Das Goethebild bei Georg Simmel

Constructions of Goethe versus Constructions of Kant in German Intellectual Culture, 1900–1925

“…Mandelkow speaks of an "Akzentverlagerung von der Germanistik auf die Philosophie" (Mandelkow 23; shift in emphasis from Germanistik to philosophy) during this time, and in the case of Goethe, the question of his relation to philosophy was "vorrangig auf das Verhältnis Goethes zu Kant eingeengt" (Mandelkow 28; constrained first and foremost to Goethe's relationship to Kant)-an artificially constrained frame of reference that gave the relationship between these two figures a dramatically inflated importance. In fact, it is largely by virtue of the "Antithese Goethe-Kant" (Goethe-Kant antithesis) 6 that Goethe took on much of his newfound vitality. Thus, if we wish to bring forth his image in the early twentieth century in its sharpest contours, it proves necessary to direct our attention not only to the way Goethe was constructed in his own right but also to the way his perceived attributes were defined in explicit opposition to the equally iconic figure of Immanuel Kant.…”