As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Mann, the most significant author in modern German literature, Mann and the countless masterpieces he penned continue to maintain their importance and relevance.<\/p>\n
Like every great writer, Mann, with his creative genius, clearly depicted the complex conflicts of his era in his novels, expressing his foresight on how societal contradictions would take shape.<\/p>\n
His works, which a century ago explored the social and cultural problems of post-war Germany, have much to say today about the intellectual legacy of German intellectuals who either openly support the war against Russia or are forced to quietly approve of it.<\/p>\n
The characters in his novel\u00a0The Magic Mountain<\/em>, published a century ago, who express anti-Russian sentiment and prejudices against Islam and Eastern societies, are like shadows from the past of today’s German intellectuals.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Mann’s journey to the East a century ago shows how even writers representing Europe’s progressive and humanist tradition shared many of the prejudices of Western conservatives.<\/p>\n The works of Thomas Mann, who discussed the future of Europe and reckoned with the war during the crisis of a century ago, are filled with lessons that need to be remembered in Europe’s current conditions of war and crisis.<\/p>\n Mann’s Impressions of Istanbul<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1925, Thomas Mann undertook a brief journey to the East, primarily to Cairo. Apart from his impressions of Egypt, which inspired his\u00a0Joseph and His Brothers<\/em>\u00a0series, this trip has been overlooked in even the most meticulous biographies.<\/p>\n There is some justification for this neglect by Mann’s biographers. Mann’s travel notes are surprisingly superficial and brief. These short notes give the reader the impression that Mann was compelled to travel out of necessity rather than his own desire.<\/p>\n Particularly striking are the political and sociological limitations of his perspective, in addition to the superficiality and brevity of his impressions of his visit to Istanbul. This overshadows the breadth of curiosity of the great writer who, in his literary works, described everything around him in the finest detail.<\/p>\n In Mann’s notes, one finds not the slightest impression of the transformation taking place in the imperial capital, which had just established a new democratic republic after a war of independence and was experiencing freedom after occupation.<\/p>\n Mann’s observations are reminiscent of the impressions of German travelers who visited Istanbul a century earlier: people wearing the fez, the contrast between Europeanized women and traditional women identified with the East… So much so that almost the only praise for Istanbul’s magnificence is reserved for the Hagia Sophia.<\/p>\n Undoubtedly, this situation has direct links to orientalist thought. Despite the full orientalist tone in Flaubert’s impressions in\u00a0Voyage to the Orient<\/em>, when compared to the intensity and depth of his observations, Mann’s attitude can be better described as disinterest or indifference.<\/p>\n However, if we consider Mann’s masterpiece\u00a0The Magic Mountain<\/em>, which he began writing in 1918 and published at the end of 1924, evaluating his notes on Istanbul becomes much more complex.<\/p>\n One of the novel’s most important characters, the humanist and representative of the Enlightenment tradition, Settembrini, states:\u00a0\u201cHe approved of what was happening because a path beneficial to civilization was being followed. A general atmosphere of peace and disarmament was blowing through Europe. Democratic ideas were developing. He claimed to have learned through back channels that the Young Turks had completed their preparations for a revolutionary uprising. T\u00fcrkiye was to become a constitutional nation-state\u2014what a great victory for humanity!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Although he did not share Settembrini’s Mediterranean optimism for the future, Mann, who defended the Weimar Republic and wanted democratic thought to take permanent root in Germany, shared these ideas.<\/p>\n To approach Mann’s notes on Istanbul with a broader perspective, we will critically examine Settembrini’s political position in the novel, as well as Naphta, the opposing pole who balances Settembrini’s intellectual weight, and the debate between them, which to a large extent continues today.<\/p>\n A Reckoning with War in The Magic Mountain<\/strong><\/p>\n It is striking that the section where Settembrini heralds the victory of the constitutional nation-state in T\u00fcrkiye is the very part where Naphta enters the novel. Until Naphta’s appearance, the political and aesthetic advice Settembrini gives to Hans and Joachim is about life and the fundamental values of European bourgeois society. In a sense, as Naphta says,\u00a0\u201cListen to our Voltaire, our rationalist,\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0he repeatedly reiterates his unwavering faith in the rationality and progress of the Enlightenment.<\/p>\n With Naphta’s entry into the novel, the political and aesthetic debate expands by another layer and intensifies tragically. The ideological framework of the novel transcends the borders of Europe, shifting to war and, inevitably, the West-East conflict and the crisis in the international political system.<\/p>\n In response to Settembrini’s words about the birth of the democratic nation-state in T\u00fcrkiye, Naphta cynically retorts,\u00a0\u201cThe emancipation of Islam, oh how wonderful. Enlightened fanaticism\u2014marvelous.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n It is jarring to see, in all its nakedness, the century-old intellectual roots of these words, which shocked us when we heard them from many Western intellectuals, especially after September 11.<\/p>\n In this context, when we read\u00a0The Magic Mountain<\/em>, we are captivated by the work’s relevance, like that of many masterpieces. Mann began writing the novel towards the end of World War I. The work was published before World War II.<\/p>\n Those who read the novel after its publication considered it a reckoning with the war, a diagnosis of the social diseases that created the war, and a critique of the intellectual climate in Europe that affirmed war.<\/p>\n Those who read the book after World War II, however, saw\u00a0The Magic Mountain<\/em>\u00a0as a great writer’s profound foresight into the rising authoritarian regimes in Europe, an account told with a deep intuition for the inevitable consequences of the European bourgeois society’s illness. Thus, like every great writer, Mann was seen as a \u2018prophet\u2019 after both world wars.<\/p>\n Today’s conflicts in the international political system, especially after the Ukraine crisis; Europe once again coming face to face with war; the political crisis with Russia expanding into a cultural crisis, leading to the revival of historical prejudices about the West-East conflict; as well as the rise of far-right populist parties in Europe, the crisis of Western liberal democracy, the structural problems in parliamentary regimes… and many similar issues compel us to put\u00a0The Magic Mountain<\/em>\u00a0before us again and reconsider our assessments.<\/p>\n The provocative prophecies of\u00a0The Magic Mountain<\/em>, particularly who Settembrini and Naphta represent in real life, have always been debated. Perhaps the most striking and closest analogy was made by the German writer R\u00fcdiger Safranski. Safranski identifies Settembrini with the Kantian Ernst Cassirer and Naphta with Martin Heidegger.<\/p>\n In Davos, where the novel is set, just four years after its publication, Cassirer and Heidegger confronted each other at a conference in 1929. Starting from the fundamental question \u2018What is man?\u2019, they debated the core points of divergence in Western philosophy, just like Settembrini and Naphta.<\/p>\n It was a profound debate experienced by German intellectuals whose paths would sharply diverge after the dissolving Weimar Republic, tragically dividing them into opposing enemy camps. In this context, Mann demonstrated his foresight by presenting the irreconcilable opposing ideas on freedom, war, and Europe’s intellectual heritage that he raised in his novel.<\/p>\n Perhaps what led Safranski to think of such a similarity was Settembrini accusing Naphta, saying,\u00a0\u201cSo you\u2019re defending Pan-Germanism? Is that it?\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0This analogy becomes even more striking when one considers Heidegger’s joining the ranks of Nazism.<\/p>\n The anti-Russian sentiment observed in Europe today, especially in Germany, was echoed a century ago in Naphta’s words:\u00a0\u201cAnd I think you are a Russia enthusiast.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0The ideological and cultural fractures of a century ago are still vividly felt today.<\/p>\n European Humanism’s Trial by War<\/strong><\/p>\n When we think of Mann, an admirer of Tolstoy, these parts of the novel resemble the relentlessly tense and dramatic political discussions in Dostoevsky’s works. Like Dostoevsky, Mann has his characters, who express opposing views, speak with their most powerful arguments.<\/p>\n When powerful ideas become concentrated, they begin to collapse inward, thus revealing contradictions that even the most bombastic rhetoric cannot hide. Ideas that seem opposed and irreconcilable dramatically converge, and universal ethical principles begin to bend and warp.<\/p>\n The same traces can be observed in the political positioning of the characters in the novel regarding war. The soldier Joachim expresses the inevitability, and even necessity, of war with the words:\u00a0\u201cWar is a necessary thing. As Moltke said, without war, the world would soon fall into decay.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The intellectual \u2018princeps scholasticorum\u2019 [Latin: first among scholars], Naphta, at the most heated point of the discussion, ends the debate by presenting war as the sole and valid solution to all existing social problems:\u00a0\u201cMeanwhile, we are about to suffocate from the crowds; all professions are so teeming with people that soon previous wars will pale in comparison to the fights that will be fought for a piece of bread. Open spaces and green cities! The strengthening of the race! But why should it be strengthened if civilization and progress say there will be no war? War will take care of these problems and will produce solutions for both strengthening the race and reducing births.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n From the soldier to the university intellectual, war is defended on the same moral grounds. It is starkly observed how imperialist bourgeois society, when faced with a deep economic and political crisis, always brings war to the agenda, pushing humanity to the brink of disaster.<\/p>\n Faced with this pro-war sentiment spreading like a plague across Europe, what position does the humanist Settembrini, who advocates for peace and progress, take? Settembrini states that international peace will be established by transitioning to a system of free and equal states. However, Settembrini takes an anti-war stance based on principles and optimistic ideals rather than on facts of reality.<\/p>\n At this point, Mann allows Settembrini’s weak points to emerge. First and foremost, Settembrini does not see or accept the crisis into which European bourgeois society has been plunged. He considers European bourgeois society’s 18th-century progressive and revolutionary character to be immutable and universal; he cannot see that the bourgeois society he identifies with reason now possesses irrational tendencies.<\/p>\n The signs of why the humanist tradition was not effective in shaping public opinion against this pro-war sentiment in a Europe where war was being loudly proclaimed are hidden in these points.<\/p>\n Despite all his provocative religious ideas, Naphta is more realistic than Settembrini. He puts forward a self-assured conservative alternative to the crisis of capitalism. He even becomes a point of attraction for people restless from the crisis by voicing the strongest opposition to capitalism in Europe. A striking example of this is that at the end of the discussion, Hans and Joachim, although they dislike Naphta, agree with him on some issues.<\/p>\n Settembrini’s other contradiction is much more dramatic. Despite his anti-war, humanist stance, Settembrini also defends war at a certain point in the name of progress and freedom:\u00a0\u201cEven Voltaire approved of wars that served to spread civilization and suggested to Frederick II that he wage war on the Turks.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n As the discussion continues, Settembrini goes so far as to defend the Crusades:\u00a0\u201cEven war, my dear sir, has at times been forced to serve progress; if you recall certain events from that period you so admire, that is, the period of the Crusades, those wars, in the name of civilization, strengthened economic and commercial relations between peoples and united Westerners under a single idea.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Undoubtedly, Settembrini’s contradictions expose the contradictions of the Enlightenment, especially the moderate Enlightenment. Montesquieu’s views, which explained the qualitative differences between civilizations with his theory of geography and climates, initiated the Enlightenment’s treatment of ideas about the East with an orientalist discourse. Many philosophers, like Voltaire, caused this orientalist view to become entrenched.<\/p>\n Settembrini and Naphta, who represent opposite poles and conflicting value judgments throughout the novel, tragically become identical in their views on war and the East.<\/p>\n As in Dostoevsky’s novels, the two opposing characters actually complete each other; the existence of one necessitates the other. Settembrini and Naphta are complementary others.<\/p>\n The traces of the rising pro-war sentiment in Europe extend back to the Enlightenment, and the West’s imperialist, orientalist view of the East originates from many of the Enlightenment’s ideas.<\/p>\n The most striking expression of this is Settembrini’s generalization of the East as a civilization of inertia, motionless, and closed to dynamism and progress, despite his enthusiastic celebration of democratic development in T\u00fcrkiye:\u00a0\u201cI am a European, a Westerner. Your scale of values is perfectly suited to the East; the East detests action. Lao-Tzu teaches that between heaven and earth there is nothing so beneficial as doing nothing, and that if humanity had renounced action, complete peace and happiness would reign on earth.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Precisely because he is a Westerner, a European, Settembrini cannot see the contradictions in his own bourgeois society. This blind spot causes him to falter in the face of rising conservative pro-war sentiment in Europe and the orientalist discourse about the East, preventing him from taking a clear stance.<\/p>\n It is at these points that we must examine the historical and ideological roots of why, before World War I, European intellectuals and artists\u2014from conservatives to humanists to radical avant-gardists, with the exception of a small minority of intellectuals\u2014took their place in the ranks of war.<\/p>\n The Istanbul notes of Thomas Mann, a Westerner and representative of Europe’s humanist tradition, and even Mann’s own contradictory attitude at the beginning of the war, should be discussed from this perspective.<\/p>\n Naphta won the century-old debate in\u00a0The Magic Mountain<\/em>; who is to say that Naphta won’t win the debate today as well?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Mann, the most significant author in modern German literature, Mann and the countless masterpieces he penned continue to maintain their importance and relevance. 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