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A review by iwb
Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider by Peter Gay
2.0
Gay’s book, "Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider", is a chronological study of the artistic and intellectual life of the Weimar Republic that emphasizes the contributions of Wilhelmian era “outsiders” and their rise to influence as Republican era “insiders.” Drawing his sources from various autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries; numerous written records, letters, and correspondence; and personal interviews and recollections, Gay documents the creative culture that flourished in the Weimar Republic. Gay includes both an annotated bibliography and, even though his focus is on the creative spirit of Weimar culture, an appended synopsis of the history of Weimar politics.
Gay states his thesis to be the following: In the Weimar Republic outsiders became insiders. Now, allow me a bit of pedantry for the moment. His key terms, while not defined precisely, are understood to apply broadly as follows: “Outsider” denotes a kind whose members are typically marginalized due to their perceived identity by the imperial elites (e.g., the Emperor, university professors, artistic directors, and the like). These outsiders can be identified politically, ethnically, and artistically; thus, for example, the democrat, the Jew, and the avant-garde artist are outsiders, respectively. A person, furthermore, is not delimited to just one kind—one might be a Jewish democrat who supports modernist trends in literature and music. The constitutive feature of an outsider thus is a relative identity condition. “Insider” denotes a kind whose members have relatively significant cultural influence due to their respective positions of authority and power—“decision-makers” as Gay calls them; e.g., curators of museums and galleries, directors of orchestras and theatres, chairs of private centers of scholarship. While not explicitly stated, Gay treats the membership between outsiders and insiders in the Weimar Republic as a one-way relationship—outsiders may become insiders but not conversely.
According to Gay, his thesis—that outsiders became insiders-- implies the claim that these outsiders had already been active in the late Empire. As Gay sees it, this claim is a necessary condition for the plausibility of his thesis statement. Gay’s thesis, then, is really the following conditional statement:
(T) If in the Weimar Republic outsiders became insiders, then these outsiders had already been active in the late Empire.
Gay argues for this claim throughout the book. Chapter one, however, is particularly devoted to establishing the consequent. In this chapter, Gay provides compelling evidence that not only were outsiders present in imperial Germany but also the corollary claim that their political and artistic sentiments made the ruling classes sick. For instance, German artists had moved from impressionism to expressionism well before the foundation of the Republic—Kadinsky wrote Uber das Geistige in der Kunst in 1910—as had German composers from the brooding romanticism of Brahms and Bruch to varying degrees of atonalism and serialism—Schoenberg completed the twelve-tone system in 1912. In 1908 the Emperor dismissed Hugo von Tschudi, the director of the National Gallery in Berlin, for having subversive modernist tastes; similarly, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, while musically still in the style of late romanticism, portrays the Baron as a dumb ox, which prompted the Empress to prevent its opening in Berlin.
The subsequent chapters follow a similar argumentative format. Each chapter consists of a simple enumeration of evidence for the thesis. With each chapter focusing on a different aspect of Weimar culture, the result is a sweeping account of the rise of outsiders whose influence as insiders is virtually undeniable. For instance, in a number of chapters Gay discusses Walter Gropius and the significance of the Bauhaus. Chapter three sketches the innovations and influence of poets and novelists, such as Stefan George, Rainer Rilke, and Thomas Mann. Gay adeptly reveals the importance of cinema and its relation to artists; hence, Gay reveals the impact that the 1920 film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the three expressionist painters—Warm, Rohrig, and Reimann-- who designed the sets, had in the Republic and particularly in Berlin. In chapter six, Gay demonstrates the flourishing of modernist composers, such as Alban Berg and Paul Hindemith, and those conductors with whom they collaborated, such as Erich Kleiber and Wilhelm Furtwanger, who could finally raise their batons in full musical license. While not pretending to give a rigorous analysis of theoretical developments in philosophy, literary criticism, and history, Gay does discuss the cultural and political impact that arose from Ernst Cassier’s interpretations of Kant, Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus of ontology, Sein und Zeit, and Leopold von Ranke’s ideological historiography.
Gay succeeds in giving a cogent argument for his thesis—it is, indeed, the case that in the Weimar Republic outsiders rose to an unprecedented level of prominence within the Weimar Republic. This success, nevertheless, has some difficulties. Gay’s project is opaque at times, for a number of reasons. First, Gay frequently inserts rhetorical flourishes that, instead of motivating the argument for his thesis, merely serve to misdirect the reader’s focus. For instance, it is one thing to demonstrate the developed, modernist creative culture of Weimar, quite another thing to merely assert that “ the Weimar Republic was a breathless era of cultural flowering that drew the world’s attention….” Phrases likes this occur throughout the text and leave one with the impression that perhaps Gay is tacitly arguing for something more; namely, that Weimar culture is unique in the history of the twentieth century. Suppose Gay intends this. Such an argument seems prima facie false. The Weimar Republic certainly can boast a significant number of impressive individuals, such as Gropius, Schoenberg, and Heidegger, as well as influential movements, such as logical positivism, serialism, and expressionism. But having a number of influential persons and movements seems to be a general feature of a number of European states at this time, such as France, where there were a number of important composers, philosophers, and writers; and Russia, which also had a number of important writers and an extraordinary group of modernist composers that included Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Mosolov, and Shostakovich.
Another difficulty with Gay’s project is that his thesis argument is not the most interesting aspect of the book. Far more interesting are Gay’s chapter-by-chapter psychoanalytic speculations about the cultural mindset and spirit of the Republic itself. This is most palpable in specific discussions. For example, Gay attempts to explain why various intellectuals engaged in ‘revivalism’ in which scholarly research erupted in Holderlien and Kleist studies. Gay refers to this need for revivalism as a German “hunger for wholeness.” Or when, for instance, Gay attempts to psychoanalyze why the ‘community of reason’- –the various intellectual institutions—were often divided amongst themselves, yet united in the pursuit of modernism. Lastly, Gay gives a psychoanalytic explanation for the German artists, philosophers, and psychologists’ love affair with poetry during the Weimar period. While Gay’s psychoanalytic musings are more interesting than the historical thesis, they are hardly as demonstrative. For this reason, Gay’s book lacks rigor and often results in shallow explanations and claims. For instance, without any citations, Gay makes the following claim:
"What Gropius taught, and what most Germans did not want to learn, was the lesson of Bacon, Descartes, and the Enlightenment: that one must confront the world and dominate it, that the cures for the ills of modernity is more, and the right kind of modernity."
Anyone who has seriously studied the philosophies of Bacon, Descartes, and the Enlightenment, recognizes this, at best, to be sophomoric, if not simply false. In Gay’s defense, however, he never claims that his book is a rigorous, exhaustive account. Had it been as such, much of the charm that this book possesses would be lost. In short, though, Gay makes a convincing case for his historical thesis, but his account is often confused by irrelevant rhetoric about the greatness of the culture of the Weimar Republic, and by speculative psychoanalytic explanations.
Gay states his thesis to be the following: In the Weimar Republic outsiders became insiders. Now, allow me a bit of pedantry for the moment. His key terms, while not defined precisely, are understood to apply broadly as follows: “Outsider” denotes a kind whose members are typically marginalized due to their perceived identity by the imperial elites (e.g., the Emperor, university professors, artistic directors, and the like). These outsiders can be identified politically, ethnically, and artistically; thus, for example, the democrat, the Jew, and the avant-garde artist are outsiders, respectively. A person, furthermore, is not delimited to just one kind—one might be a Jewish democrat who supports modernist trends in literature and music. The constitutive feature of an outsider thus is a relative identity condition. “Insider” denotes a kind whose members have relatively significant cultural influence due to their respective positions of authority and power—“decision-makers” as Gay calls them; e.g., curators of museums and galleries, directors of orchestras and theatres, chairs of private centers of scholarship. While not explicitly stated, Gay treats the membership between outsiders and insiders in the Weimar Republic as a one-way relationship—outsiders may become insiders but not conversely.
According to Gay, his thesis—that outsiders became insiders-- implies the claim that these outsiders had already been active in the late Empire. As Gay sees it, this claim is a necessary condition for the plausibility of his thesis statement. Gay’s thesis, then, is really the following conditional statement:
(T) If in the Weimar Republic outsiders became insiders, then these outsiders had already been active in the late Empire.
Gay argues for this claim throughout the book. Chapter one, however, is particularly devoted to establishing the consequent. In this chapter, Gay provides compelling evidence that not only were outsiders present in imperial Germany but also the corollary claim that their political and artistic sentiments made the ruling classes sick. For instance, German artists had moved from impressionism to expressionism well before the foundation of the Republic—Kadinsky wrote Uber das Geistige in der Kunst in 1910—as had German composers from the brooding romanticism of Brahms and Bruch to varying degrees of atonalism and serialism—Schoenberg completed the twelve-tone system in 1912. In 1908 the Emperor dismissed Hugo von Tschudi, the director of the National Gallery in Berlin, for having subversive modernist tastes; similarly, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, while musically still in the style of late romanticism, portrays the Baron as a dumb ox, which prompted the Empress to prevent its opening in Berlin.
The subsequent chapters follow a similar argumentative format. Each chapter consists of a simple enumeration of evidence for the thesis. With each chapter focusing on a different aspect of Weimar culture, the result is a sweeping account of the rise of outsiders whose influence as insiders is virtually undeniable. For instance, in a number of chapters Gay discusses Walter Gropius and the significance of the Bauhaus. Chapter three sketches the innovations and influence of poets and novelists, such as Stefan George, Rainer Rilke, and Thomas Mann. Gay adeptly reveals the importance of cinema and its relation to artists; hence, Gay reveals the impact that the 1920 film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the three expressionist painters—Warm, Rohrig, and Reimann-- who designed the sets, had in the Republic and particularly in Berlin. In chapter six, Gay demonstrates the flourishing of modernist composers, such as Alban Berg and Paul Hindemith, and those conductors with whom they collaborated, such as Erich Kleiber and Wilhelm Furtwanger, who could finally raise their batons in full musical license. While not pretending to give a rigorous analysis of theoretical developments in philosophy, literary criticism, and history, Gay does discuss the cultural and political impact that arose from Ernst Cassier’s interpretations of Kant, Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus of ontology, Sein und Zeit, and Leopold von Ranke’s ideological historiography.
Gay succeeds in giving a cogent argument for his thesis—it is, indeed, the case that in the Weimar Republic outsiders rose to an unprecedented level of prominence within the Weimar Republic. This success, nevertheless, has some difficulties. Gay’s project is opaque at times, for a number of reasons. First, Gay frequently inserts rhetorical flourishes that, instead of motivating the argument for his thesis, merely serve to misdirect the reader’s focus. For instance, it is one thing to demonstrate the developed, modernist creative culture of Weimar, quite another thing to merely assert that “ the Weimar Republic was a breathless era of cultural flowering that drew the world’s attention….” Phrases likes this occur throughout the text and leave one with the impression that perhaps Gay is tacitly arguing for something more; namely, that Weimar culture is unique in the history of the twentieth century. Suppose Gay intends this. Such an argument seems prima facie false. The Weimar Republic certainly can boast a significant number of impressive individuals, such as Gropius, Schoenberg, and Heidegger, as well as influential movements, such as logical positivism, serialism, and expressionism. But having a number of influential persons and movements seems to be a general feature of a number of European states at this time, such as France, where there were a number of important composers, philosophers, and writers; and Russia, which also had a number of important writers and an extraordinary group of modernist composers that included Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Mosolov, and Shostakovich.
Another difficulty with Gay’s project is that his thesis argument is not the most interesting aspect of the book. Far more interesting are Gay’s chapter-by-chapter psychoanalytic speculations about the cultural mindset and spirit of the Republic itself. This is most palpable in specific discussions. For example, Gay attempts to explain why various intellectuals engaged in ‘revivalism’ in which scholarly research erupted in Holderlien and Kleist studies. Gay refers to this need for revivalism as a German “hunger for wholeness.” Or when, for instance, Gay attempts to psychoanalyze why the ‘community of reason’- –the various intellectual institutions—were often divided amongst themselves, yet united in the pursuit of modernism. Lastly, Gay gives a psychoanalytic explanation for the German artists, philosophers, and psychologists’ love affair with poetry during the Weimar period. While Gay’s psychoanalytic musings are more interesting than the historical thesis, they are hardly as demonstrative. For this reason, Gay’s book lacks rigor and often results in shallow explanations and claims. For instance, without any citations, Gay makes the following claim:
"What Gropius taught, and what most Germans did not want to learn, was the lesson of Bacon, Descartes, and the Enlightenment: that one must confront the world and dominate it, that the cures for the ills of modernity is more, and the right kind of modernity."
Anyone who has seriously studied the philosophies of Bacon, Descartes, and the Enlightenment, recognizes this, at best, to be sophomoric, if not simply false. In Gay’s defense, however, he never claims that his book is a rigorous, exhaustive account. Had it been as such, much of the charm that this book possesses would be lost. In short, though, Gay makes a convincing case for his historical thesis, but his account is often confused by irrelevant rhetoric about the greatness of the culture of the Weimar Republic, and by speculative psychoanalytic explanations.