Fritz Stern (1926–2016)

This book is about Gerson Bleichroeder, a top banker in Berlin in the period roughly 1865-1890, and especially his relationship with Bismarck. Stern rummaged about in several attics and read through piles of letters to discover all sorts of details that had been neglected for decades. He points out that Bleichroeder had been almost totally neglected by historians, and that Bismarck tended to be treated as one kind of cartoon character or another, rather than fleshed out with the complex show more nuances that actually his primary mode.

The main themes of the book are how finance and politics became intertwined in those years, and very much through the persons of Bleichroeder and Bismarck; and the fall and re-arising of anti-Semitism during those years, and again how these two characters played such important roles in that process too. And of course these themes are coupled. The new anti-Semitism saw Jews as powerful; Bleichroeder was proof.

Stern transposes the literary matrix: the letters each belong to a moment in time, and many, I expect, pulled in strands from many facets of the situation of that moment. Stern largely dedicates a chapter to each facet, revisiting the same stretch of time in each chapter while isolating one strand or another. Probably the key chapter for the anti-Semitism chapter is the one on Rumania. In 1978 anti-Semitism was in sufficient retreat that a treaty could be forced on Rumania that required them to emancipate their Jews. But within a few years, Rumania had shirked this duty and was never held accountable.

Sad to say, this book seems more relevant today than when it was published. Various economic difficulties plagued the working class in the 1870s and 1880s; the old aristocracy could unite with the craftsmen and shopkeepers against the liberals and capitalists, under the banner of anti-Semitism. Of course Stern had no need to dwell on the parallels with the 1930s. I imagine he would have been surprised to see those passions reignited in the 2016 time frame.

I am not so familiar with Bismarck's chancellorship and all the events during those years. This book doesn't really tell the big story. Occasionally Stern will take a few paragraphs to sketch some piece of it, but mostly we just see the grand march from the point of view of a few players. Indeed, Stern reminds us several times that in the middle of events, the players don't have that hindsight that we have many decades later. Personally I like to learn about the big things from the perspective of the small things. Other readers may get frustrated. It's not a book for everyone! But the rich detail here is really a treasure if you don't mind getting lost in the details! show less

A culture produces its most ardent, strident critics at times of extreme tumult and change. In “The Politics of Cultural Despair,” Fritz Stern details precisely one of those extended periods, from around the middle of the nineteenth century in Germany through the Weimar Republic. He looks at the lives and work of three people who have been largely forgotten today – Paul Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, and Moeller van den Bruck – whose modes of cultural criticism eschewed liberal, show more parliamentary politics and adduced ways of imagining a mystical German future which would reinvigorate the Volk.

The first critic discussed is Paul de Lagarde (1827 – 1891), a brilliant philologist and Biblical scholar, especially of the Septuagint, and polyglot. The biographical sketch that Stern offers paints a less-than-desirable picture of Lagarde. His prodigious talents were not unaccompanied by enormous ambition, and he often blamed his colleagues for the academic projects he was unable to complete. He was a sociopath, a snob, and a prig, all of which seem to be character traits of everyone considered in the book. Later in his career, Lagarde passionately took up cultural criticism, thinking that Germany was headed for permanent destruction. Everywhere he looked, he saw only decline, with a secular, Mammon-worshipping state replacing traditional German values; to replace it, he favored a kind of nationalistic “heroic vitalism” that eschewed mushy, bourgeois liberalism. He was a thoroughgoing idealist who insisted that will and character (Nietzsche and Schopenhauer reappear throughout the book in varying interpretations and misinterpretations) predominated over all else, even the corrupt German political apparatus. Lagarde proposed a solution in which the Greek, Roman, and Jewish “elements” were extirpated from the Bible, and from middle-class German Protestantism, in an attempt to create a religion of the future by synthesizing Biblical ideas with the indomitable German Geist or, as Stern calls it, “mystical nationalism with a Christian veneer.” His work in this vein would have him hailed as a prophet within his own lifetime.

Julius Langbehn had many of the same critical concerns, and tried to suggest art as a fundamental savior. His 1890 book “Rembrandt als Erzieher” (“Rembrandt as Educator”) proposed Rembrandt as a kind of salvific figure who could re-teach Germany what true art was, especially its power to save obsolescent German culture. “He had sought a national rebirth through art, but art he regarded as synonymous with mysticism, and hence a form of religion. Rembrandt was the symbol of that reform, and resurrected prophet who could destroy the false art of naturalism and, by his example, prove that the goal of art was not the creation of beauty alone, but the attainment of the most sublime and fullest truth. In the search for that truth, Langbehn believed art and religion coincided, both alike mediating between man and the divine” (p. 112-113). Langbehn also despised science and rationalism because he perceived them to be soulless, demonstrable, and positivistic. He thought that a mind before education and science was at its most creative, and called for a return to German Kindlichkeit (childlike nature) and Volksthumlichkeit (“folksiness”). Langbehn thought that a focus on art as a means of spiritual realization was the answer to Germany’s problems.

Moeller van den Bruck, author of the well-known “Das Dritte Reich,” continued the themes outlined by Lagarde, Langbehn, and others before them. He idealized the mores and folkways of Prussia, thinking them better than the decadent ones of Germany; many of these ideas, perhaps contrary to what Moeller actually wanted, led to the mythical idea of the Third Reich. In the face of Germany’s staggering and unexpected defeat in World War I, and the harsh impositions of Versailles, Moeller turned himself to the creation of a group of soi-disant Jungkonservativen (young conservative revolutionaries) who wanted Germany to her former greatness. “After Versailles, after the vindictive measures of the victors and the submission of the vanquished, Moeller’s long-standing hatred of the West as the repository of all that was old and putrid acquired specious justification. The bourgeois life and the liberal ideals had been equally loathsome to him, and his fight against both now engaged his heart and mind, and won for him a large political audience. In his espousal of a pro-Russian foreign policy and in his vision of a Third Reich he was devising new means to implement an old hope: to tear Germany from its Western course” (p. 246). Less politically extreme than the other two critics, he attempted a kind of quasi-Hegelian dialectical synthesis to bring out his personal political utopia.

In the last chapter, “From Idealism to Nihilism,” Stern synthesizes all three critics, and compares their ideas to other predominant figures of the time, including Darwin, Nietzsche and, eventually, Hitler. This book is worth five stars, had it not been for Stern’s constant implication that the critics’ scholarship and their sociopathic egotism were somehow connected. It’s almost as if he wants tell the reader that they are bad cultural critics because they were horrible people (which, for the most part, they were). This commentary, which can come across as ad hominem in its excess, does detract a bit from Stern’s otherwise spectacular scholarship.

Stern’s book is a fascinating tool for understanding the pre-War I German cultural and social ethos. All of these critics saw the gradual undoing of a Germany that they knew and loved, and then saw it replaced with a more secular and urban country, whose modern institutions – education, science, parliamentary democracy - they grew to hate. They all suffered from a staggering ignorance of political reality, and despised practicality and utility. Their idea of the perfect Germany was religious, immediate, irrational, and intuitive. In short, they were prophets without a God. show less

A Poignant Portrait of an Embattled Financier and His Times
The first major work expounding on Bismarck's pecuniary relationship with the prominent Prussian banker Gerson von Bleichroder, Gold and Iron is truly a seminal study about the rise of the German nation. It splendidly explores the creation of the Prusso-Germanic empire through the lens of Bismarck, its architect, and Bleichroder, his Jewish financier.

Bleichroder became useful to Bismarck in many ways. He was embroiled in affaires show more d'Etat as well as Bismarck's affaires de famille. He managed the Chancellor's personal portfolio, helped finance wars against Denmark and Austria, and served as an intermediary for the massive indemnity levied against the French in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War. Bleichroder's remarkable and long-running relationship with the Rothschilds made his services doubly worthwhile to both Bismarck and Germany. However, Stern makes the poignant observation that while Bleichroder's success won him access to the corridors of power everywhere, his very success prevented him from being truly free. He became a kind of Tantalus, always seeking out recognition and confirmation of his accomplishments without really attaining what he was reaching for: a position at parity, if not becoming primus inter pares, vis-a-vis his peers and contemporaries.

Ponderous the book may be, but readers who are deeply interested in the political economy of Europe and in the crucial role played by embattled financiers in the rise of empires will be exceedingly enlightened--and entertained--by this monumental tome.

(Posted in Amazon.com, January 12, 2004) show less

It is a bit chilling to read about the resistance to a merciless dictator in our current context, and also inspiring to read about these two morally-grounded resisters. A bit disheartening to get a closer look at the aftermath of Germany's defeat and the lack of accountability for those who contributed to the imprisonment and torture of these two (while other resisters to Hitler were still punished).