Essay | Ernst Wiechert’s Poet’s Faith and Art Philosophy

How can we recover from Christian-capitalist-rationalist metaphysics if it is understood as an expression of the suffering from fear and “opening the message of evil”? German novelist and Buchenwald survivor Ernst Wiechert seeks and develops an answer to this question. His philosophy of art, Sebastian Berger argues, proposes a healing recovery that alleviates suffering through a free heart and brave love, while eschewing “principles” and “systems”. Wiechert confesses his poet’s faith in “the whole” as dawning testimony of a fourth dimension as nameless dark God. His is a unique synthesis of ideas by Hölderlin, Nietzsche and Goethe derived from a post-metaphysical interpretation of German romantic pantheism.

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Pan and the Nymphs (fresco, Pompeii)

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Berger – Wiechert