Rebecca SC French 602F2576 MA in German Studies - Rhodes ...

Hegel viewed art as a form of thought, a way of grasping reality and presenting it via the senses.
(Flew 1984: 142) For Thomas Mann, art‟s (and therefore the artist‟s) role was that of a personal
conscience and he viewed it almost as a religious vocation rather than a political or social duty.
(Pizer 1993: 104f.) This idea was supported by Adorno, who saw art not as that which could
grant us access to universal truths, but rather as that which could “alert us to the untruths
blinding us to our social and cultural situation.” (Cobley 2002: 54, original emphasis) In
addition to Mann‟s vocation-like view of art, there is an element of military duty: in his 1914
Gedanken im Kriege, he paints the artist as having the same virtues as the warrior, some of
which include “integrity, precision, […]; bravery, […]; a disdain of what in middle-class life is
known as „security‟” (Mann in Eberle 1985: 4). Recalling the Modernist emphasis on
autonomous subjectivity, this rapprochement of the artist to the mass of men that was the body of
soldiers is somewhat at odds with the image of the removed, high-minded artist. We see many
of Thomas Mann‟s protagonists 7 facing this Künstler-Bürger dilemma: as an artist, it is
necessary to maintain an autonomous distance from society in order to fulfil that role of critical
personal conscience; however, to adequately and honestly represent and convey social reality it
is equally important to have a finger on the pulse of society, to have experienced what life, in all
its beauty and cruelty, has to offer. It can be said that Leverkühn is Mann‟s only pure
Künstlerfigur in that he successfully lives out the Modernist ideal of artistic autonomous
subjectivity by shutting out the world – a self-imposed exile. The fact that this exile is partly due
to his temperament and tendency to migraines and partly to the terms of his diabolical pact must
be explored in greater depth, and I shall do so at a later stage. It is interesting to consider,
however, what Mann seems to be implying by having his only „natural born‟ Künstler, i.e. one
who is not, in his nature, drawn to people, necessarily turn to supernatural means to perfect his
art form. I shall return to this in Chapter 2.
Theodor Adorno‟s expertise in the fields of philosophy, sociology and music afforded him a
uniquely holistic insight into society, in particular the condition and role of culture. He was
particularly outspoken on the issue of the mass culture industry, of which he saw jazz as “a kind
of mythic archetype.” (Gunster 2000: 42) Before looking into the rise of the mass culture
industry in Germany towards the end of the 19 th century, it is useful to first briefly explore the
SPD and the role this political party played in the development of a working-class culture which
stood in counterposition to the culture of the bourgeoisie. As Trommler (1983: 61) points out,
during the time of the Wilhelmine Empire the SPD‟s main focus was the maintenance of its
7 E.g. Tonio Kröger, Thomas and Hanno Buddenbrook, Hans Castorp, Gustav von Aschenbach, Adrian Leverkühn.
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