Politica e cultura della nuova Germania. Friedrich Meinecke e Karl Jaspers dopo la catastrofe (1945-1949)

What does it mean to be a German citizen after the catastrophe? And what political and spiritual role should Germany play after World War II? Karl Jaspers’ postwar philosophical inquiry deals with such questions, searching for a new meaning and identity for the Germans. The aim of our paper is to shed light on his ideas, comparing them with those of the historian Friedrich Meinecke. Two different voices, but two similar ones nonetheless: both were representatives of the liberal-bourgeois world and have been, albeit in different degrees, «republicans by reason». They both made the experience of life under the regime, as members of the so-called «inner emigration». After the liberation of Germany, they were both recognized as moral authorities and had the chance to influence their country’s cultural debate in prominent roles: Jaspers in the «Committee of Thirteen», the group entrusted by the Allies with the denazification of the University of Heidelberg; Meinecke as first rector of the Freie Universität in Berlin. For both, this university activities entailed the teaching of classes mostly attended by young people who grew up in the nazi years. The points of proximity and contrast between these two authors will be examined not only in their two central books, Jaspers’ The Question of Guilt and Meinecke’s The German Catastrophe, but also in their work from the years 1945-1949, in which both put Germany’s past into question and searched for their country’s future, in an outlook of renewal (Meinecke) or purification (Jaspers).