the first to apprehend its purely-human originality, to seize therewith a meaning quite aloof from usefulness … .” [720W-{9-12/65} What is German?: PW Vol. IV, p. 155]
[721W-{9-12/65} What is German?: PW Vol. IV, p. 158-159]
[P. 158] “In this singular phenomenon, this invasion of the German nature by an utterly alien element [Israelites], there is more than meets the eye. Here, however, we will only notice that other nature in so far as its conjunction with us obliges us to become quite clear as to what we have to understand by the ‘German’ nature which it exploits. (…) Adorable and beautiful is that foible of the German’s which forbade his coining into personal profit the inwardness and purity of his feelings and beholdings, particularly in his public and political life: that a profit here, as well, was left unused, could be cognisable to none but a mind which misunderstood the very essence of the German nature. The German Princes supplied the misunderstanding, the Jews exploited it. Since the new-birth of German poetry and music, it only needed the Princes to follow the example of Frederick the Great, to make a fad of ignoring those arts, or wrongly and unjustly measuring them with French square and [P. 159] compasses, and consequently allowing no influence to the spirit which they manifested, -- it only needed this, to throw open to the spirit of alien speculation a field whereon it saw much profit to be reaped. ‘Tis as though the Jew had been astounded to find such a store of mind and genius yielding no returns but poverty and unsuccess. (…) The Jew set right this bungling of the German’s, by taking German intellectual labour into his own hands, and thus we see an odious travesty of the German spirit upheld to-day before the German Folk, as its imputed likeness. It is to be feared, ere long the nation may really take this simulacrum for its mirrored image … .” [721W-{9-12/65} What is German?: PW Vol. IV, p. 158-159]
[722W-{9-12/65} What is German?: PW Vol. IV, p. 160]
[P. 160] (anti-FEUER?) “In these his natural endeavours he [the German] makes the foreign exploit yield to him a picture of its purely-human motives. Thus ‘Parzival’ and ‘Tristan’ were shaped anew by Germans: and whilst the originals have become mere curiosities, of no importance save to the history of literature, in their German counterparts we recognise poetic works of worth imperishable.” [722W-{9-12/65} What is German?: PW Vol. IV, p. 160]
[723W-{9-12/65} What is German?: PW Vol. IV, p. 161-162]
[P. 161] {FEUER} “No people has taken arms against invasions of its inner freedom, its own true essence, as the Germans: there is no comparison for the doggedness with which the German chose his total ruin, rather than accommodate himself to claims quite foreign to his nature. This is weighty. The outcome of the Thirty Years’ War destroyed the German nation; yet, that a German Folk could rise again, is due to nothing but that outcome. The nation was annihilated, but the German spirit had passed through. It is the essence of that spirit which we call ‘genius’ in the case of highly-gifted individuals, not to trim its sails to worldly profit. (…) Recollection (Erinnerung) now became for it in truth a self-collection (Er-Innerung); for upon its deepest inner self it drew, to ward itself from the now immoderate outer influences. (…) [P. 162] {FEUER} Yet when its native countenance, its very speech was lost, there remained to the German spirit one last, one undreamt sanctuary wherein to plainly tell itself the story of its heart of hearts. From the Italians the German
