Idealism was ignored in Germany, but managed to attract attention among
liberal reformers in Spain. Doubtless because of the crush of competition, at
this time the popular image emerged associating genius with mental illness. (In
general the evidence shows no such association: creativity deteriorates with
mental illness; Herbert, 1959). The Jena-Weimar creative circle was one of the
largest on record; the notable names, when we count the Romantic circle, the
Kantian publicists, their connections in Königsberg, Berlin, Göttingen, and
elsewhere, as well as the anti-Idealist critics, add up to 30 or more in the
running for attention. The competition was mitigated to some extent by
specialization, through less than usual because literary and philosophical con-
cerns and channels of publication overlapped to a considerable extent. Intel-
lectual competition in this period was as intense as at any time in history, and
many creative thinkers were squeezed out of attention. That is why this
generation accounts for so many of the famous cases of neurotic breakdowns
and misanthropic withdrawals.
Hölderlin started out with the same trajectory as Schelling and Hegel.
Beginning in the Tübingen group, turned on by contact with Fichte, he was
sponsored by Schiller to a position at Jena, where he tried to lecture in
philosophy. But he failed to be accepted in the Weimar circle and left in 1795.
In addition to his poems (for which he eventually became known), he wrote a
philosophical novel (like so many of the others) but was ignored by his con-
temporaries.^11 After moving about as a tutor, by 1804 he had gone insane and
never wrote again. Compare Novalis, who was more successful in gaining the
friendship of Goethe, Schiller, and the Schlegels; as the Romantic circle was
breaking up in 1801, he died of consumption. Yet another example is the
playwright and poet Kleist, who left the army to devote himself to intellectual
life in 1799, and shot himself in 1811 at the age of 41. Up against the law of
small numbers, many individuals cracked under the strain; early deaths too
can be interpreted as results of the structural crunch.
The most famous of its victims was Schopenhauer. He is often regarded as
another such neurotic genius, with his misogyny, his avoidance of company,
and his violent outbursts. But these are traits of Schopenhauer while he was
experiencing the “structural crunch” of intellectual competition, not of his
early life, full of cultivating good network ties and feeling the hopeful surge of
creativity.^12 Conversely, one might question how Schopenhauer managed to
produce first-rate creativity at all, given that the slots were closing down for
him. The answer lies in the networks. Schopenhauer had very good resources
and network connections, with both the Idealists and their opponents, but he
came onto them very late. He was born in 1788; by the time he was educated,
the available attention slots were already filled. When he arrived at Weimar in
1807, the old circle was still a lively memory. His heiress mother had recently
moved to Weimar and hosted the literary circles there, and through her
636 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths