BERLIN LETTER
foundation, and the Germans themselves have neither the equipment nor
the strength. Never in modern history, I think, has a nation and a peopfe
revealed itself to be so exhausted, so bereft of inspiration and even
talent. In art there is almost nothing interesting (if you exclude Amer–
icans shopping on the blackmarket for masters) , not even old Carl
Hofer repainting his old canvases which were burned during the air–
raids. In the theater the Germans play Schiller, Goethe and Shakespeare,
Giraudoux, Wilder, and Simonov; but in more than two years not a single
substantial work of a German playwright. In 1945 there was some notion
current that with the fall of Goebbels and his
R eichskulturkammer
there
would be a flowering of so-called
Schublade
literature; but the drawers
were bare, they held no hidden manuscripts. In the film there are no
movies worth seeing, because there are no scenarios worth doing and
no directors worth watching. Most of the efforts are devoted to making
passable Hollywood-type products with primitive technical equipment,
plus a Message-unbelievably boring
tendenz
in behalf of the police
against the evils of black markets, and similar decent upright propa–
ganda for the new respectable Germany.
In the end the Germans will have to help themselves: they will
neither have a revolution made for them, in politics, nor a course in re–
education imported for them to revive their art and literature. They do
speak a great deal about
K ulturelle Erneuerung:
and the amount of
religious devotion which is being given over to the ideal of
Kultur
almost
makes up for the bad time when the word was unpronounceable because
the SS man reached for his revolver. But most of all this consists of
vague cliches and the pathetic attempt to restore some measure of self–
respect and national pride in the dim limelight of past glories. It is per–
haps the most repeated theme in German intellectual life today, but it
is still a theme without ferment, for it is not a genuine quest for tradi–
tions, for the compulsions of the inner life. It is less concerned with new
and vital creative activity than with the passive appreciation of the art
of a happier era. Historians insist on the heroic substitution of Stein and
Humboldt for Frederick the Great and Bismarck; Lessing, Goethe, and
Kant are subject to constant invocation; a cult of Heine and Men–
delssohn is growing. There is a vulgarity to this kind of usable past,
which is nothing more than
th~
cheap conscription of fashionable heroes; -
and even at its best it is sweetly absurd. In his book,
Die Deutsche Kala–
strophe,
the dean of German historians, Friedrich Meinecke writes–
"In each German city and community I would like to see the foundation
of a society of cultural friends which I would prefer to call the Goethe
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