Weisheit

The Wisdom of Germany

By: Morris Berman

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

During the last few years I have written a number of books consisting of “cameos,” or profiles, of great thinkers, artists, and writers of various peoples: Italians, Brits, Russians, Jews, and American poets. I decided it was finally time to take on the Germans, specifically those in the German literary tradition. This runs from Goethe to Bernhard Schlink, in between discussing the work of writers such as Heine, Nietzsche, Rilke, Hesse, Brecht and a few others in that illustrious category. Why am I doing this? I guess I believe that these folks have something to teach us in terms of how to live, and even at my advanced age, I feel I could use their instruction. Rilke famously tells us, “You must change your life.” Nietzsche warns us that Western culture is upside down. Hesse argues that we have multiple selves, and Heinrich von Kleist urges us to learn how not to be self-conscious. In terms of wisdom, it doesn’t get much better than this; hence my title, Weisheit—the German word for wisdom. From this group, I learned a lot, and now I wish to pass it on to you. Mehr Licht! Goethe said as he winked out. I guess we could all use a little bit more light.

Morris Berman is a poet, novelist, essayist, social critic, and cultural historian. He has written twenty-nine books and nearly 200 articles, and has taught at a number of universities in Europe, North America, Chile, and Mexico. He won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. In 2000, The Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review, and in 2013 he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. Dr. Berman lives in Mexico.