Fascism and Aesthetics: Joseph Goebbel's Novel Michael: A German Fate Through the Pages of a Diary (1929)
[In the following essay, Saalmann uses Goebbels's novel Michael to illustrate parallels between fascist social and political principles and theories of aesthetics.]
In a recent publication, Adolf Muschg, the Swiss author, literary critic, and Germanist, defines fascism as "the aesthetic façade of politics." He further elaborates by ascribing to 'aesthetic' fascism the phenomenon of "holistic phantasies foisted upon society." It is this attempt to artistically shape the masses with the intent of creating a new socio-political entity in terms of a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, that we shall concern ourselves with in this essay. It must be emphasized, however, that the question of fascism and aesthetics should not be construed as constituting an exhaustive analysis of the fascist movement. The artistic perspective is only one aspect of the multi-faceted spectrum of this phenomenon, albeit a highly significant one in that it does address itself to the very substance of the fascist mentality.
The aesthetic inclinations of National Socialism have been noted by a number of critics. Aestheticization, as it applies to the ideology espoused by the Third Reich, ought to be viewed as a "Dekadenzproze," in other words, as a process which involves the corrosion of traditional aesthetic concepts. As thus understood, the effort to analyze this abuse of the conventional aesthetic precepts of bourgeois society must therefore be seen as a contribution to the historico-political debate over German intellectual developments in the twentieth century. Hence, the document analyzed in this essay is substantially more than a piece of Trivialliteratur. It is indeed a key to the National Socialist frame of mind and thus a factor in the historical evolution.
Henry Grosshans, in his recent book entitled Hitler and the Artists, admonishes the reader that "Hitler as an artist in politics should be taken seriously." This is precisely what our exegesis proposes to accomplish by means of an interpretation of Goebbels' novel Michael. A German Fate Through the Pages of a Diary in terms of its anticipatory function as regards the aesthetic attributes of National Socialism. Consequently, Michael will reveal itself as something distinctly more portentous than solely a "true literary curiosity." Its principal protagonist will emerge as the embodiment of the nascent "artist in politics" whose most heinous incarnation was to become the scourge of Germany and all of Europe in the years to come. Inasmuch as it has been rumored that Hitler contemplated writing a novel in the 1920's that was to depict the efforts of a man of action to shape and ultimately save his nation, Goebbels' work actually conceived during the National Socialist struggle for supremacy assumes added significance. The published version and the delineation of the main character are clearly modelled on the emergence of Hitler's movement as a force to be reckoned with. As a result, the diary represents, in form of an aesthetic blueprint, what Hitler himself failed to accomplish as a writer but was nevertheless able to realize in the empirical realm. "The attempt to legitimize political rule through aesthetic symbolization," Anson G. Rabinbach states quite unequivocally in this regard, "is perhaps the decisive characteristic distinguishing twentieth century fascist regimes from other forms of authoritarian domination."
As for Goebbels' novel in particular, it was probably written at the end of 1923 and the beginning of 1924. The title chosen at first—Michael Voormann: The Diary of a Man's Fate—was later changed to "the fate of a German," that is to say, subsequent to the author's encounter with Hitler. The anti-semitic outbursts were in all likelihood not included in the draft that had been submitted to and rejected by Ullstein and Mosse, two Jewish publishing houses, before being accepted by Eher, the official Nazi publisher. In this context, Ullstein once remarked quite appropriately to Heinrich Fraenkel "that it was a pity that they had never accepted Michael and so perhaps diverted Goebbels' energies into literature instead of politics." The influence of Mein Kampf can only be traced in the printed version since Hitler's book was still unavailable when Goebbels' novel was being prepared. In the initial phases of the writing process, the narrator in Michael addressed himself to mankind in general whereas the book version that appeared in 1929 spoke to the Germans in particular. In view of our conception of fascism in terms of aesthetic attributes it is of especial interest that the author obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy at the University Heidelberg on April 21, 1921 with a dissertation on "Wilhelm Schütz. A Contribution to the History of the Romanticist Drama." He had taken up studies in that city in the fall of 1920 and became acquainted with the works of Friedrich Gundolf on Goethe, George, Caesar, and Shakespeare. All these publications were imbued with the spirit of George, that is to say, with a pronounced reverence for form which had definitely more ominous overtones than being a mere matter of aesthetics.
In the early stages of preparing the manuscript, the author resorted to an almost solemn, if not outright ecclesiastical, style. In the process of revising the preliminary draft the language became remarkably rhythmic, evocative, and exuberant under the obvious influence of Nietzsche. Basically, Michael is a dreamed-up image of Goebbels' life as a myth with the latter in the role of myth-maker: "Vincent van Gogh," one of the diary entries asserts, "is the most modern among moderns.… Modernism is a new world feeling. Van Gogh … is teacher, preacher, fanatic, prophet, madman. After all, we are all mad when we produce a creative idea."
It behoves us to regard books such as Michael not on literary grounds—in this respect the verdict is in—but as a socio-political phenomenon. Thus the protagonist reveals a profound sense of boredom with civilization and an existential malaise in general, a feeling of ennui reinforced by the experience of defeat, national humiliation, and frustrated patriotism. A similar sensation of Weltschmerz can be found in Wagner, Baudelaire, Carlyle, and other European artists. Basically, Michael is a revolt against conventional socialism as well as capitalism. Unlike earlier nationalistic heroes, Michael experiences a deep sense of isolation bordering on autism. Statesmen, according to this credo, are poets and artists manqués destined to become the legislators of the world.
By the same token, Hertha Hoik, Michael's female pendant who is ultimately sacrificed on the altar of a 'greater' cause, betrays a noteworthy insight into the potentially far-reaching consequences of this explosive concoction of politics and aesthetics: "In politics you think like an artist," she warns, "that is dangerous for your own life and career." It must be noted that these words are put into the mouth of the heroine by the au-thor himself who thus formulates a truth which has haunted him and which has finally been dismissed as irrelevant to the realization of the actual political goal. As if driven by an evil force, Michael succumbs to the lure of his "demon," in others words, to his political 'genius:' "I think and act as I must think and act. That is what everyone does who does not belong to the herd. A demon operates in us who leads us along a preordained path. One can do nothing against this demon." That political ambitions intertwined with the aesthetic inclinations of the idealist are indeed the principal criteria in the protagonist's life, emerges quite unequivocally from a brief exchange between Michael and Hertha: "In you there dwell a poet and a soldier. Are you also a musician?—A bit of each." In the end, he dismisses her as being a "realist" in the pejorative sense of the word to the extent that she fails to experience the sensation of wonderment which, for Michael, is "the origin of all poetry and all philosophy." Such a putatively poetic conception of the world contrasts rather harshly with the Herrenmenschen philosophy espoused by the protagonist and his desire, as Michael puts it in a remarkably premonitory fashion, "to reshape the world." In opposition to modern art with its emphasis on the artist's sense of hopeless isolation, Michael styles himself as a crusader for authentically German creative values. Such strictly indigenous criteria impel the artist-turned-politician to restore the nation to its presumed original unity and splendor.
From the point of view of structure, Michael is reminiscent of Goethe's Werther. Both works express in a first-person narrative very private, intimate confessions in a fragmentary and emotion-laden language. Goebbels' protagonist, a true Faustian nature, also demonstrates the author's turning from Goethe to Nietzsche, from Hertha Holk to Adolf Hitler. Ossian's want of moderation seduces Werther but not his creator. On the other hand, Nietzsche, misunderstood and misconstrued by Michael who relies on fragmentary quotations taken out of context or distorted, intoxicates both Goebbels and his spokesman. As a poet-politician, Michael's principal readings, aside from Goethe's Faust and the Bible, consist primarily of Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Quite appropriately, it is the following line from this work that concludes Michael's notebook entries: "Many die too late and some too early. Strangely sounds the lesson: die at the right time!"
The diction of Goebbels' German Diary is exclamatory, incantatory, and exhortatory. It adjusts itself to the hero's exaltations and depressions. The latter express his "demon" in a pseudo-poetic language which, however, should not simply be dismissed as the product of an inferior talent. It undoubtedly foreshadows the hypnotic power of National Socialist jargon. It is Goebbels the myth-maker extolling the 'blacksmith' of the "new Reich" who propagates the idea of 'forging' a new people and a new nation. This kind of mythical thinking anticipates the later myths surrounding Horst Wessel and Leo Schlageter. In his diary, Goebbels purports to have met Hitler as early as 1922. In reality, however, the two did not become acquainted until 1925. Such a claim is therefore symptomatic of the author's systematic effort to shroud his spiritual awakening to National Socialism with the mysterious veil of a pseudo-mythical past. The attempt to create a new political reality is couched in a mode of thinking and finds its verbalization in a language that are essentially aesthetic in nature: "The true poet," Michael's reasoning goes, "is a kind of amateur photographer of life. For a poem is nothing else but a snapshot taken by the lense of the artistic soul. Art is the expression of feeling. The artist is distinguished from him who is not an artist by the fact that he can express what he feels.… The statesman is also an artist. For him the people are that which a stone is for the sculptor. Leader and masses, that is exactly the same problem as painter and color." This creative potential of the prototypical statesman-artist is fundamentally "expressionist" in nature: "Today we are all expressionists," Michael concludes: "Men who want to make the world outside themselves take the form of their life within themselves. The expressionist builds within himself a new world. His secret and his power are the forces within his own passionate nature. The world of his inner thoughts breaks to pieces on reality.… The expressionist world-feeling is explosive. It is an autocratic sensation of its own being." In this manner, Goebbels' novel illustrates the aesthetic connection between Expressionism and National Socialism, a fact which was to become the focal point of the controversy over Expressionism in the exile journal Das Wort in 1937-38.
In congruence with such dubious literary precepts, Michael the so-called expressionist-turned-politician engages in the very process that Benjamin has termed the "aestheticization of politics" by transforming "the soul of the expressionist" into the "new macrocosm" of National Socialist ideology. It is indicative of this putatively metaphysical approach to what is fundamentally a political question that the author resorts to a terminology which circumscribes the quintessence of his belief as a sensation of "self-being" that originates in what he calls "a world unto itself." In spite of the claim that the "expressionist feeling is explosive," the inner-directed-ness of this thinking can therefore not conceal its affinity with salient aspects of a l'art pour l'art attitude.
In identifying political activity as "Ausdruckskunst," the author endows the socio-political substance with "historical form," analogous to the activities of poet, painter, and sculptor. Consequently, the "ideological" revolution he propagates continues, according to this way of thinking, the intent of divine genesis in the political sphere as an explicitly "creative act." Its final result is the nation-state as "formgewordenes Volkstum," that is to say, a Volkstum forged in accordance with the "Gestaltungswille," or creative will, of the politician-as-artist. It is this congruence of the 'will to power' and the 'will to form,' of the artistic and ideological volition that constitutes the Nietzschean and Schopenhauerian dimension of Goebbels' novel.
The metaphysico-philosophical frame of reference is further reinforced by an open appeal to the Romantic concept of "Unendlichkeit," in other words, the desire to reach the ultimate limits of human endeavor. In this way, political activity and weltanschaulich goals are conceptualized in terms of a "Faustian urge." It is this "storm and stress" mentality that the protagonist wishes to emulate, not the mature Goethe but the young disciple of iconoclastic inclinations as the incarnation of Michael's own emotional upheaval along the lines of "turmoil" and "rebellion." In such a vein, the older Goethe is rejected outright—"Not Weimar is our Mecca"—and Wilhelm Meister dismissed as being too well-rounded and lacking the rough edges of a truly revolutionary spirit. In contradistinction, the so-called "expressionist," for Michael, is the new macrocosm, not just a faint echo of the larger perspective. Thus Goethe's "Erlebniswerte," or experiential values, have been replaced by the "Eigenwert," or intrinsic worth, of the new autonomous and "autocratic" personality that strives to re-create the world in its own image.
There can be no doubt that the author of the German Diary, at least at the time of the inception of this book, was deeply steeped in Germany's cultural heritage. The following excerpt may serve as proof of our contention that Goebbels, despite the obviously transitional and fermentational nature of these diary entries, was nevertheless unable to resist the lure of an aestheticized view of the contemporary world that was to permeate the further development of National Socialism. A strong undercurrent of profound and genuine empathy for the past can be detected throughout the passage which assumes the character of a rather intimate confession: "In its decline, the gradually collapsing historical class (i. e. the bourgeoisie), for the last time, inspires the finest flowers of its failing creative force.… One more time, its exquisiteness and graciousness emanating from nearly exhausted sources of inspiration, manifest themselves in the last examples of a vanishing world. In its final hour, it engenders creations full of delicate beauty and grace." It is true that the author of these words claims to have overcome such allegedly obsolete aesthetic notions. And yet, a close perusal of the entire text leaves no doubt that the cultural legacy extolled in the lines just quoted has left an indelible imprint on this self-proclaimed "revolutionary" as harbinger of the supposedly invincible "strong forces of a new creation."
Michael's perception of the world based on 'beauty' even extends to the realms of production and technology, a characteristic feature of National Socialism. Thus, the protagonist attempts to integrate himself not only politically but also aesthetically into the reality of proletarian life. The 'beauty' of labor—to wit: the Nazi Amt Schönheit der Arbeit—therefore assumes symbolic significance. In this sense, then, Michael experiences the facts of existence as they pertain to coal mines and their work force, as a highly stylized and intensely melodramatic scenario. His efforts to bridge the attitudinal gap between his life as a student and his new associates among the miners who initially reject him as a carpetbagger, is an open undertaking to politicize the working class whose alienation inspires in Goebbels a sort of left-wing brand of National Socialism. The politicization of the production process and of the means of production is also depicted as proceeding along aesthetic lines. Consequently, the notion of 'work' is conceived essentially as a formative rather than a merely utilitarian procedure. In this way, the idea of 'beauty of work' as espoused during the Third Reich by the journal bearing the same title receives its initial formulation in Michael's encounter with the working class. The prime function of this concept is one of creating social harmony through the aestheticization of labor relations. The result is an aesthetic illusion underlying concrete social interaction which, in turn, is engendered by political motivation as the principal driving force. The aestheticization of the work environment in Michael therefore acts as a potentially calamitous symbol of the aestheticization of politics in general. In this fashion, labor relations evolve into a kind of l'art pour l'art endeavor, that is to say, into a social mode for its own sake, "a pure representation of social power." Hence, Michael's encounter with the proletarian milieu falls into the general pattern of experiencing life as a product of the imagination, of viewing the modalities of existence in metaphysical terms, just as the "metaphysical charisma" attributed to Hitler manifested itself in "the omnipresence of his speeches and on the radio…"
What emerges from Michael's desire to "forge" the political destiny of the nation—"I want to create… bring into being"—is a "Symphonie der Arbeit," a 'symphonic' work wrestled from the shapeless mass that constitutes the people. The ever-expanding and elusive nature of this material must be pressed into a manageable shape until it conforms to the machtpolitisch intentions of the creatively inclined statesman. As with the artist proper, the fundamental problem here is one of Form versus Inhalt. If applied to politics, the dichotomy between form and content can only be overcome through a truly revolutionary spirit that destroys both Form and Inhalt of the existing order for the sake of realizing the "new… German man" as the result of a process of so-called 'organic creation. ' Such is the intellectual disposition of the 'idealist' like Michael who, as an 'organic thinker, ' endeavors to perceive the "essence behind the appearances" of empirical reality by virtue of his "longing for form, Gestalt, and quintessence." What is needed, then, is not "men" but "a man," in other words, a Führer-like figure who is charged with actualizing Christ's mission of bringing "salvation" to humanity. As Michael defines the proselytizing intent of the 'new gospel: ' "My plan: from the individual to the whole, from the realia to the symbol, from brother to Volk, and only from Volk to the world."
Implicit in these assumptions is the necessity for military action in harmony with Marinetti's praise of war as the perfect incarnation of the ultimate form of human struggle and the nadir of beauty. Military conflict is viewed by Michael as the apotheosis of human existence and justified on account of the cynical premise that nature itself is "undemocratic" and that life as a whole is basically "evil." It is this substratum of militaristic thinking, the conviction that "war is the simplest form of affirming life," which undergirds the protagonist's exhortation of what he calls the necessity of "zum Ausdruck bringen," or giving verbal Gestalt to the "artistically tuned soul." From this vantage point, the notion of war embodies a "creative act," the only way, in Michael's thinking, to realize the future German nation as the "grandiose" achievement of a "dance of death." In retrospect, such words sound quite prophetic in view of what transpired in subsequent years which were to echo those premonitionary pronouncements uttered by Goebbels' alter ego: "The earth shall belong to him who takes it." In this context, Michael's penchant for war and his admiration for Nietzsche go hand in hand in that he vulgarizes the latter's ambivalent disposition of simultaneously criticizing and advocating military action and promoting a social Darwinism of German supremacy based on racial confrontation. The protagonist thus displays the same irrationalism combined with a stress on vitality and a fascination with death that recurs in a much more thoroughly aestheticized version in a number of literary figures. The anti-rational component of Michael's frame of mind is further strengthened by a nature mysticism that borders on the ecstatic. A similarly irrational attitude informs his feeling toward the Soviet Union and the supposed Slavic menace in general. It also fuels his dislike of the bourgeoisie. All these classical Feindbilder serve as models of the dreaded threats of societal "corrosion" and "dissolution," that is to say, the disintegration of traditional values because of allegedly un-German influences. "War awakened me from deep slumber. It gave me full consciousness. Geist tormented me and drove me into catastrophe: it showed me the depths and the heights of human experience. Work gave me salvation. It made me proud and free. And now I have assumed a new form on the basis of these [criteria]." What distinguishes Michael's intellectual confession is the profoundly artistic nature of the terminology chosen. Using the triad of Krieg, Geist, and Arbeit and its synthesis as the "new law" and cornerstone of his spiritual evolution, he prophecies Germany's ideological future for which these same premises constitute its very raison d'être with their message of "deliverance" through the medium of the 'creator.'
Michael's final words on his death bed after the tragic accident in a coal mine in Southern Bavaria echo such thoughts, with one significant addendum, namely the notion of "opfern," or sacrifice. His life-long struggle with Christianity has now come full circle: his exposure to National Socialism has led him to merge the figure of the anticipated Führer with that of the Savior in order to postulate his idea of the most noble form of self-denial, 'für Volk und Vaterland, ' to be sure. It thus follows quite logically that he hails the rise of so-called "Christussozialisten" fighting for what could presumably be termed a 'Christussozialismus. ' The seminal affinity between Christ, the artist such as Vincent van Gogh, and the statesman is reinforced by the description of Jesus as "Dichter" representing a specific "Zeitgeist," that is to say, the epochal spirit of the creative genius who toils to actualize man's highest ambition: "He who speaks up there places stone upon stone in order to construct the cathedral of the future. What has lived inside me for years is now taking shape and assuming tangible form." It is therefore no accident that the "Mittagsandacht" in Zarathustra with its theme of the "Brunnen der Ewigkeit," or fount of eternity, and the concept of a pantheistic sense of perfection, casts its contemplative spell over Michael. This intermingling of notions germane to the Judeo-Christian tradition with secular ideas is the more significant in that investigation into völkisch concepts has indisputably demonstrated that it was the pseudo-religious aspirations of National Socialism, its pretense as a Heilslehre, or doctrine of salvation, and its insistence on redemption, among other factors, which facilitated acceptance of the 'movement' and its anti-semitic excesses by a large segment of the German population.
"No work of art without creator! No Volk without statesman! No world without God!" This dictum synthesizes the Weltanschauung that serves as underpinning for Michael's outlook on life. Its essence lies in the total identification of Schöpfer, Staatsmann, and Gott on the one hand and Kunstwerk, Volk, and Welt on the other. "The genius," so the argument continues, "is always nothing but the highest expression of the people's will." Being "the very incarnation of creative Volkstum" as it were, the genius and his obligation are in perfect congruence with the task that Jesus Christ set himself on earth, at least according to Goebbels' interpretation. In this particular sense, Christianity is viewed as the elitist activity of a select few and the embodiment of an essentially cultural endeavor. It is a fundamentally secularized and aestheticized version of the Christian concept of life as a "Lebensqual," or vale of tears, transformed into a "lebensbildend," or life-giving, factor as it applies to the ideological sphere. In this vein, the exemplary life of Jesus Christ is credited with the ability to arouse the narrator's imaginative propensity as regards the advent of "ein Grösserer." By the same token, the quasi-religious atmosphere that permeates the entire work, conceivably as a compensation for Goebbels' lost Roman Catholicism, is reinforced by the view of Jesus himself as a kind of militant socialist whose spirit might infuse a modern, secular political movement. Such an interpretation of Christianity rests on the assumption that the notion of Gott, in the Nietzschen tradition, is ultimately identical with the concept of Wille. The latter, in turn, provides the homo politicus with the 'divine' prerogative to 'will' the 'form' that the socio-political entity is to take.
In summarizing, then, it can be said that Goebbels' prose reflects the affinities that exist between fascism and the avant-garde. To wit: the irrational tendencies of the fin-de-siècle; Nietzsche's plea for Lebenspathos, or a vitalistic disposition; moral relativism; the cult of the instinct; an emphasis on action; aristocratic inclinations toward the state as the only purveyor of values; an anti-capitalist mentality nurtured by Utopian and romantic notions; an overt racism and virulent anti-semitism; an elitist aestheticism coupled with an occasional extreme form of Weltfremdheit; a deep-seated aversion to the parliamentary form of government; a profound anti-modernist conviction exacerbated by capturing, in a very genuine way, a pronounced sense of the loss of national self-esteem and a distinct feeling of distrust vis-à-vis the Western world and the modern age in general; a frame of mind dedicated to the principle of épater le bourgeois; an emphasis on the power of the free will reinforced by an anarchist drive to determine the pattern of life as exemplified by Michael's ultimately fateful decision to gain acceptance by the proletariat; a ruthless readiness to cast aside the human element in favor of ideology; a resolute denial of mediocrity and the conforming habits of the herd instinct under the impact of Nietzsche's demand on the individual to conquer himself and to rid himself of his false sense of inferiority; and, finally, the dichotomy between aesthetic and economic considerations, between the spiritual values of the 'new myth' and its plutocratic aspects, a point that figures prominently in Brecht's and Benjamin's discussion of fascist aesthetics.
There can be no denying the fact that artistic considerations were instrumental in shaping fascist ideology. In France, it was Charles Maurras and Thierry Maulnier of the Action Française whose interest in aesthetics preceded the genesis of fascism proper. Robert Brasillach, another representative figure of the pan-European specimen of homo fascista, regarded Hitler and Mussolini as 'poets' par excellence of creative politics whose destiny it was to subdue the masses by virtue of political decisions as poetry and myth made visible. Fascism, to be sure, encompasses a total concept of life. For this reason, man's inner being is likewise subject to the urge of the fascist aesthete to give formal expression to his attitudinal disposition. In this context, Goebbels' verbal visualization of Michael as the prototypical fascist-oriented youth shares the general concern of the European intelligentsia in the early part of the century over the devastating effect of industrial and technological advancement on the artistic sensibilities and the resultant feeling of anomie in the machine age. Like the European adherents of fascism, Michael also identifies his aesthetic leanings with a distinctive sense of combativeness and a predatory tendency. In 1934, Pierre Drieu de la Rochelle, under the immediate impact of a journey across the Rhine, confirms Michael's conviction that Germany is about to embark on a course that will take the country down the path of a thoroughly spiritualized and aestheticized society. To a considerable extent, then, the success of fascism must be attributed to its appeal to man's sensory perception and his longing for creating new forms. In congruence with Brasillach's analysis of fascism, Michael thus sees the 'new order' as a struggle between the senses and metaphysical abstraction.
To be sure, it would be highly inaccurate to limit the attraction of this ideology to its aesthetic perspective, as suggested by Jean Turlais in 1943. Still, the fact of the matter is that Goebbels portrays his protagonist as a man of heroic sensibilities who, in the terminology of Brasillach's characterization of the fascist mind, strives to reconcile the corporeal and the spiritual within himself for the benefit of the 'new faith' he espouses. Notwithstanding the literary mediocrity of the 'German Diary, ' its doctrine does indeed reflect what has been called "the poetry of the dictators." By the same token, the analogy between art and politics ought not to be carried to an extreme. Thus, Alfred Fabre-Luce's attempt to present Hitler as a sort of 'presiding artist' "who betrayed the arts in trying to make them 'useful' and disregarded the laws of his personal art (the political art) which, more than any other, should take into account the resistance of the material employed," unquestioningly exceeds the limits of exegetical sagacity. One therefore wholeheartedly concurs with the caustic assessment that Fabre-Luce's claim "surely is one of the most prudent criticisms of Hitler ever written." Conversely, the significance of the Führer's own statement to the effect that "art and politics belong together as nothing else on earth belongs together" should not be nonchalantly dismissed as the pseudo-intellectual meanderings of a misguided spirit succumbing to the "external trappings of culture."
What Michael indulges in is the kind of "metapolitics" that Peter Viereck defines as an admixture of romanticism, an ill-conceived socialism, racism, and an abiding faith in the concept of Volk. Goebbels' book thus portends, in analogy to Nero's desire to turn aesthetic resentment into political animosities and cruelty, the appearance of those "frustrated aesthetes" of the Third Reich who spared no effort to become "aesthetes with brass knuckles." In anticipation of Hitler's confession that "the only things that exist are the works of human genius. This is the explanation of my love of art," Michael introduces the insidious consequences of argumentation by analogy with its inherently vague abstractions and blurring of distinctions. In conformity with H. R. Trevor-Roper's assessment of Hitler's mind—"To him there was no real truth, no objectivity.… To him, reality, especially political reality, was not a fact but an artefact; it was made by the human mind, the human will"—the protagonist of the 'German Diary' stresses the point that "what we believe is not as important as the fact that we do believe." To put it differently: 'style' envisaged by Michael as a Synthesis between "precept and expression" is the key term that prefigures later evaluations of Hitler as a "consummate actor, with the actor's and orator's facility for absorbing himself in a role and convincing himself of the truth of what he was saying at the time he said it."
Our critical assessment of fascist ideology as delineated in Goebbels' Michael in terms of the endeavor to transpose empirical reality into an artificial construct, to transfigure concrete phenomena into a triumph of the creative but utterly nihilistic will, has demonstrated the trompe l'oeil effect of such an effort, that is to say, the mendacious façade of artistic manipulation in the historical realm. The determination of the homo politicus to 'act' as a fanatical homo aestheticus with presumed prophetic ambitions therefore creates, as Horkheimer and Adorno have recognized, "an ideological curtain" on the political stage "behind which the real evil is concentrated" and perpetrated by what Thomas Mann denounces as the "künstlerischer Bezauberer Europas," in other words, the politician-as-artist turned charlatan and sorcerer who casts his magic spell over his audience. The ultimate aesthetic perversion of the alleged banality of such a self-styled ideologue and bureaucrat with artistic pretensions has recently been expressed by a commentator who characterizes Adolf Eichmann's involvement in racial annihilation as the desire to perform a "creative task." It can thus be observed that the aesthetic component of the politics espoused in Goebbels' novel signals the consummation of the principle of Fiat ars—pereat mundus that Benjamin ascribes to fascism.
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