Dietz Bering states in his monograph devoted to the history of the term in Germany that even the writers and thinkers who accepted an active definition of their social role and who were committed with all their energy to the young Weimar democracy, such as Heinrich Mann, Doblin, or Ernst
Troltsch, hesitated to use the term 'intellectual' with an intended positive content.[17] One drew far more frequently on terms such as 'Geist', 'geistiger Mensch', or simply 'die Geistigen'.