Germany: A Nation in a Dilemma - Essays E-Book

Hermann Selchow

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 304

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Germany - A Nation in a Dilemma - Almost a Declaration of Love Germans seem to love their defeats like other nations love their victories. Why? This nation, which licks its history like a wound and takes pleasure in doing so, is the subject of a book that dissects the dilemma of an entire culture: "Germany - A Nation in a Dilemma - Almost a Declaration of Love." Germany - a country that has turned failure into an art form. The author of this provocative work, Hermann Selchow, dissects the German soul with the precision of a pathologist and the tenderness of a lover. The result: a literary X-ray of a nation, sometimes exaggerated, but always close to the truth. The famous German thoroughness reveals itself as systematic self-dismantling, the drive for perfection as paralysis through analysis. Coming to terms with the past becomes a denial of the present. A people that wears its neuroses like medals and forgets how to live. But this book is no cheap voyeurism of German defects. It is a diagnosis with heart, a criticism without contempt. The author, himself a member of this people, not only exposes the mechanisms of German self-sabotage but also demonstrates its productive power. For those who destroy themselves so virtuosically also master the art of renewal. German readers will feel caught out – and perhaps for the first time, be able to smile at their own abysses. Foreigners will gain insight into the psychic landscape of a people who guard their traumas like relics. Sociologists and psychologists may find material for years of analysis. The book is written in the style of a loving postmortem: perceptive without coldness, ironic without cynicism. A rare balance between science and humanity. The question for the future remains: Can the Germans overcome their self-destruction? Or is it perhaps their most precious asset? The author offers no easy answers, but the right questions. "Germany - A Nation in a Dilemma" is therapy as literature, social criticism as an act of love. A book for all who want to understand Germany – and for Germans who finally want to tolerate themselves.

Leseprobe

Germany - A Nation in a Dilemma

Almost a Declaration of Love

© 2025 Hermann Selchow

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Germany - A Nation in a Dilemma

Almost a Declaration of Love

Essays

Table of contents

The Dilemma of the Germans under a Microscope

Roots in History: Self-destruction as a German Theme

The German aversion to success: rejection and self-castigation

Great thinkers and the petty bourgeoisie – a German contradiction?

German education - from teaching institutes and educational barracks

Business & Research - An obituary for "Made in Germany"

The working world of Germans – Between burnout and social welfare

Denunciation - Not a German invention, but...

The German relationship to power: citizen or subject?

The fragmentation of traditional social structures

The new German philistinism in the guise of wokism

Self-reflection: From fishheads and mountaineers, Ossie and Wessie

An outside view of the Germans

A German vision: A summer tale?

The Dilemma of the Germans under a Microscope

There are peoples who wear their history like a cloak, with dignity and self-evidence. And there are those who drag it around their necks like a millstone, groaning under the weight of past eras. The Germans undoubtedly belong to the second category, having developed the remarkable ability to carve additional stones from this millstone to make their lives even more difficult. One could consider this a special form of creativity, were it not so tragically productive in its destructiveness.

This study attempts to get to the bottom of this peculiar phenomenon, with the author, himself a member of this people, aware that he is thereby entering terrain crisscrossed by minefields of ideological and personal sensitivities. But what would the German soul be without its abysses, what would the German spirit be without its self-torture? It is as if Goethe had written his Faust not as a warning, but as an instruction manual for an entire people. The pact with evil was made long ago, only Mephistopheles has now taken on the form of the collective superego, which tirelessly whispers: You are not good enough, you were never good enough, you will never be good enough.

Indeed, it seems as if the Germans have developed a kind of national neurosis, which manifests itself in periodic bouts of self-hatred and self-destruction. It is remarkable how thoroughly and systematically this people works on its own dismantling. Other nations may have their dark chapters, but they know how to keep them locked away in the basement vaults of memory and build a new story above them. The Germans, on the other hand, have turned their basements into a shrine before which they kneel daily, repenting for sins that have long since crumbled to dust, while simultaneously committing new sins in the name of purification.

It is a paradox of almost dialectical beauty: A people that sees itself as a nation of poets and thinkers has managed to pervert thought into an instrument of self-castigation. Where Kant once proclaimed sapere aude, today a sapere nolo prevails – a resolute unwillingness to know when it comes to one's own strengths, combined with an obsessive fixation on one's own weaknesses. It is as if Nietzsche's superman had been replaced by his antithesis: the German subhuman, who finds his highest perfection in self-contempt.

This self-destruction does not take place in the grand gestures of heroic downfall that Romanticism once glorified. It is more subtle, more perfidious, more bureaucratic. It takes place in commissions and working groups, in studies and expert opinions, in an endless chain of self-recrimination and promises of self-improvement. The Germans have applied the industrial process to soul massage, developing an efficiency that would make their famous engineers green with envy. If self-destruction were an Olympic sport, the Germans would have swept all the medals and subsequently appointed a commission to investigate whether their victory was perhaps unfair.

It's not as if this people lacks reason for self-confidence. In recent decades, the Germans have built one of the most stable democracies in the world, created an unparalleled economic power, and produced a culture that ranges from Bach to Beuys. But all of this is overshadowed by a strange need to downplay, relativize, and question what they have achieved. It's as if a tennis star immediately holds a press conference after every victory to explain why they should have lost.

This phenomenon is not limited to any particular political persuasion. It permeates all levels of society, all parties, all institutions. Right and left, top and bottom, everywhere you find this peculiar mixture of megalomania and self-loathing that is so typically German. The right dreams of going back to wherever. The left wants to save the world and doesn't believe Germany is capable of doing so. The center oscillates between the two extremes and calls it balanced politics.

One might suspect that this behavior is a consequence of the historical traumas of the 20th century, and these undoubtedly play a role. But that doesn't explain why other nations with similarly burdened histories have found a different path. The Japanese left Hiroshima and Nagasaki behind and became a cultural nation. The Spanish overcame Franco and developed into a modern democracy.

The Germans, on the other hand, seem to cultivate their past like a chronic illness, one that, while not fatal, makes life a misery.

Perhaps the problem lies deeper, in the German soul itself, which has oscillated between extremes for centuries. Either Holy Roman Empire or small states, either Sturm und Drang or Biedermeier, either megalomania or self-loathing. It seems as if the Germans have never learned to find the middle ground, to maintain a sense of proportion. They are a nation of superlatives, even in the negative. If they are going to destroy themselves, then at least they are going to do it thoroughly.

This thoroughness is particularly evident in the way the Germans deal with their own identity. Other peoples have an identity; the Germans have an identity problem. They dissect their nationality with the same intensity with which they construct their cars, and in doing so, come to the conclusion that they really shouldn't be a nation. It's a vicious circle: the more they think about themselves, the less they like what they see. The less they like, the more they think. The end result is a people that has made itself the object of its own research and, in the process, has forgotten how to live.

Consider, for example, the German language, this magnificent, complex, precise language that gave birth to Goethe and Schiller, Heine and Brecht. What do the Germans do with it? They deface it with Anglicisms, mutilate it with gender asterisks, and dilute it with political correctness. It's like taking a Stradivarius and using it as firewood. The language that was once the language of philosophy and poetry becomes an instrument of self-subjugation.

Or take German industry, once the pride of the nation, a symbol of quality and innovation. What is happening to it? It is being dismantled in the name of moral progress, relocated in the name of globalization, and regulated in the name of environmental protection. Of course, environmental protection and globalization are important issues, but only the Germans manage to turn every challenge into an opportunity for self-sacrifice. Other nations use change as an opportunity; the Germans use it as penance.

This tendency toward self-flagellation is also evident in German foreign policy. While other countries pursue their interests and say so openly, German politicians speak of "responsibility," usually meaning renunciation. Germany should pay, Germany should help, Germany should withdraw. It is always the others who have rights, while Germany only has responsibilities. It is a strange form of imperialism: the imperialism of self-denial.

One wonders whether this masochism isn't also a form of narcissism. Anyone who is so intensely preoccupied with their own badness still makes themselves the center of the universe. German guilt becomes a new form of German greatness: We are the worst, therefore we are also the most important. It is a perverse logic, but one that works. Germany may lose its economic power, its cultural charisma, its political influence—its moral self-flagellation still makes it unique.

In doing so, the Germans overlook the fact that their constant self-criticism has long since become a new form of arrogance. Anyone who constantly emphasizes how bad they are expects admiration for their honesty. Anyone who constantly apologizes makes it clear that they consider themselves important enough to be apologized for. German humility is a cover for German arrogance, German modesty a mask for German conceit.

It is significant that this self-destruction always occurs in the name of higher values. Germans destroy themselves not out of a desire for destruction, but out of a love of morality. They sacrifice their interests not to egoism, but to altruism. They weaken themselves not out of weakness, but out of strength. It is the purest form of perversion: doing evil in the name of good.

Let's consider German history policy. No other nation engages with its past so intensively; no other nation has so many memorials, monuments, and rituals of remembrance. That is honorable in itself, but the Germans have turned it into an industry, a cult, a religion. The past is not overcome, but celebrated. Not in the sense of glorification, but in the sense of eternal self-accusation. It is as if the Germans have decided not to overcome their history, but to make it their destiny.

This obsessive preoccupation with the past results in the present slipping out of sight. While Germans research the crimes of eighty years ago, they overlook the problems of today. While they apologize for the sins of their grandfathers, they ignore the challenges of their children. It is a form of historical escape: They preoccupy themselves with the past in order to avoid thinking about the future.

And yet it is paradoxical: the more Germans engage with their history, the less they learn from it. The lesson from the past should be that extremism is dangerous. Instead, Germans have simply shifted extremism: from political to moral. They are no longer extremely nationalistic, but extremely self-critical. They are no longer extremely proud of their country, but extremely ashamed of it. The pendulum is swinging in the other direction, but it remains extremism.

These extremes are also reflected in the German all-or-nothing mentality. Germans cannot simply be a little environmentally conscious; they must save the world. They cannot simply be tolerant; they must invent tolerance. They cannot simply be democratic; they must have the best democracy in the world. And when they realize they are not perfect, they are immediately the worst. There are no nuances, no shades of gray, only black or white.

This black-and-white mentality permeates all areas of German life. In the economy, there is only growth or crisis; in politics, only progress or reaction; in culture, only avant-garde or philistinism. The Germans have forgotten that life consists mainly of shades of gray, of compromises, of imperfect solutions to complicated problems. They always want the absolute, the pure, the perfect. And since that doesn't exist, they are destroyed by it.

Perhaps this is the core of the German problem: the inability to embrace irony. Other peoples can laugh at themselves, can view their own weaknesses with humor, can endure contradictions without breaking down. The Germans take themselves and everything else with bitterness. They cannot laugh at their own quirks, their own peculiarities, their own contradictions. Everything must have meaning, everything must be important, everything must be taken seriously.

This lack of humor is perhaps the most devastating form of German self-destruction. Those who view every mistake as a catastrophe become incapable of action. Those who perceive every criticism as devastating become neurotics. The Germans have drawn the wrong conclusion from their history: not that one must avoid mistakes, but that one must not make them. And since mistakes are human, that ultimately means that one must not be human.

Consider German bureaucracy, that perfect metaphor for the German spirit. Originally created to create order, it has become an end in itself. Rules are no longer enacted to solve problems, but for the sake of having rules. Procedures are no longer used to achieve goals, but for the sake of applying procedures. Form has swallowed content; means have become the end. It is the bureaucratization of life, the juridification of existence, the regulation of the soul.

And everywhere in this bureaucracy, one finds the same pattern: the joy of self-restraint, the joy of renunciation, the pleasure of prohibition. It is as if the Germans had discovered that one can exercise power even by not exercising it. Those who impose the strictest rules on themselves can feel morally superior. Those who renounce the most win. It is a perverse form of competition: who can harm themselves the most?

This logic also permeates German economic policy. While other countries are trying to strengthen their economies, Germany is trying to civilize its economy. Profit is suspect, success is embarrassing, competition is unfair. Instead, the economy should serve: the environment, society, morality. That's not wrong in itself, but the Germans are exaggerating here, too. They don't just want a successful economy, they want a moral economy. And since morality and success are often in conflict, they choose morality and wonder about the lack of success.

It is significant that Germany has fallen behind in many future technologies. Not because it lacked technical capabilities, but because it thought too much about the moral implications. While other countries used nuclear power, Germany demonized it. While others developed genetic engineering, Germany regulated it. While others advanced artificial intelligence, Germany debated the ethics. In the end, the others have the technology and Germany has the ethics. But ethics without power are inconsequential, morality without means is ineffective.

This pattern is also evident in German foreign policy. Germany wants to be a moral power, but not real power. It wants influence without responsibility, prestige without risk, leadership without claiming to lead. Other countries define their interests and pursue them. Germany defines its values and sacrifices them. It is a policy of good intentions and bad results, a diplomacy of principles and failure.

This attitude is particularly evident in European policy. Germany is the largest and economically strongest country in the EU, but it behaves like the smallest and weakest partner. It pays the most, but certainly the least. It bears the greatest responsibility, but has the least influence. Other countries use the EU for their own purposes; Germany serves the EU as an end in itself. It is a policy of self-sacrifice for which no one thanks and which achieves nothing.

Perhaps that is the real problem: Germany has ceased to be a normal country. It wants to be either an exceptionally good country or an exceptionally bad one. It cannot simply be just another country among others, with strengths and weaknesses, with interests and values, with successes and mistakes. It must always be special, always extreme, always absolute. And since perfection is impossible, the only option is self-destruction.

This attitude also has an impact on German society. The pursuit of moral perfection has led to an atmosphere of permanent tension. Every word is weighed on the scales, every gesture interpreted, every joke analyzed. Germans have forgotten how to be relaxed, how to be natural, how to be human. They have become actors in their own lives, constantly having to pay attention to playing their roles correctly.

This rigidity is also evident in contemporary German. It is peppered with euphemisms, avoidance formulas, and preemptive excuses. People no longer say what they think, but what they should think. They no longer formulate spontaneously, but politically correctly. The language that was once the tool of poets and thinkers has become the instrument of the conformist and the fearful. It is a language of renunciation, self-censorship, and voluntary submission.

And the same logic can be found everywhere: Instead of solving problems, they are abolished by renaming them. Instead of addressing difficulties, they are explained away. Instead of resolving conflicts, they are avoided. It is a policy of denial of reality disguised as coming to terms with reality. People take refuge in language to escape reality.

This attitude becomes particularly absurd when one considers how Germans deal with their own successes. Every success is immediately relativized, every achievement belittled, every progress questioned. It's as if Germans are afraid of their own success, as if they fear their own ability. They have made failure their comfort zone and success their threat.

One could interpret this attitude as modesty, but it is not true modesty. True modesty knows its limits, but also its capabilities. German "modesty" only knows its limits and denies its capabilities. It is a false modesty, a neurotic modesty, a destructive modesty. It serves not self-knowledge, but self-contempt.

This false modesty also has a social function: It is a means of demarcation. Anyone who constantly criticizes themselves shows that they are among the good guys. Those who downplay their own successes demonstrate their moral superiority over those who are proud of their achievements. It's a form of class warfare with the opposite sign: The good guys can be recognized by the way they talk badly about themselves.

But there's a catch to this strategy: It only works as long as everyone plays along. As soon as someone sees through the rules of the game and refuses to play along, the entire system collapses. And that's exactly what's happening right now. Other countries, other cultures, are more impressed by German self-flagellation. They see it not as morality, but as weakness. They interpret German reserve not as modesty, but as a lack of self-confidence.

This leads to a paradoxical situation: The more Germany withdraws, the less respected it is. The more it renounces its interests, the more its interests are ignored. The more morally it behaves, the more immorally it is treated. It is a vicious cycle of self-weakening that can only be stopped by a radical reversal.

But such a reversal is unlikely, because it would require a fundamental change in the German mentality. Germans would have to learn that strength is not automatically evil, that success is not automatically suspect, that national interests are not automatically reprehensible. They would have to learn that one can be a good person without being a weak person, that one can be moral without being masochistic.

Above all, Germans would have to learn to laugh at themselves. They would have to recognize that their self-torture is not honorable, but ridiculous. They would have to understand that their constant self-criticism is not an expression of depth, but of superficiality. They should understand that their inability to be proud of themselves is not modesty, but stupidity.

And in doing so, the Germans are overlooking the most important thing: their self-destruction is destroying not only themselves, but also what they once stood for. German culture, German science, German technology—all of this will perish if Germany continues on its path of self-abandonment. It is not just national suicide, but cultural, spiritual, and human.

Perhaps this is the price the Germans are willing to pay for their past. Perhaps they believe they can only atone for their historical crimes through cultural suicide. Perhaps their self-destruction is their final contribution to world history: a demonstration of how to torture oneself to death out of a guilty conscience.

But that would be a waste of enormous potential. Germany has so much to offer: its science, its technology, its culture, its experiences. All of this could help the world shape the future. Instead, Germany is preoccupied with its past and leaving the future to others. It is a retreat from history in the name of history, an escape from responsibility in the name of responsibility.

The question is whether there is still hope. Whether the Germans can once again summon the courage to like themselves. Whether they can once again learn that self-criticism is good, but self-hatred is destructive. Whether they will one day understand that one must overcome one's past in order to shape one's future. Whether they can grasp that strength and morality are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.

Above all, however, it requires courage. The courage to acknowledge one's own strength. The courage to represent one's own interests. The courage to defend one's own values. The courage to be a normal country with normal ambitions and normal mistakes. The courage to be human rather than superhuman or subhuman.

It is a paradox: The Germans, of all people, who were once famous and infamous for their courage, must now learn courage. Not the courage to destroy, but the courage to live. Not the courage to conquer, but the courage to assert oneself. Not the courage to oppress, but the courage to liberate—to liberate themselves from their own complexes, from their own fixation on the past, from their own self-loathing.

Whether they will muster this courage is questionable. The temptation of self-destruction is too great, the comfort of self-loathing too tempting, the sweetness of self-flagellation too intense. It is easier to feel bad than to become good. It is more comfortable to complain than to change. It is more pleasant to be a victim than to take responsibility.

But perhaps—and this is the faint hope that remains in the end—perhaps the Germans will someday realize that their self-destruction affects not only themselves, but also their children and their children's children. Perhaps they will understand that they are responsible not only for their past, but also for their future.

Perhaps they will learn again that it is not a shame to be a people. That it is not a sin to have traditions. That it is not a crime to be proud—not of the bad, but of the good. Perhaps they will rediscover that patriotism doesn't have to be chauvinism, that self-confidence doesn't mean arrogance, that national identity doesn't imply national megalomania.

It's not a lack of intelligence. German humanities produced Kant and Hegel, German natural sciences produced Einstein and Heisenberg. It's not a lack of creativity. German culture created Bach and Beethoven, Goethe and Mann. Nor is it due to a lack of efficiency. The German economy produced Mercedes and BMW, Siemens and SAP.

The problem lies deeper: in a collective neurosis born of an inability to deal with ambivalence. Germans cannot bear the fact that they have been both perpetrators and victims of history, both destroyers and creators, both barbarians and bearers of culture. They want unambiguousness in a world of ambiguity, clarity in a reality of contradictions. Yet they have every reason to be confident.

The book to which this foreword belongs is an attempt at enlightenment in two senses: intellectual enlightenment about the mechanisms of self-destruction and emotional enlightenment about the possibilities of self-liberation. It is neither an accusation nor an apology, neither a glorification nor a condemnation. It is an attempt to tell the truth about a people who no longer recognize themselves.

Perhaps this truth will be painful. Truth is often painful. But it is also liberating. And liberation is what Germany most urgently needs: liberation from its complexes, from its past, from itself. Only a liberated Germany can once again become a contributing member of the international community, can once again be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

The diagnosis is made: Germany suffers from chronic self-destruction. The symptoms are described: self-hatred, fixation on the past, moral megalomania, phobia of success, and fear of the future. What is missing is therapy. This cannot come from outside; it must grow from within. It must originate with the Germans themselves, from their will to heal, from their courage to respect themselves, from their willingness to embrace normality.

Whether they will muster this courage remains to be seen. The signs are not currently encouraging. But history teaches that even the most unlikely twists are possible. Perhaps we will yet witness the German rebirth—not as a new empire, but as a normal nation alongside other nations. Simply as a people among nations, with rights and responsibilities, with strengths and weaknesses, with a past and a future.

The love spoken of in the title is a difficult love. It is the love for a country that doesn't love itself. It is the hope for a people who have given up hope. It is the belief in a nation that doesn't believe in itself. It is a declaration of love in the subjunctive, a confession of unreality, an affection in the mode of possibility.

But perhaps this is the only way one can still love Germany today: not as it is, but as it could be. Not in its current self-destruction, but in its potential self-discovery. Not as the land of eternal penance, but as the land of new hope.

Germany deserves this love. Its people deserve it, its culture deserves it, its future deserves it. What is not deserved is the renunciation of one's own possibilities.

In this sense, the following study is not only an analysis, but also a plea. A plea to the Germans to finally stop their self-torture and start living their lives. A plea to let the past rest and shape the future. A call to accept ourselves as we are: not perfect, but valuable, not flawless, but lovable, not superhuman, but human.

It's time for a new German normal. Time for a new German self-respect.

Roots in History: Self-destruction as a German Theme

The German soul, if it exists at all, carries within it a germ of death that has become second nature. Not the banal self-destruction of the drunkard or the gambler, but that sophisticated variant that disguises itself as a higher morality and in doing so undermines its own foundations. It is as if history had given this people a special mission: to perfect the art of self-destruction.

One could begin with the Germanic tribes, those fur-clad rangers who taught Rome to fear and then tore each other to pieces as soon as the external enemy was defeated. Tacitus already noted, with Roman precision, this peculiar tendency toward self-annihilation, which he admittedly misinterpreted as bravery. But was it really courage that drove the Cherusci, Marcomanni, and Suebi, or was it already that fatal desire for one's own destruction that Nietzsche would later identify as specifically German?

The answer may lie hidden in the structure of these early societies, in their inability to create lasting institutions. While Rome stabilized its power through administration and law, the Germanic tribes remained trapped in a state of permanent disintegration. Their kings were temporary warlords, their alliances short-lived, their loyalties for sale. They understood the art of destruction, but not that of preservation.

This predisposition to instability rubbed off on everything that would later be considered German. The Holy Roman Empire, this millennial anachronism, was already a contradiction in terms at its founding: neither holy nor Roman, and ultimately not an empire either. Otto the Great, who placed the imperial crown on his head, may have truly believed he was renewing the glory of Charlemagne. Instead, he created a monster of competing powers that expended its energies in endless civil wars.

Imagine: an empire that methodically dismantled itself for over nine hundred years, yet never abandoned its claim to be the foremost power in Christendom. The German kings and emperors regularly traveled to Italy to legitimize their rule and returned weakened, while their princes at home divided power among themselves. It was as if they had made a contract with suicide and paid it off in installments over the centuries.

Henry IV, who made a pilgrimage to Canossa in penitential garb, embodied this masochistic attitude in its purest form. Not only did he submit to the Pope—he also staged this humiliation as a triumph of piety. The Germans made a virtue of it: celebrating defeat as a moral victory. Canossa became the prototype of all later German self-humiliations, from the stab-in-the-back legend to unconditional surrender.

But the Germans only developed true mastery of self-destruction with the Reformation. Martin Luther, that brilliant divisive figure, shattered not only the unity of Christianity but also the unity of his own nation. With every posting of theses, with every polemic, he drove the wedge deeper into the already fragile fabric of the empire. The consequences were predictable: thirty years of war that transformed Germany into a desert.

Luther himself may have believed he was freeing souls from the Roman yoke. In fact, he initiated the German version of civil war, which from then on disguised itself as a war of religion. Every prince could now cloak his lust for power with theological arguments, every peasant could interpret his revolt as a divine mandate. The result was an orgy of destruction that held Europe in suspense for a century.

The Thirty Years' War was more than a religious war; it was the German nation's first major act of self-destruction. Catholics and Protestants massacred each other with a thoroughness that shocked even their contemporaries. Entire regions were depopulated, cities wiped out, cultures destroyed. When the Peace of Westphalia finally put an end to the carnage in 1648, Germany had been thrown back centuries.

And what did the Germans learn from this catastrophe? They institutionalized the division. The empire disintegrated into hundreds of small dominions, each with its own army, its own currency, its own tariffs. Germany became a patchwork of small states that paralyzed one another. The small-state system, which romantic minds later praised as diversity, was in reality the continuation of civil war by other means.

Frederick the Great attempted to counter this situation with Prussian efficiency. He created a state that functioned, but only because it treated its subjects like machines. Prussia became the barracks of Europe, a country where order prevailed at all costs.

But even Frederick could only channel the German tendency toward self-destruction, not overcome it. His Silesian Wars were already the beginning of that fatal tradition that repeatedly drove Germany into wars against half the world.

The Enlightenment, which in other countries led to the liberation of the mind, degenerated in Germany into the mental acrobatics of unworldly scholars. While the French were waging a revolution and the English were founding their empire, German professors sat in their rooms and invented systems that no one understood. Kant, the Königsberg philosopher, ran the same route every day at the same time, developing systems of thought of such complexity that they were understood only by other German professors.

This unworldliness was systematic. The German intelligentsia took refuge in abstraction because reality was unbearable. How could one be proud of a country consisting of 300 microstates, whose greatest cultural achievement was inventing the most complicated philosophy in the world? So people dreamed of a cultural nation, of that Germany of poets and thinkers that existed nowhere in reality.

Napoleon ended this dream with Prussian thoroughness of French ilk. His armies swept through Germany like a storm through a house of cards. The Holy Roman Empire, that millennial anachronism, dissolved without a tear being shed. Francis II, the last emperor, laid down his crown like a worn hat. It was the end of an illusion, but also the beginning of a new one.

The Wars of Liberation against Napoleon awakened a German national feeling for the first time in centuries. Young men flocked to the flag, not for any prince, but for the fatherland. Ernst Moritz Arndt and Johann Gottlieb Fichte preached to the Germans that they were the chosen people of Europe. Father Jahn, the gymnast, had them do physical exercises so that they would become worthy of their great destiny.

But no sooner was Napoleon defeated than national unity crumbled again. The Congress of Vienna restored the old order in a more severe form. Germany remained a patchwork quilt, only now there were only 39 rulers instead of 300. The national movement was driven underground, where it became radicalized. Patriotic youths became demagogues, and gymnastics clubs became secret societies.

Karl Ludwig Sand, who stabbed Kotzebue, was the first victim of this fatal development. He believed he could force German unity with a stab in the back. Instead, he provided Metternich with the pretext for the Carlsbad Decrees, which stifled any attempt at democratic development. Sand was executed, but his spirit lived on in the minds of a generation that had learned that only action counts, even if it leads to ruin.

The Revolution of 1848 was the next act in this drama of German self-destruction. The country's best minds gathered in Frankfurt's St. Paul's Church to finally create the unity it had longed for for centuries. They talked and discussed, drafted constitutions and catalogues of fundamental rights, while outside, reaction was gathering its strength.

These men, almost all professors, pastors, or lawyers, truly believed that a nation could be created through legal regulations. They overlooked the fact that power comes not from the mind, but from guns. When Frederick William IV refused the imperial crown offered to him, the fate of the revolution was sealed. St. Paul's Church disbanded like a debating club after closing time.

But the real drama was only just beginning. The failed revolutionaries went into exile or adapted. Some became Americans, others Prussian civil servants. Germany remained divided, but now with the additional trauma of a failed democratic revolution. The bourgeoisie had failed, the princes triumphed, the people remained silent.

Otto von Bismarck recognized this constellation with the coolness of a surgeon. He understood that German unity could not be achieved through rhetoric, but only through blood and iron. His three wars between 1864 and 1871 were masterpieces of power politics, but also the beginning of a hubris that would lead Germany to ruin.

The German Empire, proclaimed in Versailles in 1871, was a Prussian power construct with a federalist veneer. Bismarck had united Germany, but at what price? The southern German states were brought into line, the Catholics were discriminated against, and the socialists were persecuted. From the very beginning, the empire was a coercive construction, held together only by the authority of the Iron Chancellor.

Bismarck himself recognized the fragility of his creation. His foreign policy after 1871 was a constant balancing act to prevent the European powers from allying against Germany. He knew that, in its exposed position within Europe, the empire could only survive if it held back. Germany was satiated, as he repeatedly emphasized; it had had enough.

But Bismarck had not reckoned with the German soul. The empire he had created very quickly developed an appetite that exceeded its digestive power. The Germans, for centuries the Cinderella of Europe, could not resign themselves to being just one power among others. They wanted more, they wanted everything.

Kaiser Wilhelm II, this crown-adorned dilettante, embodied this new German excess in its purest form. He dismissed Bismarck because he refused to be patronized by anyone, and steered the Reich with the prudence of a wrong-way driver. His global policy was a complete mistake, his naval armament a provocation to England, his alliance policy a disaster.

The Kaiser was not solely to blame for this course. Behind him stood an entire generation of Germans who believed their country was destined to rule the world. Professors taught of Germany's mission, industrialists dreamed of the global market, generals planned for a major war. Germany had maneuvered itself into a collective frenzy from which there could only be a rude awakening.

The First World War was the logical consequence of this development. A local conflict in the Balkans became a global conflagration due to German loyalty to alliances. The Reich, which Bismarck had once described as saturated, was now waging war against half the world. The Germans marched into war with flowers in their gun barrels and the certainty of being home for Christmas. What followed was four years of carnage beyond all imagining. The Battles of Verdun and the Somme, the battles of material on the Eastern Front, the Allied starvation blockade – Germany was wasting away in a war it could not win. In the end, the German armies were still stationed in France and Belgium, but the Reich had internally collapsed.