6. Wolfgang Menzel

On his hundredth birthday Menzel is not at all suited to an objective historical approach, an unbiased view of historical phenomena. This is why his main work, "German History", became a miserable work of art.

June 21 [1898] was Wolfgang Menzel's hundredth birthday. He is a forgotten man today, even though he wrote seventy volumes in his lifetime and for a long time was a literary critic who was listened to in Germany. The "Literaturblatt", which he edited and which appeared in Cotta's publishing house, was an authoritative critical organ for decades. It is strange that so little is currently said about Menzel. For quite a few of our contemporaries are filled with his spirit. This spirit is that of a narrow-minded, narrow-minded, moralizing criticism that measures everything great with the yardstick of philistinism and dismisses genius with a philistine mind. Higher artistic sensibilities and an aesthetic world view were alien to Menzel. He fought against Goethe, Heine and "Young Germany". He did not understand the artistic intentions of those he fought against. He had formed certain views of what was morally good and evil, views that only a philistine could have. And because Goethe, Heine and "Young Germany" created works that were not tailored to philistine morals, he fought against them. Even today we find critics and writers who write in his spirit. We have a literary history of König. We also have literary historians who scold Heine, just as Menzel once scolded him. We've got rid of Menzel, but Menzel has remained. Menzel's rant against Goethe is particularly repugnant. He hated Goethe because he did not allow himself to be kept from admiring Napoleon's personality by a narrow-minded national sense; he hated him because he portrayed human nature from all sides and did not want to force it into stereotyped, moralistic forms; he hated him because he took life as it was to be taken and did not fight like a bull against what had become natural. Menzel fought against the healthy sensuality that "Young Germany" strove to portray because he found it "immoral". He was a man of narrow-minded nationalism, so much so that his comments make us think of the anti-Semites and German nationalists of today. However, he surpassed them in terms of the force and accuracy of his expression and the art of his presentation.

It is easy to doubt the sincerity of his judgments. In his youth, he paid homage to revolutionary principles and was a fervent fraternity member. Later, he was an accomplice to reaction and anti-progressive efforts. His denunciatory writings were important documents for the governments that wanted to suppress liberal aspirations. Heine is of the opinion that he was only fibbing about his inclinations for freedom and revolution. Whether this is the case is difficult to decide today. There is no doubt, however, that Menzel is one of those literary figures who, because of their narrow-mindedness, come to impudent judgments expressed with vain confidence. They talk with the air of the know-it-all about things they don't know the first thing about. There is hardly anything more worthless in German literature than the seventy volumes of Menzel's works.