Versionen Montezumas

The cultural philosopher Oswald Spengler was the first universal historian of the 20th century. His work The Decline of the West was devoted to analyzing eight “high cultures” ‑ the Classical and Western, the Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Arab and Mexican cultures (although Mexican culture was only touched on briefly). Spengler’s as yet unpublished literary debut Montezuma. Ein Trauerspiel [Montezuma. A Tragedy] (1897) sheds new light on Spengler's interest in old Mexico, the country that paradoxically became the exception and the first cornerstone of his cultural morphology.