The Weimar Republic was a unique period of German history because of the situation in which competing notions of the basis of political order were in play at the same time, leading both to extreme instability but also to a situation in which issues of aesthetic representation had crucial consequences for political developments. This merging of aesthetic and political questions resulted in the development of competing forms of political representation on both the left and the right. Both Johannes Reichl and Helmuth Kiesel have shown that this competition led to similarities between the Lehrstuck and the Thingspiel as theatrical forms developed by communists and Nazis (Reichl 110-20, Kiesel 87-90). But while Kiesel argues that the correspondences stem from their common participation in totalitarian political forms, it may be that these movements were not so much examples of a totalitarian aesthetic as products of a crisis situation in which foundations of authority were in conflict with each other. The only effective way to resolve this conflict was through different representational attempts to establish the parameters of political identity.

Pan argues that although Theodor Adorno's "Dialectic of Enlightenment" provides a critique of enlightenment that leaves the metaphysical dimension of myth and religion as the only alternative to the alienation of modernity, Adorno is unable to build upon this critique of modernity.

Multiculturalists' attacks on university attempts to instill students with an objective humanities course of study threatens the entire basis of the universality of knowledge that universities were built on.

Compares art historian Carl Einstein's (1885-1940) critique of modernity with that of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) to explore the modern belief in human achievement, & a primitive awe of mythic fate, as two basic perspectives that defined the 20th-century development of German culture. Both men were interested in the relationship between art & religious forms, but Einstein's writings are relatively unknown, while Benjamin's work has enjoyed a recent revival. Benjamin's concept of modernity is rooted in a progressivist consciousness that accepts evolution from a traditional to a modern world, while Einstein's primitivist rejection of an evolutionary understanding of differences between tradition & modernity led him to see them as "opposite poles of a constant conflict within human society." Benjamin claims collective experience can no longer be transmitted by storytelling & turns to modern methods to relieve the resulting alienation. Einstein's position is conversely based on the assumption that the position of the modern to the outside world is no different than that of the primitive. These distinctions are demonstrated in the two men's readings of fascist cult rituals. J. Lindroth