This dissertation examines how German modernism seeks to respond to the problem of nihilism, particularly as it was formulated by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche understood nihilism as the end of plausibility for objective truths grounded in transcendence, such as the belief in God, but also the belief in the absolute value of truth itself. People, he thought, could no longer take seriously the idea of an absolute truth and could therefore no longer use such a measure to establish meaning and value. The dissertation investigates the reception of these ideas by German writers after WWI. It is my contention that, in the period between WWI and the end of WWII, the project of overcoming nihilism becomes bound up with a particular understanding of aesthetic form and its applicability beyond the realm of art. An important strand of German modernist literature can therefore be understood as an attempt to provide a convincing response to nihilism by suggesting form as a new absolute principle, an idea that can likewise be traced back to Nietzsche. The dissertation attempts to theorize and follow the development of this new, highly modern understanding of form by examining its central place in the works of three writers: Ernst Jünger, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Hesse. I argue that these authors explore a commonly held anxiety about devaluation and relativism in the spheres of ethics, morality and art in the aftermath of WWI. In response, they seek to anchor collective values in a project of form-giving. This understanding of form uncouples it from any determinate content or object, presenting it instead as a rigorous ordering principle that has the potential to provide structure, hierarchy and meaning in life and in art. I investigate how these projects unfold and the difficulties they face in trying to use aesthetic tools to address problems that are primarily ethical in nature. Drawing from theoretical and philosophical texts by Alain Badiou, Theodor Adorno, Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Bloch, Peter Bürger and Georg Lukács, I show why form nevertheless presents itself as a potential alternative to an understanding of the absolute that is based in transcendence.