The German Genius - Europe's Third Renaissance, The Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century (Peter Watson, 2010)

I've had the good fortune to read quite a few truly excellent, helpful books in 2012 - but this one definitely is near or at the top of the list.

I keep trying to get a handle on Germany (see here, for example) - looking to catch up a bit after a reading list too heavily weighted toward U.S., England, France.  And when I think about what I've read about Germany - for the most part my list would confirm one of the points made by this author  - it's like we tend to think of Germany in terms of a 12-year slice (1933-1945) when the country was dominated by the Nazis.


The author notes this preoccupation without minimizing the Nazi era - after all, a 12-year run like this could not have occurred in a vacuum - big and complicated things led up to it.  So his approach is to put the Nazi era into the context of German intellectual history going back to the end of the J.S. Bach era (1750 or so), discuss how the ideas developed that - seasoned with (among so many other things) late unification as a country (1870) and World War I trauma - went wrong in the Nazi era, and suggest a fuller way of thinking about Germany going forward.

But still . . . I never do get tired of watching those movies from the 1930s and after that feature Nazi villains . . .

Anyway (and to repeat) - this book was extraordinarily useful, and I bought it immediately.  850 pages; I'll guesstimate I dog-eared 50-75 pages (a very high percentage.)

There's too much here to try to summarize . . . a few ideas:

-- The role of "Pietism" in the Germanic brand of Protestantism.

-- Emphasis on "Bildung"

-- Pietism and Bildung as key elements in inculcating a culture of self-improvement - the idea of a responsibility to use one's time wisely for the long-term good of the self and of society (I am happily afflicted by this notion)

-- Delayed unification as a country; Napoleon's intervention in early 19th century as permitting educational reforms to blossom in a way that would not have happened had the country been locked in structurally.

-- Widespread education was prized and effective at all levels - surprising charts showing the pervasiveness of education in Germany via schooling levels achieved by soldiers in various national armies.  This paid off, big time, in so many areas - a large reservoir of educated, motivated citizens from which to develop talent.

-- Conflicting strands:  state was tied up in education in a way that linked graduates to the state (compare France or Russia, where the students so often stood against the state).  But repression was strong . . . a tendency for scholars to look inward rather than take on the state critically ("internal exile" - a concept also heard in Russia and other repressive states)

-- Really incredible achievements in music, education, historical method, philosophers,all things scientific or technical; military successes post-unification.  Accomplishments way too numerous to start listing, Germany predominant in so many ways.

-- Late formation into a state made insecure and self-conscious; high achievements perhaps bred arrogance; belief in narrow national character when history really wouldn't support it - the Volk - this is twisted as demagogues see fit.  Some dangerous characters emerge, anti-Semitism; WWI defeat; emergence of the term "degenerate" and application to Jews.

-- Hitler running off highly talented but tainted (typically meaning Jewish) scientists . . . Allied quote to the effect that the Allies won WWII because "our (meaning those working for the Allies) German scientists were better than their German scientists"

-- Discussion of the denial of knowledge/complicity toward Nazi state that prevailed after the war - but how else could the country move forward?  Subsequent generations start to address, criticize.  A platform from which to move forward.