Page - 258 - in Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, Volume LIX

Evonne Levy258 But the highest value of these letters is indis- putably in their contribution to Sedlmayr’s polit- ical biography: for these contain the most explicit statement of Sedlmayr’s political views that have come to light as well as a live enactment of the effect of them on his short and long-term deal- ings with colleagues63 (not just Schapiro) and his work. And yet, we should not rush to categorical conclusions about Hans Sedlmayr for he is not without contradictions – beyond and in spite of the common ground shared by right and left in this period – a fact also noted by Schapiro.64 Sedlmayr is at once a conservative and wants to be a leader of the Junge Garde. He gathers togeth- er scholars for ‘Kritische Berichte’ with die gleiche wissenschaftliche Gesinnung, seeking collaboration with scholars on the left, some Jewish, at the very moment that he is an early member of a reac- tionary and violently anti-Semitic political party. Later he assures Meyer Schapiro (from whom he conceals and never comes out and declares his party loyalty) dass Sie es mit einem ‘ideologischen’ Gegner zu tun haben. Sedlmayr was an anti-Semi- te but one of his closest intellectual allies was Jew- ish. He did not see any contradiction. He tells Schapiro: I am anticommunist and antijüdisch and hopes he does not offend! He understands why Jewish colleagues have distanced themselves but is sad that Ernest Nagel chooses not to return for a second visit because he found him nice. Sedlmayr was naive. He does not understand why the offense to his world view constituted by Schapiro’s Communism should be taken on dif- ferent terms than his anti-Semitism. Sedlmayr’s open display of anti-Semitism complicates the already complicated discus- sion around the value of his work because it has now become personal and it is tempting to judge him rather than understand him: his ex- pression of racially offensive ideas (in addition to his anti-communism) to an individual changes the register. While I do not want to assume ab- solute unity between the work and author, the Sedlmayr-Schapiro correspondence is troubling and deepens our quandary over his work. Even in the works of scholars who do not foreground their politics their value systems infuse their thinking and if we do not notice a political register it may be that it is because we are in agreement. The discussion over the extent to which personal and political beliefs are em- bedded in a scholar’s work is more apt to take place when it is unclear to what extent a heinous politics “infects” the thinking (as in the debates over early De Man, over Ernst Jünger – another ambiguous conservative critic who Sedlmayr read65 – and over the wartime Heidegger); and over the ambition of the intellectual’s work to actively support a worldview and or a regime (which Sedlmayr’s work from 1938 on demon- strably does). It is still not entirely clear to what extent pre-1938 Sedlmayr was driving a political agenda. As I noted above, the early period of individual subject’s helplessness and dread (Grauen) in the face of successive catastrophes in modern experience that defy all rational means of order and prediction.” E. Y. Neaman, A Dubious Past. Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism, Berkeley 1999, p. 9 (describing the argument of Karl Heinz Bohrer). 63 When Schapiro wrote to Pächt that Sedlmayr had sent his greetings to him (see above), Pächt replied, 1 July 1952: What you wrote to me last time about Sedlmayr’s friendly gestures does not surprise me at all. There will be, if necessary, a third and a fourth volte face, but I am not interested in the psychology of chameleons. Alexander, Otto Pächt (cit. n. 26), p. 116, n. 3. 64 I have been stimulated in thinking about the following by the thoughtful discussion of politics and philosophy in the Third Reich in H. Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany, Cambridge (MA) 1993, esp. chapter 10 and by the various essays in: W. Hamacher/N. Herz/T. Keenan (eds), Responses: On Paul de Man’s Wartime Journalism, Lincoln 1989. 65 For a review of the post-war debates over Jünger, whether his thought can be taken in isolation from “its possible relationship to fascism and National Socialism” see Neaman, A Dubious Past (cit. n. 62), Introduction.