How romanticism and idealism shaped German history โ from early romanticism to the world wars โ the new book by Klaus Kampe
Excerpt:
Foreword:
Intellectual epochs are often either aesthetically idealized or morally simplified. Romanticism is no exception. In popular portrayals, it appears as a poetic counterpoint to the sobriety of modernity; in critical readings, however, it is seen as an irrational precursor to nationalist ideologies. Both perspectives fall short. They underestimate the structural depth of Romantic thinking as well as its long-term social impact.
The central thesis of this book is therefore that German Romanticism was neither politically innocent nor historically deterministic, but rather an ambivalent intellectual resource whose motives could have productive or destructive effects depending on the social and political context.
In this study, Romanticism is understood not primarily as a literary style, but as a form of mentality: as a specific way of interpreting the world, creating meaning, and conceiving the relationship between the individual, the community, and history. In this sense, it transcends its actual epoch and continues to have an impact across generationsโoften in a transformed, politically charged form.
Historically, Romanticism arose from multiple experiences of loss. The Enlightenment had shaken traditional religious certainties, the French Revolution had radically questioned the political order, and the onset of industrialization had changed people’s relationship to work, nature, and time. In Germany, political participation was largely denied. The result was a shift: where political power was lacking, cultural self-interpretation became central. Inner life, emotion, and symbolism took on a significance that was more strongly tied to institutions elsewhere.
This shift is crucial to understanding further developments. Romanticism initially articulated a legitimate critique of rationalism, mechanization, and alienation. It insisted on meaning, wholeness, and individualityโneeds that modern societies systematically generate but do not always satisfy. At the same time, however, Romantic thinking contained a structural openness to exaggeration: from emotion to truth, from community to destiny, from history to myth.
During the 19th century, romantic motifs became increasingly collectivized. The search for individual meaning shifted to national and cultural identity concepts. Poetic longing became cultural self-assertion, aesthetic wholeness became the idea of an organic people. This process was neither uniform nor inevitable, but it created patterns of interpretation that could become politically effective in the 20th century.
The enthusiasm for the First World War, especially in educated middle-class circles, can hardly be explained without these emotional and aesthetic dispositions. For many, the war appeared not only as a political event, but as an existential test, a place of meaning and renewal. Romantic ideals of sacrifice, devotion, and transcendence became intertwined with modern structures of power and technologyโwith devastating consequences.
This ambivalence becomes even more apparent in National Socialism. The Nazi regime was deeply modern and rationalized in its organization, administration, and machinery of destruction. At the same time, it made deliberate use of romantic imagery, myths, and narratives of redemption. Romanticism functioned here not as an origin, but as a symbolic reservoir that could be emotionally mobilized. It is precisely this instrumentality that makes critical examination necessary.
Against this backdrop, this book deliberately avoids establishing a simple causality between Romanticism and political violence. Instead, it inquires into mediations: into modes of thought, emotions, and cultural dispositions that could become politically radicalized under certain conditions. What is decisive here is not so much Romanticism itself as the way it is dealt withโin particular, the lack of self-reflection, irony, and institutional embedding.
This historical analysis raises a further question of social theory: What role does Romantic idealism play in modern societies? Is it a necessary correction to technical rationalityโor a permanent risk of overburdening political reality with moral or aesthetic claims to absoluteness? And finally: What is the relationship between Romantic thinking and social conformity? Does it enable individual freedom within social order, or does it necessarily produce tension, withdrawal, or radicalization?
The following chapters explore these questions historically, analytically, and critically. The aim is not to condemn an era, but to understand a way of thinking that is still effective todayโprecisely because it touches on fundamental human needs.
A warning against the excesses of idealism and romanticism in today’s world can be based on historical and philosophical analyses that show how the longing for a โhigher orderโ or โre-enchantmentโ of the world can turn into dangerous irrationality or totalitarianism.
The history of German Romanticism teaches us that attempts to heal the world through pure poetry or idealism often go hand in hand with a dangerous detachment from reality. When the โromantic subjectโ uses the world solely as a source of inspiration for its own productivity and mood, there is a risk of political paralysis or a mere simulation of effectiveness.
Particularly in the context of modern large-scale projects such as the Green Deal or radical environmental movements, there is a danger that reason will turn into unreason and enlightenment into a new myth. In their โDialectic of Enlightenment,โ Adorno and Horkheimer already warned that a totally administered world does not create true freedom, but rather new forms of subjugation in which the individual no longer counts in favor of a supposedly higher collective necessity.
Critical points of the warning:
- Aesthetic aristocratism: Idealists tend to place their visions above the mundane needs of the โmasses,โ which leads to alienation from social reality.
- The โsteel romanticismโ of planning: Carl Schmitt warned against the paradises of a thoroughly planned world, which, through unleashed productive forces, erects a โsocial barrierโ that no longer recognizes human beings but seeks to change them by force.
- Loss of decisiveness (ability to make decisions): Romantics often linger in aesthetic โidlenessโ and fail to make clear political distinctions, which makes them susceptible to exploitation by foreign powers.
- The โgerm of diseaseโ in the ideal: As Thomas Mann explained in 1945, romanticism often carries within it a germ that places devotion to the irrational and an unworldly depth above democratic sobriety.
One must therefore be vigilant against movements that seek to transform politics back into โintoxication and mystery.โ Politics based solely on emotion, revivalism, and utopian illusions loses its footing in legal and rational norms, paving the way for a new barbarism.
Romanticism should be used as a corrective to modernity, without elevating it to state ideology, as this would inevitably lead to catastrophe.
KK
