by a narrow patriotism and a false racial pride,[1] they have made themselves, or allowed themselves to be made, into a nation, and have added one more to the system of small states into which Europe is divided."[2] With their "Freiheits-Kriegen," they cut athwart the possibility of a united Europe which Napoleon opened, and brought Europe into the blind alley where it is today.[3] In 1870, indeed, they might have attempted what Napoleon had, but they renounced the task and compromised with democracy and "modern ideas," under the pompous pretense of founding an Empire.[4] The Empire has absorbed the mind of Germany since, and thought and culture have suffered correspondingly. The first thing is now to be "German," to emphasize "race"—and all values and even historical facts are estimated accordingly. "German" becomes an argument, "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles" a principle, the Germans are proclaimed as the "moral world-order" in history—standing for freedom in contrast with the imperium Romanum and for the re-establishment of morality against the eighteenth century; there is an Imperial-German way of writing history, even "a court style of history (and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed …)."[5] The exclusive interest in questions of power, in business and trade, in "good-living" lowers the intellectual level.[6] "'Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles'—I fear that was the end of German philosophy."[7] They were once the "people of thinkers"; but the Germans of today think in gen-
- ↑ "One must come down to Wagner in his last epoch and the Bayreuther Blättern to find a marsh of presumption, uncleanness, and Deutschthümelei equal to Fichte's 'Reden an die deutsche Nation'" (Werke, XIII, 340, § 846). "The false Germanism in Richard Wagner … goes as much against me as the false pictures of ancient Rome by David or the false English Middle Ages of Walter Scott" (ibid., 343, § 851).
- ↑ When Nietzsche speaks of the "small states of Europe," he says, "I mean all our present states and Empires" (Werke, XIII, 357, § 881).
- ↑ Ecce Homo, III, x, § 2; cf. Werke, XIII, 349, § 866; The Antichristian, § 61.
- ↑ "Attempt at Self-criticism," § 6, prefixed to later editions of The Birth of Tragedy.
- ↑ Ecce Homo, III, x, § 2.
- ↑ Cf. Werke, XIII, 350-1, § 870; Genealogy etc., III, § 26.
- ↑ Twilight etc., viii, § 1; cf. ibid., viii, § 4, and i, § 23 ("Deutscher Geist: seit achtzehn Jahren eine contradictio in adjecto"—this said in 1888); Werke, XIII, 351, § 870 ("Germany has lost the intellectual leadership in Europe; no significant men come from her any longer—for Wagner is from 1813, Bismarck himself from 1815").
