Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Once long ago — oh, so very long ago! — after arriving in Cologne with my busted box of books and, together with my Mom, passing the bordello test that all academic greenhorns from the provinces have to go through (the only test, by the way, that I ever passed), I threw myself into the arms of the professors with the thought, “Here I am! Now create me anew in your image!” I was no longer a little boy, but actually not yet old enough for this kind of re-creation. My true nature had already taken shape, but unfortunately the wrong way around. I looked up to my intellectual guides as if they were superhuman. I was astonished at the amount of their knowledge, which they not only set down in books but could also, at least in some cases, deliver impressively at the lectern. Even more impressive were the private libraries in their erudite households, collections that, following their decease, were submitted in toto to the local antiquarian bookshop of K. E. Koehler & Co. How great was my pleasure at poring over catalogues of old books! A scholar who never once in his career experienced an embarrassing moment must have felt the pinch after his death, when the contents of his book collection were revealed for all to see. But what amazed me most of all was the procession of Ph.D.s emerging one by one from the seminar rooms, wearing borrowed suits and with summa cum laude diplomas in hand. The sight of this academic conveyor belt in operation bore serious implications concerning the highest aims of life.

I signed up for course after course, educating myself with a genuine furor teutonicus , and continually extended the goal-markers on my intellectual horizon — given that there was no upward limit to my seeking. It was when listening to the professors of divinity that I first realized that certain things were not quite right about the German system of higher education so prized by Goethe and his humanistic contemporaries. I was crushed to ascertain that the teachers of theology had no sense whatever of religion. Instead, they were the mathematical purveyors of dogmatic theorems into which they inserted statements about God. They derived the cubic root of God, and raised God to the desired power — which is to say, they held on a leash the entity they referred to as their Creator. Those who allowed this entity the most slack were the ones who attracted the most students, but it was easy to see that the leash had a finite length. Sooner or later the leash would go taut, and the game would end with a jolt. Johannes Hessen was one such theological gamesman, whose lectures were exciting to listen to. In the halls of academe it was an open secret that he constantly stood with one foot in the papal dungeon. He warned us against Rilke’s dangerous pantheism — Rilke, whom I considered more religious than the entire Bible.

In other academic departments, it took me longer to figure out that German scholarship was a malleable science, one that always gave way to stronger pressure. Thus I was not at all surprised to witness the universities falling victim to political Gleichschaltung in 1933. In fact, most of the learned gentlemen were willing to forego their customary privilege of waiting the “academic quarter-hour”—no one wanted to be left behind. Having studied their way into “frigidity and impotence,” these erudite fellows kowtowed to patriotic fervor, and kept on teaching with half the normal professional achievement (nationalism always means doing things in halves) and in constant fealty to the ineffable omniscience of the Führer . The rest of the world greeted with astonishment this newest patent, Made in Germany. Rather than threaten imitators with lawsuits, the Reich actually encouraged them; whoever was unwilling to imitate was a loser. Great writers shrank to midget size and joined the ranks of the Reich Chamber of Literature. I had been among their admirers, but now they had gone stupid and fell for a country-fair barker, just as the tourists on Mallorca fell for a certain other Führer’s swindle. Both Führers had this in common: they detested the rabble and reacted to them by vomiting — each in his own fashion.

The higher the degree, the weirder they be: Schopenhauer, Lichtenberg, Nietzsche — who wouldn’t have certain qualms when it comes to scholars who wind themselves up inside a cocoon or hide inside a shell, lacking the kind of spiky tooth that every fowl embryo comes equipped with, to peck its way out of its prenatal housing? Kierkegaard, too, meditated on this subject and wrote about it. Take, for example, Professor Wernicke, who made a name for himself as a scientist investigating the higher cognitive processes of human beings. A specific area of the brain has been named after him, and this will remain in mankind’s memory longer than any city park that bears his name. This man, so very familiar with the brains of his fellow countrymen, is reported to have said that twenty-two percent of German university professors were feebleminded. In issuing this report, Wernicke clearly echoed statements made by Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil . Whoever feels personally offended by this ought rightfully to put his head in his hands. If he is unlucky, he will find himself touching the Wernicke region of the brain. Damage to this area of the cerebrum has as a consequence the inability to understand simple language… I intend to pursue this matter further, because rumors of this kind do not arise merely by accident. Indeed, there are rumors that have more truth to them than the events that gave rise to them. One example: how human beings actually became human.

Count Harry Kessler, the Kaiser’s adjutant during the Wilhelminian World War, shared with us similar horror stories about the cerebral zones of members of the General Staff. When the papers reported the death of Joseph Pilsudski, he told us how in 1918 the Kaiser had given him orders to free the Polish conspirator from the Magdeburg citadel, a mission he accomplished by disguising himself as a prison guard. Continuing on the subject of stupidity as a way of life, I asked him whether this phenomenon, stupefaction as the result of over-education, was visible among the leading officers of the German Army. Kessler flashed a glance at me with his hollow-set eyes, but he was too polite and too set in his traditional ways to reply, “Hold on there, my friend, don’t ask such stupid questions!” Instead, he simply explained that the officers in question manifested a form of stupidity that stemmed from sheer military obstinacy. As a mitigating factor, he cited the fact that even these gentlemen sometimes regarded events at the battlefront as stupid, but then they would take up their rifles and go off duck-hunting. The enemy would suddenly break through the defense lines, and the Kaiser would quickly cashier these generals, the ones who meanwhile had chosen to take potshots at a different kind of enemy. “And which one was the stupidest of them all?” we wanted to know. Kessler explained that there had been a good deal of rivalry for this distinction, but that we should now just be patient. If the Nazis kept their hands off of our island he, Kessler, would let me type out the names to my heart’s content. But he added that he planned to take up this topic only in the fourth and final volume of his memoirs.

Count Kessler never got past the first chapters of Volume Three. Thus I have had to compile my own list.

It wasn’t until I started living in foreign countries that I became aware of how disreputable these German scholars were who, gorged by the extent of their own knowledge, maintained contact with the world around them exclusively through the prism of their narrow specialties. What they thought and said had precious little to do with genuine human affairs. That is why Hitler had an easy time stringing them one by one, these bogus pearls of German scholarship, onto his Nazi necklace. I was once witness to the first personal encounter of two famous German professors who over the previous twenty years had exchanged professional ideas in letters and scholarly journals. I mentioned to the professor from Munich that his colleague from Berlin would be attending the conference. “Oh, fine,” he said, “it’s good that he’ll be on hand. That means we can ask him directly. It’s not possible to clear these things up by writing letters.” When they finally met, there was no evidence of real pleasure. They shook hands with each other — an anemic gesture resembling nothing so much as two slabs of veal getting placed one on top of the other. Not one personal word. I stood by watching in horror. This, I thought, is how a victorious general and his conquered counterpart might behave at an armistice negotiation. There’s no denying that scholars of this type play a role as catalysts in the advancement of “pure science.” They serve as activating parasites, like the millions of larvae that aid the digestive process in the stomachs of elephants. As long as scholarship continues to go on, this brand of specialized scholar will always be on hand, though it will never occur to them that their true role is that of a purgative. Hitler despised these learned puppets within his movement just as deeply as the Christian churches he continually toyed with.