The German Question by Wilhelm Röpke

Author:Wilhelm Röpke [Wilhelm Röpke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61016-115-2
Publisher: George Allen & Unwin Ltd
Published: 1946-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER II

THE PATHOLOGY

OF GERMAN HISTORY

FALLACIES AND HALF-TRUTHS

THIS chemical combination, with which we compared the German national character in the last chapter, may, broadly, be regarded as the ultimate product of a thousand years of German history, a history that differs in important respects from that of the other great European nations. But what is the peculiarity of German history that has led to what we must once again call the German problem?

Those who know how difficult the problem is do not need to be told that there is no short answer to this question. In this case, if ever, it is true that every simple answer is wrong.

Some people say that the source of all the evil lies in the fact that Roman civilization, after many efforts to subject Germania to the empire, was forced in the end to stop short at the limes, the fortified frontier, and to abandon to barbarism the country east of the Rhine and the Neckar. The real culprit was thus Arminius, chief of the Cheruski, who annihilated the legions of Varus in the Teutoburger Wald in A.D. 9. This limes theory, as we may call it, sounds plausible and so has many adherents, even in Germany. But it is spoilt by the fact that there are other regions of Europe—Scotland, Scandinavia, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and so on—that came even less under the influence of Roman civihzation and yet have a full share in the patrimony of Europe. The argument that the Scandinavian peoples were seafarers, whose contacts with Western civihzation were capable of bringing them under its influence without Roman occupation, cannot save the theory, since Czechoslovakia, for instance, has no sea coast, and on the other hand there were large Germanic tribes dwelling by the sea.1

Equally unconvincing with the limes theory is the similar argument about the belated penetration of Christianity into certain German regions—into Mecklenburg, for instance, so late as the twelfth century. To this there is the obvious objection that Scandinavia was converted to Christianity little earlier, and Finland still later.

This does not mean that these explanations of the German problem are entirely worthless. The fact that wide regions of Germany were little influenced by Roman civilization and others renounced paganism only at a late date is actually of great importance. It supplies one reason for the strong regional differences in German culture, in particular for the striking contrast between the west and south, on the one hand, and the east on the other. It has also certainly reinforced other causes of the fatal elements in the German character. But by itself it is not a sufficient explanation.

This absence of any monistic explanation may be illustrated by another very widespread theory, which attributes the origin of the German problem to a later and a highly important event in German history, the Reformation, and to the influence of Lutheran Protestantism. That this theory, too, contains a great truth, we shall be concerned to show later. Without any question, Lutheranism influenced the political,

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