In August 1870, Friedrich Nietzsche obtained leave from his position at the University of Basel to volunteer as a medical orderly following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War a month earlier. Nietzsche, who had renounced his Prussian citizenship in 1869, was initially, in 1870, optimistic for Bismarck’s vision of the founding of the German Reich, “because in that power something will perish that we hate as the real opponent of every deeper philosophy and art consideration, a state of illness from which the German character has been suffering primarily since the Great French Revolution…not to mention the great crowd, in which that suffering is called…liberalism”.[1] Like his service in the war, this optimism for a unified Germany was short-lived. On account of illness, Nietzsche spent only a few weeks on active duty and by October 1870 he had returned to Basel. In July 1870, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff obtained his doctorate from the University of Berlin and, immediately afterwards, he enlisted as a grenadier and served in the army until July 1871, fighting in the Franco-Prussian War until its end in January 1871. While Wilamowitz fought on the frontline, and while the possibility of the unification Germany and the establishment of Otto von Bismarck’s German Reich edged closer and closer to actuality, Nietzsche was already working on his major work, The Birth of Tragedy. The publication of this book in 1872 reignited the rivalry between Nietzsche and Wilamowitz, which had its origins when both were students at the Schulpforta and which in many ways became determinative for the future of classical studies in Germany until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and the consequent collapse of the Third Reich of National Socialism in 1945.
This conference explores the development of classical thought in Germany from out of this important dispute between Wilamowitz and Nietzsche and within the political context of the unification of the German Reich in 1871, its progress until the First World War, the period of the Weimar Republic from 1919, and the rise and fall of National Socialism between 1933 and 1945. Ultimately, this conference asks how and in what ways did the question of Antiquity inform and influence the question of Germany throughout this turbulent period and, simultaneously, how did the German question inform the study and reception of Antiquity?
In 1921, Wilamowitz declared the fulfilment of German classical philology wherein “the conquest of the ancient world by science had been completed”.[1] And yet, despite Wilamowitz’s bluster, the spectres of both Burckhardt and Nietzsche had already begun again to haunt the hallowed halls of Altertumswissenschaft. Defeat in the First World War profoundly impacted the conception of the historical destiny of Germany upon which the German Reich was established. The volatile and ever-changing political landscape of the German state between 1918 and 1945 is reflected in the shifting focuses of classical philologists, for many of whom cultural renewal became the basis upon which their engagement with Antiquity laid.
The optimism for the cultural renewal of Germany, a renewal of the idea of Germania itself, grounded, in many ways, in a radical new engagement with Antiquity, had already begun to emerge prior to the First World War through Stefan George and his followers. At the heart of this movement was Nietzsche and Friedrich Hölderlin. The revival of Hölderlin, who had remained largely obscure throughout the 19th Century, is itself symptomatic of the changing mindset within Germany, especially after the 1918. By 1938, according to Heidegger, “the pursuit of the popularising of Nietzsche and Burckhardt, and also of Hölderlin, is now increasing to unbearable proportions”.[1] Despite the growing optimism of a new Germany founded on Greek ideals, and despite the radical departure classical philology had made from its traditional roots toward founding the question of this cultural renewal, the rise of National Socialism and the coming to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933 turned hope into fear.
Between 1871 and 1945, between the unification of the German states and the division of Germany between East and West, the question of Antiquity and its role in the historical consciousness of modern Germany was constantly being posed and reposed anew. As the political and social landscape of Germany became increasingly unsettled and unstable over the course of these seven decades, so too the shape and purpose of the study of Classical Greece and Rome became increasingly contested and, in many cases, radical. Did Greek and Roman studies inform the question of modernity, of Germania itself? Or did the question of Germania inform the study of Classical Antiquity? This conference seeks to answer neither question directly, but asks, ultimately, what lies at the confluence of these two questions?
[1] Martin Heidegger, Uberlegungen VII-XI (Schwarze Hefte 1938/39 (GA 95) (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2011), 199.
[1] Ulrich Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Geschichte der Philologie, 3rd Edition (Leibniz: B.G Teubner, 1998 [1921]), 47.
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, “Nachträge aus einer „erweiterten Form der Geburt der Tragödie“ („Ursprung und Ziel der Tragödie”)” in Nachgelassene Werke 9 (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner, 1921), 142.