BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

The mirage of Anglo-German religious affinity would ultimately shatter in an eruption of
religious chauvinism during the decades prior to World War I. The apocalyptic sense of fighting
a cosmic war between good and evil became a predominant theme in the writings and sermons of
British theologians and would result in a thorough revision of German history built on the worst
aspects of the German stereotype. Opinion held that critical rationalism had diverted Germany
from true religious faith toward a barbaric reverence for the State and an unholy glorification of
Machtpolitik, a supposition which implied a degeneracy or inherent weakness in Germans, a
childish, mechanical susceptibility to the teachings of evil philosophers (Nietzsche) and the
whims of megalomaniac rulers (Kaiser Wilhelm II). 69 Positive aspects of the German character,
such as chivalry, piety and morality had supposedly been abandoned or corrupted in the reversion
to neopaganism. 70 Such streams of invective only broadened the ideological gulf initially opened
with British rejection of German devotional works, biblical criticism and metaphysical
speculation on the nature of God.
Anglo-German Antagonism, 106-8.
69 Hoover, God, Germany, and Britain, 69, 74.
70 Ibid., 23-42.
British Reactions to German Literature
Although the scope of this study does not warrant a comprehensive review of British
receptivity to German literature, historians of the subject tend to agree that recognition of
German literary achievement met with some unusual resistance in England. John Mander wrote:
“The evolution of German intellectual life—Deutscher Geist—was seriously out of phase with
English appreciation of it, with the result that the picture remained always a little cloudy, and at
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