This perspective may be an injustice to other nations, for the Faustian drive is hardly exclusive to Germany, being equally recognisable in England, Spain, France, and others. And yet, within this fatalistic belief in predestination lies something distinctly German, a trait that even Mann himself could not escape. It is an impulse that, in its crudest contemporary form, finds expression in the grandiose visions of German politicians seeking to “save the world.”

“Self-belittlement, my friend—and you underestimate me too, if you limit me thuswise and try to make a German provincial of me. I am in fact German, German to the core, yet even so in an older, better way, to wit cosmopolitan from my heart.”

The theme of a pact with the devil is not merely old but distinctly German. What is striking about the Faustian bargain—later elevated by Oswald Spengler to the defining trait of “Faustian culture”—is that it is rarely motivated by a conscious desire to break moral laws, nor by any explicit will to sin. Instead, it stems from an insatiable thirst for knowledge, an intellectual imperative so strong that without the devil’s assistance, the protagonist feels incomplete.

In Doctor Faustus, Mann ensures that when Adrian Leverkühn enters into his fateful dialogue with Mephistopheles, the devil unmistakably reveals himself as German. However, this is not the caricatured, provincial German stereotype so often ridiculed abroad, but rather a German who once transcended his linguistic and national boundaries within the framework of the Holy Roman Empire.

Nevertheless, Mann—who can certainly not be accused of papist bias—casts the devil’s influence predominantly in a post-Reformation context. Mephistopheles himself references Martin Luther, and the opening words of their dialogue—“Whist, mum’s the word”—are directly lifted from the Reformer’s works. Though Mann does not explicitly blame Protestantism, there is an undeniable undercurrent in Doctor Faustus suggesting that this moment marked the moment in which Germany began its descent into boundless ambition, leading to its eventual ruin.

“Did not Bismarck say something about the Germans needing half a bottle of champagne to arrive at their normal height? Meseems he said something of the sort. And that of right. Gifted but halt is the German—gifted enough to be angry with his paralysis, and to overcome it by hand-over-head illumination.”

Germany’s pact with the diabolical should not be understood solely in a political sense. The Faustian nature of the German soul is responsible for one of the most extraordinary cultural flowerings in history—from the artistry of Dürer, the musical genius of Beethoven, the literary mastery of Goethe, the philosophical depth of Nietzsche, to Mann himself. Yet, all these figures are marked by a profound excess, an intellectual extremism that Mephistopheles himself acknowledges: every zenith is followed by a nadir, every era has its expiration date.

In 1861, at the eve of Germany’s unification, this spirit found political articulation in the infamous declaration: “Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen” (The German essence shall heal the world). Even then, it was apparent that Germany’s towering intellectual accomplishments were not to be repeated. Politics became the last refuge of the Faustian spirit—with devastating consequences for the next century.

Despite Germany’s strenuous efforts—epitomised by Thomas Mann himself—to distance itself from its past in the aftermath of the Second World War, its essential character remained dormant rather than having been extinguished. Today, it re-emerges in a different form: no longer in the name of imperial dominion or confessional dogma, but under the banner of moral absolutism in political matters, be it environmental policy, unrestrained migration, or identity politics. The unwavering determination to see these missions through, pursued ”for its own sake” and oblivious to shifting realities, remains as uncompromising as ever.

As Mann’s Mephistopheles aptly quotes Goethe:

“All do the gods give, the Eternal,
To their favourites, wholly:
All the joys, the eternal,
All the pangs, the eternal,
Wholly.”

Germany’s time of joys is over.

“Good time, divellishly German time!”