Culture in Dark Times: Nazi Fascism, Inner Emigration, and Exile by Jost Hermand (review)

Jost Hermand, now emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than fifty books on 19^th and 20^th-century German literature and culture. Most of these books were written in German, but many, like the one under review here, have subsequently been translated into English. There can be no quarreling with the fact that he has made major contributions to the field, opening up new areas for discussion and offering insightful syntheses of subjects as disparate as Beethoven and the literature of the German Democratic Republic. It is a synthetic book that we have before us, and one that draws some of its passion, perhaps, from Hermand’s personal experience as a boy forced to join the Hitler Youth during the Third Reich. There is much to learn from this book, especially for students of German history and culture who are not specialists in the period 1933-1945—though I must register a serious objection to the decision made by the author and the press not to use any end—or footnotes in the text, meaning that students will be unable to locate the sources of his information. The ‘selected bibliography’ at the book’s end is no substitute for real source notes. And there are also some aspects of the book that this reader, at least, found perplexing and vexing. It is in recognition of Hermand’s achievements and stature that I offer both an appreciation and a critique of this book.

Hermand’s book is neatly divided into three sections: one on Nazi-sponsored cultural affairs; one on the so-called ‘inner emigration,’ treating writers, artists, and composers who remained in Germany but did not collaborate directly with the regime; and one on German intellectuals in exile. The best section of the book, in my view, is the first one, in which Hermand describes how the Nazis used the appeal to tradition to win favor from people he refers to as bourgeois humanists, people who hated modernism anyway, and were happy to go on cultivating Bildung and Schönheit, while simultaneously encouraging the production of frothy and distracting forms of entertainment for the working classes. Hermand helpfully describes this approach—which naturally also rested on the extrusion of Jews and ‘degenerate’ artists—as ‘limited pluralism’ (p. 77). In his telling, Goebbels appears as the mastermind who recognized that all politics all the time, in the form of party rallies, anti-Semitic caricatures, and völkisch paintings, would not suffice to keep the masses (or the humanists) happy. The regime, accordingly, sponsored the offering of Bach concerts, sci-fi novels (such as Anilin, which sold 920,000 copies in the years 1937-41), and silly movies with painfully ironic titles such as “Wenn wir alle Engel wären” (1936). In this section, as in the section on inner emigration, Hermand brings together a great deal of material, and reminds us that Nazi patronage was inconsistent, not to say promiscuous. Hermand notes, for example, that Goebbels made no move to curtail the playing of jazz at pubs, even after Alfred Rosenberg complained, and that Joachim von Ribbentropp commissioned Otto Dix to secretly paint portraits of his children (pp. 85, 159). Most of this detail has been available in other books and articles for some time, but Hermand nicely brings it together, and argues, convincingly, that ‘limited pluralism’ was instrumental in keeping the majority of culture-consumers satisfied throughout the Third Reich.

What I like far less about Hermand’s narrative is his treatment of exile cultures, in which the author relentlessly blames liberal exiles for not producing politicized works and repeatedly insults the United States—the ultimate destination of so many exiles—for its profit-oriented ‘culture industry’ and its crass attitude toward modernist high culture. I’m afraid this a reprise of now very tired laments about the disunity of the left and the vacuity...