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 Spengler’s as yet unpublished literary debut Montezuma.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.