Abstract

Philosophers in the German Democratic Republic are concerned in a special way with the works and activity of Georg Lukács. Several of his works published in our country after the Second World War, such as Twist of Fate , The Young Hegel and the Problems of Capitalist Society , Existentialism or Marxism , The Destruction of Reason , and Goethe and His Age , exerted a definite influence on our ideological work. They helped us to overcome reactionary bourgeois, particularly fascist, ideology. Most important, the books of Lukács helped us to grasp the problems of ideological struggle not only in ideological, but also in political categories. Through them we learned to understand how one can utilize the humanistic potential of the past for the creation of the future, and to simultaneously lead a struggle against the irrationalism characteristic of a society that has outlived itself. The ideas of Lukács had important significance, especially for that generation to which I belong. We speak of Lukács not only because it is the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth, but above all to honor his memory and express our feeling of profound gratitude to him