It's kinda funny but mostly sad that Germany was a center of global culture until, you know, The Thing, happened, and they never really recovered.
Replies
This omits a few things, mostly the rise of the US as a cultural juggernaut, the shift to English as the lingua franca, etc. Things were just so different after.
aug 18, 2025, 11:15 pm • 3 0 • view
Some of that was driven by German refugees who fled to America
aug 18, 2025, 11:18 pm • 4 0 • view
Also true. And many other refugees.
aug 18, 2025, 11:42 pm • 0 0 • view
yeah, the Nazi's dichotomy between "Great German" art and "Degenerate" art inadvertently showed the difference -- knock off Greco-roman sculptures and Hobby Lobby paintings vs some of the greatest art ever made.
aug 18, 2025, 10:09 pm • 76 3 • view
I think your point risks falling into the völkish anti-nazism ganz describes too. I dont mean to be full antideutsch but i think what the essay is getting at is there *is* some overlap. Of course there’s a ton of kitsch but some of that great Romantic art did also fuel ultranationalist ideology
aug 18, 2025, 10:46 pm • 24 0 • view
I love Schleiermacher and am jewish. Yes we exist
aug 18, 2025, 10:49 pm • 15 0 • view
yea emil nolde was a fascist
aug 18, 2025, 11:32 pm • 3 0 • view
Great art is not a pure distillation of some kind of aesthetic Geist but rather the work of interesting weirdos, more and more people are saying.
aug 18, 2025, 10:55 pm • 7 0 • view
@alt-text.bsky.social
aug 19, 2025, 12:11 am • 0 0 • view
📌 read me for later
aug 19, 2025, 5:15 am • 0 0 • view
Germany is still trying to recover in culture to this day to the point where they offer 1 year visas just to find work for those in careers that have labor shortages. Hopefully Germany can become a center of global culture again.
aug 18, 2025, 11:54 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s less funny and also more true that Germany is still a center of global culture and Berlin is like…a peak immigrant city.
aug 19, 2025, 12:36 am • 0 0 • view
the Thing also happened with Japan but they recovered
aug 18, 2025, 10:47 pm • 5 0 • view
same time, Japan didn't kill most of their cultural class.
aug 18, 2025, 10:52 pm • 20 1 • view
I guess their cultural class was not Otherable
aug 18, 2025, 11:04 pm • 5 0 • view
Or not fascistly Otherable
aug 18, 2025, 11:06 pm • 0 0 • view
And didn't quite have the same option to flee to the United States that Germany's did.
aug 19, 2025, 12:27 am • 1 0 • view
the modern Germany state was divided longer than it has been unified, and its most famous city (to Americans, at least) was half behind the iron curtain and half not part of any state during the time of division.
aug 18, 2025, 10:02 pm • 14 0 • view
and Berlin is undoubtedly the center of modern German cultural expression...
aug 18, 2025, 10:03 pm • 8 0 • view
I think Germany being able to have Culture again is a new thing and we should continue to let her cook
aug 18, 2025, 10:05 pm • 13 0 • view
Konrad Ardenaur implicitly setting up West Germany as a Germany without Prussia was, in retrospect, a genius move.
aug 18, 2025, 10:52 pm • 5 0 • view