Moderne und Antimoderne: Der Renouveau catholique und die deutsche Literatur. Beiträge des Heidelberger Colloquiums vom 12. bis 16 September 2006 (review)

This collection considers the influence of the Renouveau catholique on Catholic German literati through roughly the first half of the twentieth century. As Thomas Pittrof asserts in his contribution, the fundamental causes of the Renouveau were grounded in a profound dissatisfaction with the scientific monism of an unbelieving era. Horrified by the notion (popularized by the contemporary chemist Marcellin Berthelot) that "today's world is without mystery," many Catholic writers on both sides of the Rhine bemoaned the attendant loss of creative freedom, the erosion of society's metaphysical roots, and the crumbling of its religious foundations (p. 118).There was much about modernity to which Renouveau writers objected and, in turn, sought to overcome. But this was not the defensive Catholicism of the Syllabus of Errors. Those who identified with the Renouveau worked largely outside the official Church. Like theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, they were willing to challenge its boundaries by engaging modernity in a constructive manner. (Balthasar raised eyebrows both inside and outside the Church by making productive use of Nietzsche.) As the editors explain, in the Renouveau, modern and antimodern often crossed paths in the same author (p. 11).

The connection between Renouveau Catholicism and politics, covered by many contributors to this volume, is predictably ambivalent. In the poetry of Heinrich Lersch, an intensely experienced Catholicism could work symbiotically with wartime nationalism (p. 327). Novelist Léon Bloy at least partially impressed conservative icons Carl Schmitt and Ernst Jünger. Hermann Bahr, as Stephanie Arend writes, took inspiration in Maurice Barrès's attack on the empty decadence of fin-de-siècle Paris. However, Bahr rejected Barrès's call to couple a revived Catholicism with French nationalism. Bahr likewise refused to join a European-wide alliance of anti-Dreyfusards. Catholic Germans who took an interest in the Renouveau even veered to the left. A translator of Renouveau texts from a number of French authors, Franz Blei saw in the Catholic faith the power to foster connectivity in an otherwise chaotic time (p. 209). This time the French influence was Charles Péguy, lauded by Blei as a living example of Catholic socialism. Like Blei, Heinrich Böll was interested in the renewed fascination with the poverty of Christ, originally brought to the attention of many Renouveau figures by the Grünewald cult, which was inspired by the French novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans. In Böll's case the most proximate influence was Bloy, whose Le sang du pauvre (Blood of the Poor, Paris, 1922) reached young Catholic Germans like a "bomb" in 1936. In his later work, Böll affirmed Bloy's criticism of contemporary Catholics, too complacent in their material comfort and too indifferent to the obvious connection between money and human suffering (pp. 315-16).

Beyond the world of German Catholicism, there is much in this volume that will resonate with readers. For instance, we learn that the Grünewald cult inspired Expressionist painters like Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, and August Macke (p. 35).We also learn that Alfred Döblin's conversion to Catholicism (announced in 1943 on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday in Santa Monica, California) meant marginalization from fellow exiles Berthold Brecht and Thomas Mann, and an indifferent reputation from the German reading public after the author of Berlin Alexanderplatz returned home after 1945 (p. 396). We also learn that being too interested in things French could be a liability, as was discovered by cultural philosopher and novelist Hermann Platz, one of the most prolific translators of the Renouveau from 1910 to 1935. In late 1934, Hitler's government denounced Platz as a "typical...