This paper argues that German literary studies was, from its inception, an entirely nationalist and nation‐building endeavor, perhaps the quintessential nationalist project. Among the discipline's foundational premises are its belief in and commitment to a diversity of culturally individuated national communities (rather than one uniform humanity), a non‐hierarchical plurality of vernaculars (rather than classical languages), and historically inflected and culturally expressive aesthetic forms (rather than transhistorically and transregionally valid templates of excellence). Three disciplinary activities of early Germanistik—Germanic historical linguistics, vernacular canon formation, and national literary history—are introduced as key instruments of nationalization. In conclusion, the paper claims that contemporary German Studies in the US, thankfully a reflective and critical enterprise, nonetheless remains institutionally completely dependent on the paradigm of the linguistically and culturally defined nation.

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quickly became something of a phenomenon. The volume was reviewed in the major newspapers and on the radio, and, more surprising, it achieved a degree of commercial success.1 It did so in part, I would argue, because it offered advice-advice on how to negotiate a range of everyday situations or, more generally, advice on how to live.2 Adorno's volume reflected on but also participated in established formats of social communication that made it recognizable as a book of advice, a feature of the text that has been noted (Bernard 17) but far from fully explored. The reflections deal with questions such as the proper choice of gifts, whether to reciprocate or decline conversational invitations on mass transit, and how to live as part of a married couple. These recurring comments on situations of hospitality, sociability, and domesticity claim as much space as the discussions of aesthetics and philosophy, and the attention to the details of daily life is inseparable from morally inflected statements (Jaeggi 115-16). Adorno seems almost to propose a code of behavior in the spheres of privacy and social intercourse with the assured voice of an authority on the overlapping but not coinciding realms of etiquette, civility, and everyday moral issues (Pippin 225). His blocks of text repeatedly culminate in claims about "the only responsible course" ("das Einzige, was sich verantworten läßt" [26; 29]), which appeal to the prudence and moral consciousness of the reader.3 And at times he even opens a paragraph with a piece of advice directed to a particular segment of the readership: "Advice to intellectuals: let no-one represent you" ("Rat an Intellektuelle: laß dich nicht vertreten" [128; 146]).

In his writings on satire, the Marxist literary critic Georg Lukács argued that hatred could function as an anticapitalist affect. Hatred, he believed, equips the committed author with a set of traits—certainty, lucidity, endurance, and pitilessness—that are eminently useful for exposing and destroying a fundamentally criminal socioeconomic system. Contrary to the contemporary anxiety about hatred (hate speech, hate crimes), Lukács wanted to mobilize the affect for revolutionary ends. Yet he also admitted that hatred tends to grow in conditions of powerlessness, dependence, and frustration. As a consequence, Lukács could not unite the cool passion of hatred with the position of a confident revolutionary.

Berlin as Mnemonic Device: Walter Benjamin on Franz Hessel In reviewing a work by Franz Hessel, Walter Benjamin speaks of Berlin as a mnemonic device for the lonely wanderer. This article unpacks this peculiar claim by arguing that Benjamin maps ars memoria, a technique for memorization in rhetoric, onto the modern cityscape. According to the particular art of memory to which Benjamin refers, emblems placed in an imagined series of rooms signify consecutive parts of a speech to be  remembered. The mnemonic technique thus allows the trained orator to trace a narrative sequence through interconnected spaces that encase a chain of images. By referring to the city as a mnemonic device, Benjamin indicates how the topography and visual character of the urban space may serve as a repository for narratives that circulate across city-dwelling generations. The Berlin flâneur thus uses movement through the city to release its deposited past. In Benjamin’s article, the lonely wanderer finally emerges as part shaman and part tourist guide.