Abstract

Though customarily treated as a secondary theme, Lukács's preoccupation with the German legacy forms the architectonic center of his theory of culture. He studied in Berlin and Heidelberg from 1909-1915, and assimilated a direct line of German intellectual culture from Kant to Hegel to Marx. His transition to Marxism was blocked by his criticism of "vulgar" Marxism and by inability to reconcile the classical interpretation of German culture with his own reading of Marx. The rise of Hitler only confirmed his suspicion that the traditions of Kant and Hegel were radically opposed as reactionary and progressive. Lukács also opposed the romanticism of Kant and Schiller to the rationalism or realism of Hegel and Goethe. Finally, Lukács considered Mann his literary counterpart because of his approach to realism, modernism, and the re-interpretation of German culture