Germany: A Diverse Culture - Case Study Example

What specific revisions were you requesting? Germany: A Diverse Culture The internal cultural forces that initiated the holocaust in Germany, the intense feelings of nationalism, remain, for better and worse, a part of German society today. The xenophobic attitudes of the German population towards the Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continues but are now directed more so at other groups, primarily Turkish immigrants to Germany that now number in the millions. The Jewish community in Germany (yes, surprisingly enough there is one), does not face physical abuses that other ‘outside’ groups endure. However, instances of attacks by Aryan, ‘native’ Germans on items that represent Jewish history and culture have continued unabated since WWII. The people of any country, even when from different ethnic backgrounds, often feel a strong bond to each other. These nationalistic feelings are in regard to the country and its symbols. The cultures and traditions are regarded as belonging to all of the people. For Germans, these feelings emanate from deep historical roots and did not suddenly end in 1945. Hopefully, it goes without saying that the vast majority of the German people were unaware of and remains as horrified by the atrocities of the Holocaust as were the rest of the world. However, the nationalistic sentiments that allowed the Nazi regime to gain power and the Holocaust to happen remain largely intact. These feelings of intense patriotism are not unique to the citizens of Germany but have been longer-lasting and have a history of being more fervent. For example, while the U.S. was torn apart by a civil war, Germany was already well into unifying as a nation with a single ethnicity. The movement toward a nationalistic ideology began with the idea of the ‘volk’ about two hundred years ago. This paper examines the history of the ‘volk,’ the progression of nationalistic feelings and why this ultimately lead to the rise of the Third Reich in an effort to better comprehend the reason these feelings remain strong among Germans today. Throughout history, many nations have conquered others for various reasons while at the same time oppressing its own people, but why was a particular race of people systematically killed? How could such a fervent hatred of Jews infect an entire national conscience causing such unconscionable acts to be perpetrated? In spite of popular opinion, it didn’t happen because the people of Germany fell into a hypnotic trance and all of a sudden felt compelled to murder innocents simply from hearing Hitler’s speeches (Dawidowicz, 1986: 3). Hitler and the Third Reich rose to power based largely on their successful campaign to evoke feelings of nationality within the German population. The ideas intended to unify a nation advanced by Volkist philosophies evolved for over a century into a national impression of superiority. During the early 1800’s Germans began thinking of themselves as more than just a disassembled collection of Bavarians, Prussians, Saxons and the like living within the same borders. The idea of Volk became not simply the people of a country, but a unifying spiritual force of a peoples traditions and customs. Literature, music, art, folklore, and religion are all manifestations of the spirit of the people, or the ‘volkgeit’. This draw to unify inspired a considerable interest in the German people’s common culture, myths, legends and folksongs. “This idea found many adherents, reacting to both the Napoleonic conquest of Germany from 1806 to 1811 and the rationalism and scientific advances of the English and the French later in the century” (Iggers 1988). Though still not politically united, Germans were learning to take pride in their cultural accomplishments. There was, unfortunately, a dark aspect to unification. The tendency for cultural nationalism produced cultural superiority and intolerance, which, when combined with racism, was a powerful political force of nineteenth-century Europe. Volkish writers. These writers, in-step with the people of the mid to late 1800’s Germany, were becoming increasingly intolerant of cultures other than their own. It was widely held that the true German spirit was rooted in nature. The people perceived the rural culture as genuinely German. The peasant who lives close to nature is closest to the German volkgeist. Wilhelm von Polenzs 1895 “The Peasant from Buttner” is the story of a German peasant who hanged himself after becoming indebted to a Jewish landlord. The Semite creditor in the story had the peasant’s land foreclosed and sold the property to a manufacturer who then built a factory on it. The basis of Volkish thought of the late eighteenth century was a reaction against modernity, and the rapid industrialization of Germany as well as decidedly against the Jewish people. Volkish writers viewed German nationality as fundamentally a sacred soul (Mosse, 1964). True Germans are spiritually united by the volkgeist and, like Polenz, portrayed Jews as adversaries of the German volk. The consensus of the time was that the Jew is spiritually incompatible with the German spirit, strangers on German lands. As the industrial age swept across Europe in the late-1800’s it brought society new opportunities but also inadvertently served to increase the individual’s feeling of remoteness and a loss of personal belonging (Mosse, 1964). Throughout the 1800’s and 1900’s, Germans, as most all other cultures and countries did, held a romantic notion of the medieval period. This general and fervent interest in German history further boosted the volkish idea of national unity. “There was a certain nostalgia for medieval times, seen by Germans as an age of innocence and wisdom. This medieval and rural utopia symbolized the intrinsic unity of people and landscapes” (Mosse, 1964: 20). The growth of mystic (occult) societies in Germany also played an important role in the spread of romantic nationalism during this period. The world-view shared by these societies was composed of numerous superficial notions such as “human beings can attain truth not with their reason but through their feelings and intuitions; every country possesses a national spirit; the German national spirit is a pagan spirit. These societies prepared the ground for the rise of Hitler and Nazism” (Howard, 1989: 106). The Third Reich did not expose the German people to beliefs to which they were not originally pre-disposed. The regime had to be supported by the German people for it to have experienced the heights of popularity that it achieved during the 1930’s and this support came from a nationalistic narcissism. Nazi ideology was not an overnight event; it had evolved for over a century with a beginning in nationalistic beliefs. What Volkish, nationalistic thinking and the Nazi movement both shared was a sense of cultural superiority along with intolerance for people or cultures within their borders that did not fit their cultural ideal. This sense of commonality of the people fit the objectives for Hitler and the Third Reich. For the Nazis, the Volk could only be described as the Aryan race, thus the concept of excluding the Jews. The concept of the Volk for the ‘German Race’ to remain pure was loudly voiced by the Third Reich. The two identities were in conflict, the German nationalistic influence of the Volk and the Jewish 2000 year persona as the Chosen People. Conflicts of the two strong national identities in Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s developed over time (Wegner, 2002: 1). “The centrality of the Volkish, mystical base is emphasized, as is the position that the ideological framework for education was based on ideas found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and reflected in a 1919 letter by Hitler asserting that a ‘rational anti-semitism’ must be devised that would include facts establishing Jews as a ‘racial tuberculosis of the people, a race, rather than a religion, which must be removed.’” (Wegner, 2002: 1). The need for bloodline purity and the treacherous influence of the Jews was formed from the Volkish ideology regarding racial soul transmittal through bloodlines. “Julius Langbehn espoused the notion that the Aryans possessed the ‘life-force’ in a ‘life-fluid’ which flowed from the cosmos to the Volk. Jews did not possess this ‘life fluid’ because they had ‘long ago forfeited their souls” (Mosse, 1985: 97-99). Anti-Semitism propaganda under the Third Reich fulfilled its objective to represent the combination of older, culturally stereotyped perceptions of the Jewish people with the racialism in the Nazi curriculum (Iggers, 2000). Germans were constantly encouraged by the Reich to view the Aryan people of Germany as part of the Volk and to envision themselves as a superior and eternal collection of people. Guided by racist and authoritarian political theories, the Nazis quickly abolished basic freedoms in an attempt to create a ‘Volk’ community. According to Nazi ideals, a ‘volkish’ community united all social classes and regions of Germany behind a supreme leader or Führer, Adolf Hitler. As a matter of domestic policy, the National Socialists derived their entire claim to power over German society from this mission; and as a matter of foreign policy, the asserted concept of the ‘Aryan race’, with its accompanying drive for ‘living space’, was supposed to lay the foundation for a new order for the European continent along racist lines. However, because of the inconsistency of the racist concept, these aims could only be achieved by destructive measures. The ‘racial elite’ propagated by the Nazis implied permanent exclusion and eradication of so-called ‘inferiors’. In addition to ‘racial hygiene’, the persecution of the Jews took on a central role because of their allegedly ‘foreign blood’; the relatively new racist theme was combined with the centuries-old stereotypes of conventional hostility towards the Jews Jews were victims of open bigotry in Germany prior to 1933 and this expression of intolerance only escalated following Hitler’s rise to power (Iggers, 2000). Many citizens of Germany were unaware of the Concentration Camps, including the residents of the towns where the camps were located. The executions were carried out by the German army with SS troops in charge of the operations. The unknowing German people and the most fervent of Nazis did have a nationalistic idealism in common, however, which was the underlying reason for the extermination of the Jewish race. This common idealism was developed from the culmination of centuries of German cultural bonding through the ideas of Volkism, with roots that had begun the century before (Iggers, 2000). The Third Reich rose to power based largely on their successful campaign to evoke feelings of nationality within the German population. The ideas intended to unify a nation advanced by Volkist philosophies evolved for over a century into a national impression of superiority. Experiencing intense feelings of patriotism and nationalism while simultaneously not feeling superior to others is a delicate balance. It is a balance not always achieved in other countries including the U.S. either, see the Civil Rights Movement. Many people are guilty of overly-nationalistic sentiments themselves and believe ‘their country’ is always right. This point of view can be contagious and predictably dangerous as is evidenced by the current culture of Germany which is so strongly linked to its past. References Dawidowicz, Lucy S. (1986). The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945. New York: Bantam Books. Howard, Michael. (1989). The Occult Conspiracy: The Secret History of Mystics, Templars, Masons and Occult Societies. London: Rider & Co. Ltd. Iggers, George G. (1988). The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present. Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University/University Press of New England. Iggers, George G. (2000). “The Uses and Misuses of History.” Apollon. Available September 11, 2007 from Mosse, George L. (1985). Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Wegner, Gregory Paul. (2002). Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich. New York: Routledge Palmer Press. Read More