Germanism

“ A defeat for Germany I could regard only as a deferred victory. I should say to myself: The time, then, is not yet ripe; the sacred treasure must yet awhile be guarded and cherished in the circle of the narrower Fatherland. For alone among all nations Germany possesses to-day a [103] living, developing, sacred treasure.—H.S. Chamberlain, K.A., p. 24.
189. Germanism (Was wir "deutsch" nennen) is the secret through which the inner man is illuminated; and the instrument of this illumination is the [German] language.—H.S. Chamberlain, K.A., p. ”

“ Whatever the Magyars may say, the Czechs will not abandon the Slovaks after their sacrifices. They will demand for them also the right to a national culture. It is true that the Czechs would welcome peace with open arms. But you must not forget that our people did not shed their blood for imperialism or Germanism. When the millions of men return from the front, they shall claim freedom and equal rights for themselves and they will demand that the bloody bath of the present war shall never again occur. ”

“ For he who has sinned against the German language has desecrated the mystery of all our Germanity. Throughout all the confusion and the changes of races and of customs, the German language alone, as though possessed of some supernatural charm, has saved herself; and with her own salvation she has wrought that of the spirit of Germany. She alone holds the warrant for this spirit in future ages, provided she be not destroyed at the sacrilegious hands of the modern world. ”

“ I have an idea that the waters will benefit me, at least it is something new: we penetrate at once into Germany. It is true, we do not understand German; but where better learn a language than in its native country?
“What’s in a name!”—You know the quotation: it applies to things known; to things unknown, a name is often everything: on me it has a powerful effect; and many hours of extreme pleasure have derived their zest simply from a name; and now a name is drawing me on—Germany—vast, unseen Germany! ”

“ The German language acts as a blessing which, coming direct from the hand of God, sinks into the heart like a precious balm. To us, more than any other nation, is intrusted the true structure of human existence. ”

“ A man must first and foremost be "German," he must belong to "the race"; then only can he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values in history—then only can he establish them.... To be German is in itself an argument, "Germany, Germany above all," [4] is a principle; the Germans [Pg 124] stand for the "moral order of the universe" in history; compared with the Roman Empire, they are the up-holders of freedom; compared with the eighteenth century, they are the restorers of morality, of the "Categorical Imperative." ”

“ The peasant brings grain only, and no money. Thus the word 'alone' or 'only' helps the word 'no' to become a complete, clear German statement. When you wish to speak German, you must not consult the letters in the Latin language, as these dunces are doing, but you must inquire of a mother how she talks to her children, of the children how they talk to each other on the street, of the common people on the market-place. Watch them how they frame their speech, and make your translation accordingly, and they will understand it and know that some one is speaking German to them. ”

“ With Luther, the literary language of Germany became New High-German. A change of language invariably betokens a change in the social constitution of a country. In Germany, at the time of the Reformation, the change of language marks the rise of a new aristocracy, which is henceforth to reside in the universities. Literature leaves its former homes. ”

“ Of the separate and special means of once more raising the German spirit a very powerful one would be in our hands if we had a soul-stirring history of the Germans in that period—one that would become a book for the nation and for the people, just as the Bible and the hymn-book are now, until the time came when we ourselves had again achieved something worthy of record. ”

“ But the German language, German literature, and the Germans! The writer has already stated his opinion with respect to German; he does not speak from ignorance or prejudice; he has heard German spoken, and many other languages. German literature! he does not speak from ignorance; he has read that and many a literature, and he repeats—p. 328however, he acknowledges that there is one fine poem in the German language; that poem is the ‘Oberon’—a poem, by-the-by, ignored by the Germans—a speaking fact—and, of course, by the Anglo-Germanists. ”

“ I have already given reasons for anticipating that the French language may not only hold its own, but prevail against German in Western Europe. And there are certain other obstacles in the way even of the union of indisputable Germans. One element in Germany's present efficiency must become more and more of an encumbrance as the years pass. The Germanic idea is deeply interwoven with the traditional Empire and with the martinet methods of the Prussian monarchy. The intellectual development of the Germans is defined to a very large extent by a court-directed officialdom. ”

“ But although, in the early days of German life, the Low and High German dialects were on terms of perfect equality, Low-German has fallen back in the race, while High-German has pressed forward with double speed. High-German has become the language of literature and good society. ”

“ As a people made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a preponderance of the pre-Aryan element as the "people of the centre" in every sense of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more ample, more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more surprising, and even more terrifying than other peoples are to themselves:--they escape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone the despair of the French. It IS characteristic of the Germans that the question: "What is German?" never dies out among them. ”

“ The Deutschtum is sacred to the Germans. One cannot but have the deepest respect for the pride of Germans in their ancestry, in their language, in their church, and in the preservation of traditional customs. ”

“ And so he sees in the works of this Germanic race, and more particularly in the works of the later development of it when it is specifically the German race, the ideals of a sturdy people carried out in a sturdy way,—less refined than some, less delicate than some, but lacking never in the power of virility,—the favorite materials for the expression of these ideals being the homely substances by which they were surrounded in their daily life—iron, stone, wood and leather. ”

“ The subject of Germany during that closing period of the Middle Ages, characterized by what is known as the revival of learning and the Reformation, is so important for an understanding of later German history and the especial characteristics of the German culture of later times, that we propose, even at the risk of wearying some readers, to recapitulate in as short a space as possible, compatible with clearness, the leading conditions of the times—conditions which, directly or indirectly, have moulded the whole subsequent course of German development. ”

“ In my college reading I have become somewhat familiar with French and German literature. The German puts strength before beauty, and truth before convention, both in life and in literature. There is a vehement, sledge-hammer vigour about everything that he does. When he speaks, it is not to impress others, but because his heart would burst if he did not find an outlet for the thoughts that burn in his soul. ”

“ What preserves, in its original strength and grandeur, the rich and massy arch of German literature? The incomparable exertions of the German student. The German student! whose mind knows no other commune than the thoughts of the mighty dead. The German student! who knows the power and majesty of truth, and thinks no care, nor labor, too great to possess it; and whose intellectual eye takes in all that is lovely and sublime in creation. The universities of Germany are unequalled in the world. Is it wonderful that its literature is unequalled? ”

“ Be this as it may, it is to our German governesses that we owe the power of understanding Germany, more than to German literature. For the literature itself requires some introduction of mood for its romantic, homely, sentimental, essentially German qualities; the mere Anglo-Saxon or Latin being, methinks, incapable of caring at once for Wilhelm Meister, or Siebennkäs, or Götz, or the manifold lyric of Forest and Millstream. ”

“ Thousands of Englishmen make their homes in German cities; find German ways of living, if anything, suit them better. Suddenly there arises the question, shall English ways of life or German ways of life prevail: English or German culture—which shall it be? And the English who have lived contentedly in Germany for years hasten back to fight for England, and the desire of every German in England is to break up his pleasant home among us and fight to bring all Europe into German ways of thinking. ”

“ Nowadays the Germans are bored by intellect, they mistrust intellect; politics have swallowed up all earnestness for really intellectual things—"Germany, Germany above all." [1] I fear this was the death-blow to German philosophy. "Are there any German philosophers? Are there any German poets? Are there any good German books?" ”

“ Animosity of the Germans against Enlightenment.— Let us consider what the Germans of the earlier portion of our century contributed to the general culture by means of their intellectual work, and take first the German philosophers: they reverted to the first and oldest stage of speculation, for they were satisfied with conceptions instead of explanations, like unto the thinkers of dreamy ages,—thus, & pre-scientific mode of philosophy was resuscitated by them. ”

“ Her soil is the original birthplace of those motive powers of character, those mental tendencies and those ideal aspirations which most distinguish the Germanic race from others—peculiarities common to Germanic peoples which more or less distinctly reveal themselves in their fundamental conceptions of right and wrong, their collective consciences, their ideals of liberty, their methods of truth-seeking, their philosophies and an almost endless variety of things denoting common instincts. ”

“ Within this time, the study and translation of German literature have become fashionable pursuits, and on the whole, highly beneficial. The philology of Germany and its profound poetical criticism have taught much: the philosophical tendency of German theology has engaged the attention of teachers of religion, and had its effect both for good and evil, and the accurate study of the highest branches of German philosophy has tended decidedly to elevate the standard of abstract speculation. ”

“ The effect of German philosophy has been to develop intense intellectual activity. The habit of searching into the hidden mysteries of being has inclined the German mind to what is deepest, and sometimes to what is most obscure in thought; and the tendency to rise to the absolute, which is characteristic of this philosophy, manifests its influence not only in the blending of poetry and metaphysics, but in every department of science, literature, and art. ”

“ What an honor to fight and die for the German Fatherland! The German is the foremost man in the world."
Yes. Yes. Poor devils! We know all about that. That is the song your masters taught you at school! For the King of Prussia and his nobility you work, you spy, you have your bones broken on the battle-field! They pay you with hollow phrases about the noble German, the German Fatherland, the German sky, the German Rhine; and when you sing false, with rough German slaps upon your German faces. ”

“ Let us try, then, to relearn with regard to German depth; the only thing necessary for the purpose is a little vivisection of the German soul.--The German soul is above all manifold, varied in its source, aggregated and super- imposed, rather than actually built: this is owing to its origin. A German who would embolden himself to assert: "Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast," would make a bad guess at the truth, or, more correctly, he would come far short of the truth about the number of souls. ”

“ In the later period of German humanism this exaggeration was very common. In the earlier period, however, the place and the value of the German language itself is recognized, and due acknowledgments were made to the men of the later Middle Ages for all that they had accomplished for scholarship and for real progress in philosophy and theology. ”

“ As for Germany, it was surely German then, and not a medley of Saxon, Dane, and Norman-French. The people were talking in their German tongues. German song and German epos were already heard in forms which were not to be cast aside, but retained and developed; of course the influence of the French poetry was not yet. The Germans were still living their own sturdy and half-barbarous life. Those who loved knowledge had turned with earnest purpose to the Latin culture; they were studying Latin and logic, and, as we have said, translating it into their German tongue or temperament. ”

“ Only the Germans can lay claim to a lyric wealth as great as ours. The language we inherit is an extraordinarily rich one. A German authority credits it with a vocabulary three times as large as that of France, the poorest, in number of words, of all the great languages. ”

“ Our opinion of the pure and vigorous kernel of the German being is such that we venture to expect of it, and only of it, this elimination of forcibly ingrafted foreign elements, and we deem it possible that the German spirit will reflect anew on itself. ”