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PARTISAN REVIEW
Several years before the First World War a petition protest–
ing against the drift to war was signed by intellectuals of England
and Germany. Hofmannsthal, as we recently learned from the
George-Hofmannsthal correspondence, wrote to George soliciting
a signature. George did not answer, but we have the reply which
he never mailed.
It
is sardonic and sad. There was, George said,
no such simple method of preventing wars. Wars were the result
of a long
but meaningless
drifting on both sides. No botching
("Verklebmittel") was any use. Geo.rge is closer to the melan–
choly defeatism of Spengler than to Hitler who, when war was
declared in 1914, passionately gave thanks to God.
What were the relations of Stefan George and the Nazis? The
question has been much discussed and anti-German fanatics have
gone too far. Aurel Kolnai, writing in
The War against the West,
attributes to George the prime responsibility for the invention and
dissemination of Nazi philosophy. The truth is that not much is
known. There are stories, contradicted by many non-Nazis, that
George not only ignored the overtures of Goebbels and Rust, who
offered him money and a laureateship, but swore he would never
live in Germany after 1933 nor would he be buried there. The
truth is that George insulted Goebbels by having a reply sent to
him by Morwitz, a Jew. Morwitz told Goebbels that George "did
not wish to discuss the boundaries between art and politics."
The Nazi writer, Hans Naumann, dedicated the sixth edition
of his book on modem German poetry (1933) to Our Leaders, i.e.,
Hitler and George. Both, he says, are of German peasant stock,
both without wife or kinsfolk, both have the same ideal of race and
leadership, both have developed organically in their literary pro–
ductions, both live for others. Gottfried Benn, often accounted the
greatest Nazi man of letters, confirmed Naumann at a writers' con–
ference. A book was written by one Margarete Klein who
elab–
orated the theme. But evidently we have false ideas about
Nazi
unanimity, for the same year-1938-which produced
Miss
Klein's book produced a denunciation of George by another
Nazi
named Hans Rossner. Mr.
R~ssner
correctly observed that
the
Georgekreis was not Nazi in that (1) George did not understand
the philosophy of race; (2) George did not understand the role
ci
woman as creator. (Ludwig Klages scored here and became
Nui
