[Much was and is said on how intellectuals fled Nazi Germany en masse; inner emigration has long been a trope in the all too massive literature dedicated to it. This article has therefore great merits. The magazine it was published in makes its content all the more surprising: La revue catholique des idées et des faits, funded under the auspices of Cardinal Mercier in 1921, having seen its publication halted by the German occupier in 1940 — never to come back —, was a francophone Belgian Catholic, conservative — and even maurrassian — weekly. The profane may ignore it: this combination was the sign of certain disdain towards Germany, if not of outright hostility. Cardinal Mercier was known, as many Walloons, as a fervent resistant to the Germans during the First World War1; Maurrassians often were, like Maurras himself, passionately antigerman, and didn’t shy away from presenting them as barbaric antichristians; as for the vision non-German Catholics had of the Third Reich, needless to say that it usually wasn’t a very positive one, especially after dissenters went abroad and on a campaign against it. Roger de Craon-Poussy2, author of the following article, as the reader will see reaching the end, shared some of these views: this only gives more value to his testimony, as they did not divert him from being an impartial observer of editorial trends and successes in the National-Socialist-ruled Germanic world. His acknowledgement of the high intellectual and literary qualities of a certain — usually untranslated, and so even completely obscured — German literature and part of the scholarly production gives to the ear an absolutely alien impression. One finds himself wondering where all these books went; who are these seemingly famous names, and why they were forgotten. Some other ones sound weirdly familiar, but then comes a question: “…Weren’t they antinazis?”. But the most important part in my eyes is this supremely surprising bit, telling us how religious literature was flourishing there.3]

The German soul’s diet

So many times were we given details on the Germanic diet, so many times were we given a talk on the butter and eggs, on the milk and meat that the German cannot afford eating since the beginning of this strange, phoney war, but to this day, none did care about the spiritual food consumed by the people of the Third Reich. Yet man shall not live by bread alone, in Germany as elsewhere. Resources of the spirit have an importance at least equal to those of the body; the real milk, that followers of the Führer lack, is replaced by the Milch der frommen Denkungsart4, the boldly figurative “milk of orthodox thought” as per the late Schiller. In short, we would have every interest in knowing what the Germans currently read, both in the trenches and in the rear area.

The resentment of émigré writers, be they Aryans or Semites, will give the answer straight away: our (ex-)fellow countrymen are deprived of good reading material, literary genius deserted this scorched earth of slavery. The spirit of free inquiry, of pure art, when it has not been jailed in a concentration camp, has died from exhaustion. However, to our regret, against such assertions heard many times and even more often repeated by ignorant journalists, we have to issue a denial: “Spirit not dead in Germany. Letter follows.5” Letters do their best to follow the Hitlerian movement, they get inspired by the new ideas, or endure them unprotestingly, but they do not find themselves to be in a bad state. As for the production of serious books, either scholarly or laymen’s ones, the regime encourages it, and the shock that the advent of National Socialism meant has freed remarkable energies, especially in the realm of History, of critique, and of course, of the three preeminently nazist [sic] fields: “geopolitics”, economy, and racial science6. The taste — and even the mania — for great enterprises, the “monumental” character of the Third Reich is expressed in the republic of letters by the creation of vast series devoted to sciences and to subjects dear to National Socialism. It goes without saying that all heresy is forbidden, that any kind of Jewish infiltration is excluded from them, but nobody forces Germans to profess a nazist orthodoxy, and the most varied foreign influences are received, even since the beginning of the War. In sum, if the physical food of the Germans gets very poor, the spiritual nourishment stays excellent and varied, as long as one abstains from certain of his favourite meals, forbidden that they are by the Hitlerian hygiene.

This must be acknowledged in all frankness, first and foremost in order to partly explain a trend that surprises and bewilders foreign observers: Germans from the upper-classes, even those who are not so fond of the regime, find themselves pretty well under the tyranny, because they get to cultivate a field where they suffer almost no constraints: letters and sciences. Furthermore, the shift that happened in this field helped the nazist doctrine take roots among the indifferent ones, and to make the recalcitrants hesitate and evolve towards the regime. For the German people, their literature, bereft of some greatly talented Aryan émigrés, freed from a Jewish element that was never fully assimilated, proves the existence of a continuity, coming from the Wilhelmian Empire to the Third Reich through the Weimar Republic, and it does not present them these paradoxes we will talk about later, that strike foreigners, namely: the coexistence of humanism with barbarism, of a truly European feeling with an over-the-top nationalism, of a true appetite for transcendance and of essentially materialistic conceptions. The docile subject-readers do not seem to perceive the leaps and outbursts writers subject themselves to in order to stay in line through their sincere adventurous zigzags.

First of all, the “leading personnel”, great figures of the German Letters stayed the same as before 1933. A single authentic glory, Mr Thomas Mann, went abroad; several top-tier figures passed away, among which Stefan George, but the other genius writers did not emigrate. Sirs Gerhart Hauptmann7, Emil Strauss8, Herman Hesse, Hermann Stehr9, Hans Carossa10, Anton Schnack11, Karl Benno von Mechow, Ernst Jünger, Ladies Ricarda Huch12, Gertrud von Le Fort13 and Elisabeth Langgässer14, just to name the exceptionally gifted artists belonging to the three generations currently collaborating to the contemporary German Letters, assert themselves through new works and penetrate masses that usually ignored them before (except for Mr Hauptmann) at the benefit of the now evicted Jewish literati of the famous, communist-leaning Asphaltliteratur. Great new writers only rarely come forward, but they manage to get known, such as the profound and bewitching Roland Betsch, whose Ballade am Strom lies among beauties from the best of the Romantic tradition.

One can mention good authors accessible to the masses and, in this regard, equivalent to the French Henry Bordeaux and André Maurois (shamed be whoever thinks ill of it), except that they embrace the official doctrine far more eagerly than do the best of poets15. Here we have Mr Hans Grimm16, whose Volk ohne Raum (People without space) gave the letter of a political slogan to the Third Reich. Mr Hans Fallada17, sprang from the last years of the German Republic, champion of the little man (Kleiner Mann, was nun?) and then chronicler of the daily life under this new regime, or the oh-so sympathetic Hans F. Blunck18, President of the short-lived Chamber of literature, who revealed himself to be a high-class writer with his modern, very original fairy tales, but whose historical novels, way too blubo19, are too exactly conform to the myths, the racial teachings and the cult of the soil preached by National Socialism. Yet after all, such readings are not worse, and not — far from that — more repellent than the best sellers crafted by the coryphei of the German Academy, in the times of Mr Heinrich Mann, its President.

The rare authentic geniuses simply create spontaneously, and second-rate writers product, according to the established public order. Since this order condemns the Weimar “system”, novels that decry such a system are printed continuously, unless they glorify the virtue of the soil and the qualities of countrymen. Since the new order is hard and severe, the “New Line”20 (the name of a very popular magazine in German society) crowns hard and severe “short stories” every year. Since youth, strength and struggle get the honors, heroes will be young, strong and combative men. Therefore, aside from these conscious elements, deliberately enhanced, there are some determining properties that National Socialism uncovered, after them having been hidden and banned by the Republican Muse: for example a sentimental romanticism, ashamed to be expressed (left-winged expressionists were marked by naturalism; nazis rather want to operate in a Neue Sachlichkeit frame, in a new realism), a language drawing from the political jargon and militaristic vocabulary, reflecting the “bringing into line” of the whole Germanic life, and finally a heavy and strong sensuality, replacing the lubric spasms and contorsions of the previous period. As for rythmical literature, the surge in the pathetic genre is significant. Never since Klopstock and Hölderlin, who are the great forerunners of the Third Reich’s lyrical poetry, did we sing so much hymns, did we cultivate with such love the nobility of terms adequate to elevated ideas. We would be wrong not to concede that works such as those of Josef Weinheber, Richard Billinger, Mrs. von Le Fort and Langgässer were born from an inspiration kindred to the National Socialist spirit, or even identical to it.

However, poetry and the high brow part of narrative prose neither do reach the masses, nor even the totality of the leading personnel of the Reich, the Army and the Party. The literary climate in contemporary Germany would rather be better suggested by the scholarly and popular scientific publications. Here, after the ever-reprinted works on the racist doctrine, ever-completed by new volumes, after the canonical works of the Führer, of Mr Rosenberg, H. F. Günther et al., books on current political issues utterly dominate. Every issue discussed in the Press — obviously, according to orders from above — finds an immediate echo in a bunch of quickly published monographs — even more quickly if it is related to the War; war of the nerves since 1933, and the other kind since September 1939.

Trends that are coming to light in such an avalanche of huge volumes and booklets deserve to be studied and weighed. Above all, Germany wants to stay “European” in its own way. Amidst a general conflagration, she intends on having these Schriftenreihen published, these monstruous and yet typically Germanic collections, such as a great Universal History and a large Ethnology, unveiled by the famous Bibliographisches Institut of Leipzig. The Hoffmann und Campe publishing house presents a series, Geistiges Europa, that begins with three remarkable essays on the French civilisation of the last Century: “Beethoven and Wagner in Parisian musical life21”, “Nietzsche and the French spirit22” and “The heritage of Auguste Rodin23”. Great political editors, Steiniger, Junker und Dünnhaupt, Paul List, the Frundsberg-Verlag, the Societäts-Verlag, from Frankfurt am Main, are flooding us with whole collections about all major countries in the world. The tone they use about each and one of them enables one to draw very useful conclusions. Despite not being bound by a watchword, every one of our authors always has this Einstellung, this way of seeing things that is shared by every good German. Thence24, a somehow condescending sympathy towards France. The range goes from enthusiasm, granted towards the Grand Siècle [of Louis XIV: 1643-1715] and the great figures, representatives of the French spirit, for example in the beautiful book by Mr Reinhold Schneider25 Das Ethos Corneilles, or in the amusing, secretely emotional panorama of contemporary France given by Mr Montgomery Belgio[n]26, up to the gallfull volumes of Mr Krug von Nidda (Marianne 39), Kranz (Die Sieger nachher) and Fleischer [Eugen Funk] (Wer regiert Frankreich?). However, even these ill-intentioned journalists are forced to pose as having compassion for the good ol’ French people that’s being exploited, corrupted and led to the battlefield by politicians and businessmen.

England’s case is something else. Over there, one can find only documentation supporting the future sentence of Providence. A certain J[ohannes] Stoye27 gathers testimonies proving So schwach ist England (See how weak is England!). Sire Walter Schneefuss describes the Gefahrenzonen des Britischen Weltreichs (Danger zones of the British Empire), while the count Pückler28 draws — negative — portraits of thirteen Einglussreiche Englander (Influent Englishmen), the same that are the current whipping boys targetted by nazist propaganda. Mr Abshagen bashes König, Lords und Gentlemen, the ruling class, governing the whole British Empire. A whole editorial strategy sheds light on “hotspots of the said Empire, i. e. Ireland, Palestine, East Indies,” and we need to call a distinguished historian to our help, Mr Carl Brinkmann, in order to find in his England seit 1815 a more or less faithful picture of English realities.

As usual, Blick durchs Fenster (A peek from the window), a volume from Mr Sieburg, the author of As God is in France (or rather, Is God a Frenchman?, as conformly to Mr Grasset’s title for the translation of Wie Gott in Frankreich29), differs from the products adressed to the internal market. In these pages, apparently dictated by the gratuitous artism [sic] of the writer, and yet so diplomatic, Mr Sieburg eandeavors taking the path of a return to the West, for Germany and himself. At the same time, others, turned to their fellow countrymen, glorify the friendships of the Reich, the most antique being with Rome, and the most recent one with Spain, — this brought us an extraordinary epic of the Condor Legion, thanks to the eminent writer Werner Beumelburg, — the more vague ties between Germany and the Balkan countries, and the world of Islam, and finally, the Russo-Germanic brotherhood renewed.

The about-face enforced in this field would be astonishing if one ignored the easiness with which the Germans gather their spirits. Just to name a particularly instructive specimen, Mr F. W. von Oertzen launched under the Rzeczpospolita an evil-smelling pamphlet: Das ist Polen (That is Poland). The non-agression pact having been concluded in 1934, he lauded the “men around Pilsudski” in an eulogy called Alles oder Nichts (All or nothing). As soon as the tide was turning, in 1939, Das ist Polen was printed back in a new, augmented version, and we can bet that the latest arrival from this perpetually up to date author, Junker, will take the Baltic migration into account. However, it is not yet expected for this autumn’s literary releases.

The countless books dedicated to Germanism abroad, to the Ausland-deutschtum, will all have to change directions, in order for their thousands of pages to stay relevant. Who in fact could have anticipated, when defending the Germans from abroad through historico-political (Mr Beyer30 and Mr Lohr31) or even philological (Mr Klein32) narratives, that these Volksgenossen would have to leave their current dwellings so soon? By insisting upon the Germanic task in the European East and South-East, these writers were supporting, by means of imagination, the tasks of their brothers who were justifying ex post-coup facto the “return” of Austria (of the Ostmark) and of the protectorates (Bohemia and Moravia) to the Greater Reich. The Anschluss gave birth to several very beautiful works, recalling the artistic riches of the Eastern Marches; it triggered a wave of Viennese novels, reconstructions in a more or — generally — less authentic manner of the weanerisch atmosphere; finally it gave good Austrian authors, usually lesser-known in the Alt-Reich, an access to German publishing houses and audiences. Such an event is not politically meaningless, since the Weinheber, Jelusich33, Hohlbaum, Spunda, Henz and Brehm34 exercise a significant influence on the Austrain public opinion.

In the end, this process of politico-literary interaction in what we call the-former-Austria gets integrated into this general tendency, didactical and pedagogical, marking the whole of spiritual creation in the Third Reich. We mentioned books on foreign policy in a global framework earlier. Here, we are dealing with explanations of the Germanic past. The syntheses brought to us these last years are legion, for both political, literary or art history. The whole venerable Confrérie of professors, doctors and other bookworms is now busy giving a new meaning to current events according to the racial doctrine. Some survivors of the liberal era, such as Mr Friedrich Meinecke, dare emitting some reserves. But the bulk of professionals is nazist with a fury. They only have to make some small adjustments to go from being democrats to being nazis, a process that does not particularly affect their publications. Evidence for this would be the great pontiffs of literary history, Messrs Julius Peterson and Hans Naumann (as for the Catholics, Mr Josef Nadler and Günther Müller were always very close to the National Socialist conceptions). Also historians, Messrs Erich Brandenburg35 and Fritz Hartung36, who give us a reworked presentation of the evolution of the Hohenzollern Empire. Moreover all these posthumous eulogies of the House of Brandenburg and of Teutonic knights made and still being made by conservative traditionalists, who perfectly match with the official hitlerian epic.

All of this is not unexpected. We will therefore take a halt to witness three highly curious, seemingly paradoxical phenomenons, that need to be engaged in order to get a faithful image of contemporary Germany, namely: 1) the flourishing of religious literature, and especially of the Catholic book, 2) the concern for language, its structure and evolution, in an era where the Muses would be better off staying quiet, and at last, 3) the aesthetic concerns in general, much more vivid in Germany now than in the past.

The religious book is flourishing in the Third Reich. Not only in environments hostile to the regime, but among strong advocates of National Socialism. We will therefore not talk about the Karl Barth, the Karl Adam37, Guardini, Peter Wust and Przywara, but about men such as Johannes von Walter, who just published a magnificent History of Christianity38, contemplated from a Lutheran point of view, or about the fact that Catholic publishing houses Herder, Kösel und Pustet, Otto Müller are claiming an increasingly important place in German Letters, and that young and highly gifted Catholic writers, such as Mr von Mechow, a convert from Protestantism, or Messers von Heiseler39 and Fr. Reiferscheidt, two excessively brilliant and subtile critics, do not feel in the heart of their hearts any internal conflict between their Faith and their adhesion to the ideological bases of the Third Reich. In this regard, reading Ahnung und Aussage (Intuition and declaration) and Ueber die Sprache (On language) is enlightening. Even more enlightening to us would seem to be the fourth volume of Schmeidler’s imposing History of the Popes40. We can read there a very complete and admirative history of Pius XI’s pontificate. Alas! there would only be one lack, that the author innocently confesses: he did neither deal with the relationships between the Holy See and the Third Reich, nor with the attitude of the Supreme Pontiff towards racism!

Some sort of colourblindness spreads within Germany, where the best spirits fail to recognise the habitual brown from other colours of the external world; where they mistake their own virtue with the vices of their leaders, and their own morals, truly elevated and really Christian, with that, very different, of the nazis. Thus, we can consider the Aufbruch des deutschen Geistes, the “awakening of the German spirit” since Lessing and Klopstock, as if it were a manoeuvre whose ends would be the nazi synchronisation. We draw portraits of the “Great tragic poets” or of “Masters of creative philosophy”, as if they were the John the Baptists of today’s German Saviour. Another tool for many unselfish thought and aesthetics ought not to be forgotten. While browsing the splendid publications on the Greco and Goya, on the art of Primitives and on Prague, the jewel of baroque art, an episode of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by Blasco Ibañez, comes back to our memory: a German senior officer has a French peasant shot because he is so terribly ugly. Indeed, a slight hint of decadent cruelty cannot be lacking in the aesthetic concerns of a Germany overwhelmed by the war.

If we truly want to understand everything from the enigmatic Germany of Hitler, and if a contact with its literature helps us achieve it, such an understanding does not include giving forgiveness to the doctrines; while at the same time, it can dispose us to indulgence towards one man or another, moved by an undeniable good will, and towards a mass who, led by seduced intellectuals, follows the movement; that baneful National Socialist movement.

Roger de Craon-Poussy. 8 Dec. 1939.