In 1945 Karl Mannheim, the sociologist, developed the program for a new European university on London radio. For him as for any serious thinker, it goes without saying that without scholarly freedom there can be no university, or at least no institution worthy of this great name in the sense it has within the European tradition and western rationalism. Yet what constitutes this scholarly freedom and what is its fundamental precondition?
Karl Mannheim provides the answer: the precondition of scholarly freedom is “a fundamental curiosity that wishes to understand every other group and every other person in their otherness.” We can build on this answer both in a philosophical–epistemological [erkenntniskritischer] and in a historical–sociological fashion. We may interpret it as the presupposition of a factual–scholarly interest that avoids the dead ends in which the fronts and counterfronts of world civil war, both the open and the latent one, meet their spiritual death. Avoiding this would be the main issue in the present European situation. For in some respects the kind of civil war carried out in the confessional wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe and on colonial soil is repeating itself.
Without the presupposition of a “fundamental curiosity” in the sense of a restless drive to continue questioning there can really be no intellectual freedom, at least no freedom of scholarship. Now, can that which the German mind produced in the way of scholarly achievements in the 12 years from 1933 to 1945 be an occasion for such curiosity? Or is the interest that German researchers and scholars, but also German poets, painters, and musicians deserve over these 12 years to be attended to solely on the basis of the announcements and proclamations that were broadcast over the amplifiers of that era’s public sphere?
It is well known that, in a totalitarian one-party system, everything that is not forbidden is compulsory. If a hundred-percent totality [Totalität] in fact existed and if the only thing to be considered valid were what the loudspeakers of the system barked out into the world, then the issue would already be settled. If what stands in the spotlight of a constantly recorded and licensed public sphere were the only thing worthy of notice, and if, in addition, merely entering this public sphere were construed as unconditional spiritual submission, then the scholarly work of these twelve years would indeed merit no special recognition. Then the sociological and mass-psychological techniques of the apparatus would at best be worthy of some interest, namely in the context of the sociological problem of the control of the masses through the use of science—a problem that is acute not only in Germany.
For scholarship itself, however, one cannot content oneself with the façade of an artificially organized public sphere. In reality, specifically new questions emerge in confrontation with a situation that arises within a system of sharpened controls: above all, the question of the degree of totality, pretended or real, and the further question of whether the sphere under consideration here can be ascertained. One would have to ask to what extent it is even possible for a political ruler to achieve such a grip on the intellectual productivity of an entire people that no free thought and no reservations in fact remain. The possibility of a complete, hundred-percent totality is a sociological problem of the first order.
It may have come to pass, now and then in world history, that entire civilizations were eradicated. European intellectual history does not know many such cases. The spirit of western rationalism has until now, even in dire cases of political terror, awakened mental and intellectual forces that did not come to the surface; at least initially it did not wish to do so. The mind has its pride, its tactics, its ineluctable freedom, and, if you excuse the expression, even its guardian angel, and it has all this not merely in emigration but also inwardly, even in the claws of the Leviathan itself. In Europe, the mind has known until now how to find its crypts and catacombs, its new methods and forms. Tyrannum licet decipere [“one is allowed to deceive a tyrant”]. This sentence stands prominently at the beginning of the entire doctrine of tyranny in the Middle Ages, which at the same time was a doctrine of potestas spiritualis [spiritual power] and without this concrete precondition is nothing but an abominable doctrine of civil war.
Now, however, modern natural science places monstrous instruments of power at the disposal of rulers and the legal, quasi-legal, and illegal possibilities of a modern system are not to be compared with the opportunities available to a medieval power. This trend will continue in the future. In Germany, the mind has once again outmaneuvered [überspielt] the Leviathan. I conclude from this that the humanities will outmaneuver the natural sciences and will force them to transform themselves into humanities. From technically enhanced coercion and technically enhanced control there emerge new forms of novel thinking and speaking that evade this coercion and control. This is true in general, with regard to every kind of terror and discrimination. It is true not only for Germany and not only for the 12 years [of Nazi rule].
Germany has long been a relatively small, intellectually non-circumscribed and non-circumscribable space in the middle of Europe, a junction and a transit country for forces and ideas from the North and the South, the West and the East. Germany has never decided in a clear and unified way [between these competing geographical influences], and was unable to do so because it could not submit itself to any of the questions that descended upon it from abroad. Here lies the secret of its weakness and its superiority. As a result of the still unresolved struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism, the German mind has remained open, and in this state of suspension it has developed a great tradition of the most thorough research and the boldest criticism. In the nineteenth century Hegelianism joined in. It became historically effective in Marxism. In this way [German] openness underwent an extraordinary expansion. Of course, the educated class grew weaker from generation to generation after 1848 and was in the end almost demoralized. Nevertheless, it was in no sense dehumanized and destroyed, even in the 12 years from 1933 to 1945. It was full of fear in the face of any civil war and showed little aptitude for conspiracies and plots. Thus it could become the prey of a sworn society: an easy, but in the end merely perfunctory prey. Only he who knows his prey better than it knows itself can conquer.
The ineradicable individualism of the German [character] retained its force in the face of this perfunctory conquest as well. Its astounding susceptibility to being organized is only the foreground of its astounding ego armor [Ich-Verpanzerung]. The silent, tried-and-tested tradition of withdrawal to a private interiority subsisted, along with a great readiness for conscientious cooperation with whatever the current legal government mandated. And positivists as well as pietists could easily come to the same practical conclusion, namely that a government unopposed by even the shadow of a countergovernment was legal. Nowhere else has the separation between interior and exterior been driven to this complete disjunction between inside and outside. The inner, complete Gleichschaltung of this kind of educated class is every bit as difficult as its external Gleichschaltung is smooth and easy.
On the other hand, the mental basis of the Gleichschaltung, its so-called Weltanschauung, was in itself much too intellectually confused to yield a consistent doctrine and, with it, the norm for a total registration. The way the party program was worded allowed for many conflicting interpretations, which gained currency in different instances and in different years, in the most diverse ways. Numerous directions, streams and movements, groups, circles, and alliances emerged in Germany since 1900—since the beginning of domestic protest against the official Germany of the time. They all contributed in some way to the success of the great mass movement that fell into Hitler’s hands. They were also all somehow appropriated. But they were either too deep or too dull, too manifold or too idiosyncratic, to be capable of becoming a more or less coherent intellectual formation. The existing Christian churches and Marxist doctrine were scarcely impacted in their intellectual content by the montage of slogans from the party. The sociological and intellectual-historical explanation of this kind of party is a problem in its own right. In any case it is improbable that such an ideological bovigus1 could have consumed the education and intelligence of the entire German people in the course of 12 years and that all intellectual productivity would have been absorbed by this combination of non-committal ambiguity and the most servile clarity.
The external terror became more spasmodic in the process, but the chances of a mental totality grew ever weaker. Every amplifier brings a falsification of meaning, even for those who consider themselves masters of the amplifier. Danger awakens new forces among those who have not succumbed [to the official ideology]. The mind and intelligence put forward multiple forms of politeness, correctness, and irony, and ultimately their silence, against the clamor of public activity. A judgment regarding achievements in such a situation can thus not simply be passed from the outside. The person judging must remain aware of a few basic sociological truths, above all things regarding the eternal link between protection and obedience.
A researcher and scholar cannot select the political regime according to his wishes either. In general he accepts it initially as a loyal citizen, like every other person. If the situation then becomes completely anomalous and nobody from the outside protects him from the terror within, he must determine the boundaries of his loyalty himself, namely when the situation becomes so abnormal that one no longer knows where even his closest friend really stands. The duty to unleash a civil war, to conduct sabotage, and to become a martyr has its limits. Here one should grant something to the victims of such situations and should not be allowed to judge only from the outside. Plato was an aide to the tyrants of Syracuse and taught that one should not be permitted to refuse good advice even to the enemy. Thomas More, the patron saint of intellectual freedom, went through many phases and made astounding concessions to the tyrant before things reached the point where he became a martyr and saint. In any case the old sentence of Macrobius’ Saturnalia—non possum scribere in eum qui potest proscribere [“it is not possible to write against one who has the power to proscribe”]—is valid in all times of political concentration of power and for every publicist.
In the summer of 1938 in Germany, a book was published that included the following passage: “If in a [particular] country only the public sphere organized by the state still has any validity, then the soul of a people embarks on the secret path leading inward; then the counterforce of silence and of quiet grows.” Benito Cereno, the hero of Herman Melville’s novella,2 was elevated to a symbol of the position of the intelligentsia in a mass system. In September 1939 Die Marmorklippen [On the Marble Cliffs]3 appeared, a book that portrays with great daring the abysses concealed behind the orderly masks of nihilism. Despite fanatical controls, many works of authentic art emerged even in the genre of painting, then discriminated against; and they found genuine protection and true support. In all areas of the natural sciences and humanities one will discover great achievements, so much so that intellectual curiosity does not suddenly fail. The mind is in essence free and brings its own freedom with it. It will have to prove its freedom in the dangerous situations of modern mass organization as well. But the measure of its success cannot be sought too far afield from its context.
Corresponding to this intellectual freedom is the inalienable right to a scholarly hearing. Our scholarly work has nothing to fear from the forum of the mind, nothing to conceal and nothing to regret. The discussion of its mistakes will be very informative. We look forward to the fundamental curiosity mentioned above and to a free public sphere. But we cannot do without the gains of a difficult time of trial and will not forget what we experienced in the danger of those twelve years: the difference between a genuine and a false public sphere, and the counteracting force of silence and quiet.
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I want to try to reach Karl Mannheim with these answering remarks.4 “Understanding”5 has been discussed so often and so much among sociologists that it would be good to test this understanding, for once, in a desperate situation, and not only in the atmosphere of well-organized sociologists’ conferences. I am reminded of some good conversations with Karl Mannheim. Perhaps he understands that scholarly curiosity plagues me at all times and today no less than it does him, and that the loudspeakers of today have just as little authority for me as the loudspeakers of yesterday. Above all, he will not misunderstand my reference to his formula of scholarly curiosity as an appeal to the victor. His formulation contains too much of the dialectic of the objective mind for that. He speaks of the comprehension of the other in its otherness. Whoever makes use of such phrases knows that the way of the mind also leads through errors, in which the mind remains the mind, even in its error. Thus it is written in a classic passage with a famous sentence. This sentence of the master6 is no charter, least of all for perfidy, but rather a letter of safe conduct whose handwriting the sons of freedom can read.
Winter 1945/6