Goethe’s Politics and Political Uses: Nazi and Anti-Nazi Readings of Des Epimenides Erwachen

This article examines the first leaflet produced by the anti-Nazi White Rose group in 1942, focusing on its use of a quotation from Goethe’s festival play Des Epimenides Erwachen. I begin by exploring the appropriation of Goethe by the Nazi Regime, in particular the instrumentalisation of his works during wartime. In contrast, I then consider how the White Rose use their chosen Goethe passage to send an anti-war message and to incite passive resistance, reclaiming Goethe for an anti-Nazi agenda. Finally, I consider the passage’s political significance in Goethe’s own context ca. 1813, which was characteristically ambivalent, reflecting the lack of a singular political, nationalist narrative at the time of the Wars of Liberation.