Modernism, medievalism and humanism: A research bibliography on the reception of the works of Ernst Robert Curtius 9783111329079, 3484521961, 9783484521964

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BEIHEFTE

ZUR

ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR ROMANISCHE

PHILOLOGIE

BEGRÜNDET VON GUSTAV GRÖBER FORTGEFÜHRT VON WALTHER VON WARTBURG HERAUSGEGEBEN VON KURT BALDINGER

B A N D 196

EARL JEFFREY RICHARDS

Modernism, Medievalism and Humanism: A Research Bibliography on the Reception of the Works of Ernst Robert Curtius

MAX NIEMEYER VERLAG T Ü B I N G E N 1983

Gedruckt mit Unterstützung der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft

Meinem.

Schwiegervater

CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek Richards, Earl Jeffrey: Modernism, medievalism and humanism : a research bibliogr. on the reception of the works of Ernst Robert Curtius / Earl Jeffrey Richards. - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1983. (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie ; Bd. 196) NE: Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie / Beihefte; HST

ISBN 3-484-52196-1 ISSN 0084-5396 © Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1983 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Ohne Genehmigung des Verlages ist es nicht gestattet, dieses Buch oder Teile daraus auf photomechanischem Wege zu vervielfältigen. Printed in Germany. Satz: Computersatz Staiger, Tübingen. Druck: Becht-Druck, Pfäffingen. Einband: Heinrich Koch, Tübingen.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction Annotated Bibliography of Reviews of Curtius' Writings, (1912-1983)

VII 1 20

Supplement

164

Bibliography of Curtius' Publications

170

Index of Proper Names

189

Acknowledgements

In the course of compiling this research bibliography, I benefited from conversations with Professors Yakov Malkiel (Berkeley), Heinrich Lausberg (Paderborn), Günther Weydt (Münster), Wolfgang Babilas (Münster), Wolf-Dieter Stempel (Hamburg), Karl August Ott (Kiel), Wolf-Dieter Lange (Bonn), and Peter Dembowski (Chicago), whom I wish to recognize and thank here. In particular I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Robert Hollander (Princeton) for his encouragement during the more difficult periods of my research. I am grateful to the Interlibrary Loan staff of the Universitätsbibliothek Münster, to the Readers' Service division of the Bayrische Staatsbibliothek, München, to Dr. Hans-Joachim Hermes (Münster) and to Dr. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (New York) for their competent assistance. Frau Ilse Curtius deserves special thanks for her help in clarifying many biographical details of her husband's life. I would also like to recognize Professor Kurt Baldinger, editor of the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, for all his aid and counsel. My wife Ingrid provided me with invaluable help in understanding the rich and complex intellectual tradition of her homeland. Francke Verlag (Bern/München) kindly granted permission for me to utilize parts of the bibliography of Curtius' writings which first appeared in the Freundesgabe (1956). Finally I would like to express my warmest thanks to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for its generous support in subsidizing the publication costs of this bibliography as well as to its referees for their valuable suggestions.* E. J. Richards Münster i.W., July 1982

* A considerably shorter version of the annotated bibliographic section of this work has been published in Italian by II Mulino, Bologna. VII

Ancient

without Modern is a stumbling-

block, Modern without Ancient is foolishness utter and irremediable. Saintsburv

Curtius at the Goethe-Bicentenial, (Aspen, Colorado), in 1949 (Photo, courtesy Frau Use Curtius)

Introduction

Hugo Schuchardt once called for the creation of a new academic discipline which he called «researching the researcher» (die Erforschung des Forschers). Schuchardt maintained that an acquaintance with the personal, subjective context from which a scholar's work springs facilitates understanding the objective contribution of scholarship in general1. The 'dovetailing' of subjectivity and objectivity to which Schuchardt referred has increasingly attracted scholarly attention in recent years. Given the unavoidable fact that all scholarship is time-bound, recent writers investigating the history of scholarship (Wissenschaftsgeschichte) have found that reconstructing the «epistemological interests» (Erkenntnisinteressen) of older scholars can afford a means of ascertaining the on-going value of their earlier research. The history of scholarship faces complicated tasks for it constantly runs the risk of degenerating into ad hominem argumentation or into the disordered accumulation of personal anecdotes. The contemporary researcher, moreover, can himself fail to recognize to what extent his own current «epistemological interests» may influence and cloud his judgment. Present needs impinging on research possess an incontestible legitimacy, indeed priority; they cannot, however, necessarily claim a greater or higher validity than the requirements which influenced the research of earlier scholars. Both viewpoints are inevitably relative. Thus the history of scholarship is challenged to provide a chance for present research to interrogate past research in the explicit hope and epistemological interest that future research will benefit from this imperfect dialogue of the present with the past. Examining the reception of the writings of Ernst Robert Curtius over the period of the last seventy years can both reveal the changing demands made on literary scholarship during that time and afford new purchase on the problems which confronted Curtius and which continue to confront succeeding generations of scholars.

i «Ich empfinde es immer wohltätig, wenn unter dem kühlen Panzer der Objektivität hervor mich ein warmer Hauch von Subjektivität anweht, die ja doch nie fehlt. Der Mitforscher tritt mir dann näher, wird mir verständlicher», Hugo-Schuchardt-Brevier, ed. Leo Spitzer, (Halle, 2 1928), 421.

1

One can usefully begin with a short biographical excursus2. Curtius was born on April 14, 1886, in the Alsatian town of Thann, the son of Friedrich Curtius (1851-1933) and his wife Louise, née Countess of Erlach-Hindelbank (1857-1919). Friedrich Curtius was a transplanted civil servant who, in addition to his other duties, served as president of the small Protestant Augsburg Confessional Church in Roman Catholic Alsace-Lorraine 3 . At one time Albert Schweitzer was a boarder at the Curtius' home; he has left a description of the cultivated atmosphere of their family life (entry no. 121). Curtius saw in his father, as he wrote Charles Du Bos in 1933 (entry no. 407), a representative of the «old, idealistic Germany». Despite recurrent rumors that he had converted to Roman Catholicism (see his 1921 letter to Carl Schmitt, entry no.413, and his 1927 letter to Gide, entry no.407), and despite Stefan George's frequently cited reference to Curtius' «aufgewärmter catholicism» [sic], Curtius remained a Protestant all his life, assuming what he himself called an «Anglican» position toward Roman Catholicism. Curtius received his Abitur in 1903 from the Protestant Gymnasium in Strasbourg, and studied from October, 1903 to July, 1910 at the Universities of Strasbourg, Berlin and Heidelberg. While he was a student in Berlin (during the winter semester of 1906/07), he was able to profit from the social ties of his late grandfather, Ernst Curtius (influential Hellenist, archaeologist and excavator of Olympia), and received invitations to the home of the impressionist painter Reinhold Lepsius (brother-in-law of Friedrich Curtius' half-sister). Here Curtius met Friedrich Gundolf, Stefan George and Charles Du Bos. On February 28, 1910, Curtius defended his doctoral dissertation in Strasbourg, later published under the title Einleitung zu einer neuen Ausgabe der «Quatre Livre des Reis». Curtius' dissertation adviser, Gustav Gröber, exerted a powerful influence on Curtius throughout his entire career, evidenced in the dedication of Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter to Gröber some forty years later. In 1913 the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Bonn accepted Curtius' Habilitationsschrift on Ferdinand Brunetière, a topic suggested in fact by Gröber before his death on November 6, 1911. Curtius began his career as a Privatdozent in Bonn. During the summer se2 This short excursus on Curtius' life is based on the articles by Evans (entry no. 379) and Lausberg (entry no. 380). 3 All throughout his life Curtius identified strongly with Alsace. It might be useful to compare Curtius' career with that of his contemporary Ernest Hoeppfner (1879-1956): both were Alsatians, attended the same Gymnasium, studied in Strasbourg under Gröber. In 1918 Hoeppfner returned to Strasbourg from Jena. Curtius did not return. Hoeppfner remained exclusively a medievalist during his long and fruitful career. See Paul Imbs, Ernest Hoeppfner (1879-1956), Bulletin de la Faculté des lettres, Strasbourg 35 (1956/57), 147-150; Charles-Edmont Perrin, Discours à l'occasion de la mort de M. Ernest Hoeppfner, Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions et belleslettres (1956), 396-401; and Gustave Cohen, Un grand romaniste alsacien, Ernest Hoeppfner, Les Lettres françaises, Paris, (25 October 1956), 2.

2

mester, 1914, Curtius offered three courses: a two-hour seminar on Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain; a two-hour seminar on Provençal; and a one-hour lecture course, open to students from all faculties, on the intellectual currents of contemporary French literature. The lectures (repeated in 1917 and 1919) formed the basis of Curtius' Wegbereiter. Curtius fought in France and Poland during the First World War, and was shot through the neck in 1915. This wound was so severe - in later years it often led to swelling which prevented Curtius from speaking - that he was released from the army. From 1916 to 1920 he taught in Bonn, offering a variety of courses (besides his Wegbereiter lectures) on both medieval and modern topics, including a lecture course on Balzac (which was preparatory to his 1923 study). In 1916 Curtius sent the manuscript of his Wegbereiter to Stefan George who disliked the book and refused to recommend it to his publisher Georg Bondi (see entry no.345). Yet, while he never succeeded in being accepted into the George-Kreis, Curtius' Romanist colleagues never tired of reproaching him for his association with George and Gundolf (see entries nos. 15, 45, 72, and 90). In 1920 Curtius was named professor in Marburg where he remained until 1924. Although he felt exiled in Marburg (see his letters to Carl Schmitt from 1921-22, entry no. 413), his activity there proved extremely productive, for it was during this time that he published his books on Maurice Barrés (1921) and Balzac (1923). In 1921 he went to Colpach for the first time (see entry no. 20); in 1922 he participated in the «Entretiens de Pontigny». At the same time his journalistic activities - which earned him the disdain of many older Romanists - increased enormously during this period. In 1925, thanks to Gundolfs intervention and despite strong opposition from the older Romanists in Heidelberg, Curtius was named professor there. During this part of his career, he wrote a great many articles for Die Neue Rundschau, Die Literarische Welt, Neue Schweizer Rundschau, and Deutsch-französische Rundschau, and published his short monograph on James Joyce und sein Ulysses (1929). While in Heidelberg Curtius made the acquaintance of Arnold Bergsträsser who later collaborated with Curtius on their joint study Frankreich (1930). It was also during this time that Curtius met his future wife, Ilse Gsottschneider, a student in Heidelberg, whom he married on February 15, 1930. In 1929 Curtius was appointed as the successor of Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke in Bonn. His nomination was extraordinarily controversial, not specifically because Curtius had devoted himself to modernist studies in the previous decade (though this undoubtedly played a role), but because, although he had consistently taught Old French and lectured on Dante during the 1920's (see his letters to Gide and to Mme. Mayrisch from 1922, entry no. 407), he had neglected historical linguistics, a field of specialization traditionally associated with this chair in Bonn. Lausberg cites excerpts from the protocol of the nominating committee which might usefully be repeated here: Von dem Gedanken ausgehend, eine europäische bekannte Gelehrtenpersönlichkeit zu berufen, würde die Fakultät vor allem an Ernst Robert Curtius denken, wenn des-

3

sen Einseitigkeit durch eine vollwertige Ergänzung aufgewogen würde. Curtius repräsentiert mit der Weite seiner Interessen und Bildung, mit seinem ästhetischen Instinkt, mit seiner Fähigkeit, auf größere Kreise schriftstellerisch zu wirken, mit der Verbindung von strenger Wissenschaftlichkeit und einer über die Wissenschaft hinausragenden Vermittlertätigkeit einen Gelehrtentypus, wie er bei uns in Deutschland ganz selten ist und wie er sich häufiger nur in romanischen Ländern findet. Als Lehrer übt er allerdings mehr auf eine Schülerelite eine tiefe Wirkung aus. Als Schriftsteller widmet er der französischen Literaturgeschichte der Neuzeit seine Hauptkraft. Damit aber bebaut er zweifellos, auch unter dem Gesichtspunkt der akademischen Lehrtätigkeit, eines der wichtigsten Felder. Er liest regelmäßig auch über Dante, Einführung ins Altfranzösische, Erklärung altfranzösischer Texte. Immerhin vernachlässigt Curtius die Sprachgeschichte mit bewußter und zugestandener Einseitigkeit. Die Fakultät, die auf eine so bedeutende Persönlichkeit wie Curtius Anspruch erheben zu dürfen glaubt, ist nun aber einmal durch die besondere Bonner Überlieferung von Diez bis Meyer-Lübke, sodann auch durch das Bedürfnis unserer Studierenden daran gebunden, auf die Sprachgeschichte weiter das größte Gewicht zu legen. (...) Wenn es das Ministerium ermöglichen kann, den Romanistischen Lehrstuhl Curtius zu übertragen, daneben aber die Sprachgeschichte durch Herrn v. Wartburg vertreten zu lassen, (...) so würde die Fakultät die Berufung von Curtius unter fachlichen wie allgemein universitäts-politischen Gesichtspunkten begrüssen. [entry no. 350, 226- 227]

As Lausberg notes, Meyer-Lübke himself opposed Curtius' succeeding him. The decisive factor was the intervention of Carl Becker, Prussian minister of culture and former professor of oriental languages in Bonn until 1916 (see Becker's review of Curtius' Brunetiire, entry no. 6). Curtius remained at the University of Bonn until his retirement (Emeritierung) shortly after his sixtyfifth birthday, on April 30,1951. Lausberg supplies a list of Curtius' seminars in Bonn, whose topics range from French modernist, Spanish siglo de oro, medieval Latin, to Old French subjects, including a «Philosophisch-soziologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft» sponsored jointly by Curtius, Joseph Schumpeter, Fritz Kern and Erich Rothacker during the 1930 summer semester and the 1930/31 winter semester (see also entry no. 348). During the last twenty years of his teaching, modernist topics took an increasingly secondary role, assuming roughly the same proportion occupied by medieval subjects during the earlier part of his career. Medieval and modernist topics are consistently represented, albeit in different ratios to each other, throughout Curtius' entire teaching career. Curtius' position during the Nazi period was precarious. Because this subject has subsequently attracted a great deal of controversy, and because Curtius' vulnerability during this time resulted in large part from the publication of Deutscher Geist in Gefahr, it is better to discuss this problem below in connection with the reception of Deutscher Geist in Gefahr itself. The amount of published documentary material available from this era is comparatively small, in part because Curtius' correspondence during this time was censured. One catches glimpses, nevertheless, of the difficulties and perils to which Curtius was exposed in Curtius' recently published letters to Gide (entry no. 407) and to Gertrud Bing (entry no. 408). Curtius spent the last months of the war in hiding (see entry no. 383). 4

Shortly after the war the English poet Stephen Spender paid Curtius a visit. His observations (entry no. 187) portray a bitter and resigned Curtius, and seem to have sparked the controversy concerning Curtius' political stance during the Nazi period. Thomas Mann (entry no. 346) spoke of an «intellectual shrinkage» on Curtius' part after reading Curtius' 1947 essay on Hesse. (Curtius was no less kind in his remarks on Mann, see entry no. 407.) Spender's and Mann's remarks reflect their own concerns: Spender, disillusioned with the leftist politics of his youth, may have projected some of his disappointments on Curtius, who represented for Spender prior to the war a mentor figure (see entry no. 182). Following the war Thomas Mann, for his part, was concerned with justifying his refusal to return to Germany; a certain haughtiness may have colored his remarks. Regardless of the validity or accuracy of Spender's and Mann's observations on Curtius' state of mind immediately after the war, Curtius, apparently undeterred by his alleged bout of intellectual shrinkage or defeatism, or perhaps suddenly cured, collected the articles which he had written during the Nazi period and published them together in 1948 as Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. Curtius' choice of a Swiss, rather than a German publisher was dictated in all likelihood by the practical difficulties of publishing in Germany immediately following the war and should not be interpreted as a turning away from Germany. In the course of the next several years Curtius collected his scattered articles in Kritische Essays zur europäischen Literatur (1950), reissued his Balzac in 1951, and combined his Wegbereiter and Französischer Geist im neuen Europa under the title Französischer Geist im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (1952). He also devoted himself to a number of translations: André Gide's Thésée (1949), William Goyen's House of Bread (1952), and Jorge Guillén's Càntico (1952). Curtius also wrote a number of articles for the Zurich journal Die Tat (not to be confused with the right-wing journal from the late 'twenties and early 'thirties which Curtius himself attacked). These essays, treating a wide spectrum of literary critical subjects, were collected after his death and published by Max Rychner under the title Büchertagebuch (see entry no. 333). In June, 1951, Curtius received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Glasgow. A year later he was decorated with the Orden Pour le Mérite, following in the tradition of his predecessor in Bonn, Friedrich Diez, who was so honored in 1866. In November, 1954, Curtius was awarded an honorary doctorate of humanities from the Sorbonne, the first German bestowed this honor since the end of the Second World War (see entry no. 270). Similar honors from German universities are, unfortunately, conspicuously absent. In late 1952 Curtius was taken seriously ill with a liver ailment which severely curtailed his further scholarly and literary activities. He and his wife traveled to Switzerland and Italy, spending considerable time in Rome where Curtius died from this same liver ailment on April 19,1956, five days after his seventieth birthday. He was buried in the crypt of his mother's family in Freiburg im Breisgau. 5

This short biographical survey may cast some light on the reception of Curtius' writings themselves, particularly because Curtius was so fond of calling attention to the relationship of a scholar's life to his own scholarship, and cited Schuchardt's call for the founding of the discipline of «researching the researcher» in his essay on Gustav Grober. Yet before examining the reception of Curtius' individual works in detail, it is important to appraise the epistemological value of the reviews themselves. They combine 'objective' (or 'positivistically verifiable') judgments with personal evaluations, and their documentary value perhaps stems more from the latter than from the former component, precisely because the personal remarks culled from the different reviews permit us in retrospect to reconstruct the assumptions which originally motivated Curtius as well as his public. At the same time, isolating the presuppositions behind Curtius' writings should not deteriorate into an uncritical or indiscriminate appreciation of Curtius' work. Such an attitude can only do Curtius' writings a disservice. The reviewers which are examined here represent a nearly exhaustive collection of published discussions. Doubtless they reflect only a part of a much larger oral tradition. With this limitation in mind, however, one can proceed to evaluate the reviews themselves. Curtius' dissertation and Habilitationsschrift attracted relatively little attention. In the case of the latter work it is likely that the First World War precluded its receiving much notice - and in 1935 Robert Pitrou was prompted to make good belatedly for this neglect (see entry no. 178). Curtius' interest in Brunetiere (spawned by a suggestion from Grober) did not represent an abandonment of the Middle Ages: it was, and often still is customary for German Romanists to write their dissertation on one period and their Habilitationsschrift on another. In other words, the early stages of Curtius' career followed an orthodox, indeed a classic pattern for German Romance scholars. The only hint of future professional disapprobation to come from the ranks of Curtius' colleagues was sounded by Eugen Lerch (entry no. 8), who objected to an excessively aesthetic (i.e., non-historical) orientation in Curtius' book. Lerch would later become vitriolic in his criticisms of Wegbereiter. Curtius owed his initial fame - or notoriety - to the tremendous publishing success of his Wegbereiter. Despite his original difficulties in finding a publisher, Curtius found an eager audience for his exposition of contemporary French authors among a postwar German public anxious to understand the sources of their former enemy's strength, either as a first step toward reconciliation or as a means of understanding the debacle of Germany's unexpected defeat at the hands of the 'decadent' French (see entries nos.9,10,11,12,13, 14, 17,18, 21, 22, 26, 27). Curtius' Romanist colleagues were overwhelmingly negative in their remarks. In one review (see entry no. 15) Klemperer judged Wegbereiter naive and pretentious; in another he reproached Curtius for taking the statements of his literary precursors too seriously (entry no. 24). Oskar Schultz-Gora (entry no. 40) berated Curtius for his «scholarly aberration» (wissenschaftliche Verirrung) since the authors he treated represented a 6

«national deviation» (völkische Entgleisung). The sharpest attacks came from Eugen Lerch: in one review (no. 25) he attacked Curtius for having his work printed by a literary (as opposed to a scholarly) publisher with «saloncommunist» (edelbolshewistisch) leanings. In another review (no. 35), he accused Curtius of «hobnobbing with the nigger nation» (Anbiederung mit der Negernation, i.e., France; «nigger nation» probably refers to the French deployment of contingents of Senegalese soldiers among their troops occupying the Rhineland). The Alsatian writer Otto Flake sharply rebuked Lerch for this slander (entry no. 42). Curtius wrote Carl Schmitt that Lerch probably did himself more damage than he had done to Curtius (entry no. 407). In his Rückblick 1952 Curtius depicted this incident as typical of his relations with the esprit de corps of German Romance scholars. Describing his encounter with this Zunftgeist ("guild-spirit", a pun on Zeitgeist), Curtius noted: Die Wegbereiter hatten in den ersten Nachkriegsjahren einen publizistischen Erfolg, der mich überraschte. Das Buch wurde begrüßt von Hermann Bahr (Neues Wiener Journal, 27. Juli 1919 [entry no. 9]), Hermann Hesse (Vivos voco, Oktober 1919 [entry no. 13]), Fritz Schotthöfer (Frankfurter Zeitung, 12. Oktober 1919 [entry no. 17]). Aus der Schweiz stimmten Adolf Keller zu (Wissen und Leben, 15. November 1919 [entry no. 14]); aus Frankreich Paul Souday (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 23. August 1920 [entry no. 29]) und 'Alain Desportes' (Nouvelle Revue Française, Oktober 1920 [entry no. 20]), aus Italien Mario Praz (Rivista di Cultura, 15. Oktober 1920 [entry no.27, see also no. 37]). Aber meinen deutschen Fachgenossen hatte ich es nicht recht gemacht. Einer von ihnen zieh mich der «Anbiederung mit der Negernation» [entry no. 35], wofür ihn der Deutschelsässer Otto Flake zur Ordnung rief (Neue Rundschau, Februar 1922 [entry no.42]). Ein anderer Kollege [i.e., Wilhelm Friedmann, no. 34] schrieb 1921 vermittelnd: «Das Buch von C. hat ein eigenartiges Schicksal erlebt. Nach einer allerdings reichlich ungeschickten Verlagsreklame fand es ein begeistertes Echo in der Tagespresse - ich erfuhr von seinem Erscheinen erstmalig durch einen enthusiastischen Artikel Hermann Bahrs im Neuen Wiener Journal - um dann in den wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften eine ziemlich 'mauvaise presse' zu finden. Namentlich die Münchner Richtung - von einer Schule zu sprechen geht nicht an, ohne den kräftigen Persönlichkeiten von X. [Lerch] und Y. [Klemperer] Unrecht zu tun - hat das Buch mit einer ungewöhnlichen Schärfe abgelehnt. Y. [Klemperer] stellt in einem scharfsinnigen Aufsatz im Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen [no. 24] das Buch von Curtius der Preisschrift von X. [Lerch] gegenüber. Dieser schroffen Ablehnung des Buches müssen schwerwiegende Gründe das Wort gesprochen haben - und wir werden uns fragen müssen, welche die Fehler der Arbeit sind, und ob diesen Fehlern nicht denn doch auch Qualitäten gegenüberstehen». Das war zünftig geredet, und ich sollte diesem Zunftgeist in den seither verflossenen dreißig Jahren noch oft begegnen. Für seine Analyse ist die von einem witzigen Kollegen geforderte Bonzol-Chemie zuständig.4 Nur zwei ältere Kollegen haben die Wegbereiter mit Sympathie gewürdigt: Eduard Wechßler [entry no. 30] in Berlin und Hanns Heiss [entry no.23] in Freiburg [523-524].

4

'Bonzol-Chemie' is a pun on Benzol ("benzene") and Bonze ("big shot, bigwig"). The pun might also include a play on the hexagonal form of the benzene ring and the colloquial German expression im Sechseck springen (roughly, "to fly off the handle"). 7

The reception of Wegbereiter outside of Germany was as favorable as the German Romanist reception was negative. The review written by Mme. Émile Mayrisch under the pseudonym «Alain Desportes» (entry no.20) led to Curtius' association with La Nouvelle Revue Française, an acquaintance which was instrumental to his continued commitment to Franco-German reconciliation. Thanks to Mme. Mayrisch, Curtius was invited to Colpach and Pontigny5. One might also mention in passing the favorable reviews offered by Maurice Muret (no. 16) and Fernand Baldensperger (no. 19) which Curtius neglected to include in his list of recensions. The patterns evident in the reception of Wegbereiter anticipate the response which Curtius' later works frequently encountered: popular acclaim, professional reserve. While it would be an exaggeration to say that Curtius was viewed as a renegade by his colleagues (one might recall the weighed tone of the protocol on Curtius' appointment as Meyer-Lübke's successor cited above), Curtius doubtless remained the object of bitter professional jealousy. The publishing success of Wegbereiter (which went through three printings from 1919 to 1923) permitted Curtius to attain a prominent and enviable public position unusual for a German Romance scholar. Curtius was well aware of the strains in his professional ties, of the difficulties involved in 'BonzolChemie', and wrote to Carl Schmitt in 1921 that the varying degrees of hostility shown by Lerch and Voßler contributed a number of valuable examples of the psychology of academic decision-making (Beiträge zu einer Psychologie des Urteils - von Akademikern)! However one must also realize that the bitterness of the professional response to Curtius' Wegbereiter was not untypical of German Romanist exchanges at that time. Lerch's Preisschrift, to which Curtius alludes, Die Verwendung des romanischen Futurums als Ausdruck eines sittlichen Sollens, (Leipzig, 1919), also met with sharp criticism. As Iordan-Orr explain, «This kind of animosity is doubtless to be attributed to the bitterness aroused by the war, which unfortunately spread to the world of scholarship» [130n.]. The criticisms levelled at Wegbereiter constitute perhaps the most severe form taken by this postwar bitterness among professional Romance scholars. Perhaps in response to this negative reaction from his colleagues, Curtius deliberately sought another public for his writings, cultivating friendships among writers, journalists and poets. Curtius' isolation from the Romanist «guild» tended therefore to be self-perpetuating, though the professional response he received gradually turned somewhat more positive. Curtius' Maurice Barrés encountered slightly more favorable reviews than Wegbereiter. Eugen Lerch arrogantly noted (entry no. 47) that Curtius had managed to achieve with Barrés what he had failed to accomplish with Wegbereiter, namely to write an «educational manual for the younger generation» s See Émile Mayrisch, Précurseur de la construction de l'Europe, (Lausanne, 1967); and Anne Heurgon-Desjardins, Paul Des jardins et les Décades de Pontigny, Études, témoignages et documents, (Paris, 1964).

8

(iein Erziehungsbuch für unsere Jugend). Klemperer took the occasion (entry no. 45) to remark that Curtius was propagating «the old, wonderful and noble, only unfortunately misleading optimism» regarding the political future of Europe. Barrés received largely favorable reviews in the popular press (see entries nos. 38, 39, 41, 44, 48). Curtius' Balzac generally elicited an even more positive response than his previous writings, though Karl Voßler (entry no. 62) admitted that he failed to be convinced by Curtius' approach. Leo Spitzer's comments on Balzac (entry no. 68) are of special interest. Though not in the strict sense a pupil of Voßler, Spitzer was heavily influenced by his approach (see Iordan-Orr, pp. 135-142). It is thus significant that Spitzer sought to point out the stylistic elements in Curtius' analysis which presented affinities with the methods favored by Voßler and Lerch and which they had overlooked in their reviews of Balzac. The French response to Curtius' study was particularly positive (see, e.g., entry no. 69) and led to a French translation done in 1933 by Henri Jourdan (see entries nos. 175 and 176). Curtius' Französischer Geist im neuen Europa (1925) received comparatively less attention than Curtius' other writings from this era. Klemperer (entry no. 75) however noted that while Curtius' politics previously had often managed to spoil his literary criticism, in the case of this latest work, Curtius had succeeded in striking a felicitious balance between these two components of his personality: Der Ethiker Curtius, der Mann des Friedens und der Verständigung, hat dem Literarhistoriker Curtius manch einmal das Konzept verdorben. Diesmal wird fast durchweg getrennte Rechnung geführt, und da er nun den Historiker in seinen Festlegungen nicht mehr beirrt, so kann man auch an dem Friedensfreund seine reine Freude haben.

The response outside Romanist circles was enthusiastic: the recurrent adjective used to qualify this work of Curtius was «European» (see entries nos. 76, 77, 78, 84). The begrudging acceptance which Curtius had wrung from his colleagues by this time is more and more apparent in the various discussions of Curtius' work from this period and sets the stage for the reception of his 1930 study, Die französische Kultur. Curtius was requested by the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt to write a short introduction to French civilization in cooperation with Arnold Bergsträsser. Curtius was a natural candidate in view of his earlier sympathetic studies of contemporary French literature, a number of which he incorporated into his monograph. The study of French civilization (Kulturkunde or Frankreichkunde) was highly controversial in Romanist circles; hitherto relatively few expositions of French culture had been undertaken by German Romance scholars, and then only as an outgrowth of semantic studies, such as Eduard Wechßler's notorious and jingoistic Esprit und Geist (1927), or in non-professional circles as a compilation of journalistic articles, such as Friedrich Sieburg's widely read and translated Gott in Frankreich?, Ein Versuch (1929). The only other 9

German study of French civilization then available was Hartig and Schellberg (eds.), Handbuch der Frankreichkunde (1928), which was criticized for its lack of organization. This entire field of inquiry had yet to win acceptance among older Romance scholars. Curtius undertook the task fully aware of the methodological pitfalls. His book attracted widespread attention throughout Europe. The reaction in German Romance circles was mixed: Walther Küchler (entry no. 113) presented a lengthy refutation of Curtius' «subjective» approach; Eugen Lerch (entry no. 114) sniffed that the book was a highly cultivated essay but not scholarship; Helmut Hatzfeld (entry no. I l l ) thought that it overcame the weaknesses of earlier studies; Fritz Schalk (entry no. 155) exhaustively contrasted the assumptions of Wechßler with those of Curtius; Victor Klemperer (entry no. 339) noted: Ein besonderer Vorzug dieses Bandes, der fraglos ( . . . ) das reichste deutsche Frankreichbild enthält, das bisher geschaffen wurde, ( . . . ) liegt darin, daß Curtius dem Riesenthema gegenüber nirgends in fachliche Enge und nirgends in Dilettantismus verfällt. [90]

Klemperer also noted that Curtius' views on France were «authoritative» (maßgebend) for the intellectual left just as Wechßler's opinions set the tone for the intellectual right. Stefan Gross (entry no. 409) has provided a very competent analysis of the German Romanist writings on France from the 1920's. It is important to bear Klemperer's characterization in mind when one considers the controversy which erupted over Curtius' political motives when Christian Sénéchal, echoing a recurrent criticism of German studies of French civilization (see entries nos. 102,128,135), accused Curtius of advocating «the belief in irreducible differences among nations», a belief which constituted for Sénéchal «a new and insidious form of nationalism» (entries nos. 119 and 120). Curtius did not hesitate to rebuke Sénéchal in the strongest possible terms: he noted sarcastically that his crypto-nationalism had succeeded in fooling most French and German critics, not only of Die französische Kultur but also of his earlier works as well (see entry no. 120 for a more detailed account of this quarrel). Curtius' book in fact impressed most French reviewers (see entries nos. 94, 98, 109, 116, 117, 134, 137, 144, 151, 159, 163, 167), and enjoyed considerable success in French, English and Swedish translations. The recurrent political concerns which animated Curtius' writings from 1919 to 1930 - the striving for reconciliation with France, the promotion of a 'European' mentality, the balancing of classical, medieval and modern literature - found their most explicit expression in a number of essays which originally appeared from 1929 to 1932 in Die Neue Rundschau and Neue Schweizer Rundschau and which Curtius collected and published in his Deutscher Geist in Gefahr. Regardless whether one chooses to view Curtius' humanistic program as «completely Utopian» (René Wellek, entry no. 403), the point here is to ascertain the contemporary reception of this work. Curtius had many tar10

gets: the Nazis, the 7af-Kreis 6 , the sociologist Karl Mannheim. The popular reception of this work mirrors the German political spectrum of 1932-33. While many German reviewers welcomed Curtius' marriage of humanism and nationalism as a remedy to that form of nationalism propagated by the Nazis (see entries nos. 149, 153), a number of contemporary reviewers criticized Curtius for being out of touch with contemporary reality (see entries nos. 164, 166, 173). Indeed, after Curtius had Deutscher Geist in Gefahr reprinted after Hitler's takeover, he attracted the censure of the official Nazi Party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter. Hermann Sauter, in his article there (entry no. 174), accused Curtius of being mistaken about the state of the German nation as a result of his «association with Jews and confused Jewish-minded souls» (Umgang mit Juden und Jüdischgesinnten verirrten Herzen) and warned that the «New Germany» probably did not have a place for Curtius as a teacher. This single review, which effectively declared Curtius a persona non grata in his homeland, was probably responsible for the abrupt decline in discussions by Germans of Curtius' writings from 1933 to 1945. The only German Romance scholar who positively discussed Curtius' work during this entire period was the Austrian-born Fritz Schalk (entry no. 186). Curtius continued to teach and publish of course, but his former non-professional public was now cut off from him. Curtius however was not arrested and not imprisoned in a concentration camp, though there were persistent rumors outside Germany to this effect (see T. S. Eliot's contribution in the Freundesgabe). Curtius did not emigrate, and, as Stephen Spender (entry no. 187) explained (long before it became fashionable to single out 'good Germans'): I think really the reason was a passion for continuity, a rootedness in his environment which made him almost immovable. He had modelled his life on the idea of Goethe who boasted that during the Napoleonic struggle he had been like a mighty cliff towering above and indifferent to the waters raging hundreds of feet beneath him. If he always detested the Nazis, he also had little sympathy for the Left, and the movement

6 See Kurt Sontheimer, Der «Tat»-Kreis, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 7 (1959), 229-260. The editors of the journal Die Tat, Hans Zehrer, Ferdinand Friedrich Zimmermann, Giselher Wirsing and Ernst Wilhelm Eschmann (see entry no. 106), were highly influential, in spite of their youth, in making their 'middle way' between socialism and capitalism, i.e., the marriage of nationalism and socialism in a kind of 'conservative' revolution acceptable among educated Germans. As Sontheimer notes, «Die Tat hat (...) zu einem nicht geringen Teil daran mitgewirkt, den Nationalsozialismus unter deutschen Gebildeten salonfähig zu machen» [254-255], See also Klaus Fritzsche, Politische Romantik und Gegenrevolution, Fluchtwege in der Krise der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, Das Beispiel des «Tat»-Kreises, (Frankfurt, 1976). Fritzsche's book, though tendentious, refers to Curtius in the following terms: «Der Romanist Ernst Robert Curtius rühmte in seinem 1932 erschienenen Essay Deutscher Geist in Gefahr - dessen eigene politische Romantik sozusagen romanisch-abendländisch gefiltert und daher gegenüber den deutschen Dingen eher distanziert war - an der Tat immerhin eine