WOLF LEPENIES
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guage has been closely examined. Rivarol saw not Robespierre but the
French language as "incorruptible." Ernest Renan even claimed that re–
actionary thoughts were inexpressible in good French. The pretentious
assumption of self-evident morality in the French language was brought
to the brink of absurdity in literary collaboration with the Vichy govern–
ment. Not only did many authors continue writing during the German
occupation, they wrote surprisingly well.
Therein lies the real scandal of intellectual collaboration. One can
understand that resistance was weak among French people who no longer
wished to identify with the Third Republic. What remains inexcusable is
that the French language did not resolutely resist the tempting apple of
fascism. If one reads German literature of the same time, it would seem
that at least the German language resisted National Socialism. Outstanding
German fascist literature does not exist. Ernst Junger's works cannot easily
be classified as good literature; when his political viewpoints became ex–
tremely precarious, his stylistic bravura generally tended towards
pompousness. Similarly, Gottfried Benn's early enthusiasm for the Na–
tional Socialist state sinks into unbearable pathos. Only when he began to
write for himself again did his mood become cynical - that is, productive
- and his syntax glowed anew in its unpredictability. Of course, the
German language did not resist. Its greatest authors were banished.
German survived in foreign lands, not least because of German Jews, and
along with the language, German literature lived on, and to some extent
German science. Postwar intellectual life in the Second German Republic
profited from this survival. Some of the emigrants came home, running
up against those who had remained: fellow travellers, collaborators, and
culprits.
Denazification has been unsuccessful. But what is most contestable
from the political-moral perspective proves to be an extraordinary advan–
tage from an intellectual point of view. The sharp underlying tensions
existing in Germany among members of the intelligentsia are not found
anywhere else in Europe. Neither France nor England has been able to
foster this kind of intellectual tension, which silently pits Theodor
Adorno and Arnold Gehlen against each other. Disagreeing but never di–
rectly attacking, they have even paid close attention to what the other is
saying. Intellectual life in Germany also benefits from the annexes estab–
lished by exiles. Phenomenology, like existentialism; Hegelianism, like
Marxism; critical theory, like empirical sociology - these survive and
change away from home, thereby preserving provocative German intel–
lectual traditions. In the United States, these traditions evoked the wrath
of Allan Bloom
(The Closing of the American Mind),
who saw the
Germanization of American thought as the greatest menace to his
