The European Difference: Karl Heinz Bohrer's Critique of the European Project

Abstract

Literary critic and essayist Karl Heinz Bohrer offers a Eurosceptic perspective on the German commitment to a united Europe. This article is a reconstruction of Bohrer's argument. It identifies two distinct critiques. The first is a somewhat prosaic observation that the differences between the national traditions of Europe are simply too great for a united Europe to be viable. The other is a more complex reflection on “European decadence”: Europeans lack the will that is required to project power, and power is a precondition for cultural achievements. Protestantism—the “Protestant mind”—plays a central role in this second critique. The two critiques are connected through Bohrer's conception of the nation-state as an entity that integrates in an agonistic way legal and cultural power.

Notes

1. Jan-Werner Müller, Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 177–98; Perry Anderson, “A New Germany?” New Left Review 57 (2009): 5–40, esp. 30–35.

2. Müller, Another Country, 97.

3. Anderson, “A New Germany?” 35.

4. Joschka Fischer, “From Confederation to Federation: Thoughts on the Finality of European Integration” (Federal Trust for Education and Research, 2000); http://fedtrust.co.uk/uploads/Essays/Essay_8.pdf (accessed 31/10/10, 18).

5. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (London: Fontana Press, 1973), 234. See also Karl Heinz Bohrer, Nach der Natur: über Politik und Ästhetik (Munich: Hanser, 1988), 78–79.

6. Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, “February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe,” Constellations 10.3 (2003): 292.

7. Karl Heinz Bohrer, Provinzialismus: ein physiognomisches Panorama (Munich: Hanser, 2000), 51. In an essay on the Gulf War, first published in 1991, Bohrer argues that the French defence of their participation in the war in terms of human rights was “too abstract” and “rationalist” for the Anglo-Americans, but nonetheless in contradistinction to the vague morality of the Germans it was concretely political (Provinzialismus, 31–32).

8. Karl Heinz Bohrer, “Die europäische Differenz: Epitaph auf eine deutsche Utopie,” Merkur 617/618 (2000): 958.

9. Bohrer, Provinzialismus: ein physiognomisches Panorama, 99.

10. Bohrer, “Die europäische Differenz: Epitaph auf eine deutsche Utopie,” 998.

11. Bohrer, Provinzialismus: ein physiognomisches Panorama,105.

12. Bohrer, “Die europäische Differenz: Epitaph auf eine deutsche Utopie,” 999–1000.

13. Karl Heinz Bohrer, Großer Stil: Form und Formlosigkeit in der Moderne (Munich: Hanser, 2007), 13–15. Bohrer attributes the term “maniera” to sixteenth-century Italian author Baldassare Castiglione, who defined it not simply as the style of a particular artist but as the capacity of a person. It denotes the way a person expresses him- or herself such that the purely subjective is transcended and the individual is connected to a collective.

14. Anthony D Smith, “‘Set in the Silver Sea’: English National Identity and European Integration,” Nations and Nationalism 12.3 (2006): 445.

15. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991): 37–40.

16. Bohrer, Provinzialismus: ein physiognomisches Panorama,100.

17. Karl Heinz Bohrer, “Deutsche Revolution und protestantische Mentalität,” Merkur 522/523 (1992): 961.

18. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols; The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990),133

19. Bohrer, Großer Stil: Form und Formlosigkeit in der Moderne, 243.

20. Karl Heinz Bohrer, “Auf deutschen Wegen,” Merkur 643 (2002): 1043.

21. Charles Murray Cuddihy, No Offense: Civil Religion and Protestant Taste (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), 3–4

22. Bohrer, Provinzialismus: ein physiognomisches Panorama, 106.

23. Bohrer, Nach der Natur: über Politik und Ästhetik, 9–11.

24. Habermas and Derrida, “February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together,” 295.

25. Karl Heinz Bohrer, “Subjektive Zukunft,” Merkur 629/630 (2001): 756.

26. Karl Heinz Bohrer, “Why We Are Not a Nation, and Why We Should Become One,” New German Critique 52 (1991): 82.

27. Bohrer, Provinzialismus: ein physiognomisches Panorama, 39.

28. Karl Heinz Bohrer, “A New Germany?”, lecture given at Stanford University, 6 November 2006. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/DLCL/cgi-bin/web/node/133 (accessed 31/10/10).

29. Bohrer, Großer Stil: Form und Formlosigkeit in der Moderne, 236–61.

30. Karl Heinz Bohrer, Grenzen des Ästhetischen (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1998), 160–70

31. Alfred Kroeber, The Nature of Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 402–8.

32. Bohrer, “Die europäische Differenz: Epitaph auf eine deutsche Utopie,” 1001.

33. Karl Heinz Bohrer, Ein bißchen Lust am Untergang: englische Ansichten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982), 116.

34. Karl Heinz Bohrer, “Kein Wille zur Macht,” Merkur 700 (2007): 659.

35. Ibid., 660. Sea and sea power play a significant role in Bohrer's perception of Britain. This is evident in his defence of British engagement in the Falklands War against German criticism, see Bohrer, Provinzialismus: ein physiognomisches Panorama, 9–16.

36. Nietzsche cited in Bohrer, “Kein Wille zur Macht,” 663. Nietzsche's emphasis.

37. Karl Heinz Bohrer, “PS: ‘Der Bevölkerung’?” Merkur 614 (2000): 563–64.

38. Jürgen Habermas, “Why Europe Needs a Constitution,” New Left Review 11 (2001): 10.