The German Genius By Peter Watson: Chapter Summary

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In the book by Peter Watson, “The German Genius” reflects greatly on the importance of German influence as well as the impact of historical individuals had on sculpting what Germany is now. Chapter twenty-one and chapter twenty-two act as the turning point historically German in the sense of being a positive influence for the rest of the world to a negative influence. In chapter twenty-one “The Abuses of History”, the author elaborates on the blossoming of aggressive nationalism, militarism, Darwinism, the Aryan myth, and anti-Catholicism, which carried a negative effect on Germany as well as the rest of the world. Lastly, in chapter twenty-two “The Pathologies of Nationalism”, Watson goes further into detail the destructiveness of Nationalism. …show more content…
With the indifference to politics, Germany never turned their attention to the dangers of politics that were a result of the imperial system. Another importance highlighted in this chapter is the rise of nationalism, which was coined by three gentlemen: Theodor Mommsen, Heinrich von Sybel, and Heinrich von Trietschke. Most of these men held the same characteristics: a liberal who was a monarchist, a rigorous scholar whose nationalism bordered on racism. One of Sybel’s coined ideas was that great men make history, that “the masses do nothing”. The commonality all three German men share is that fact that they were politically involved historians, which relays back to the reason why they were so greatly involved in nationalism. Another production of nationalism is the growth in archeology. Schliemann was noted as the true father of archeology because he was the first to use excavation to test a hypothesis. A consequence of Schliemann was that Britain, France, and America established their own archeological institutions in Greece and

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