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No country within the Western orbit offers to foreign thinkers such an ambiguous and enigmatic aspect as does Germany. There is no end of books and articles wrestling with this problem.
German history presents sufficient justification for the existence of an enigmatic dualism within the nation. To begin with: Germany is that country in Europe through which a line of profound cultural demarcation runs. The Limes Germanicus (cf. my articles in this Review, July and October, 1939) signified the borderline of Roman conquest and Roman cultural penetration. Within this line Mediterranean civilization took undisputed hold both during the Roman Empire and throughout the middle ages, in the latter period mediated by the Church. The lands farther to the East and North became christianized hundreds of years later than the lands around the Danube and Rhine valley. Often the christianization of the East was pushed forward by force of arms. Riehl, Nietzsche, Ricarda Huch and others have remarked that, to all appearances, the christianization of the German North and East was only superficial, a thin veneer over a basically heathen reality; of late H. Rauschning expressed his concern over the quick disappearance of the Christian faith and ethics among the Northern German peasants after Nazism came to power, and the prophets of the “German Faith” today spread the suggestion that the Northern German peasant never was a Christian.
* The significance of the Reformation in connection with the racial and cultural differentiation has been emphasized by Nadler (Die Berliner Romantik, 1921). Henri Massis (La Guerre de Trente Ans, Paris, Plon, 1940, p. 109, footnote) condenses the gist of Nadler's observations in the following way: “… Nadler has demonstrated that the German culture is not homogeneous. South-western Germany under the influence of Roman civilization has developed towards humanism and classicism; the German North-East, strongly slavic, developed towards a mystical individualism and romanticism. It has frequently been remarked that protestantism conquered only those parts of Germany which never were under Roman rule. The map of Catholic Germany coincides almost exactly with the limits of romanized Germany.” It may be added that the Reformation actually started in those parts of Germany that showed the densest admixture of Slav blood: from Saxony and Thuringia.
** Quoted by Reynaud, L., L'Influence Allemande en France, Paris, 1922, p. 262Google Scholar.
* Europe and the German Question, New York, Sheed and Ward, 1940Google Scholar.
* “Germany without leaders is condemned to inner anarchy and domination from abroad. Germany with leaders is destined to dictatorship and conquest.” (p. 3.)