ISAIAH BERLIN LECTURE

Overestimating Culture - A German Problem

Professor Wolf Lepenies, Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin

11 April 2002

It has convincingly been argued that the strange indifference to politics that characterized German private and public life can be largely explained by the high premium placed on cultural pre-eminence and on the illiberal elitism that prevailed in Germany since the time of Weimar classicism. Culture was the arena of the absolute, a realm without compromise. Its exaltation led to the illusion that culture could be a substitute for power and therefore a substitute for politics. Unlike "civilization", "culture" has remained a term that, in the German language, is almost naturally distant from, if not contrary to, politics. The connotation of "culture" is as positive, warm, and promising as that of "politics" is ambivalent, cold, and suspicious. Even today, the term "Weimar Republic" suffers from linguistic bruises, whereas "Weimar Culture" is nostalgically remembered as a great promise that has remained largely unfulfilled. The elevation of culture and the degrading of politics contributed to the downfall of the first German Republic. This ambivalence survived well into the Federal Republic, whose battle cry was "Bonn is not Weimar", and it survives in the reunited Germany.

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