/lit/ - Literature

>>11026650

Arguably, Prussia's - and the German states' - greatest military feat of the modern era was von Blucher's forced march to Waterloo:

>"Forwards! I hear you say it's impossible, but it has to be done! I have given my promise to Wellington, and you surely don't want me to break it? Push yourselves, my sons, and we'll have victory!"
>It is impossible not to like Blücher. He was seventy-four years old, still in pain and discomfort from his adventures at Ligny, still stinking of schnapps and of rhubarb liniment, yet he is all enthusiasm and energy.
>If Napoleon's demeanour that day was one of sullen disdain for an enemy he underestimated, and Wellington's a cold, calculating calmness that hid concern, then Blücher is all passion

The high culture of the provincial competition in the German sphere made for this kind of Romantic apotheosis. Nietzsche would've disdained the exigencies leading to its rise, but it would be difficult to say he'd outright hate what he had seen coming, given his prophetic vision of titanic world conflict for dominion over the planet. Heidegger's endorsement likely envisioned a German (and European) existence posited as its goal more akin to Goethe's:

>I do not fear that Germany will not be united; our excellent streets and future railroads will do their own. Germany is united in her patriotism and opposition to external enemies. She is united, because the German Taler and Groschen have the same value throughout the entire Empire, and because my suitcase can pass through all thirty-six states without being opened. It is united, because the municipal travel documents of a resident of Weimar are accepted everywhere on a par with the passports of the citizens of her mighty foreign neighbors. With regard to the German states, there is no longer any talk of domestic and foreign lands. Further, Germany is united in the areas of weights and measures, trade and migration, and a hundred similar things which I neither can nor wish to mention.
>"One is mistaken, however, if one thinks that Germany's unity should be expressed in the form of one large capital city, and that this great city might benefit the masses in the same way that it might benefit the development of a few outstanding individuals,"