The Tragedy of German Genius... And its Review!

Social scientist Wilhelm Heitmeyer has been publishing studies on German attitudes for a decade. In a SPIEGEL interview, he discusses his latest results, which show that Germans' relationship to minorities and the disadvantaged has become increasingly hostile.

SPIEGEL: Professor Heitmeyer, you have been studying the condition of the Germans for the last 10 years. How are we doing?

Heitmeyer: Not very well. The growing social divide is corroding the sense of community, and society is poisoned. Social disintegration is dangerous, especially for disadvantaged groups. Substantial segments of society believe that they are more valuable than others. Only those who achieve something, who are useful and efficient, count for something.

SPIEGEL: Hasn't that always been the case?

Heitmeyer: Yes, but the principle of rationality, which has its place in the economy, has increasingly permeated our thinking, finding its way into living rooms, schools and social relationships. This application of economic principles to the valuation of human beings is inhumane. Immigrants, the homeless, the long-term unemployed, the disabled, all of these people are worth less than others according to these standards. 

SPIEGEL: How do elites treat the weak?

Heitmeyer: Significant segments the elites and higher earners are increasingly withdrawing from a mutually supportive society. They claim the privileges of the establishment, and they fight against a minimum wage, the wealth tax and the inheritance tax, even though the policies of redistribution have been in their favor for years. This is class warfare from above. It shows that the core standards of this society are in great jeopardy. Some 64 percent of society believes that striving for justice is pointless. Solidarity and fairness, values that are vital to the cohesion of a society, are being eroded.

December 14 2011

Niall Ferguson and Nouriel Roubini, 12 June 2012:

"...We find it extraordinary that it should be Germany, of all countries, that is failing to learn from history. Fixated on the non-threat of inflation, today's Germans appear to attach more importance to the year 1923 (the year of hyperinflation) than to the year 1933 (the year democracy died). They would do well to remember how a European banking crisis two years before 1933 contributed directly to the breakdown of democracy not just in their own country but right across the European continent..."
     

Peter Watson in chapter titled 'The German Ideology And The Future Of Human Nature':

"...is Germany itself always to remain unredeemable? Perhaps Norbert Elias was correct in saying that the country cannot move ahead until a convincing explanation for the rise of Hitler has been given..."

 
Brooke Allen:

"Not many people can remember the year 1945. For those of us who were born well after World War II, into a world governed, however imperfectly, by entities like the United Nations, the European Union, the International Criminal Court, and the World Bank, the scale of pure chaos during that fateful year is unimaginable. Many millions lay dead. Beyond the murder of 6 million Jews, 8 million Soviet soldiers and 16 million Soviet civilians had been killed; in China, 10 million civilians. At war's end, 8 million "displaced persons" were stuck in Germany, 3.5 million in other parts of Europe. Six and a half million Japanese were stranded in Asia and the Pacific, a million enslaved Korean workers in Japan."
 
Marathi daily Loksatta (लोकसत्ता)  has reviewed Peter Watson's 'The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century', 2011 on September 21 2013.

First some funny things.
 
The reviewer says "...‘द जर्मन जीनियस’ या पुस्तकाच्या शोधात बरेच दिवस होतो. लंडनला सापडलं..." (I was in search of  'The German Genius'. Found it in London.). 

I wonder why. I did casual search on internet. I started with Amazon.in. I found it right there on my screen. It (paperback edition) costed only Rs. 402 on Sept 21 2013 much lower than the price of British Pound 9.99 given at the end of the review. 

We of course conclude reading the review that the reviewer has been to Germany a few times and (probably) drops by London to pick up books. I envy him.

The review itself is disappointing.

The world will in less than a year's time observe the 100th anniversary of the start of the World War I. 20th century is the bloodiest century in the history of mankind and the principal party responsible for it is the nation of Germany.

Therefore, although I understand that there is a lot more to Germany than those wars, how can you avoid the subject? Has that unprecedented violence anything to do with their so-called 'genius'? Shouldn't you be raising these questions?


David Crossland says:

"...Few would disagree that Germany as a nation has worked hard to atone for its past, unlike Austria and Japan which have cloaked themselves in denial. Germany has paid an estimated €70 billion in compensation for the suffering it caused, conducts solemn ceremonies to commemorate the victims and, above all, has owned up to what was done in its name.


Companies and government ministries have opened up their archives to historians to illuminate their role in the Third Reich, and a late push in prosecutions of war criminals is underway to make up for the failure to bring them to justice in the decades after the war.


But millions never confronted their own personal role as cogs in the Nazi machinery..."

Therefore, a lot remains to be done or was never done.

The review mentions  William L. Shirer's book.  Ron Rosenbaum observes:

"....Shirer does not condemn Germans as Germans. He’s faithful to the idea that all men are created equal, but he won’t accede to the relativistic notion that all ideas are equal as well, and in bringing Fichte and Poetsch to the fore, he forces our attention on how stupid and evil ideas played a crucial role in Hitler’s development..."

As the Loksatta reviewer brings Mercedes to the fore, can we be sure that even today "stupid and evil ideas" are not lurking close behind?

Reviewing this book for The New York Times, Brain Ladd  has said:

"...Even if Heidegger hadn’t been a Nazi, we would still face the question of whether Hitler was the nemesis or the culmination of German genius. Just as Mann had to acknowledge Goebbels as his bastard child, Watson knows that Germany cannot disown the Nazis. He borrows many different and contradictory theories of the German catastrophe, variously suggesting that the educated middle class was too weak to stop Hitler, that it abdicated its responsibility to do so and that its antipolitical ideals taught a nation to welcome a charlatan’s promises of a redemptive community. 

Yet no history of ideas can explain the tragedy of German genius. Hitler may have fancied himself a great thinker, but his success came from his brilliance as a political tactician in a troubled time. Intellectuals admired (or feared) him for his ability to seduce millions of voters who knew nothing of Kant or Heidegger. Watson gives us a compilation of German ideas; a history of the German genius would be a different and dicier matter..."

Artist: Rea Gardner, The New Yorker, 10 November 1945

Turning Statue of Unity On Her Side...

The Times of India / PTI, September 19 2013:

"Jnanpith awardee and acclaimed Kannada writer Dr UR Ananthamurthy has said he will not live in a country with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister, triggering angry reactions from BJP which said he was free to leave India..."
 

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, The Times of India, November 25 2012:

"...I can only say that the killings of 1948 cannot possibly justify the killings of 2002, or 1984, or any others. Modi has blood on his hands, whether or not he was directly culpable. But why pretend that others had spotlessly clean hands? There is a macabre logic in the praises Modi has recently heaped on Patel: the two were not entirely dissimilar. Nations need to acknowledge their past errors in order to avoid them in the future. Germany acknowledged the horrors of fascism and militarism, and this helped it build a new anti-war society focused on human rights..."
 
Philips Talbot, Frontline, October 19 2007:

"...Communal elements in the Congress needed no help from the League. Nehru noted in his Autobiography in 1936 that “many a Congressman was a communalist under his nationalist garb” (page 136). That included men who came to wield power at the Centre and in the States. Patel, Pant, Sampurnanand and Tandon, Ravi Shankar Shukla, B.C. Roy and Morarji Desai besides others. Rajaji provided a sterling exception until his death..."

Perry Anderson, London Review of Books,  July 2012 :

"In the ranks of such patriots, none showed less slackness than Vallabhbhai Patel, minister for home affairs. In a ‘marvellous and deeply touching speech before officers and men of the Royal Indian Air Force on 1 October 1948’, as a centenary volume of his writings describes it, Patel reported:

While people talk of our failing to follow Gandhiji’s teachings, I wish to give you one example which I remember from his conversation. When Srinagar was touch and go, when we wanted to put our army in Srinagar and when the air force was asked … to carry the army and all its requirements quickly, they did it with wonderful speed; and if we had been late by 24 hours, the whole game would have been lost. That is the work which you have done, which is written in letters of gold in the history of Freedom. We are proud of you. But what Gandhiji said to me was: ‘I feel so proud when I hear the noise of these aeroplanes. At one time I was feeling very miserable and oppressed when I heard this. But when this Kashmir operation began, I began to feel proud of them and every aeroplane that goes with materials and arms and ammunition and requirements of the army, I feel proud.’ [italics in original]

Patel himself, who held that ‘what nature and God had intended to be one on no account can be split in two for all times,’ had wider aims in view, as these were recalled by Elmhirst, the admiring British air marshal who served under him: ‘If all the decisions rested on me, I think I would be in favour of extending this little affair in Kashmir to a full-scale war with Pakistan … Let us get it over with once and for all and settle down as a united continent.’ Congress had accepted partition as the price of a strong centralised state in which it could be sure of a monopoly of power, but in the mind of its top leaders it was a temporary concession..." 


The Hindu on FB , September 16 2013:

"(Narendra) Modi: “We will build a statue of unity as a memorial for Sardar Patel who unified this country. This statue will be two times bigger than the Statue of Liberty.”..."

Artist: Mike Luckovich (I am using this great cartoon for the second time on this blog.)

And then one day we too can turn Statue of Unity on her side and make her an instrument of a new pogrom...
 

Echoes of Soundarya Lahari...Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini

Artist: Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini 

"How Uma Became Parvati:  Change is at the heart of many religions and all good stories. 

This illustration depicts the dance through which Uma changes form into the hideous goddess Kalee - developing a third eye and dripping blood. I know that Daniela relished conveying the darkness and raw power of this scene. This illustration clearly shows the influence of Aubrey Beardsley, both in its exploration of female psychology and its striking deployment of line. Thankfully, this terrible transformation is only temporary, as Uma later becomes the beautiful Parvati"

(The Guardian, August 8 2013)

Wikipedia:

"Soundarya Lahari's hundred and three shlokas (verses) eulogize the beauty, grace and munificence of Goddess Parvati / Dakshayani, consort of Shiva."

"निसर्ग-क्षीणस्य स्तनतट-भरेण क्लमजुषो
नमन्मूर्ते र्नारीतिलक शनकै-स्त्रुट्यत इव ।
चिरं ते मध्यस्य त्रुटित तटिनी-तीर-तरुणा
समावस्था-स्थेम्नो भवतु कुशलं शैलतनये ॥ 79 ॥"

source: http://www.vignanam.org/veda/soundarya-lahari-devanagari.html

[("Oh daughter of the mountain,
You who is the greatest among women,
Long live your pretty hips,
Which look fragile,
Which are by nature tiny,
Which are strained by your heavy breasts,
And hence slightly bent,
And which look like the tree,
In the eroded banks of a rushing river."), translation by  P. R. Ramachander
     
http://shankaracharya.org/soundarya_lahari.php]

Michel de Montaigne: a Humble and Inglorious Life; that Does Not Matter

Today September 13 2013 is 421st Death Anniversary of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne:

"I set forth a humble and inglorious life; that does not matter.  You can tie up all moral philosophy with a common and private life just as well as with a life of richer stuff." 

"When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not making me her pastime more than I make her mine?"

 

Anthony Gottlieb:

 

"…Bakewell, Frampton and Kent all stress that the distinctive mark of Montaigne is his intellectual humility. Like Socrates, Montaigne claims that what he knows best is the fact that he does not know anything much. To undermine common beliefs and attitudes, Montaigne draws on tales of other times and places, on his own observations and on a barrage of arguments in the ancient Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition, which encouraged the suspension of judgment as a middle way between dogmatic assertion and equally dogmatic denial. Montaigne does often state his considered view, but rarely without suggesting, explicitly or otherwise, that maybe he is wrong. In this regard, his writing is far removed from that of the most popular bloggers and columnists, who are usually sure that they are right. ..”

Michael Dirda:

"Suppose that Earth was invited to join the Intergalactic Congress of Planets, and its chair-being, Zinglos-Atheling, wanted to know more about our strange species. What one person in history would you choose to best represent humanity? On the one hand, Socrates and Jesus are a bit too saintly (or more than saintly) to be wholly representative; on the other, Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan are, as the saying goes, all too human.You could hardly go wrong by picking Michel de Montaigne..."
 
There is no equivalent of  Montaigne in Marathi.  Not just that, I guess, his essays have still not been translated into Marathi. What a pity!
 

The first essays in Marathi were written only in 19th century. The two essay writers from the period that come immediately to mind are Lokhitwadi (लोकहितवादी) and Vishushastri Chiplunkar (विष्णुशास्त्री चिपळूणकर). 

P G Sahasrabuddhe (पु ग सहस्रबुद्धे) writes about Lokhitwadi's essays:

"...शुद्ध, प्रौढ, पल्लेदार, प्रवाही, ओघवती भाषा हे निबंधांचे मोठे वैभव असते. लोकहितवादींच्या शतपत्रांत त्याची फार उणीव आहे आणि ती पदोपदी भासते. व्याकरणशुद्ध भाषा लिहिण्याचीसुद्धा  ते कसोशी करीत नाहीत…"

("... chaste, mature, strong, flowing language is the big wealth of essays. Lokhitwadi's essays lack it and that is constantly felt. He doesn't even attempt to write grammatically pure language...")

['Lokhitwadinchi Shatpatre' (लोकहितवादींची शतपत्रे), Edited by Dr. Pu G Sahasrabuddhe, 1960/2007]

Hence, Dr.  Sahasrabuddhe says,  Vishunshastri, Tilak (टिळक), Aagarkar (आगरकर), Rajwade (राजवाडे) were better essayists than him.

Marathi Vishwakosh (मराठी विश्वकोश) says Chiplunkar was influenced by Joseph Addison and Lord Macaulay. As we have seen on this blog earlier, Tilak/Agarkar were by J S Mill and Herbert Spencer. 

For my taste, some of Rajwade's essays are among the best early essays written in Marathi. A few of them still remain very fresh and readable.

However,  I feel none of the gentlemen mentioned above - British or Indian- comes close to the depth, width and literary qualities of Montaigne's work.  

I have chosen two examples from  the Frenchman's output.


Title of XIX essay in "The Essays of Montaigne" is "That To Study Philosophy Is to Learn To Die"

"Cicero says—[Tusc., i. 31.]—"that to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die." The reason of which is, because study and contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and employ it separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or, else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear to die..."

Now how to illustrate this?

Artist: Salvador Dali 

Courtesy: Brainpickings.org




(George Orwell writes about Dali's art: "Dead faces, skulls, corpses of animals occur fairly frequently in his pictures..." Montaingen's essay then was a good excuse to draw a skull!)
 
Look at the following picture. Happy couple? Man dealing too lasciviously with the woman?

 Artist: Salvador Dalí

Courtesy: Brainpickings.org

"A man, says Aristotle, must approach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of reason. What he says upon the account of conscience, the physicians say upon the account of health: "that a pleasure excessively lascivious, voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hinders conception": 'tis said, elsewhere, that to a languishing intercourse, as this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man must do it but seldom and at appreciable intervals: 

"Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat."

["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in  his bosom."—Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]

 
I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires; there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth nothing."

(Chapter V——'Upon Some Verses Of Virgil') 

Look again at the picture above. Is the man Dali himself? 

This is what Dali writes in his autobiography- "The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí", 1942- about his first meeting with his future wife, Gala: 

"          I threw back Gala's head, pulling it by the hair, and trembling with complete hysteria, I commanded:

‘Now tell me what you want me to do with you! But tell me slowly, looking me in the eye, with the crudest, the most ferociously erotic words that can make both of us feel the greatest shame!’

Then Gala, transforming the last glimmer of her expression of pleasure into the hard light of her own tyranny, answered:

‘I want you to kill me!’"

 Orwell adds: "He is somewhat disappointed by this demand, since it is merely what he wanted to do already. He contemplates throwing her off the bell-tower of the Cathedral of Toledo, but refrains from doing so."

After reading this, the question that haunts me : "What happened next to the lady in the picture?