CHAPTER I: The far right in the German and Russian Empires
National Socialism with its intensely anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic ideology arose primarily as a synthesis of radical right German and Russian movements and ideas. This chapter illuminates the background of National Socialism's genesis by examining the development of the far right in Imperial Germany and the Russian Empire up to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. During a dynamic period of increasing industrialization and democratization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Imperial German and Russian radical rightists feared for their elevated societal positions, and they developed intensely anti-Western, anti-socialist, and anti-Semitic views. These beliefs later found prominent expression in Hitler's National Socialist movement, which fought against what it perceived to be an insidious international Jewish alliance between ravenous finance capitalism and murderous Bolshevism.
Volkisch German ideology increasingly represented Jews as racial parasites, but it also regarded the Jewish essence metaphysically as the manifestation of shallow materialism. In the spirit of the "denial of the will to live," a concept that the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer championed, volkisch theorists such as the composer Richard Wagner and the author Houston Stewart Chamberlain sought German religious redemption. This German struggle against the perceived worldly Jewish nature primarily took place on the spiritual plane and not on the political stage. While volkisch ideologues in Imperial Germany developed a substantial ideology based on hopes for German inner redemption as racially and spiritually superior beings, they could not achieve anything approaching the modest political success of Imperial Russian far rightists in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917.
In the Russian Empire, "conservative revolutionaries," to borrow a phrase from one of their leading members, the author Fedor Dostoevskii, demonstrated more vitality than their right-wing German counterparts. They used religiously inspired notions of Orthodox Christian superiority and the apocalyptic battle for Russia's salvation from scheming Jews in a moderately successful political struggle against perceived materialistic, westernizing, and socialist Jewish elements. At the height of their powers immediately following the 1905 Revolution, Imperial Russian far rightists, most notably members of the Soiuz russkago naroda (Union of the Russian People), disseminated their anti-Western, anti-socialist, and anti-Semitic message to the broad masses far more effectively than pre-World War I volkisch Germans ever did.
I read the news about Kelsiyev [1] with much emotion. That's the right way, that's truth and reason! But be you very sure of this that (of course excepting the Poles) all our Liberals of socialistic leanings will rage like wild beasts. It will thrill them to the marrow. They'll hate it worse than if all their noses had been cut off. What are they to say now, whom now shall they bespatter? The most they can do is to gnash their teeth; and everyone at home quite understands that. Have you ever yet heard a sensible idea from any of our Liberals? They can but gnash their teeth, at any time; and indeed it mightily impresses school-boys. Of Kelsiyev, it will now be maintained that he has denounced them all. By God, you'll see that I am right. But can anyone "denounce" them, I ask you? In the first place, they have themselves compromised themselves; in the second who takes the slightest interest in them? They're not worth denouncing! . . .
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Notes:
1 V. Kelsiyev, a political emigre, and collaborator with Herzen. He came back to Russia penitent, and became a collaborator on the extremely conservative Roussky Viestnik.
-- Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends, translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne
Ultimately, far right alignments in Imperial Germany and the Russian Empire failed to develop into powerful societal forces. Volkisch German political activities culminated in "national opposition" efforts to replace Kaiser Wilhelm Hohenzollern II, seen as a weak leader, with a military dictatorship under the volkisch General Erich von Ludendorff in 1917. These endeavors miscarried. After a brief period of moderate success, Imperial Russian radical rightists faded into relative political insignificance. While they sought to uphold the autocratic prerogatives of Tsar Nikolai Romanov II, they could not thwart either the Tsar's abdication or the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917. German and Russian far right movements only came into vogue after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the defeat of Imperial Germany in World War I. Volkisch Germans, including National Socialists, and White emigres blamed both of these catastrophes primarily on sinister international Jewish conspirators.
THE VOLKISCH RIGHT IN IMPERIAL GERMANY
In order to understand the rise of volkisch ideology in Germany, one must examine the political development of the German state. The German Empire became a political entity only in 1871, and even then it failed to include millions of ethnic Germans. Late and incomplete German unification spurred a substantial volkisch ideology in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that Hitler ultimately drew upon. The adjective "volkisch" derives from the word "Volk" (people). Proponents of volkisch thought believed the German people to be an autonomous agent above the state largely because of its transcendental essence. [1] Volkisch ideas developed from German Romanticism, which opposed parliamentarianism, Westernism, and the Jewish spirit. Volkisch theorists rejected the modern, liberal, and capitalist world they associated with soulless Western Zivilisation (civilization) in favor of an organic and spiritual Gemeinschaft (community). Volkisch ideologues equated Jews with an essentially pernicious materialism. [2]
The historian Saul Friedlander has termed one current of volkisch ideology "redemptive anti-Semitism." This spiritual aspect of the volkisch movement conceived the "sacredness of Aryan blood" and fused this belief "with a decidedly religious vision, that of the need for a German (or Aryan) Christianity." [3] The transcendental ideas of the German philosopher Schopenhauer helped to crystallize the redemptive features of volkisch thought. In his 1844 magnum opus, The World as Will and Idea, Schopenhauer expressed a concept that developed into an important component of later volkisch beliefs, namely that the denial of the will to live led to salvation.
In The World as Will and Idea, Schopenhauer argued that most people strove to affirm their "will to live" with "sufficient success to keep them from despair, and sufficient failure to keep them from ennui and its consequences." The enlightened few, however, realized: "Existence is certainly to be regarded as an erring, to return from which is salvation." He found this belief to play a central role in Christianity. He maintained, "The doctrine of original sin (assertion of the will) and of salvation (denial of the will) is the great truth which constitutes the essence of Christianity." Thus true Christians had to deny their worldly desires in order to achieve spiritual purity.
Schopenhauer did not explicitly attribute the ability to deny the will to live to Germans or Aryans, but he did argue that Jews lacked this capacity. He stressed, "Christianity belongs to the ancient, true, and sublime faith of mankind, which is opposed to the false, shallow, and injurious optimism which exhibits itself in ... Judaism." He further asserted that the Old Testament was "foreign to true Christianity; for in the New Testament the world is always spoken of as something to which one does not belong, which one does not love, nay, whose lord is the devil." [4] Schopenhauer upheld Christian idealism as the opposite of Jewish materialism.
What is opposed to this really Christian fundamental view is everywhere and always only the Old Testament, with its [x]. [21] This appears with particular distinctness from that important third book of the Stromata of Clement. Arguing against the above-mentioned Encratite heretics, he there always confronts them merely with Judaism and its optimistic history of creation, with which the world-denying tendency of the New Testament is most certainly in contradiction. But the connexion of the New Testament with the Old is at bottom only an external, accidental, and in fact forced one; and, as I have said, this offered a sole point of contact for the Christian teaching only in the story of the Fall, which, moreover, in the Old Testament is isolated, and is not further utilized. Yet according to the Gospel account, it is just the orthodox followers of the Old Testament who bring about the crucifixion of the Founder, because they consider his teachings to be in contradiction with their own. In the above-mentioned third book of the Stromata of Clement the antagonism between optimism together with theism on the one hand, and pessimism together with asceticism on the other, comes out with surprising distinctness. This book is directed against the Gnostics, who taught precisely pessimism and asceticism, particularly (abstinence of every kind, but especially from all sexual satisfaction); for this reason, Clement vigorously censures them. But at the same time it becomes apparent that the spirit of the Old Testament stands in this antagonism with that of the New. For, apart from the Fall which appears in the Old Testament like an hors d'oeuvre, the spirit of the Old Testament is diametrically opposed to that of the New; the former is optimistic, and the latter pessimistic. This contradiction is brought out by Clement himself at the end of the eleventh chapter ( ), [22] although he will not admit it, but declares it to be apparent, like the good Jew that he is. In general, it is interesting to see how for Clement the New and Old Testaments always get mixed up, and how he strives to reconcile them, yet often drives out the New Testament with the Old. At the very beginning of the third chapter he objects to the Marcionites for having found fault with the creation, after the manner of Plato and Pythagoras, since Marcion teaches that nature is bad and made of bad material ( ); hence this world should not be populated, but man should abstain from marriage ( ). Now Clement, to whom the Old Testament is generally much more congenial and convincing than the New, takes this very much amiss. He sees in this their flagrant ingratitude, enmity, and resentment towards him who made the world, towards the just demiurge, whose work they themselves are. In godless rebellion "forsaking the natural disposition," they nevertheless disdained to make use of his creatures ( ). [23] Here in his holy ardour he will not allow the Marcionites even the honour of originality, but, armed with his well-known erudition, he reproaches them and supports his case with the finest quotations, that the ancient philosophers, that Heraclitus and Empedocles, Pythagoras and Plato, Orpheus and Pindar, Herodotus and Euripides, and in addition the Sibyls, already deeply deplored the wretched nature of the world, and thus taught pessimism. Now he does not notice in this scholarly enthusiasm that precisely in this way he is providing grist to the mill of the Marcionites, for he shows indeed that "All the wisest of all the ages" have taught and sung the same thing as they. On the contrary, he confidently and boldly quotes the most decided and emphatic utterances of the ancients in that sense. Of course, he is not put out by them; sages may lament the melancholy nature of existence, poets may pour out the most affecting lamentations about it, nature and experience may cry out ever so loudly against optimism; all this does not disturb our Church Father; he still holds his Jewish revelation in his hand, and remains confident. The demiurge has made the world; from this it is a priori certain that it is excellent, no matter what it looks like. It is then just the same with the second point, with the [x], by which, according to his view, the Marcionites reveal their ingratitude to the demiurge ( ), and the stubbornness with which they reject his gifts ( ). The tragic poets had already paved the way for the Encratites (to the detriment of their originality), and had said the same thing. Thus they lamented the infinite misery of existence, and added that it is better to bring no children into such a world. Again he supports this with the finest passages, and at the same time accuses the Pythagoreans of having renounced sexual pleasure for this reason. All this, however, does not worry him at all; he sticks to his principle that through their abstinence all these sin against the demiurge, since they teach that one should not marry, should not beget children, should not bring into the world new miserable beings, should not produce fresh fodder for death ( [x] c. 6). [24] Since the learned Church Father thus denounces, he does not appear to have foreseen that, just after his time, the celibacy of the Christian priesthood would be introduced more and more, and finally in the eleventh century would be passed into law, because it is in keeping with the spirit of the New Testament. It is precisely this spirit that the Gnostics grasped more profoundly and understood better than did our Church Father, who was more of a Jew than a Christian. The point of view of the Gnostics stands out very clearly at the beginning of the ninth chapter, where the following is quoted from the Gospel of the Egyptians: (Aiunt enim dixisse Servatorem: "Veni ad dissolvendum opera feminae": feminae quidem, cupiditatis,' opera autem, generationem et interitum); [25] but particularly at the end of the thirteenth chapter and at the beginning of the fourteenth. The Church, of course, had to consider how to set on its feet a religion that could also walk and stand in the world as it is, and among men; she therefore declared these men to be heretics. At the conclusion of the seventh chapter, our Church Father sets up Indian asceticism as bad in opposition to the Christian-Jewish; here is clearly brought out the fundamental difference in the spirit of the two religions. In Judaism and Christianity, everything runs back to obedience or disobedience to God's command, as befits us creatures, (nobis qui ab Omnipotentis voluntate effecti sumus) [26] c. 14. Then comes, as a second duty, to serve the Lord, to praise his works, and to overflow with thankfulness. In Brahmanism and Buddhism, of course, the matter has quite a different aspect, since in the latter all improvement, conversion, and salvation to be hoped for from this world of suffering, from this Samsara, proceed from knowledge of the four fundamental truths: (1) dolor, (2) doloris ortus, (3) doloris interitus, (4) octopartita via ad doloris sedationem. [27] Dhammapada, ed. Fausboll, pp. 35 and 347. The explanation of these four truths is found in Burnouf, Introduction a l'histoire du Buddhisme, p. 629, and in all descriptions of Buddhism.
In truth it is not Judaism with its [x], [28] but Brahmanism and Buddhism that in spirit and ethical tendency are akin to Christianity. The spirit and ethical tendency, however, are the essentials of a religion, not the myths in which it clothes them. Therefore I do not abandon the belief that the teachings of Christianity are to be derived in some way from those first and original religions. I have already pointed out some traces of this in the second volume of the Parerga, § 179. In addition to these is the statement of Epiphanius (Haereses, xviii) that the first Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, who called themselves Nazarenes, abstained from all animal food. By virtue of this origin (or at any rate of this agreement), Christianity belongs to the ancient, true, and sublime faith of mankind. This faith stands in contrast to the false, shallow, and pernicious optimism that manifests itself in Greek paganism, Judaism, and Islam. To a certain extent the Zend religion holds the mean, since it opposes to Ormuzd a pessimistic counterpoise in Ahriman. The Jewish religion resulted from this Zend religion, as J. G. Rhode has thoroughly demonstrated in his book Die heilige Sage des Zendvolks; Jehovah came from Ormuzd, and Satan from Ahriman. The latter, however, plays only a very subordinate role in Judaism, in fact almost entirely disappears. In this way optimism gains the upper hand, and there is left only the myth of the Fall as a pessimistic element, which (as the fable of Meshian and Meshiane) is also taken from the Zend-Avesta, but nevertheless falls into oblivion until it, as well as Satan, is again taken up by Christianity. But Ormuzd himself is derived from Brahmanism, although from a lower region thereof; he is no other than Indra, that subordinate god of the firmament and the atmosphere, who is frequently in competition with men. This has been very clearly shown by the eminent scholar I. J. Schmidt in his work Ueber die Verwandtschaft der gnostisch-theosophischen Lehren mit den Religionssystemen des Orients, vorzuglich dem Buddhismus. This Indra-Ormuzd-Jehovah afterwards had to pass into Christianity, as that religion arose in Judaea. But in consequence of the cosmopolitan character of Christianity, he laid aside his proper name, in order to be described in the language of each converted nation by the appellative of the superhuman individuals he supplanted, as , Deus, which comes from the Sanskrit Deva (from which also devil, Teufel is derived), or among the Gothic-Germanic nations by the word God, Gott, which comes from Odin, or Wodan, Guodan, Godan. In just the same way he assumed in Islam, which also springs from Judaism, the name of Allah, which existed previously in Arabia. Analogously to this, when the gods of the Greek Olympus were transplanted to Italy in prehistoric times, they assumed the names of the gods who reigned there previously; hence among the Romans Zeus is called Jupiter, Hera Juno, Hermes Mercury, and so on. In China the first embarrassment of the missionaries arose from the fact that the Chinese language has absolutely no appellative of the kind, and also no word for creating; [29] for the three religions of China know of no gods either in the plural or in the singular.
However it may be in other respects, that [x] [30] of the Old Testament is really foreign to Christianity proper; for in the New Testament the world is generally spoken of as something to which we do not belong, which we do not love, the ruler of which, in fact, is the devil. [31] This agrees with the ascetic spirit of the denial of one's self and the overcoming of the world. Like boundless love of one's neighbour, even of one's enemy, this spirit is the fundamental characteristic which Christianity has in common with Brahmanism and Buddhism, and which is evidence of their relationship. There is nothing in which we have to distinguish the kernel from the shell so much as in Christianity. Just because I value this kernel highly, I sometimes treat the shell with little ceremony; yet it is thicker than is often supposed.
-- The World As Will and Representation, by Arthur Schopenhauer
As cited by Dietrich Eckart, Hitler's early volkisch mentor, Schopenhauer elaborated on Judaism's overwhelmingly materialistic nature in his work Parerga. He asserted, "The true Jewish religion ... is the crudest of all religions, since it is the only one that has absolutely no doctrine of immortality, nor even any trace of it." He also maintained: "Judaism ... is a religion without any metaphysical tendency." This argument corresponded with his claim that what passed for the Jewish religion merely represented a "war-cry in the subjugation of foreign peoples." [5] According to Schopenhauer, Jews focused on shallow worldly gain and could not negate the will to live in order to achieve salvation.
The real religion of the Jews, as presented and taught in Genesis and all the historical books up to the end of Chronicles, is the crudest of all religions because it is the only one that has absolutely no doctrine of immortality, not even a trace thereof. When he dies, each king, each hero or prophet, is buried with his fathers and with this everything is finished. There is no trace of any existence after death; indeed every idea of this kind seems to be purposely dismissed. For example, Jehovah delivers a long eulogy to King Josiah and ends it with the promise of a reward. It says: [x] ['Behold, I will gather thee to thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered to thy grave in peace.' 2 Chronicles 34: 28); thus he shall not live to see Nebuchadnezzar. But there is no idea of another existence after death and with it of a positive reward instead of the merely negative one of dying and of suffering no further sorrows. On the contrary, when Jehovah has sufficiently used up and tormented his handiwork and plaything, he throws it away into the ditch; that is the reward for it. Just because the religion of the Jews knows no immortality and consequently no punishments after death, Jehovah can threaten the sinner, the one who prospers on earth, only with punishing his misdeeds in the persons of his children and children's children unto the fourth generation, as may be seen in Exodus 34:7, and Numbers 14: 18. This proves the absence of any doctrine of immortality. Likewise the passage in Tobias, 3: 6, where the latter begs Jehovah to let him die, [x] ['that I may be saved, and return to dust']; nothing more, no notion of an existence after death. In the Old Testament the reward promised to virtue is to live a really long time on earth (e.g. Deuteronomy 5:16 and 33); in the Veda, on the other hand, it is not to be born again. The contempt in which the Jews were always held by contemporary peoples may have been due in great measure to the poor character of their religion. What is said in Ecclesiastes 3:19, 20 is the true sentiment of the Jews' religion. If immortality is alluded to, as in Daniel 12:2, it is as an imported foreign doctrine, as is evident from Daniel, :4 and 6. In the second book of Maccabees, chapter 7, the doctrine of immortality appears clearly to be of Babylonian origin. All other religions, those of the Indians, both Brahmans and Buddhists, of the Egyptians, Persians, and even of the Druids, teach immortality and, with the exception of the Persians in the Zendavesta, metempsychosis as well. D. G. v. Ekendahl establishes in his review of the Svenska Siare och Skalder of Atterbom, in the Blatter fur litter. Unterhaltung, 25 August 1843, that the Edda, especially the Voluspa, teaches transmigration of souls. Even Greeks and Romans had something post letum ['after death'], namely Tartarus and Elysium, and said:unt aliquid manes, letum non omnia finit:
Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.
Propertius, IV. 7.
['The shades of the departed are still something, death does not end all: the lurid shadow rises triumphant from the fiery flames.']
Speaking generally, the really essential element in a religion as such consists in the conviction it gives that our existence proper is not limited to our life, but is infinite. Now this wretched religion of the Jews does not do this at all, in fact it does not even attempt it. It is, therefore, the crudest and poorest of all religions and consists merely in an absurd and revolting theism. It amounts to this that the [x] ['Lord'], who has created the world, desires to be worshipped and adored; and so above all he is jealous, is envious of his colleagues, of all the other gods; if sacrifices are made to them he is furious and his Jews have a bad time. All these other religions and their gods are stigmatized in the Septuagint as [x] ['abomination']; but it is crude Judaism without any immortality that really merits this description. [/b]It is most deplorable that this religion has become the basis of the prevailing religion of Europe; for it is a religion without any metaphysical tendency. While all other religions endeavour to explain to the people by symbols and parables the metaphysical significance of life, the religion of the Jews is entirely immanent and furnishes nothing but a mere war-cry in the struggle with other nations.[/b] Lessing's Erziehung des Menschmgeschlechts should be called education of the Jewish race, for the whole of the human race with the exception of these elect of God was convinced of that truth. The Jews are the chosen people of their God and he is the chosen God of his people. And this need not trouble anyone else. [x] ['I will be their God, and they shall be my people'] is a passage from one of the prophets, according to Clement of Alexandria. But when I observe that the present nations of Europe to a certain extent regard themselves as the heirs to that chosen people of God, I cannot conceal my regret. On the other hand, Judaism cannot be denied the reputation of being the only really monotheistic religion on earth; for no other religion can boast of an objective God, creator of heaven and earth.
-- Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, by Arthur Schopenhauer
In constructing his Weltanschauung of Germanic redemption through self-negation, the German composer Richard Wagner borrowed extensively from Schopenhauer's philosophy of achieving salvation by repudiating the will to live. Wagner read Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea four times in 1854 and 1855. He enthused of the philosopher: "His cardinal idea, the ultimate negation of the will to live, is terribly solemn but uniquely redeeming. It was not new to me, of course, and cannot be entertained at all by anyone in whom it does not already reside." [6] Wagner ultimately claimed that the only path to "true hope" meant establishing "the Schopenhauerian philosophy as the basis of all further intellectual and moral culture.'' [7]
Wagner expressed anti-Semitic views in his schema of attaining salvation by negating the will to live. He ended his notorious essay, "Judaism in Music," which he originally wrote in 1850 and revised in 1869, by urging "the Jew" to attain redemption along with the German, for which he would have "to cease being a Jew." Wagner named a Jewish author, Ludwig Borne, who had achieved this transformation after realizing that the Jews could only find salvation with their "redemption into true men." Wagner stressed, "Borne of all people teaches us as well that this redemption ... costs sweat, affliction, anxieties, and an abundance of pain and suffering." He then exhorted the Jews:
Take part in this regenerative work of redemption through self-destruction. and then we will be united and undifferentiated! But consider that only one thing can be your redemption from the curse that weighs heavily upon you: the redemption of Ahasuerus: downfall! [8]
In this passage, Wagner referred to the myth of Ahasuerus, or the Wandering Jew, a cobbler who, according to seventeenth-century legend, had mocked Jesus and had thereby brought a curse upon himself to live until the second coming of Christ. Only then would he be granted the release of death. [9] Wagner called upon the Jews to join the Germans in effecting regenerative redemption through self-negation. By admonishing them that only their downfall would redeem them, however, he seems to have thought that this in itself would daunt them. For Wagner, the Jews remained too attached to their own worldly interests to renounce their materialism, and thus they would by and large remain beyond the bounds of redemption.
Ahasuerus, the wandering Jew, is nothing but the personification of the whole Jewish race. Since he sinned grievously against the Saviour and World-Redeemer, he shall never be delivered from earthly existence and its burden and moreover shall wander homeless in foreign lands. This is just the flight and fate of the small Jewish race which, strange to relate, was driven from its native land some two thousand years ago and has ever since existed and wandered homeless. On the other hand, many great and illustrious nations with which this pettifogging little nation cannot possibly be compared, such as the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Etruscans and others have passed to eternal rest and entirely disappeared. And so even today, this gens extorris, [26] this John Lackland among the nations, is to be found all over the globe, nowhere at home and nowhere strangers. Moreover, it asserts its nationality with unprecedented obstinacy and, mindful of Abraham who dwelt in Canaan as a stranger but who gradually became master of the whole land, as his God had promised him (Genesis 17: 8), it would also like to set foot somewhere and take root in order to arrive once more at a country, without which, of course, a people is like a ball floating in air.* Till then, it lives parasitically on other nations and their soil; but yet it is inspired with the liveliest patriotism for its own nation. This is seen in the very firm way in which Jews stick together on the principle of each for all and all for each, so that this patriotism sine patria inspires greater enthusiasm than does any other. The rest of the Jews are the fatherland of the Jew; and so he fights for them as he would pro ara et focis, [27] and no community on earth sticks so firmly together as does this. It follows from this that it is absurd to want to concede to them a share in the government or administration of any country. Originally amalgamated and one with their state, their religion is by no means the main issue here, but rather merely the bond that holds them together, the point de ralliement, [28] and the banner whereby they recognize one another. This is also seen in the fact that even the converted Jew who has been baptized does not by any means bring upon himself the hatred and loathing of all the rest, as do all other apostates. On the contrary, he continues as a rule to be their friend and companion and to regard them as his true countrymen, naturally with a few orthodox exceptions. Even in the case of the regular and solemn Jewish prayer for which ten must be present, a Jew turned Christian, but no other Christian, may be present if one of the ten is missing. The same holds good of all the other religious acts. The case would be even clearer if Christianity were to decline and cease altogether; for then the Jews would not on that account cease to exist and to hang together as Jews, separately and by themselves. Accordingly, it is an extremely superficial and false view to regard the Jews merely as a religious sect. But if, in order to countenance this error, Judaism is described by an expression borrowed from the Christian Church as 'Jewish Confession', then this is a fundamentally false expression which is deliberately calculated to mislead and should not be allowed at all. On the contrary, 'Jewish Nation' is the correct expression. The Jews have absolutely no confession; monotheism is part of their nationality and political constitution and is with them a matter of course. Indeed it is quite clear that monotheism and Judaism are convertible terms. The fact that the well-known faults attaching to the Jewish national character, of which a surprising absence of all that is expressed by the word verecundia [29] is the most conspicuous, although this fault is far more useful in the world than is perhaps any positive quality; the fact, I say, that such faults are to be attributed mainly to the long and unjust oppression they have suffered, excuses them, it is true, but does not do away with them. I am bound to praise absolutely the rational Jew who, on giving up old myths, humbug, and prejudices by being baptized, quits an association that brings him neither honour nor advantage (although the latter occurs in exceptional cases), even if he should not take the Christian faith very seriously. For is this not the case with every young Christian who repeats his credo at his confirmation? To save him even this step, however, and to bring to an end in the gentlest manner the whole tragi-comic state of affairs, the best way is certainly for marriages to be permitted and even encouraged between Jews and Gentiles. The Church cannot object to this for there is the authority of the apostle himself (1 Corinthians 7: 12-16). Then in the course of a hundred years, there will be only a very few Jews left and soon the ghost will be exorcized. Ahasuerus will be buried and the chosen people will not know where their abode was. This desirable result, however, will be frustrated if the emancipation of the Jews is carried to the point of their obtaining political rights, and thus an interest in the administration and government of Christian countries. For then they will be and remain Jews really only con amore. Justice demands that they should enjoy with others equal civil rights; but to concede to them a share in the running of the State is absurd. They are and remain a foreign oriental race, and so must always be regarded merely as domiciled foreigners. When some twenty-five years ago the emancipation of the Jews was debated in the English Parliament, a speaker put forward the following hypothetical case. An English Jew comes to Lisbon where he meets two men in extreme want and distress; yet it is only in his power to save one of them. Personally to him they are both strangers. Yet if one of them is an Englishman but a Christian, and the other a Portuguese but a Jew, whom will he save? I do not think that any sensible Christian and any sincere Jew will be in doubt as to the answer. But it gives us some indication of the rights to be conceded to the Jews.
-- Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, by Arthur Schopenhauer
Wagner's magnum opus, the four-part opera cycle based on Teutonic mythology and legend, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), powerfully expresses the alleged Germanic capacity to negate the will to live heroically as compared to the Jewish drive for earthly power. Wagner wrote of his work, "Here everything is tragic through and through, and the will that wanted to shape a world according to its plan can in the end attain nothing more satisfying than to break itself through a dignified downfall." [10] In the Ring, Wotan, the chief god, seeks to transcend "divine splendor's boasting ignominy." He exclaims: "I renounce my work. I only want one thing more: the end, the end!" [11]
In his quest for a "dignified downfall," Wotan arranges for his daughter, the Valkyrie Brunnhilde, to work a "world-redeeming deed." She carries out this mission by riding into the funeral pyre of her dead lover, Wotan's heroic grandson Siegfried, while wearing the ring of the Nibelung, which grants earthly power. Brunnhilde's heroic self-negation purifies the ring of its dread curse and allows Wotan to destroy Valhalla, his splendid castle in the sky, with its assembled gods and heroes. [12] After this conflagration, a purified new world arises from out of the old order's destruction. [13]
Wagner's Ring portrays heroic Germanic self-abnegation in contrast to the Jewish lust for earthly power. The Germanic deities Wotan and Brunnhilde destroy themselves to redeem the world. The fiendish Alberich, on the other hand, who crafts the accursed ring in the first place, and his son Hagen, who dastardly stabs Siegfried in the back, remain slaves to their material desires. They exhibit no redemptive spiritual tendencies. Hagen meets his doom in an ignominious manner. He leaps to his death in a final grab for the ring "as if insane." [14] Wagner intended Alberich and Hagen to represent what he regarded as the worldly and corrupting Jewish essence. Alberich symbolized the menace of purebred Jews and his son Hagen embodied the threat inherent in the bastardized offspring of Germans and Jews. [15]
-- Der Ring Des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), by Richard Wagner
In his later prose writings and in his final opera, Parsifal, Wagner advocated a "true religion" for Germans as opposed to Jews in which compassion arose from suffering. [16] He drew heavily upon Schopenhauerian thought in advocating this "true religion" based on the "annulment of the will" that could effect a "great regeneration." He stressed that Jews were incapable of attaining this "true religion." He even asserted that Jesus had not been a Jew. [17] In formulating his ideas, Wagner borrowed from the racist notions of the French author Count Arthur de Gobineau, who had released his Essai sur l'inegalite des races humaines (Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races) [The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, With Particular Reference to Their Respective Influence in the Civil and Political History of Mankind] in 1855. [18] Gobineau conceived an "Aryan ruling race." [19] Wagner, for his part, argued that the "so-called white race" manifested the "ability of deliberate suffering to an exceptional degree." [20] "The Jew," on the other hand, possessed
no religion whatsoever, but rather only a belief in certain promises of his God that by no means extends to an atemporal life beyond ... , but solely to precisely this present life on earth, on which power over everything alive and lifeless ... remains promised to his tribe. [21]
Wagner thus upheld a strict racist divide between idealistic Germans and materialistic Jews. Subsequent volkisch theorists drew upon this dichotomy.
Wagner tended to avoid concrete proposals for combating the Jewish menace, though he did address this topic on at least two occasions. He wrote in a revised version of "Judaism in Music" in 1869 that he was "unable to decide" whether the "downfall of our culture can be arrested by a violent ejection of the destructive foreign element," meaning the Jews. [22] In his 1881 essay, "Know Thyself," he prophesied that when the "demon of suffering humanity" no longer had a place to lurk among the Germans, "there will also no longer be -- any Jew." He then asserted that the "current movement that has only just become conceivable among us again could make this great solution possible for us Germans sooner than for every other nation as soon as we carry out that 'know thyself' into the innermost core of our existence." [23] While imprecise in his language, Wagner clearly displayed a menacing attitude towards Jews.
After Wagner's death in 1883, the volkisch ideologue Houston Stewart Chamberlain disseminated Wagnerian ideas to a large audience. Chamberlain was a born Englishman who married Wagner's daughter Eva and moved into Wagner's former villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth, Bavaria. [24] Chamberlain asserted in 1883: "I must confess I doubt whether humanity ever produced a greater, perhaps as great a genius as Richard Wagner." [25] His first book dealt with Wagner, the "great German Meister." In his work Richard Wagner, Chamberlain summarized many of Wagner's somewhat abstruse views. He asserted that Wagner had traced the fundamental causes of human decadence to the "deterioration of the blood" and to the "demoralizing influence of the Jews." He summed up Wagner's doctrine of regeneration as the belief, "Out of the inner negation of the world the affirmation of redemption will be born." [26]
With his major work, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which was first published in 1899 and went through twenty-four German editions by 1938, Chamberlain wished to establish himself as a great volkisch thinker in his own right. [27] He clearly owed a great debt to Wagnerian thought, however. In Foundations, Chamberlain continued in the vein of Wagner's racist dichotomy between idealistic Germans and materialistic Jews. With regard to the "Teutons," he asserted: ''A race so profoundly and inwardly religious is unknown to history." The Jewish people, on the other hand, remained "quite stunted in its religious growth."
In Chamberlain's view, the profound Germanic religious nature as opposed to the Jewish lack of deep spiritual feeling also manifested itself when one compared German and Jewish heroes. Chamberlain argued that the "Germanic" character possessed the notion of "victory in downfall (in other words, the true heroism centered in the inner motive, not in the outward distress)." This self-negating aspect as well as "loyalty" distinguished "a Siegfried, a Tristan, a Parzival" from a "Semitic Samson whose heroism lies in his hair." Chamberlain thus argued that while Jewish heroes perhaps defied death, they did not transcend it as Germanic ones did.
Chamberlain used Schopenhauerian philosophy in maintaining a spiritual gulf between Germanics and Jews. He praised the "unworldly, speculative, ideal tendency of mind" that had "received monumental expression in the nineteenth century in Schopenhauer's doctrine of the negation of the will to live." He noted: "The will is here in a way directed inwardly. This is quite different in the case of the Jew. His will at all times took an outward direction; it was the unconditional will to live." Chamberlain further argued that in opposition to the ''Aryan negation of the will," the Jews displayed the "enormous predominance of will." He asserted, "For while the Indian taught the negation of the will, and Christ its 'conversion,' religion is for the Semite the idolization of his will, its most glowing, immoderate and fanatical assertion."
Chamberlain used ominous language when he described the battle between Germanics and Jews. He emphasized: "To this day these two powers -- Jews and Teutonic races -- stand, wherever the recent spread of the Chaos has not blurred their features, now as friendly, now as hostile, but always as alien forces face to face." He warned, "No arguing about 'humanity' can alter the fact that this means a struggle. Where the struggle is not waged with cannon balls, it goes on silently in the heart of society .... But this struggle, silent though it be, is above all others a struggle for life and death." [28] Chamberlain, the leading volkisch theorist around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thus believed that an unbridgeable chasm divided will-denying Germans from will-affirming Jews.
While German far rightists who drew inspiration from the ideas of Chamberlain, Schopenhauer, and Wagner possessed a coherent volkisch ideology that asserted German racial and spiritual superiority over the materialistic Jews through the German ability to negate the will to live, the Imperial German volkisch right could not establish a politically successful movement. After the founding of the German Empire in 1871, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck focused on a "domestic preventive war" against what he perceived as dangerous internal enemies: not Jews, but Catholics, in what became known as the Kulturkampf (Culture Struggle). [29] The modest acme of anti-Semitic volkisch political success in Imperial Germany arrived in the early 1890s. In 1892, the Conservative Party adopted the Tivoli Program, which asserted: "We combat the widely obtruding and decomposing Jewish influence on our popular life." Ardent anti-Semitic parties won 2.9 percent of the parliamentary vote in 1893. After this slight victory, however, German political parties specifically devoted to anti-Semitism declined to insignificance. [30]
The most noteworthy twentieth-century Imperial German volkisch manifestation began when Heinrich Class gave the then little-known Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League) with approximately 14,000 members a pronounced anti-Semitic character when he became chairman in February 1908. [31] Class had familiarized himself with the racist ideas of Count Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He honored both thinkers as "great men." As the leader of the Pan-German League, he required the regional branches of the organization to acquaint themselves with Gobineau's work on the inequality of the races and to hold discussion sessions on it. [32] In 1909, Class released a work influenced by Chamberlain that he intended to serve as a popular history, Deutsche Geschichte (German History). He treated what he deemed the heroic struggles of Germanic peoples and also warned of the "Jewish peril." [33] He ultimately received personal praise from Chamberlain himself for his book. [34]
While the "Jewish question" had remained relatively dormant in German politics from 1894 on, it flared up again after the so-called "Jewish elections" of 1912, when the Social Democratic vote rose from 53 to 110 seats in the Reichstag, the German parliament." In response to the elections, Class wrote an anti-Semitic book, Wenn ich der Kaiser war (If I Were the Kaiser), in March and April 1912 under the pseudonym Daniel Frymann. [36] He noted: "Today the entire people is dissatisfied with the way it is governed." After remarking that the Kaiser had expressed admiration of Chamberlain and had expedited the printing of thousands of copies of Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Class asked, "Has the Kaiser read and understood the book? How is it then possible that directly afterwards he became a patron of the Jews ... ?" Class further called for the rebirth of "German idealism," and he asserted, "The Jews are the upholders and teachers of the materialism that reigns today."
In his Kaiser work, Class proposed drastically curtailing Jewish rights. He advocated halting all future Jewish immigration into Germany, expelling all Jews who had not become German citizens, and subjecting remaining Jews in Germany to alien status. All those who had belonged to the Hebraic religion in January 1871 along with the descendents of such people, even if only from one parent, were to be classified as Jews. Jews would be forbidden to serve as civil servants, officers, enlisted men, lawyers, teachers, and theater directors, and they would possess neither the right to vote nor to own land. They would only be allowed to write for "Jewish" newspapers, and they would have to pay twice as many taxes as German citizens. Class concluded his work with the appeal that the National Socialists subsequently stressed: "Germany to the Germans!" [37] Class' Kaiser book went through five editions of 5,000 copies each before World War I. Class later lamented, however, that while his work had found many readers and was generally considered "interesting," Germany's political elite had disregarded his anti-Semitic warnings and proposals. [38]
Class' Kaiser book was not the only manifestation of increased anti-Semitic activity in Germany in 1912. In February of that year, Ludwig Muller von Hausen, a fervent admirer of Schopenhauer, founded the Verband gegen Uberhebung des Judentumes (Association against the Presumption of Jewry) in Berlin. [39] The association's statutes asserted that the organization sought "to waken racial pride, to boost volkisch consciousness, and to work against any Jewish presumption." Only Germans of ''Aryan descent" could serve as regular members, while certain foreigners could become extraordinary ones. [40]
Hausen sought to gain Class' favor. He soon established that the latter had written the Kaiser book that he esteemed, and he joined Class' Pan-German League. Hausen sought to impress Class with the influence of his Association against the Presumption of Jewry. Hausen wrote Class that while his organization possessed only a few hundred members, they included large landowners, important industrialists, high-ranking governmental officials, and leading officers. [41] Incidentally, the future National Socialist Party secretary, Martin Bormann, joined Hausen's Association in July 1920. [42]
Class and Hausen established a personal relationship that thrived for a while but then deteriorated. They met for the first time in September 1913 in Berlin and then met again in October and November of that year. Class gave Hausen 1,500 marks to support the work of the Association against the Presumption of Jewry, followed by another 1,000 marks later on. [43] Class and Hausen later had a serious falling out, however, in one of the many examples of Class' pronounced weakness at maintaining amicable relations with other important volkisch leaders, ultimately including Hitler. [44] Hausen developed derogatory views of Class. He claimed in 1922, "I have never had a high opinion of Class, holding him to be a conceited, cowardly person of very mediocre education." [45]
Despite the efforts of Class and Hausen to alert the Germans to the supposed Jewish peril, anti-Semitism remained much less extreme in Imperial Germany than in France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Imperial Russia on the Eve of World War I. [46] Neither Class' Pan-German League nor Hausen's Association against the Presumption of Jewry gained mass followings. Moreover, after modest successes in the late nineteenth century, the fortunes of German parties specifically devoted to anti-Semitism declined in the prewar period. [47] German volkisch-redemptive anti-Semitism did not flourish until after the catastrophic outcome of World War I.
During World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm Hohenzollern II managed to weather national opposition intrigues from the right. The Kaiser surmounted rightist opposition stemming primarily from Heinrich Class' Pan-German League and the Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (German Fatherland Party) under Wolfgang Kapp, the Generallandschaftsdirektor (General Countryside Director) of East Prussia. [48] In late August 1917, Kapp invited his close comrade General Count Rudiger von der Goltz to collaborate in the official formation of the German Fatherland Party. [49] Kapp served as the chairman of the German Fatherland Party, and Goltz acted as the second chairman of the East Prussian branch of the organization. [50] Goltz went on to coordinate an anti-Bolshevik intervention of German/White Russian forces in Latvia in 1919 with Kapp's backing. The German Fatherland Party collected nationalist forces into a powerful behind-the-scenes force. The organization secretly planned to place Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz at the head of a nationalist German government as a "strong man" with Kapp as his advisor. [51]
The volkisch leaders Kapp and Class cooperated with one another in their national opposition undertakings. Kapp valued the right-wing activities of Class' Pan-German League. In order to gain support for his own conspiratorial alliance, Kapp asked Class to serve on the German Fatherland Party's Advisory Committee. Class agreed. By this time, membership in Class' Pan-German League had reached 37,000. The volkisch theorist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who had been granted German citizenship in August 1916, played a leading role in the association. [52] Kapp, Class, and Chamberlain collaborated on the editorial staff of a volkisch newspaper in 1917: Deutschlands Erneuerung: Monatsschrift for das deutsche Volk (Germanys Renewal: Monthly for the German People). This publication provided a theoretical underpinning for the German Fatherland Party's bid for power. [53]
In addition to receiving assistance for his nationalist schemes from Class and Chamberlain, Kapp obtained the support of Ludwig Muller von Hausen, the leader of the Association against the Presumption of Jewry, in 1917. Hausen had curtailed his political activities during the first half of World War I before becoming more politically active again in the war's later years. Despite his advanced age, he had served as an artillery captain on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. He had received the Iron Cross, First Class, for his efforts. He had corresponded with General Erich von Ludendorff, the chief of the Army General Staff. In fact, he had served the general in an advisory capacity. In 1917, Hausen worked to increase the membership of Kapp's German Fatherland Party. [54]
Hausen's volkisch colleague General Ludendorff played an important role in right-wing intrigues against the Kaiser. Ludendorff was Germany's most valuable military strategist as well as a leading volkisch activist who later allied himself closely with Hitler. He supported Kapp's German Fatherland Party. He regarded the organization as a means of strengthening the German will to win the war." He also followed the activities of Class' Pan-German League with great interest. He admired the association's determination to fight on until final victory. Class visited Ludendorff at Army Headquarters in October 1917 with the backing of both his Pan-German League and Kapp's German Fatherland Party. Working in the vein of what he termed "national opposition," Class tried to convince the influential general to seize dictatorial powers.
Class stressed that the Kaiser had long since lost the trust of the people, whereas the Army High Command enjoyed widespread popular support. Ludendorff should therefore inaugurate a military dictatorship to see the German people through to victory. Ludendorff replied that this plan was not realistic, since he was fully occupied with directing military affairs and could not run the country politically as well. Class and Kapp's collaboration deteriorated in the face of this setback. Frictions developed between them. Kapp jettisoned the Advisory Committee of the German Fatherland Party in which Class played a prominent role at the end of 1917. [56] The Kaiser was spared removal in a putsch from the right and instead fled to the Netherlands under the pressure of revolution from the left in November 1918.
RUSSIAN CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTIONARIES UP TO THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
In a manner similar to anti-Semitic volkisch German theorists who argued that the Germans possessed the heroic capability to achieve redemption by denying the will to live. Imperial Russian conservative revolutionaries used concepts of superior Russian or Slavic spirituality to further their anti-Western, anti-socialist, and anti-Semitic arguments. Russian far rightists also propagated apocalyptic notions of Europe's imminent demise largely through the agency of the Jews. Many conservative revolutionaries associated the Jews with the Antichrist, the foe of Jesus who is written of in the biblical Book of Revelation.
While they failed to reshape Imperial Russian society according to their desires, Imperial Russian far rightists nonetheless managed to transcend mere theoretical musings to achieve a concrete political dimension superior to that of their German counterparts. Russian conservative revolutionaries better implemented their ideas in the political sphere than politically weak volkisch leaders in Germany. Imperial Russian revolutionary nationalists urged the Russian Empire to lead the entire Slavic world in launching a determined political action to escape allegedly decadent Europe's imminent demise.
The author and journalist Fedor Dostoevskii crystallized conservative revolutionary ideology in Imperial Russia much like Wagner shaped volkisch views in Germany. Like Wagner, Dostoevskii failed at socialist revolutionary undertakings in his youth. He was even sentenced to death before receiving a last-minute reprieve. He subsequently refocused his energies into joining those whom he termed "revolutionaries ... out of conservatism." [57] Dostoevskii's intellectual development resembled that of one of his greatest literary creations, Radian Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov commits a brutal double homicide in pursuit of utopian revolutionary ideals before ultimately embracing Orthodox Christianity with its emphasis on the redemptive powers of suffering.