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Romanitas
were used by both the fascists and Nazis-but only by thor–
oughly distorting his philosophical intent. Though he took the ancient
Greeks as cultural models, he did not subscribe to that self-conception
which had prompted them as a "breed of masters" to brand non-Greek
foreigners as "barbarians," fit only to be slaves. Indeed, all forms of
xenophobia were alien to Nietzsche's outlook, no less than the hot–
headed chauvinist rivalries so typical of the European nation-state sys–
tem in his time. This helps explain his revulsion to the German
nationalism which had come into vogue in the I880s following the uni–
fication of Germany and the success of Bismarckian power politics.
In
fact, in many respects Nietzsche was the least patriotic and least Ger–
man of his philosophical contemporaries in the Second Reich. This was
one of the major reasons for his abandonment of Wagner and the
Bayreuth Festival, which had degenerated into a hysterically narrow–
minded celebration of "German Art," "German virtues," and so-called
"Germanic essence," deeply contaminated by "the humbug of races"
and anti-Semitism. The fact that the Wagnerites gave a romantic-Chris–
tian veneer to their cult of "Germanism" reinforced his revulsion at the
sorry spectacle.
Nietzsche reserved a special animus for the ways in which the Chris–
tian churches in Germany allowed themselves to be swept along by the
national intoxication after 1870. The roots of this phenomenon lay in
the Lutheran Reformation which Nietzsche deplored as a kind of "peas–
ant revolt of the spirit" that had destroyed the promise of the Italian
Renaissance with its revival of pagan and classical" traditions. Luther
had resurrected the Pauline theology which Nietzsche so detested, and
had awakened the demons of German nationalism. But the betrayal
went much deeper. Nietzsche firmly believed that the institutional
Church had for centuries distorted the innermost reality of faith and the
original symbolism of Christianity as represented in the life of Jesus–
for whom he retained both respect and a strange fascination. That was
the meaning of his famous epigram, that "in reality there has been only
one Christian, and he died on the Cross." German Protestantism,
despite its claims of returning to original Biblical teachings and an inner–
worldly spirituality, was for Nietzsche still hopelessly entangled by its
subordination to the Prussian State (which it had divinized) and vulgar–
ized by its association with modern German nationalism and anti–
Semitic demagogy.
Nietzsche's insight into the potential of these developments was an
important catalyst for his proclamation that "God is dead," meaning
that "the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable"-which
