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1 results

  • Chapter 1 - The Genius of War, the Genius of Peace

  • Nicolas de Warren, Pennsylvania State University
  • Book:
    German Philosophy and the First World War
    Published online:
    30 March 2023
    Print publication:
    20 April 2023, pp 12-46

  • Summary

    On August 25, 1914, three weeks after the invasion of Belgium (August 4) and two months after the fateful assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo (June 28), German troops entered the city of Leuven and destroyed its celebrated university library. Some 300,000 books and more than a thousand irreplaceable Medieval manuscripts were burnt along with the torching of 2,000 buildings and the killing of 248 civilians. The devastation was so intense that Dietrich Mahnke, a student of Edmund Husserl’s serving in the 75th Reserve Infantry Regiment, could still observe the city burning on August 27 as his company marched through the village of Korbeek-Lo a few kilometers northwest of Leuven. Outrage among intellectuals, politicians, and the public in Allied nations was swift.