Simon Strauss has been hailed as Germany’s new wunderkind. A millennial author whose debut novel, ‘Seven Nights’, has been described as ‘a passionate, fearless battle cry’ and a manifesto for the millennial generation, by the German press. I recently heard him speak in Amsterdam about his vision for the future. A vision that centers around a focus on feeling, in the Romantic tradition of 19th century Europe. He is part of a wider resurgence of neo-romanticism in Germany.
Strauss hails from Berlin. He has recently completed his Doctorate in History and is a critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His father is also a well-known writer, Botho, whose plays are among some of the most widely performed in Germany. In all these ways, the young Strauss is the quintessential millennial. Born, as he puts it, into ‘the made bed of wealth’. An inheritor of ‘a liberality that was and is no longer a promise’. Yet perhaps it is precisely because of his privileged position that his debut novel is concerned with what he terms, a ‘revolutionary tiredness …, a fear of not tackling things’. Perhaps this is why Strauss is drawn to the passion and the focus on feeling characterized by Romanticism.
‘I yearn for more quarrels.’ – Strauss
The young writer is not alone in his interest in the virtues of Romanticism. Germany’s new Romantics have taken inspiration from Berlin-based philosopher, Byun-Chul Han. He champions the Romantic in the face of the seductive ‘smartpolitics’ of capitalism embodied by the ‘smoothness’ of iPhone and ‘teflon Chancellor Merkel’. Han argues that capitalism in the neoliberal era works by ‘pleasing and fulfilling rather than ‘forbidding and depriving’. ‘Instead of making people compliant, it seeks to make them dependent. To me, the Romantic world of Holderlin (German poet) is the world of the future,’ says Han. His series of talks on Romanticism at Berlin’s University of the Arts last year were delivered to packed lecture theaters. He champions authenticity and laments the eradication of difference.
The dark side of Romanticism.
But Germany’s relationship with Romanticism is not all wine and roses. The movement’s privileging of emotion over reason has resulted in its association with nationalism and populism of the kind found in the rise of the National Socialists in 1930’s Germany. It was German writer, Thomas Mann, who coined the phrase ‘romantic barbarism’ to describe the snubbing of rationalism in favour of a focus on folklore and the past. Appropriated by the Nazis, it is this connection that nurtures fears of a neo-romantic revival in Germany today. Yet links between populism and romanticism are not exclusive to the German context. The idea of American exceptionalism has a Romantic component too, as Conservative commentator, Kyle Sammin points out. Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ approach is clear evidence of this.
However Strauss refuses to let what he describes as its ‘perversion’ by the National Socialists cloud its ‘original promise’. He draws our attention instead to Romanticism’s central role in the development of European liberalism in its emphasis on the individual. For Strauss then, Romanticism represents a much needed antidote to the ‘purely rationalist, efficiency trimmed worldview, which has become so decisive for Western societies’. It is also ‘a plea for the wonderful, the mysterious’. As such, it provides a much needed antidote to the rational, technocracy that is the European Union today. In what Strauss describes as the ‘hyper-individualism’ of his age, he sees a yearning for ‘cohesion, trust and empathy’. A yearning that has been exploited by right-wing populists.
‘Europe is more than taxation and immigration.’ – Strauss
Macron’s recent call for a European Renaissance – laid out in his open letter to all European citizens in 28 member states, calls for a pan-European approach to problems of migration, defense and social security. Such a vision chimes with Strauss’s argument that the original idea of Europe was ‘a deeply Romantic one … in its focus on a universal community’. ‘Europe is more than taxation and immigration’ he maintains, ‘it is a powerful idea/l that can talk to both the mind and the soul’.
Ironically, Macron’s strong stance against populism and nationalism highlights the difficulty of separating nationalism and Romanticism. ‘We cannot let nationalists without solutions exploit the people’s anger’ says the French president. Strauss finishes with a call to his fellow millennials to ‘Again dare to raise our voices and dream of another world’. Perhaps a German/French rapprochement is not so far off. If so, Europe might find the long looked for balance needed to move forward.