, “Art, Society, and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany,” Journal of Modern History 57 (1985): 696–710CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jensen, Robert, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siécle Europe (Princeton, 1994)Google Scholar, which, although it also discusses modernism in France, treats the reception of aesthetic modernism in Germany at length.

4. On the Rodin scandal see Volker Wahl's article, “Die Jenaer Ehrenpromotion von Auguste Rodin und der ‘Rodin-Skandal’ zu Weimar 1905/06,” in Wahl, Volker, Jena als Kunststadt: 1900–1933 (Leipzig, 1988).Google Scholar

5. Most of this article is based on my dissertation entitled “The Red Count: The Life & Times of Harry Kessler, 1868–1914 (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1991), and my forthcoming biography of Kessler, under contract with the University of California Press. The discovery, in a bank vault in Mallorca in 1983, of Kessler's missing diaries from 1902–1912 has sparked renewed interest in the man and his thought and in 1988 his selected writings were published in Germany as Gesammelte Schrifien, ed. Schuster, Gerhard (Frankfurt am Main, 1988)Google Scholar [henceforth abbreviated as GS, vols. 1–3]. See also the catalogue, containing many excerpts from the unpublished diaries, published by the Schillergesellschaft, Deutsche, Harry Graf Kessler: Tagebuch eines Weltmannes, ed. Schuster, Gerhard and Pehle, Margot, Kataloge, Marbacher 43 (Marbach am Neckar, 1988).Google Scholar Recently a number of biographies have appeared, most notably Grupp, Peter, Harry Graf Kessler, 1868–1937 (Munich, 1995)Google Scholar and Stenzel, Burkhard, Harry Graf Kessler: Ein Leben zwischen Kultur und Politik (Weimar, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Nabbe, Hildegard, “Mäzenatentum und elitäre Kunst: Harry Graf Kessler als Schlüsselfigur für eine kulturelle Erneuerung um die Jahrhundertwende,” Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 64 (1990): 652–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Karl Salzmann lists Pan along with Freie Bühne, the Fischer Verlag, and the Berlin Secession as one of the four seminal institutions of Berlin modernism, Salzmann, , “PAN: Geschichte einer Zeitschrift,” in Jugendstil, ed. Hermand, Jost (Darmstadt, 1971), 181.Google Scholar Kessler quickly became a leading figure on the editorial board during the second half of the journal's existence. On the history of Pan in general and Kessler's participation see Gisela Henze's exhaustive study, Der PAN: Geschichte und Profit einer Zeitschrift der Jahrhundertwende (Ph.D. diss., University of Freiburg, 1974). Jutta Thamer has analyzed the artwork of the journal in Zwischen Historismus und Jugendstil: Zur Ausstattung der Zeitschrift “Pan” (1895–1900) (Frankfurt am Main, 1980).

7. Gerhard Schuster estimates that Kessler's diary contains roughly 40,000 names, Schuster, , “Harry Graf Kessler: Tagebuch eines Weltmannes,” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 32 (1988): 433.Google Scholar W. H. Auden, reviewing the 1971 English translation of Kessler's postwar diaries, asserted that Kessler seemed to know everyone who was anyone in Europe between 1890 and 1930 except Winston Churchill and T. S. Eliot; Auden, , “A Saint-Simon of Our Time,” The New York Review of Books (31 08 1972): 4.Google Scholar In fact Kessler just missed meeting Churchill at St. George's preparatory school in Ascot by one academic term.

8. Kessler, , Gesichter und Zeiten in GS 1:199.Google Scholar

9. On Kessler's initial reaction to Nietzsche see Easton, “The Red Count,” 98–99. The literature is enormous on Nietzsche's initial reception in Germany. Richard Krummel has compiled a fascinating two volume anthology of contemporary reactions entitled Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist (Berlin, 1974). For a good recent synopsis see Aschheim, Steven E., The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890–1990 (Berkeley, 1992), esp. chap. III.Google Scholar

10. In this I follow the argument outlined by Nehamas, Alexander in Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, MA, 1985)Google Scholar when he writes, “… Nietzsche exemplifies through his own writings one way in which one individual may have succeeded in fashioning itself—an individual, moreover, who, though beyond morality, is not morally objectionable” (p. 8).

11. Her secret seems to have been a cunning manipulation of the refracted sentiments of piety surrounding her hopelessly ill brother, combined with her own shrewd instinct for flattery, and, when her lies and betrayals had pushed her into a really tight corner, she played the female victim of unscrupulous and ruthless men. Of course many saw through this charade, and Elisabeth was always a controversial figure, but it is nevertheless still surprising how many normally perspicacious individuals, such as Kessler himself, were taken in by her or made allowances for the faults they noticed. “When she becomes excited she begins to speak with a Saxon accent and often becomes mawkishly sentimental,” wrote Kessler on the occasion of his third visit, but then added, “how she says things often sounds inane, but what she says is mostly good,” Tagebuch, 7 August 1897. On Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche see Peters, H. F., Zarathustra's Sister: The Case of Elisabeth and Friedrich Nietzsche (New York, 1977)Google Scholar and Macintyre, Ben, Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

12. Krause, Jürgen, “Märtyr” und “Prophet”: Studien zum Nietzsche-Kult in der bildenden Kunst der Jahrhundertwende (Berlin and New York, 1984), 101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Despite a bitter dispute over a planned memorial to Nietzsche and, after the First World War, sharp political disagreements, Kessler remained friends with Förster-Nietzsche for nearly forty years. On the relationship between Kessler and the Nietzsche Archive see Wollkopf, Rosawitha, “Das Nietzsche-Archiv im Spiegel der Beziehungen Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsches zu Harry Graf Kessler,” Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 34 (1990): 123–67.Google Scholar

14. Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil (New York, 1990), 185.Google Scholar

15. A costly edition of Zarathustra, designed by van de Velde, was eventually published but only after years of immensely complicated negotiations between the designer, Kessler, Nietzsche's sister, and numerous publishers; see Block, Jane, “The Insel-Verlag “Zarathustra”: An Untold Tale of Art and Printing,” Pantheon 45 (1987): 129–37.Google Scholar

16. Velde, Henry van de, Geschichte meines Lebens, ed. Curjel, Hans (rev. ed., Munich, 1986), 159.Google Scholar See also his essay, “Säuberung der Kunst,” in Van de Velde, , Zum neuen Stil, ed. Curjel, Hans, (Munich, 1985), 23–35.Google Scholar

17. For a superbly illustrated discussion of this transition in van de Velde's style see the essays in Sembach, Klaus-Jürgen and Schulte, Birgit, Henry van de Velde: Ein Europäischer Künstler seiner Zeit (Cologne, 1992), esp. 118–69.Google Scholar

18. Van de Velde, Geschichte, 159. See also Alexandre Kostka, “Der Dilettant und sein Künstler: Die Beziehung Harry Graf Kessler—Henry van de Velde,” in Henry van de Velde, 253–85.

19. Van de Velde, Geschichte, 186–87; see also Becker, Ingeborg, Henry van de Velde in Berlin (Berlin, 1993), 9–53.Google Scholar

20. Mommsen confuses Karl Alexander with his grandson Wilhelm Ernst and in any case erroneously credits the grand duke supporting the Künstlerbund, see Mommsen, Bürgerliche Kultur, 55.

21. See the correspondence between Kessler and Förster-Nietzsche in Wollkopf, “Nietzsche Archiv,” 142–57.

22. Van de Velde objected to what he considered an excessively ornamental and floral Art Nouveau. See Co, Francesco Dal, Figures of Architecture and Thought: German Architecture Culture, 1880–1920 (New York, 1990), 182–89Google Scholar; see also the catalogue Museum Künstlerkolonie Darmstadt (Darmstadt,1989), as well as the comments by Schumacher, Fritz, Stufen des Lebens: Erinnerungen eines Baumeisters (Berlin, 1935), 236–39.Google Scholar

23. Bodenhausen, /Kessler, , Briefwechsel, 1894–1918, ed. Simon, Hans-Ulrich, Schriften, Marbacher 16 (Marbach am Neckar, 1978), 62.Google Scholar

24. Kostka, “Der Dilettant,” 260. Jürgen Krause points out that Förster-Nietzsche pondered seriously whether to support the Van de Velde/Kessler option or to throw the prestige behind the Heimatkunst movement—in many ways more acceptable to her personal taste—before allowing herself to be convinced that the first choice lay more in the spirit of her brother. See Krause, “Märtyrer” und “Prophet,” 143.

25. Aimé von Palézieux, called Falconnet (1843–1907), court chamberlain at Weimar, had started his career as a salesman and then joined the Prussian army. After diplomatic activity in London and Paris, he entered the service of Karl Alexander in Weimar, rising to the position of lieutenant general on inactive service in the Prussian army. Recognized as the unofficial spokesman for Prussian interests at the court he had made a name for himself as early as the 1890s as an opponent of modernism in music and drama (for a damning portrait of both Palézieux and the young grand duke see Scholz, Wilhelm von, An Ilm und Isar: Lebenserinnerungen (Leipzig, 1939), 93–96Google Scholar. Fritz Schumacher also reports on the anxiety of Palézieux that the grand duke might become too interested in modern art, see Stufen des Lebens, 259–60). The Permanente Ausstellung, whose collections Kessler's museum took over, had been his creation. Supported by numerous lotteries as well as by a number of other businesses that had nothing to do with art, it became a surprisingly wealthy institution, the largest tax payer in the city. Accompanying this wealth, however, were persistent financial scandals concerning Palézieux's administration (Bodenhausen, /Kessler, , Briefwechsel, 160Google Scholar; Hess, Ulrich, “Beginn kapitalistischer Produktionsverhältnisse,” in Geschichte der Stadt Weimar (Weimar, 1975), 441–43.Google Scholar

26. Kessler to Van de Velde, 5 November 1901; van de Velde correspondence, Bibliothéque Royale Albert Premiére (henceforth BRA), Brussels. My translation from the French.

27. Kessler tells the story of Bülow's attempted seduction of his mother, a famously beautiful woman, in his memoirs, Gesichter und Zeiten (now in GS, 1:76–78). Whether the story is apocryphal or not, the former chancellor of Imperial Germany took the trouble in his own memoirs of suggesting maliciously that the Kessler family owed its ennoblement to the favors bestowed by Alice von Kessler upon the aging Kaiser Wilhelm I. This was the old canard, often used against Kessler by his political enemies, that he was the illegitimate son of the old kaiser (and thus the half-uncle to Wilhelm II).

28. Grupp attributes the rejection less to the opposition of a high ranking enemy in the Wilhelmstrasse than to Kessler's own dilatory application, as well as his association with the bohemian art world, which must have aroused suspicions in the conservative world of Imperial Germany's foreign office, Grupp, Kessler, 91–92.

29. Kessler to van de Velde, 15 October 1902, Van de Velde correspondence, BRA.

30. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 99.

31. Tagebuch, 26 November 1897.

32. He had been impressed with Japanese art and its integration into daily life when he visited the country in 1892. Part of the inspiration for the planned monument to Nietzsche he planned came from his admiration for Japanese temples.

33. Tagebuch, 14 November 1900.

34. Ibid., 15 June 1901.

35. Ibid., 23 March 1902.

36. Ibid., 5 August 1902.

37. On the rediscovery of the body in turn-of-the-century Germany see Hepp, Corona, Avantgarde: Moderne Kunst, Kulturkritik und Reformbewegungen nach der Jahrhundertwende (Munich, 1987), esp. 75–89Google Scholar; also Frecot, Janos, “Von der Weltstadt zur Kieferheide, oder: Die Flucht aus der Bürgerlichkeit,” in Berlin um 1900 (Berlin, 1984)Google Scholar and Green, Martin, Mountain of Truth: The Counterculture Begins, Ascona, 1900–1920 (Hanover, NH, 1986)Google Scholar. On Nietzsche's influence on modern dance see Aschheim, Nietzsche Legacy, 59–61. From an early age Kessler was fascinated with the revitalization of dance, admiring the Americans Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, and especially Ruth St. Denis, and becoming an intimate friend of Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet for whom he and Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote a ballet “Die Josephslegende,” see Easton, “Red Count,” 405–30.

38. Hildegard Nabbe claims that the distinguishing characteristic of Kessler and his friends is that they combined “eine eigenartige Mischung von künstlerischer Experimentierlust und einer ausgesprochen konservativen Weltanschauung,” see Nabbe, “Mäzenatentum,” 655. This is not accurate; Kessler's relatively few remarks on domestic politics before the war place him closer to Friedrich Naumann's liberalism than to an “outspoken conservatism.”

39. On this subject see Hans-Ulrich Simon's afterword to the Bodenhausen/Kessler correspondence, Briefwechsel, 202–5.

40. Tagebuch, 10 January 1903. On Avenarius and his ideas on aesthetic education see Kratzsch, Gerhard, Kunstwart und Dürerbund: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gebildeten im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Göttingen, 1969), esp. 321–35Google Scholar; on Lichtwark see Gebhard, Julius, Alfred Lichtwark und die Kunsterziehungsbewegung in Hamburg (Hamburg, 1947)Google Scholar and Praffcke, Hans, Der Kunstbegriff Alfred Lichtwarks (Hildesheim, 1986).Google Scholar

41. Tagebuch, 10 January 1903.

42. Chytry, Josef, The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought (Berkeley, 1989), xii.Google Scholar

43. For a discussion of this trip see Easton, “Red Count,” 367–76. Portions of Kessler's diaries along with excerpts from Hofmannsthal's correspondence have been published by Volke, Werner, “Unterwegs mit Hofmannsthal: Berlin—Griechenland—Venedig,” Hofmannsthal Blätter 35/36 (1987): 50–104.Google Scholar For Hofmannsthal's own account of the trip see “Moments in Greece,” in Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, Selected Prose, trans. James, and Stern, Tania (New York, 1952), 167–68.Google Scholar For the effect on Maillol see Claudel, Judith, Maillol. Sa vie—son oeuvre—ses idées (Paris, 1937), 92–101.Google Scholar

44. Kessler, GS, 2:178.

45. The occasion was the controversy over the exhibition of German art at the St. Louis World's Fair, see the discussion by Paret, Berlin Secession, 134–48.

46. Kessler, GS, 2:75–6.

47. On these plans see Urban, Bernd, “Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Einige Gesichtspunkte für das Verhältnis zwischen Lehrern und Schülern. Zum Plan einer Wilhelm-Ernst-Schule,” Hofmannsthal-Blätter 27 (1983): 34–47.Google Scholar

48. For Kessler's ambitions see his letter to Bodenhausen of 6 April 1902, Bodenhausen/Kessler, Briefwechsel, 67–69.

49. Ibid., 66. See also Van de Velde, Geschichte, 209–13.

50. Van de Velde, Geschichte, 214–16.

51. The best short introduction to van de Velde's influence in Weimar is Karl-Heinz Hüter, “Hoffnung, Illusion und Enttäuschung: Henry van de Velde's Kunstgewerbeschule und das frühe Bauhaus,” in Hüter, Henry van de Velde, 285–337; see also Sembach, Klaus-Jürgen, Henry van de Velde (New York, 1989).Google Scholar

52. The Prussian ambassador to Weimar, in a sarcastic report that heaped scorn on the theater enterprise, also alluded to the lively controversy unleashed by the campaign of a “young generation, free of piety and prejudices against an older [generation] that still cherishes the memories of Germany's greatest intellects like holy treasures,” Müller's report of 30 January 1904, IA; Sachsen-Weimar 1 (R 3309), Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (henceforth PA), Bonn. For the theater plans and the vehement opposition they aroused see Stenzel, Kessler, 101–2.

53. See the scathing remarks of the Prussian ambassador, Report of von Below, 22 February 1906, PA, IA; Sachsen-Weimar I (RR 3309), quoted also in Tagebuch eines Weltmannes, 134–35.

54. This is the message of Kessler's introduction to an art book Impressionisten: Die Begründer der modemen Malerei in ihren Hauptwerken (Munich, 1908, repr. in GS, 2:131–46.).

55. See the facsimile of Durand-Ruel's pricelist sent to Kessler in Schuster and Pehle, Tagebuch eines Weltmannes, 126; see Jensen's interesting discussion of Durand-Ruel in Marketing Modernism, 49–62.

56. Uncovering the “ubiquity of market discourses in the ideological defense of both aesthetic modernism and avant-gardism” is one of Jensen's goals, ibid., 10. It is not, however, market discourse that pervades Kessler's defense of aesthetic modernism but that of a Nietzschean life-philosophy. Jensen incidentally makes many errors about Kessler in his short discussion; to wit, Kessler was not educated at Oxford, he did not live with his mother after his father's death, he was not introduced to Cézanne and the Nabis through Vollard's gallery, the Duke of Saxony-Weimar was not called Ernst Ludwig, and the Weimar museum did not, after Kessler's resignation, continue “to exhibit the most radical contemporay art, domestic and foreign,” p. 211.

57. Kessler to van de Velde, 15 October 1902, BRA. Jensen has pointed out how the proponents of modernism sought to legitimize modern art by presenting it, in the form of retrospectives and general histories, as the natural consequence of a logical historical evolution, an effort that culminated in Julius Meier-Graefe's Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Malerei the most influential early history of modernism. See Jensen, Marketing Modernism, 119, 212–27, 242–56.

58. Hofmannsthal, /Kessler, , Briefwechsel, 1898–1929, ed. Burger, Hilde (Frankfurt am Main, 1968), 51.Google Scholar

59. Nostitz, Helene von, Aus dent alten Europa (2nd rev. ed., Frankfurt am Main, 1978), 100–4.Google Scholar For a description of Kessler's private art collection see Bismarck, Beatrice von, “Harry Graf Kessler und die französische Kunst der Jahrhundertwende,” Zeitschrifi des deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft 42 (1988): 47–62.Google Scholar

60. Henry van de Velde, Geschichte, 182.

61. Denis, Maurice, Journal, vol. II, 1905–1920 (Paris, 1957), 109.Google Scholar It was to be expected that the reactionary Catholic Denis, an ardent anti-Dreyfusard, would find the Nietzschean atmosphere of Kessler's Weimar objectionable. But even Karl Scheffler, the editor of Kunst und Künstler and author of an admiring biography of van de Velde, found the atmosphere in Weimar a little too thick for his liking. Describing van de Velde's situation in Weimar as somewhat artificial, he remarked, “this was all the more evident as the narrow circle around him fell into an esoteric aestheticism,” in Scheffler, Karl, Die fetten und die mageren Jahre: Ein Arbeits und Lebensbericht (Leipzig, 1948), 31.Google Scholar

62. “Kunst und Publikum,” Die Neue Rundschau 17 (January 1906): 112–16.

63. This interpretation of St. Francis he owed to the art historian Henry Thode, see Thode, , Franz von Assisi und die Anfänge der Kunst in der Renaissance in Italien (second rev. ed., Berlin, 1904), xviii, 60–63; 570–72.Google Scholar On Thode's place in the historiography of the Renaissance see Ferguson, William K., “The Reinterpretation of the Renaissance,” in Facets of the Renaissance, ed. Werkmeister, William H. (Los Angeles, 1959), 9–10.Google Scholar

64. Toward the latter half of the nineteenth century, German aestheticians became increasingly interested in the subjective and empathetic elements of the art experience. See the fascinating introduction by Mallgrave, Henry Francis and Ikonomou, Eleftherios to Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893 (Santa Monica, 1994), 1–85.Google Scholar

65. Kessler's major theoretical work was “Kunst und Religion: Die Kunst und die religiöse Menge,” published in Pan 5 (February, 1899): 163–76, reprinted in GS, 2:9–47. See the extended discussion of this essay in Easton, “Red Count,” 206–15.

66. See Cancik, Hubert, “Der Nietzsche-Kult in Weimar: Ein Beitrag zur Religionsgeschichte der wilhelminischen Ära,” in Nietzsche-Studien 16 (1987): 405–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67. In less than three years Kessler's museum put on thirty-four exhibitions. Kessler wrote the introduction to eleven of these catalogues.

68. Quoted in van de Velde, Geschichte, 245–50.

69. “Das neue Weimar,” Die Woche 37 (September 1904): 1644.

70. For an account of this debate see Paret, Berlin Secession, chap. 4, as well as his article, “Art and the National Image: The Conflict over Germany's Participation in the St. Louis Exposition,” Central European History 11 (1978): 173–83. Kessler's unpublished diaries from February 1904 provide an insight into the careful soundings and negotiations that took place before the debate began.

71. On the Deutsche Künstlerbund see Easton, “Red Count,” 261–71; Paret, Berlin Secession, 134–37; Tagebuch eines Weltmannes, 186–213, as well as Kessler's article, “Der Deutsche Künstlerbund,” in GS, 2:66–77.

72. Tagebuch, 15 November 1905.

73. Ibid., 10 November 1905.

74. Bodenhausen/Kessler, Briefwechsel, 68, 73; Tagebuch, 4 November 1905.

75. Peter Grupp makes the valid point that Kessler's appointment had been approved by the Weimar authorities only because they thought he would introduce a technical modernization of the museum, not because they approved of his wide-ranging Nietzschean plans, Grupp, Kessler, 90–94.

76. Tagebuch, 18 April 105. This outburst by Rothe qualifies the view that he was a reliable supporter of Kessler and van de Velde, see Krause, “Märtyr” und “Prophet”, 144.

77. Müller's report of 8 February 1904, PA, IA; Sachsen-Weimar 1 (R 3309), 16–17.

78. Tagebuch eines Weltmannes, 135.

79. Tagebuch, 8 and 13 November 1903; Bodenhausen/Kessler, Briefwechsel 146–47.

80. Van de Velde, Geschichte, 222.

81. According to Hans-Ulrich Simon in the afterword to the Bodenhausen/Kessler correspondence, Bodenhausen / Kessler. Briefwechsel, 176.

82. Van de Velde to Kessler, 31 October 1904, Kessler Nachlass, National German Literary Archives.

83. Van de Velde to Kessler, 2 January 1905, Kessler Nachlass. Peter Grupp suggests that Kessler increasingly lost sight of the political realities of Weimar, and especially how dependent on the good will of the grand duke his position was. He further accuses him of an elitist contempt for his opponents and their sensitivity to the kaiser's feelings. This assumes, however, that some fruitful compromise with the likes of Palézieux and his supporters was possible, an assumption I question given the almost immediate vituperation that greeted even the most modest efforts at introducing modern art. It is highly unlikely that a Kulturpolitik acceptable to Palézieux would have gone any distance toward achieving Kessler's goals. A civil servant, or a museum director dependent on a salary, might have had to endure the anemic results of such a compromise; Kessler did not. See Grupp, Kessler, 122–23.

84. Tagebuch, 10 December 1908.

85. The editor of the local newspaper greeted the exhibition with enthusiasm: “Rodin is a brilliant artist and has been recognized as such for a long time. We have every reason therefore to sincerely thank the direction of the Grand Ducal Museum on the Karlsplatz for the organization of this important and magnificent exhibition,” quoted in Stenzel, Kessler, 101.

86. Kessler, , “Rodins Zeichnung,” GS, 2:86–87.Google Scholar Just before this exhibition was scheduled to open Kessler had met with Palézieux, who was very anxious about the reaction of Berlin. “If something happens,” he repeated, “then I will be dismissed. I risk my entire position etc.” Tagebuch, 22 April 1904.

87. For a recent study of this part of Rodin's oeuvre see J. A. Schmoll, called Eisenwerth, “Rodin's Late Drawings and Watercolors,” in Güse, Ernst-Gerhard, Auguste Rodin: Drawings and Watercolors (New York, 1985), 211–31.Google Scholar

88. For the plans of a Salle Rodin at the museum see Kessler to van de Velde, 28 May 1905; BRA.

89. On Rodin's doctorate and the subsequent scandal see Wahl, , Jena als Kunststadt, 1900–1933 (Leipzig, 1988), 56–63.Google Scholar

90. Deutschland, 17 February 1906, quoted in Wahl, Jena als Kunststadt, 66.

91. Wahl, Jena als Kunststadt, 70; Rieth, Paul, “Rodin in Weimar,” Jugend 11 (1906): 234Google Scholar; Avenarius, Ferdinand, “Die Schmach der Weimaraner,” Kunstwart 19 (04 1906): 46–47.Google Scholar Avenarius was later taken to task by a reader for his patronizing defense of censorship but stuck to his position, “Zur ‘Schmach der Weimaraner,’” Kunstwart 19 (September 1906): 622–23.

92. On this effort see Easton, “Red Count,” 313–22.

93. Von Below's report of 22 February 1906, PA, IA; Sachsen-Weimar 1, (R 3309) also quoted in Tagebuch eines Weltmannes, 133–35.

94. The fact that Egloffstein does not mention the Rodin scandal in his fatuous memoirs, Egloffstein, Hermann Freiherr von, Das Weimar von Karl Alexander und Wilhelm Ernst (1934)Google Scholar may have to do with the rumor that Kessler heard some years later, according to which Egloffstein was physically struck by the grand duke and dismissed from his post when his role in the intrigue was revealed.

95. Van de Velde, , Geschichte, 288, and 284–90Google Scholar; Tagebuch, 7 March 1906; Hofmannsthal/Kessler, Briefwechsel (8 March 1906), 115. Why he had been smiling for a week when he had only discovered the letter the day before is not clear.

96. Frevert, Ute, “Honour and Middle-Class Culture: the History of the Duel in England and Germany,” in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Kocka, Jürgen and Mitchell, Alan (Providence, RI, 1993), 232–33.Google Scholar In her book on the same subject Frevert points out how “the honor code of the officer corps allowed the insulted officer no other option than to avenge the insult with a duel,” Frevert, , Ehrenmänner: Das Duell in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Munich, 1991), 102Google Scholar and chap. IV. See also Demeter, Karl, The German Officer-Corps in Society and State, 1650–1945 (New York, 1965), 139–46Google Scholar, and McAleer, Kevin, Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-Siède Germany (Princeton, 1994).Google Scholar

97. See Wahl, Jena als Kunststadt, 72–73.

98. Tagebuch, 7, 11, 12 June, 3 July 1905; Van de Velde, Geschichte meines Lebens, 289.

99. Tagebuch, 13 July 1905.

100. Hofmannsthal /Kessler, Briefwechsel, (17 February 1907), 147.

101. Kunst und Künstler 4 (1906): 531.

102. Tagebuch, 9 December 1906. See Die Zukunft 15 (1906): 505–10 and 16 (1907): 153–56.

103. Tagebuch, 9 and 11 December 1906.

104. Kessler to van de Velde, 4 February 1907, BRA.

105. Von Below's report of 30 January 1907, PA, IA; Sachsen-Weimar 1 (R 3309).

106. Wahl, Jena als Kunststadt, 74–76; Tagebuch, 1 and 4 February 1907.

107. Hofmannsthal /Kessler, Briefwechsel (17 February 1907), 146–47; Tagebuch, 19 February, 1, 7, 24 April 1907.

108. Much to the joy of some opponents of Kessler. The conservative Literat Max von Münchhausen wrote to Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, “God, how merry we were often back then,—before the horrible time arrived when we all wanted to make Weimar into a center of German culture with artificial means—and not only German culture!—How fortunate that we didn't succeed, that we blundered miserably, it would have certainly been solemn, but also terribly boring! How fortunate, that this Wahnfried remained a Wahn” quoted in Wollkopf, “Nietzsche-Archive,” 132.

109. On the Nietzsche project see Easton, “Red Count,” chap. 21; Grupp, Kessler, 149–52; Stamm, Günther, “Monumental Architecture and Ideology,” Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis 23 (1973–1975:) 303–42.Google Scholar On the Cranach-Presse see Müller-Krumbach, Renate, Harry Graf Kessler und die Cranach-Presse in Weimar, (Hamburg, 1969).Google Scholar

110. As Maria Makela has pointed out, the Bavarian state, eager to protect Munich's reputation as Germany's art capital from Berlin's encroachment, was rather more sympathetic to the rather tame modernism represented by the Munich Secession, see Makela, Munich Secession, 15, 21, 32, 58–67

111. On the politicization of aesthetic issues see Paret, Berlin Secession, 198–99. The experience of Kessler in Weimar qualifies the optimistic view of Wolfgang Mommsen that the federal structure of the empire protected modern art from the wrath of its opponents, see Mommsen, “Culture and Politics,” 130, 136; see also Mommsen, Bürgerliche Kultur, 55.

112. In June 1918 Gustav Stresemann informed Kessler, at that time serving as cultural attaché in Switzerland and involved in a number of delicate, secret negotiations, that conservative forces in the Reichstag were preparing to attack him as being “too modern, namely in painting,” Tagebuch, 29 June 1918. In the fall of that year he learned through Kurt Riezler that the doyen of German art historians, Wilhelm von Bode, had been denouncing both Kessler and Riezler in private letters to the kaiser “for being too close to foreigners (Auslanderei) and having relations to modern art.” The cabinet had then demanded that the foreign office take a position on this, Tagebuch, 27 September 1918.

113. Grupp argues that Kessler's elitist plans “could never have achieved a broad basis, were therefore untimely in an emerging mass society,” Grupp, Kessler, 127. Yet much of the Weimar experiment did indeed point toward the future, from the exhibition style of Kessler's museum to the architecture and design of van de Velde and his students. Kessler himself would, not unreasonably, trace the triumph of modernism in the Weimar Republic to such prewar endeavors as the “New Weimar,” see below.

114. Thomas Nipperdey, Wie das Bürgertum die Moderne fand, 75. This interpretation differs considerably from the more orthodox view that sees Wilhelmian culture as increasingly dominated by an apolitical, escapist attitude before the war. See Mommsen, “Culture and Politics,” 138–40 for an expression of this viewpoint.

115. Kessler, , In the Twenties: The Diaries of Harry Kessler (New York, 1971), 406.Google Scholar

116. Kessler, , “In memoriam Paul Cassirer,” GS, 2:275.Google Scholar

117. Kessler, In the Twenties, 390.

118. Ibid. For Ernst May's work see Lane, Barbara Miller, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918–1945 (Cambridge, MA, 1968), 90–103.Google Scholar

119. Kessler, In the Twenties, 395.

120. Kessler, , “Der neue deutsche Menschentyp,” in GS, 2:290.Google Scholar

121. Ibid, 294.

122. See Krause's shrewd remarks, “Märtyrer” und “Prophet,” 142–47.

123. For the bitter opposition to the Bauhaus within Weimar see Éva Forgács, The Bauhaus Idea and Bauhaus Politics (Budapest, 1991), 126–30;Google ScholarNaylor, Gillian, The Bauhaus Reassessed (London, 1985), 121–22;Google ScholarGropius, Reginald Issacs: An Illustrated Biography of the Founder of the Bauhaus (Boston, 1991), 113–117;Google Scholar and, in the greatest detail, Lane, Architecture and Politics, 69–86.