Culture vs. Kultur
By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
Current discussion of the worth of German culture has been almost hopelessly clouded by the fact that when a German speaks of Kultur he means an entirely different thing from what a Latin or Briton means by culture. Kultur means the organized efficiency of a nation in the broadest sense—its successful achievement in civil and military administration, industry, commerce, finance, and in a quite secondary way in scholarship, letters, and art. Kultur applies to a nation as a whole, implying an enlightened Government to which the individual is strictly subordinated. Thus Kultur is an attribute not of individuals—whose particular interests, on the contrary, must often be sacrificed to it—but of nations.
Culture, for which nearest German equivalent is Bildung, is the opposite of all this. It is an attribute not of nations as a whole but of accomplished individuals. It acquires national import only through the approval and admiration of these individuals by the rest, who share but slightly in the culture they applaud. The aim of culture is the enlightened and humane individual, conversant with the best values of the past and sensitive to the best values of the present. The open-mindedness and imagination implied in culture are potentially destructive to a highly organized national Kultur. A cultured leader is generally too much alive to the point of view of his rival to be a wholly convinced partisan. Hence he lacks the intensity, drive, and narrowness that make for competitive success. He keeps his place in the sun not by masterfully overriding others, but by a series of delicate compromises which reconcile the apparently conflicting claims. Moreover, he has too great a respect for the differences between men's gifts to formulate any rigid plan which, requires for its execution a strictly regimented humanity. He will sacrifice a little efficiency that life may be more various, rich, and delightful.
Hence nations with cultured leaders have generally been beaten by those whose leaders had merely Kultur. The Spartans and Macedonians had abundant Kultur; they generally beat the Athenians, who had merely very high culture. The Romans had Kultur, and the Hellenistic world wore their yoke. Germany unquestionably has admirable Kultur, and none of the mere cultured nations who are leagued against her could hope to beat her singly.
She Does Not Desire Culture.
On the other hand, Germany has singularly little culture, has less than she had a hundred years ago, does not apparently desire it. She has willingly sacrificed the culture of a few leading individuals to the Kultur of the empire as a whole. Thus it is not surprising that Germany, as measured by the production of cultured individuals, takes a very low place today. Not only France and England, Italy and Spain, but also Russia and America, may fairly claim a higher degree of culture. Here the fetich of German scholarship should not deceive us. Culture—a balanced and humanized state of mind—is only remotely connected with scholarship or even with education. A Spanish peasant or an Italian waiter may have finer culture than a German university professor. And in the field of scholarship, Germany is in the main chiefly laborious, accurate, and small-minded. Her scholarship is related not to culture, but is a minor expression of Kultur. Such scholarly men of letters as Darwin, Huxley, Renan, Taine, Boissier, Gaston Paris, Menendez y Pelayo, Francis J. Child, Germany used to produce in the days of the Grimms and Schlegels. She rarely does so now. Her culture has been swallowed up in her Kultur.
The claim of Germany to realize her Kultur at the expense of her neighbors is at first sight plausible. Her Kultur is unquestionably higher than theirs. She has a sharply realized idea of the State, and she has justified it largely in practice. In a certain patience, thoroughness, and perfection of political organization her pre-eminence is unquestionable. The tone of her apologists shows amazement and indignation over the fact that the world, so far from welcoming the extension of German Kultur, is actively hostile to that ambition. Yet, even if it be conceded that Germany's Kultur is wholly good for herself—surely a debatable proposition—it does not follow that it is or would be a universal benefit. Nations may deliberately and legitimately prefer their culture, with its admitted disadvantages, to the Kultur which pleases Germany. England is often mocked for the way in which she "muddles through" successive perils, yet she may feel that the stereotyping of her people in a rigid administrative frame might be too high a price to pay for constant preparedness. As for us Americans, we have made a virtue, perhaps overdone it, of avoiding a mechanical Kultur. We prefer the greatest freedom for the individual to the perfectly regimented state. We will move toward culture and cheerfully assume the necessary risks of the process.