Call for Papers
Classical Thought and the German Reich (1871-1945)
to be held online on 17th-18th September 2026
Conference Organiser
Aaron Turner (Knapp Foundation/Royal Holloway, University of London)
Confirmed Speakers
Christoph Begass (Universität Heidelberg)
Mauro Bonazzi (Università di Bologna)
Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana State University)
James I. Porter (University of California, Berkeley)
Stefan Rebenich (Universität Bern)
In August 1870, Friedrich Nietzsche obtained leave from his position at the University of Basel to volunteer as a medical orderly following the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War a month earlier. Nietzsche was optimistic for Bismarck’s vision of the founding of the German Reich, “because in that power something will perish that we hate as the real opponent of every deeper philosophy and art consideration, a state of illness from which the German character has been suffering primarily since the Great French Revolution…not to mention the great crowd, in which that suffering is called…liberalism”. On account of illness, Nietzsche spent only a few weeks on active duty and by October 1870 he had returned to Basel. In July 1870, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff obtained his doctorate from the University of Berlin and, immediately afterwards, he enlisted as a grenadier and fought in the Franco-Prussian War until its end in January 1871. While Wilamowitz fought on the frontline, and while the possibility of the unification Germany and the establishment of Otto von Bismarck’s German Reich edged closer and closer to actuality, Nietzsche was already back in Basel working on his major work, The Birth of Tragedy. This book reignited the rivalry between Nietzsche and Wilamowitz, which had its origins when both were students at the Schulpforta and which in many ways became determinative for the future of classical studies in Germany until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and the consequent collapse of the Third Reich of National Socialism in 1945.
This conference explores the development of classical thought in Germany from out of this important dispute between Wilamowitz and Nietzsche and within the political context of the unification of the German Reich in 1871, its progress until the First World War, the period of the Weimar Republic from 1919, and the rise and fall of National Socialism between 1933 and 1945. Ultimately, this conference asks how and in what ways did the question of Antiquity inform and influence the question of Germany throughout this turbulent period and, simultaneously, how did the German question inform the study and reception of Antiquity?
For Nietzsche, by the 1860s classical philology in Germany had grown stagnant. “It is time”, he noted in 1867/68, “to stop bending over singular letters. The next generation of philologists must…take on the responsibility of the great legacy of the past”. Like Hölderlin before him, like his contemporary Burckhardt, and like George and Heidegger who came after him, Nietzsche belonged to a tradition that was strongly reproached by “conventional” philologists for its “radical” approaches to Greek thought. Wilamowitz in particular was critical of both Burckhardt and Nietzsche for ignoring the advancements made by the “science of antiquity”. When Nietzsche resigned from his Chair of Classical Philology in Basel in 1879 due to poor health, Wilamowitz set about revitalising the various philological schools, especially those of Welcker, Hermann, and Boeckh. Following his lead, a new generation of Altertumswissenschaftler emerged, including Diels, Leo, Meyer, and Schwartz.
In 1921, Wilamowitz declared the fulfilment of German classical philology wherein “the conquest of the ancient world by science had been completed”. And yet, despite Wilamowitz’s bluster, the spectres of both Burckhardt and Nietzsche had already begun again to haunt the hallowed halls of Altertumswissenschaft. Defeat in the First World War profoundly impacted the conception of the historical destiny of Germany upon which the German Reich was established. The transformation of classical studies after 1918 is indicative of these misgivings. Many philologists, including Friedländer, Reinhardt, Schadewaldt, Stenzel, and Friedemann sought to consolidate their duty to the traditional practices prescribed by Wilamowitz and the new ways of interpreting Antiquity offered through Nietzsche and George. Arguably the most significant of these was Werner Jaeger, who was as much influenced by George and Nietzsche as he was by Schleiermacher and Dilthey and it was out of this prism of traditions that Jaeger preached the need for a “cultural renewal” through what he termed a “third humanism”, which aimed at retrieving the fundamental values of Greek Paideia and appropriating them for German Bildung.
The volatile and ever-changing political landscape of the German state between 1918 and 1945 is reflected in the shifting focuses of classical philologists, for many of whom cultural renewal became the basis upon which their engagement with Antiquity laid. Despite the growing optimism of a new Germany founded on Greek ideals, and despite the radical departure classical philology had made from its traditional roots toward founding the question of this cultural renewal, the rise of National Socialism soon put such optimism to rest. Jaeger, whose wife was Jewish, emigrated to the US in 1936. Friedländer, one of the few Jewish officers to have served in the First World War, was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1938. At the same time, philologists such as Josef Vogt and Helmut Berve took up the call of National Socialism and began to integrate its fundamental principles into their work. For Vogt, this included recontextualising the wars between Rome and Carthage in terms of race, in which the “Nordic” Romans successfully fended off the Punic uprising, which according to Vogt, was “fundamentally Semitic”.
Between 1871 and 1949, between the unification of the German states and the division of Germany between East and West, the question of Antiquity and its role in the historical consciousness of modern Germany was constantly being posed and reposed anew. As the political and social landscape of Germany became increasingly unsettled and unstable over the course of these eight decades, so too the shape and purpose of the study of Classical Greece and Rome became increasingly contested and, in many cases, radical. Did Greek and Roman studies inform the question of Modernity, of Germania itself? Or did the question of Germania inform the study of Classical Antiquity? This conference seeks to answer neither question directly, but asks, ultimately, what lies at the confluence of these two questions?
This conference will take place entirely online on September 17th-18th 2026. If you would like to present a paper at this conference, please send an abstract (300-500 words) to aaron.turner@knappfoundation.ac.uk by Friday 27th February 2026. Notifications will be sent out by mid-April.
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