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Germany Looks in the Mirror of History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Extract
Ranke remarks somewhere that defending its borders is not sufficient justification for a nation's policy; “the condition of its existence is that it provides a new expression of the spirit of mankind.” That, he added, is “its mandate from God.” In his new, monumental Deutsche Geschichte, Professor Michael Freund finds that German history never has been “providential” in this sense, as was Israel's, Greece's, or Rome's which, respectively, brought forth the ideas of justice, science, and law. Having surveyed “a terrifying chain of catastrophes,” he concludes, half in despair, half in resignation: “Nothing remains of German history but a quiet luminescence” (p. 780). The phrase belongs to Prince Oscar von Preussen, who fell in Russia as Hitler's soldier, and whatever his merits as a coiner of phrases may be, it cannot be an accident that his words in particular were chosen to conclude a volume adorned with over a thousand other apt quotations. It will be seen that Freund's sense of history has a Friderician ring, and this also explains his terminal evasion into aestheticism: “form” has been a comfort of last resort precisely for those German historians who have grappled most profoundly with the problem of freedom and power.
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- Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1961
References
* Ludwig Dehio is professor of history at the University of Marburg; his book consists of essays previously published in the Historische Zeitschrift, Germany's foremost academic quarterly, in Der Monat, and in Aussenpolitik. Michael Freund, once a left-wing Social Democrat, now a regular contributor to the liberal Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, teaches at the University of Kiel. Hans Kohn, an émigré scholar and an authority on nationalism, is on the faculty of the College of the City of New York; a German translation of his book is in the process of preparation. Golo Mann, son of Thomas Mann, formerly taught in this country and has published an American history for German lay readers. Hans Rothfels also taught as a refugee in this country, but has now returned to Germany; an earlier version of the book under review appeared in English as The German Opposition to Hitler (Hinsdale, Ill., Henry Regnery, 1948); the present German edition, completely revised and enlarged by abundant notes, supersedes it.
1 In a similar vein, as the title indicates, is Die Zerstörung der deutschen Politik: Dokumente, 1871–1933, edited and annotated by Harry Pross, Frankfurt, S. Fischer, 1959.
2 Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, withdrawn from circulation and never translated into English.
3 Schriften des Instituts für politische Wissenschaft, Stuttgart, Ring Verlag, 1955.