The German Soul was written by Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925), a theologian who was famous for the 1908 book The Mystical Element of Religion. His family had roots in Germany but he had lived in England for many years when The German Soul was published.
Von Hügel used his personal and professional backgrounds to analyze Germany's role in the war from religious, philosophical, and political perspectives. The German Soul was a compilation of two long magazine articles that were originally published between January 1915 and January 1916.
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| Friedrich von Hügel |
In this article, von Hügel tried to describe the moral responsibilities of each of these entities, and how Germany's militarism resulted from an unhealthy imbalance among them.
"Christianity in Face of War" talked about two Germans who were active in both theology and politics—Friedrich Naumann and Ernst Troeltsch. Von Hügel said that Naumann was too dependent on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and didn't understand the full capabilities of humans to make moral decisions.
Von Hügel criticized Troeltsch by writing that "you cannot be both fully, definitely Machiavellian in politics and deeply, tenderly Christian in the life of the individual, the family and the church."
"Christianity in Face of War" concludes with religiously inspiring words about a kingdom that does not exist on earth:
There, there is no War; and here War can be made less and less frequent, extensive, unmitigated, more and more filled with ethical motives, with justice, and even love, things without which the State itself cannot persist, extend and truly flourish, things indeed, never, nowhere wholly absent from the life and aim of man.Von Hügel took a more secular approach in the second article that was included in The German Soul, "The German Soul and the Great War." This article was published in two parts in The Quest in April 1915 and January 1916.
In this article, von Hügel was more critical of Germany than in the Church Quarterly article. He wrote that the thinking of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel contributed to Germany's war mentality by Hegel's assertion that the state was justified in using force to preserve itself.
Von Hügel used his combined English/German background to identify characteristics of the German personality, by contrasting it with the English personality.
For example, the Germans were less self-conscious and more dependent on theory than the English. He gave this description of the German soul:
An imperious need (as soon as this soul is fully aroused) of theory, system, completeness, at every turn and in every subject-matter; an immense capacity for auto-suggestion and mono-ideism; and an ever proximate danger, as well as power, of becoming so dominated by such vivid projections of the racial imaginings and ideals, as to lose all compelling sense of the limits between such dreams and reality, and especially all awareness, or at least alertness, as to the competing rights and differing gifts, indeed as to the very existence, of other souls and other races, with their intrinsically different civilizations, rights and ideals.Colonialism was also used as an example of the differences between England and Germany, at a time when colonialism was more accepted as a part of the world economy. Von Hügel said that England was less oppressive in its colonial rule than Germany.
Von Hügel examined the relationship of four groups of German thought to the war—Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Idealism, and the increasingly influential Materialism. This last group had "deflected and changed the German soul" through such processes as Industrialism and Pan-Germanism.
The German Soul ends with suggestions on how to change German politics and society from what led to World War I. These suggestions include a thorough military defeat that would lead to less militarism and more self-government.
On a more positive note, von Hügel hoped that Germany would resume "the noblest traditions and teachings with which the human race at large has been stimulated and supplied by that essentially rich and large, but of late 'heady' and hardened, spirit—the German Soul."
The German Soul is often challenging to read because of abstract discussions of religious and secular philosophy. Also, von Hügel's heavy reliance on clauses and run-on sentences often makes it hard to follow his train of thought.
But a patient reading of The German Soul will give a student of World War I much philosophical and psychological background for books that focus more on military and political events. The book also is valuable to students of religion and philosophy as an application of those disciplines to a difficult subject—war.
The German Soul was published around July 23, 1916, when a review of it appeared in The Detroit Free Press. Front page headlines in the Free Press that day included:
- ENEMY RETIRES IN DISORDER AS RUSS ADVANCE / Sakharoff Follows Victory in Lipa-Styr Salient by Further Gains Against Austro-Germans / ALLIES ALTERNATE ATTACKS TO CHECK SHIFTS BY TEUTONS / Situation Along Somme Is Comparatively Quiet as Bear Takes Turn in Pressing the Foe
- BOMB KILLS FOUR IN PREPAREDNESS PARADE IN WEST / 44 Injured By Explosive With Nails, Glass and Scrap Iron, Hidden in Shabby Suitcase / FORCE IS TERRIFIC, BLASTING ITS WAY THROUGH CROWD / People Were Warned of Intended Attack by Letters Sent to San Francisco Newspapers
Online versions:
Newspaper information from Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/).
Photograph from Alchetron.
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