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

case for nationality/ nationhood. While, until recently 21 , German nationality was determined on
the basis of the ius sanguinis, it could be argued that, when viewed alongside the examples of
French and British “principles of descent” just mentioned, and the North American “common
vision as theoretical unifier” outlook, the German case managed to tread the middle ground, with
its ability to assimilate foreign cultural ideas and practices on the one hand, and its
acknowledged pride in the mythic purity of the attributed Tacitean depiction on the other hand.
The image of the German nation during the Weimar Republic as enlightened and cosmopolitan
authority on matters cultural did, to a great extent, owe its stability to the fact that this middle
ground had been preserved, nurtured and explored. It is often asked how a nation as stable and
authoritative could subsequently have deteriorated into tyrannical totalitarianism – Thomas
Mann‟s own view was that the suffering and humiliation of having lost World War I undermined
this stability to the extent that the vision and charisma of one man was able to fan the almost
extinguished embers of German pride into the raging inferno of “hysterische Barbarei, […] einen
Rausch und Krampf von Überheblichkeit und Verbrechen […]” that we now call National
Socialism. (Mann 1992: 36)
From what we have seen above on the mixed heritage of the German Volk, it is not altogether
surprising to hear of concepts like “der deutsche Selbstwiderspruch” or “innerer Zwiespalt”
when referring to the nature of the German character. (Vaget in Röcke 2001: 21f.) Sebastian
Haffner, during his émigré years in England, made reference to this „Doppelnatur‟ in his 1940
book entitled Germany: Jekyll and Hyde. This work, together with Erich Kahler‟s Der deutsche
Charakter in der Geschichte Europas (1937) greatly informed Thomas Mann‟s view of
Germany's history and its unique psychology, and both feature prominently as sources for
Mann‟s 1947 Entstehung des Doktor Faustus. (Vaget 2001: 21f.) Kahler refers to Emperor Otto
III as symbolic figure of this “Selbst-Antipathie”, calling him the “Knotenpunkt” of German
history and seeing in him the conflicting forces of the nationalistic versus the universalist, the
German versus the European. (Vaget 2001: 22) The latter conflict raises the question of
Germany‟s relationship to the rest of Europe – was Germany to become European, or was
Europe to become German? Thomas Mann‟s choice of hometown for Adrian Leverkühn, the
fictional town of Kaisersaschern, modelled on his own hometown Lübeck and fictional burial
place of Otto III, is no coincidence; the implied hereditary traits of the so-called
cosmopolitanism in a nightcap, the combination of “„altdeutsche[m] Provinzialismus‟ und
21 German citizenship laws changed in 1999/ 2000 to accommodate cases based on ius soli. The naturalization
process has subsequently become more stringent, requiring tests in the area of language, civic and cultural values,
and also a denunciation of any previous/other nationality. (Bundesministerium des Inneren website)
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