There is the individualist view that the creativity of a community is a result of the creativity of individuals that participate in it and their interactions (e.g. through artistic education). The opposing, collectivist, view is that the creativity of individuals is merely a result or manifestation of the creativity of the group–that groups are thus the primary explanatory entities in art and architectural history, not individuals that constitute them. Social entities on this latter account are conceived of as superior forces that drive and determine the creative and intellectual capacities of individuals. The article analyses the domination of such collectivist positions in the German art historiography of the Wilhelmine and Weimar eras and seeks to examine in how far it reflects German historians’ implicit assumptions of their cultural inferiority (esp. towards Italy) and the need to construct historiographical positions that would deny it. The paper a preliminary study for the research that resulted in my book Rage and Denials (Penn State Press, 2015)