ways 18th century high Germans appropriated street culture

Frankfurt at night

The skyscrapers looked immense as we sped down the Hessian autobahn. They call it the New York of Europe because of the skyline, tower after tower lined up like they were stacked in an IKEA box ready to be unpacked and screwed together in a mesa of steel and concrete. It’s quite in a way that’s completely foreign to Europe, un-European almost in the sense that it’s very much American looking. But as the car drove up closer and closer, our speed was scaling down, trees thinning and gathering in orderly lines as they do in organized cities, the city also began scaling down.

These weren’t the massive towers of American cities, these were like those towers, but in miniature. Every tower there I had recognized the life-size version of, some modeled after the ones of New York, others from Chicago or Houston or Denver. But they all seemed like bizarre model replicas. Scaled as they were, from a distance they seemed to be massive, but up close there was something tiny about them. It wasn’t the New York of Europe, it was a mini-New York, like the casino in Vegas. Indeed, as Frankfurt was the home of the European Central Bank, it was very much like a casino in Vegas. 

Frankfurt isn’t only known for its New Yorker qualities—though they also have a Wall Street bull statue, but here, in typical European pessimism, it stands next to a bear statue—but also for its history. They managed to salvage a lot of it from the firestorm of World War II, and that included the birthplace of the great poet and founder of modern German literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Cultural appropriation

The Goethe House Museum exists, though not in the original condition. A bomb fell on it during the war, but they were able to salvage a surprising amount of furniture. Even more surprising is that the beds must have been the main pieces that were completely destroyed. The other furniture, armchairs, tables, and the like, were found and restored, and the house replicated to look as it was, and it all generally resembles what most upper-class families of the 1800s of Germany must have looked like.

Imitation Goethe's kitchen

Goethe didn’t live there long though. It was only during his childhood. As most things German, even literature comes with a name resembling a heaving force of nature, and Goethe was soon at the front of the movement called Storm and Stress, which related to the violent upheavals against the authoritarian monarchic regimes of Europe in a drive towards freedom and democracy, the American Revolution inspiring the continent to take up arms against their own slave masters.

Just like in America, the rich folk are always trying to appropriate urban culture and it was the same in the Germany of the 1800s. Most of Germany—even the nobility—were inspired by these young Storm and Stress artists. In Bavaria, for instance, King Ludwig II was throwing flowers at Wagner’s feet. The same courtship endured with Goethe when Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, brought him to Weimar and slowly wheedled down his Romantic nature, eventually leading him to a noble investiture. It was at this point that Goethe went the way of Kanye West and Jay Z, going from street player to boring rich guy. His literature got soft and he shared the pansification that Schiller also went through.

Imitation Goethe's dining room

The biggest hit though for the European Romantic was the rise of Napoleon and the spread of his empire, when every educated man then began to understand the fate of democracy. A radical democracy, exposed to the whims of a stupid and ignorant common folk, will devour itself and offer itself prey to an infernal regime, ready to renew the authority of a monarchy, though without the chains of tradition. The serpent can renew itself.

Do you think appropriation can be applied in this context? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

You can read more about why I was at Frankfurt in the first place, or keep in touch at www.saintfacetious.com.