Meinecke is not alone in this. In any case he, along with almost everyone else, had little notion of what in fact the Federal Republic of Germany would become once it was created in 1949, more or less simultaneously with its sister state the German Democratic Republic. Both Germanies immediately engaged in an incessant propaganda struggle over identity, historical responsibility (or guilt), and “present” probity. But there was little reason to imagine in 1945 that a future German state—of either stamp—would be characterized by Goethe clubs, although there was a Goethe Institute founded in the FRG in 1951 to spread German culture, chiefly by teaching German as a second language. However the post-1989, allegedly reunified, German state and what it can be taken to mean will be a speculation indulged in at the end of this essay. For the moment one should remain with what has been the most ubiquitous theme hitherto: the tension between the ideological notion(s) of Germany and the material fact(s) of the state.

Certainly, while German historians, by and large, had earlier succumbed to material facts on the ground and accepted with pride the second empire, the spiritual and idealistic roots of their enthusiasm did not wither. We have already noted the peculiar—but hardly incomprehensible—outbreak of cultural exceptionalism that accompanied the events of August 1914. Oddly, the glamorous rush to the battlefield only underpinned the supranational character of the German idea of the state. One did not go to war to defend boundaries, or to assert sovereignty. Officially Germany had no territorial claims in 1914, although there was a great deal of speculation behind the scenes as to possible annexations of one sort or another (see chapter 13). But while the kaiser and the chancellor, The obald von Bethmann Hollweg, claimed that Germans were forced to take up the “sword” by the belligerence of Russia (Russia mobilized first) and therefore had clean hands, the enthusiastic ideologues of German high culture would claim that Germany went to war simply to establish the superiority of what one was.