The Question of German Guilt

Such demands were so harrowing because there was profound truth in them, yet a truth insultingly perverted by the manner of its presentation. What man, by himself, can experience before the transcendent, was dragged down to a level of moralizing, if not of sensationalism. Quietude and reverence were lost.

At present, a bad example of dodging into mutual accusation is given in many discussions between emigrants and others who stayed here—between the two groups we have come to describe as outer and inner emigration. Each has its ordeal. The emigrant has the world of a strange language to contend with, and homesickness as in the symbolic story of the German Jew in New York who had Hitler’s picture on the wall of his room. Why? Because nothing short of this daily reminder of the horrors awaiting him here would let him master his longing for the homeland. The trials of the stay-at-home included being utterly forsaken, an outcast in his own country, in constant danger, alone in the hour of need, shunned by all save a few friends whom he endangered in turn, thus suffering anew. Yet if now one group accuses the other, we need but to ask ourselves how we feel about the inner condition and tone of voice of these accusers—whether we are happy that such people feel this way, whether they set an example, whether there is something of an uplift in them, of freedom, of love, which might encourage us. If not, then what they say is not true, either.

There is no growth of life in mutual accusation. Talking with each other actually ceases; it is a form of the severance of communication. And this in turn is always a symptom of untruth, and so an occasion for honest men to search unceasingly where untruth might be hiding. It hides wherever Germans presume to judge Germans morally and metaphysically; wherever the veiled will to compulsion reigns instead of the goodwill to communication; wherever there is zeal to have the other admit guilt; wherever arrogance—“I am not incriminated”—looks down on the other; wherever the feeling of guiltlessness holds itself entitled to hold others guilty.

Self-Abasement and Defiance

Our human disposition—in Europe, at least—is such as to make us equally sensitive to blame and quick to blame others. We do not want our toes stepped on, but in our moral judgment of others we get excited easily. This is the consequence of moralistic poisoning. There is generally nothing to which we are so sensitive as to any hint that we are considered guilty. Even if we are guilty we do not want to let ourselves be told. And if we let ourselves be told we still do not want to be told by everyone. The greater this sensitivity to blame, the greater, as a rule, is the inconsiderate readiness to blame others. The world, down to the petty circumstances of everyday life, teems with imputations of the authorship of some mischance.

Oddly, sensitivity to blame is very apt to rebound into an urge to confess. Such confessions of guilt—false, because still instinctive and lustful—have one unmistakable external trait: fed by the same will to power as their opposites in the same individual, they betray the confessor’s wish to enhance his worth by his confession, to eclipse others. His confession of guilt wants to force others to confess. There is a touch of aggressiveness in such confessions. Moralism as a phenomenon of the will to power fosters both sensitivity to blame and confessions of guilt, both reproach and self-reproach, and psychologically it causes each of these to rebound into the other.

Hence, philosophically, the first thing required of anyone dealing with guilt questions is that he deal with himself, thereby extinguishing both sensitivity and the confession urge.

Today this generally human phenomenon—here described psychologically—is indissolubly interwoven with the gravity of our German question. We are threatened by the twin errors of self-abasing lamentation in confessions of guilt and of defiantly self-isolating pride.

The material concerns of the moment lead many astray. Confessing guilt strikes them as advantageous. Their eagerness to confess corresponds to the world’s indignation at German moral turpitude. The powerful are met with flattery; one likes to say what they would like to hear. In addition, there is the baneful tendency to feel that confessing guilt makes us better than others. Humility cloaks an evil self-conceit. Self-disparagement contains an attack on others who refrain from it. The ignominy of such cheap self-accusations, the disgrace of supposedly helpful flattery, is obvious. At this point the power instincts of the mighty and the impotent fatally interlock.

Defiant pride is different. The moral attack of the others is the very reason for its stiffened obstinacy. It aims at self-respect in a supposed inner independence. But this is not to be gained if the decisive point remains obscure.