Marianne Weber - The Soil and Air of Academic Life - Weber - Radbruch

ACADEMIC CONVIVIALITY
Author(s): MARIANNE WEBER and E. S.

Source: Minerva, Vol. 15, No. 2 (SUMMER 1977), pp. 214-246
Published by: Springer
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214
Reports
and Documents
il
ACADEMIC CONVIVIALITY
MARIANNE WEBER
Marianne Weber was born in 1870 and died in 1954. Like
Mary Paley
Marshall
at
Cambridge,1
she continued after the death of her illustrious husband to be
in her own
way
an attractive
figure
in the intellectual life of her deceased
husband's
university.
In addition to the classic
biography
of her
husband,2
she
also wrote
Ehefrau
und Mutter in der
Rechtsentwicklung ,3 Erflltes
Leben
4
and a number of other works
including
her own
autobiography.5
In 1948 sh
wrote an
essay
on
"
Academic
Conviviality
"
which was
part
of a
Festschrift
to be
presented
to Gustav
Radbruch,
who had been a
professor
of criminal law
at the
University
of
Heidelberg
and who had been dismissed from his academic
post by
the Nazis.6 It is
reproduced
herewith.
"
Academic
Conviviality
"
contains her recollections of the
gatherings
which
she held in her old home in
Heidelberg
on
Sunday afternoons, beginning
with
her return there after the death of Max Weber in Munich in 1922 and con-
tinuing
for several decades thereafter.7
E.S.
I
When Max Weber was
alive,
a circle of his friends
gathered
at his home
every Sunday.
He
was,
without
seeking
to be
so,
the centre of their
group.
They
flocked round
him,
fixed their attention on whatever was elicited
from him
by anyone
who was
engaged
in conversation with
him,
full of
wonder at the
unceasingly flowing
fullness and
power
of vivid
expression
which characterised whatever he said. Even his wife after 25
years
could
never hear
enough
and
constantly
ran the
danger
of
neglecting
her domes-
tic duties in order to snatch a few sentences. Whatever this man let flow
from his
mind,
artlessly, simply
and
unpretentiously, gave
off a tone of
earthy
realism transformed
by
his intellectual
power. Especially during
the
years
of the First World
War,
his friends wished
every Sunday
to hear
his assessment of the situation.
(In my
life of Max
Weber,
I tell much
about these
Sundays.8)
1
See
Keynes,
John
Maynard, "Obituary: Mary Paley
Marshall"
(1850-1944),
The
Economic Journal
, LIV,
2-3
(June-September, 1944), pp.
268-284
(reprinted
in
Keynes,
John
Maynard,
Collected Writings ,
vol. X [London: Macmillan, 1972] pp. 232-250).
2
Weber, Marianne,
Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild
(Tbingen:
J. C. B. Mohr
[Paul
Siebeck], 1926). (English
translation
by Zohn, H.,
Max Weber: A
Biography [New York:
John
Wiley, 1975].
a
(Tbingen
: J. C. B. Mohr
[Paul Siebeck], 1907).
4
(Heidelberg:
Lambert
Schneider, 1946).
5
Lebenserrinnerungen (Bremen
: Johs. Storm
Verlag, 1948).
6
In a somewhat different form the essay
was
published
as a
chapter
of her Lebenserrin-
nerungen, pp.
193-233. I do not know whether the
Festschrift
was ever
printed.
7
All footnotes to Marianne Weber's text are
supplied by
the editor.
8
Weber, Marianne,
"
Das schne Leben
",
in Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild . . .
chap.
XIII, pp.
462-486.
Academic
Conviviality
215
Following
her return to her old
home,9
Marianne felt that she could
justify being
in these rooms
only
if
they
were
again
used for the intellec-
tual enrichment of other
persons.
At the same time she knew that she
could not have
anything quite
like what had once
been,
since the
very
centre of that
group
no
longer
existed. She discussed the matter with
friends and decided to
organise
a series of
Sunday
lectures to be followed
by discussions,
to be held
every
three or four weeks with invited
guests.
The idea did not catch on at first.
Why
have
something
like an academic
seminar or an
evening
lecture at the
university?
Would scholars be
interested in
having
such
things
on
Sunday
as well?
Why
not
try
to have
once more a convivial
coming together
in
larger groups
with free and
personal exchanges?
So be it! Marianne decided to
attempt
it.
Some time around 1924 on a warm summer
afternoon, many guests
spread
themselves out in the shadow of the old
garden,
refreshed them-
selves with tea and cakes and chatted with one another
light-heartedly
and
freely
without
any
sense of
being
held to what
they
said. There were
talented and brilliant
persons among
them. But Marianne felt desolate and
tearful: what
good
was this
glittering
crowd without a centre which
gave
it form? This could
happen anywhere.
Recollection of the
past
was an
obstacle to this kind of
conviviality.
She did not seek advice
again
but
did what she
thought
was best. Whoever did not
enjoy
the efforts of the
planned Sunday
discussions would be
gladly
excused. But this was unneces-
sary
since no one withdrew. The
"
intellectual teas
"
increased in their
lasting power
of attraction. In the course of two
decades, they developed
into a sort of institution which a certain academic circle
regarded
as
belonging
to itself.
Things
were
again happening
in the house and this
justified
to Marianne her
possession
of it.
The first hour was
spent
in
unguided
conversation in small
groups,
with
tea and cakes. Then the
guests
settled down to the talk and the discussion
which
followed; they
viewed them as vital elements of intellectual Heidel-
berg.
The scholars who
participated,
with their
wives,
were from all the
faculties of the
university
but most of them came from the humanities and
the social sciences. The natural sciences were
only scantily represented.
And it was not
only
cultivated and learned men and women who enriched
the
gathering.
Records for the
early years
of the
profusion
of lectures are
lacking; only
accounts in short letters
give
some indication of what went
on. It was
only
from 1930 onwards that at least the
speakers
and their
topics
were recorded. The authoress of the
following
account must for this
reason content herself with a selection of the
fragmentary
traces which
remain in her
memory.
For the first decade these do not come to much.
But it would also be tedious for the reader if all the
offerings
of the two
decades were enumerated and listed. The chronicler must content herself
9
After
having
been in retirement from
teaching
on
grounds
of ill-health for
nearly
a
decade and a
half,
Max Weber resumed
teaching
at the
University
of Vienna for one
year
in 1918. The final
year
of his life
-
he died in June 1920
-
was
spent
as
professor
at the
University
of Munich. In 1921 Marianne Weber returned to
Heidelberg
and in 1922 to the
house where she and her husband had lived since 1910 and which had been built in 1847
by
Max Weber's maternal
grandfather.
From 1910
onwards,
the Webers had shared the house
with Ernst Troeltsch.
216
Reports
and Documents
with a selection
guided by
her own interests. She has been
helped
in this
by
brief
reports
which a few available friends have
placed
at her
disposal
The first
meeting
was dazzled
by
the
archaeologist, Ludwig Curtius,10
with a brilliant account of Greek
statuary
in Rome. The members of the
audience were
richly
served and the more
they
themselves
brought
to it
from their own
outlook,
the
greater
was their enrichment. For
many
of
us,
Curtius'
exposition
led us to a
deepened understanding
of an admired
world of ancient forms which we had assimilated in Rome
by
intense
effort.
There is also a note for this
early period
to the effect that the
Indologist,
Heinrich Zimmer
11
-
who was called
"
Indo
"
-
delivered a talk in
which,
as a
profound
student of Sanskrit and an
expert
on Indian
spirituality,
he
denied that Rabindranath
Tagore
was entitled to the
great reputation
which he had in
Europe
as a
poet;
this caused some distress to
Tagore's
admirers. On another
occasion,
Zimmer
delighted
us with his fanciful and
enchanting description
of his
impressions
of Paris. At that time he was at
the
height
of his
youthful
and
manly handsomeness;
he was one of the
most
distinguished
and richest
personalities
of the
younger
academic
generation.
His mind flashed and
sparkled
over the immense distances
between West and
East,
the features of which he
brought
to such mani-
fold connections that even the most obscure
points
were laid
open
to our
understanding.
Whatever he said flowed in the resonant
depths
of a
powerful vitality
which was controlled
by
hidden
powers.
We loved him
and were
proud
of him. The small number of
specialised
students who
benefited from his learned lectures stood in an almost
grotesque dispro-
portion
to his
great potentiality
for
powerful
intellectual influence. Fortu-
nately
his riches were made available in
public
lectures which could be
attended
by laymen.
Older
persons
above
all, including many
interested
women,
were in
consequence
stirred
by hearing
him. Zimmer married
Christiane von
Hofmannsthal;
as a
daughter
of the
poet,
she was counted
as an
"
ethnic
hybrid
"
and for that reason the National Socialist
govern-
ment would not allow her husband to advance in his career. The
family
therefore
emigrated
to the United States in order to
bring up
their children
there. The
University
of
Heidelberg
which had to renounce the collabora-
10
Ludwig
Curtius (1874-1954)
after
studying
law in Berlin turned to
archaeology.
In
1904-07 he
engaged
in
archaeological
excavation in Greece and in Asia Minor. He was
professor
in
Erlangen
from 1909 to
1919,
when he
accepted
an
appointment
to the Univer-
sity
of
Wrzburg.
He remained there
only
for one
year, leaving
for
Heidelberg
where he
held the
professorship
of classical archaeology
until 1928. There he established his
reputa-
tion as one of the
leading
classical
archaeologists
of the
century.
From 1928 to
1937,
when
he was
dismissed,
he was the director of the German
Archaeological
Institute in Rome.
When he was removed from his
post,
he remained in Rome. He covered the entire
range
of
ancient art. His works include Die antike Kunst
(1924-39);
Die Wandmalerei
Pompeiis
(1929);
Zeus und Hermes
(1931);
Ikono
graphische Beitrge (1932-49);
Das antike Rome
(1943);
and Deutsche und antike Welt:
Lebenserrinnerungen (1950).
11
Heinrich Zimmer
(1890-1943)
became Privatdozent at
Heidelberg
in 1922. He became
associate
professor
of
Indology
in 1928. He left
Germany
in 1938 and
spent
two
years
at
Oxford before
going
to the United States where he ended his career as
professor
of
Indology
at Columbia
University.
His works include
Kunstform
und
Yoga
im indischen
Weltbild
(1926); Maya:
der indische
Mythos (1936); Myths
and
Symbols
in Indian Civiliza-
tion
(1946);
The
King
and the
Corpse (1948);
The
Philosophies of
India
(1951);
and The
Art
of
Indian Asia: Its
Mythology
and its
Transformations (2 vols., 1955).
His Gesammelte
Schriften
were
published
in 1951.
Academic
Conviviality
217
tion of its most
important
older and
younger
scholars
-
40 were dismissed
from their
posts
-
was
tangibly impoverished by
these losses. In
addition,
the circle of friends was also
painfully damaged.
When,
in later
years,
we
learned that Zimmer after a
very
successful career had died at the
age
of 50 from inflammation of the
lungs
we could
scarcely grasp
our final
and irretrievable loss.
Another mind of
great
radiative
power
whom we lost
through
death
just
before the National Socialist seizure of
power
was Friedrich Gun-
dolf.12
Perhaps
this
might really
be seen as an act of
providence.
The
brutal
expulsion
from the environment in which he could be effective
would have been a disastrous blow to this much
celebrated,
much
honoured and much beloved
man,
who believed in human
goodness.
He
was German
through
and
through;
to have to
adapt
himself to a
strange
environment at his
age
would have been even more difficult for him than
it was for others. But
perhaps
such reflections were
only
the
way
in
which we found later consolation for such losses. The
Sundays
which
were filled
up by
Gundolf in the
early years
were
especially splendid.
His
broad
scholarly
erudition
expressed
in the dialectical form of his mode of
speech
set the mind in stimulated motion. His
spirited
mode of discourse
brought
his
subject
from the
sphere
of
scholarship
to that of
poetry.
His
scintillating
wit flashed his bon mots before us like fireworks. On one
occasion he
spoke
to us about the
writings
of Bismarck as a monument
of German
literature;
he revealed the founder of the Reich in an
aspect
which we had never noticed before. On another occasion he treated us
to his views on Mrike. Marianne once said in a letter:
"
Gundolf knew
how to draw the loftiest and the
deepest
from a work of literature and
could
place
it in an intellectual
landscape
of
great grandeur."
A star over
Heidelberg
was
extinguished
when Gundolf died.
Observations contained in letters tell about a rather different sort of
speaker
of those
early years
:
"
Last
Sunday,
we had N. N. in full
splendour
and
many guests.
As
always
he
spoke
as a
person
with broad
knowledge,
sound
judgement,
and
really
brilliant
insights,
and
yet
as a
personality
he
made a rather
poor impression;
he seemed like a cheerful
innkeeper
who
instead of beer and
wine,
draws
knowledge
and even research from the
tap,
without himself
being
affected
by
it. That a successful
pursuit
of
knowledge
and intellectual
productivity
do not raise the
spiritual
and
intellectual level of a
person
became clear to me in
seeing
him." That Sun-
day
when a
journey
to Vienna was the
topic,
Mrs. Jellinek
13
at
my
12
Friedrich Gundolf
(Gundelfinger) (1880-1931)
was Privatdozent in
Heidelberg
from
1911 and then
professor
of
literary history
from 1920. A friend and admirer of Stefan
George,
he was the
intermediary
who
brought
Max Weber and
George together. (See Weber,
M., op. cit.,
1926
chap. XIII).
His combination of erudite
scholarship
and refined aesthetic
sensibility
made him into a
very
attractive teacher and a
great
influence on German
literary
studies in his time. His works include
Shakespeare
und der deutsche Geist
(1911);
Goethe
(1916); George (1920);
Heinrich von Kleist
(1922);
Caesar: Geschichte seines Ruhmes
(1925); Shakespeare (2 vols., 1928);
and Die Romantiker
(2 vols., 1930-31).
13
Walter Jellinek
(1885-1955)
was
professor
of constitutional law at
Heidelberg
from
1929 to 1935 and then
again
after 1941. He was the son of the famous constitutional
laiwyer
Georg
Jellinek who had also been
professor
at
Heidelberg
and who was a close friend of
Max Weber. Walter Jellinek's books include Grenzen der
Verfassungsgesetzgebung (1931)
and
Schpferische Rechtswissenschaft (1928).
218
Reports
and Documents
request opened
her mouth for the first time and the
way
in which she
spoke
of her native
city
was so fine and sensitive that the
young persons
present
were
perfectly
enchanted. The difference between her and N. N.
was
striking.
A
young friend, speaking
of Mrs. Jellinek and Professor
Frnkel
14
said,
"
It is fortunate that there are old
people."
From those
years,
I mention talks
by
the classical
philologists,
Otto
Regenbogen
15
on Greek
politics,
the
Egyptologists
Luise
Sigwart-Klebs
16
and Hermann Ranke
17
on ancient
Egyptian religiosity,
the economist Carl
Brinkmann
18
on his
impressions
of a
journey
to
England.
The
pleasure
of
those hours remains in
memory
but not the substance. Brinkmann's talks
took
place during
the time of the first summer festival which,
with the
intention of
attracting foreigners
on a
large scale, heightened
the
image
of our
landscape
in the
unforgettable setting
of the court of the
Heidelberg
Castle under the
starry night by presenting plays
of
Shakespeare, Goethe,
Kleist and Paul Ernst. The Midsummer
Nighs
Dream was a
unique
delight;
the
Gtz
von
Berlichingen brought
into modern form
by
the
actor
George
was a
shattering experience.
Certain
poets
who were
guests
raised the
importance
of the
project.
The main address of the festival
was delivered
by
Thomas Mann. His son
Gottlieb,
a serious
young philo-
sopher,
was a friend of the
family
and he
brought
with him his celebrated
father,
whose
simple
and
unpretentious humanity
won our
appreciation.
II
Our
programme
of talks was determined
by
the
knowledge
which was at
the
fingertips
of our
speakers.
Erudite research
expounded
in detail
alternated with the discussion of current social and
political problems.
These were interwoven with vivid accounts of
personal experiences,
like
reports
on
travels, deepened by scholarly knowledge.
The
significance
of
14
There were two
distinguished
classicists
bearing
the same surname.
They
were Eduard
and Hermann. Neither seems to have
taught
at
Heidelberg.
Marianne Weber did not
indicate which one she had in mind. Her
nephew
thinks she referred to a local
figure
whom I cannot trace.
15
Otto
Regenbogen (1891-1966)
was
professor
of classical
philology
at the
University
of
Heidelberg
from 1925 to 1935 and
again
from 1945 to 1959. He
played
an
important part
in the reconstruction of the
University
after the war. His works include Schmerz und Tod
in den
Tragdien Snecas
(Vortrge
der Bibliothek
Warburg, 1930);
Eine
Forschungsmethode
antiker
Naturwissenschaft (1930); Thukydides politische
Reden
(1949);
and Kleine
Schriften
(1961).
16
Luise
Sigwart-Klebs (1865-1931)
was the widow of
Georg
Klebs
(1857-1918) who was
professor
of
botany
at
Heidelberg
from 1907 onward. Mrs. Klebs*
writings
include: Die
Reliefs
des alten Reiches
(
2980-2475 vor
Christus):
Material zur gyptischen Kulturgeschichte
(1915);
Die
Reliefs
und Malereien des mittleren Reiches
(VIl-XVII. Dynastie
ca. 2475-1580
vor
Christus):
Material zur gyptischen Kulturgeschichte (1915);
and Die
Reliefs
und
Malereien des neuen Reiches
(XVII-XX. Dynastie
ca. 1580-1100 vor
Christus) (1934).
17
Herman Ranke
(1878-1953)
became Privatdozent at
Heidelberg
from 1910 and
pro-
fessor of
Egyptology
from 1928. His works include
Early Babylonian
Personal Names
(1904);
and
Babylonian Legal
and Business Documents
(1905).
18
Carl Brinkmann
(1885-1954)
studied at
Breslau, Gttingen,
Berlin and Oxford and
was Privatdozent at
Freiburg
before he became
professor
of economic
history
at
Heidelberg
in 1923. He continued to teach in
Germany throughout
the National Socialist
period.
His
works include Englische
Geschichte: 1815-1914
(1924); Weltpolitik
und
Weltwirtschaft
der
neuesten Zeit
(1930);
G. Schmoller und die
Volkswirtschaftsleben (1937);
and
Soziologische
Theorie der Revolution
(1948).
Academic
Conviviality
219
plastic
art was often
discussed;
the
explanation
and
presentation
of such
work
through photographs
was
especially pleasing.
Such occasions were
feasts for the
eyes
and
opened
the
way
to the
large
number of friends
who otherwise could not see them.
Ludwig
Curtius' successor, the Swiss
archaeologist
Professor van
Salis,
treated us to an
explanation
of the
murals in Roman and
Pompeian villas;
he led us into Nero's Golden
House which otherwise would not have been accessible to us.
Once,
under
his
guidance,
we looked at Roman
portraits.
What we saw and heard
awakened in those who had made
pilgrimages
to Rome,
a
yearning
to look
again
with enriched
knowledge
at what
they
had
already
seen. The destruc-
tive turbulence of the Second World War removed this
possibility.
Ill
We laid
emphasis
at that time on a
deepened conviviality
and mutual
stimulation
through
discussions of
great
works,
but we also
sought
to
clarify
our minds about social and
political problems.
This aim was furthered
by,
among
other
things,
a lecture
by
the
psychiatrist
and
psychologist Willy
Hellpach
19
who was
equally
at home in the natural and human sciences.
His
past
as a democratic
politician
of the
period
of the Weimar
republic
was still
very
fresh in his
memory.
For that reason he did not
speak
as a
scholar but as a former
politician
on the
question
:
"
Under what
type
of
state is
Germany living
at
present?".
The
greatly
esteemed
professors
of
constitutional
law,
Gerhard Anschiitz20 and Walter
Jellinek,
discussed
constitutional
questions
at a time when the constitutional foundations of
the state were in
danger
as a result of the rise of the National Socialist
Party.
Karl
Geiler,21
who was
equally respected
as teacher and as a
lawyer,
and who
despite
his double task found time for
deep
and
many-
sided
studies,
discussed the
relationship
between law and
society
in the
light
of his own direct observations. On a later occasion he
gave
us
plea-
sure
through
a vivid and informative account of his travels
whereby
he
acquainted
us with the ancient Minoan culture in Crete and its influence
in
prehistoric
Greece.
19
Willy Hellpach (1877-1955)
was
professor
of
psychology
at
Heidelberg
from 1926. He
was a member of the executive committee of the German Democratic
Party,
Minister of
Religion and Education for Baden 1922-25 and Chief Minister of Baden in 1924-25. In 1925
he was a candidate for the
presidency
of the Reich. From 1925 to
1930,
he was a member
of the
Reichstag.
After retirement under the National Socialist
government,
he took
up
a
professorship
in Karlsruhe in 1945. His books include Grundlinien einer
Psychologie
der
Hysterie (1904); Geistige Epidemien (1906); Sozialpsychologie (1933);
Mensch und Volk der
Grossstadt
(1939);
Grundriss der
Religionspsychologie (1951);
and Universelle
Psychologie
einer Genius: Goethe
(1953).
20
Gerhard Anschtz
(1867-1948)
was
professor
of constitutional law in
Heidelberg
from
1900 to 1908 and
again
from 1916 until 1933. He was the author of the standard commen-
tary
on the Weimar constitution. His works include Polizei ,
Staat und Gemeinde Preussens
(1914);
Die
Verfassung
der deutschen Reichs von 11.8.1919 (1921);
and Deutsches Staatsrecht
(1947).
21
Karl Geiler
(1878-1953)
was a
lawyer
in Mannheim from 1904. In 1909 he
helped
to
found the School of Commerce at Mannheim and also
taught
there. From 1921 to 1933
when he was dismissed he also
taught
in
Heidelberg.
Under the United States
military
government
he was
governor
of Greater Hesse. In 1947 he became
professor
of international
law in
Heidelberg
and in 1948-49 he was also rector of the
University.
220
Reports
and Documents
The economists and
sociologists,
Emil
Lederer,22
Carl
Brinkmann,
Karl Mannheim23 and Jakob Marschak
24
discussed economic and social
problems, particularly
the reconstruction of our disordered fiscal
system
and
unemployment,
which were then
very pressing.
The acute scholar
Brinkmann discussed a
strictly scholarly question;
in a lecture on Max
Weber's
concept
of the ideal
type,
the latter's
spirit
hovered over the
gathering.
Emil
Lederer,
who was an economic theorist as
well,
once took us
beyond
his
discipline
into the remote and
magical
world of
Japan
where
he had been
privileged
to
spend
two
happy years
with his wife at a univer-
sity.
Both of these had become intimate with the alien culture and land-
scape,
and
they
returned with fresh
understanding
and
many gifts
for their
friends.
They
were collaborators and the fruit of their
experiences
went
into a
jointly
written book on
Japan.
These close friends also left their
chosen
country
on the outbreak of the National Socialist revolution.
They
found an
opportunity
to use their talents in the United States where
they
were
permitted
to
enjoy
a number of successful
years.
First the wife died
and then the
husband,
after
many
German exiles had benefited from their
readiness to
help. They
were refined and
good
human
beings permeated
by
a
lofty
intellectual
spirit
and
always ready
to come to the aid of others.
Their friends in
Heidelberg
had additional reasons for tears when
they
died.
The two
young
lecturers Mannheim and Marschak both
disappeared
from
Germany
after the seizure of
power by
the National Socialists to find
places
in
England
and the United States for a new
period
of
fertility. They
not
only provided knowledge through
their intellectual endowment and
acquisitions
but
they
also
gained
the
appreciation
of their
pupils through
their human warmth.
They
were both
Hungarians by
birth
25
and Jews
by
race.
Germany
was their chosen
country
and
they
saw its fate befall
them.
Among
the
young
social scientists in the
circle,
Arnold
Bergstrsser
26
22
Emil Lederer
(1882-1939)
was
professor
of economics at
Heidelberg
from 1920 and
at Berlin from 1931 to 1933. From 1922 he was editor of the Archiv
fr Sozialwissenschaft
und
Sozialpolitik ,
the
leading
German
journal
of the social
sciences,
founded and edited
by
Max Weber. He then
emigrated
to the United States where he became dean of the
Graduate
Faculty
of the New School of Social Research in New York. His works include
Grundzge
der konomischen Theorie
(1922);
Technischer Fortschritt und
Arbeitslosigkeit
(1938);
and The State
of
the Masses
(1940).
23
Karl Mannheim
(1893-1947)
was Privatdozent in
Heidelberg
from 1924 until 1930 when
he became
professor
of
sociology
at the
University
of Frankfurt-am-Main. In 1933 he
emigrated to
England, becoming
lecturer in
sociology
at the London School of
Economics,
and,
in
1946, professor
of education at the Institute of Education
(University
of
London).
His works include
Ideologie
und
Utopie (1929, English
translation
1936);
Mensch und
Gesellschaft
um Zeitalter des Umbaus
(1935, English
translation
1940); Diagnosis of
our
Time
(1944);
Freedom
,
Power and Democratic
Planning (1950); Essays
in
Sociology
and
Social
Psychology (1953);
and
Essays
in the
Sociology of
Culture
(1956).
24
Jakob Marschak
(1898-1977)
was Privatdozent in economics and statistics at Heidel-
berg
from 1931 to
1933,
director of the Institute of Statistics at Oxford 1933-39 and
pro-
fessor at the
University
of
Chicago
from
1943-55,
when he became
professor
at Yale. He
became one of the
leading
econometricians of the world.
25
Marianne Weber was in error here.
Only
Mannheim was of
Hungarian origin;
Marschak was born in Russia.
26
Arnold
Bergstrsser (1896-1964)
was
professor
of
political
science in
Heidelberg
from
1928 to 1937.
Although
he had been wounded in the First World
War,
he was
disqualified
Academic
Conviviality
221
should be
mentioned;
he had become Max Weber's
pupil
in Munich. He
had lost an
eye
in the First World
War;
the other shone all the more
brightly.
A whole
group
of
young persons gathered
around
him; they
saw in him a
helper
and a
guide.
When at one of our
Sunday meetings,
he
spoke
about the reforms of the
university
which were then so much
discussed,
he did so in their name. His
widely ranging practical
activities
were
indispensable
to the Institut fr Sozial- und Staatswissenschaften
which was directed
by
Alfred Weber. For the formation of a
large library
of its own and for other
equipment,
it needed a circle of friends and
patrons
from
industry
who were in a
position
to
help
it
financially.
Bergstrsser's political
and
organisational energy
seemed to
qualify
him
better to be a leader of
youth
and a
politician
than a scholar and thinker.
We
expected
certain
important political accomplishments
of him in the
new
state,
after the
upheaval
but it turned out
differently.
A hitherto
unseen flaw in his
ancestry prevented
his success and in the end drove
him abroad.
IV
Outsiders also came to
speak
to us about the
things
which interested them.
Kurt
Hahn,
for
example,
once came to
speak
about his educational work
at Salem. We knew that his
charges developed very
well under his
guidance.
We were
happy
with his enthusiasm for education but we were
not convinced of the correctness of his methods. At another time a
young
lecturer and
youth-leader
from Basel
spoke
and he made a sensation. In
the summer of
1930,
I wrote in immediate
response
"A tremendous
Sunday!
A successful
engineer
and
young professor,
F.
Sch.,
who is
making
a name for
himself,
came here
expressly
to discuss the
youth
movement.
He is the leader of the
4
grey corps*,
an association of
young persons
something
like an order or
sodality
which we
hope
will become the
elite of the nation and its future
leadership.
F. Sch.
clearly
knows how to
put
himself in the
right position.
His followers cast themselves down
before
him,
obey
his
mysterious
commands and written commissions
unconditionally
and other
obligations
fade
away
before them. Parents
are not to know about it. He
organises camps
in which adolescents
are hardened and all sorts of tests of
courage
are
required
of them.
The
parents
are not
asked; they
have to reconcile themselves to the dis-
respect
of their children and their
being
weaned
away
from school and
church." Some of those
present
were touched to the
quick by
his
account,
for the difficult
relationship
with their own sons was
turning
into
open
resistance. One of his
youthful
followers had asked me to allow this man
to
speak
in
my
house.
Obviously,
the successful
pied-piper
was convinced
that he would be able to win the confidence of the
parents
but he was dis-
by being
one fourth Jewish in
ancestry
and was dismissed from his
post.
He then went to the
United States where he was
professor
of Germanic literature at the
University
of
Chicago
until his return to
Germany
in 1954 as
professor
of
political
science at the
University
of
Freiburg
im
Breisgau.
He was also the director of the Institut fr
europaische
Politik und
Wissenschaft in
Freiburg.
His
writings include Staat und
Wirtschaft
Frankreichs
(1930);
Sinn und Grenzen der
Verstndigung
zwischen Nationen
(1930);
and
Geistige Grundlagen
des deutschen Nationalbewusst seins
(1933).
222
Reports
and Documents
abused of this. His talk was
astonishingly empty;
his
appearance conveyed
a vain
self-satisfaction, immaturity
and other
problematic qualities.
The
parents
were horrified that such a
person
had
gained possession
of the
minds of their children. This time the
arguments
were
very outspoken.
Greatly surprised,
the
speaker
lost some of his brilliance.
Subsequent
developments
showed that the
judgement
which was rendered of him on
that
Sunday
was
very fitting.
He
disappeared
from his
profession
and from his
post.
V
Hans
Gruhle,27
the
psychiatrist
and
psychologist,
was
among
the
guests
who were
thorough
masters of the natural sciences and who at the same
time extended their interests into intellectual
history.
He was for
many
years
one of the close friends of the Webers. His interests reached far
beyond
his own academic
disciplines,
above all to the
plastic arts;
in this
sphere
he was a connoisseur and scholar of the most refined taste. We
learned much from him. As a scholar, his mind fastened on what could
be
rationally investigated
and demonstrated. He
acquired
a
many-sided
and
comprehensive learning
but he did not believe in undemonstrable
truths. He was cool to
metaphysical interpretations;
historical
syntheses,
enthusiastic
appreciations
of works of
art,
and
speculative philosophical
and
theological
ideas drew no
response
from him. His acute critical
intelli-
gence,
which often made his
professional colleagues uncomfortable,
treated what
lay beyond
the
grasp
of the rational intellect as
self-deception.
Intellectual
integrity,
sober
analytical thought, constantly referring
to
reality
-
that was his forte. Yet at the same
time,
he allowed for
empathie
understanding
as a heuristic
procedure.
He remained
young,
did not take
himself too
seriously,
and
rejected
all the
pomposities
associated with
being
a Geheimrat. He enlivened intercourse
through contradiction;
indeed he
took
pleasure
in
injecting
a
ray
of his
understanding
into
enthusiastic,
fanciful
interpretations
of works of art and historical situations so that
they
were deflated. But at the same time he was
lovably
free from touchi-
ness when his own views were handled
roughly.
But there was no occasion
for this when he delivered a
learned,
meticulous talk on the crisis of the
theory
of
genetics.
One was
gratefully
enriched
by
his
lucidity.
.
It was a little different when he
gave
two talks on
biography
and
portrai-
ture,
which were the
products
of his
far-reaching
studies. He
explained
the
perception
and
application
of the
psychological theory
of
types,
which
was then
widely accepted,
as an inadmissible basis for tenable
biographical
exposition
and
spoke harshly
from this
standpoint
of the
biographical
interpretations
of
leading
scholars of
history
and art who availed them^
selves of the
techniques
of
empathie understanding.
He
gave
rise to a
certain amount of
head-shaking by
his ironical treatment of certain
por-
27
Hans Gruhle
(1880-1958)
was
professor
of
psychiatry
at the
University
of
Heidelberg
from 1919 and from 1946 to 1956 was director of the
Psychiatrische und Nervenklinik of the
University
of Bonn. His
Writings
include Grundriss des
Psychiatrie (15th
edition
1948);
Das
Portrait : Eine Studie zur Einfhlung
in der Ausdruck
(1948);
V erstehende
Psychiatrie (1948);
Verstehen und Einfhlen
: Gesammelte
Schriften (1 953) ;
and
Geschichtsschreibung
und
Psychiatrie (1953).
Academic
Conviviality
223
trayais
of
personalities;
he condemned these from his
standpoint
as
"
dilettantism There was a
stormy
discussion in the
group
which ordi-
narily proceeded very circumspectly
and
considerately.
He incited an
outburst which broke
through
the otherwise serene reserve of the
group,
but it amused the
speaker.
He
enjoyed open combat,
even when he
received some blows himself. The housewife who on this occasion
parti-
cipated passionately
in the debate and in a
spirit
of contradiction found
that both sides had reached the limit of the
possible.
VI
The eminent
physicist,
Professor
Meyerhoff
28
expressed
a
quite
different
attitude. Over the
precision
of his scientific
knowledge,
he bilt a dome of
speculative philosophical reflection,
which he
expounded
to us as
grate-
fully admiring listeners,
under the
grand
title:
"
Changes
in the World-
view of the Natural Sciences." Professor
Meyerhoff
was a Nobel laureate
and was one of the
guiding
stars of his
discipline.
But he was a Jew and
for that
reason,
after a little
delay,
was
compelled by
the new rulers to
emigrate.
The laboratories and
studies,
and the
professorial
chairs of
Heidelberg
became
impoverished;
other countries benefited.
No less
painful
was the loss of the
highly
esteemed ancient
historian,
E.
Tubler,29
who had
spoken
in our
group
about the
problem
of universal
history.
I remember
nothing any longer
of the substance of this
deep,
philosophical
lecture but I do retain the
memory
of his sober
passion
and
the
glowing
intellectual refinement which
poured
out of the
depths
of a
mind of the
highest intensity. Tubler,
who had thrown himself into the
First World War for
Germany
and been
severely wounded,
felt himself
wholly justified
in
regarding
himself as a German and as entitled to
occupy
a
professorial
chair in a German
university.
He was also a homo
religio
-
sus and as a conscious heir of the faith of his fathers lived in a fruitful ten-
sion between the
powers
of the
people
of Israel which dwelt within
him,
ancient Greek
civilisation,
and
Germany.
He was
passionately
devoted to
making
his contribution to the solution of the Jewish
question;
he had
broadly
conceived but
practically
unrealisable
plans.
His
personality gave
such an
impregnable impression
that he was tolerated for a
long
time as
a
private
scholar in the National Socialist state. But somehow and from
somewhere he was informed that the time had come to
disappear.
28
Otto
Meyerhoff (1884-1951)
studied in
Heidelberg
and
taught
at Kiel before
becoming
the director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut fr medizinische
Forschung
at
Heidelberg
in
1929. Removed from his
post by
government,
he
emigrated
first to
Paris and then to the United States where he served as research
professor
at the
University
of
Pennsylvania.
He shared the Nobel
prize
for
physiology
and medicine with Professor
A. V. HiU in 1922 for his research on chemical reactions in muscular metabolism. His books
include Zur
Energetik
der
Zeltvorgnge (1913);
The Chemical
Dynamics of Life-Phenomena
(1924);
and Die chemische Vorgnge
im Muskel
(1930).
29
E. Tubler
(1879-1953)
habilitated m Berlin m 1918 and became
professor
of ancient
history
at
Heidelberg
in 1925. His works include
Imperium
Romanm: Studie zur Entwick-
lungsgeschichte
des rmischen Reiches
(1913);
Bellum Helveticum: Ein Caesar-Studie
(1924);
Tyche
: Historische Studien
(1926);
Die Archologie
des
Thukydides (1927);
Terramare und
Rom
(1932);
and Biblische Studien : die
Epoche
des Richter
(1958).
224
Reports
and Documents
The
professor
of criminal
law,
Gustav
Radbruch,30
was inclined to wel-
come what he
thought
was the
positive
element in the structural
change
of
society
into a socialist
direction, namely
the rise of the masses to the level
of a
humanly dignified
existence. Our
friend,
who had
taught previously
at
Knigsberg
and
Kiel, joined up
as an
ordinary
soldier in the First World
War when he was a
fully
mature man. His sense of
justice
was affronted
at this time
by
the
preferences given
in the
army
to the
upper classes;
as
a result he
joined
the Social-Democratic
Party
so that he could
participate
in its endeavours to attain a better condition of
society.
After the revolu-
tion of
1918,
he served his
party
as a
parliamentarian
and he became a
socialist minister of
justice.
His
accomplishments
included a new draft
of the criminal law. After four
years
of such
activity,
he returned as a
successful and honoured teacher to the
professorship
of
legal
and
political
theory
at
Heidelberg.
His first talk at our
Sunday meeting
-
in about 1926
-
was about
"
Socia-
listic Culture
"
as a confession of faith and an
attempt
to
bring
the ideal
of cultural and
personal
individualism into
harmony
with a somewhat
Marxist
conception
of the future. What he said there was
very stimulating
and aroused
many contrary arguments.
The contradictions were also
expressed
in the
speaker
himself: his
individualistically toned, spiritualised
personality
was in conflict with the convert who had been drawn towards
collectivistic
principles by
his love of
humanity.
Political emotions were
aroused;
the discussion was uninhibited. Members of the
group
were in
different
camps
but
they
dealt with each other in the most courteous
way.
Those who
only
sat and listened
appreciated
the
spiritual
drama. Later
on,
government deprived
Radbruch of his
professorship.
He then returned to the
complete
inner freedom of the
scholar;
his interest
in intellectual
history
became more salient. We have reason to be
grateful
to him for a
significant biographical
work on the Feuerbach
family.
Once
he offered us a
product
of his
professional experience, namely,
a lecture on
the
psychology
of
imprisonment.
Under the influence of
impressions
which
he
gained
from a
year
as a
guest
at an
English university,
he was drawn
to
speak
about the remarkable
figure
-
almost unknown in
Germany
-
of Samuel Johnson and the fondness of
Englishmen
for him. His
portrayal
was intended to
give
us an
insight
into the nature of the
Englishman:
"
Not to understand Dr. Johnson is to fail to understand the
English
character." The
speaker
discussed Boswell's
Life of
Dr. Johnson which has
become the model for all
English biographies;
the esteem in which this
work as well as its unusual author are held teaches much about the
English
"sense of humour" and the "matter-of-fact"
quality
of the
30
Gustav Radbruch
(1878-1949)
was
professor
of criminal law at the
University
of
Heidelberg
from 1926 until 1933 when he was dismissed
by
government.
He was a Social-Democrat;
he
represented
that
party
in the
Reichstag
from 1920 to 1924
arid was federal Minister of Justice in 1920-21 and
again
in 1923. In 1922 he formulated a
major proposal
for the revision of German criminal law. He was dismissed from his
post
in 1933 on
grounds
of
"political unreliability";
he resumed his
professorship
of criminal
law and
jurisprudence
in 1945. His works include
Einfhrung
im' die
Rechtswissenschaft
(1910); Rechtsphilosophie (1914);
Kulturlehre des Sozialismus
(1922);
Paul Anselm Friedrich
Feuerbach: Ein Juristenleben
(1934);
Gestalten und Gedanken
(third ed., 1954);
Der Geist
des
englischen
Rechts
(1946);
Vorschule der
Rechtsphilosophie (1948);
and Der innere
Weg
(1951).
Academic
Conviviality
225
English
character. We were
grateful
that the
speaker
was able to
help
us
to a
deeper understanding
of the
English
mind
through
his account of this
tragic figure
who
triumphed
over his own fate.
Perhaps
Gustav Radbruch himself was
particularly
drawn to Johnson's
personality.
Fate had made
very
severe demands on him: an avalanche
buried his
daughter
in the full bloom of her
life;
his
spirited
son died for
his
country.
He himself suffered from
bodily
ailments but he was not
broken
by
these misfortunes. His creative mental
powers
saved him from
annihilation. His life showed that a human
being,
who is sustained
by
his
intellectual
work,
cannot be
destroyed by
the heaviest
personal
burdens.
Our friend is not
only
a
person
of rare
spiritual
and intellectual
gifts,
he is
also a
loving person.
His close
relationship
with his wife and the
helpful
devotion of his
young
friends
protected
him from the desolation of
loneliness. The fact that he
always
discerned and held fast to the
positive
values embodied in the human
beings
around him and
responded
so en-
couragingly,
rather than
critically,
to their
qualities
and
actions,
had on
us the effect of a
warming light
which
brings plants
into flower. He is an
incarnation of
goodness.
The fact that
despite
his
sufferings,
he
again
took
up
his
activity
as a teacher after the Second World War had a wonderful
effect. He
gathered many young persons
around
him,
sacrificed himself
to them and had a
far-reaching
influence.31
Men were less
common,
women made
up
the
majority
of the
guests
at
these
Sunday meetings; they
included not
only
married women but also
widows and
spinsters among
Marianne's
friends,
who came to
enjoy
the
intellectual stimulus.
Nonetheless, conviviality
is not a welfare
institution,
it has its own distinctive form like
any
other cultural
undertaking
and it
can stand
only
a limited amount of
purely personal
affection if it is not
to suffer distortion. It was therefore
necessary
to choose
carefully.
Those
who were chosen included old female friends of the
Webers, especially
recommended women students but not the women who had worked most
closely
with Marianne in the women's
movement;
an
overwhelming
majority
of women would have forced out the men. A ratio of two thirds
of
gratefully receptive
women and one third of men had to be maintained.
It
gave
much satisfaction that the intellectual substance of our
meetings
was not
provided exclusively by
the
men; instead,
thanks to our intellec-
tual
emancipation, Heidelberg
was enriched
by
a new
type
of woman who
combined solid
thought
and action with the fulfilment of her feminine
capacities
and tasks. For
example,
Luise
Klebs,
the widow of the eminent
botanist O.
Klebs,
was a
person
of
many-sided interests,
a model house-
wife who had
brought up
three children. When her children
grew up
and
left
home,
she
poured
her unused
energy
with
great
concentration into the
study
of
hieroglyphs.
In this
way
she was able to withstand the loss of
two
promising
sons
-
one was killed in the war
-
and her own isolation. H.
Ranke was her teacher but
through
a research visit to
Egypt
and
through
her own
artistically
intensified
capacity
to
interpret forms,
she was able
to
acquire
a fund of
new, specialised knowledge
and to
produce
a dic-
tionary
of
hieroglyphics
which is much
appreciated by specialists.
We
31
Final sentence added in
published version, Weber, M., op. cit., 1948, p.
205.
226
Reports
and Documents
women were
very proud
that she enabled us to come into contact with the
rich life of an
epoch long past.
The men were not reserved in their
acknowledgement
of her and the
University expressed
its
appreciation by
the award of an
honorary
doctorate. Death took her
away
from us.
In the course of
years,
our friend Marie Baum32 adorned our life on
many
occasions. She
belonged
to the first
generation
of enthusiastic
women
students;
she chose the natural sciences because of her intellec-
tual interest and because she wished to become a chemist and stand on
her own feet as soon as
possible.
But since her feminine heart did not
find sufficient
gratification
in such
impersonal work,
she entered
upon
an
externally varying
but in essence continuous
professional life,
first as a
factory inspector.
Her
ever-open
love of mankind was distressed
by
the
social
problems
of
capitalistic enterprise.
When it became evident that
her efforts on behalf of the
labouring
class would be
officially
confined
within narrow
limits,
she
accepted
an invitation to
go
to the Rhineland
to
develop
the welfare
services;
there she established
something
which
was her own
creation, namely,
a network of institutions for the care of
mothers and children in the
densely
settled district of Dsseldorf.
Later,
during
the First World
War,
she drew
upon
her
experiences
to
found,
with Gertrud
Baumer,33
a school of social work for women. After a
parliamentary
interlude she returned to Baden as a member of the
government
to set the welfare services on a
genuinely original path.
Her
most
prized
achievement was the institution which she founded at
Heuberg
for the rehabilitation of
young persons
who had been
psycholo-
gically
and
physically damaged by
the war.
Finally,
she settled in Heidel-
berg
where as a teacher of social welfare and the care of
youth,
she
gave
young
students a
of their future tasks.
Her brilliant
appearance bespoke great strength
and
energy.
She
could do a
great
deal of work but she also found
time, alongside
her
variegated professional career,
for
many
other interests. Her broad cul-
ture
permitted
her to
present many
different
topics
to our
group.
A
sojourn
in the United States
revealed,
thanks to her
insight sharpened
by
her
experience
in social
work,
aspects
of life in that
country
which
were not disclosed to us
by exchange professors.
Her first
Sunday
talk
on that
subject
extended the
range
of our
programme
and
gave pleasure
to the
group through
her feminine charm. On a later occasion she
gave
a talk on Ricarda
Huch,34
to whom she was bound in
friendship
for more
32
Marie Baum
(1874-1964)
wrote
among
other works: Die
Bekmpfung
der
Suglings-
sterblichkeit
(1905);
Die
Wohlfahrtspflege (1916);
Grundriss der
Gesundheitsfrsorge (1923);
(with
Alice
Salomon)
Das Familienleben der
Gegenwart (1930); Familienfrsorge (1928);
and
Leuchtende
Spur
: Das Leben Ricarda Huchs (1950).
33
Gertrud Bumer
(1873-1954)
wrote Die Frauen in der
Kulturbewegung
der
Gegenwart
(1904);
Die deutsche Frau in der sozialen
Kriegsfrsorge (1916);
Die seelische Krise
(1924);
Deutsche
Schulpolitik (1928);
Gestalt und Wandel
(1939);
Die drei
gttliche Komdien des
Abendlandes :
Wolframs
Par zi fai,
Dantes Divina Commedia
, Goethes Faust
(1949);
and
Ricarda Huch
(1954).
34
Ricarda Huch
(1904-1947)
was one of the most
outstanding literary figures
of the first
half of the
century.
She lived in
Heidelberg
from 1932-34 where she was a close friend
of Gustav Radbruch. She
resigned
from the Prussian
Academy
of Art in 1933 in
protest
against
regime.
In addition to numerous novels and
poetical works, she
wrote Romantik
(1899-1901);
Luthers Glaube
(1916);
Sinn der
Heiligen Schrift (1919);
1848: Die Revolution des 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland
(1930);
Die Zeitalter des Glau
-
Academic
Conviviality
227
than a
generation.
How
good
it would have been had the
shy poetess
been able to
listen,
from an unseen
corner,
to the solid and affectionate
interpretation
of her works and
personality!
Marie Baum found another
stimulating
theme
through
her immersion in
autobiographies
in the
year
before the outbreak of the Second World
War;
Ernst
Jnger35
as
a
poet
and thinker
particularly
aroused her interest. He enchanted
many
of us
through
the
perfection
of his
language
and the distinctiveness of
his
sensually
and
intellectually
constructed
insight
into
reality.
We
savoured his
poetic perceptiveness
for unnoticed
things,
for the
tiny
creatures of
nature,
for
insects, beetles, plants
which were
despised
as
weeds,
and his emotional
depiction
of nature in the South. But Marie
Baum at that time was
primarily
attracted
by
his one
systematic work,
Der Arbeiter:
Herrschaft
und Gestalt. As she told
us,
she had for a
long
time
uncomprehendingly
faced the
spiritual upheavals
of our
time,
with-
out
grasping
what
they really
were until
Jnger opened
her
eyes.
He
was,
according
to
her,
the
only person
who in an
epoch
of endless discus-
sions and blind
actions, put
into words
passionate
social criticism and
his
predictions
of the future course of
society. Through this,
she saw
the
problematic
and
ultimately
untruthful character of the distinctive
and
fundamentally
irreconcilable contradiction between the
change
which
according
to his
theory
was
being shaped through instinctual,
automatic
strivings
rather than
through conscious,
intellectually
formed
ideas,
and his own
highly complicated
intellectual
personality.
She was
particularly repelled by
the coldness of his view of life and she
expressed
the view that
despite
his
very
considerable talents he was denied both
the
power
which
springs
from the
depths
of the heart and the
lasting
influence which comes from it. We were led
by
her
analysis
to further
study
of
Jnger
and we
learned,
with
horror,
that the
literary
artist of
many-sided
talents was to be counted
among
those thinkers whose social
and
political predictions provided
the intellectual
weapons
for the
totalitarian state and its relentless
striving
for
power;
such were his ideas
of
"
total mobilisation
",
"
total war
"
and his
transfiguration
of
military
heroism. The fact that later
on,
in his
symbolic mythical
work
Auf
den
Marmorklippen
and in his war
diary
written
during
the French cam-
paign
of
1940, Jnger
returned to a more
spiritual
outlook and to an
appreciation
of the work of
peace,
can
scarcely
undo the effect of his
slogans
on
youth
before the Second World War.
bensspaltung (1936);
and
Urphnomene (1946).
Her last work was concerned with the
German resistance
against
National Socialism and
particularly
with the activities of the
Schlls and Professor Huber at the
University
of Munich.
35
Ernst
Jnger (1895-19
. .
.)
served in the French
Foreign Legion
in
1913,
then in the
German
Army
until 1923. He studied
zoology
and
philosophy
in
Leipzig
and
Naples.
In the
Second World War he was a German staff officer in Paris. In 1944 he was
discharged
as
44
unworthy
of
military
service ". His earliest books
expounded
a militaristic
44
heroic
nihilism ". He then
began
to celebrate a
44
non-bourgeois type
of man
"
and from this he
passed
to the
praise
of
44
total mobilisation
",
of
mythical
44
order
"
and
unquestioning
obedience. His enthusiasm for National Socialism waned after a time and
Auf
den Marmor-
klippen (1939)
was
regarded
as an
allegorical
criticism of National Socialism. After the
Second World
War,
he became a critic of totalitarianism and inclined towards a
theologically
toned conservative
humanism,
hostile towards science and
technology.
His works include
Das Wldchen 125
(1925);
Die totale
Mobilmachung (1931);
and Bltter und
Steine, Jahre
der
Okkupation (1958).
His collected works
appeared
in 10 volumes from 1960 to 1965.
228
Reports
and Documents
VII
Among
the most brilliant of the
intellectually productive
women of the
first
generation
of our circle was Marie Luise Gothein.36 She was the
widow of Eberhard
Gothein,37
a historian and
sociologist
of universal
erudition;
she was a woman of intense vital and intellectual
energy,
of
many-sided learning
and a zest for life. She was a true scholar and at the
same time a
charming
and skilful
housewife,
the mother of four
sons,
a
stimulating
friend of older and
younger persons, mainly
male. Most
women bored her and she was remote in her relations with them. She had
little time for the women's movement and other social
"
movements
",
since as an intellectual aristocrat she was convinced that such
things
helped only
the
average person
and the masses. The talented and the
able were what
counted; they
would succeed as individuals
through
their
own
ability.
Marianne did not
agree
with her.
According
to her
experi-
ence,
our sex
develops many
otherwise
hidden, repressed
intellectual
powers
as a result of the
jointly
achieved
change
in ideas and values and
also as a result of
changes
in the external world.
Frau Gothein seized the
possibilities
which life offered. She mastered
ancient and modern
languages
and learned Sanskrit and
acquired
an
understanding
of Indian culture when she was
already
a
grandmother.
But the
responsiveness
of her attention to so
many
different
things
and
her unlimited intellectual
curiosity hampered
the concentration of her
powers
on a central
topic.
She lavished her
powers
above all on
literary
and
philosophical essays
of
many varieties;
she translated
poetry
from
foreign languages
into German. She also wrote a
beautifully printed
and
illustrated work in two volumes on
gardening,
which she had studied on
a worldwide scale
including
the Far
East;
this work
acquired
an endur-
ing reputation
as a contribution to the
history
of art and culture. In the
course of her travels to
gather
material for her
book,
she also visited
Bali and was
deeply impressed by
its
people,
who amidst the wonders of
tropical
nature and under the influence of their traditional
culture,
live
healthily
and
beautifully
like innocent children. She
thought
that their
life,
at that time still
undamaged by
contact with
Europeans,
was
perfec-
tion itself. The work of aesthetic enchantment had a
deep
effect on her
feminine
sensitivity
and the
Sunday
circle was
permitted
to
enjoy
its
resonant echo. On another occasion Frau Gothein travelled
through
the
eastern
regions
of
Germany
which had been so deformed
by
the
Versailles
Treaty.
We crossed the Polish Corridor with
her, experienced
the desolation of the Weichsel and the harbour of
Danzig,
and she
enabled us to have the
Tannenberg
Memorial
bring
back
proud
memories
to us. Frau Gothein had lost a fine son in the war. She ws a
patriot:
the
36
Marie Luise Gothein
(1863-1931)
wrote William Wordsworth: sein
Leben, seine
Werke,
seine
Zeitgenossen (1893);
A
History of
Garden Art
(2 vols., 1928);
and Eberhard Gothein:
Ein Lebensbild
(1931).
37
Eberhard Gothein
(1853-1923) taught
in
Breslau, Strasburg,
Karlsruhe and Bonn until
1904,
when he became
professor
of economics at
Heidelberg,
where he remained until his
retirement. A follower of Burckhardt and
Dilthey,
he
was,
I was once
told,
"
the last
person
who had read all the books ever written
"
! His most
important writings
were
Wirtschafts-
geschichte
des Schwarzwaldes
(1892); Ignatius
von
Loyola (1895);
and
Schriften zur Kultur-
geschichte der Renaissance
, Reformation
und
Gegenreformation (2 vols., 1924).
Academic
Conviviality
229
German
Empire
as a unified
great power was,
for
her, despite
her intel-
lectual interest which was not confined
by nationality,
an
unquestionable
good.
It was fortunate that the
unsparing expenditure
of her
strength
spared
her from a future in
which,
towards the
frightful
end of the
Second World
War,
the rulers of
Germany thought they
should blow
up
that
proud monument,
in order to avoid its
degradation
at the hands of
the
enemy.
If certain
outstanding
women of the
Sunday group
are dealt with
here more
fully
than the
men,
it
may
be
permitted
to a woman who
takes a
particular
interest in
every sign
of
productive
intellectual achieve-
ment
by
members of her own sex. Creative men
naturally
were more
numerous;
most of the women were
grateful recipients, including
those
who
through
methodical intellectual work had been successful in
achieving something
in their own
right.
The housewife
regarded
it as her task to
"
guide
"
the discussions in
the most
unparliamentary way possible;
this meant
weaving
in her own
thread when the occasion arose. The discussions were conducted in
accordance with her
views,
but
they
were constituted
by
the active
participation
in
thought
and action of the audience. The
group apprecia-
ted the
drama; they
did not wish
merely
to be edified.
When,
as was
frequently
the case after the
"
vote of thanks
"
to the
speaker,
a
thoughtful
silence settled on the
group,
Marianne tried to break
through
the
suspense by addressing
nave
questions
to the
speaker
or
by
bold
objections.
If those who were well informed on the
subjects
discussed
did not enter
actively enough, they
were called
upon
in succession for
their views. This
always helped;
free communication
began,
minds
expressed
themselves and
complemented
each other. The talk could not
go
on for
longer
than an
hour;
otherwise the interest of the listeners was
distracted. Those
speakers
who were full of their
subjects
found it diffi-
cult to observe this rule. The combination of
simplification
and
compres-
sion is a difficult
art;
it
frequently happened
that
during
the
subsequent
free discussion in which criticism and
response
were
equally free,
the
speaker
was
given
a welcome
opportunity
to
bring
out the
points
which
he could not
compress
into his talk. One mind lit
up
the other. The
audience was stimulated when the
sparks glowed.
The discussions were
enriched in an
irreplaceable
manner
by
the
participation
of Alfred
Weber,38
who was the oldest
participant.
He did not wish to deliver a
talk but he
freely
lavished his universal historical
knowledge
in the
38
Alfred Weber
(1868-1958)
was the
younger
brother of Max Weber. He came to Heidel-
berg
in 1907 and remained there the rest of his life.
Originally
an
economist,
he
early
Established a
reputation
with his treatise on the location of
industry.
In the first
years
of
the Weimar
republic,
he took an active
part
in
politics
on the liberal-democratic side. When
the National Socialists came to
power
he asked to be retired from
teaching.
After the death
Of his brother he was the most
important figure
in the social sciences at
Heidelberg
and
many
of those who later became well-known scholars like Karl
Mannheim,
Jacob
Marshak
and Alexander von
Schelting
were
among
his
pupils
and
protgs.
His works include
Deutschland und die
europische
Kultur
(1924);
Die Krise des modernen
Staatsgedankens
in
Europa (1925); Kulturgeschichte
als
Kultursoziologie (1936);
Das
Tragische
in der
Geschichte
(1943,
not
permitted
to circulate in
Germany during
the Nazi
regime);
Abschied
von der
bisherigen
Geschichte
(1946);
and
Prinzipien
der Geschickt s- und
Kultursoziologie
(1945).
230
Reports
and Documents
course of the
discussions,
whether in
supplementing
the
speaker's
obser-
vations or in contradiction to him. In
temperament,
he was
very youth-
ful. The
speakers
and audience both looked forward more than
anything
else to the
outpouring
of his
knowledge.
The discussions also stirred the
other scholars to allow their own reservoirs of
learning
to flow forth. It
was no mere
formality
when Marianne
Weber,
who did not
always
find
new
ways
of
expressing herself, expressed
at the end of the discussion
the conviction that the
speakers
too would
regard
themselves as
having
gained
from the
proceedings.
1933-44: The National Socialist revolution of 1933 was a threat even
to the
unspectacular
and
private pleasures arising
from the free intellec-
tual intercourse which had been
carefully spared by
the democratic
revolution of 1918. The
Sunday
talks had to be discontinued for a time
and could be resumed
only
in another somewhat different form.
Groups,
even those of
persons who,
without
any party labels, regarded
them-
selves as
liberals,
individualists and
intellectuals,
were
suspiciously
watched
-
especially
so when
they
were faithful to their Jewish friends.
Hence caution was
necessary.
The discussion of
contemporary questions
had to be avoided. Students could be invited
only
after
very painstaking
selection. The
group
tried to avoid
notice,
but even
then,
it was under
observation. Members who
thought
that their academic
posts
were
endangered
and who felt under
pressure
to
join
the
Storm-Troopers
in
order to
give
evidence of their devotion to the new
state,
ceased to
participate.
Where this was
openly declared,
it was all
right.
Those who
indicated their
position by repeated
refusals of invitations to attend were
regarded
as
having
ceased to be friends. Marianne was
constantly expec-
tant that the local authorities would
prohibit
the
Sunday meetings
-
that
it did not
happen
was
appreciated
over the
years
as a
precious gift.
When the
University
declared its devotion to the
"
German
"
in con-
trast with
"
the
living spirit
",39
academic life was
fundamentally
changed.
The
University
-
until the second revolution
-
had been a haven
of intellectual
freedom;
scholars and scientists of different
political
and
moral outlooks and of different races had worked in it. Socialists were
alongside
of
supporters
of the Deutsch-nationale
party, metaphysicians
alongside rationalists,
Jews
alongside Aryans.
Some teachers had not
tried to avoid
winning
over their
pupils
to their own
personal conviction,
but each individual was free to find his own
position;
no one suffered for
his
political
or
philosophical
beliefs. Such
liberty
was now
persecuted.
The
University
was forced into a
position
at the
opposite pole
from the
one it had
formerly occupied.
It was now
expected
to become a
pillar
of
the
total,
authoritarian state and a
training
school for followers of
national socialism. The
teaching
staff was
transformed;
40 teachers were
dismissed.
Young
immature revolutionaries served as
shock-troopers
against
eminent older scholars and
scientists;
the vacated
professorships
were filled with raw but
politically
reliable teachers. Where the German
39
The
building
of the Institut fr Staats- und Sozialwissenschaften bore the
epigraph:
"
Zum
lebendigen
Geist
"
-
"
to the
living spirit
Under the National Socialist
regime,
it
was
changed
to
"
Zum deutschen Geist
"
-
"
to the German
spirit
".
Academic
Conviviality
231
student fraternities had once
sought personal
and
political freedom,
now
a
young generation,
tired of its
freedom,
did
just
the
opposite;
it
blindly
submitted, as a
sign
of racial virtue and as a condition of
political
success. When one of the most
distinguished physicists
delivered a lecture
on the
theory
of
electrons,
in the old
style, i.e.,
without
adding
a con-
fession of
political faith,
he was
shamelessly
told
by
a fanatical student
functionary
to discontinue
teaching
and he
thereupon
retired to his
research. In a short
time,
the
spirit
and structure of the
University
were
fundamentally changed.
Each of us asked himself with worriment and
disillusion: Would not an immediate common resistance of the
teaching
staff here and elsewhere in other universities set some limit to the am-
bitions of the new authorities? Would not a decisive collective
expression
of our views cause the new rulers to retreat?
Unfortunately
such a cor-
porate spirit
was
lacking
in the German universities.40 But was there no
one
among
the bewildered
scholars,
who
despite
all the
dangers,
felt
himself called
up
to offer a
symbolic
ethical resistance? Was
nothing
else
demanded than an
unresisting compliance
and silent
resignation?
The
world outside
Germany
wondered about this and we
women, despite
the
ingenious justifications
which certain friends
gave us,
will never under-
stand this kind of conduct.
The new situation also soon
changed
the convivial life of the Univer-
sity.
The cohesion of academic
society,
which
paid
no attention to
differences in
political outlook,
broke
up.
Caution and mutual mistrust
infected the uninhibited
exchange
of
views,
the ties of freedom were
broken. The
teaching
staff was no
longer appointed
with the
cooperation
of the
faculties;
it was now done
by government.
The old
custom,
whereby
a teacher
newly appointed
to a
faculty presented
himself to
the students and
persons
with an academic interest
through
a
public
inaugural
lecture and then
personally presented
himself to his
colleagues
by visiting
them in their
homes,
ceased. As a
result,
the beautiful cere-
monies which united
young
and old became
impossible.
vm
A
major
loss was the cessation of the
evenings
of free discussion
among
teachers and
pupils regarding questions
of the
day
and the
problems
of
science and
scholarship
to which access had been
granted
to
guests.
Another
significant
loss was those
interesting meetings
led
by
Alfred
Weber,
Brinkmann and Lederer at the Institute of Political and Social
Sciences to which were invited non-academic
patrons
and
friends, mostly
industrialists and men of
practical
affairs,
and at which current
questions
were treated at a
high level;
these were now discontinued. In
place
of
such a
profusion
of
stimulating
ideas about intellectual and
practical
matters,
there were now
occasional, politically
coloured
meetings,
atten-
40
Max Weber had warned before the First World War of this lack of
corporate spirit
of
the academic
profession
and its reluctance to withstand the blandishments and threats of
authority.
See Weber, Max,
4 4
The Power of the State and the
Dignity
of the Academic Call-
ing
in Imperial Germany ",v Minerva, XI,
4
(October 1973), pp. 571-632,
also
published
as
Weber, Max,
On Universities
(Chicago
and London:
University
of
Chicago Press, 1974).
232
Reports
and Documents
dance at which was
obligatory
for students. At first
many young persons
welcomed this austere orientation towards
tangible political goals
and
heroically
transcendent ideals.
They
did not see the reverse side. Do not
persons
who crave
dependence
find it more comfortable to allow them-
selves to be led than to
grope
about on their own
responsibility
in the
"
open spaces
of freedom "? The
propaganda
of the totalitarian state
and its
appeal
to the desire for a
closely-knit community
were effective.
The
young people
lost the
opportunity
to
develop
the ethos of
learning
freely sought
and committed to
truth; they
lost the
opportunity
for free
communication and for a
free, unprejudiced
intellectual
growth. They
began
to sense this loss
only
after some
years. They
created a
surrogate
for what
they
lost in their new
associations;
there
alongside
their
political
interests, they
also cultivated intellectual interests of a somewhat
pretentious
sort.
So it
happened
that Mrs. Weber's
Sunday gatherings
became more
precious
as the remains of an
earlier,
better endowed convivial and
intellectual circle. It now consisted
essentially
of
persons
of the same
generation who, although differing
from each
other,
were united in
their attitude towards the new state and in their mutual trust.
They
felt
themselves closer to each other than
they
had been
previously; they
were bound
together by
a common outlook and
by friendship; they
suffered
together
from their
impotence
as well as from the common
guilt.
Those who in the first
years
of the new
regime voluntarily
com-
mitted themselves to the National Socialist
Party
and who
thereby
accepted
a share in the
responsibility
for its
deeds,
ceased to be members
of our circle. Our Jewish
friends,
as
long
as
they
were still
among us,
could not be
expected
to associate with members of the
party.
X
During
those
years,
the circle lost about a dozen of its
speakers
but it
still had about 70
participants,
about half of whom attended on invita-
tion. The intellectual resources of those who remained seemed to be
inexhaustible, particularly
since the talks
gave
the scholars who had been
deprived
of their chairs the
only opportunity
to
present
the results of
their intellectual work and to receive a
response
to it.
Young persons
were not
entirely lacking
and whoever could
participate
was
deeply
impressed by
the
performance
and the
quality
of the
private
scholars who
had seldom been seen in the
University.
And in the course of
years
older friends
rejoined
the
group.
The avoidance of
questions
of the
day
made the
proceedings deeper although
it also
impoverished
them.
Literary
historians and historians of art as well as
philosophers
and
theologians
now had the floor.
Hans von Eckardt
41
was a member of the
younger generation
and had
41
Hans von Eckardt
(1890-1957)
habilitated at
Hamburg and became associate
professor
at
Heidelberg
in 1926. He was dismissed from his
post
in 1933. After
1945,
he became
associate
professor
of
sociology
at
Heidelberg
and director of the Institut fr Publizistik
there. His works include: Russland
(1930); Ivan der Schreckliche
(1947);
Russisches
Christentum
(1947);
and Macht der Frau
(1949).
Academic
Conviviality
233
belonged
to the circle even before 1933. He was of Baltic
birth,
and a
Russian
national,
but a German
by
choice. As
such,
he had shown his
quality
in the First World War. He then founded and directed the In-
stitute for the
Study
of the Press in
Heidelberg,
which afforded him an
opportunity
to have an
impact
on the
young generation
of students. This
man who had
spent
a
part
of his formative
years
in
Russia, regarded
it
as his task to contribute to a
lasting peace
in central
Europe through
the
preparation
of a German
policy
of collaboration with the Eastern
colossus. Before
1933,
he
spoke
of this interest in a talk on the theme
of
"
Germany's Obligations
to Promote a
Policy
of Peace ". The National
Socialists
deprived
him of his
post
and
deliberately attempted
to discredit
him
politically.
He had to
support
himself
very meagrely
for some
years
by taking
subordinate
employment
in
business,
as one of those intellec-
tuals whom the new state
prevented
from
exercising
his talents in an
appropriate way. Finally,
after
many years,
there
appeared
some coura-
geous publishers
who wanted to
satisfy
the
growing
interest about Russia
among
the educated classes. Von Eckardt wrote a successful book about
Ivan the Terrible. Thereafter he
began
to
gather
material in the
quiet
of
retirement for a book on Russian intellectual and cultural
history
-
a
starveling
who intended to earn his bread in a lawful manner. For
years,
he lived on retirement and
passed through
his
early
middle
age
in diffi-
cult
straits, deepened
and transformed.
(Now
he fills a
professorial
chair
as a
sociologist
in
Heidelberg.)
A lecture on
"Spirit
and Power in
Russian Literature
"
in 1943 was an
expression
of this. The
speaker
had
to
give
his talk
twice,
so
great
was the interest in it. His
presentation
was
very pertinent
since it showed
impressively
how the
great
works of
Russian literature from Pushkin to
Turgenev,
Gorki and Tolstoi to
Dostoievsky,
shared in the
responsibility
for the annihilation of the
Russian intellectual in the
conflagration
of the Russian revolution. Trans-
figured by poetry
and
organisationally ineffectual,
their
passionate
love
of the
people,
of the
peasants
and the
proletariat,
of all
simple
souls,
including
the
backward,
the feeble-minded and
criminals,
aroused an
exaggerated
self-consciousness in the lower classes. Above
all,
the erosive
self-criticism and self-revelation of the faults and weaknesses of the
upper
classes which were
presented
in the
great literary
works
destroyed
the
respect
of the masses for the
educated,
and above
all,
for a
spiritual
and
intellectual existence. As a
result,
the Bolsheviks could calumniate this
whole stratum as
parasites
and vermin and then
destroy
them.
The audience was
profoundly
and
enduringly impressed.
As
humane,
socially
minded human
beings, they
were reinforced in their belief that
they
must not renounce their ideals and their conviction of the autono-
mous value of intellectual
activity
in favour of the masses and of a less
differentiated form of
culture,
if
they
wished to save themselves from
annihilation and to
preserve
some
respect,
in a future devoted to the
satisfaction of the needs of the
masses,
for an intellectual culture which
has come into existence
through
a
long process
of
development.
234
Reports
and Documents
X
Ernst
Hoffman,42
the
philosopher
and
literary scholar, appeared among
us as a
speaker only
after the National Socialist accession to
power;
he
was one of those men of
learning
who had been forced
prematurely
into
a hermitic existence and had to use his
powers
in some other
way.
He
then devoted himself
primarily
to the
edition,
translation and
explana-
tion of Meister Eckart and Nicholas of
Cusa,
the
profoundest
thinkers
and
theologians
of the German Middle
Ages.
Over the
years,
he enriched
our circle
by
talks on Plato and
Platonism,
on Plato's
Symposium ,
on
the
early Pythagoreans,
on Giordano
Bruno,
on Nicholas of Cusa and on
Eckart. His introduction to this
religious thinker,
whose sermons were
known to most of
us,
was
especially instructive,
but also
extremely
diffi-
cult. It was
necessary
to listen
very attentively
to some of the basic ideas
which he
brought
close to us and which were
expounded, according
to
an
autobiographical
account
by
the
speaker,
because the idea of God
of this
thinker,
so remote from us in
time,
is once more
fructifying
the
religious
life of
persons
who have moved
away
from the substantive
beliefs of
Christianity.
The
speaker
first of all
helped
us to understand the two features com-
mon to all Western Christian
mysticism:
the belief in one infinite
God,
who confronts the world as a multifarious
patchwork
of that which
is alien to the
divine,
and the
yearning
to transcend the unbearable ten-
sion between the world and God
by
the fusion of the soul with God as
the
unique
essence of
man,
which is
grounded
not in the world but in
God. The new life follows from this
mystical
unio with Him. We then
learned the distinctive ideas with which Meister Eckart filled out this
schema: the one infinite God should not be
thought
of as
creator;
he
must rather be seen
absolutely
as
"
divinity ",
as the idea in the Platonic
sense.
Otherwise, by
creation,
He would be human and relative. The
pure
"
what
",
and not the
"
why
"
how
"
or
"
wherefore
"
are decisive for
the
relationship
between the finite and the infinite. The fundamental
fact is God's existence in us. That is
why
the soul must divest itself of
all
multifariousness,
colours and
images.
The decisive
thing
is not the
fullness of the
spirit
but the
emptiness
of the
ground
of the
soul,
of the
deep silence,
the still
desolation,
the small
sparks. Allowing
the world
to
submerge
is no
longer
a
particular
act but rather it
emerges
from
itself. If desolation is once
again empty,
the self once
again
freed from
images,
the
ground
of the soul alive and
divinity present,
then the new
life commences. In the new life, the central God has no
longer
created
the world for
us,
but we have created the world for the
truly
divine.
"
See, everything
has become new."
The listeners understood
enough
to be entranced
by
the decisive turn-
ing away
of a
deeply
reflective
religious personality,
who was
recognis-
able in these fundamental
qualities,
from belief in the Biblical creator
and the Christian Father-God.
They
were entranced too
by
the fact that
42
Ernst Hoffman
(1880-1952)
became
professor
of
philosophy
at
Heidelberg
in 1922. His
works include Die
Sprache
und die archaische
Logik (1925); Platonismus und Miltelalter
(1926);
Das Universum von Nikolaus von Cues
(1930);
Platonismus und
Mystik
im Altertum
(1935);
and Piaton
(1950).
Academic
Conviviality
235
this
pious
heretic did not think that this new doctrine in
any way separa-
ted him from his church. The
lofty
dialectical skill of the
speaker
had
brought
us into this
body
of ideas which were so difficult to
comprehend
and which was still unilluminated in its animated dialectic. He knew how
to arouse a
grateful understanding
in his
pupils
and in
laymen.
Even his
philological
meticulousness did not
give
an
impression
of
dryness
or
remoteness,
because he knew how to draw
up
the timeless substance from
the well of ancient documents
by
the use of his
philosophical
bucket.
A similar
gift
was
possessed by
the classical
philologist
Otto
Regen-
bogen,43
who at the
height
of his
powers
had been tricked out of his
position
and influence as one of the most successful teachers in the
University.
It was a difficult fate for a
person
who had a talent for
filling
his
pupils
with
genuine
enthusiasm for
specialised knowledge
of
antiquity.
[Today
his
post
and his honour have been restored to him and
very
important
tasks in the rehabilitation of the
University
have been en-
trusted to
him44]. Regenbogen
was not a
professional philosopher;
he
was rather an amateur of
philosophy.
He embraced the historical,
philoso-
phical
and
literary
documents in his own
thought
with such enthusiasm that
they
then issued forth from his mind with such animation and enchant-
ment that
they
seemed to have the effect of an annunciation. He had a
special expository
talent of
making
ancient
things
seem to
speak
for
themselves,
so that those who heard
him,
even
though they
were far
from the
subject-matter by
their
.
own
background,
were
brought
into
intimacy
with them. This was true of his
widely ranging
discussions like
"
Man and
Destiny
in
Antiquity ",
in which Plotinus as the thinker who
drew
up
the summa of
antiquity
was accorded
pre-eminence.
It was also
very
effective with
topics
like
"
Seneca as the
Philosopher
of Roman
Conduct
"
and
"
Plato's
Image
of the Politician ". In a lecture on the
"
Hymns
of Ambrose
", parts
of St.
Augustine's Confessions
were woven
into the discourse and
interpreted.
Gtto
Regenbogen
was also
very
fami-
liar with the
literary
treasures of the German
language
and he knew how
to illuminate the
complex relationships
of the German mind to ancient
Greece. Two fine lectures on
"
Goethe's Achilles
"
and on
"
Goethe's
Appreciation
of Pindar
"
showed, through
his
interpretation
of the much
misinterpreted poetic fragment
and of a
crucially important
letter of
Goethe,
how the old and the
new,
the
past
and the
present
were fused
and a
quite original pattern
in
poetry
and life could
grow
out of their
ancient roots.
The
speaker
attained his end best with the
apparently
remote
topic
of
"The
Speeches
in the Historical Work of
Thucydides"
of which he
presented parts
in new translation. When he
portrayed
the
portrait
of
that
age
and its intellectual
background,
he was
saying something
to us
which seemed
exceptionally
close to our
present-day experiences,
and
for that
reason,
it had that
shattering
effect which
every genuine
encounter with a
great object engenders.
His listeners
grasped
once
more that our
species
confronts unsolved conflicts of values which form
polar
human
types,
conflicts of
power
and interest which are never en-
43
Vide
supra ,
fn. 15.
44
Added
by
Marianne
Weber, op. cit., 1948, p.
218.
236
Reports
and Documents
duringly
resolved and which become so enshrouded in
grandiose
ideals
that human
beings
can never
enjoy
ultimate
peace
with their fellow-men
and can never
bring
their world into order.
XI
On one
occasion,
after the National Socialist seizure of
power,
Karl
Jaspers'
45
lofty figure appeared
before us as a
speaker
on the
topic
"
Nietzsche and
Christianity Through long years
of
disciplined
work
achieved at the cost of
fragile
health,
he turned from
psychiatry
and
psychology
to become the most
important
German
philosopher
of the
present day;
his
logical
and
speculative productivity
took form in a series
of works which in unadorned
prose brought together clarity
and
pro-
fundity
in an
incomparable way.
He had the
gift
of
keeping
the
thinking
mind in dialectical movement,
of
showing
the
possibility
of a fruitful inter-
dependence
of several
polar points
of view and of
orienting
himself to the
whole and to the hidden
unity
of
being.
He was able
through persistently
exploring
and
philosophising
to ascend to even more
comprehensive,
even
if never
definitive,
truths
regarding
the infinite source and the eternal
meaning
of our existence.
As a
teacher, Jaspers
had
great power
to attract students of all kinds.
He could do this
because,
for other
reasons,
he could
very vividly explain
the various
possible ways
of
understanding
existence and of
realising
the
capacities
of the
mind,
but unlike most
philosophers
who
imposed
their
own
view,
he showed them to his audience as
possibilities
and left them
free to make their own decisions. For
every
human
being
should
-
this
was one of his fundamental
principles
-
not remain a
disciple
but should
ascend to the condition of
"
being
a self
"
in his own
right.
The students
were educated to a
stringent
and sober
willingness
to face
facts;
for a
wide circle of adult
listeners,
his
great
lectures were not
just
an
enlarge-
ment of their
knowledge,
but rather hours of meditation and an inward
quest
about their innermost
selves,
as well as the fructification of the
seed
lying
in their own nature.
They
could see in them a mode of
religious analysis
for
persons
to whom it was no
longer granted
to inter-
pret
their own existence in accordance with belief in certain revelations.
Karl
Jaspers'
wife was Jewish. The honour which
many persons
accorded to the
philosopher
and his
growing
renown embarrassed the
National Socialist incumbents of the seats of
power. They
hesitated for
a number of
years
to dismiss him from his
post, obviously
in the
expecta-
45
Karl
Jaspers (1883-1969)
was
professor
of
psychology
at the
University
of
Heidelberg
from 1919 to 1921 when he became
professor
of
philosophy
there. In 1937 the National
Socialist
government prohibited
him from
teaching.
In 1948 he
accepted
an invitation to
become
professor
of
philosophy
at the
University
of Basel. As a follower of
Dilthey
and
Max
Weber,
he first made a mark
by
his
development
of a verstehende
psychopathology.
His studies of the
psychological
structure of
religious
and intellectual outlooks led him
towards
philosophy,
where he elaborated an
important
variant of existentialism. His
writings
include
Allgemeine Psychopathologie (1913,
7th
ed., 1959, English translation,
General
Psychopathology , 1963); Strindberg
und van
Gogh (1922);
Die
geistige
Situation der Zeit
(1933);
Max Weber: Deutsches Wesen im Forschen
, Philosophieren
und Politik
(1932);
Philosophe: (3 vols., 1932); Vernunft
und Existenz (1935); Nietzsche (1936); Nietzsche und
das Christentum
(1946);
and Von
Ursprung
und Ziel der Geschichte
(1949).
Academic
Conviviality
237
tion that
Jaspers
would sooner or later
separate
himself from his wife.
But their
hopes
were deceived because the
philosopher
and his
wife,
who
was also his
companion
and
helper,
were
indissolubly
bound in a union
of
metaphysical depth. So,
in the
end, Jaspers
too was
deprived
of his
chair. In the
period
which
followed,
the
couple
withdrew from all social
life and from our circle as well. The
glowing
soul of the
wife,
who until
1933 had been a
passionate
German
patriot
but also
proud
of the
spiritual
inheritance which she had received from her
ancestors,
suffered too
bitterly
from the
contempt,
maltreatment and extermination to which
her race was
subjected,
for it to be still
possible
for her to move
among
us. She was also too
proud
to wish to
endanger
those friends who still
remained in their
posts
and who were forbidden to have
any
association
with Jews. Her husband withdrew with her into the
quiet
of isolation
and henceforth could
only
be seen in his
study.
His
study
became a
place
to which
many persons
-
young
and old
-
went as to a
holy
shrine.
After seven
years
of existence in the
shadows,
in 1945 Karl
Jaspers
was
enabled to become once more a teacher of
far-flung
influence as a
pro-
fessor in a Swiss
university.
Students and listeners came to him from all
parts
of the world. His wise and brilliant
thoughts
now reached
through-
out the world.46
XII
During
the
war,
our circle
gained
a new and
productive
member in
Gustav Hartlaub.47 When the National Socialist rulers dismissed him
from his
post
as director of the Kunsthalle in
Mannheim,
he settled in
Heidelberg
and added to our lives
by
his broad
knowledge
and his
effervescent
vitality.
He was
engaged
in
questioning
and
seeking
ultimate
answers to such
problems
as the
metaphysical significance
of art. He had
concerned himself
quite early
with
magical
and occult
phenomena.
He
was interested in them not
only
because
knowledge
of them was an
indispensable key
to
understanding
the substance of a whole series of
works of
great
art of the
past
but also
because,
like
many persons
who
-
having
become
enlightened
-
have moved
away
from the Christian
religion,
he stood on the
verge
of new decisions in matters of belief. He
sought
evidence of a transcendent
reality
which dominates the world of
natural events and which would be accessible to human
beings.
Thus
his talk on
"
Superstition
"
led us into the
question
of the difference
between belief and
superstition.
The distinction is a fluid one; what was
accepted by
human
beings
in the
past
as
religious
beliefs which
guided
46
This
paragraph
is a handwritten addition and is not
wholly legible.
In the
correspond-
ing place
in her Lebenserrinnerungen ,
Marianne Weber
wrote,
"
Since the
political
cata-
strophe
Karl
Jasper again
stands as a
shining light
of the
university. Young persons
crowd
around
him,
and he seeks in a
lofty way
to transform their minds
fundamentally by
a new
illumination of the historical
past
and
present
and to free them from the ideas of
imperia-
lism, nationalism,
militarism and antisemitism
"
(p. 221).
47
Gustav Hartlaub (1884-1963)
was director of the Kunsthalle of Mannheim from
1923 to 1933;
from
1946,
he
taught
at the
University
of
Heidelberg
and was co-founder of
the Kammrspiele
of
Heidelberg.
His works include: Matteo da Siena und seine Zeit
(1910);
G. Dor (1924): Giorgiones
Geheimmis
(1925);
Die
Graphik
des Expressionismus in
Deutschland. (1947);
Die
grossen englischen
Maler des Bltezeit: 1730 bis 1840
(1948);
Zauber des
Spiegels (1951);
and Das Unerklrliche: Studien zum magischen
Weltbild
(1951).
238
Reports
and Documents
their lives could be dismissed as
superstition
in later
ages.
We
agreed
that the substance of a belief at
any particular
time is not decisive
in
determining
what is belief and what is
superstition
but rather the
difference lies in the conduct of the believer. A
genuine
belief does not
aim at
changes
in external conditions
by magical practices
and the in-
vocation of
spirits
to
promote
the attainment of human
purposes.
A
genuine
belief determines our
being
and action
inwardly, through
devo-
tion to a transcendent
power, by
which the believer thinks he is
governed
and to which he feels himself
responsible.
The
speaker
did not
distinguish
only
between belief and
magic,,
but between fruitful and unfruitful
superstition.
This
gave
rise to
very lively disagreements.
Neither the
religious
believer nor the listeners who
accepted only
demonstrable truths
could share Hartlaub's
positive
evaluation of the
significance
of the
magical
world-view for our
present age; they
saw it
only
as evidence of a
lack of
capacity
to decide in favour of a
genuine religion
with a
specific
content or in favour of a
philosophical religiosity
which renounced all
magic.
In contrast with
this,
Hartlaub's
interpretation
of Rembrandt's well-
known
etching,
the so-called
"
Faust as an
illuminating
artistic
por-
trayal
of
magical procedures
was
gratefully
received. In another lecture
he introduced us to "The
Relationship
between Protestantism and
Plastic Art in still
another,
"
On Art as
Religion,"
he examined the
metaphysical significance
of art and the
symbolic representation
of the
transcendental in
sensually experienceable phenomena.
The
speaker
con-
fessed himself to be one of those
questioners
and seekers for whom the
substance of Christian belief had faded, but who did not wish to live with-
out some
relationship
to a transcendent
power.
The revelation of
high
art,
for
example
Bach's
religious music,
confirmed for him the existence
of the divine and of
divinity
but it was clear to him that it was not
per-
missible to confuse such
yielding
to the attractions of aesthetic
experi-
ence with the
thoughts
offered
by life-determining
beliefs. Hartlaub has
recently published
a book on the mirror in its
significance
as a
symbolic
image
and as a
reproductive
one. He
explains
there
why magical
features
have
always
in all times and
places
been
imputed
to the mirror in the
plastic
arts as in
poetry
and in reflection on the world. As an
example
of
this he told us about his own
unique attempt
to
interpret
I Corinthians
13.12: "For now we see
through
a
glass darkly;
but then shall I know
even as also I am known." The celebrated words of St. Paul are
not,
according
to
Hartlaub,
understood
nowadays
as
they
were intended
by
the
Apostle
himself and as
they
were understood
by
the readers of his
time. In
comparison
with a
mirror,
we think of the distinction between
direct
perception
and indirect
perception
of an
object,
as it is
presented
to us
by
the
reflecting
surface of the mirror. But
why
does the
Apostle
elaborate the
phrase "through
a
glass" by adding "darkly"
-
"m
nigmate
"? Reflection in itself is not
mysterious
or obscure. The in-
compatibility
of the two
points
had
always
been noted. Sometimes the
"
in
nigmate
"
had been accounted for as a
subsequent
addition. The
speaker
took the view that St. Paul was not
referring
to the reflective
properties
of the mirror but rather that the
point
of
comparison lay
in
Academic
Conviviality
239
the so-called
"
Katpromanie i.e.,
in the belief in the
divinatory power.
What was involved was an oracular
procedure
which was
already
well
known in
antiquity
and in
primitive
cultures and which was in fact
based on
something
real.
Experimental
observations confirm that even
today
certain
experimental subjects possess
a
capacity
to hallucinate
certain
images
and events when
they
stare into a mirror or a
crystal
ball.
These visions
bring unconscious, forgotten, repressed past
events to the
light
of
day.
In
earlier, superstitious times,
it was believed that in this
way things
which were
spatially
far
away
or hidden or still in the future
could be
perceived.
One could indeed
speak
dark riddles in connection
with such uses of the mirror. The visions
gained through
a mirror are
naturally only symbolically
dream-like and
fragmentary.
Hartlaub
defined the real
meaning
of the
Apostle's
words as follows: We now see
the truths of the
Kingdom
of God which are in life or
prior
to the last
days only
in the
way
in which a
riddle,
like
prophetic vision,
is
experi-
enced;
there will be a
time, however,
when we
actually
see God himself.
The
theologians responded very vigorously;
conversations with them
showed that the learned
speaker
had
given
them a new and
convincing
viewpoint.
Shortly
before the Second World
War,
Richard Benz48
joined
our
circle as a
newly
found friend.
Although
he had
already
shown himself
to have
comprehensive
intellectual interests and was
very
interested in
research,
he did not
attempt
to establish himself as a
university
teacher
because he wished to be an
independent
writer. He was
quite
without
vanity:
he did not look
upon
himself as a man of
learning.
His first
interests were in medieval
art;
later
they
turned to
great
music and its
effect on art and
poetry
and he
approached
these matters from his own
standpoint.
In his mature
years,
he became a much
sought-after speaker
and a much read
philosopher
of culture and an
interpreter
of art. He was
especially
skilful in
uncovering
and
explaining
the
unique qualities
of
German artistic and
literary
creations. His
openness
to others was as
attractive as his
capacity
to communicate his
many-sided knowledge,
his
empathie understanding
and his restrained enthusiasm.
Only
when it
could no
longer
be
kept
a secret that he had
-
in addition to a series of
essays
and
editions,
the most
significant
of which is the
great
collection
of medieval
legends
to which he devoted 10
years
of his
youth
-
written
a
big
book on the
Romantics,
could his reserve and
modesty
be over-
come. He was then
persuaded
to
give
some talks to our circle. He
began
with
reports
about the
posthumous writings
of Beethoven which he held
collected. A
very
sensitive
musician,
he adorned our
meeting by
fram-
ing
it in the music of Bach and Beethoven. On another
occasion,
he
48
Richard Benz
(1884-1967)
was a historian of
literature,
art and music. He studied at
the
University
of
Heidelberg
in 1903-04 and received the doctorate there in 1907 with a
dissertation on
fairy-tales
and enlightenment.
In 1910 he settled in
Heidelberg
as a
private
scholar, remaining
there until the end of his life. He was named
honorary professor
of the
history
of art at the University
of Heidelberg
and was a member of the
Heidelberg
Akademie
der Wissenschaften. His Geist und Reich
,
in which he
expressed
his
personal
views about
culture and
politics,
was
suppressed by
the National Socialists on its
appearance
in 1933.
His chief works are Die Stunde der deutschen Musik
(2 vols., 1923-27);
Goethe und Beet
-
hoven
(1942);
Deutsches Barock
(1949);
Die Zeit der deutschen Klassik
(1953);
and
Heidelberg:
Schicksal und Geist
(1961).
240
Reports
and Documents
attempted
to
clarify
the
concepts
of
"
classic
"
and
"
romantic he
denied that
they
involve an
unbridgeable disjunction,
which had been
infused into our historical outlook
by
Goethe's
rigorous
attitude towards
art,
and which made it a
question
of
"
either-or he saw them as
phenomena
with
many parallels
and as
complementary
to each other in
ways
which were fruitful. In a talk on the
image
of
antiquity
in the
eighteenth century,
he showed in his treatment of the
Baroque
how the
worldly representation
of the
person
of the
great
monarch
by pagan
mysteries
and
allegories
carried with it a considerable
popular
element
of ancient
subjects,
names and
figures
which made it
possible
for the
arts to assimilate these alien elements into their own
dynamic-musical
expressive impulses.
He was
especially
skilful in
making
us aware of
the richness and distinctiveness of the German creative
imagination
which was revealed in South German
Baroque
and above all in German
music;
he was also able to set it off from the classicism
which,
in the
age
of
Goethe,
had been
spread particularly
in North
Germany through
the love of Greek
antiquity.
Benz
played
down the inheritance of our
culture from classical
antiquity,
not to belittle its
perfection
but to
make Germans more aware of the distinctive
qualities
of their own
creative works which stood out
despite
the
pervasive
influence of classical
antiquity.
South German
Baroque
was
newly opened up
to
us, especially
its
great music,
which for Benz ran from Bach
through
Mozart to
Beethoven
up
to Schubert. This he saw as the attainment of
complete-
ness.
Nothing
else
subsequently
was of
equal
stature. He showed how
Bach in the Passion
according
to St. Mathew created German
tragedy
and
how,
in his cantatas and
chorales,
the Christian
religion
found its
appropriate
vessel. It was this which
protected
it from ossification and
fixation on external
things
and for that
reason,
it was able to save Ger-
man souls from
being repeatedly
absorbed into
worldly
concerns.
They
were a call from another world
-
regardless
of whether one believed in
the Christian
teachings
as the
reality
of God
revealing
Himself or
whether
they
touch us as the
mysterious symbols
of a hidden divine
power.
XIII
The circle was
quickened
in its second
phase by presentations
in the field
of
art,
above all on the
part
of the
younger generation.
The two archi-
tects,
Hermann
Hampe
and
Rudolph Steinbach, joined
us.
They
trans-
mitted to us the
outlook,
deepened by learning,
of their free and
practical
art. The sensitive Hermann
Hampe
told us about the work of
Schumacher. Steinbach introduced us into the architecture of
Islam,
so
influenced
by
its article of faith and its mode of
worship.
On another
occasion,
the
richly
woven texture of his mind allowed us to share
the fullness of his
knowledge
of Rilke. What moved the
speaker
was the
ascent of the
poet
from an art which believed it could
approach
the
meaning
of existence
only through beauty
to the most relentless self-
compression
which could no
longer
be led
astray
in the darkness of the
terrors of existence. It was his aim to show that the
path
of the
poet
Academic
Conviviality
241
from
apprehensible beauty
and
through
the
abyss
of
insecurity,
led him
to the
insight
that behind all horror a valid
reality
shows
through.
Our
friend was able to offer in his own fine form what he had drawn from
the
deep springs
of his soul.
Hans Huber was a
judge by profession.
In addition to
that,
he was a
musician of
high artistry,
a
searching soul, struggling constantly
for
greater depth,
and able to find balance
through
ascent to
lofty patterns
of mind. He
helped
us to understand Hermann
Hesse,
to whom he had
a
particular attraction,
because he set himself the task of
expressing
with
particular uprightness
his own
parlous plight
and that of the
age.
Huber
showed us the
ways
in which the
powers
of
good
and
evil,
their
poetic
manifestations,
the untamed natural instincts and
transcendence,
were
struggling
with daemonic violence. For this reason,
he won the hearts
of all those who were
experiencing
this awful condition in a similar
manner,
even
though
he could tell them
only
that the most
important
insight
he could offer them was that there was no doctrine which could
bring redemption
from this terrible
condition,
and that the
great
antino-
mies of human life cannot be resolved but can
only
be
recognised
in their
inevitability
and thus be borne. Nonetheless he consoled us
by enabling
us,
time and
again,
to see even if
only
for an occasional moment that the
unity
which was to be constructed
-
the
triumph
over these conflicts
-
was
attainable
through
a life of service and love.
XIV
The
theologians
had the
largest part
in our
lonely inquiries.
In the midst
of the
growing
horror of the Second World
War,
in the
expectation
of
apocalyptic events,
we felt the need to come to
grips
with timeless
religious
beliefs and were
grateful
for their
guidance
in a
deepened
historical
understanding
of the Bible. This led us
away
from the
oppres-
sive
present
into a
society
and into a cosmos of beliefs in which
frightful
events,
fate and
guilt,
were mastered
through
the
grandiose mythical
figures, through
the
symbol-laden
stories and
through
the documents of
an ever renewed
struggle
to come closer to God and to
insight
into His
will. The
profound
words of the sacred
scriptures
affected us
deeply
through
the
general applicability
of their timeless wisdom and
counsel,
and
by
their
simplicity; they
cast their
light
further than other human
insight
and
they
were for that reason asserted
by
those who were firm
of faith to be the revealed
"
word of God ". But the Bible is also an
historically
differentiated
product,
the
precipitate
of various
ages,
an
admixture with alien
cultures,
a witness of various
stages
of
religious
existence
ranging
from a fixation on the external fulfilment of the law
to a
deep
inwardness. This was
why
it has
compelled
scholars to
engage
in new investigations
and in new
attempts
at
interpretation,
and to an
ever more
explicit separation
of what were
generally
valid
religious
and
ethical
principles
from what is
historically
and
socially
conditioned. We
all tacitly
agreed
that there were to be no
"
Bible classes
"
in our
group
but rather
scholarly
discussions. When on occasion the sense of
personal
242
Reports
and Documents
involvement could be heard in the
language
of a
scholarly discourse,
we
allowed ourselves to be moved in reverence.
XV
A new
member,
the
theologian
Gustav
Hlscher,49
a scholar of the old
style
and a
thoroughly spiritual person, brought
us into a
deeper
under-
standing
of the Old Testament. The matter was inexhaustible. It com-
prehended
the
dialogue
of more than
2,000 years
of a
people
and its
God,
who had revealed Himself to
them,
as the foremost
among
the
peoples,
as the
One,
the
Absolute,
the
Creator,
the
Judge
and the
Lawgiver
of
heaven and
earth, by
whom this
people,
for that
very reason,
felt them-
selves to be chosen above all others. With the aid of their
unique
prophetic
evidence the Jewish
people
were able to
keep
before them
their
unique religious
vocation.
They
were also able to
preserve
their
distinctive existence as a
people
from extinction
by separation
from
other
peoples,
which at the same time
imposed
on them the cruelest fate.
The scholar conducted us into a
of the book of
Job which he himself had translated into
rhythmic language;
we were
able to learn from it that the
pious person
could resolve the obdurate
riddle of innocent
suffering only by
unconditional
submission to the
majesty
of God. At another
time,
we were told about the
origins
of the
Biblical view of
history.
On still another
occasion,
he offered us
insight
into the
changing meaning
of
"
Death and Resurrection in the Old
Testament ". We were able to catch a
glimpse
of the intellectual work-
shop
of a scholar who in order to make the correct
temporal
and causal
imputations
of Biblical accounts had to become as much a
linguist
and
historian as he was a
theologian/What
the
layman
was
taught
to revere
as a
unity,
as
"
the word of God
"
was shown to us in all its
complexity,
as the outcome of
religious
and ethical
experiences
and as a collection of
shrewd rules of
conduct,
which served to maintain a stateless
people
subjected
to
repeated political catastrophes.
We learned to
distinguish
a
religion
of inwardness from its
degeneration
into ossified ritual
practices.
We were
upset,
from time to
time,
when this careful scholar not
only
dissolved the fictitious
unity
of the Biblical view of
history,
but also left
nothing
of the honoured
mythical figures
in whom we had believed from
childhood. We believed that the
legends
of the
patriarchs
had drawn the
substance of their vivid
poetical
form from the
earthly
realm of
reality.
We were not
happy
when under the
penetrating scrutiny
of the scholar
the
figure
of the man from the land of
Ur,
the
divinely
chosen ancestor
of the
people
of Israel, Abraham,
was reduced to a believer
making
a
journey
to the sacred
grove
of
Mamre,
a cultic centre for a millennium
and a half. Our reason could offer no resistance to Hlscher's acute
analyses.
But our sentiments were resistant. We did not wish to
give up
49
Gustav Hlscher
(1872-1955)
became Privatdozent at Halle in 1905. He was
professor
of Old Testament at
Giessen, Marburg,
Bonn and
Heidelberg, ending
his career there. His
works include Die
Profeten (1914);
Geschichte der israelitischen und
jdischen Religion
(1922);
Hesekiel: Der Dichter und das Buch
(1924);
Das Buch Hiobs
(1937);
and
Geschichtsschreibung
in Israel :
Untersuchungen zum Jahwisten und Elohisten
(1952).
Academic
Conviviality
243
our belief that there was a kernel of
reality
in this man who had been
selected
by
God for the crudest test to which He could
subject
him,
who
submitted
unconditionally
and was thus blessed
by
God with whom he
had made a covenant. On the other
side,
we learned much and were
stirred
metaphysically by
his talk on the
prophet
Isaiah. These were some
of his main ideas:
Jahwe,
the
god
of the tribes and
people
of Israel
became,
under the
influence of the
prophets
of the
eighth century,
the most
significant
of
whom was
Isaiah,
the
god
of the
world,
and the national
religion
of Israel
became a
personal religion.
Rooted in the
personal experiences
of the
prophets,
it reached its
high point
in an unconditional confidence in
God's rule in the life of nations and of the individual and in
pious
sub-
mission to the
power
of God and His intentions. In the course of this
change, exemplified
in Isaiah and his
disciples,
all the
meaning
of the
traditional forms and values of life were
changed
in their innermost
essence.
Worship
lost its
magical power
and henceforth became a
pure
expression
of
piety. Prophecy
ceased to be the
prediction
of
particular
events in the
future;
it became instead a
deep insight
into the action of
God in the life of the world and
humanity.
The state ceased to be
legiti-
mated
simply
as an
organisation
for the exercise of
power;
its
legitimacy
henceforth
lay
in its
being
an
ethically governed community.
Culture was
valuable
only
in so far as it conformed with divine will. It was from
these roots that
eschatology subsequently developed
and thus there
emerged
the idea of human
history
as movement towards an ultimate
goal.
XVI
The
theologian
Martin Dibelius50
spoke
once in our circle,
before the
seizure of
power by
the National
Socialists;
his
topic
was the
disintegra-
tion of the
bourgeoisie.
The theme was
very pertinent
and aroused much
discussion. The
speaker
described the
process
as a
change
in social struc-
ture,
which had
begun
before the First World
War;
he said it was our
task to
prepare
ourselves in our mode of life for
coming
events
by
aware-
ness of what was
taking place
in our
lives,
since all the ties which
governed bourgeois life,
the
state, property,
the
family,
the
church,
and
education had become
problematic.
The
speaker
set forth the events in
these
spheres
which had
brought
about the shifts in the external condi-
tions and the inner attitudes of modern men and women. His
unflinching
analysis
clarified the minds of his listeners about the threats to their
culture and their mode of life which still rested on
bourgeois security
and a
superior
cultivation and which now had to exist within a state
which was
inevitably
based on the
support
of the masses. Some of us
50
Martin Dibelius
(1883-1947)
was
professor
of
theology
at the
University
of
Heidelberg
from
1915,
after
having taught
at the
University
of Berlin. His main interests
lay
in the
investigation
of the oral tradition of
early Christianity
and in the sources and
history
of the
ethical
teachings
of the New Testament. His works include Die Geisterwelt im Glauben des
Paulus
(1909);
Die urchristliche
berlieferung
von Johannes der
Tufer (1911);
Die Form-
geschichte
des
Evangeliums (1919);
Der
Brief
des Jakobus
(1921);
Geschichtliche und
ber
geschichtliche Religion
in Christentum
(1925);
Geschichte der urchristliche Literatur
(2 vols., 1939);
and Jesus
(1951).
244
Reports
and Documents
were
deeply
shaken: was this
process
of
disintegration really
inevitable?
Could
nothing
be done
against
it? Would not the
spiritually
determined
values which are at
present powerless
revive in the future? Would not
new ties arise in the future? Would not a new
spiritual
and intellectual
elite arise in the future? Were not
"
we
"
still alive and were we not
called
upon
to
preserve
the
continuity
of
high
culture in the future? We
tried to shake off this
nightmare
of the threatened annihilation of our
forms of life and of our
spiritual
existence.
Only
a
year
later the
power-
lessness of our stratum was
drastically displayed
to us.
"
We
"
were
forced to the
verge
of
annihilation,
not in the first instance
through
the
flood-tide of the domination of the
masses,
but
through
the new authori-
tarian state which wished to
destroy
the inner resistance of trained
judgement
and a love of scientific
knowledge
as the most burdensome
obstacle to its
dictatorship.
But when the horrors of destruction
threatened not
only
one
group
of human
beings
who were still
privileged
by
the education which
they
had received but also
endangered
the entire
people,
the
homeland,
the
realm,
the
very quality
of
being German,
a few
stars of
permanence
shone
through
the
frightful
darkness. The loss of
the
physical things
which had once seemed so firm
brought
to
many
persons
an increased inner freedom. Their
high
humanistic culture
appeared
to be a
luxury;
their
religious sensibility,
the Christian
religion
and its outer
form,
the
church,
lit
up
for them those
things
which are
indispensable
and which can never be renounced.
In this new
phase,
Dibelius
expounded
to us the results of his meticu-
lous
study
of the New Testament. He
sought
a better
knowledge
of the
personality
and works of Jesus Christ which was as much in
keeping
as
possible
with Christian
theological thought
and a
reality
enshrouded in
mythology.
He was a
theologian
but not a
priest
and hence felt free to
pursue
his research
according
to his
lights.
His intellectual
honesty
did
not allow him to
exempt
articles of faith and
legendary
accounts from
critical examination. Our friend
gave
us a
many-sided picture.
He
spoke, among
other
things,
of the vicissitudes of the idea of God in
the Old and the New
Testament,
of the Pauline
problem,
of Peter in
Rome,
of the
Gospel
of St.
John,
of Nietzsche's treatment of
Jesus;
he
gave
to us a rich harvest of meticulous
scholarship
and an inward bear-
ing
of mind. Some of the theses of his
inquiry
into the
Gospel
of St.
John are the
following:
This work has a
unique relationship
to
history
such as is difficult for
human
beings
of the
present day
to understand. It does not intend to
describe a
history,
but rather to render
intelligible happenings
which are
known to the readers of the other
gospels.
It is not the historical
existence of Jesus which is
presented
there but rather his
"post-exist-
ence ". It is the elevated master of the
community
who
speaks
and acts
here and who indeed is efficacious
only
when Christians have received
the
spirit. Every
"
I am
"
in the
Gospel
means
"
I shall be ". But this
efficacy
of the elevated master is
presented
in the
setting
of a life of
Jesus. For this
purpose,
the author drew
upon
traditions which are not
patently
identical with the traditions known to us from other sources.
Historical facts could be derived from the
Gospel
of St. John
only
if we
Academic
Conviviality
245
ourselves drew
upon
the traditions which he used.
Theologically,
the
essential substance of the
Gospel
lies in the
capacity
of
present-day
readers
-
not the
original
audience
-
to become the
recipient
of the revela-
tion.
They acquire thereby
a certain measure of
independence
vis--vis
God as well as
men,
indeed
they
themselves become bearers of the
revelation to others. From
being recipients, they
become
givers. They
do
not await divine
judgement;
last
things
have become real
through
the mission of Jesus. These
lofty thoughts
about the
autonomy
of the
believer, i.e.,
he who
accepts
his
relationship
to the
revelation,
are the
real aim of this
Gospel. Thus,
the
eschatological
disillusionment of
the
community
of believers is transcended
by
a new self-consciousness. This
is more essential than
any
historical
knowledge
which one
may
obtain
from this
Gospel.
The listener who is interested in
history
and seeks the
truth,
but who
is no
longer
a
simple
believer within the boundaries of the church and
who is
passionately
interested in its
origin,
was
very
much taken
by
such
discourses. That was because the tone of edification was
absent,
but not
the reverent attachment to the
subject.
Even the Catholic
priests
who in
later
years
had
joined
us were not
put
off
by
the breath of
rationality;
they
were
firmly
attached to their church and to their
priestly
office but
they
were also scholars and
very open
to secular
learning.
Hence
they
were
by
no means offended
by
the results of the
speaker's
research;
rather
they gratefully accepted
the
opportunity
for discussion which was
offered to them.
They
did so as human
beings
who were also
trying
to
learn the truth in a critical
way.
The substance of their Roman Catholic
Christianity
was not
endangered.
On one occasion in the
year just
before the war ended the
speaker
-
and the discussion which he aroused
-
departed
from the reserved mode
of communication. The
practical theologian
and
priest,
Professor R.
Hupfeld,
in his lecture on the
problem
of
evil,
allowed himself to break
through
the surface of a historical and
philosophical
lecture and to con-
fess his adherence to the belief that the Christian
religion
and
theology
possessed
the
deepest insight
into the causes and nature of evil and,
through
the
message
of
Jesus,
the surest
path
of salvation. The audience
was moved not
only by
such a confession of faith but also
by
the
per-
sonality
behind it. R.
Hupfeld
was at the time the head of the Confes-
sional Church in
Heidelberg.
He had lost his
only
son at the
front,
a
highly gifted young
man who was sacrificed before he came to full
maturity.
The father overcame this irremediable loss
by strengthening
his devotion to his beliefs and
by self-sacrificing
service. This occurrence
was not
mentioned,
but it stirred our souls. Masks fell
away
and for a
moment we were
open
to each other. The different attitudes of the
listeners to the darkest riddles of human existence did not
change,
but
-
whether we were Catholics or
Protestants,
Christians or
philosophical
non-Christians
-
we came nearer to each other in warmth and reverence
as human
beings,
who,
beyond
our diverse
metaphysical interpretations
and
convictions,
were bound to each other
through
the effort to
deepen
our inner
experience
and to
spiritualise
our existence, in our belief in its
transcendent
meaning
and in the
hidden,
transcendent
power,
which held
246
Reports
and Documents
in its hands the
inexhaustible,
inscrutable
meaning
of the whole. Per-
haps
these
Sundays
had become
something
more than
very pleasant
social occurrences? Were
they perhaps
an
undemanding
service of the
spirit?
The ultimate destruction which threatened us and our world
united us in our efforts to
preserve
the
timelessly
valid works and values
of our culture. We were
agreed
in our reverent
appreciation
of the
Christian
religion
and the church as the
only spiritual
and intellectual
power
of the time
capable
of
giving guidance
to the mass of mankind and
of
protecting
a
people
from
sinking
into an uncharted
waste,
from an
inner ruination and from the dominion of bestial
impulses.

Marianne Weber - The Soil and Air of Academic Life - Weber - Radbruch

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Marianne Weber - The Soil and Air of Academic Life - Weber - Radbruch

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ACADEMIC CONVIVIALITY

Author(s): MARIANNE WEBER and E. S.

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