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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2017
Studies of German philhellenism have often focused upon the idealization of Greece by German intellectuals, rather than considering the very real, at times reciprocal, at times ambivalent or even brutal, relationship which existed between contemporary Germans and the Greek state from the Greek War of Independence onwards. This review essay surveys historiographical developments in the literature on German philhellenism which have emerged in the past dozen years (2004–16), drawing on research in German studies, classical philology and reception studies, Modern Greek studies, intellectual history, philosophy, art history, and archaeology. The essay explores the extent to which recent research affirms or rebuts that notion of German cultural exceptionalism which posits a Hellenophile Sonderweg – culminating in the tyranny of Germany over Greece imposed by force of arms under the Third Reich – when interpreting the vicissitudes of the Graeco–German relationship. The discussion of new literature touches upon various themes, including Winckelmann reception at the fin-de-siècle and the anti-positivist aspects of twentieth-century philhellenism, the idealization of ‘Platonic’ homoeroticism in the Stefan George-Kreis, the reciprocal relationship between German idealist philhellenism and historicism, and the ways in which German perceptions of modern Greece's materiality have constantly been mediated through idealized visions of Greek antiquity.
The author is very grateful not only to the Historical Journal for obtaining review copies of several of the works cited here, but also to the editors of the Oxford University Press Classical Presences series for generously providing a number of books from their back-catalogue. Sadly, two further relevant monographs, Erika Fischer-Lichte's Tragedy's endurance: performances of Greek tragedies and cultural identity in Germany since 1800 (Oxford, 2017), and Johanna Hanink's The classical debt: Greek antiquity in an era of austerity (Cambridge, MA, 2017), appeared too late to be included in this essay – for a detailed discussion, the reader is advised to consult the author's forthcoming reviews of both works, which are scheduled to appear in the Classical Review (68, 1) and Reviews in History respectively.
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3 Butler, Eliza Marian, The tyranny of Greece over Germany: a study of the influence exercised by Greek art and poetry over the great German writers of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Cambridge, 1935; repr. 2011)Google Scholar. For a detailed discussion of the book's genesis and its place within Butler's oeuvre, see Peacock, Sandra J., ‘Struggling with the daimon: Eliza M. Butler on Germany and Germans’, History of European Ideas, 32 (2006), pp. 99–115Google Scholar.
4 As an example of this tendency, see the smorgasbord of essays included in Stephens, Susan A. and Vasunia, Phiroze, eds., Classics and national cultures (Oxford, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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9 Herder, Johann Gottfried, Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Suphan, Bernhard, Redlich, Carl, and Steig, Reinhold (33 vols., Berlin, 1887–1913), ii, p. 111Google Scholar, quoted in Harloe, Katherine, Winckelmann and the invention of antiquity: history and aesthetics in the age of Altertumswissenschaft (Oxford, 2013), p. 206Google Scholar.
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12 Orrells, Masculinity, pp. 88–9.
13 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, Gedanken über die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerey und Bildhauerkunst (2nd edn, Dresden and Leipzig, 1756), p. 3Google Scholar.
14 Marchand, Olympus, pp. 7–8.
15 Butler, Tyranny, p. 6.
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17 Güthenke, Placing modern Greece, pp. 64–5.
18 Most, Glenn W., ‘On the use and abuse of ancient Greece for life’, Cultura Tedesca, 20 (2002), pp. 31–53Google Scholar, at p. 42.
19 Marchand, Olympus, pp. 159–60.
20 Ibid., pp. xviii–xix.
21 Ibid., p. 6.
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25 Ibid., p. xxiv.
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27 Harloe, Winckelmann, esp. pp. xvi–xvii, 7.
28 Ibid., esp. p. xvii.
29 Ibid., esp. p. 165.
30 Ibid., esp. p. 243.
31 Sünderhauf, Esther Sophia, Griechensehnsucht und Kulturkritik: Die deutsche Rezeption von Winckelmanns Antikenideal, 1840–1945 (Berlin, 2004), p. xxviiGoogle Scholar.
32 Ibid., esp. p. 241.
33 Ibid., p. 116.
34 Ibid., chs. ii.3, iii.
35 Ibid., ch. v. These aspects of National Socialist philhellenism are also cogently discussed in Chapoutot, Johann, Greeks, Romans, Germans: how the Nazis usurped Europe's classical past (Oakland, CA, 2016)Google Scholar (original French edition: Le national-socialisme et l'Antiquité (Paris, 2008)), esp. pp. 136–42Google Scholar, 156–9, 175–86. For more negative views of Winckelmann and the philhellenic tradition during the Third Reich, see Roche, Helen, ‘“Anti-Enlightenment”: National Socialist educators’ troubled relationship with humanism and the philhellenist tradition’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 82 (2013), pp. 193–207Google Scholar.
36 Sünderhauf, Griechensehnsucht, p. 359.
37 Ibid., ch. iii, esp. pp. 173–203, 152.
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41 Stiewe, Der ‘Dritte Humanismus’, pp. 237–43. On the existing Prussian military tradition of laconophile philhellenism, see also Roche, Helen, Sparta's German children: the ideal of ancient Sparta in the Royal Prussian Cadet-Corps, 1818–1920, and in National Socialist elite schools (the Napolas), 1933–1945 (Swansea, 2013)Google Scholar.
42 Stiewe, Der ‘Dritte Humanismus’, p. 311. The most notorious attempt to align the Third Humanism with the educational ideals of National Socialism was arguably Jaeger's article ‘Die Erziehung des politischen Menschen und die Antike’, Volk im Werden, 1 (1933), pp. 43–9, which was intended to impress education minister Bernhard Rust with his ideological credentials. For more on this, see Marchand, Olympus, ch. 9, esp. pp. 325–30.
43 Stiewe, Der ‘Dritte Humanismus’, pp. 9, 311.
44 Butler, Tyranny, pp. 322–31.
45 Lane, Melissa S. and Ruehl, Martin A., eds., A poet's Reich: politics and culture in the George Circle (Woodbridge, 2011)Google Scholar; Melissa S. Lane, ‘The Platonic politics of the George Circle: a reconsideration’, pp. 133–63; and Adam Bisno, ‘Stefan George's homoerotic Erlösungsreligion, 1891–1907’, pp. 37–55. On the George Circle's relationship with Plato, see also Rebenich, Stefan, ‘“Dass ein strahl von Hellas auf uns fiel”: Platon im George-Kreis’, George-Jahrbuch, 7 (2009), pp. 115–41Google Scholar, revised and translated as ‘“May a ray from Hellas fall upon us”: Plato in the George-Circle’, in Roche, Helen and Demetriou, Kyriakos, eds., Brill's companion to the classics, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Leiden, 2018), pp. 178–204Google Scholar.
46 Lane, ‘Platonic politics’, p. 134; Bisno, ‘Erlösungsreligion’.
47 Bisno, ‘Erlösungsreligion’, esp. p. 49. See also Sünderhauf, Griechensehnsucht, pp. 203–13; Stiewe, Der ‘Dritte Humanismus’, p. 128.
48 See also Matzner, Sebastian, ‘From Uranians to homosexuals: philhellenism, Greek homoeroticism and gay emancipation in Germany, 1835–1915’, Classical Receptions Journal, 2 (2010), pp. 60–91Google Scholar; Evangelista, Stefano, ‘“Life in the whole”: Goethe and English aestheticism’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, 82 (2013), pp. 180–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davidson, James, The Greeks and Greek love: a radical reappraisal of homosexuality in ancient Greece (London, 2007)Google Scholar, also provides some insight on this theme.
49 Orrells, Masculinity, p. 18.
50 Ibid., ch. 1, p. 186.
51 Billings, Joshua, Genealogy of the tragic: Greek tragedy and German philosophy (Princeton, NJ, 2014), p. 7Google Scholar. For a theatrical perspective on such debates, see Fischer-Lichte, Tragedy's endurance, pp. 42–68.
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61 Güthenke, Placing modern Greece, p. 243; Hamilakis, Ruins, p. 1; Tsiovas, ‘Introduction’, pp. 13–16. For a broad-brush portrait of these tropes, their genesis and development, see also Hanink, Debt.
62 Meid, Griechenland-Imaginationen, p. 163.
63 Fleischer, Hagen, ‘Die “Viehmenschen” und das “Sauvolk”. Feindbilder einer dreifachen Okkupation: Der Fall Griechenland’, in Benz, Wolfgang and Otto, Gerhard, eds., Kultur–Propaganda–Öffentlichkeit: Intentionen deutscher Besatzungspolitik und Reaktionen auf die Okkupation (Berlin, 1998), pp. 135–69Google Scholar; see also more generally Mazower, Mark, Inside Hitler's Greece: the experience of occupation, 1941–1944 (New Haven, CT, 2001)Google Scholar.
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67 Güthenke, Placing modern Greece, p. 116; Tobias Roth, ‘Mit scharfen und mit zerbrochenen Zithern. Wilhelm Müllers Kriegslyrik, die Lieder der Griechen und der Kampf um Griechenlands Antike’, in Hillemann and Roth, eds., Wilhelm Müller, pp. 19–43, at p. 35.
68 Mylona, Gedenkorte, pp. 132–43.
69 Bilsel, Antiquity on display, p. 223.
70 Hamilakis, Ruins, p. 62.
71 Sünderhauf, Griechensehnsucht, pp. 344–5.
72 See also Hamilakis, Ruins, ch. 5; Katerina Zacharia, ‘Postcards from Metaxas’ Greece: the uses of classical antiquity in tourism photography’, in Tsiovas, ed., Re-imagining the past, pp. 186–208, at p. 194.
73 Greek ambassador A. Rizo-Rangabé to Karl Wernecke, Oberbürgermeister of Stendal, letter dated 2 Apr. 1936, Stadtarchiv Stendal 010–08/05, quoted in Sünderhauf, Griechensehnsucht, p. 345.
