No Will to Power

Karl Heinz Bohrer’s opinions on politics are always aimed at the whole picture. He is particularly interested in the way in which day-to-day politics illuminates disavowed, repressed or forgotten conflicts. Germany’s refusal to play a front-line role in the world, its reticent handling of its Prussian past, the way it remembers the two World Wars: issues like these show that a historical perspective, philosophical arguments and literary memory are intrinsic to a substantiated political position. In six essays, Bohrer analyses the European power play of the last 150 years – an emphatic lesson on spiritual independence.