Germany: Memories of a Nation — Neil MacGregor (2014)
A cultural and psychological history of the German people and nation, it’s both a successful and idiosyncratic account. MacGregor, an art historian and former director of the National Gallery and the British Museum, tells the story through a series of vignettes on individual objects or phenomenons of material culture. Examples include Luther’s Bible, the printing press, Durer’s art, the Berlin wall, porcelain, the Volkswagen Beetle, Charlemagne’s crown, sausages, coins, the apprentice system, the Iron Cross, the sculptures of Riemenschneider, the city of Strasbourg, or Barlach’s Hovering Angel sculpture. Through items such as these, MacGregor illuminates elements of the German psychology and story, often a complex and paradoxical one.
MacGregor focuses on the areas of his knowledge such as art and architecture, whilst many giants of the German-speaking world in music or poetry for example are never mentioned; these include Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Schumann. MacGregor discusses the earlier German identification with Greek culture and Greek city states, and discusses this through the prism of architecture, and yet doesn’t mention Holderlin, a giant of German and European poetry, greatly influenced by Greek literature, whose story would have illuminated this narrative thread. This is not meant as a criticism, more an observation.
MacGregor’s book is stronger for not being representative; by its particular focus on areas MacGregor clearly has an intimate intellectual as well as emotional understanding, the book comes to life. In addition, MacGregor clearly intended the book to serve as a platform for a subsequent exhibit.
The book increased my sympathy and understanding for the German nation, in particular its efforts to address the fallout of the Second World War, and this helps illuminate German attitudes in geopolitics today. The cautionary notes the book strikes against overt nationalism are timely.
At times MacGregor comes across as rather too impartial in his efforts to write a sympathetic account that borders on historical revisionism. An example, in discussing the Holy Roman Empire in the 1700s: ‘Germany as a pivot of a Europe-wide system of security: it seems a strikingly modern view’ (pg. 87). It is doubtful whether those living in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth would have agreed with this interpretation, seeing their territory relentlessly attacked, chipped away at and plundered by the Prussian military throughout the 1700s. Prussia also found itself at the centre of the Seven Years War during this time.
The above statement of MacGregor’s ties in with a broader contemporary purpose; MacGregor at various points in the narrative seeks to draw parallels between the federalisation currently underway with the EU and earlier European history, with clear sympathies. Federalisation is positive, peaceful and civilising, whilst nationalism is negative, warlike and dehumanising, in MacGregor’s dichotomy. A sort of ‘End of History’ feeling clouds this narrative at times (written in 2014). Notwithstanding this, the book is well worth the price of admission.
