Fichte’s concept of the cultural continuities of the German nation (kulturnation) is significant in theorising ethno-linguistic nationalism and the construction of German national identity. This treatment first will explore Fichte in the context of history and debate, and his theory as stated within the collection of Addresses to the German Nation, a series of lectures between December 1807 to March 1808, to discover his conception of the kulturnation, in defining what is was to be German. These characteristics of the kulturnation will then be used to analyse the associated assumptions and how this works towards production of knowledge and ultimately to the constitution of the other in constructing a theory of nationalism. This then is a theory of exclusion – an othering that is ostensibly cultural, but rooted in ethnic and genealogical boundary making, and furthermore, crucially a foundational primordial identity established through a mythical production of epistemology.
Fichte’s move from philosopher to an early German nationalist manifests in his writing in the early 19th century, in recognition of what he considered to be an organically constituted Germany, unlike the France that existed post-revolution. Kulturnation was born out of this reaction against the French occupation of German territories, clashing sharply with Fichte’s rediscovering of personal identity pertaining to that of a nationalistic German, and contrasting with his idealism and romanticism derived from the Enlightenment. Thus, the intellectual context of the late 18th/19th century must be explored. These years represented an emergence of nationalism of a shared national identity – what is Germany and who is German. Among the German nationalists of his time Fichte occupied a unique position. His idea of Germanism separated him from the Romanticists who saw in nationality an historical growth, not a manifestation of the timeless absolute.
Fichte and the Kulturnation
The basis of Fichte’s claim to German-ness then, is an organicist approach to language. A development from Herder’s Volkgeist (the vehicle of the national spirit), Fichte’s analysis of language represents boundaries, “inner frontiers” of the “natural” nation. Contextually then for Fichte, the French occupation of Berlin could never bridge the absolute and impermeable linguistic boundaries. Language thus is primordial, rooted into German culture, and is inextricably linked to territory. This is more mythical than real, as Fichte appears to be interested less in the ability of kulturnation to describe a reality, than as a “national imagination”, a common value of a people.
Fichte states that “the German speaks a language which has been alive ever since it first issued from the force of nature, whereas the other Teutonic races speak a language that has movement on the surface, but is dead at the roots.” This then rests on a bed of assumptions, and highlights Fichte’s notions of nationhood. Firstly, there lies an assumption of a singular imagination, of the concept of a volk. Secondly, Fichte’s further assessment that German alone is an “original language” lies on an assumption of primordial identity. These both then imply a continuity, a lineage that can be traced. Thirdly, Fichte’s conceptualisation of a kulturnation rests on the foundations of language – a dead language equates to a dead culture. Fourthly, is the assumption of the attribution of character traits through biology – the traits of a true German are definite and primordial – and thus link a nation into a volk. There is Germany, and “das ausland” – the other land.
So then, what do these assumptions do? Essentially then, it forms a genealogy, ultimately linking, and thus justifying, a theory of nationalism. Contextually, Fichte’s Addresses linked the French “other” invasion of German territories to the concept of a single German volk that was fundamentally linked through language (the only organic language) which thus reinforced the boundaries of the kulturnation – of mythical historical continuities, imaginary communities, and generations of similar character traits – despite the lack of a political unified unit, to create a national identity that always existed. The fact that this national identity had always existed is crucial, as it establishes a connection, a continuity of past, present, and as Fichte hoped to reinstate, future. Thus, Fichte’s demonstration of the national and cultural value of a specific language by the means of a syncretic devaluation of any other. French, for him, is a poorly organised collection, lacking a mother tongue, and thus an association to the fatherland. German needed to be separated from that that was un-German in nature, with the importance of language thus becoming a motive for demarcation, in opposition to an other.
Constructing National Identity
Fichte’s Addresses outline a kulturnation that creates a volk and thus a national identity that creates impermeable boundaries, both in terms of physical territorial boundaries, and in the establishment of the German and the other. The volk thus is grounded in a natural and rationally “absolutely necessary” Ursprache (original language). Fichte states that “we call a people those men whose speech organs are subject to the same external influences, who live together and develop their language in continuous communication”, thus implying a spatial and temporal dimension to the volk. Spatially, in regards to a territorial claim, and temporally, of a continuity of communication in time. This therefore is the imaginary component Fichte speaks of, to unite the contemporary members of the volk in this distinct territory with one another, and thus to bind this territorially rooted volk with the ancestry as being one. Neither is it a mere cultural narrative, or ethnic nationalism, but a commitment to “something absolutely primary and original.” Therefore, this primacy creates a theory of exclusion, as the identity of the other becomes inscribed. The continuity this creates as well is that of what Germans are not (by deconstruction of the French Revolution), that can be extended to that to be German is a birth-right and a link to an ancestry of connections to a national spirit. In connecting the nation to ancestral ties, the nations origin is endowed with a legitimacy for a future existence, and the spatial claims thus work alongside the temporal claims of giving absolute authority and rights for the German volk to make claims of territory. This exclusivity implies an inclusion and exclusion, and an implicit idea of birth right, as “the German alone – the original (…) capable of loving his nation in the true way.”
The imaginary component thus feeds into the constitution of continuity, establishing the line between ancestors and present day Germans. Fichte writes that “grasp them in accordance with its nature, not in the mere knowledge of a foreign life but as an integral part of life”, and crucially, “what were previously merely airy figures in bodies that are solid and stable”. The kulturnation narrative thus is revealed in this connection, of ancestral myths becoming aspirations for the present day due to intrinsic connections. This then becomes a semi-biological form of nationalism, whereby Fichte seems to suggest that to be German is to have inherited these afflictions that characterised the great heroes of German historical myth, saying “branch of the aboriginal tribe which remained in the stream of original culture” – the Germans today still possess the aboriginal link. An example frequently used by Fichte in the Addresses is that of Arminius, and the image of a honorable German struggle against the Romans. Fichte writes that “our oldest common forefathers, the ancestral people of the new culture, called Teutons (…) in which even an Arminius did not disdain to learn the arts of war?”. The ancestral struggle against the Romans is echoed in the struggle against the new Roman other – the French. This idealized representation of a national culture based on icons and attitudes and invented traditions is one built upon formalized myth – as Fichte clearly does in his Addresses.
From Fichte’s position, he did not think of the concrete and historical German of his time or of any time. He spoke of an ideal German, of his idea of the Germans. Yet again and again he seemed to confuse the ideal/real and attributes to the Germans (past and present) qualities which in other passages were clearly reserved to the reconstruction of the "true" German. This confusion of historical reality and metaphysical ideal was a dangerous bequeath to German nationalism. This thus strengthens the myth of the spiritual superiority of the members of an historical nation, and to increase scorn and suspicion of alien influences. The rising German nationalism of the Napoleonic age received the assurance that the Germans as the possessors of an original language were so much superior to the French who, though partly of Frankish descent, had to restrict their intellectual life due to using a derived or “dead language”. Thus, what it is to be German is in fact a symptom of the papering over of reality with a recasting and re-modernization of old norms – to constitute an idealistic future German identity, that again, is symptomatic of a past and future glory. For Fichte, to be German is to reject the other – a violent reclaiming of territory.
Here then is the Fichtean twist that is all too present in the Addresses – his seemingly cosmopolitan ideas being incompatible with his underlying principles. Cosmopolitanism is “the will that this purpose be reached in all humanity”, yet according to his Wissenschaftlehre, only Germans can pursue this project through serving the nation, thus legitimizing a form of German revolution for the purposes of humanity, and of the volkgeist. This again is reproduced is Fichte’s avoidance of speaking of a German volk united by race in unison with language, yet a strong implication of race is present, particularly in delineating the other. Fichte calls the Jews “a state within a state” with potential to “undermine the German nation”. The very claim of a subpopulation being defended in lieu of another is a demarcation of the other within, which holds immense repercussions for production of violence and of what constitutes a German state. Here then, Fichte justifies his demarcation with the emphasis on language, that if “these newcomers are not allowed to raise the sphere of their intuitions to the standpoint from which henceforth the language will continue to
develop, then they remain without influence on the language until they themselves have entered the sphere of intuitions of the original race.” Thus, the other becomes racialized, and firmly excluded from becoming German in any sense. The preservation of the German spirit required its isolation from all the elements which were alien to it.
This then alludes to the bio-political idea of the nation. Fichte does not speak of a nation as a political unit, nor does he see the importance of recognition as a political unit which is significant. The nation’s borders are internal and spiritual boundaries that are absolute and much more powerful for Fichte than an empirical territorial border, as this is simply an external manifestation of the spiritual border. The nation thus engages in bio-political theory as a living organism, as Fichte’s German-ness encourages the gradual conflation of the state and nation. He states “the State is not primary (…) the means for the higher purpose of the eternally consistent and development of what is purely human in this Nation,” highlighting the conflict between the state’s promise of security and the nation’s intent on preservation of the Volkgeist and the necessary violence that ensues.
Conclusion
Fichte’s Addresses thus illustrate the assumptions and discontinuities within primarily discourses of the primacy of the German language, and in a wider context, the kulturnation. Deconstructing the Addresses provides an insight into the perpetuation of foundational myths, historical narratives and claims to original language, to reinforce territorial, spatial and biological inclusion and exclusion, and for the demarcation of boundaries separating the us and the foreign other. In conclusion, the discursive element of the addresses thus incites nationalism as it clearly demonstrates what it is to be German, yet ambiguously addresses the continuation of a volk into a formalized state, thus leaving room for violence against the other, and equally the other within, as seen in the future of German nationalism.