NAZI CULTURE: INTELLECTUAL, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL LIFE IN THE

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PART 2 OF 2

The Earth-Centered Jew Lacks a Soul, by ALFRED ROSENBERG

Let us repeat once more, and again and again, the most important point that has been made up to now: the Jewish religion completely lacks the belief in a supra-sensible Beyond. Indeed, one even gets an almost positive impression that, in the course of time, everything that in the least could foster a belief in an incorporeal life after death was intentionally eliminated. The Jews, with their religion oriented to purely earthly affairs, stand alone in the world! This should not be forgotten for a single moment; it is highly significant. For it is this exceptional situation which explains why a "shady nation" such as that of the Jews has survived the greatest and most glorious nations, and will continue to survive, until the end of all time, until the hour of salvation strikes for all mankind. The Jewish nation will not perish before this hour strikes. The world is preserved, as we shall see, only by a positive yea-saying to the world. Among the Jewish people this world-affirmation is totally pure, without any admixture of world-denial. All other nations that have ever existed, and exist today, had, or have, such an admixture, characterized by the idea of a Hereafter, even if only a trace of it. This mere trace would have sufficed, or would suffice, to provide the necessary counterweight to the unadulterated yea-saying to the world, as embodied in the Jewish people. For the inner light-and belief in immortality is the inner light-does not need always to shine with the brightest glow in order to produce an effect; it must simply be there, it must not be allowed to be snuffed out, or otherwise mankind would be lost forever to the terrestrial world. Everything takes its own time, however, a fact which is all too often overlooked. The denial of the world needs a still longer time in order to grow so that it will acquire a lasting predominance over affirmation of the world. At this time it seems again to have sunk to a zero point; its opposite, symbolized by the Jewish people, is triumphant as never before. It seems as if the inner light has completely vanished from this earth. But, to anticipate, it merely seems that way. Denial of the world cannot perish because it is part of the soul of mankind and the soul is immortal. Where the idea of the immortal dwells, the longing for the eternal or the withdrawal from temporality must always emerge again; hence a denial of the world will always reappear. And this is the meaning of the non-Jewish peoples: they are the custodians of world-negation, of the idea of the Hereafter, even if they maintain it in the poorest way. Hence, One or another of them can quietly go under, but what really matters lives on in their descendants. If, however, the Jewish people were to perish, no nation would be left which would hold world-affirmation in high esteem -- the end of all time would be here.

This would also be the case if the Zionist idea were to become a reality, namely, if the entire Jewish people would unite to become a national entity in Palestine Or somewhere else. Such a unification of Jews has never existed before: this must be stressed not twice but three times, inasmuch as it is little known. Long before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem a large part of the Jews lived in the diaspora, that is, dispersed among the "heathen" people. And, as every schoolboy knows, at the beginning of their history they were "guests" among the Egyptians. What arose afterward in Palestine was anything but a state structure. At best it was an attempt to build one, when it was not a preparatory school for the exploitation or the destruction of foreign peoples. To the Jew Weininger [1] his own nation is like an invisible cohesive web of slime fungus (plasmodium), existing since time immemorial and spread over the entire earth; and this expansionism, as he correctly observes (without, of course, proving it), is an essential component of the idea, of the nature of Judaism. This immediately becomes clear if we again regard the Jewish people as the embodiment of world-affirmation. Without it, nothing of a terrestrial character, and thus no nation, is conceivable. Hence, the Jew, the only consistent and consequently the only viable yea-sayer to the world, must be found wherever other men bear in themselves -- if only in the tiniest degree -- a compulsion to overcome the world. The Jew represents the still necessary counterweight to them; otherwise that urgent craving would be fulfilled immediately and thereby would not usher in the salvation of the world (since the Jewish people would still remain in existence), but would destroy it in a different way through the elimination of the spiritual power without which it cannot exist either. I will discuss this idea more fully later on; here I wish merely to demonstrate that the world could not exist if the Jews were living by themselves. This is why an old prophecy proclaims that the end of the world will arrive on the day when the Jews will have established the state of Palestine ...

From all this it follows that Judaism is part of the organism of mankind just as, let us say, certain bacteria are part of man's body, and indeed the Jews are as necessary as bacteria. The body contains, as we know, a host of tiny organisms without which it would perish, even though they feed on it. Similarly, mankind needs the Jewish strain in order to preserve its vitality until its earthly mission is fulfilled. In other words, the world-affirmation exemplified by Judaism in its purest form, though disastrous in itself, is a condition of man's earthly being -- as long as men exist -- and we cannot even imagine its nonexistence. It will collapse only when all mankind is redeemed.

Thus, we are obliged to accept the Jews among us as a necessary evil, for who knows how many thousands of years to come. But just as the body would become stunted if the bacteria increased beyond a salutary number, our nation too -- to describe a more limited circle -- would gradually succumb to a spiritual malady if the Jew were to become too much for it. Were he to leave us entirely (this is the aim of Zionism, or at least what it pretends to be) it would be just as disastrous as if he were to dominate us. The mission of the German nation will come to an end -- and this is my firm conviction-with the last hour of mankind. But we could never reach it if we lost world affirmation, the Jew among us, because no life is possible without world-affirmation. On the other hand, if the Jew were continually to stifle us, we would never be able to fulfill our mission, which is the salvation of the world, but would, to be frank, succumb to insanity, for pure world-affirmation, the unrestrained will for a vain existence, leads to no other goal. It would literally lead to a void, to the destruction not only of the illusory earthly world but also of the truly existent, the spiritual. Considered in himself the Jew represents nothing else but this blind will for destruction, the insanity of mankind. It is known that Jewish people are especially prone to mental disease. "Dominated by delusions," said Schopenhauer about the Jew.... To strip the world of its soul, that and nothing else is what Judaism wants. This, however, would be tantamount to the world's destruction.

Even now, while the Jews still live among us, all their undertakings reveal this aim, and necessarily so. Their aim is to strip mankind of its soul. This is why they endeavor to break any form behind which the living soul is operative. For as arch-materialists it is their insane opinion that it is precisely the spiritual, which they sense only obscurely, that is connected with the form as a matter of life and death and must perish with it. Hence they are also, all and sundry, anarchists, consciously or unconsciously. In fact, they cannot be anything else but opponents of order and law, because order and law, in a unique way, bear the radiant imprint of a purer world. Schiller calls order "the daughter of heaven," and for the divine origin of law we find much evidence in Schiller and still more in Goethe.

Without order and law no conception of state can be actualized, since they are the indispensable foundation for it. For this very reason, the Jew, the mortal enemy of order and law, can never create a viable state in Palestine. The result would again be chaos. For this word, correctly translated, means an infinite void, nothingness.

[From Dietrich Eckart: Ein Vermachtnis, edited by Alfred Rosenberg (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher Nachf., 1928), pp. 214-219.]

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Notes:

1. Otto Weininger (1880-1903) wrote Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character) (1903), which became a classic not only of Jewish self-hate but also of racist literature.

Heredity and Racial Biology for Students, by JAKOB GRAF

The Aryan: The Creative Force in Human History

In the second millennium B.C. the Aryans (the Nordic race) invaded India and established Aryan culture there. A branch related to the Aryans created the foundations for the power and the flowering of the Persian empire. Ancient Hellenic culture likewise is traceable to the blood of Nordic immigrants. Paintings that have come down to us, as well as descriptions dating from that period, attest to the fact that the Hellenes, as long as they kept their race pure, were tall, light-skinned, light-eyed, blond people. The Roman Empire was founded by the Italics, who were related to the Celts. With the vanishing of the Nordic component-that is, with the disappearance of Nordic blood-the fate of these proud empires was sealed. The Goths, Franks, Vandals, and Normans, too, were peoples of Nordic blood. A renaissance took place only in the Western Roman Empire, not in its eastern counterpart, because in the west Nordic blood developed its creative power in the form of the Longobards. Remnants of the western Goths created a Spanish empire. The spread of Christianity in northern and eastern Europe was in the main supported by Nordic people, and the Nordic longing for freedom of the spirit found powerful expression in the Reformation. It was Nordic energy and boldness that were responsible for the power and prestige enjoyed by small nations such as the Netherlands and Sweden. The successors of the northern Franks, Goths, and Germanic peoples created the might and greatness of France in the past centuries, and even the Russian empire was founded by Normans. The opening up of North America, South Africa, and Australia was carried out with unequaled success by the Anglo-Saxons, the descendants of the Saxons and Normans. Everywhere Nordic creative power has built mighty empires with high-minded ideas, and to this very day Aryan languages and cultural values are spread over a large part of the world, though the creative Nordic blood has long since vanished in many places. Ethnological historical research has proved that the Nordic race has produced a great many more highly talented people than any other race.

Nordic boldness not only is a precondition for the martial exploits of nations of Nordic origin, but it is also a prerequisite for the courageous profession of new, great ideas.

How We Can Learn to Recognize a Person's Race

ASSIGNMENTS

I. Summarize the spiritual characteristics of the individual races.

2. Collect from stories, essays, and poems examples of ethnological illustrations. Underline those terms which describe the type and mode of the expression of the soul.

3. What are the expressions, gestures, and movements which allow us to make conclusions as to the attitude of the racial soul?

4. Determine also the physical features which go hand in hand with the specific racial soul characteristics of the individual figures.

5. Try to discover the intrinsic nature of the racial soul through the characters in stories and poetical works in terms of their inner attitude. Apply this mode of observation to persons in your own environment.

6. Collect propaganda posters and caricatures tor your race book and arrange them according to a racial scheme. What image of beauty is emphasized by the artist (a) in posters publicizing sports and travel? (b) in publicity for cosmetics? How are hunters, mountain climbers, and shepherds drawn?

7. Collect from illustrated magazines, newspapers, etc., pictures of great scholars, statesmen, artists, and others who distinguished themselves by their special accomplishments (for example, in economic life, politics, sports). Determine the preponderant race and admixture, according to physical characteristics. Repeat this exercise with the pictures of great men of all nations and times.

8. When viewing monuments, busts, etc., be sure to pay attention to the race of the person portrayed with respect to figure, bearing, and physical characteristics. Try to harmonize these determinations with the features of the racial soul.

9. Observe people whose special racial features have drawn your attention, also with respect to their bearing when moving or when speaking. Observe their expressions and gestures.

10. Observe the Jew: his way of walking, his bearing, gestures, and movements when talking.

11. What strikes you about the way a Jew talks and sings?

12. What are the occupations engaged in by the Jews of your acquaintance?

13. What are the occupations in which Jews are not to be found? Explain this phenomenon on the basis of the character of the Jew's soul.

14. In what stories, descriptions, and poems do you find the psychical character of the Jew pertinently portrayed. ("The Jew in the Prickle" from Grimm's Fairy Tales; Debit and Credit by Gustav Freytag; Ut mine Stromtid by Fritz Reuter; The Hunger Pastor by Wilhelm Raabe; The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare. [1]) Give more examples.

From Jakob Graf, Familienkunde und Rassenbiologie fur Schuler (2nd ed.; Munich, 1935), pp. 107, 114-115.

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Notes:

1. All these works were widely read, and in all of them the Jewish stereotype appears, even if not yet dressed up in racial garb. With the exception of Shakespeare, the authors lived in the nineteenth century.

The New Biology: Training in Racial Citizenship, by PAUL BROHMER

How did it come about that Darwin's doctrine aroused his contemporaries to such a pitch of violence, that passionate quarrels broke out for and against the new theory? His fellow biologists soon espoused one or the other shadings of the Law of Descent.... The success of this doctrine derived from the fact that all events in nature were reduced to a single formula by which everything was explained.... In addition, there was also the strong desire for a mechanistic explanation of events, as this also found expression in the philosophy of positivism. Darwin's theory, however, is purely mechanistic....

From our pedagogical standpoint, which considers the task of the school to be the inculcation of Volkish thinking and volition, in opposition to the carrying-over of Darwinian ideas to the teaching of biology in schools, it can be objected that teaching these ideas will hardly serve this pedagogical aim. These teachings are, so to speak, international, since they examine all the countries of the world for the phenomena which the laws of the theory of descent supposedly predict. Thus, we find that textbooks deal with almost more foreign animals and plants than native ones; the selection is made on the basis of localities where the phenomena under consideration -- mimesis, protective coloration, adaptation -- can best be recognized. Thus the student learns all about the Indian meal moth, the walking-stick insect, the walking leaf, but not about the parasites which destroy the harvest in our own orchards or cause enormous losses in the fields of German agriculture. The student might be familiar with the Australian monotremes and marsupials, but know hardly anything about the animals and plants that are most frequently come upon in the fields and forests of the homeland.

Such knowledge may well be of use to the researcher, but not to the German who is not an expert in the field of biology. It is no exaggeration to assert that much of the subject matter of biology teaching is alien to life, the homeland, and the Volk. The reason for this aberrant development in the teaching of biology lies mainly in the fact that, owing to the tendencies of the time, the Darwinian ideas became the principal content of instruction in the schools....

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The inclusion of physiological viewpoints in the teaching of biology leads to a specific technical procedure, to an elaboration of biology as subject matter for the school based on instructive work-experience. In this sense there has already been a great improvement in the past few years. But this is not the essential problem. It is not just a question of improving the teaching procedure, but rather of transforming the content of our subject, of guiding the student to a new conception of nature! To accomplish this, teachings taken from physiology must be introduced. Consequently, this purpose is not served if a number of physiological experiments are carried out and interpreted as postscripts or appendices, so to speak. Here, too, from the very beginning the student must be guided to an over-all, total view, and not, say, to one that is encyclopedic. He should perceive and feel that behind the individual achievement there is a meaningful plan, that behind it stands the whole organism. Let us take, for example, an experiment showing the action of saliva in changing starch into sugar. This is not just a random interesting fact, but a real accomplishment, a process in the service of the preservation of the whole organism. Or, let us consider the process of seeing: the eye by itself is not able to produce any visual images but requires the cooperation of a number of organs. Thus, the act of seeing is also an accomplishment achieved by the entire organism.

These examples show us two ways in which physiology considers the whole: first, in that the accomplishment is in the service of the whole; second, in that it is achieved by the whole. Hence these two methods of observing an event from the standpoint of the whole organism are intimately connected: the conception that every occurrence is planned, as a part of the total accomplishment, and the conception of the organism as a totality, in which everything that occurs is conditioned and regulated by a meaningful plan. If we guide the student to this conception of nature as a unified totality by way of repeated concrete examples, we shall have helped to provide him, at least in this branch of biology, with a modern method of observation and he will have acquired the basis for an organic Volkish-based thinking. Naturally, this must also be done in the other branches of our subject....

The importance of emphasizing physiological ideas in the teaching of botany and zoology is also to be found in the fact that the way for it is prepared by the new teaching of anthropology. The physiological processes in plants and animals with which the student becomes acquainted create a basis for an understanding of the corresponding processes in man. In the actual teaching of anthropology, however, a strong emphasis on physiology is necessary because it prepares the way for teaching hygiene, and it certainly is a task of this branch of instruction in biology to provide a guide for a rational way of life. Individual hygiene, again, is a prerequisite for racial hygiene, which is so important. Thus the study of physiology is likewise connected with this problem. It can be successfully utilized, however, only on the basis of a total view, which must be introduced into all branches of the teaching of biology.

The concept of the total view will come to the fore in the study of living plant or animal communities more than it will in any other branch of biology teaching.... Unfortunately this idea has been understood by many methodologists in a purely external way as a principle of the organization of matter. It is more than that. Behind it stands a repudiation of an outmoded tendency in research; the aim should be to present a view of the whole, to apply methods of instruction relevant to the subject matter, to arrive at a national formulation of biology teaching and the discovery of internal interconnections in the occurrences of life. The metabolic changes in a closed biotic community reveal a meaningful plan in the greater occurrences of nature, and when we come to understand that the whole world is a living space for one biotic community, we can then discover ultimate interconnections, and finally arrive at a concept of nature that does not conflict with religious experience, whereas this was necessarily the case with the former purely mechanistic attitude.

Introducing the student to this mode of observation is in the spirit of a Volkish education. On the basis of the elaboration of the laws of biology we turn to the emotional life of the student: he must come to see Germany as his "living space" and himself as a link in the German biotic community and the German destiny; and he must regard all Germans as his blood relations, his brothers. If we reach this goal, then all party and class divisions sink into nothingness, and more is accomplished for education in citizenship than is done by studying governmental and administrative structures.

For the very reason that the theory of the biotic community is so important for the development of biological knowledge and for education in organic Volkish thinking, it would be expedient to base the school curriculum on this idea. When we go into the free, open spaces we always come upon animals and plants in their specific living space in which they form biotic communities. It is not a mechanical system which orders the natural arrangement of organisms, but the living space. This living space not only presents an external frame of community but links its inhabitants to each other with indissoluble bonds. Whoever, in teaching the concept of the biotic community, utilizes it only as a principle of the organization of matter has not grasped the deeper meaning of bionomics. He stands, as it were, in front of a deep well of precious water and draws nothing from it although his companions are dying of thirst. Thus it is a question of opening up Volkish values to the students.

At the same time this produces effects which, from a didactic point of view, are not to be scorned. For one thing, instruction along the lines of the concept of the living community compels the teacher to take his students on frequent trips outside the classroom and to collect observations for later evaluation. Thus a true teaching of life is striven for, not just an accumulation of knowledge acquired by studying "animal skeletons and dead bones." There is little justification for a "museum" biology in the instruction which we are striving to establish. Even the illustrative specimens, which in many school lessons still must serve as a substitute for nature, can be dispensed with in most cases. They may still serve as a supplement to what has been seen in a living context, but they can no longer be the source for the formation of views.

It is not enough to make one visit to a biotic community, such as a beech wood. Rather, it must be visited at least once every season. How different is the effect which a beech wood, for example, makes on us in early spring, when the ground is covered with a carpet of anemones, from that which it makes on us in midsummer, when a mysterious penumbra prevails, when it looks to us like a cathedral with high, slender columns! Anyone who absorbs the atmosphere of the landscape, its soul, begins to love his homeland, and it is precisely love of the homeland which we want to arouse and can arouse with the help of the concept of the biotic community. It is almost self-evident that educational hikes to the biotic communities in his regional environment provide the student with a knowledge that is not limited to the field of biology but includes knowledge about the homeland.

It is necessary to take several such hikes through a biotic community in order to be able to grasp fully the metabolic changes which take place within it. The seasonal changes in the world of the organisms play an important part in this metabolism. From this results a methodological conclusion of great significance. For most schools it is not feasible to deal with only one kind of biotic community in the course of a school year. Even though this would involve a very thorough investigation of one living space and its inhabitants, it is opposed by the requirements of life, which demand a certain versatility. According to my experience, it is easily possible in one school year to deal with three or four biotic communities, putting more stress on one than on the others. If it is desired to visit each one of these biotic communities at least once every season, then it is impossible to treat the individual biotic communities as self-contained teaching units -- for example, by dealing with one in the first semester, the second in the following semester, etc. Rather, the treatment of the three or four biotic communities prescribed by the school curriculum for one year would parallel each other. In this way the summer can be used mainly for gathering observations and the winter can serve more as a period of evaluation....

Another change we must make in the teaching of biology if its cultural value is to be increased concerns the position of man in our discipline. In the usual textbooks, anthropology is treated as a supplement to biology; man is dealt with in somewhat more detail than any other mammal, but according to the same points of view. The only difference is that, on the basis of the knowledge of the structure and functioning of the organs, some rules on health may be offered, and it has been said that the teaching of anthropology should offer the student a guide to intelligent living. No doubt, anthropology should fulfill this task too. But all it does is promote knowledge as such; it does not add to the growth of the student's intellectual or religious culture.... Furthermore, knowledge as an individual accomplishment must be supplemented by a knowledge of a supra-individual character, because German man must not think only of himself, but should be cognizant of his duty to place himself in the service of the people.

Our aim is not merely that man be made the object of the study of nature, but that he should also be placed as subject in the biological consideration of nature. To be sure, everybody must have a certain fund of knowledge about the structure and function of his "body tools," and everybody should also know how to keep healthy. Hence we should welcome the methodological demand that the road to the teaching of anthropology should always be prepared by the teaching of biology. Consequently, it is possible in zoology to elaborate, for example, on the nature of digestion, breathing, etc., and then refer back to it in anthropology. The study of botany, too, offers many opportunities for preparing the way for anthropological knowledge....

Beyond and above this, the place of man vis-a-vis nature must constantly be discussed in the teaching of biology. This is made easy precisely by arranging the subject matter, and the insights deriving from it, in terms of a biotic-community approach. We would start with -- since our concept of biotic community is a broad one -- the domain of "house and home." In it man is the master; he has taken into his household the animals and plants which he keeps either for his use or for his pleasure. He gives them shelter, food, and care; he has changed them through breeding and he holds their lives in his hands. Without him most of the organisms he keeps as domestic animals or indoor plants would perish. At this point we can discuss in an elementary way the attitude of man toward nature. In this biotic community we meet first and foremost the will to rule over nature, the viewpoint of utilitarianism, which is, however, accompanied by the joy in the beauty of the things of nature and love of nature itself. Similar discussions will come up in the study of biotic communities in the garden, field, and meadow.

It might be thought that with the "anthropological idea," as I should like to designate the emphasis on anthropology in biology teaching, our aim is to return to the anthropocentric point of view which has been justifiably attacked; or that we wish to foster a utilitarian pedagogy by discussing more thoroughly than was done in the past domestic animals, useful plants and their parasites, and eugenics from the viewpoint of the individual and the race. It is anthropocentric if it is assumed that nature has been created only for man. We decisively reject this attitude. According to our conception of nature, man is a link in the chain of living nature just as any other organism. On the other hand, it is a fact that man has made himself master of nature, and that he will increasingly aim to widen this mastery. The teaching of natural history must contribute to this. Thus its task is not merely to transmit theoretical knowledge, to foster joy in nature, to arouse love of one's homeland and one's country; it has, in addition, practical aims. One may call this utilitarian pedagogy if one so pleases. But in our view instruction in biology that does not take the problems of agriculture, forestry, gardening, and fishing into consideration is a failure; it is a form of teaching that is alien to the practical life of our people. School is not a research laboratory, but an institution which aims to educate Germans, and these should stand at their posts in the life of the German Volk. We are as far removed from a one-sided utilitarian viewpoint as we are from pedagogy that is alien to life....

Still more important, it seems to me, is the fact that the task of biology teaching, briefly referred to above, can be fulfilled by an orientation toward the concept of the biotic community. It must be grasped here once more on the basis of another idea. We have said that the student must be led to the conception that Germany is his living space to which he is linked by the bond of blood. We have explained in detail that the bionomic approach teaches that the organisms within a living space are dependent on each other as well as dependent upon the whole, and that each link must perform an indispensable function in the total accomplishment. When this insight is applied to the human biotic community, when the future German racial-comrade feels himself to be a link in the German biotic community, and when he is imbued with the idea of the blood relationship of all Germans, then class differences and class hatred cannot take acute forms, as was often the case in the past due to a misunderstanding of the actual bond that unites all estates together. Once every German regards Germany as his living space and feels himself to be a link in the German biotic community, he will be fully conscious of the fact that every individual within the metabolism of the biotic community into which he was born must fulfill his own important task. Thus a supra-individualistic attitude is created which constitutes the best possible foundation for training in citizenship. Indeed, it can be said that it has achieved its deepest fulfillment once this attitude is transformed into action.

Racial eugenics works in the same direction, namely, the education of the student in a national sense. Although it constitutes the finishing touch of biology teaching, its concepts should from the very beginning permeate all biological instruction in all types of schools, and not be left for discussion in anthropology, which concludes the study of biology. It should be repeatedly emphasized that the biological laws operative in animals and plants apply also to man; for example, that the knowledge acquired from studying the genetics of these organisms can, in a general way, be applied to man. Thus, the teaching of animal breeding and plant cultivation can effectively prepare the way for conceptions of racial biology. Naturally, a more systematic discussion of these questions will first take place in the teaching of anthropology.

It is not so much a matter of making the student knowledgeable on all questions of eugenics, but of creating motives for his action. Racial eugenics is particularly valuable for school because of its educational significance. If the emphasis on the ideology of the biotic community creates a feeling of belonging to our people and state, then racial eugenics creates the will to struggle, body and soul, for the growth and health of this biotic community.

This is also the place for discussing, from a biological viewpoint, the family as a value, and the improvement of the sense of family which has been sorely neglected by many modern pedagogues. The family, after all, is the smallest biotic community since it forms the germ cell of the state. If we take up these questions, the fields of individual hygiene and racial eugenics, of genetics and sex education, combine to form a meaningful unit, just as, generally, the teaching of biology, which in the past was fragmented into many unrelated individual fields, will be fused into a unified whole once our efforts achieve fruition. In these discussions on the family we are less concerned with the student's enlarging his knowledge and more with the aim that he be imbued with a sense of responsibility, that he begin to sense that the deepest meaning of human life is to grow beyond himself in his children, and that nothing he could leave to them would be more valuable than the German heritage which he has received from his ancestors, and that, through race mixing, he could taint and impair his progeny in a most unfavorable way.

Such ideas lead to an ethnology of the German people, which we mentioned earlier by way of a few pedagogical observations. All that remains to be discussed is at what stage it should be introduced. As we have explained, the way to it is already prepared in zoology and botany and it is concluded in the teaching of anthropology. Now a short remark on the goal of ethnology: the knowledge of physical and spiritual features of the individual races has little value if it does not lead to the firm will to fight against the racial deterioration of the German nation and if it does not imbue the student with the conviction that the fact of belonging to a race imposes a responsibility....

The actual method of teaching racial eugenics of necessity will vary with the individual types of schools. Even the simplest village school may not pass over these problems. It can build upon the children's own radius of experience in the fields of animal breeding and plant cultivation. From this, simple rules of heredity can be deduced; these, however, do not need to involve cellular research and the theory of chromosomes. Children are familiar with symptoms of degeneration in animals and plants, and not much initiative is required to find such signs of degeneration and decline in man too. Thus a point of departure is created for introducing racial eugenics during instruction in zoology and botany. At suitable opportunities -- this can also be done in the teaching of geography and history -- such ideas will be elaborated further until they are most fully treated in the teaching of anthropology. Not one elementary-school pupil should leave school without having internalized the iron command that he is to bear part of the responsibility for the fate of his fatherland, without the awareness that he is only a link in the chain of his ancestors and descendants and the carrier of the future generation. The higher schools can devote more time to racial eugenics: the students in the later classes are more mature than those in the elementary and intermediate schools. Here, too, the way will be prepared in zoology and botany. Further, the teaching of history can be made very meaningful through racial eugenics, since we know that modern historians consider the cause of the collapse of the ancient world to lie in non-eugenic racial mixtures....

When teaching the theory of family and race, as well as eugenics, it is methodologically important to stimulate independent activity on the part of the student to the greatest possible degree. It can be suggested that the student draw up a genealogical chart of his family as far back as he can go. In addition, he can be asked questions about the physical characteristics of his parents and other forebears as far as they can be determined (size, figure, shape of head and face, color of hair and eyes, form of nose, etc.), about their intellectual and characterological qualities, their special achievements (for example, rescues during the war, scientific or literary publications, compositions), their life span and cause of death. In given cases, deformities and hereditary diseases should also be reported. The number of children produced by the student's ancestors should be determined. This is the kind of material in which the student will be directly interested. But when explaining hereditary diseases the teacher must take care not to arouse feelings of inferiority or fear of such diseases in students who come from families with handicaps of a hereditary character. It also goes without saying that he is duty-bound to keep certain information confidential as far as the other students are concerned. In every class, then, there will be sufficient usable material which can serve as a basis for teaching in the afore-mentioned fields.

From Paul Brohmer, Biologieunterricht und volkische Erziehung (Frankfurt: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, 1933), pp. 8-10, 68-72, 74-80.

To Preserve the Strength of the Race: Compulsory Sterilization, by ERICH RISTOW

There is complete unanimity on the decision which stipulates that a recommendation of sterilization is not to be postponed for the reason that the person subject to this measure is pregnant. Consequently, the measure has to be carried out and the order thereto is to be issued by the Hereditary Health Law Court (Erbgesundheits-Gericht). [1]

The decision of the Hereditary Health Law Courts will be carried out in such a way that the ovaries of the woman are removed or unbound. Care must be taken to make it as difficult as possible, if not in fact impossible, for surgery to undo this measure, so as to avoid the rejoining of the parts that have been separated.... Persons who have been sterilized must be prevented from traveling abroad in order to have physicians there counter the effect of the surgery.

When a Hereditary Health Law Court has legally decreed the sterilization of a woman who is pregnant at the time this measure is to be carried out, the pregnancy can be interrupted with the permission of the pregnant woman, except when the fetus is already in a stage of viability or if the interruption of pregnancy would seriously endanger the woman's life or health.

From Erich Ristow, Erbgesundheitsrecht (Stuttgart and Berlin: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1935), pp. 127, 159, 226, 256.

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Notes:

1. These courts were composed of two doctors and one judge.

[admin]

PART 1 OF 2

4. Building Myths and Heroes

Editor's Introduction

MYTHS AND HEROES were all-important in what Hitler called the "magic influence" of mass suggestion. A myth is an image which can inspire men. It must have some element of truth in it, but it is twisted into a vision that conforms to the desired ideal. Nietzsche did live, and his name was familiar to most Germans, but Alfred Baeumler (b. 1887) transformed Nietzsche's thought into a myth which put the famous philosopher at the service of the Nazi world view. Baeumler stresses Nietzsche's heroism, his emphasis upon the power of the will, and his advocacy of an aristocratic community. Such ideas can be found in Nietzsche, who was a singularly unsystematic philosopher, and there can be little doubt about Nietzsche's opposition to Christianity and democracy. However, Baeumler does not mention the philosopher's hatred of nationalism and his contempt for Germans. The philosopher of the "heroic" became a part of the Nazi world view. Baeumler himself was one of the leading academic philosophers of the Third Reich. As professor at the University of Berlin, he became the chief liaison man between the German universities and Alfred Rosenberg's office, which was charged with the ideological education of the Nazi party.

Baeumler connects Nietzsche's activism to Nordic and soldierly virtues. Indeed, the war experience produced an important renewal of supposedly heroic virtues. Ernst Rohm (1887-1934) catalogues them 'for us: plain talk, defiance, passion, and hate-a soldier is rough and direct. These virtues are identical with those "genuine" qualities of the Volk which the Nazis praised so much: they are natural as opposed to artificial (see page 27). Rohm himself had fought in the First World War, and afterward against the left-wing uprisings in northern and southern Germany. Soldiering was his whole life, and he continued it when he became the leader of the SA. Rohm's autobiography is called Die Geschichte eines Hochverraters (The Story of a Traitor), and it was as a traitor that Hitler regarded him when he was murdered in 1934. In reality, he was done away with because the independence, power, and revolutionary fervor of the SA had to be brought under the Fuhrer's control.

The idealized war experience was made to serve the Nazi ideology just as Baeumler had transformed Nietzsche into a prophet for the Third Reich. Joseph Goebbels' Michael is the hero who sacrifices himself for his people. Goebbels always had literary ambitions, but Michael (1929) was his only novel, though by 1942 it had gone through seventeen editions. Michael gives up his studies to go down to the people at work, to "a war without cannons." The experience of the trenches becomes a court of appeal: there all Germans had been united, regardless of class, through their work for the Fatherland, and now they must recapture this unity once again. The anti-bourgeois prejudice of Goebbels comes through in this novel. Soldiers, students, and workers will build the new Reich. But for Goebbels, as for Hitler, "bourgeois" is not a class term, but rather a label for the older generation still imprisoned in liberalism and held enthralled by the lure of Mammon.

Michael does not succeed. At the end of the novel he is killed in a mining accident. But a heroic death in a just cause is an important factor in the building of heroes. Albert Leo Schlageter (1894-1923) became one of the most celebrated heroes of the Third Reich. He had fought against the French when they occupied the Ruhr Valley in order to obtain reparations for war damages. The French captured Schlageter, probably while he was performing an act of sabotage. He was condemned to death by a military tribunal and shot. Like Michael, he was in search of his people and, like Michael too, he died in their cause. But he was also a soldier (he had fought in the Free Corps after the war), and the slim memorial volume of his letters stresses his simplicity as well as his activism -- a note very similar to that of Rohm's autobiography and Baeumler's essay on Nietzsche.

Hanns Johst's play Schlageter had its premiere in Hitler's presence and on Hitler's birthday (April 20, 1933). It was performed throughout the Reich by a series of theatrical touring companies. Johst (b. 1890) was the only distinguished playwright to put himself wholly at the service of the Nazi cause, becoming president of the Reichsschriftstumskammer (see page 13 5). The excerpt from the play illustrates the stress put upon the differences between generations. The son wants to join his hero, Schlageter, while the father holds back. The "young generation" were the "new men" who confront the old bourgeois generation, which (so the Nazis hoped) was "finished."

Fritz Todt (1891-1942) died in the glory of his great accomplishment: the building of the Autobahnen. He was burned alive in a plane crash while returning from a visit with Hitler, whom he was then serving as Minister of Munitions. Here was a contemporary hero for whom the superhighway was symbolic of speed and activism in the service of his leader. Moreover, his work is linked to a lively sense of history and an appreciation of the genuineness of nature. But what about heroes of the past? The cult of Frederick the Great goes back to the party's years of struggle and was expanded during the war. Goebbels was the high priest of this cult. [1] Wilhelm Ihde puts forward the Nazi version of the Prussian King. His strength of will stands in the foreground, while his artistic interests and his philosophical predilections are relegated to unimportance. Such had to be the case, for Frederick was, after all, a man of the hated Enlightenment. Ihde himself was a former journalist who rose to high rank in the SS (Obersturmfuhrer) and became the director of the Reichsschriftstumskammer.

The creation of heroes and the creation of myths are closely interrelated. No doubt, for the young SA bride Hermann Goring was a living hero, surrounded as he was by the acted-out mythology of the summer solstice celebration. The marching, the torches, the fire -- this was the "magic" that produced enthusiasm among many a youth (see page 271). This account of a Nazi experience was written four years before Hitler came to power, at a time when Nazi strength had not yet made an impact upon the voting behavior of the boys' and girls' parents.

The myth was institutionalized; it became a part of the official rhythm of the Third Reich. As the instructions for festivities in the school state, the teacher battles for the human soul on the cultural- political front. Here celebrations are important, because they help root the mythology of the movement in that soul; they are indeed "confessions of faith." Like all Nazi festivities, these are set up in the form of recitations, responses, and choruses: the Christian liturgical framework is adapted to the content of the Nazi world view.

Building myths and heroes was an integral part of the Nazi cultural drive. The theme, specifically illustrated here, runs throughout this book. Racial thought produced strong myths and the peasant provided the constant culture hero of National Socialism. The flight from reason became a search for myths and heroes to believe in, and National Socialism was only too glad to provide both in full measure.

G.L.M.

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Notes:

1. Ernest K. Bramsted, Goebbels and National Socialist Propaganda, 1925-1945 (East Lansing, Mich., 1965), pp. 444-445.

Nietzsche and National Socialism, by ALFRED BAEUMLER

Nietzsche and National Socialism stand on the other side of the traditions of the German bourgeoisie. What does that mean? The spiritual forces which have formed the German bourgeoisie in the last several centuries have been Pietism, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism. Pietism was the last truly revolutionary religious movement on Lutheran soil. It led men from a hopeless political reality back into their own selves and gathered them together in small private circles. It was a religious individualism which strengthened the inclination toward concern with self, toward psychological analysis and biographical examination. Every apolitical state-alien tendency necessarily had to find support and nourishment in Pietistic Germany. The wholly different individualism of the Enlightenment also worked in this direction. This individualism was not of a religious-sentimental character. It believed in reason, it was rational, but it was "political" only in that it denied the feudal system; it was unable to erect an enduring political system of its own and was capable only of breaking the path for the economic system of capitalism. Man was viewed as a wholly individual entity, cut off from all original orders and relations, a fictitious person responsible only to himself. In contrast, Romanticism saw man again in the light of his natural and historical ties. Romanticism opened our eyes to the night, the past, our ancestors, to the mythos and the Volk. The movement that led from Herder to Gorres, to the brothers Grimm, Eichendorff, Arnim, and Savigny, [1] is the only spiritual movement that is still fully alive. It is the only movement with which Nietzsche had to wrestle....

When we call National Socialism a world view we mean that not only the bourgeois parties but also their ideologies have been annihilated. Only ill-willed persons could maintain that everything that has been created by the past must now be negated. Rather, we mean that we have entered into a new relationship with our past, that our view has been cleared for what was truly forceful in this past but which had been clouded by bourgeois ideology. In a word, we have discovered new possibilities for understanding the essence of German existence. Precisely in this Nietzsche has preceded us. We hold a view of Romanticism that is different from his. But his most personal and lonely possession, the negation of bourgeois ideology as a whole, has today become the property of a generation....

The foundations of Christian morality -- religious individualism, a guilty conscience, meekness, concern for the eternal salvation of the soul -- all are absolutely foreign to Nietzsche. He revolts against the concept of repentance: "I do not like this kind of cowardice about one's own action; one should not leave one's own self in the lurch before the assault of unexpected disgrace and vexation. Rather, an extreme pride is in order here. For, finally, what is the use! No deed can be undone by repentance." What he means here is not a reduction of responsibility, but rather its intensification. Here speaks the man who knows how much courage, how much pride, is necessary to maintain himself in the face of Fate. Out of his amor fati Nietzsche spoke contemptuously about Christianity with its "perspective of salvation." As a Nordic man he never understood for what purpose he should be "redeemed." The Mediterranean religion of salvation is alien to and far removed from his Nordic attitude. He can understand man only as a warrior against Fate. A mode of thought which sees struggle and work only as a penance appears incomprehensible to him. "Our real life is a false, apostatic, and sinful existence, a penalty existence." Sorrow, battle, work, death, are merely taken as objections to life. "Man as innocent, idle, immortal, happy -- this concept of 'highest desirability' especially must be criticized." Nietzsche turns passionately upon the monastic vita contemplativa, against Augustine's "Sabbath of all Sabbaths." He praises Luther for having made an end of the vita contemplativa. The Nordic melody of strife and labor sounds strong and clear here. The accent with which we pronounce these words today we heard from Nietzsche for the first time.

We call Nietzsche the philosopher of heroism. But that is only a half-truth if we do not regard him at the same time as the philosopher of activism. He considered himself the world-historical counterpart to Plato. "Works" result not from the desire for display, not from the acknowledgment of "extramundane" values, but from practice, from the ever repeated deed. Nietzsche employs a famous antithesis to make this clear: "First and above all there is the work. And that means training, training, training! The accompanying faith will come by itself -- of that you can be certain." Nietzsche opposes the Christian proscription of the political sphere, of the sphere of action altogether, with the thesis that also overcame the contrast between Catholicism and Protestantism (work and faith): "One has to train oneself not in the strengthening of value feelings, but in action; One has to know how to do something." In this way he re-established the purity of the sphere of action, of the political sphere.

Nietzsche's "values" have nothing to do with the Beyond, and therefore cannot be petrified into dogma. In ourselves, through us, they rise struggling to the surface; they exist only as long as we make ourselves responsible for them. When Nietzsche warns, "Be true to the Earth!" he reminds us of the idea that is rooted in our strength but does not hope for "realization" in a distant Beyond. It is not enough to point out the "this-worldly" character of Nietzsche's values if one at the same time does not want to refute the notion that values are "realized" by action. Something inferior is always attached to the "realization" of given values whether these values are of a mundane or extramundane character....

Nietzsche's Nordic and soldierly valuation opposes that of the Mediterranean world and that of the priests. His critique of religion is a criticism of the priest, and arises from the point of view of the warrior, since Nietzsche demonstrates that even the origin of religion lies in the realm of power. This explains the fateful contradiction in a morality based on the Christian religion. "To secure the rule of moral values, all kinds of unmoral forces and passions have to be enlisted. The development of moral values is the work of unmoral passions and considerations." Morality, therefore, is the creation of unmorality. "How to bring virtue to rule: This treatise deals with the great politics of virtue." It teaches for the first time "that one cannot bring about the reign of virtue by the same means used to establish any kind of rule, least of all through virtue." "One has to be very unmoral to make morality through deeds." Nietzsche replaces the bourgeois moral philosophy with the philosophy of the will to power -- in other words with the philosophy of politics. If in doing so he becomes the apologist for the "unconscious," this "unconscious" is not to be understood in terms of depth psychology. Here the concern is not with the instinctive and unconscious drives of an individual. Rather, "unconscious" here means "perfect" and "able." And beyond that, "unconscious" also means life as such, the organism, the "great reason" of the body.

Consciousness is only a tool, a detail in the totality of life. In opposition to the philosophy of the conscious, Nietzsche asserts the aristocracy of nature. But for thousands of years a life-weary morality has opposed the aristocracy of the strong and healthy. Like National Socialism, Nietzsche sees in the state, in society, the "great mandatory of life," responsible for each life's failure to life itself. "The species requires the extinction of the misfits, weaklings, and degenerates: but Christianity as a conserving force appeals especially to them." Here we encounter the basic contradiction: whether one proceeds from a natural life context or from an equality of individual souls before God. Ultimately the ideal of democratic equality rests upon the latter assumption. The former contains the foundations of a new policy. It takes unexcelled boldness to base a state upon the race. A new order of things is the natural consequence. It is this order which Nietzsche undertook to establish in opposition to the existing one.

In the face of the overpowering strength of the race, what happens to the individual? He returns -- as a single member in a community. The herd instinct is basically altogether different from the instinct of an "aristocratic society," composed of strong, natural men who do not permit their basic instincts to languish in favor of a mediocre average -- men who know how to curb and control their passions instead of weakening or negating them. This again must not be understood from an individualistic point of view. For a long time emotions will have to be kept under "tyrannical" control. This can be done only by one community, one race, one people....

If there ever was a truly German expression, it is this: One must have the need to be strong, otherwise one never will be. We Germans know what it means to maintain ourselves against all opposition. We understand the "will to power" -- even if in an altogether different manner than our enemies assume. Even in this connection, Nietzsche has supplied the deepest meaning: "We Germans demand something from ourselves that nobody expected from us -- we want more."

If today we see German youth on the march under the banner of the swastika, we are reminded of Nietzsche's "untimely meditations" in which this youth was appealed to for the first time. It is our greatest hope that the state today is wide open to our youth. And if today we shout "Heil Hitler!" to this youth, at the same time we are also hailing Nietzsche.

From Alfred Baeumler, Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte (Berlin: Junker und Dunnhaupt Verlag, 1937), pp. 283-285, 288-294.

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Notes:

1. These are all Romantic writers of the late eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century.

A Soldier Believes in Plain Talk, by ERNST ROHM

I have opened here the book of my life to the understanding friend as well as to the nagging philistine.

The narrow-minded petit bourgeois may find my attitude injudicious, but that does not bother me.

Many books have been written, but few with such reckless frankness.

Even my political friends may have found some of my opinions objectionable; my soldier's sensibility compelled me, in spite of the prevalent onesidedness of thought and feeling, to recognize the merits of the enemy no less than the shortcomings of the friend.

I am a believer in plain talk and have not hid my heart like a skeleton in the closet.

I must write without fear, with defiance -- just as it comes from my soul.

And yet nothing was further from my intention than to offend or to injure anyone. Soldiers' talk is rough and direct, but we soldiers all speak the same language and understand each other.

The "soldiers' emperor," Napoleon, is reported to have said on one occasion during his exile: "Soldiers will never be able to hate me, even if they have faced me on the battlefield."

The wife of a soldier in my company, whose political convictions were far removed from mine, said to me on one occasion: "In the heart of my husband, his captain takes the first place; there is nobody to outrank him. Only then come his mother and I."

And another of my soldiers, a Communist, during the period of the soldiers' councils, jumped up in a meeting at which the officers were being denounced, and shouted: "I don't know whether what you are saying about the officers is true, but I know that as far as my captain is concerned, it's not true."

This is the way in which the hand of a soldier reaches out beyond all differences of class,. rank, and political philosophy. Soldierly comradeship, cemented with blood, can perhaps temporarily relax, but it can never be torn out of the heart, it cannot be exterminated.

Still, all of Germany has not been awakened yet -- despite National Socialism. My words shall be a trumpet call to those who are still asleep.

I am not appealing to the hustling and sneaky trader who has made accursed gold his God, but to the warrior who is struggling in the battle of life, who wants to win freedom and with it the kingdom of heaven.

I approve of whatever serves the purpose of German freedom. I oppose whatever runs counter to it. Europe, aye, the whole world, may go down in flames -- what concern is it of ours? Germany must live and be free.

One may call me a bigoted fool -- I can't help that. I am opposed to sport in its present form and to its effects. Moreover, I consider it a definite national danger. We cannot rebuild the Fatherland with champions and artificially nurtured "big guns of sport." Only the most careful development which provides physical strength and capability, with spiritual elasticity and ethical backbone, can be of use to the Volk community. Indeed, it is in keeping with these times of pretense and advertising: rubbish, confusion of the senses and sensation, have no enduring essence. I leave the sport mania to Ullstein and Mosse. [1] I remain with Jahn. [2]

The Germans have forgotten how to hate.

Virile hate has been replaced by feminine lamentation. But he who is unable to hate cannot love either. Fanatical love and hate -- their fires kindle flames of freedom.

Passionlessness, matter-of-factness, objectivity, are impersonality, are sophistry.

Only passion gives knowledge, creates wisdom.

"Peace and order" is the battle cry of people living on pensions. In the last analysis you cannot govern a state on the basis of the needs of pensioners.

"One is being circumspect," wrote the Munchner Zeitung in 1927 on the occasion of French attacks in the occupied zone, [3] "if one peacefully takes a punch in the ears."

Translated into German it means "peace and order," hence simply shaking at the knees.

Once more to hell with this peace and prudence, with the halfhearted, the middlings, the cowards!

"Non-circumspect" persons fought four and a half years at the front! The "circumspect" ones remained at home!

"Immature" persons fought in Upper Silesia for the preservation of the Reich. The "mature" persons locked themselves behind their doors.

"Irresponsible dreamers" for years and years have called upon the people to rise up against enslavement and oppression. The "responsible politicians" of the new Germany in these same years have sold Germany lock, stock, and barrel.

Our people and Fatherland are slowly but surely going under because of "circumspection" and "maturity."

From time immemorial Germany was not suited to "diplomacy" and "politics." The sword has always determined the greatness of its history.

"I most respectfully beg of the diplomats not to lose again what the soldier has gained with his blood." This is what Blucher had to write his king, Frederick William II, after the Battle of "Belle-Alliance." [4]

Only the soldier could lead his people and Fatherland out of wretchedness and shame to freedom and honor.

From Ernst Rohm, Die Geschichte eines Hochverraters (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher Nachf., 1928), pp. 365-367. (This extract has been taken from the seventh edition, 1934.)

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Notes:

1. The two leading publishing houses of Germany.

2. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) combined patriotism, defined as allegiance to the Volkdom, with preparedness through physical fitness. He founded the gymnastic associations and the modern fraternity movement.

3. That is, the French occupation of the Ruhr Valley.

4. A battle in the wars of liberation against Napoleon.

Michael: A German Fate, by JOSEPH GOEBBELS

June 3

Intellectualism is becoming a big bore to me. I feel nauseous at every printed word. I don't find anything in it that could redeem me.

Richard wants to help me in small ways.

I cannot very well speak uncivilly to him.

***

Sometimes I sit for hours in listless indecisiveness, do nothing, and think nothing. Then again I am pursued by a thousand demons and forge plan after plan.

But I don't begin to carry any of them out. Every evening I read the Sermon on the Mount. I find no consolation in it, only despair and shame. Something is wrong about it.

***

In Germany's higher schools much work is done, but little of it for the future. It is all only day laborer's work.

The wisdom of university chairs will never be able to redeem us!

***

June7

If Christ were to be restored as he was, perhaps that would be our redemption.

***

June 10

Before me rises a new fatherland.

I am learning to love this fatherland again. And the more disgraceful its shame, the more ardent becomes my love for it.

When I see the new man, I seek first for the German man.

I will root myself in the soil of this fatherland. It is the mother of my thoughts and longings.

We will not be blind to its failures and shortcomings. But we shall love these too, because they are our failures and shortcomings.

The new nationalism desires Germany's future, not the restoration of a broken past.

What does nationalism mean? We stand by Germany because we are Germans and because Germany is Our fatherland, the German soul is our soul, because each of us is a piece of Germany's soul.

I hate the tongue-warriors who always carry the words "fatherland" and "patriotism" in their mouths.

Fatherland: that must again become something that is self-evident to us.

All of German history is nothing but a continuous chain of the battles of the German soul against its enemies.

The German soul is Faustian! In it lies the instinctive bent toward work and its possibilities and the longing for redemption from the mind.

There is a German idea, just as there is a Russian idea. They both will have to take each other's measure in the future.

***

June 15

The battle that is raging through Europe today is a battle between newly emerging aristocratic classes.

Every history-making epoch has been created by aristocrats. Aristocracy = the rule of the best.

Never do the people rule themselves. This madness has been invented by liberalism. Behind its concept of the sovereignty of the people hide the most corrupt rogues, who do not want to be recognized.

It is easy to see that it is all a cheap swindle, which can deceive only a fool whose head is stuffed with straw.

The mass is victorious: what madness! Just as if I were to say: marble makes the statue. No work of art without its creator. No people without a statesman. No world without God!

History is a sequence of many virile decisions. Armies are not victorious, but men within armies.

Europe will be reconstructed by peoples who will be the first to overcome the mass madness and find their way back to the principle of personality.

However, the new aristocracy is being created on the basis of new law. Tradition is being replaced by ability. The Best One! This title is not inherited, it has to be earned.

Geniuses are only the highest forms of expression of the national will. They represent, so to speak, the incarnation of the creative Volkdom.

No oak tree grows without soil, root, and strength. No man comes out of the unsubstantial. The people are his soil, history his root, blood his strength.

Great ideas are always championed by minorities. In the end, however, they create a condition which enables whole nations to exist.

Works of art, inventions, ideas, battles, laws, and states -- at the beginning of all of them stands always the man.

Race is the matrix of all creative forces. Humanity -- that is a mere supposition. Reality is only the Volk. Humanity is nothing but a multitude of peoples. A people is an organic entity. Humanity has only the chance to become organic.

To be organic means to possess within oneself the capability of creating organic life.

The forest is only a multiplicity of trees.

I cannot destroy nations and keep humanity alive, just as I could not uproot the trees and keep the forest.

Trees -- that is, in their totality a forest.

Peoples -- that is, in their totality humanity.

The stronger the oak grows, the more will it beautify the forest.

The more thoroughly a people is people, the greater its service to humanity ...

Everything else is invented, not organically grown. For that reason it cannot stand up to history.

A minority, if it includes the best, will turn the German fate.

We must, therefore, be more courageous, more clever, more radical, and have more character than the majority; then we will automatically be victorious.

That other peoples are ruled by their social scum should give us no headaches. The better the prospect of our success.

If the most courageous hold the helm, they shall openly pronounce: We practice dictatorship! We assume responsibility before history -- who will cast the first stone at us?

But if the cowards have the helm in their hand, they say: The people rule. They avoid responsibility and stone all those who unite to turn against this hypocrisy.

Rule will always be an affair of a minority. The people have only the choice to live under the open dictatorship of the courageous, or to die under the hypocritical democracy of cowards.

This is an account that is as simple as it is logical....

***

July 2

"1 will have to go to work, Agnes Stahl. It is my only salvation."

"You always worked."

"No, I was a dreamer, an aesthete, a fine talker.

"I wanted to redeem the world with phrases.

"I had a high regard for myself.

"But now I would like to take my place in the middle of things. Nobody can remain neutral when two enemies, armed to the teeth, battle each other for the future."

"Two enemies? Where and when?"

"Yes, you don't see it, you don't want to see it. But it's so just the same. Money has made slaves of us, but work shall make us free. With the political bourgeoisie we staggered on the edge of an abyss; but with the political working class we will achieve a resurrection."

"But you are opposed to the class struggle, and now you preach the rule of a class?"

"Labor is no class. Class derived from the economic sphere. But labor has its roots in politics. It is a historical social estate. Nations have importance only if their ruling social estate has reality. The political bourgeoisie is nothing and does not want to be anything. It wants only to live, to live wholly primitively. For that reason it is doomed to destruction.

"We can maintain life only if we are ready to die for it!

"But the working class, on the other hand, has to fulfill a mission, above all in Germany. It must free the German people internally and externally. This is a world mission. If Germany goes under, the light of the world will be extinguished."

"You are not very modest."

"Only scoundrels are modest. The less I ask for myself, the more passionately I fight for the rights of my Volk. And since I see this sold out and betrayed by the bourgeoisie, I write off the past and begin with my work from the bottom up."

"You may make revolutions, as many as you want. Fat will always swim on the surface."

"Correct, the fat ones will always say the big words; they will own country villas and will deliver the speeches on national holidays. Mass man rules today and the morrow as well. But we will engrave our name on history. We alone!

"The others live only for today. That is why they will be dead in the future. But those who are willing to renounce life today will be alive tomorrow."

"Why renunciation? Who will thank you for it?"

"Thank? I don't know the word. I want no thanks. What difference does this bit of life make?"

"But you yourself come from the bourgeoisie."

"That is why I learned to hate it so devoutly. One has to experience a thing in order to learn either to love or hate it thoroughly.

"I hate the bourgeois because he is a coward and no longer wants to fight. He is only a zoological organism, nothing else.

"Soldiers, students, and workers will build the new Reich. I was a soldier, I am a student, I want to be a worker. I have to go through all three steps to show the way. I was not granted the word, so I must begin to act. Each one to his post."

"You love to sacrifice?"

"Yes, sacrifice is necessary. I don't like it, but I must do it. I must descend to the deepest abyss. We have to begin from below.

"Up to now we were inheritors. We have accepted what was transmitted to us with thanks.

"But we must start from the beginning.

"I shall be most ruthless and completely commit myself."

"You have always been totally committed. You were always all ardor and sacrifice,"

"But in connection with wrong things. The new German man will be born in the workshops, not in books.

"We have written, twaddled, and romanticized enough. Now we must work."

"You will ruin yourself in the attempt."

"No, I shall live. I want to make a beginning."

"Work will reduce you to serfdom."

"No, I shall ennoble my work. Work is not a thing in itself, it is only a step."

"You put us all to shame."

"I can take no credit for it; I have to be and act the way I am."

Both of us are silent for a long while; it is getting late and the day is dying....

***

September 15

I feel good only if it crashes and thunders down there. When the pit props crash and the stone breaks. When the noise of work roars so that you can't hear your own voice.

Symphony of work!

Satiated, full life!

Creation! Work! To use one's hands!

To be master! Conqueror! King of life!

And then I yearn again for the divine loneliness of the mountains and the virgin white snow.

***

September 18

It is not the spirit that sets us free, nor is it work. Both are only forms of a higher power.

Struggle stands at the beginning and at the end. I have undertaken the struggle with myself. We must first overcome the scoundrel in ourselves. The rest is child's play.

Out of spirit, work, and struggle we create the motor which will set our age into motion.

It will be an age of the newly formed aristocracy of achievement.

***

September 20

Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.

I hate Mammon.

It breeds sloth and satiated rest. It poisons our own values and subjects us to the service of low and base instincts.

To me the worst day of the week is payday. They throw the money at us like bones to a dog.

This world is hard and cruel. As hard as money in the thin hands of a miser.

Thrift is a sticky virtue.

Let them collect treasures and gold -- I shall be spendthrift with the surplus of my soul.

***

Money is the yardstick for the values of liberalism. So insubstantial is this concept that it can elevate mere appearance to reality. That is what will eventually lead to its ruin. Money is the curse of labor.

One cannot set money above life. Where that is done, all noble forces must run dry.

Money is a means to an end, not an end in itself. If it becomes a purpose unto itself, then it must of necessity devaluate all labor until it becomes the means to an end.

A Volk which evaluates everything in terms of money already stands before its own dark end. It will slowly be eaten up by the disintegrating forces of gold, which since time immemorial have led peoples and cultures to ruin.

While the soldiers in the Great War offered their bodies for the protection of their homes and two million of them bled to death, the speculators coined gold out of their red and noble blood. And they later used this gold to cheat the returning soldiers out of house and home.

The war was won by money and lost by labor. The peoples are not the victors or the vanquished. They performed only day labor in the service of money, or defended work against this slave labor.

Germany battled for work. France fought for money. Labor lost the battle. Money won it.

Money rules the world! If true, this is a horrible statement. But today we die because it is a reality. Money and Jew -- they belong together.

Money is without roots. It stands above the races. Slowly it eats its way into the sound bodies of nations and little by little poisons their creative force.

We must deliver ourselves from money through struggle and work. We must destroy this delusion in ourselves. Then the Golden Calf will come crashing down.

In its deepest sense, liberalism is the philosophy of money.

Liberalism means: I believe in Mammon.

Socialism means: I believe in work. . . .

***

September 28

I'm beginning to gain recognition among my fellow workers.

Here and there one of them says a word to me. Some of them even initiate me into their sorrows and hardships.

Slowly their distrust vanishes.

Even my landlords become friendlier.

This afternoon I found a few modest flowers on my table.

How they filled me with joy!

The children now call me by name when they see me and hang on to to my hands.

***

October 3

"You're wearing yourself out, Michael. You can't keep it up. You will ruin yourself."

"A man can endue more than we think. One can't take care of oneself. One has to assume great burdens in life.

"During the war we wrested even more from our bodies and our defiance and we didn't go to ruin."

"But we suffered grievously in body and soul."

''True, Matthias, it was not easy to overcome it all. But see here, we did it together, worker and master.

"We lay together in the trenches, he who came from a palace and he who hailed from a miner's cottage.

"We clung together, became friends, and for the first time knew each other.

"But when the war was over, the unholy cleavage opened up again.

"Work is a war without cannons. Here too we must hold together, brawn and brain. We must for once understand each other, the sooner the better.

"Life is difficult. We don't have time enough to be each other's enemy. We must raise bread for the millions already born and for the millions yet to come. Otherwise, sooner or later we go to ruin."

"Yes, but none of them up there thinks as you do: only money and power count with them."

"These creatures have to be forced. There are people who are impressed only by the fist under their nose. There can be no special considerations. We young people have the greater right before history.

"The old ones don't even want to understand that we young people even exist. They defend their power to the last.

"But one day they will be defeated after all. Youth finally must be victorious.

"We young ones, we shall attack. The attacker is always stronger than the defender.

"If we free ourselves, we can also liberate the whole working class. And the liberated working class will release the Fatherland from its chains."

"What you said about labor and war is absolutely right. And the most beautiful part of it is that you yourself make these words come true.

"You do not merely mouth phrases like the others. You act.

"As soon as you arrived here, when I saw you for the first time, I knew that you were a pioneer of the idea of labor.

"Alas, we see many university students here. They are all eager and do their duty below in the pit.

"But most of them fail to understand us miners. They climb down to us. Moreover, they condescend to come down to our level. There always remains an open space between them and us. That is the reason for the brooding hatred between us and the 'white hands.'

"You will find here much animosity against the students. But I know that you want to improve things. You don't want to come down to us, you want to help us to come up to you.

"You understand how to grasp this correctly, because you see the comrade in us. Therefore you easily find the right word that opens our hearts."

I kneel beside Matthias Grutzer deep down in the pit during our breakfast break. We can only talk after long intervals and must shout in order to understand each other.

From Joseph Goebbels, Michael: Ein deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblattern (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Frz. Eher Nachf., 1929), pp. 112-115, 118-120, 137-142.

[admin]

PART 2 OF 2

Germany Must Live, by FRIEDRICH BUBENDEN

ALBERT LEO SCHLAGETER'S WAR SONG

Though at first we are but few,
You perhaps, we, a couple of others still,
The road is broad -- the aim is clear;
Forward, step by step!
Courage, come along!
Though at first we are but few,
We shall carry it off, nonetheless!

The November day of the year 1918 when Germany fell to pieces was dying, oddly worn out, languid, yellow intermingled with the bitter-sweet fragrance of falling autumn leaves.

Suddenly the stillness of death over a sea of battlefields, the stillness of death over millions of dead bodies.

At the crossroads, on the empty fields, on the cloud-enveloped mountainsides, on the wet shore, on which the waves beat sluggishly, astonished, startled faces of soldiers still hot with battle, there is a catching of breath, the restless shrugging of shoulders, a leaderless forlornness, a deeply alarmed questioning:

"Over?"

"Yes -- over!"

A war comes to an end. A world war ends with a final bang. A smirking skeleton squats and giggles inaudibly over victor and vanquished.

Who is the victor?

In this brief moment, in which the very earth stands still, nobody knows. Even afterward nobody knows.

The primordial, eternal laws governing our planet are again set in motion, and the earth rotates once more. The petrification dissolves. One draws a breath, another draws a breath. Hands, forlornly, rub foreheads. The earth rotates faster and faster, already it spins at the usual speed; by now the clever have understood. The blood again pulsates through their veins.

The smokeless chimneys of the Wendel mines on the Lorraine frontiers point like steel fingers in the air, and a lieutenant, with fluttering red ribbons in his buttonhole, stands smiling in the door of his quarters.

Discarded rifles pile up in the Cologne railroad station. anthem, also discarded, lies an inconvenient dagger, and train after train rolls, rolls, rolls eastward along the bare rails. And now men are flowing into the heart of the homeland from all sections of the front.

A small cluster of heroes remains behind in the forgotten war lands, still deeply rooted, still uncomprehending. They do not yet know that the earth is once more rotating.

Among them stands Albert Leo Schlageter.

The cowardly Soldiers' Council stepped back from their flashing, angry eyes, and even more from their clenched fists, and let them pass.

But in the homeland the Reds are victorious! Frenzy, ardor, greed for life, have replaced paralyzed shock. Liquor glasses clink. And as warehouses and granaries slowly and gradually fill up, it is forgotten that the earth's crust is cracking. Ho! Good times are here again! Business as usual! A spirit that goes arm in arm with everything that promises and pledges peace and quiet.

But one person sits restlessly there. Among students at their books. He is always on the lookout for leadership. It never comes. Shall Germany live or who? Under colorful caps in Freiburg one man moans: it is Albert Leo Schlageter.

Suddenly he disappears. Riga, German Riga calls! The battery sprays flaming lightning on narrow bridges. Riga is delivered. [1] Among those who breathe freely, the happy ones, the rejoicing ones, is Albert Leo Schlageter, the leader of that battery. Schlageter the mercenary. The mercenary?

The waves rise higher in the homeland. Greedy hands reach out for gold, which flutters away in paper form. That's nothing! Just don't listen. Enjoy life. It's peace after all! The peace of Versailles!

Only one listens: Albert Leo Schlageter! He hears the subterranean rumbling of the mountains of the Ruhr. The goaded, wild, misled Red mob rises up! The petit bourgeois only shudders. He doesn't even see the insolent, yellow Muscovite mask. Albert Leo Schlageter again, impetuously firing off his battery, scatters the Red rabble.

The easily adjusting bourgeois smiles: it wasn't so bad after all.

Where is the leadership?

Here! calls Albert Leo Schlageter! Free Corps officer in Silesia!

The Annaberg looks down on German heroes. The Pole grates his teeth, pulls back. German land is saved. But how much German land was lost altogether?

The merchants and usurers call: Away with the Free Corps that has saved us! The war is over! Now let's have some peace and quiet. Become civilians!

In the background the Marxists smile, the Communists smile, the Jews smile, a Reich government smiles contentedly.

But one man does not smile! Doesn't he take a rest then? Does Germany still call? She calls! But only to those who listen! And those who listen must withdraw. They must always be on the move. They must keep hidden. From the police and the burghers. Restlessly they move here and there. Among them again stands -- he! There he hears him call, the unnamed, unknown soldier, whom only a few know at first. He, without being called to leadership, also shouted his "Here!" Under the earth, near the Reich's capital, but nevertheless under the earth, Albert Leo Schlageter dedicated himself to the flag of this man.

But the fate of the German earth calls Albert Leo Schlageter to another task. Between the Rhine and the Ruhr the fires are burning again! According to the "Treaty and Agreement," the cowardly enemy [2] may invade and seize, jail, and assault Germany's sons and daughters; he may steal and rob. Silent war in the Ruhr territory.

Albert Leo Schlageter sets out when Germany calls again. He does not know that it is the last time in his life that Germany will call him. The war becomes increasingly more hidden, increasingly more secret. From an open fight in an open battlefield, it turns into a dark, secret, almost powerless defense. But he grits his teeth, and his fiery spirit, dampened into what only seems like powerlessness, fights on.

Muffled explosions and crashes. Railway tracks and iron bars split open! Bridges fly up in the air. Fear sits day and night in the shaking knees of the victor."

But suddenly base treachery stands alongside unfettered heroism.

Incomprehensible, this going under of the holy light in the murkiness of hell! Again and again someone must experience this on this earth, and end with death. Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do!

The cross of Golgotha is raised anew in the lonely pile in the sandpit in Golzheim. A Great One must again -- how often in world history -- sink lifeless to his knees because all the petty ones hate him, must hate him.

A salvo flashes, roars in the pale gray dawn of May 26, 1920.

Albert Leo Schlageter is dead!

Is he dead? Odd! Where he is dead everything now springs to life around him and his heroism.

He had fought on in the battalions of German heroes after the war. Alongside him, with him, before him, behind him, his comrades fought for the same prize: for Germany....

This Albert Leo Schlageter who was restless in life, because he sought Germany, now dead, spread restlessness among ever more and new thousands.

Who was Albert Leo Schlageter?

Anyone who reads these simple letters and thinks about them knows. Certainly no one could have written more simply! Was he a creator of illusions? A gifted talker? A singer of freedom? A herald of the word, a lord of speech? A poet?

This slender little volume of letters says: no!

However, this Albert Leo Schlageter, wasn't he, and isn't he, much, much more? He was nothing else, wanted and could be nothing else but a true son of his Volk and of his homeland, nothing else but a living deed!

He did not preach the deed, he was the deed itself!

But because he was a man of action and not of words, because he accepted the bitter chalice for the sake of his faith in Germany and drank it to its last dregs, standing upright, he was and is -- the German conscience!

This German conscience was threatened by struggle as long as he lived. Today the silent, despairing struggle of the unenlightened among us still goes on against this German conscience!

Again, again, and again will there be this struggle between God and the Devil, between light and darkness. It will come to an end only with the final redemption of the world.

Until then, we who call ourselves German and who feel in our blood that we are Germans must persevere in this struggle, even if it costs us our lives! We must do it, as did Albert Leo Schlageter, for the sake of Germany.

If, however, courage and strength forsake us and if we are in danger of sinking into a non-militant contemplation -- then the testament of these plain letters that have been bequeathed to us shall once more open the path to heroism. Then the German conscience in these pages shall smite us.

From the afterword to Deutschland muss leben: Gesammelte Briefe von Albert Leo Schlageter, edited by Friedrich Bubenden (Berlin: Paul Steegemann Verlag, 1931), pp. 70-75, 77-78.

_______________

Notes:

1. Delivered from the Bolshevists' advance. In 1920 they were forced to recognize the independence of Latvia, with Riga as its capital.

2. France and Belgium.

The Difference Between Generations, by HANNS JOHST

AUGUST: You won't believe it, Papa, but that's the way it is. The young people don't pay much attention to these old slogans any mare ... they're dying out ... the class struggle is dying out.

SCHNEIDER: So ... and what do you live on then?

AUGUST: The Volk community!

SCHNEIDER: And that's a slogan ... ?

AUGUST: No, it's an experience!

SCHNEIDER: My God! ... Our class struggle, our strikes, they weren't an experience, eh ...? Socialism, the International, were they fantasies maybe ...?

AUGUST: They were necessary, but they were ... they have been ... with respect to the future, that is, they are historical experiences.

SCHNEIDER: So ... and the future therefore will have your Volk community. Tell me, how do you actually envision it? Poor, rich, healthy, upper, lower, all this ceases with you, eh? A social land of Cockaine, eh ... ?

AUGUST: Look, Papa ... upper, lower, poor, rich, that always exists. It is only the importance one places on this question that is decisive.

To us life is not chopped up into working hours and furnished with price charts. Rather, we believe in human existence as a whole. None of us regards making money as the most important thing; we want to serve. The individual is a corpuscle in the bloodstream of his people.

SCHNEIDER: That is the romanticism of adolescence! Redemption of the people through minors. Rub your nose in reality first!

World views aside for now.... Let's talk about something concrete: What is the attitude of your corps and your "Volk community" toward passive resistance?

AUGUST: We want to turn it into a putsch, into a national uprising.

SCHNEIDER: Turn it into a putsch ... ?

AUGUST: You, as an old revolutionary, I must say, stress the word "putsch" rather oddly. The government either will march with us or it will vanish!

SCHNEIDER: You are talking to a regional president and he tells you: the government will raise hell with putschists!

AUGUST: I'm talking quite cheerfully and agreeably with my old father.

SCHNEIDER: Your old father is an official of the state, which considers passive resistance right and proper!

AUGUST: And your son is a revolutionary!

SCHNEIDER: My son is a lout who is going to get a box on the ears .... Now obey!

AUGUST [moves back, laughing gaily]: As a regional president you still manage things like an old work master. That's all right for teaching children good manners. But ...

SCHNEIDER: But ... but.... We oldsters are not as stupid as you youngsters imagine. To you, Schlageter and his cronies are national heroes ... to us here, they are just an event.

Schlageter is a dead man if he doesn't obey orders. The governments of Europe are agreed that the last adventurers and fanatics and firebrands and bandits of the world war must be exterminated with fire and sword!

We want peace! That's what I tell you, young man, and I stood four years under fire for Germany, as it is today and as it will remain, so long as I draw breath!

AUGUST: No!!

And I say this to you, that I have no idea of what a battle is in which equipment is decisive, or of barrages, flame-throwers, and tanks.

We young people, who stand by Schlageter, do not stand by him because he is the last soldier of the world war, but because he is the first soldier of the Third Reich!!!

CURTAIN

From Hanns Johst, Schlageter (Munich, 1934), pp. 82-85.

Fritz Todt: Contemporary Hero, by EDUARD SCHONLEBEN

At the very beginning of his work, on the occasion of the opening of the short Autobahn built to bypass the town of Opladen, on September 27, 1933, he said: "The new road of Adolf Hitler, the Autobahn, is in keeping with the essence of our National Socialism. We wish to fix our goal far ahead of us, we want to achieve our aims directly and in a straight line. We build bridges over crossroads; unnecessary connections are alien to us. We do not need switch tracks; we create for ourselves a road that leads only forward, since we need a road which permits us to maintain a speed that suits us.

"Thus do we build our roads in the Third Reich, thus do we educate our people, thus do we erect the whole National Socialist Reich."

The second secret of Dr. Todt's ability to accomplish great things was an unremitting hardness against his own self, which never permitted him to demand from others what he was unwilling to do himself. "He who is privileged to live in the times of Adolf Hitler must subordinate all desire for personal comfort to the sacred obligation of accomplishing any task the Fuhrer assigns to him."

A few sentences, typical of Dr. Todt's artistic views, must be repeated here:

"The master builder who builds in the stone-ocean of a great city must envision his creation amidst the forms and modes of human expression of earlier times. He must express the greatness of our time in relationship to the accomplishments of earlier periods. But the attitude of the master builder who is called upon to create in the wide-open space of the all-German landscape must be altogether different. His building site is the wide room of nature. The attempt to be even more monumental, even greater than nature, will seem arrogant and presumptuous."

From Eduard Schonleben, Fritz Todt: Der Mensch, der Ingenieur, der Nationalsozialist (Oldenburg: Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1943), pp. 13, 72.

Frederick the Great: Prussian Hero, by WILHELM IHDE

Anyone who understands what the ancient Greeks, in their wordly wisdom, were trying to represent by the classic figure of Prometheus may also speculate whether Frederick does not occupy in history the position of the Prometheus of the Prussian state. Obviously, in his physical stature Frederick could not compare with the muscular demigod chained to the rock. But, then, it is not always the physically heroic figures who are chosen by Fate to awaken, through their own will, the determination of a Volk. When the exulting rhythm of the Hohenfriedberger March sounded -- when flags waved proudly in the crimson dawn of the Prussian-German morning -- when the people of Berlin bared their heads in silent reverence -- when all of Europe paid more than due respect -- when the Mediterranean corsairs freed Prussian ships-when in faraway China there was awestruck whispering at the sight of the ensigns of Prussian ships-when even a sophisticated posterity must admit its unconditional admiration -- when all this happens, it is not alone due to the King of Prussia, but much more to the man Frederick, whose Prussian will overcame the weaknesses of his body and who in the forty-six years of his reign always did more than just his duty.

What is there to say of this Prussian will of Frederick's, this inflexible will to live? Fortunate is he whose will finds open doors and favor able circumstances among men and things; he may unfold the fullness of his being undisturbed. But flaming sparks are ignited only then, when the genius of a great man is engaged in desperate battle with unyielding Fate, when the harmoniously peaceful purpose of his planning is transformed into the stormy, roaring hurricane of his will. Then the human will shines as a sublime heavenly flame which illuminates true human greatness beyond all time and earthliness. Only when a man's iron will wrestles breast to breast with Fate, when, gnashing his teeth and panting, he tears the disguise from the awesome power and punishes it with the club of his will -- only then does the human spirit tear itself away from all matter and soar to the heights, leaving earth behind and boldly demanding entry into the realm of the Godhead. Only then does the reality of daily drudgery disappear before our eyes and in a flash of sudden awe we understand how man's struggling will can hurl thunderbolts which tear the rainbow-bridged path between earth and the universe and force the Godhead to extend its benediction. His will pushes the Gods from their "golden seats" and forces them to give justice to the human race.

Frederick never experienced good will and luck. From his youth he was forced to stand question and answer, to receive blows and to repay them with even harder blows. From year to year his spirit grew in this never-ending dialogue. Fate raised her own enemy. He was not concerned with the petty joys of life, he hardened his heart early and eventually grew far beyond the everyday world to greatness during the hardest battles of the Seven Years' War.

Four and a half million Prussian subjects defended themselves against a European coalition of 96 million. But Frederick could muster only 150,000 soldiers against many hundred thousands. He marched back and forth across the land, joined battle wherever the enemy could be found, and through cleverly conceived maneuvering kept the multitudinous pack of his enemies before the edge of his sword. His will made up for the lack of troops, his mind for the lack of allies....

Perhaps, then, the great King of Prussia was a philosopher? Many who understood that Frederick could not be explained either as a coldly calculating general, as an unfeeling diplomat, or as a personally ambitious statesman thought it possible to attribute these qualities to him by calling him a philosopher in whom the lives and sufferings of his subjects and the wishes of the surrounding world aroused no sympathy. Nothing could be more wrong than such fabrications! Of course, he was called the Philosopher of Sanssouci, [1] but this philosopher was a human being who was involved in reality with all the fibers of his feelings. He had been forced to look into the weakness and the baseness of the human character. And he had to take them into consideration every day, had no leisure to search for hypotheses alien to reality. There was hardly a man of his time, filled as it was with so-called philosophical speculation, who expressed his scorn and derision for them as strongly as did Frederick. True, in some situations he seemed to be a fatalist, but on the whole he had his feet solidly on the ground and he avoided philosophical speculations which seldom can awaken the interest of active people. In fact, he hated them in his innermost soul. He himself confessed: "A little rest, a little sleep, a little bit of good health -- these constitute my whole philosophy." His whole so-called "philosopher's conceit" was nothing but a splendid humaneness, tempered by suffering and woe, by victory and glory, a heart that was not alien to anything human.

This then is the golden key to Frederick II, King of Prussia; he was nothing but a human being!

He had no less need than others for human joys and happiness; indeed, because of his artistic sensibility he could even have laid a greater claim to them. Who would deny that the bitter disappointments of his youth and his forced marriage made him worthy of a share of some compensating human happiness? A man of Frederick's capacities would have known well what loveliness, what enrapturing felicities and artistic enjoyments, life holds for the connoisseur, and his own capacity for life was equally ready to give and take. The temptations that beset this gracious prince were not small. At the small price of national dignity, the whole of Europe would have been willing to let him lead a life that would have provided the greatest opportunities for his personal inclinations. And in view of the real power relations, posterity would have found little cause to criticize him for it. This Frederick was not forced to be a hero. If he had succumbed to the blandishments of life, it would certainly have been an expression of the will to live on the part of the most charming and intellectual prince in Europe, but we would have searched in vain for the Prussian will to live.

This man Frederick, gifted and blessed for the pursuit of human happiness, made the decision himself. On the day that he, alone in the world and before God, was charged with the future of his people, it was as if a glowing stream of fire went through his heart; he tore himself loose from his personal fate and made this avowal: "It is not necessary for me to live, but that I do my duty." From then On he was Frederick of Prussia, the first servant of his people, and nothing else. Far behind now lay the idyl of Rheinsberg, lost were friends and joys, and before him rose the terror of the battlefield, and for all the future, until the hour of his death, the unfailing clockwork of service. Now, as Fate had declared war on him, he became a hero. In the face of sorrows and hardships he knew nothing of a hero's glory, but when he raised his eyes to his generals -- when his glance swept over his grenadiers -- when from his desk he inspired his ministers -- when he instructed the ambassadors of foreign powers-when he looked like a father upon the least of his Prussians -- then appeared before all of them the hero Frederick.

When finally he fell asleep in the arms of his valet in Sanssouci and wrote finis to seventy-four troublesome years, he left no more personal property than a single threadbare uniform coat of his own guards regiment, an old and tired whippet hound, the old gray charger Conde, and a few snuffboxes. Every general and minister possessed more.

But the great king left behind a Prussia which he had put into the world with will and might, so that it could look forward to its German destiny.

From Kampfer, Kunder, Tatzeugen: Gestalter deutscher Grosse, Vol. I: Kampfer, edited by Ernst Adolf Dreyer and Heinz W. Siska (Munich, Vienna, Leipzig: Zinnen-Verlag, 1942), pp. 182-184, 203- 205.

_______________

Notes:

1. Frederick's palace at Potsdam.

The Diary of an SA Man's Bride, by GUDRUN STREITER

Although I am very tired, I just cannot sleep. The events of the last days have filled me with such a great enthusiasm that despite the late hour I take up my beloved diary in order to write in it what has so deeply stirred me. It was cloudy and overcast when I set out for the Rhine yesterday with my Hitler comrades, men and women. Nevertheless, we paid no attention to the unfavorable weather. Our hearts flamed with a glowing enthusiasm and a great joy. The lutes played and our song-happy lips never rested. Men and women party comrades boarded the train at almost every station and brought even more cheer to the frolicsome group. Time flew by so quickly with all the singing and jingling and jangling and before we were aware of it Germania was already greeting us from the Niederwald. Upon arriving in Bingen, we were still undecided whether we should go by ferry in order to travel up the other side of the Rhine by train or whether we should proceed to our destination by steamboat on the German Rhine. The weather decided for us. An opaque black mass of clouds had formed in the skies. The clouds were riveted together like iron chains. While we were looking up at the skies pondering alternatives, a violent storm began to rage and pound the waves of the Rhine with terrible force. Then we were all seized by a yearning for wild waves, stormy wind and rain. We boarded the steamer and clambered to the upper deck, to let the storm wind blow through us and to lift our heads to the elements. How loudly our hearts pounded and how proudly waved our swastika flags and pennants in the storm wind. Legend-woven castles greeted us boldly and stubbornly from both banks. And our enthusiasm and ecstasy grew even mare. The beautiful trip was concluded much too quickly and soon we could spot the little Rhenish town, Our destination, greeting us. A great stir of life could be seen on the shores of the Rhine. Unnumbered bands of Brownshirts marched with their blood-red flags to assembly on the banks of the Rhine. Roaring shouts of "Heil!" greeted us, echoing back and forth. We were met by a wonderful panorama when we entered the town. The streets were a regular forest of flags. From every house waved the glorious German banners. Garlands and a profusion of flowers decorated the streets. There was liveliness everywhere. SA men hurried past us, carrying out the orders of their leaders. From every side we could hear stirring tunes of Prussian military marches. And then I saw something I had never seen before: women and girls in the brown Hitler uniform. They sold us badges for the solstice celebration. This touched me in a wondrous way, and a desire began to burgeon and to burn within me, to be permitted to help, like these women and girls, in the great work of our leader Adolf Hitler. A torch had been thrown into my heart and continued to flame and blaze. There was no place for any other thought within me.

Almost in a trance, I followed my girl comrades to our quarters. I no longer heard or saw what was happening around me; I just sat on my cot and wondered how I could become a helper in the reconstruction of the Fatherland. I was still lost in thought when one of my girl comrades found me and took me to the open-air concert of the SA. Deep inside I was annoyed that I had been disturbed in my thoughts. But outwardly, of course, I gave no indication and acted as though I were in high spirits. But in spite of the eager talk of the other girls, I was soon lost in my thoughts again, not at all aware of the fact that I was already beginning my work for the Hitler movement. As we approached the square, we heard the last few bars of the Petersburg March, and then there was a pause in the music program. I soon lost my comrades in the press of people. I went along a stretch of the Rhine promenade and suddenly found myself before the statue of our great Blucher. I stood on the spot where, on New Year's night in 1814, the Prussian army led by Blucher had crossed the Rhine. My thoughts rushed back to that memorable night and, fully occupied with meditation on this great deed of the courageous Prussians, I just stood there. I was torn out of my thoughts when I heard a man's voice beside me and I saw an SA man standing in front of me. He said to me: "Pardon me, are you a party comrade?" "Yes, of course," I answered. "Heil and greetings." I looked up and saw before me a weather-browned manly face with a pair of strikingly large and sunny eyes. He looked at me questioningly. "Wouldn't you like to help the movement a bit by selling some cards?" "With pleasure," I responded, and received a stack of cards from his hands. With joy I rushed toward the mass of people that surrounded the band. In only a quarter of an hour I had sold all the relief cards and joyfully delivered the money to the SA man for the movement. He was overjoyed and thanked me by shaking my hand. He told me his name, Wolfgang Jensen. I told him my name in return. We exchanged a few more words and then I hastened to rejoin my comrades to tell them about my card selling.

In the evening, at ten o'clock, there was a great assembly before the Blucher monument. We had bought torches from the SA men and now we took our place in the ranks of the Hitler legions. Countless people stood in formation. SS and SA men, Hitler Youth, National Socialist women and girls' groups, Stahlhelmer, Pfadfinder, Wandervogel, and thousands of others formed the endless ranks of the participants in the solstice festival. In the van stood the standard-bearers with their blood-red swastika flags, and countless pennants waved between the ranks in the evening breeze. We stood like that in rank and file for more than two hours. At twelve-fifteen finally came the great moment. The order came to march off and the torches were lighted. We marched with joyful song, accompanied by lutes, through the streets of the little town. After a short time we were in top marching form. As we entered the market square, there was a roar of "Heil!" There stood Flight Captain Hermann Goring, his hand raised in the Hitler salute, and he reviewed the long line of marchers, while shouts of "Heil!" echoed in the square. After we left the town, the road led us up into the mountains toward the solstice fire. It was a splendid sight. The road led to the mountain in serpentine twists and turns. From the top we could look back on the long marching columns. The brilliant glare of the torches in the night was glorious. It was an overwhelming sight. My words are too poor to portray this experience. For a long time we let this picture enter our thirsty souls to their uttermost depths until our eyes were focused on one mighty flaming fire. It was our solstice celebration. We were received by the tunes of Prussian military marches. Then, with the Dutch Prayer of Thanksgiving, the inspiring festival began. Heads were bared. With folded hands we listened devoutly to the solemn melody: "We come to pray before the righteous God ..."

Toward the end Hermann Goring rose again to deliver a flaming address. In his call to battle for Germany's freedom the rustle of the Rhine sounded like a prayer for redemption from foreign despotism. In the deep darkness of the night, the iron words of Ernst Moritz Arndt [1] sounded forceful and thundering on Hermann Goring's tongue: "The Rhine, Germany's river, but not Germany's border."

After singing the national anthem, we all sat down around the great fire and sang our songs. Goring stepped into the circle and remained standing, proud and upright. It was a glorious picture, the great air hero standing there, surrounded by the light of the solstice fire. But his face remained somewhat in the dark, since the dying flames did not reach that far. I had the luck to sit directly behind him. With a sudden decision I jumped up and held my torch over his shoulder, and now his face, too, radiated a great glow. Then came a great, eventful moment for me. He turned and nodded thankfully to me. Who could have been happier than I? Then we sang Lons's [2] song of the Red hussars. Again, the main speaker addressed us in imperative and flaming words and stepped out of our midst, accompanied by roaring shouts of "Heil!" Our eyes followed him for a long time until he vanished in the dark night. I thought that I would not see him again for a long time. I had not noticed that meanwhile an SA man had stepped to my side. I turned around only after I heard myself addressed by name, and encountered the manly face of SA man Jensen. He shook my hand and asked about my impressions of the solstice celebration. I began to tell him in my stormy and elated state of excitement. He looked at me with joyful and shining eyes, sharing my enthusiasm and joy. After I had expressed all my feelings about the solstice celebration, we both fell silent. I noticed that his facial expression had changed. A deadly seriousness was on his face. He looked at me silently for a long time and then he asked how long I had been a follower of Hitler and what had prompted me to become a National Socialist. He did not turn his eyes from me, but continued to look at me, steadfast and probing. I shall never forget these hours. His eyes plumbed the depth of my soul. His gaze was strong and powerful, but without importunity. I felt his eyes in the deepest corner of my heart and it would have been impossible for me to make a secret of anything that he wanted to know of me. I answered his question and explained clearly and simply when and why I had become a National Socialist. He was silent for a while, turned his head, and looked thoughtfully into the flames of the solstice fire. Slowly he turned his face to me, looked deep into my eyes, and, shaking my hand, said in all seriousness: "You have truly grasped what National Socialism is!" Meanwhile the fire was banking. Some threw their torches into the flames. Wolfgang Jensen and I followed the example of the others and once again the flames shot up. We looked silently and seriously into the fire. Then Wolfgang Jensen said admonishingly, almost solemnly, to me: "Don't ever forget the solstice fire. Let it flame in your heart and let its rays reach out to your racial comrades. Then you will truly help in the great work of Adolf Hitler."

From Gudrun Streiter, Dem Tod so nah ...: Tagebuchblatter einer SA-Mann's Braut (published by the author, n.d.), pp. 8-11.

_______________

Notes:

1. Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860), a patriotic Romantic poet.

2. Hermann Lons (1866-1914), a writer, mostly of peasant and regional novels.

On Festivities in the School, by HERMANN KLAUSS

The German school is not an institution devoted only to the transmission of knowledge; it is not a dead organizational form -- it is a form of life itself. The teacher is not just an instructor and a transmitter of knowledge. He is more than that. He is a soldier, serving on the cultural-political front of National Socialism. True, the battle on this front is of a different nature and is fought with different weapons, but it is no less important, because the struggle is for the soul of the people. It would make no sense whatsoever to win the political but lose the cultural-political battle.

The task of the German educator is to form human souls. The festive hours in the school are charged with the highest mission of leadership -- hours in which the task of forming human souls is most urgent.

Hence the festivity can never be something secondary, something, say, that is off to the side, that merely deflects everyone from their real task.

The daily school work all too easily leads a class to withdraw into its work assignment and to a separation from the school community and the outside world. At a festivity, however, teacher and students stand together, whether the occasion is a simple flag-raising ceremony or a great celebration involving the whole school community.

Nowhere can we discern the spirit that prevails in a community as clearly as in the manner in which its celebrations are conducted. This applies to a ceremony of a single class as well as to a ceremony of the whole school. The old proverb could be changed to read: "Show me how you celebrate, and I will tell you who you are."

Every festive hour is a confession of faith. The school administration has clearly recognized the great importance of school celebrations. This is distinctly shown in the regulations for the curricula of the various types of schools.

The regulations for education and instruction at the grade-school level set forth on page 7:

In school celebrations, the incorporation of the school into the great Volk community is most strikingly expressed. It is the climax of the school's community life and must therefore be organized with special love and care.

The corresponding regulations for education and instruction in the intermediate school read:

The community life of a school finds its loftiest expression in its celebrations. Specific celebrations should be held if they grow organically out of the life of the school and its link with the great Volkish events. Since it is the purpose of these celebrations to serve as climaxes, they should be held only infrequently.

The regulations for education and instruction in the higher schools also explain how the various school subjects can be integrated in the school festivities.

Festivities during the School Year

Individually school celebrations show a great variety, ranging from the simple morning speech and song to the flag raising, the morning celebration, the memorial hour, and the festive drama, to the great celebrations of national holidays in a form suitable for young people.

The great celebrations of the school community should be few; they should represent climaxes in the life of the school. If these celebrations follow each other too frequently, they lose their effectiveness. But celebrations are also held in small groups in order to prepare the youth for the experience of the great national holidays.

School celebrations can be grouped as follows:

Celebrations under the Flag

Brief flag raising or massing of colors on the first and last day of a semester or on special occasions.

Celebrations under the flag.

The School's "Own" Celebrations

Upon entering the school -- the road into school.

Upon graduation from school -- the road into life.

National Holidays

The Day of the Reich -- January 30.

The Day of the Fuhrer -- April 20.

The Day of Labor -- May 1.

The Day of the Farmer -- Thanksgiving Day.

Heroes' Memorial -- The Day of Langemarck [1] and Heroes' Memorial Day.

November 9.

Celebrations during the School Year

The Day of the German Mother.

The Day of German Volkdom.

Pre-Christmas Festive Hour -- the Light Celebration.

General Morning Celebrations

The Weekly Festive Hour.

Festive Hours On Special Occasions

Historical memorial days.

Current events.

Concerning the Organization of a Festive Hour

Action, speech, and music are the pillars upon which the great national celebrations rest.

Music serves to prepare the celebrants. Speech opens bridges to their hearts. Action creates meaningful customs....

The Flag Orders Our Day

The law of the flag rules over our lives. It also stands above our school work.

We begin each section of the school year with a general flag-raising ceremony. We close it with a general flag lowering. The first great experience of a new student is the ceremonial flag raising. The school year ends with the flag lowering on the last day of school. On the holidays of the school and the Volk community the school hoists the flags of the Reich and its youth.

Flag raising is honor, elevation, admonition, and avowal of faith. The external expression -- assembly, speech, song, greetings, and retreat -- is an unfailing indication of the spirit which prevails in the community.

Generally, the flag-raising ceremony is quite brief and is limited to a recitation and song. In some cases it will be enlarged to include an appeal, reflection, and avowal of loyalty in recitation, song, and address. Such would be the case on the occasion of the flag raising at the beginning of a new school year, on the first day in the country boarding school, on national holidays, and on other similar occasions.

The flag song is always a "We" song, a song of the community. A large selection of such songs is readily available in all collections, so that it is not necessary to list them here....

***

The following suggestions for celebrations -- "The Flag Is Our Faith" ... -- are so conceived that they could take place before the flag raising with the song of the nation. It is, of course, also possible to have the flag raising precede these ceremonies. In that case the first song could be dispensed with.

The narrator of the words of the Fuhrer stands before the ranks of the assembled teachers; the narrators of the avowal of faith and loyalty stand in the front rank of the pupils.

"The Flag Is Our Faith

We sing together:

"Under the Flag We March."

A student speaks:

The flag is our faith
In God and Volk and Land.
Whoever wants to rob us of it
Must take our life and hand.

A teacher speaks:

Thus the Fuhrer admonishes us:

"Everything that we demand of Germany in the future, that, boys and girls, we also demand of you.

"This must you practice and this must you then pass on to the future, because whatever we create today and whatever we do, we will have to pass on. But in you Germany will live on, and when there is nothing left of us, it will be up to you to hold in your fists the flag which we once raised out of nothingness.

"Therefore you must stand solidly on the ground of your soil, and you must be hard so that this flag does not slip from you, then may you be followed by generation after generation from whom you can make the same demand that they be as you were. And then Germany will look upon you with pride."

***

Or a brief address:

Main idea: The flag is a symbol and an obligation.

A student recites:

We boys carry the flag for the assault of youth.
It shall stand and rise and glow like fire in the skies!
We are sworn to the flag
For always and ever.
Forever cursed be he
Who besmirches the flag.
The flag is our faith
In God and Volk and Land.
Whoever wants to rob us of it
Must take our life and hand.
For our flag we will care
As we do for our own mother,
For the flag is our tomorrow
And our honor and courage!

We sing together:

"We Youngsters Carry the Flag."

From Hermann Klauss, Feierstunden der deutschen Schule (Stuttgart: Franck'sche Verlagshandlung, 1941), pp. 7 ff.

________________

Notes:

1. A battle in World War I (1914), fought by youthful volunteers, most of whom perished.

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PART 1 OF 3

5. Toward a Total Culture

Editor's Introduction

IN THE THIRD REICH the central task of culture was the dissemination of the Nazi world view. What was the place of the intellect in this culture? The National Socialist world view was based upon the rejection of rationalism, and any emphasis upon man's reason was thought to be "divisive," destructive of the unity of the emotionally centered ideology which the whole Volk could understand. Man's "creativity" was put into the foreground of his striving, which was defined through art and literature as well as politics. The very totality of the world view embraced all of these as one interrelated cultural whole.

Those who are involved in cultural creativity must always turn the energies of the German people toward their German mode of being -- as Hermann Burte puts it in his speech to the assembled poets of the Greater German Reich in 1940. The emotional basis of this commitment is made quite clear: Hitler is the poet turned statesman -- a poet because he has a vision of the inmost German being, a statesman because from out of that vision he has created a new people. The differences between poetry and statesmanship vanish in such an analysis. All of fascism has this element in common; the Belgian fascist leader Leon Degrelle called Hitler and Mussolini "poets of revolution."

Hermann Burte had made his mark early in the century with a novel which portrayed a hero in search of his Volk (Wiltfeber, der ewige Deutsche, 1912). He became a supporter of the Fuhrer and felt that the new leader was superior even to the great Goethe because of his grasp of the organic nature of the German people. The inte11ectuals belong to the people, he said, and by this he asserted the primacy of the primordial German image, of German being, over human reason. The Wilna newspaper describes the intellectual as one who believes that everything can be arrived at through reason. Labor Service, performed on the soil, is a good corrective to such an attitude. The very word "intellectual" is twisted into an anti-intellectual meaning: Julius Streicher is offended because those who have fled the Reich do not regard his racist vituperations as part of the "intellectual" struggle between themselves and the Nazi dictatorship. In a nation which bestowed great prestige on academics, it was impossible for many to admit to the anti-intellectualism that was one of the hallmarks of the Nazi ideology.

Even the Heidelberg students no longer wanted to educate the mind but merely to build character -- that is, the right ideological attitude and way of life. It is, perhaps, significant that three years later a military newspaper protests against such opinions. A balance between character and mind must be maintained -- but now it is wartime and the army needs good minds and cannot win battles equipped only with the proper world view.

The anti-intellectualism rests upon an organic view of the German people. The Reich Peasant Leader and Minister of Agriculture, R. Walther Darre (1895-1953), i11ustrates this well in his speech on the anniversary of a Medieval peasant uprising. The German peasant is symbolic of the Volk, he is the driving force and purifier of all German history. Here is the substance of Germanism, evolving independently of political boundaries, princes, or bishops. German racial stock, German uniqueness, indeed German history -- all of these are in his custody. This might be considered a piece of special pleading by the Reich Peasant Leader, if the same theme did not run throughout Nazi culture: we will meet it often in this chapter and have met it earlier. The peasant was the culture hero of the movement, though other, more recent party heroes existed side by side with him.

The relationship of organization to the Nazi concept of artistic freedom is defined by Joseph Goebbels, whose business it was to enforce this definition. Goebbels' speech of 1937 was addressed to the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer). This organization was founded by a law of September 22, 1933, and was given the ambitious task of encouraging "all forms of artistic creation or activity which are made public." The Reich Chamber became an instrument of cultural control closely linked to the Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment. Goebbels himself assumed its presidency.

The Reich Chamber of Culture was divided into seven subordinate Chambers, concerned with literature, music, films, radio, the theater, fine arts, and the press. Each of these had its own president and administrative apparatus, always linked to the relevant department in Goebbels' ministry. This corporate structure was supposed to give the appearance of self-government by the artistic professions, but in reality the Chambers were an integral part of the complex apparatus of cultural control, directed from a single source. Membership in a Chamber was compulsory for the exercise of any artistic profession; denial of membership meant, therefore, the effective silencing of any undesired creative voice in the nation.

The Reich Chamber of Literature (Reichsschriftstumskammer) is of special importance for our purposes: it included not only all German writers but publishers and libraries as well. Its first president (1934-1935) was a writer who specialized in Old Germanic stories and legends, Hans Friedrich Blunck (1888-1961). His subject matter was close to that of Josefa Berens-Totenohl, who is represented in this chapter. But he proved too old-fashioned and was replaced by the playwright Hanns Johst (see page 116). The secretary of the Chamber was Wilhelm Ihde, who wrote history with a Nazi slant (see page 119).

Typically enough, this elaborate structure was never without its challengers from within the party itself. Alfred Rosenberg and his office, established to "supervise the entire spiritual and ideological education of the NSDAP," maintained a separate department devoted to supervising German letters. Moreover, Philip Bouhler, on the basis of his "party commission for the protection of NS literature," published lists of approved books on his own. There was bound to be friction between all these agencies, but it was Goebbels' ministry which censored all published books, while the Reich Chamber of Culture printed lists of forbidden books and silenced those authors and artists who refused to conform.

Goebbels' speech laid down the principles which were to govern cultural activity. In putting these into practice, publishing was obviously an important cog within the cultural machinery. The German tradition of publishing was highly personal, and publishing houses were known by their specific orientation. Adolf Spemann, the proprietor of the medium-sized Engelhorn publishing house, had in the past published books by Jewish authors as well as translations of Romain Rolland. Spemann was one of those men who, though politically indifferent up to 1933, were captured by the elan of the Third Reich. However, he never became a party member and his only public activity was to direct, for a few years, the "belles-lettres and popular science" section of the professional association of the German book trade. [1] This was a subsection of the Reich Chamber of Literature.

Spemann, however, was a popular speaker, and at a meeting called by Rosenberg's office he defined the new position of the publisher in the Third Reich. This speech also found approval in the eyes of Bouhler, whose list of approved books could only "joyfully underline Spemann's words." [2] Spemann does give reasons why publishing should share responsibility for the National Socialist cultural drive. He writes about ideals which were to become reality. A recent study has shown that by 1937 some 50 to 75 per cent of all book sales were accounted for by approved National Socialist literature. Peasant novels, historical novels, and novels set in the native landscape were the biggest sellers. From 1939 onward their place was taken by novels glorifying the early struggles of the Nazi party, war literature, and books by German writers living on foreign soil, such as Heinrich Zillich (see page 165). [3]

These were, of course, the kind of books publishers put out, but they were bought by the public. Such cultural control meant opposition to all meaningful criticism of literature and art. Goebbels says as much in his speech and he had already carried it through. For on November 27, 1936, he had forbidden the "continuance of art criticism in its past form." The place of the art critic must be taken by the "reporter of art." The public must be the judge. This was indeed safe, for Nazi artistic criteria did correspond to a low common denominator of popular taste. Goebbels sums up this point of view (and gives himself away) when he stresses the unchanging taste of the masses as the only stable element in the process of artistic evolution.

For Hitler the visual arts were the most important and effective part of culture. Kurt Karl Eberlein, art historian and literary critic, summarizes the official line. He expounds at greater length the point which Goebbels makes both in his speech and in his order forbidding art criticism. The rural family (and the peasant is the primordial image of the Volk) does not "judge" art, but accepts it and lives it -- if this art is of the right Germanic kind. Clarity and simplicity are important here, as well as the idealization of familiar and traditional themes.

But if these factors were important, the ties to the history and tradition of the race were equally vital. Heinrich Zillich (b. 1898) was a writer of novels which were set among the Germans in Rumania. Ever since the twelfth century a large German peasant settlement had existed in the Rumanian Carpathians. Zillich's ancestors had for generations lived in that mountainous territory. Small wonder that he advocates the bursting of narrow political and territorial confines. The people and its mission must stand at the center of the poet's work, and history must inform his consciousness. Zillich echoes the point made by Dam~ in his speech: not dynasties determine history, but the evolution and ambitions of the people themselves. The poet becomes a historian in the service of the race.

Zillich spoke as a German separated from his homeland, but his ideas were "official." He expressed them in one of the principal speeches at the meeting of Greater German poets at Weimar in 1938. The Nazis furthered these gatherings at the historical shrine of German culture; Burte made his speech at another such meeting in 1940. Nazi culture and the culture of the age of Goethe and Schiller could in this way appear to clasp hands across the centuries.

What results did these definitions of culture produce? We must confine ourselves to a very few examples. Josefa Berens-Totenohl (b. 1891) wrote in an older tradition of the romantic peasant novel. She was one of the most popular and widely read authors during the period of the Third Reich. She produced the kind of escapist literature which could be tolerated, for it praised peasant virtues, strength, and rootedness. Purely sentimental novels like the immensely popular stories of Hedwig Courths-Mahler (1867-1952) were not considered desirable reading. Her more than 200 novels (27 million copies sold up to 1950) were love stories written for the lower classes and without any ideological overtones. The ideology, however, was present in the writing of Berens-Totenohl, if in muted form (she was never a party member and never played any part in the organizations for culture control, though she did receive the literature prize of Westphalia in 1936).

Der Femhof (1935) was her first book and it brought her immediate fame. It had sold 226,000 copies by 1944. It may be regarded as typical of the peasant novel, which idealized its subject and painted the mythology of peasant life, far from the crossroads of the world.

Tudel Weller's work is included with some regret, but its bad taste and the blatant glorification of brutality directed against the Jewish stereotype do belong to the totality of Nazi culture. Even this book, Rabaukenl (1938), ran through seven editions by 1943. It is only one example of a whole literary genre. But even the Nazis seemed dissatisfied with such products, and by 1941 there was some official agitation to further the writing of a "good racial and blood novel." [4]

The theater had been one of the glories of the German Republic, and the Nazis attempted to use it as a forum for their own cultural ideas. Eckart von Naso, then a young script editor, describes the effect of the Nazi seizure of power upon the Prussian State Theater in Berlin. Though a powerful director with Goring's support could keep up, for a time, a semblance of standards, in the provinces the decline was rapid and inevitable.

The playbills of the city of Herne in the Ruhr Valley (see also page 375) are informative. Johst is represented and so are classical German writers like Schiller and Goethe. But the vast majority of the repertory is filled with light opera -- some by good composers like Franz Lebar and Johann Strauss -- but mostly with works by second-rate tunesmiths who are rightly forgotten. There was an attempt to further a Volk theater. Konrad Dreher had founded the Tegernsee Peasant Theater in 1892 in order to revive an art form which had its roots in the Jesuit drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as in the passion plays. But by the time the troupe appeared in Herne it had long been stocked by professional actors and it performed modern plays with peasant themes and in peasant dialect (two such plays appear here, one by Dreher himself and the other by August Hinrichs). Foreigners are sparsely represented, and then through light entertainment. Calderon's comedy falls into that category, and so does Rossini's opera and even Shakespeare's As You Like It. The only exception is the realistic war play by the Englishman R. C. Sheriff; Journey's End portrays the brutal life in the trenches. The Third Reich used the stage for light entertainment (the practical result of Goebbels' assertion that "the people seek joy") or for patriotic propaganda. Gerhard Menzel's Scharnhorst would be in the latter classification, and so would the Kleist and Grabbe cycles in nearby Bochum. Either the public was to be amused in a harmless way or it was to be uplifted.

Goebbels was obsessed with the power of the radio, and indeed the Nazis made wide and thorough use of this medium of communication. They inherited a system of centralized control, for ever since 1928 the Post Office dominated the National Broadcasting Company (Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft) and influenced the provincial broadcasting companies as well. After the seizure of power the Propaganda Ministry acquired all the shares of the National Broadcasting Company and through the Reich Broadcasting Chamber (Reichsrundfunkkammer) controlled not only the broadcasters themselves but also the manufacturers of sets. The National Broadcasting Company lost its importance and became merely the executive organ for day-to-day operations. Through pressure upon manufacturers cheap radio sets were produced, so that every German could afford to own one. These were made in such a way that no foreign broadcasts could be received. From 1933 to 1934 the number of German homes owning a radio set increased by over a million, and by 1936 some 30 million people could be reached over the radio. This figure does not include those subjected to radio through public loudspeakers on the streets or in such places as restaurants and factories.

This was a powerful weapon in Goebbels' hands. The radio program for the winter of 1936 gives an idea of how it was used. The speech by the director of the National Broadcasting Company lays down the principles under which all broadcasting operated. There was to be no criticism of the Nazi movement or ideology; "humorous sketches" were explicitly forbidden.

The Reich Film Chamber (Reichsfilmkammer) controlled the lively German film industry, while a Film Credit Bank (also under Goebbels' control) centralized the financial aspects of film production. The largest remaining independent German film company, the UFA, was bought out by the Propaganda Ministry in 1937. Through the Film Chamber it had been brought under control long before then. The titles of the films officially submitted to the biannual international film festival in Venice show the kind of motion pictures the Nazis thought especially valuable as their international "visiting card." German film stars were encouraged to represent the Germanic ideal of genuine womanhood (see page 39) in contrast to the painted and perfumed "degeneracy" of Hollywood. As a matter of fact, Paula Wessely was an outstanding actress who had come to the film from Vienna's famous Burgtheater. But this fact was less important than her conformity to those emotional ideals which a valuable film should portray.

The people are praised for recognizing the worth of such genuineness, just as they were relied upon to have an intuitively proper attitude toward art. Nazi culture sought a popular base and often found it. At any rate, the sales figures of Nazi-sponsored literature and art seem to lead to this conclusion. There is no reason why the millions for whom the Nazi world view made "life worth living again" should not also be attracted by the products of Nazi culture. Moreover, as has been mentioned earlier, the Nazis did cater to popular taste and preconceptions. But no risk was taken: a thorough apparatus of cultural control accompanied such popularity as Nazi culture may have achieved on its own. In any case, no alternatives were available. Modern dictatorships have sought to spread their total culture widely throughout the population, however this has led not to the elevation of popular taste but to the confirmation of its prejudices.

G.L.M.

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Notes:

1. Adolf Spemann, Menschen und Werke: Erinnerungen eines Verlegers (Munich, 1959), pp. 250 ff.

2. Nationalsozialistische Bibliographie, Heft II (November 1938), p. xviii.

3. Dietrich Strothmann, Nationalsozialistische Literaturpolitik (Bonn, 1960). pp. 384-385.

4. Ibid., p. 406.

Intellectuals Must Belong to the People, by HERMANN BURTE

Contemporary German poetry need not lower its eyes before the outstanding figures of the past. "No art is created during war and revolution," says Balzac. But in her poets struggling Germany seems to belie this assertion: like larks amid a shower of bullets, her poets sing also in war. In the greatest yearning and passion to find and to grasp its own essence, to give it form, speech and value, spirit and taste, in the face of the difficult task of harmonizing a Volkish experience without parallel, of endowing an extraordinary event with an understandable meaning, of changing the shriek of suffering into the song of joy, and finally of existing and enduring as a people through the spirit -- German poetry of the present can boldly take its place alongside every other in the world! Before all things it seeks the heart of its own people, it wants to be one with the feeling of all, and the calling that is most uniquely its own is to create a special breed.

It must turn all the vital energies of the German people toward the discovery, solidification, and perpetuation of the German mode of being. For how would it help German poetry to win the world but to lose the soul?

The German poet is better than his reputation. We shall mention no names. He whom today the shadows of silence envelope, tomorrow can find light and sound. The wonderful poem of Hebbel, [1] that thinker among the poets, is applicable here: "You have sowed pearls, suddenly it begins to snow, And one sees them no more; Hope for the sun, it comes!"

Like Schiller in his time, present-day German poetry emerges hopefully before the people and the world and awaits its judgment. It respects this judgment, but it does not fear it.

The Germans are scolded and rebuked for being original, and they are, for they knowingly and willingly recognize the excellence of others and seek to understand their essence.

Shakespeare belongs as much to us as he does to the English; indeed, we know him and perform his plays better than they do. And we boldly assert that as Germans of 1940 we in truth are closer to the spirit of the Elizabethan English and their genius William than the Englishmen of today, behind whose throne lurks and rules that Shylock whom Shakespeare recognized and rejected.

Because Goethe's nature was complete, fully sure of itself, he could unhesitatingly absorb all alien things, create the concept of world literature, and entertain the belief that though the great literatures of the world spring from different roots, their branches rise into the lofty atmosphere which belongs to all, into the realm of space up to the very stars!

At this level the poet has indeed achieved fame. As soon as the magic word "fame" is uttered, it is time to look not only at things but through them!

A man whose fame is spread by foreigners, whom one plays off against his people and fatherland, or whom one esteems because he has denied his people and his fatherland and betrayed them in spirit, is a pathetic ghost, a Herostratus, a deception, not a man with a mission!

The fame of a poet must reflect as much on his people, country, and Reich as on himself. Otherwise he must reject it like a poisoned shirt! A German of our militant age achieves the most honorable fame when he steps forward as an accuser before the world, and lashes it for an outrage, an injustice, a fundamental criminal attitude, when he hurls a lightning-like, flaming thought into the stifling expanse around him, and when through the strength of his reasoning, the tone of truth, the force of the accusation, he compels the adversary to respond, against his will and in the agony of confessing his guilt....

The dying Chamberlain [2] had this feeling: a novum has come into the world, and new too in the way in which it came. A book was written, not poetry in a low common sense, and yet a poem, a view of a new people in a new state! The man who wrote it is called Adolf Hitler! At last the stirring, noble Holderlin, who wandered through his Germany with the question "Will the books soon come to life?" has received an answer, an unhoped-for answer: Yes, the books live, and not only the books -- living men emerge and charge them with life! Here is the primordial and model image of the future German being! The spirit journeys forth before the deed as the morning wind goes before the sun! Before he embarks upon his work, the great statesman of the Germans is a kind of poet and thinker, his mind clarifies for itself how things ought to be in the world of things! A prose comes into being with a surging quality uniquely its own, a march-like step, with tensions and projections of that attitude which Nietzsche had in mind when he said: "I love him who hurls forth the great word of his deed, since he wills his fall!" But since the spirit of Hitler lives in Germany, one no longer seeks the tragic, ultimately sweet decline and fall, but the tough, day-bright, enduring upward thrust and drive. Neither the individual nor all are to go under....

Everything is possible in Germany, except the tragedy of the whole! To prevent this tragedy, as the curse of curses, is precisely the meaning of Being and hence of the meaning of poetry. Poetry and this direction of life are as one! The European mission of German poetry is one with the European mission of the German Reich. The Reich of the poets lies in the German world, and its shrine is in Weimar!

A new man has emerged from the depth of the people. He has forged new theses and set forth new Tables and he has created a new people, and raised it up from the same depths out of which the great poems rise -- from the mothers, from blood and soil.

In its deepest essence, in the core and star of its being, the European mission of German poetry is one and the same with the European mission of the German people and its Fuhrer. It should be of little concern to us whether this new type and newly won form, created on the Faustian path to the birth- giving energies of the people, from the sources of Our blood, to the ruthless homecoming to ourselves, at first appears pleasing or not to others. For just as we saw that the new conception and configuration of the Volk and the state was at first not understood in the world and, at a decisive moment in the war, proved itself to be superior and overwhelming, so we believe and feel too that the psychic and spiritual configuration of poetry also brings forth an equally surprising, and unbelieved, but true and truthful, altogether alive work, since it creates out of the same Sources as do the state-creating and military values.

In Truth and Poetry Goethe says that the highest life-content in German poetry came into being through Frederick the Great.

Now, dear comrades, how much more great and more powerful is the life-content and the life-power which Adolf Hitler, through his manner and his work, has brought to the German people and thereby to German poetry.

If Frederick the Great, the far-sighted monarch, the friend and pupil of the rationalist Voltaire, could fructify poetry through his deeds, all the more so can Adolf Hitler, the son of the people, risen from its powerful depths, steeled by suffering and privation, familiar with all that is human, a volunteer soldier in the world war, close to death and the eternal night, rescued and preserved, designated by the Norns as elect, and provided with an earnestness and will, an energy for action and knowledge of people, insight and broadness of perspective, great as orator, greater as man of action. Everyone can feel what an enormous content, what a racially suited form he has bequeathed to our people, and first of all to the intellectuals! For the intellectuals belong to the people or they are nothing!

If fate has bequeathed us the great Fuhrer, it will not deny us the great poet!

From the depths of our heart we thank the Fuhrer, from the fullness of our faith we hope for the future great poet!

He will stand to Adolf Hitler as Goethe stood to Frederick the Great. We know very well that the genius does not come when one calls to him, the spirits will not be ordered about! But just as the remarkable poetry of the Elizabethans arose from the victory over the Spanish Armada, so will -- we see it in our minds' eye -- a new poetry arise from our victory. Fully developed through competition among all segments of the people, everywhere educated and hardened to what is most lofty, true to the mind, devoted to the soul, the great poet will rise like the crystal from the mother-lye!

This future poet will have something which the great of Weimar in their time, in their place, could not possess: the people as a configuration! In place of a social stratum, the multiple I, the people as a whole, emerges as an element.

And we, what should we do during this time? We all serve the future Best One. He will include all that we accomplish in the sum of his accomplishment, without naming names! For he will be a kind of King of the Spirit, to whom belongs all that waves over the summits. To him who has will be given! A serene Siegfried who slays dragons, throws precious stones at ravens, and sings in competition with the birds of the woods, an eternal young German, like Goethe!

With an innate drive to perfection, he will work on himself as did Goethe, and shape and present his essence in peace on a new height. Then the Best in the other peoples will again recognize their Best One in the figure of this German and honor him like the poet of Faust.

Then the European mission of German poetry will again be fulfilled in a new time, in a new space! What must we give and send in this moment before he comes?

"We greet the Fuhrer!" Such is the beautiful, heart-felt expression of the people as they rise in order to thank their savior, to be mindful of him in love, and in order to find and to feel themselves in him!

Following this custom, dear comrades, let us greet the Poet, the unknown one, the future one, who will arise to us -- we deliberately repeat ourselves -- and who must likewise be nourished to a loftier life- content and a stronger poetical power by the mighty manner and the extraordinary work of Adolf Hitler, as Goethe was by the deeds of Frederick the Great. He will not be a Hamlet who flees from himself, because he will set aright the times that are out of joint!

He will be of use to his time as the joint in the socket. He will not, like Werther, suffer the plague of his time; he will not be a Hyperion among the all too inadequate Germans, nor a Wiltfeber in the court, [3] which went under. For through the deeds of the Fuhrer the Fatherland will be so transformed that neither the ruler nor the poet will be tragic figures! They will freely and joyfully fulfill their being, continuously fulfill themselves, and show the world their essence!

But until the poet comes who will gather us all and therefore sustain us, let us in this hour and in this place greet the Master and the great of Weimar!

From a speech delivered in 1940 at the meeting of the poets of the Greater German Reich, published in Sieben Reden von Burte (Strassburg, 1943), pp. 19-21, 27-32.

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Notes:

1. Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863), a Romantic poet and dramatist.

2. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) (see p. 256) acclaimed Hitler as the future leader as early as 1923.

3. Wiltfeber, der ewige Deutsche (1912) was Burte's most famous book.

The Birth of Intellectuals

The accomplishments of which the mind is capable lead from a true appreciation of its value to an over-estimation, and this tempts one into the delusion that everything in the world is to be arrived at exclusively through the mind.... Thus is born the human type we designate as intellectuals. Labor service is an excellent defense against the danger of intellectualism. Manual work makes demands not only on one's physical powers but also on one's character and thus brings about a transformation of one's mental attributes and assists In the full development of the mind.

From the Wilnaer Zeitung, Aug. 21, 1942. (Wiener Library Clipping Collection.)

Streicher the Intellectual

The Jews know how to falsify the authentic concept of intellectual struggle. Otherwise, for example, Gauleiter Julius Streicher's remarkable struggle could not have been dismissed as "unintellectual" in the emigre press.

From Carl Schmitt, "Streichers geistiger Kampf: Das Judentum in der Rechtswissenschaft," in the Frankische Tageszeitung, Oct. 3, 1936. (Wiener Library Clipping Collection.)

A Balance Is Necessary

We read the following in a book review in a 1937 issue of the Heidelberg student newspaper: "Here the mind is discussed, that is, one's intellectual endowment. We merely wish to declare that today we no longer want to educate this mind; we want to educate the character." This statement betrays a serious and -- we must say it openly -- deplorable misunderstanding of the situation, especially for a student. Mind and character cannot be played off against each other. Reason, of course, by itself does not make the whole man, but neither can we get very far or accomplish anything of importance without reason.

From the Militar-Wochenblatt (the independent newspaper of the German Army), Jan. 12, 1940. (Wiener Library Clipping Collection.)

The German Peasant Formed German History, by R. WALTHER DARRE

At the beginning of today's address in remembrance of the Stedinger struggle for freedom 700 years ago, [1] we first of all wish to establish a fact which is valid for the whole German people: while German historiography is industriously engaged in presenting "German history" as the effect of the interests or conflicting interests of imperial rulers, of ecclesiastical and territorial princes, this same historiography is remarkably silent about what one might call "German peasant history." This is all the more striking because no matter how zealously the historians have portrayed matters concerning lords and princes, the German people has preserved in its subconscious the remembrance of the great peasant catastrophes of its history much more forcefully than the cares and tribulations of its ruling lords.

This is seen to be particularly obvious if one bears in mind, for example, that the slaughter of thousands of Saxon peasants by Charles the Saxon butcher [2] in Berden on the Aller more than a thousand years ago has not only been preserved in the memory of Lower Saxonians for the whole last millennium but preserved even despite the fact that a deliberate historical forgery was perpetrated for the purpose of blotting this deed from the memory of the German people. Let us take another example: Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell, which describes the freedom struggle of the Swiss free peasants against the arrogance of the Habsburgs, contributed much more to turning the German people against its territorial princes in Wallung than any other tendentious play of that time. Incidentally, in learned circles the rumor persists stubbornly that Schiller after the publication of Wilhelm Tell received a warning from the Freemason Lodge, which was not pleased by this glorification of the free peasantry. It would be useful for us historians to investigate such a rumor objectively, on the basis of documents, in the interest of the German people, instead of wasting time and energy trying to keep the German people in a state of unclear or false knowledge concerning the cultural level of its Germanic ancestors.

In reality, however, what we call Volkdom was never brought about by German emperors, German ecclesiastical princes, and German territorial princes. Rather, the precondition for Volkdom was exclusively bound up with the existence of the German peasantry. First there was a German peasantry in Germany before what is today served up as German history could develop from it -- and unfortunately often on its back. Neither princes, nor the Church, nor the cities have created the German man as such. Rather, the German man emerged from the German peasantry. To be sure, princes, Church, and cities were able to place their stamp on a special kind of German man. Nevertheless, the German peasant down the centuries has been their raw material and thus the precondition, the foundation, and the determinant of their impact. We National Socialists, who have retrieved the old truth that the blood of the people is the formative element of its culture, see these things with a crystal-clear knowledge. In every period of history the blood of our cities was supplemented by the peasantry and thus the blood of this peasantry repeatedly determined the Germanic content of our city culture.

Traveling through the German countryside today, one still finds among our peasants customs which have survived for a thousand years. In this we have clear proof that it is here that the ground of a Volkdom is to be sought, rather than in the bloodless abstractions of the scholar's desk. And if we then go through the documentary sources, or search for the historical sources, we find to our amazement that these thousand-year-old customs among our peasantry have not developed, for instance, through the kind understanding of the ecclesiastical or territorial princes. Rather the opposite is true -- the peasantry defended their customs with bitter tenacity against these very ecclesiastical and territorial princes. In this connection it matters little precisely where one comes upon a confirmation of this assertion, whether in the old peasant territory of Lower Saxony, or in Hesse or Thuringia, or in Upper Bavaria or Franconia. Everywhere one will find primordial peasant customs that reach far back into the past. Everywhere there is evidence that the German peasantry, with an unparalleled tenacity, knew how to preserve its unique character and its customs against every attempt to wipe them out, including the attempts of the Church. And it preferred to go under rather than bend its head to the alien law imposed upon it by the lords.

Although the German-minded among our scholars have for some time now turned away from the above-mentioned methods and have begun to devote themselves to the true significance of the peasantry, some of our scholars still stubbornly assert that the contrary is correct, and they are still attempting to prove to us that the Germans, said to be nomads, were first laboriously given culture through what is called a German history -- that is to say, by the fatherly efforts of their imperial, ecclesiastical and territorial princes. Against this sort of scholar I once and for all will coolly and soberly maintain the following: Before there was a German scholarship in Germany, the German peasant was already there and had preserved his essence and his breed. Despite this thousand-year effort to alienate the German peasant from his nature, the common sense and the deep blood-feeling of the German peasant knew how to preserve his German breed, and indeed in the face of a scholarship that with scientific methods aimed to prove the very opposite. If the German peasant during a thousand years possessed enough common sense to be able to survive this form of scholarship, then may the above-mentioned scholars become clearly aware that much of this understanding is still in existence today and will surmount and survive their scribbling. What a thousand years could not destroy, the eager industriousness of certain scholars will not be able to destroy in the next few years.

On the contrary: when today we speak of German racial stocks, of German uniqueness, it is customary to maintain that the unique qualities of these racial stocks are exclusively contained within the frontiers of the territorial principalities that still exist as German regions. This has gone so far that some, for example, consider the frontiers of the South German states so important that they would have the Germany newly awakened under National Socialism believe that the borders of the South German territories are divinely ordained and that to violate them in any way would signify a desire no longer to take into account the racial uniqueness of their population.

The nonsensical character of this assertion can be seen most clearly in the case of Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Baden, for the borders of these states are neither racial borders nor borders of any kind of principality or any kind of racial stock. Rather, the borders of these states were arbitrarily drawn by Napoleon I, who never gave a thought to racial stocks and history or traditions of any kind. These particular South German border relations prove that the individual landscapes of these states have preserved their primordial uniqueness independently of the borders that were marked out. The fact that they did this, despite the state borders, means that they did it on the basis of laws which have nothing at all to do with these state borders.

For what preserved the unique character of these individual landscapes and gave them their peculiar characteristics was the peasantry that had been preserved in them. A city like Munich, for example, did not receive its Bavarian quality from its monuments or its other peculiarities, for any other German tribe could perhaps have developed these things in its cities. Rather, what we come upon in Munich as typically Bavarian -- as was the case a hundred years ago and before -- are the Bavarian peasants, who today still live on their farms the way their forefathers lived for centuries and who still send their sons to Munich. And what I say here about the Bavarian peasant also applies to the peasantry of every other German tribe. It was on the old peasant landholdings, whose economic structure has in most cases remained unchanged for five hundred years, that German man acquired the special quality of his racial stock. Wherever the generation which occupies such old peasant landholdings clung to the customs of their fathers, there grew the individual German racial uniqueness which today still embodies and represents the variety and multifariousness of German Volk life. No German city can make the same claim. For no German city can produce evidence that the people now living within its walls are authentic blood descendants of those who centuries before gave the city its characteristic stamp. Undoubtedly, however, on our German peasant landholdings there sit, if not the direct, at least the indirect descendants of those who cultivated the soil there centuries before. Here is anchored the eternalness of a racial stock of unique character. When a few weeks ago someone in South Germany said that the Hereditary Health Law' would do more to guarantee the unique character of the racial stock than any kind of regional particularism could ever have done, he was absolutely correct. One can say that the blood of a people digs its roots deep into the homeland earth through its peasant landholdings, from which it continuously receives that life-endowing strength which constitutes its special character.

From Rede des Reichsbauernfuhrers und Reichsministers R. Walther Darre (on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the Stedinger struggle for freedom, Altenesch, May 27, 1934), pp. 3, 5-7.

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Notes:

1. Conrad of Marburg, with the support of the Dominican order, accused the Stedinger peasantry of heresy in 1234. In reality he wanted to take away their rights and bring them under his princely control. His "crusade" was successful.

2. Namely, Charlemagne.

3. See page 90.

Freedom and Organization, by JOSEPH GOEBBELS

My Fuhrer! Your excellencies!

My racial comrades!

Organization plays a decisive role in the lives of peoples. It has the task of forming human groups into units so that they may be brought purposefully and successfully to a starting point. Thus organization is a means to an end and is related to the aim to be striven for, a necessary evil so to speak. Just as organization, when correctly established and formed, can shorten and simplify the way to success (indeed, sometimes it is the only way to success), it is capable, on the other hand, of restricting and holding up natural developments, especially when it forgets its real task and becomes an end in itself.

This possibility, however, which is more or less innate in any organization, must not mislead us into denying the necessity and purposefulness of organization as such. Leadership requires it for the guidance of men and in order to prepare the way for developments in the various vital spheres of politics, economy, and social functions as well as culture. Here organization is most difficult to carry through and thus it is also exposed to the most dangers.

For every organization must demand that its members surrender certain individual private rights for the benefit of a greater and more comprehensive law of life, and thereby a goal-directed point of departure for energies which if isolated are powerless, but which if united have a striking, penetrating effect.

Therefore one should scrupulously see to it that every organization does not lose its specific aim and that the renunciation of individual rights is always promoted only to the extent necessary for its success. One should, therefore, to express it briefly, organize only what must be organized, not everything that can be organized.

Only in this way will a great and complete effect be achieved by the total engagement of all energies. Obviously, it is in the nature of the matter that in the operation of this total engagement of all energies one is often and easily inclined to overestimate the renunciation of private and individual rights as against the purpose and aim that is to be achieved through the total engagement of energies.

In addition, a host of old habits and prejudices, to which many people had become fondly attached, had to be overcome through the organization of the German creative artists in their Reich Culture Chamber and in their individual Chambers. [1] Despite this, these old habits and prejudices still playa certain role in the ideas of some people who have not found the correct door to the new times and its demands. These critics of course eagerly claim, almost as a matter of course, and without any special expression of thanks, the advantages and success brought about in the main through this organization. On the other hand, they do not want to acknowledge that one conditions the other and that the advantages and success of the whole could be brought into being only by the renunciation of individual demands as against the demands of the time.

Hence it has been our constant effort to carry out the inner regeneration of the German art world not so much through a profusion of laws as through a continuous program of self-help. That which in the first months of 1933 was still considered impossible has become a fact, and it now operates in such a way that it is almost taken for granted. Meanwhile the difficulties of solving the countless individual problems which at that time had fallen due, so to speak, have long been forgotten. The reality is there, and it continuously creates new facts....

Our enemy's cry that it is impossible to expel the Jew from German cultural life, that he cannot be replaced, still rings in our ears. We have done precisely this and things are proceeding better than ever! The demand of National Socialism has been thoroughly carried out in this field and the world has visible proof that the cultural life of a people can also -- and indeed meaningfully and purposefully -- be administered, led, and represented by its own sons.

How deeply the perverse Jewish spirit had penetrated German cultural life is shown in the frightening and horrifying forms of the "Exhibition of Degenerate Art" in Munich, arranged as an admonitory example. We have been frequently attacked in the so-called world press on account of this exhibit. But up to now no foreign enthusiast has been found who, in reparation for this cultural barbarism, is prepared to buy the "art treasures" on exhibit in Munich and thereby save them for eternity. They do not like them, but they defend them. And they defend them not on cultural but exclusively on political grounds. It requires barely a contemptuous wave of the hand to dispose of their arguments. It is maintained that one should allow this movement to work itself out, that in this way it would soon come to a standstill. One could have said the same in domestic politics in regard to Marxism or parliamentarianism, in the economic sphere in regard to the class struggle or to class conceit, in foreign policy in regard to the Versailles Treaty or to the theft of German sovereignty rights. A thing of this kind does not come to a dead stop; it must be overcome. The more thoroughly, quickly, and radically this occurs, the better it is!

This has nothing at all to do with the suppression of artistic freedom and modern progress. On the contrary, the botched art works which were exhibited there and their creators are of yesterday and before yesterday. They are the senile representatives, no longer to be taken seriously, of a period that we have intellectually and politically overcome and whose monstrous, degenerate creations still haunt the field of the plastic arts in our time.

How healthy this purging operation was is shown by the reaction of the public and above all of the art buyers to the Greater Germany Art Exhibition in the House of German Art in Munich. Never were so many paintings sold as on this occasion, paintings which were in the main really creative works of art. Never had the general public participated in the questions of the plastic arts in such a lively and intimate way. That the appearance of a new artistic creativeness was combined with the end of a period which had lain on our souls like an oppressive nightmare, was actually greeted as a redemption.

Does this now signify a narrowing of the much-discussed artistic freedom? If so, then only when the artist should have the right to withdraw from his times and its demands and lead an eccentric life outside the community of his people. That, however, cannot and ought not to be. The artist stands in the midst of his nation. Art is not a sphere of life that exists for itself, which must defend itself against the invasion of the people.

Art is a function of the life of the people and the artist its blessed endower of meaning.

And just as the leadership of the state claims for itself the political guidance of other areas of the people's life, likewise does it make the same claim here. This does not mean that politics must interfere in the inner function of art, or that it even desires to do so. It means only that the state regulates and orders its great beginning and total engagement. This right is a sovereign right. It springs from political power and responsibility.

The abolition of art criticism was proclaimed at the congress held last year. This act was directly related to the goal-directed purging and coordinating of our cultural life. The responsibility for the phenomenon of degeneration in art was in large measure laid at the door of art criticism. In the main, art criticism had created the tendencies and the isms. It did not judge artistic development in terms of a healthy instinct linked to the people, but only in terms of the emptiness of its intellectual abstractness. The people had never taken part in it. It had only turned away in horror from an art tendency which could no longer be brought into harmony with its healthy sensibility and could be appraised only as the abortive product of a snobbish decadence. The abolition of art criticism and the introduction of art observation, which has for almost a year now been decried by large sectors of world public opinion as barbaric and impracticable, has in the meanwhile been effected everywhere in our country. Now the public itself functions as critic, and through its participation or non-participation it pronounces a clear judgment upon its poets, painters, composers, and actors.

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PART 2 OF 2

The purging of the cultural field has been accomplished with the least amount of legislation. The social estate of creative artists took this cleansing into its own hands. Nowhere did any serious obstructions emerge. Today we can assert with joy and satisfaction that the great development is once again set in motion. Everywhere people are painting, building, writing poetry, singing, and acting. The German artist has his feet on a solid, vital ground. Art, taken out of its narrow and isolated circle, again stands in the midst of the people and from there exerts its strong influences on the whole nation.

To be sure, the political leadership has interfered in this, and today it still interferes daily and directly. But this occurs in a way that can only work to the benefit of the German artist: through subsidy, the commission of works, and a patronage of the arts, whose generosity is unique today in the whole world. Theater and film, writing and poetry, painting and architecture, have thereby experienced a fruitfulness which heretofore was wholly unimaginable.

The radio broadcasting system has become a real people's institution. Since the National Socialist revolution the number of listeners has increased from four to nearly nine million. The German press, in a rare demonstration of discipline, daily conducts its educational mission among the German people. The way to the nation has been cleared for all cultural efforts and strivings. We have not only sought for talent but have also found talent. In the new state, opportunities have been offered to talented people as never before. They need only to reach out for them and make themselves master of them.

It is true that in the long run every great art can live only by inducting healthy recruits. Therefore our major concern has been directed to this problem. It cannot be doubted that in a history-making time, so highly tension-ridden, as our own, political life absorbs a host of talents which normally would have been partly at the disposal of cultural life. In addition, there is the fact that the great philosophical ideas which have been set in motion by the National Socialist revolution, for the moment operate so spontaneously and eruptively that they are not yet ripe enough for elaboration in artistic form. The problems are too fresh and too new for them to become artistically, dramatically, or poetically formed. The recruits who one day will have to solve this task are still in the offing. In order to prepare the way for them, we can do nothing else but offer them every opportunity to develop their intellectual and technical aptitudes and skills in the broadest range possible....

What was first achieved for the creative artists of the stage should in no way be an ending. It is the cornerstone on which the old-age security program for all art creators must be established. The necessary preliminary work for the attainment of this goal is already in progress. It is a question of finding an organizational and economic form for every profession in this new field.

Along with this we have also turned our attention, in this year, to the establishment of old-age and recreation homes. Through the magnanimity of the Prussian Minister President not only was a new home for the aged in Weimar bequeathed to German veterans of the stage, but the Marie Seebach Foundation, which has been in existence for many years, was given a secure financial basis. In addition, we created a new old-age and recreation home in Oberwisenthal and two new beautiful recreation homes in Arendsee on the Baltic Sea. They are to be opened next spring and will provide accommodations for seventy to eighty German artists seeking rest and recreation.

The projects which have been successfully carried out here and in other fields of art are cultural acts of the first rank and thus truly worthy of the National Socialist German nation. Nothing similar has even been tried ever or anywhere else in the world. In this field we have not presented any high- sounding program; we have acted. We have courageously tackled these questions, and here also it has been proven that problems can be solved, if one wants to solve them. Germany marches ahead of all other countries not only in art but also in the care which it showers upon artists, and thus sets an illuminating example.

We are all the more obligated in this respect when today German art encompasses the whole nation. The people, participating by the million, have made it their own cause.

One speaks so often in a contemptuous way of mass taste and tries to contrast it to the taste of the propertied classes, the cultured or the upper ten thousand. Nothing, however, is more unjust than that. While the taste of the so-called cultural persons, precisely because they are cultured and have read so much, was exposed to the most manifold ill will and therefore also to fluctuations, the taste of the broad masses has always remained the same. They do not have so many possibilities of comparison in order, in the end, no longer to know whether the good is really good or the inferior really inferior. Nor are they so satiated that out of sheer lack of spiritual hunger they ultimately succumb to the most inane confusions and degenerations of the primitive and thus of clear and pure artistic feeling. Their joy in the healthy and the strong is still naive, untroubled, and sensuously moved. They still feel with the heart, and this heart does not stand in the shadow of an all-knowing, all-perceiving mind which in the end is also destructive and doubtful of all. Their unchanging taste is the only stable element in the great artistic evolutionary processes.

The people have a healthy feeling for authentic accomplishment, but also for words which indeed speak of accomplishments but behind which there are no accomplishments. Its taste derives from a solid predisposition, but it must be correctly and systematically guided. In its sometimes primitive expressions it is nevertheless always right and unwarped. True culture is not bound up with wealth. On the contrary, wealth often makes one bored and decadent. It is frequently the cause of uncertainty in matters of the mind and of taste. Only in this way can we explain the terrible devastations of the degeneration of German art in the past. Had the representatives of decadence and decline turned their attention to the masses of the people, they would have come up against icy contempt and cold mockery. For the people have no fear of being scorned as out of step with the times and as reactionary by enraged Jewish literati. Only the wealthy classes have this fear, when it is combined with insecurity in matters of taste. They succumb all too easily to that kind of demi-culture which is coupled with intellectual pride and conceited arrogance. These defects are familiar to us under the label "snobbism." The snob is an empty and hollow culture lackey who eats only the rinds from the fruits and who then cannot digest them. He goes in black tie and tails to the theater in order to breathe the fragrance of poor people. He must see suffering, which he shudderingly and shiveringly enjoys. This is the final degeneration of a rabble-like amusement industry. In the theater the rich want to see how things go with the poor. What a brutalization of the sensibility! But also what a bestialization of taste and of the whole artistic sensibility!

The Volk visits the theater, concerts, museums, and galleries for other reasons. It wants to see and enjoy the beautiful and the lofty. That which life so often and stubbornly withholds from the people, a world of wonder and of gracious appearance, here ought to unfold before their eyes, gleaming with astonishment. The people approach the illusions of art with a naive and unbroken joyousness and imagine themselves to be in an enchanted world of the Ideal, which life allows us only to guess at but seldom grasp and never obtain. Here lie the origins and the eternally operative driving energies of every great art. Snobbism is sick and worm-eaten. Its taste cannot set the standards and erect the forms for an era. We have had the courage to reject the products of its insolent arrogance. Today they are assembled in the "Exhibition of Degenerate Art," and the people, by the million, walk by this blooming nonsense, shaking their heads angrily, especially because this snobbism, in its insolence and arrogance, presumed to make its appeal precisely to this Volk. In fact, the Fuhrer had acted in the fulfillment of a national duty when he interfered here and again established order and a sure footing in this chaos. The people hardly knew this. "Wherever they met it, they punished it with mockery and contempt. This kind of art was right to avoid the bright, clear eye of the people and to withdraw from them into their salons. The primitive and healthy popular taste demands a corresponding spiritual diet. One does not raise strong people with snobbish over-refinements. Let no one here raise the objection that the people desire only to be entertained. The people seek joy. They have a right to it. We have the duty of giving this joy to them. Most of us have barely an idea of how joyless in general is the life of the people and therefore of how important it is to provide a remedy.

"Hence bread and circuses!" croak the wiseacres. No: "Strength Through Joy!" we reply to them.

This is why we have thus named the movement for the organization of optimism. It has led all strata of the people, by the million, to the beauties of our country, to the treasures of our culture, our art, and our life. Certainly, entertainment has at the same time found abundant expression. In most cases it is the preliminary stage to purely artistic enjoyment. This is where true art almost always originates....

Foreign circles hostile to Germany often attempt to project an image of the contemporary German artist as an oppressed and beaten creature who, surrounded by laws and regulations, languishes and sighs under the tyrannical dictatorship of a cultureless, barbaric regime. What a distortion of the true situation!

The German artist of today feels himself freer and more untrammeled than ever before. With joy he serves the people and the state, who have accepted him and his cause in such a warmhearted and understanding way. National Socialism has wholly won over German creative artists. They belong to us and we to them.

We have not brought them to our side by means of hollow programs and empty phraseology, but by means of action. Ancient artist-dreams have been fulfilled by us, others are in the process of being actualized. How could the German artist not feel sheltered in this state! Socially secure, economically improved, esteemed by society, he can now serve his great plans in peace and without the bitterest cares for his livelihood. He again has a people that awaits his call. He no longer speaks to empty rooms and before dead walls. A noble competition has begun for the laurel of victory in all fields of our artistic life. National Socialism has also drawn the German artist under its spell. It is the foundation of his creativity, the solid basis on which he stands with all of us. He fulfills the task that a great time has assigned to him as a true servant of his people.

In this hour, we all look reverently upon you, my Fuhrer, you who do not regard art as a ceremonial duty but as a sacred mission and a lofty task, the ultimate and mightiest documentation of human life.

You know and love art and artists. Even as a statesman you come from their circles. You follow the way of German art in our time with an ardent heart. You point out its direction and goal as the blessed giver of meaning.

We all thank you for this. May you keep your protecting hand in the future as well over German art and the German race. Accomplishment and deeds will be the answer and the solemn vow of the German artist for this protection.

Our people today, however, are around us and with us. They render their thanks to their artists for the countless hours of joy, recreation, and edification, liberating laughter and excitement. A year of work lies behind us. A year of work lies before us. The success we have achieved summons us to new deeds. By building upon this success, we aim to dedicate ourselves to our tasks with ardent hearts and glowing idealism in the service of art, the great consoler of our life.

From an address by Dr. Goebbels at the Annual Congress of the Reich Chamber of Culture and the Strength Through Joy organization, Berlin, November 26, 1937, published in Von der Grossmacht zur Weltmacht, 1937, edited by Hans Volz (Berlin: Junker und Dunnhaupt Verlag, 1938), pp. 416-426.

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Notes:

1. See page 135.

On the National Responsibility of Publishers, by ADOLF SPEMANN

There have always been publishers -- and not the worst ones -- who saw it as their function to subordinate themselves, in a purely servile capacity, to the creator of literary works, that the writer himself bore the full responsibility for his work and that the publisher's task was merely to be the most perfect reflection possible of contemporary cultural achievements. In this way the publisher keeps to himself his personal attitude -- which, to use that favorite expression, one is always wont to suspend when one does not wish to take a position or has no point of view. Often this was conceived not only in a purely business way but as a kind of flawless idealism, in which the freedom of discussion appeared more important than any definite idea. But this is precisely the form most often taken by liberalism, out of which ultimately a political, moral, and artistic theory of relativity has emerged.

This attitude of the publisher was strongly influenced by the prevailing views in aesthetics and music and literary criticism, which increasingly came to hold that all artistic, musical, and literary monuments must be grasped and understood in terms of their historical premises. Out of this quickly emerged a second principle: to understand all is to forgive all -- and in the diligent effort to understand all, even that which was fully race-alien to us, one lost every footing and point of reference. Thus it is a sad but indisputable fact that it was precisely the growing knowledge concerning the process of becoming which began to destroy sound judgment concerning being. This attitude which permeated the whole degenerate conception of art before the accession to power of National Socialism, which was mirrored in countless published writings, naturally could not avoid influencing the publishers of these books and periodicals, and for the very reason that they were unable to oppose this decadence with any clear world view or any clear cultural political aim. And thus the ring closed: these publishers in good faith brought out works which fostered the dissolution of all solid forms....

The great fundamental reversal, however, took place only through the seizure of power by National Socialism. The great master of the education of his people, Adolf Hitler, has in a few years transformed our souls and has also sharpened in the whole book-publishing trade the feeling that it bears a tremendous responsibility. The first decisive act in this direction was the establishment of personal responsibility, since from it also arises complete liability: the publisher, in reproducing and distributing a piece of writing, is just as responsible for its contents as is its author. Hence he is forced to concern himself closely with the contents of his books, as closely as should have been decreed long ago by law. Thus the great distance that separates the present-day conception of the publisher's calling from yesterday's becomes quite clear: instead of an inwardly uninvolved cultural-mirror he is a cultural-politician imbued with his task. The servant of the writer has been changed into a deputy of the state. The self-satisfied noninvolved connoisseur has become a militant fighter in the front ranks. Thus today it is not enough for the publisher to master his craft and to be as cultured .s possible; he must be thoroughly imbued with the idea of the state leadership of Adolf Hitler and in this idea he will find the guidelines for his own work. No one will be able to say that he is in no position to do this. The countless great speeches of the Fuhrer, along with his book, afford an exhaustive exposition of the state idea that he has created and espoused, down to the smallest details of personal life. Anyone who fully absorbs, over and over again, the lavish fullness of this brilliant mind which literally runneth over and this example of a truly great life will know what he has to do....

Likewise, however, the publisher will always be conscious of the fact that literature is not to be separated from politics, which in the last analysis is the guidance of man and therefore his education. It all depends on the reply to the question: do books influence or change people or do they not? Now, One of the beliefs of the age of degeneracy that is now behind us was that it was a superstition of anxiety-ridden, power-hungry headmasters that books could warp and destroy the soul. With this cleverly conceived distortion, the literary man created his own license to wash his dirty linen in public and even to get paid for it. Whether one decides that pernicious books are a consequence of decadence or one of its causes is meaningless, and is at bottom a question of taste. The fact is that in daily life cause and effect have entwined themselves into an indissoluble knot. What does one do, however, when one cannot untie a knot? One cuts it in two and masters it. This is what National Socialism has done. In the face of this imperishable accomplishment the fact that it at first believed that it had to destroy many other real values, perhaps unjustly, carries little weight. It is well known that in every great housecleaning some pieces of porcelain are bound to be broken....

The decisive consideration which the publisher today must pose to himself should not, therefore, be the following: "Will this book be a sensation? Will it be a hit? Can I create a need so that I may satisfy it? Can I add new riddles to the ones already in existence? Can I open a discussion which my magazine can feed on for months on end? Can I get hold of this or that famous name for my house? How shall I make a neat turnover at any price?"

No! The publisher must ask himself: "Will this book that I publish now, and in years to come, when I have long departed this earth, fill my children with pride in the accomplishment of their father? Does this book make people stronger, without making them stupid? Will it imbue the soul of the reader with strength and joy, or will it leave a bitter taste and will it steep the heart in lye and jar the nerves? Does it give the individual the strength which aspires to the Whole and forms the community or does it lead him to at deceptive pseudo-consolation of self-sufficient solitude and to flight from this world and the present? Does it broaden the reader's point of view, without alienating him from the roots of his own Volkdom? Does it show him the greatness of the German present and past without obscuring or indeed making contemptible the imperishable cultural accomplishments of other peoples and times, to the extent that these enrich and strengthen us? Will it direct his gaze to greatness in all its associations, without alienating him from loyalty to little things, to details? Will the book be a contribution to the efforts to sharpen the ear of the people, so that it can learn to distinguish the genuine from the false tone, so that it does not imbibe the sparkling brilliance or the intoxicating semi-darkness of stylized language without an inner view and a moral attitude for true poetry, so that it does not confuse handy maxims, cheap sloganeering, or finely spun dialectics with valuable scientific research, so that it does not take foggy haziness for philosophical depth? Does it increase the German cultural patrimony in any way or is it wholly irrelevant to it? In the 2000-year history of our people is it worthy, perhaps, of the unique period which we are experiencing today? Does it serve, if only in a very small way, the great aim of the Fuhrer to create the new German man, that indispensable, irreplaceable building material for the next millennium of German history, whose threshold we have just crossed with wildly throbbing hearts?"

From Adolf Spemann, Einsamkeit und Gemeinschaft (Stuttgart: J. Engelhorn Nachf., 1939), pp. 142- 147.

Goebbels Forbids Art Criticism

Because this year has not brought an improvement in art criticism, I forbid once and for all the continuance of art criticism in its past form, effective as of today [November 27, 1936]. From now on, the reporting of art will take the place of an art criticism which has set itself up as a judge of art -- a complete perversion of the concept of "criticism" which dates from the time of the Jewish domination of art. The critic is to be superseded by the art editor. The reporting of art should not be concerned with values, but should confine itself to description. Such reporting should give the public a chance to make its own judgments, should stimulate it to form an opinion about artistic achievements through its own attitudes and feelings.

From Der Deutsche Schriftsteller, Jahrg. I, Heft 12 (1936), pp. 280 ff. Reprinted in Rolf Geissler, Dekadenz und Heroismus (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1964), p. 30, n. 20.

What Is German in German Art?, by KURT KARL EBERLEIN

Art is never objective. It is an offense against romanticism to call the naturalism of Our debased "sailor painting" romantic. "The spirit, in terms of which we act, is the loftiest." And this art spirit is as loveless as a medical diagnosis, a photograph, Or a statistic. The pleinair civilization of modern painting which began with French Impressionism does not belong either to the soul or to the language of the soul: it does not contemplate, but looks. Its art is seen, with susceptible time-conditioned nerves, with time-conditioned eyes, newspaper-like, and in the same way, therefore, is this art to be seen, to be enjoyed, but not to be experienced. Art is contemplation. Here the inner eye decides. Artists have the landscape in their hearts, because they contemplated, because their soul becomes landscape, and their landscape becomes soul. German art is homeland and homesickness and therefore always landscape even in the picture, the land of the soul becomes and grows into soul, it is the language of the homeland even in an alien atmosphere, in the alien atmosphere of foreign lands as well as in the alien atmosphere of animals, flowers, things. Either one speaks German and then the soul speaks, or one speaks an alien tongue, a cosmopolitan, fashionable, Esperanto language and then the soul speaks no more. The casing of this homeland is the house that the German loves so much, the room, the mirror image of his being, the thought of home which the German carried with him even amid the sufferings and death of the trenches. Anyone who knows this German room image knows what I mean, this soul becomes a room, the soul of a room that hardly survives today because the fashion in decoration killed the German room the way it has killed German dress, because the model makes everything equal, alike, and spiritually poor. The new Germany lives in the world on the basis of such rooms, since the magic circle from which all that is called Volkdom unfolds -- namely, the family -- encloses its law of growth here in the family room, whose holy, state-forming character Pestalozzi described so magnificently. Today the principal task of architects is to create a family living room in which the family spirit can dwell and exert its influence. Here lie the real roots of our strength. All those to whom Germandom was an essential entity saw in the family the health, salvation, and future of the state; around the family table they saw the circle sheltering and protecting the qualities of the soul. ... The homeland, the landscape, the living space, the language community are embodied in the family which roams and grows beyond the borders. In it lives the child with mores and customs, the dialect of play, of celebration, in it live the song, the fairy tale, the proverb, native costume and furniture and utensils. In it lie the ultimate energies of primordial folk art, the work done in the home, handicraft, tradition, in it lies also that salutary and profound sentimental feeling for family arts which it would be hazardous to underestimate, for it is the bread and joy of the house. Here work music, dancing music, family music, house music, have a last abode and a potent health-giving magic. Here the life rhythm of the year pulsates squarely through house and field, growing close and vitally out of the very soil. How distant is this venerable life-maturity from all that which stirs the big city, the changing fashion of the day, which revolves around the abiding customs like the earth around the sun. How laughable, puppetlike, and cinematic do the art groups of the big city appear here, the art fashions which are best compared with the exotic animals inside the cages of the zoological gardens of the big city. One may object that the family, especially the rural family, was never a connoisseur or judge of art nor could it be. Certainly not! Thank God, for here nothing is being judged, it is not a question of criticism, but of something much more essential, namely, life itself. It is not a question of the blossom, but of the tree. It is an "achievement" and a result of the Renaissance that art is considered only the surface of aesthetic values, of phenomenal and formal values, that it is enjoyed aesthetically as adornment for a wall, as a decor for a room, as a concert or an exhibit.

Our museum, for this reason, is not a museum for the people. It has not yet lost the character of a castle, the decorative style and charm of an aristocratic, uncomfortable, awesome palace of culture. A visit to it brings to mind a world's fair, a panoptikon, a castle. "Art," therefore, for most racial comrades -- let's be honest about it for once! -- is not the bread of life, not a life value, not a nourishment for the soul. Rather, it still is the priceless unnecessary, the delicate pastry in the store window, the comfortable accouterment of the propertied classes, the speculation stock of the wealthy, the collective ownership of the state. The life of the working people unfolds beyond this art. Bread and work are more important. This is the situation, despite such slogans as "art for everybody," "art for the people," "art without an entrance fee," "art with a sunset glow." This art is still "culture," hence uncomfortable, alien to the people. The fault lies neither with the state nor with the individual, but with that art which is cut off from blood and soil.

From Kurt Karl Eberlein, Was ist delltsch in der deutschen Kunst? (Leipzig: Verlag E. A. Seemann, 1933), pp. 56-59.

The Poet Summoned by History, by HEINRICH ZILLICH

No, I mean poets who are kindled by history and forced to speak because they are overcome by this kinship with a great event, and who must restlessly revolve around this illuminating point in the crisis of their spiritual existence until, in an act of self-redemption, they endow it with that form through which the people can share in fanner living spaces and in their past being because their meaning is revealed to them.

It must be a deep kinship that touches, summons, torments, and blesses the poet. He will become conscious of this kinship only when he finds the way to it from its most characteristic blood drenched experience, that representatively anticipates the necessary and same experience of the people and actually brings it about later through the creative work.

The greatest experience that grew in the German, bitterly at first in the last war and in the subsequent years of tribulation, but then radiantly in the time of ascent, was the self-discovery of the body of his own Volk with all its members, the bursting of the close-fitting skin of the state which had been left over and which was ridiculously restricting the Volk-consciousness by virtue of racial cleavage and political narrowness and which first required the collapse of a world in order to be stripped off and to reveal all the Germans created by God. In this way the reality of the Reich and the Volk became alive in a new form, in a natural wedding as never before. For a poet to remove himself from this amplitude means to lose the ground under his feet. His attitude toward history and its evaluation through science today can rest only upon the new consciousness of the nation, whose strength and relevance to the times, whose noble modesty and at the same time crystalline sense of responsibility intertwined with the world, were truly overwhelmingly proved this year when ten million Germans were able to return to the Reich without striking a blow. [1]

On the basis of this consciousness, of this feeling of the common citizenship of Germans, we can now finally approach a historiography whose judgments are made in accordance with Volkish criteria, in accordance, that is to say, with whether events satisfy the whole people and its mission-neither just the one or the other -- but both the people and its mission. This does not mean that we must falsify the purposes of our actions and ideas into our ancestors' in order to grasp for ourselves external confirmation from history. History confirms to us -- who are rich in history -- the wide spaces that are open to us in the future. But it does mean that, despite our full understanding of the substantiality and uniqueness of past ages, we seek the specifically German dimension in its totality everywhere, which up to now was not perceived in the historiography of dynastic power and territorial interests.

Many a deed whose greatness is indisputable, if considered from the viewpoint of the whole people, only now allows us to see the tragic consequences as well as those of a more fruitful character. To cite an example: If we were to consider the wars of Frederick the Great, we must ask whether those long years of German fratricidal struggle were not a cause of the fact that the broad territories of the Southeast, at that time still sparsely populated ever since the Turkish wars and subject to Vienna's control, were only insufficiently settled by Germans. We must ask whether at that time we did not definitely lose a vast living space which Providence had assigned to us as a sphere of dominion and as a prize for saving Europe from the deadly Islamic threat and which we at a later time had to relinquish completely perhaps only as the ultimate consequence of our fratricidal struggles. Thus must the historical researcher formulate the question to himself, without, of course, attaching any blame to the actors of that time, who in accordance with their value-consciousness could not have foreseen this result.

Thus the poet also is summoned by history to place the amplitude and the unity of the people in the center of his view. At the same time he should try to avoid the error of transferring the spirit of his age into the past. But he should certainly look for the whole people in past ages and give significant form to its fate. For the whole German people also lived at that time. Even at that time -- to conjure another example -- the axes of the Swabian settlers resounded in the Banat, alone, often forsaken, in order to build a new province, while the rulers of the people quarreled over whether an old province, whose German-ness was not under any threat, should be transferred from one German hand to another. What a subject for a heart-rending epic when one considers that the new province remained unfinished!

The amplitude and unity of the people -- this is the kinship which the poet today must perceive in history, and there he will also perceive the relations between the people and the Reich, between the people, the Reich, and Europe, those indissoluble relations of the primordial bond of fate, co-determining the human world order, which redound to the special honor of the Germans.

The Reich often reached out beyond the sphere of the German people, but later it constricted itself until after 1918 it did not encompass more than two thirds of the people. Again a subject to sear the soul! And actually the tragedy of the division of the people in the recent past, within a few years, which we can count on the fingers of our hand, abruptly caused, like a miracle, a number of poets to emerge one after the other with works of a militant, passionate character with the power of created truth born of the most particular experience. They shout forth the song of tribulation of the Germans which touches not only us -- we experienced it a few weeks ago in the unparalleled restoration of a part of the suffering! [2] -- but also Europe to its vital nerve, since we do belong to the responsible master-builders of this continent whose way of life subjected the world. Therefore the poetry of the fate of Germans beyond the Reich, in its most important works, does not cling to territorial and spiritual narrowness, which often enjoys dubious praise as homeland poetry. No, with its presentation of the fate of the homeland, it bursts open larger contexts and becomes a meaningful scripture of German and European fate. In it germinates also the poetry of the law of the eastern spaces and of their bond with the mission and tragedy of our people. A poetry, which -- if all is not deceiving -- in a few years will correctly present the image of the East, up to now distorted by historiography, above all of the Southeast, in terms of its relevance to things German.

From Heinrich Zillich, "Die deutsche Dichtung und die Welt der Geschichte," in Weimarer Reden des Grossdeutschen Dichtertreffens (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1938), pp. 43-45.

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Notes:

1. That is, in the Austrian Anschluss.

2. This refers to the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich.

Wulfe's Manor: Two Episodes in a Peasant's Life, by JOSEFA BERENS-TOTENOHL

I

Several leagues downward where the Lenne doubles back in a northwesterly direction, there lay a free manor called the Wulfe manor. Here dwelt the clan of the Wulfes, lordly, free, secluded. The ancestral father of the clan had founded the manor when the hills were still ruled by savage robber bands. Strong, courageous -- wild blood had coursed through the veins of many members of the family. All had increased in number and defended themselves, regardless of the illustrious lords, von Arnsberg, von Mark, and von Koln, whose boundaries were in this region and who attacked each other whenever they had the opportunity. Through all the dangers the Wulfes had kept their holding free and raised it to a power which stood inviolable on the eternally flaming borders between the three princes.

The Lenne River surrounded the lonely manor, towering on a hill, in a thundering bracket which was ominously threatening in times of danger. On the mountainside the water was dammed by a weir. The mill, which stood On the manor, extended to the edge of the weir. Then the Lenne flowed around the whole manor, which, itself almost a mountainous protrusion, pushed out obliquely into the valley.

So that the manor would not be cut of! during a flood tide, a solid dam had been built to the weir because the waters of the Lenne become a sea when they rush past the steep precipices of the mountain. And this occurred every year in November. This affliction was called Catherine's flood.

The manor, built out of the stones of the mountain, covered over by a gray thatched roof, lay in solitude and darkness. At once a refuge and a defense, the walls presented the aspect of a fortress rather than a house. The manor court was narrow. It was enclosed by stables for the livestock, granaries, barns, and workshops. This garland of buildings necessarily lay lower on the hill. A wall also closed this off against the open Lenne. A heavy portal formed the barrier against the outside world.

In these times the Wulfes kept a guard over the manor at night. The peasant collected a body of men, as many as the holding could support, and gathered them for his defense and honor.

Troubles and crises afflicted the countryside. The lords, big and little, wrested power and lands from each other and were heedless of the fact that they were tearing each other apart. The smell of fire pervaded the land. Misery sat on the hearth. People recited the "Our Father" more frequently than they usually did for the one good petition, the one for bread. But everyone who lay on his deathbed and breathed his last did not pray to the end. In such times it was easy to hate, there were many acts of trespass and trespasses in the making, more than acts of forgiveness, God knows! The hostile hordes of mercenaries tore at each other for the booty like the wild predatory animals in the mountains, forgetting that they had sprung at each other for its sake. Only the Wulfe manor defended itself from becoming booty.

The present peasant, a stocky, fifty-year-old man, sat in an armchair, a brown bearskin spread on the floor in front of him. His grandfather had felled this king of the woods. The armchair was elaborately carved. The arms were formed of two sculptured wolves, the heraldic animals of the Wulfes. The back of the chair showed two eagle-owl heads, which a later ancestor of the Wulfes had added to the escutcheon. The old pagan defiance had sprung up once more in this ancestor and he had the image of the female companion of this God, the owl, the knower among the birds, secretly carved in the ornamental strip of the church pew of the Wulfes in Wormbeeke. The priest, a fanatical persecutor of pagan abominations, had opposed this. The ancestor, firmly defiant, unconcerned at the prospect of being burned at the stake and receiving a harsh court sentence, had said: "Count me out without it!"

Thus the eagle-owl remained on the Wulfes' escutcheon in the church and in the house. For the priest did not want to do without Wulfes and their tithe. The eagle-owl heads gazed, unmoved, upon the Wulfes in their thoughts and in their prayers, when they sat between them. The young Wulfes of several generations had cut their teeth on the springing wolves of the arms of the chair, which were barely perceptible, and had almost reduced them to nothingness with cuts and thrusts.

The peasant was the last Wulfe. His wife Margret had given him only a daughter. Then she was afflicted with an incurable paralysis and sat year after year in her chair near the other windows of the enormous room. Her feet rested on a beautiful wildcat skin with which the peasant had honored her on her wedding day, never imagining that her dead feet would burden it for a whole life. The stillness of old age floated for a long time around this armchair and one perforce already saw deeply, if he wanted to perceive this, that even here a life had been lived far, unutterably far, from peasant life and its necessities.

At that moment the daughter Magdlene came in with the warm evening beer for her father.

"It's going to be bad outside tonight," she said.

"No worse than any other time," decided the peasant.

"It could be, nevertheless. I feel it in my bones like never before," warned the peasant's wife. Thereupon the daughter helped her mother to the bedroom....

The peasant sat still for a long time in the enormous room. Magdlene went into the weaving room, sent the maids away, and worked at the looms by herself. Her loom beat time with the blows of the storm outside, which pounded the corners of the walls, picking up new strength after a moment's pause.

Suddenly a lightning bolt struck, followed by the clap of thunder. The Wulfe daughter hurriedly ran over to her father's side.

"A storm now."

The old man remained silent, serious as though he had heard nothing. He was in another world with his thoughts....

***

And in addition the merchant had to come today! How he hated him! Him, who was only a nothing! He had once placed himself in the hands of this nothing! Of course, it was a long time ago. He had hated him since then. In particular he hated that hour, which he saw as the lowest in his life, and in this hour stood Robbe. Wulfe had never bowed before any prince, yet he had given him, whom he called a dog, he had at one time given him power over him.

It was the only sin that Wulfe recognized in his life. Each time Robbe came, Wulfe thought about this shame, and he certainly would not let him come into the manor if it had not occurred. The peasant always read this triumph in the look of the other, which the shrewd merchant himself never made reference to. But it remained in the abyss, which continuously spewed forth poison.

"Satan!" cursed Wulfe in the direction of the barn.

Wulfe was young, strong, and happy like no other lad in the valley. He had once captured a live wolf and brought him home to his parents. He was the only son and heir of the old manor. In their last progeny the Wulfes were no longer really fruitful! And he was quite aware of his uniqueness.

For years Margret, a rich peasant girl from the Cologne area, had been reserved for him as his future wife. Then fate threw a wild, black-haired gypsy witch into his arms, a girl with smoldering eyes and a fiery passion for rutting, and he forgot all about his blond and quiet Margret and he pulled the alien woman into his riotous nights.

His bedroom, when he was a youth, was located in the wing over the eternally gray weir, the same one which had been swept away by the flood. Hei! How his body flamed when the black witch cowered in the night darkness under the window and cooed up to him. When he flung open the window and she drew close to him! When he grabbed her by her wild lock of hair, and when he heard the wild heartbeat of the woman pound against his equally wild heartbeat, when he hurled his blood into the scorching whirlpool of her flaming desire and lost himself with her in ecstasy! For whole nights, for whole weeks! Then the owls outside screeched their "Huhuhhh!" in vain, the waters roared their warning song to no avail, their song of flood, distress, and disaster.

It was a wild autumn that year, long ago, and it glowed like no other. To this day still, Wulfe's eyes sparkled when on occasion, as on this very night, his thoughts dwelt upon it. He still liked to take delight in this wild exultant time of his life, which otherwise had known only harshness. But then always a stooped, gray shadow crept in, Robbe, and the exultant mood died.

One day, however, the turning point came, the moment in which fate poses the question. For a long time he had secretly tried to flee from her. Many nights it drove him up to the mountains, instead of into her tempting arms, it drove him on the trail of the lynx and the wolf into danger, hardship, and death, instead of to the satiated desire of his senses. A cry for freedom resounded in him, for the proud freedom of his being, which he had betrayed. He wanted to hunt and to fight again for what he had lost on the steep flanks of the cliffs.

Up there in the mountains the old spark sprang up in him, which always drove out the over-drunk sensual frenzy and sated covetousness: hate. The lawful instinct of his peasant blood raised this terrible sword for the revenge of the offenses committed against his being.

Of course, when he came down to the manor again and found the woman waiting for him below, then lust still loudly cried down this spark of salvation. Nevertheless, he returned home hesitatingly, and one wild autumn night he stayed away completely. The mountains resounded with the mighty battle cries of the bucks, the earth trembled under the thud of their hooves. There the woman found him on the owl cliff, from where he had spied upon the raging fury of the battling animals. Thus had he overheard the approach of footsteps.

Even to this day Wulfe shook whenever he thought of this moment, when the shaggy head of the gypsy witch suddenly appeared above the edge of the cliff and was raised higher and higher with a searching, spying look. He had grabbed his javelin, ready to hurl it, for he had thought it was a she-wolf. Then he recognized the eyes.

"You -- here?"

"Yes! Me! You made me wait a long time!"

"You shouldn't have followed me. See!" He showed her the spear. "I was just about to throw it!"

But she just stood there, unmoving, flashing her eyes at him, so that he almost gave way to confusion. He mastered the surge of his blood, or his hatred mastered it. He threw the weapon to the ground.

"Go, go back to your people, woman!"

"My people have gone away, peasant, and you know it! I want to come to you, and 1 want to ask you: When will you make me your peasant wife before all the people?"

"Woman, are you mad?"

"Mad? Didn't you swear to that? A thousand times!"

"What are vows sworn in the night, woman?"

"What are vows, you scoundrel?" she cried, and lunged at him, hanging on his neck, biting and scratching him. "What are vows? Then ask my body, you ..."

If he had not suddenly thrown her back, she would have bitten through his throat like a she-wolf. As though the heavens joined her anger, a fiery glow played around the blazing woman, who stood with smoldering eyes before him, her fists clenched.

"You traitor! Watch out for my people! They will find you! Revenge is sacred!"

Then he stood alone. Before he could lift up his arm to strike her, she had slid down the rock at breakneck speed. No other person could have come out of such a drop alive. Had she saved her life? She had vanished as though the waters of the Lenne had swallowed her and dragged her along. She had left behind with him only her word of revenge and he had brought it home with him.

Thus she was not out of his life.

"If only I had done it!" he wished a thousand times, and every time he regretted that he had not hurled the spear. For, later, she had produced a black gypsy brat, and because of this worm he had to pay with corn and more corn, money and more money. No one was to know about it, neither his old parents nor his quiet bride.

Robbe played the role of intermediary. The rogue! The dog! To this day the peasant always shook with anger whenever the merchant came. But it was too late to order him off the manor. He must be killed. This had always been the peasant's idea, but he never laid him low.

So even today Robbe was again a guest at the Wulfe manor, and even today he had been seated above the domestic servants at the evening meal....

II

"Is Father really dying?" asked Felix, in order to say something, for the silence was becoming oppressive.

"You must adjust yourselves to that! It happens, of course, a little early. How old is he?"

"Barely fifty."

Wulfe was silent.

"He hasn't been able to do anything for a long time now," said Job. Felix, secretly observing Wulfe, added: "There is not much that can really be done on our place."

Here Wulfe was in his element, in which he could find the proper word.

"Everybody knows that the Od manor is falling to pieces. It is all the more regrettable because there are young hands on the place who should be able to do something about it."

He again wanted to summon the devil, but then he thought he heard the throat-rattle from the bedchamber through the rafters of the room, and he did not summon him.

"What shall we do? We don't know to what extent Father has already placed the manor in debt to von Arnsberg," Felix said.

"Your father, indeed, has not worked in a long time. He could do no more. I believe that if his sons had supported and administered the manor in a good, meaningful way, it would not have declined to the point where he had to go to the Count looking for help, which is really not help. Where there are young hands, there should be no decline. This is against all peasant laws."

The sons sat down and were silent. Wulfe continued:

"Your father will not revive. When a tree is rotten, it falls and no support helps. But the land remains. It does not decay. It builds new trees. The manor is your land. You are the new trees. You should know that."

They also knew it. At least they acted as though they did. But to Wulfe their words seemed to have little worth.

"When one lets death come over a manor, then one betrays the immortal soul in creation and God avenges it without mercy. It doesn't matter if your Od manor is run by you or by another. Every manor, however, in the long run requires a strong protector. It rejects the traitor."

The two sons sat before Wulfe as though crushed. They knew his reputation in the whole mountain country and took his words as a judgment and a sentence upon them. Felix was especially depressed. He had nourished a secret hope to marry Wulfe's daughter. Today he realized clearly that he would never be accepted by the people of the Wulfe manor. After his father died, he would find out whether all of them would have to go away from the manor with nothing but a beggar's staff. And such persons would never find mercy at the hand of the peasant Wulfe.

After a while Job arose from his chair. Felix spoke with Wulfe about the work on the manor and in the woods.

"Manual work itself is not even the principal concern of the owner of the manor. Any servant knows how to do that, because otherwise he loses his bread. What counts is the goal of the work. Or its meaning, and this, you say, no longer exists on the Od manor. I say that it is to be found on a manor that is one's own, never on that of another. Happiness too lies in one's own manor. One must only have courage and want to see and conquer it."

"You may talk that way, peasant Wulfe. You would seek yours in vain on the Od manor."

Wulfe looked sharply at the young man. Had things already gone so far that nobody understood him any more? Or did death in the room above lie so heavily on all of them that it wrapped everything in gloom? Wulfe felt a bitter taste on his tongue. What did they want from him? If the freedom of the Od manor was already lost, what was there to do? And his thoughts rose threateningly against the man in the room whom death was now seizing in its grip.

Cecilie's shout interrupted his thoughts: "Hurry, come quickly! He's dying!" She sounded as though she were out of her senses.

In the room, much had changed in one hour. The dying man had acquired a wholly different countenance. The cheeks were completely sunken, the temples showed a deep hollow that gleamed blue and cold. The whole face was waxen, the heart no longer sent a single drop of blood up there. The forehead was beaded with cold sweat. The eyes looked out as though they were already in a distant world. The dying man's breathing was hard and intermittent. They thought that every breath would surely be the last. But his chest rose still once more.

Wulfe remained standing at the door. He saw that Cecilie had also brought in the sisters. They crowded around their mother, fearfully, as though they didn't know what to do with their weeping. The brothers kept in the dark, until Felix came in and supported his fa ther, who wanted to sit up.

The proprietor of the Od manor must still have had something in mind, for he looked around him with eyes that were already dimmed. His thoughts must have achieved a degree of clarity once more. Then his gaze found Wulfe.

Wulfe went up to him immediately. He took the chilling hands in his strong grip, which once had strangled a wolf. And gently Wulfe bent over the man and tried to read his wishes from his lips, but the man could not speak. His tongue no longer obeyed him. A choking gripped the dying man, yet those around him saw that despite this he made every effort to make himself understandable. It was terrible to watch. After a little while, however, it was all over. He had to depart from life, unabsolved, without being able to express the word and his thoughts.

Wulfe let the dead man sink back on his bed and left the room. He had to leave the relatives alone with him. His breed was not good at comforting others, so he took a walk in the night through the manor. It would soon be time for the new day to dawn. The roof of the house already set itself off slightly from the gray sky. He stood there and watched how the beams pushed outward. They stood steep against the sky. It was a lord who had set them up in this way, mused Wulfe the peasant, and he shook his head at the thought that now the Od manor was coming to an end.

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PART 3 OF 3

But while he was standing before the house, thinking his thoughts, he saw that pieces of the beautiful gable were missing and that a deadly air of forlornness hung like a cloud around the protruding rafters. In the garden the snow had been trampled by wild animals and the manor's own livestock. A broken fence had not been repaired. The stables were poorly protected against the cold. Wulfe's anger rose with every step he took. A dog howled behind the stable. Then Wulfe was struck by a shuddering thought. He was familiar with the belief that faithful dogs often quickly follow their masters to the grave. But when he saw this wretched creature, half-starved and forgotten, tethered outdoors in the cold, he could give solemn assurance to the dead man upstairs that he would not have long to wait before the beast would also have gone his way.

Wulfe did not have the heart to go further. The dilapidated condition of the manor affected him so deeply that he decided to take his stallion and ride home. He did not mourn for the dead man in the house; he saw only the death of the manor and to him this was like murder.

He said so to the two sons, whom he soon met, still and speechless, in the room. They did not know how to lend a hand like the women, who everywhere know better how to cope with the things of life. When he spoke about the dog outside behind the stables, the eldest son asked: "Which dog?" Wulfe refused to answer him.

"My daughter said that the Od manor had lost its honor. She was even more right than I imagined."

His words were heard by the dead peasant's widow, who had just come into the room. She was carrying a piece of linen which was to be the dead man's shroud.

"If only you would speak with von Arnsberg, peasant Wulfe, and tell him that he shouldn't send us a stranger to the --" She could not go on. She was overcome with emotion. The little children gathered around her. Before this poignant scene, Wulfe's bones burned as though he had a fever.

''I'll speak with him," he promised, and rode off.

He sent his daughter to the burial. He could no longer set foot on the desolation of this manor.

It turned out that the deal with the Count had really been concluded. For soon after the burial a proxy of von Arnsberg arrived in order to pick out the best cow and horse for the feudal lord. The members of the Od manor realized that they had lost their freedom. It had happened even before the wretched, neglected dog followed his master to the grave.

From Josefa Berens-Totenohl, Der Femhof (Jena, 1935), pp. 14-17, 39-43, 208-213.

A Rowdy as Hero: From an Anti-Jewish Novel, by TUDEL WELLER

"In any case -- they must already be shrewder than we are, because one thing is certain: they sit on top today in our dear Fatherland and we squat here below. And we pay twelve per cent interest ..." This brought him back to reality.

"First of all, for once I'm now going to look into it," he said. "It's bad enough that this is the first time I've heard about it. Maybe we can get a reduction."

"Do you plan to see Lowenstein?" said his mother in astonishment.

"Why not? He won't gobble me up then and there."

"But you won't get anywhere, Peter. When we were in great need we agreed to everything, and we signed everything."

"Will you still be going away now?" his sister broke in.

"Of course -- but only after everything is settled. After all" -- he held his breath, a little less deep now -- "I do want to study, if it goes right. As I've had in mind for a long time."

The old lady's face lit up. "That would be splendid, if you could do it, Peter. But what will you live on? You know how things are with us right now!"

"Well, I'll try to struggle through as a working student like count less others. I've heard of young men who night after night work at their factory shifts and are to be found in the lecture halls by day. Shouldn't I be able to do something like that?" He looked into the faces of his family with an air of triumph, now more assured. His mother, he could see, was already in agreement with him. When is a mother not in agreement when it involves the well-being and the future of a beloved son?

"And we," she said, indicating the daughter, "we'll live in a smaller space, and rent some rooms to strangers. That way we can give our student a little helping hand now and then." But he would not hear of it. "I'll get by all right, Mother, but first I want to give this twelve per cent Jew a good dressing down."

More easily said than done. He came to Poststrasse, to a building constructed like a palace. To the right of the lordly entrance glittered a marble tablet on which was inscribed in golden letters: "Sigfried Lowenstein, Real Estate, Mortgages, Purchase and Sale of Landed Properties, Loans." Nice set-up, the young man said to himself. Nothing so clever about that: after all, should he live in a large block of flats, or maybe even in a barn, at twelve per cent?

Already anger began to smolder in him, and it was not inconsiderable.

He had never been able to stand the chosen sons of Israel. He hardly knew why; it must have lain in his blood. Besides, even in the days of his childhood there had been a guiding experience. He didn't like to think about it. It was a dirty Jewish story. In any case, Lowenstein lived in a palace -- that was certain. And now a young fellow named Peter Monkemann stood before his fancy door. And if things were rightly considered-that is, viewed soberly and clearly -- he came here as an insignificant and modest petitioner. His imperceptibly smoldering anger was meaningless. It could have sprung up from nothing but his inner feeling of powerlessness. For he was little fit to be a petitioner ...

He was received by the chief clerk, who in the new building lorded it over a dozen clerks bent deeply over their desks. "How was that now? Speak with Mr. Lowenstein? Speak with him personally, you mean? Anybody can say that! What do you want from him, then? A mortgage matter, isn't it?"

"Yes -- a mortgage matter."

"Fine. Now what's it about? You can settle matters with me at any time, my good man. You think the boss has time for such things?"

"First," said Peter Monkemann, "I am not your good man, understand? Second -- I want to see Sigfried Lowenstein personally, understand? And as quickly as possible!" Now there was hardly a doubt that this young man would achieve his goal. But before that something new cropped up.

The chief clerk became officious, straightened his crooked back, and said condescendingly: "Obviously you didn't come here on a matter that concerns you personally. Certainly you have come at the bidding of your parents. So you will first have to bring us a certificate stating that you have authorization to act for them."

"But I dropped in only in connection with a possible reduction of the interest and I am here at my mother's request!" Peter protested.

"Precisely!" replied the chief clerk, bowing his head. "We must have that in writing, because in the last analysis anybody can say anything."

So Peter returned home without result, but he was sure that he would not give in. Not he. And when he reappeared with the required authorization and the police certification of his mother's authorization was demanded, he also obtained that, although now he was seething with rage and he had to make a strong effort to control himself in order not to fly at the graybeard.

At last he stood before Sigfried Lowenstein. This at least could not be prevented.

He was sitting, broad and bulky, in a big chair behind a writing desk overloaded with piles of documents and papers. His bloated face revealed cheek pouches. Lachrymal sacs like stuffed pillows hung under his oval, ink-colored, shining bullet-shaped eyes. There was no perceptible neck; the cranium seemed to sit directly between the shoulders, which were pulled up high On the fat torso.

He did not stir when Peter Monkemann entered. He hardly raised his head.

Peter said his little piece: Twelve per cent was too much. Would not half that figure be enough? It did not exactly sound subservient.

"What's that, please?" asked the fat man. He seemed not to have understood at all, and perhaps had not listened.

The young man repeated what he had said.

"Who let you in to see me?" the fat man asked, and raised his head.

"Nobody! I have come to see you so that you yourself can decide whether a reduction ought to be made."

"A reduction," came the echo in the deepest astonishment. "Is that correct? ..Did I hear 'reduction'!"

"Yes, that's correct! After all, you must admit that twelve per cent means ..." He wanted to say "usury." But he controlled himself. Perhaps by being prudent he could still attain something. "Twelve per cent, in the long run, means an impossibility for us, since my father died a short time ago and at home we simply have no income!" he concluded.

The other again bent over his desk. "Go to my chief clerk," he said.

"But I just came from there," the younger man remonstrated. "He can't make a decision on that matter. I would like to hear from you yourself about what's to happen now. I was detained long enough back there. I'm simply tired of being shunted back and forth, do you understand?"

No -- Lowenstein did not understand the tone at all. Not at all. ... Rather, he raised his head again toward the speaker in disbelief and in utter surprise. He saw the other's gaze focused on him, in which hatred and contempt were clearly expressed. At this very moment the youth was forced to think: His face looks like a pig's snout; indeed, like a pig's snout!

No -- Sigfried Lowenstein understood not a word of all that. Who let this fellow push his way into his private office? This in itself was an act of unheard-of insolence.... So he at last removed the long- xtinguished cigar from his big fish-mouth and then he straightened up slightly in his chair, as much as was possible in view of his extraordinary obesity. And then he said: "Young man, if you speak to me any further in that tone of voice, I'll have my house servant throw you out, do you understand? As for the rest, who are you, and what do you want from me anyway? Do you think I've nothing else to do except listen to your trivialities?"

Peter Monkemann stood there and stared at him, repressing his anger. Did he not come here as a petitioner? If he now gave in to his inner impulse, if he kicked this fat sack in the belly and landed a punch on his pig's snout, then the whole mess would really get worse. Then the mortgage would be foreclosed -- that was for sure. Then too the police might come with rubber truncheons and handcuffs and he could kiss his studies and his future good-by.

So he just stood there, swallowed hard, and quivered a little.... What did the Jewish pig mean just now? Call the house servant, have him thrown out ... ?

"Be careful, mister," said Peter Monkemann with difficulty. "It takes two to throw me out, so far as I know. And it will not be wholly undangerous, but ..." Now he controlled himself, stiff and steel-like in his bearing. "Besides, it's probably completely unnecessary. I'll disappear without further ado as soon as you agree to a reduction."

Sigfried Lowenstein was moved by an inexplicable feeling. The instinct of his race told him that here really a hidden danger was in the offing, and he always got out of the way of physical danger -- this also was taught to him by his instinct -- like all the members of his race for millennia before him.

So he turned the whole matter into a stupid and bold phraseology, thus toning down the threatening scene. So, smirking broadly and striking his fleshy, ring-studded hand on the table, he said: "May the righteous God strike me dead if I am in the wrong. But I still hear 'reduction.' How can you imagine such a thing? Do you believe, for instance, that it can be done just like that? I didn't find money on the streets either! I don't deal with interest, young man ... whatever you may think!"

"But after all you live only from trade," the young man almost roared, "and an interest of twelve percent is profiteering. It's usury and nothing else!"

Now the lad had called things by their right names and now he had certainly lost his chance.

Sigfried Lowenstein withdrew his arm from the flat part of the desk. He stuck the cigar into his big fish-mouth, leaned back, and placed the thumbs of his two hands jauntily behind his vest. Circumspectly, calmly, and quite the master of this situation, Sigfried Lowenstein said:

"Let me tell you something, young man. I could sue you for accusing me of usury. But I won't do it. I'm a businessman, understand? But to teach you a little lesson, the mortgage is foreclosed, understand? And if your mother doesn't bring the whole sum -- and she never will -- if the money isn't there on the dot, then there will be an auction, understand? Then I'll auction off the place.... It's my good and proper right."

Peter Monkemann took one step forward. He looked threateningly at the fat man, looked squarely into his ugly, fat face.

"You won't do that," he said tonelessly. His fists clenched and unclenched convulsively, but he himself was unaware of it. "You won't do it," he repeated, and stood up against the front of the desk.

Lowenstein's face paled. Suddenly he had a muddy-gray coloration. He expressed an unutterable fear. His eyes almost rolled out of their sockets, the pulsing of the spongy veins was perceptible on his temples, and one bead of perspiration after another arranged itself on his wrinkled forehead, as high as the leather-colored dome of his cranium. The master of the situation suddenly had lamentably collapsed, and despite his physical dimensions he now presented only a pathetic scrap of a man. He rose from his deep chair, drew backward slightly, while his hand stretched out over the flat surface of the writing desk and pressed the buzzer. "Take your paws off the buzzer!" ordered his visitor, and fury glowered behind his forced composure, but the other kept on pressing the buzzer vigorously and now he suddenly began to scream: "This is a threat ... blackmail, yes indeed ... blackmail ... !"

His voice tumbled over itself. The word echoed through the room and the man repeated it, meaninglessly, as if crazed with fear. He was still screaming it when the door opened and his house servant stood on the threshold. Peter Monkemann stepped back. His anger had collapsed like a house of cards at the sight of the frantic fear of this miserable wretch. Now he was the master of the situation. This ridiculous scene, in no way justified, suddenly brought him back to reason.

The broker pulled himself together, and he regained his bearing with such swiftness that Peter Monkemann was filled with astonishment. He pointed to the lad. "Take the man to the door," he said, but his voice was still not wholly clear. It sounded something like the rattle of a beast. "It's not necessary," answered Peter Monkemann, "I'll find the way back by myself." His look had the effect of preventing the servant from coming any nearer. "You will certainly think the matter over," he continued as he was about to leave the room. Nevertheless, when he closed the door he heard the man saying, insolently and provocatively as during the beginning of the dispute: "I won't reconsider it at all, it will be foreclosed ... immediately! And then -- legal execution of the foreclosure!"

The young man hesitated imperceptibly. Should he ... should he not? This scoundrel -- just minutes ago he was a whimpering bundle of flesh -- was baring his teeth again. Peter Monkemann still held the doorknob in his hand, literally uncomprehending. Where does the fellow get such insolence? But naturally -- now he has a witness, his house slave, his protector.

On the steps he said to the servant: "Give your Sigfried a nice greeting from me. Do that immediately and tell him that he will really get to know Peter Monkemann if he tries to carry out his intention."

But that did not mean too much; he knew that very well. As he sat in the train on his journey homeward, he thought about the case. He had achieved nothing. Of this there was no doubt. On the contrary, it would have been much better if he had remained at home. Now things were worse than before. This Manichean would make short shrift of it; he would push for legal foreclosure, because these carrion vultures have a greater knowledge of conditions in the money market than anybody else. Money indeed is scarce in these bad times. He would not be able to find anyone to refinance the mortgage. Things are in a sad way in the German Fatherland, he said to himself in discouragement.... In a word, it makes you vomit! What could be the reason? he brooded. We won the battles in the war, but we lost the war. And it was no different with the Freikorps. [1] We scattered the Red pack, but we didn't triumph at all. On the contrary, afterward, when the work was done, there was the kick in the ass from the top.

Other people triumphed. Just look around you! You see that everywhere.... Where do they sit, do you mean? Stupid question! Rather, you should say, where don't they sit? For there is no high position, no government office, no authority, no trade union, no business office, no management, no board of directors, and no government in which they do not make their way. The same whose necks you wanted to break, to be sure only in harmless song, you stupid novices. [2]

Your Freikorps fought against the red terror, against the Communist gang of murderers, from east to west, from the Baltic to the Ruhr, but you forgot the Jew. And today he is breaking your neck, and sometimes it is twelve per cent. Today you sit below, and he sits on top. And who knows? Perhaps it would have been better if you had let Spartacus [3] in. Doesn't one often expel the Devil with Beelzebub?

"No," murmured the young man. For after all it is one and the same gang -- it's chips from the same block. Have you forgotten how the city commandants of March 1920 looked? Oh, it's a cursed world! ...

[Peter Monkemann now definitely leaves home for study in Berlin. On his way he passes again through Lowenstein's town.]

The next train would not be leaving for two hours, and for one who was so immersed in himself as this traveler, this was a long time. He did not want to fall once more into brooding. Instead, he wanted to be alert and open to all that was new. He wanted to burn all the ships behind him, strike the tents, the past was to be a dead thing, he would march with a light pack. With an assault pack, so to speak, because otherwise he would not move forward fast enough and this he must do.

What then should he do in these two hours? Naturally -- the only right thing. Obviously, to go to Sigfried Lowenstein and tell him: "In order that you may know what's what -- the money for the mortgage is ready. It will be paid off and then, praise God, we shall have nothing more to do with each other. Now you can swindle others with your twelve per cent. You usurer. And there won't be a legal execution of the foreclosure either. I've taken care of that, you Jew!"

He could not very well deny himself this triumph. Besides, it is a good thing to do anyway. Without any clear declarations, this fat fellow would probably try new tricks with Peter's womenfolk.

Peter Monkemann made his way up to his private office. The Jew was terrified no little: "Are you here again already?"

"It's me, Mr. Sigfried Lowenstein. To your regret, I must declare to you that I have the money for the refinancing of the mortgage. It's all over with usurious rates of interest. You have swindled yourself out of business. At least with us, Mr. Sigfried."

He smiled. Fat and spiteful. "So," he said slowly, almost enjoying it, "so you found a stupid person. I was mistaken ... it can happen ... so much money -- so much money -- but whom have you conned? -- if it's true!"

He didn't say any more. Peter Monkemann leaned over the desk, grabbed him by the collar with one hand, shook him from one side to the other, and pushed him back and forth. Then in a sudden, flaming,
unbridled rage he hurled a word at him that will remain a word of abuse and insult as long as the world goes round and round: "You Jew! -- You Jew! -- You dirty Jew!"

Lowenstein made a rattling sound. But he didn't scream. He didn't scream even when the angry bull let him go.

He hunched himself -- ashen-pale and in a state of collapse -- in the big chair. Then with a tired movement he picked up two shirt buttons that had fallen off and which were lying on the desk. When Peter was about to leave the room, he noticed that the Jew's ring-studded hand was picking up the telephone receiver.

Now's the time, thought the young man.

Sigfried Lowenstein thought it over. What had happened? A chap, a goyim, had screamed a word that always strikes out at him more painfully than the lash of a whip. As true as it may be.... And this chap had grabbed him by the collar, not exactly very gently, oh not at all, and only because he had used the expression "conned"? That was a bit thick, a bit thick, but to call the police for this reason? Ridiculous! Sigfried Lowenstein had other methods. Methods which gave him a chance to vent his lustful rages and at the same time brought in more money.

From Tudel Weller, Rabauken! Peter Monkemann haut sich durch (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Frz. Eher Nachf., 1938), pp. 14-15, 17-23, 29-31.

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Notes:

1. The Free Corps, army units that refused to disband after World War I and fought first in the Baltic and Silesia and then against the Communist governments in Bavaria and Saxony. They were also active against the French in the Ruhr (see p. 94).

2. This reference is to the threat against Jews in the Nazis' "Horst Wesser" song.

3. The Spartacus revolt was a Communist uprising in Berlin (January 1919) .

Events at the Prussian State Theater, by ECKART VON NASO

Although mostly already "coordinated" and "Aryanized," the press and public had lost nothing of the spontaneous sureness of their judgment, and when winter returned, with prudent regret they were forced to realize that the Staatsbuhne, which was much quarreled over and nonetheless interesting, was in danger of becoming a philistine provincial theater. At that time they could still express such criticism; later it was no longer possible.

Specifically, Goebbels invented "art observation" in the place of criticism. One, to be sure, had the right to "observe" -- but was forbidden to pronounce a judgment. Thus criticism was stripped of all meaning. The "art creators," which was the name given to actors, composers, painters, sculptors, and writers, no longer saw themselves. here was no mirror. They did not know whether their accomplishments were good or bad. All one learned was that they had accomplished something, though the masters of the journalistic craft could smuggle in the carefully camouflaged truth between the lines. Remarkably enough, one was allowed to praise. Obviously this was not a judgment, but observation. And the whole invention thereupon led to removing the, in part, pathetic propaganda plays in brown uniform from the danger of adverse criticism.

Many funny things happened at that time. Thus at first Charlemagne was prohibited as a dramatic personage because he had proved himself to be a race-alien "Saxon-slaughterer" and had slaughtered with Christian chauvinism. Then upon further consideration one convinced oneself that after all he had certainly accomplished something for German interests: so Carolus Magnus was again a dramatic persona grata. On the other hand, Cromwell was regarded as harmless and was liked by the Fuhrer. Real mushroom cultures of Cromwell sprouted from the earth. Julius Caesar also seemed to be much in demand, although he had come to a questionable end. But one probably thought if one could go as far as he had, the Ides of March no longer played a role. But it was not at all easy to find one's way through this maze of prohibitions and desiderata, because often enough the desiderata, for undiscoverable reasons, were sooner or later placed on the prohibition list.

The tragedy was permeated with farcical events. Among the 2400 manuscripts which were sent in to the script department in 1933, among which were 500 dramas about Arminius and Thesnulda, [1] there was also a bloodthirsty, anti-Jewish play of an undiscussable kind. "Be careful," said Johst, [2] "I know the author." I dictated a polite letter of rejection. Johst signed it -- not a pleasant function, which soon enough was to be assigned to me. An angry letter came back which read something like the following: "Esteemed Party Comrade Johst! Do you dare to send back my play? Don't you know that I have a party number in two figures -- and what do you have? A party number in six or seven figures! I will file a protest with the Fuhrer. Heil Hitler!" We both had to laugh. "That's how they are," said Johst. "The party number decides all." Yes, these were the farcical events of a tragic time....

Since the director had suddenly given up apprentice, journeyman, and master tests, the producer [3] now needed only to give free play to his motor powers in order to bring the machine to high speed. His secret was that he did not start out from the world of literature but from the world of low comedy. He had and still has a flair for the theater, indeed for the primitivity of the theater, if it is real and kindles a spark. A man named Shakespeare had the same. He did not believe in ghosts; he himself had said so in his great monologue in Hamlet: "... from whose world no traveller returns...." Despite this he began the play with a ghost scene, because he understood the theater and knew that a ghost on the stage has a sure-fire effect.

The producer Grundgens wanted a Dionysian, not a literary, theater -- certainly not the philosophizing theater of the deep thinking to which he gave a very funny name in which only the syllable "deep" was repeated. He also knew that tragedy once had arisen from the intoxication and bewitchment of the wine god, in order to couple play-instinct and poetry. Therefore he decided to play Scribe's Glass of Water with more determination than his friends could assume at that time, who urgently advised him against such an old, used-up "theatrical" antique.

Grundgens did not let himself be side-tracked from his opinion. The theater first of all needed a public, and the public, weary of "blood and soil," had again deserted our theater. It had to be won back. This, however, could be done only by giving the play program an electrical charge. It the tensions were perceptible, the sparks would fly further.... This bold experiment succeeded. Kleist's Hermannsschlacht, otherwise no play for the public, performed three days after Glass of Water, was drawn into the success of the witty Scribean dialectic. With such a two-pronged attack, which forged a connection between the play instinct and poetry, the theater became once again an interesting place. People talked about it; they sensed the vibration. The long line at the box office, which formerly had looked like a blind worm, now finally resembled the legendary Mittgart, [4] which circled around the Gendarmenmarkt the way its predecessor had encircled the world.

Even the premieres were hits. Thus I had the dramaturgist's pleasure to assist at the birth of two playwrights who had stumbled upon the theater from other fields: the epic poet Hans Friedrich Blunck and the lyric poet Hans Schwarz. Of course, Blunck had also written lyrics of great form, as is proved by his Ballads. Schwarz was the editor of the collected works of Moeller van den Bruck, whom the Nazi state at first had praised to the skies.... [5]

Be it as it may: Blunck's Country in the Twilight with the man-and-wife acting team of Kayssler and Helene Fehdmer and The Rebel in England by Hans Schwarz with Hermine Korner as Elizabeth and Paul Hartmann as Essex, were impressive visiting cards. The great representative drama had again replaced the peasant play.

From Eckart von Naso, Ich liebe das Leben: Erinnerungen aus funf Jahrzehnten (Hamburg: Wolfgang Kruger Verlag, 1953), pp. 617-618, 648-649. (Reprinted by permission.)

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Notes:

1. Arminius was a Germanic hero who defeated the Roman legions at the battle of the Teutoburger Forest (9 A.D.). Thesnulda was his wife.

2. See page 135.

3. Gustav Grundgens (1899-1963), perhaps Germany's best-known actor, became the producer of the Prussian State Theater in Berlin, over which Goring maintained control.

4. The serpent which, according to Germanic legend, entwines itself around the globe.

5. For Blunck, see page 135. Hans Schwarz (b. 1890) refined the technique of the Greek chorus in his plays, a device much used in the Nazi liturgy.

Playbills of the Herne City Theater, 1936-1940



In July 1937 the chief office of the National Socialist Cultural Community was transferred to the Strength Through Joy organization. The local theater directorate, naturally, announced a new winter program, but it could not carry it out. As a result, the performances were sponsored by the Strength Through Joy organization. This led, as far as such was still possible, to a further superficialization of the program, which in 1937·38 unfolded as follows:



The city now also involved itself in the new theater season and granted subsidies to the Strength Through Joy organization, without thereby improving the quality of the program.

Winter program 1938-39:



Program for 1939-40:



Thus the level had sunk more and more; the program contained almost only propaganda pieces, comedies, operettas. If to this one adds the cabaret-like performances, a cultural nadir was reached below which one could no longer sink. This is astonishing in view of the fact that the National Socialists in other cities promoted an authentic cultural life or at least guaranteed it. Thus during these years the Stadt-theater in Bochum, under its director, Saladin Schmitt, attained a new high cultural level with its cycles of Kleist, Grabbe, [9] and others. One must assume that the taste of the people responsible for cultural life in Herne was so shallow and bad that they were not able to offer the people anything of a special character. During the war years an attempt was made at first to carry out a program, but after the proclamation of total war, actors and musicians were integrated into the war economy.

Program for 1940-41:



From Herne, 1933-1945: Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, edited by Hermann Meyerhoff (Herne, 1963), p. 63.

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Notes:

1. Gerhard Menzel (b. 1894) wrote Scharnhorst in 1935. Scharnhorst (1755-1813), a Prussian general, reformed the army by introducing universal military service. It was in 1935 that Hitler reintroduced conscription in Germany.

2. A realistic war play (1929) by C. R. Sheriff.

3. August Hinrichs (b. 1879) wrote books and plays in native peasant dialect.

4. Written in 1913 on a theme by the nineteenth-century author Eduard Morike.

5. Konrad Dreher founded this group in 1892.

6. Konrad Dreher, after World War I, continued with his own "folk theater" ensemble.

7. Dario Niccodemi (1874-1934). a writer of comedies. This, his most famous, was written in 1915.

8. Karl Zeller (1842-1898), Austrian composer.

9. Both Kleist and Grabbe were chosen as patriotic nineteenth-century writers. Kleist was acclaimed wholeheartedly by the Nazis as the "conscience of the nation," Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836) wrote "heroic" historical dramas. The Nazis created a special "Grabbe week" in 1936.

The Winter Program of the German Radio, 1936

Munich, October 28. Reich broadcasting director Hadamovsky, [1] at the order of Reich Minister Dr. Goebbels, in the main broadcasting studio of the German radio broadcasting system of Munich, announced the winter program of the German radio to the directors and co-workers of the radio broadcasting system and representatives of the party and the government. According to the Reich broadcasting director, the main purpose of future programming is to create joy and to solidify the community. Hence the new program is called "Joy and Community." The German Labor Front and the Strength Through Joy organization are to be drawn into the program through a uniform regulation of work breaks, an energetic propaganda campaign among workers, and the shaping of leisure evening hours.

This year, for the first time, a preliminary program containing all the important broadcasts of the winter will be given to the German public and to radio listeners abroad.

The program contains the political broadcasts of the Reich broadcasting directorate and the major radio features and broadcasts of the Reich broadcasting system and the German short-wave broadcasting system. The major political broadcasts of the winter can be found in the section entitled "The Party Has the Floor!" The programs for the work breaks of the German workers are to be broadcast under the motto "Joy in the Plant and at Home." The work-break broadcasts in the Reich railway repair works at Munich-Freimann will begin with a festival under the slogan "Music and Dance in the Plant." The work-break concerts will take place from 6 A.M. to 8 A.M., from 8:30 A.M. to 9:30 A.M., and from 12 A.M. to 1 P.M. Plant managers are urged to cooperate in this program by arranging work breaks in the plants in such a way that they correspond with this schedule.

During the winter the German radio will hold evening leisure hours in which conductors and soloists of the first rank will interpret important musical works. These broadcasts will also be transmitted to factories. Under the title "Peasantry and Landscape," provisions have been made for general broadcasts on the German peasantry along with agricultural news. The Hitler Youth and the National Socialist Teachers' Association will jointly sponsor the "Hour of the Young Nation" on Wednesdays and the "Morning Celebrations" on Sundays.

The Reich broadcasting director gave details on the music program of the radio station. According to him, the music program of the radio broadcasting system has been continually broadened since the seizure of power by National Socialism, increasing from 25,000 broadcasts in 1932 to more than 40,000 broadcasts in 1935. In the future, overtures, feature programs, and the great dramatic works of world literature are to replace lectures and readings more frequently than has been the case up to now.

The Deutschlandsender [2] is to visit the Reich Autobahn, the airports of Lufthansa, the German coal- mining districts and the blast furnaces, porcelain factories and amber-laundries, cloth and linen weavers, herring ships and herring fishery centers, fishing ports and refrigeration plants, the auxiliary Bavarian troop and the motorized troop "Deutschland" of the NSDAP, and in addition provide a series of radio reports on the NSDAP and its organizations. The section "Germany Calls the World!" contains a summary of the important broadcasts of the German short-wave broadcasting system. The German short-wave system broadcasts forty hours daily. Six separate programs are especially designed for the various areas of the world: Southern Asia and Australia, Eastern Asia, Africa, South America, Central America, and North America.

The radio broadcasting system in Germany today includes about 8,000,000 owners of radio sets, and counts on about 30,000,000 listeners. There are about 70,000 broadcasting hours and over 250,000 individual broadcasts. In the last years the number of listeners has increased by about 1,000,000 annually.

From the Frankfurter Zeitung, Oct. 29, 1936. (Wiener Library Clipping Collection.)

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Notes:

1. Eugen Hadamovsky was the first National Socialist Reich director of radio broadcasting (Reichsendeleiter).

2. Main central radio transmission station.

Fundamental Features of Radio Programming, 1938

Berlin, August 9. Each year the members of the German radio broadcasting industry come together from all the districts of the Reich to meet in Berlin during the great Radio Broadcasting Exhibition. This year's gathering, which was held on Tuesday in the meeting room of the Kroll Opera House, received its special slogan from Dr. Goebbels with his declaration that "Germany must become the strongest radio broadcasting country in the world."

Reich Superintendent Glasmeier [1] read his report on the basic features of the programming of the German radio broadcasting system. His main point was that the basic attitude of the radio broadcasting system is National Socialist. Moreover, on the basis of this attitude the radio broadcasting system must strive to include the whole range of public life today, to give it support where necessary, especially the enormous program of the Strength Through Joy organization, the great Winter Aid programs, and the activities of the individual branches of the movement.

In connection with the problem of light dance music versus music of greater artistic value, a question which has been widely discussed among radio listeners, Reich Superintendent Glasmeier declared that the radio broadcasting system has held to a healthy middle course, which it would continue to follow in the future.

Reich Superintendent Glasmeier sharply opposed the reinfiltration, by way of the "humorous" sketch, of the destructive Jewish spirit into the radio broadcasting system. We cannot have a situation in which the leaders of the movement extol the sacredness of marriage and the ethos of the German soldier, who must risk his life and blood for the Fatherland, while in the evening these very values are insulted and ridiculed in "colorful" entertainment sketches with the corroding sarcasm of so-called variety programs. (Loud applause.)

Superintendent Glasmeier addressed an urgent appeal to his musical colleagues not to fall asleep at their desks, filing cabinets, and music cabinets, but to set forth on journeys of discovery in the field of German musical literature, to find unknown precious pearls, which can be transmitted to the German people, works of the past as well as works of contemporary creative artists.

At the conclusion of his discussion, Superintendent Glasmeier distinguished between the tasks of the Reich broadcasting stations and the tasks of the Deutschlandsender. [2] The Reich broadcasting stations, which originated because of the particularism of the individual German states, in the new Reich have a twofold task: on the one hand, they must represent their territory; on the other, they must always be conscious of the fact that they are Reich radio stations, that they are the heralds of the idea of the Reich and that they must contribute their share, that clan and provincial borders are increasingly vanishing, and that in all German districts it is the German man who inhabits the German soil.

The Deutschlandsender, however, must present a wholly different face. It is the representative of the German Reich government, of the National Socialist movement, in short a representative of German culture. It must not attend to the needs of the individual territory as such; it must portray the face of the whole German land.

After Dr. Glasmeier's discussion, which received enthusiastic applause, the President of the Reich Radio Chamber, Kriegler, took the floor. In his speech he pointed out that the Radio Broadcasting Exhibition had never before met with such a great response from the public. Obviously, much of this was due to the new "German small receiver 1938," which was a truly socialistic community accomplishment of the radio broadcasting directorate and the radio industry.

Today about 54 per cent of the households in the Reich are linked to the radio network. Of the rest, only a relatively small part has remained outside broadcasting range because of disinterest. The majority of the population, however, for financial reasons has not been in a position to buy the 65- Reichsmark Volk-receiver and in addition to pay the monthly radio fee of 2 Reichsmarks. Our special promotional efforts and concern must be directed at these racial comrades.

From the National Zeitung (Essen), Aug. 10, 1938. (Wiener Library Clipping Collection.)

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Notes:

1. Heinrich Glasmeier, director-general of the German Broadcasting Company (Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft). Before 1933 he was an archivist in Westphalia.

2. See page 192.

German Films for Venice, 1938

German films will be strongly represented at this year's Biennale exhibition. The following films will be shown:

"Olympia-Film [1] ("Feast of the Peoples," "Feast of Beauty"); Homeland; The Model Husband; Furlough on Word of Honor; Traveling People; Youth.

Other films to be shown are the documentaries The Bee State; Feathered Seaside Guests on the Baltic Sea; Riemenschneider, the Master of Wurzburg; German Racing Cars in Front; Fliers, Radio Operators, Cannoneers; Black Forest Melody; Splendor of Color at the Bottom of the Sea; Speed Streets; Pilots of the Air; Nature in Technique; Cuttlefish; Moorlands; Youth in Dance.

From Der Mittag (Dusseldorf), July 20, 1938. (Wiener Library Clipping Collection.)

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Notes:

1. Taken at the 1936 Olympic Games.

The Film Public Is Not So Stupid

At the Gloria-Palast in Berlin one can witness a remarkable event -- a film in which the leading lady is something less than a movie beauty. Whenever this actress, who has none of the charms of Hollywood, appears, the audience is enthusiastic and applauds at the end of each scene. We would advise all film producers to attend one of the ordinary evening performances. They would then see that the usual answer, that the film public demands platinum blondes, girls with mascara around the eyes, and a sexy look even as in toothpaste ads, is a poor answer. The excellent film at the Gloria- Palast is called Masquerade, and the lady is Paula Wessely, the most outstanding of the new young actresses of the stage. Here, in her first appearance on the screen, she plays the part of a simple young girl unaffectedly and directly, with an astounding power to portray human beings. A stir of excitement runs through the theater -- this is the impact her acting has upon people. Why? This is not the first time that such acting has been seen. But it is a rare event, even in German films, when one can look to the great actress, rather than to the charming starlet for one's enjoyment. This success has proven the Vienna Film Society right: the public is not as stupid as we are led to believe. Sometimes it exhibits perfectly good instinct -- for instance, when it laughed during the deadly serious scenes of a certain new film drama that was based on mechanical hodge-podge and banal dialogue. Or when, as here, it applauds the achievement of a real actress and finally leaves the theater visibly moved to its innermost being.

Today in Germany we should ponder this, and instead of sensational effects we should allow real artistic accomplishment to come to the fore. Unfortunately, this seldom happens. But it can be done earnestly and -- this is very important for the film -- cheerfully. Then we will once more attain the leading place that is due to us even in the eyes of the most demanding people.

From the Dusseldorfer Allegemeine Zeitung, Aug. 26, 1934. (Wiener Library Clipping Collection.)

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PART 1 OF 2

6. Science and National Socialism

Editor's Introduction

Two NOBEL LAUREATES were instrumental in building a bridge between science and the Nazi world view. Philipp Lenard (1862.1947), who received the Nobel Prize in 1905 for his work on cathode rays, occupied the chair of theoretical physics at the University of Heidelberg. Together with his fellow Nobel laureate Johannes Stark, he declared himself a follower of Hitler as early as 1924. Lenard's Deutsche Physik (German Physics) (1936) was praised by the official party bibliography for making science relevant to the political struggle, [1] and indeed this was the aim of the work. Lenard divided all knowledge into the natural and spiritual sciences. In this scheme all animate matter is brought into the world of the spirit, which, in turn, is determined by the racial origins of the organism itself. But inanimate matter is also included in the "mysteries of nature" by emphasizing the interconnection between all natural phenomena, animate or inanimate.

Stress upon the "organic" and the fundamental unity of all of nature according to a divine plan is basic to National Socialist science, indeed to its view of nature (see also page 81). This theme appears throughout the chapter. With this hypothesis Lenard is able to avoid "materialism" and can, instead, subordinate scientific investigation to the "greatest mystery," which is one of the spirit. Of itself, matter is merely a mechanism which does not comprehend the spiritual dimension all-important to scientific investigation. We have already seen how the spiritual dimension was linked with race. Lenard thus lays the foundation for the absorption of science into the world view.

Johannes Stark (1874-1951) further elaborates these ideas. After receiving a Nobel Prize for his work on electromagnetism, he had to retire from his chair at the University of Wurzburg because of his polemics against Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity in 1922. He devoted the rest of his life as a scientist to the cultivation of fruit trees and to forestry. Under the Nazis he became the president of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the state organization concerned with supporting scientific research. Stark makes a direct and simple equation between science and Volk. What remains of science is the emphasis upon exact and disinterested observation of natural phenomena, but this is immediately tied, Once again, to the Nordic race. With its emphasis upon race the Nazi world view envelops all scientific activity. Stark stands the truth upon its head: German science, as he defines it, is objective and factual, while Jews are advocates of opinion -- and the proof for this is seen in the quite unobjective science of race. Scientific respectability depends on the racial soul.

Lenard mentions Newton as one of the true scientists; indeed National Socialist scientists regarded themselves as descended from scientists of the seventeenth century. For these men did, as a matter of fact, believe in the organic nature of the universe; they were interested in religion as much as in science and their theories sought to encompass the whole universe. Science had changed in the nineteenth century: the "new physics" had denied the organic nature of the Newtonian universe and the Theory of Relativity sounded its death knell.

That is why Bruno Thuring's attack on Einstein is important. Thuring (b. 1905) was a young astronomer and mathematician, active in the Heidelberg Association of Students of Science, a branch of the National Socialist student organization. It was before this body that he gave the talk (September 4, 1936) that was reprinted in the official mathematical journal, Deutsche Mathematik, from which our excerpt is taken. The year after his speech, Bruno Thuring became a lecturer at the University of Munich, working at the university's observatory. Thuring, like the others, emphasizes the so-called spiritual factors in science, but he also presents a good exposition of the National Socialist history of science. His opposition to the course of modern science is obvious, and modernity is, in typical Nazi fashion, linked to the Jew. The materialism of Einstein's space-time concept and the supposed absence of "energy" from his system are contrasted with the Nordic's instinctual understanding of the meaning of energy. The influence of Nietzsche is not to be denied in this passage.

If a certain view of human nature is implicit in Thuring's approach to science, as it is in that of Lenard and Stark, what then of psychoanalysis? Kurt Gauger gives us the official Nazi version of this science. Though he had taken a medical degree, he was not active in that field. He was associated with the government office in charge of educational films and edited its series of pamphlets. Moreover, as a side line he wrote novels about seafaring men. Gauger was a propagandist, and as such helped to lay down the line for a German psychotherapy: the world view must be primary. Small wonder that he appeared at the International Medical Congress for Psychotherapy in 1934 as a political leader rather than as a practicing psychoanalyst. For to that title he could lay no claim -- certainly not before an international audience.

Gauger's attacks against Freud are very similar to those of Thuring against Einstein. The materialism of the Freudians is contrasted with the positive values which National Socialism has brought to science. When he comes to discuss the actual nature of mental illness, he moves toward the theories of Carl Gustav Jung, not just by contrasting Jung and Freud but in a more fundamental sense. The emphasis upon the "collective unconscious," which expresses itself in the community linked together by a shared archetype (or soul) derives from Jung, as does the denial that the ego and the id (defined as soul and mind) are opposed to each other. At one point Gauger takes Freud's famous metaphor -- that the relation of the ego to the id is like that of a rider to a horse -- and changes Freud's wild horse into an animal in complete harmony with its rider. Once again the organic is stressed, the genuine unity of all nature. Jung, it must be remembered, had taken over the presidency of the German Society for Psychotherapy in June 1933. He began to refine his concept of the "collective unconscious" in the pages of the journal of the association -- writing about the differences between the Aryan and the Jewish archetype while advocating the necessity of understanding the German soul. Thus another distinguished scientist came to the aid of the Nazi cultural drive.

The physician in the new Reich must be a "biological soldier." Hanns Lohr (b. 1891), the medical director of the University Hospital at the University of Kiel, defines the place of the medical sciences in the National Socialist state. He calls for a basic revision in medical studies toward building character and personality rather than merely transmitting knowledge. This approach to medical education has its parallel in the general educational theories of the Third Reich (see Chapter 8). Empirical knowledge is integrated into the total biological picture and here the basic spiritual fact of Volkish belonging is primary. If Volk and race are the chief reality, then a medical science which is divorced from these is merely mechanical. On the other hand, an emphasis on race is not anti-intellectualism, but rather leads to intuitive insights. Lohr's book Aberglaube und Medizin (Superstition and Medicine) (1940) stresses the immanent laws of nature which only the Nordic, with his talent for observation, can under stand -- a point made by Lenard. Superstition is the belief that healing derives not from nature but from supernatural causes, such as those advanced by Christianity.

In these documents the Nazi world view is equated with organic nature: Volk and race are part of an interconnected totality of which nature is one facet -- all held together by spiritual principles which were expressed in Nazi culture. The "biological soldier" must be aware of this totality so that he can serve the truth and through it his Volk. For Lohr this also meant encouraging the propagation of the race through healthy child-bearing as well as approval of the sterilization law (see page 90).

Science was absorbed by Nazi culture, and in turn helped to give this culture an air of intellectual respectability. The importance of empirical facts was never denied; instead they were integrated into the world view. There can be little doubt that Nazi science, in departing from the famous tradition of German scientific accomplishment, contributed to the final failure of the Third Reich in the war effort. It was no accident that the Allies, not Germany, developed the atomic bomb, the "miracle weapon" for which Hitler waited in vain.

G.L.M.

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Notes:

1. Nationalsozialistische Bibliographie, Jahrg. I, Heft II, (March 1936), p. 4. No. 25a.

The Limits of Science, by PHILIPP LENARD

Natural Science and the Spiritual Sciences [1]

Originally, physics meant -- and essentially continues to mean even today, especially in our conception -- natural science in general. This is one part of human knowledge; the other part consists of the spiritual sciences.

Natural science -- physical -- deals with the totality of nature, or the world, as far as it is perceptible to us. Its subject is everything that exists that is observable. And this is a great deal, for it reaches to the farthest celestial bodies. Obviously, however, it is not everything, not the entire world. There is, as our innermost being teaches us, a portion of the world that is inaccessible to our senses.

We call the portion of the world that is accessible to our senses the material or substantial world; the other part, of which our inner being gives us information but whose existence is also apprehended by our senses when we observe organisms, we call the spiritual world.

Our subject, therefore, is the material world and everything that happens in it; the spiritual sciences, on the other hand, deal with matters of the spirit. Among these spiritual sciences are history, theology, so- called philosophy, jurisprudence.

The work of the investigator of nature who furthers the natural sciences is very different from that of the man who deals with the spiritual sciences. The investigator of nature relies entirely on his senses; he uses them to gather daily ever more extensive and new information about the material world. Thus he generally focuses his observations on the inanimate part of the material world, since that part has most easily confirmed and still confirms for him the simple uniformities of the processes of the entire material world. The animate part is strikingly different from the inanimate; it is marked by processes of a highly intricate character, and it is this difference, accessible to sensory perception, which indicates to the senses the existence of an extra-material world. Obviously it is the same "spiritual world" of whose operations we are informed by our own inner being. The animate part of the material world is influenced by the "spiritual world," which is not noticeably the case with the inanimate part. Animate organisms exhibit phenomena in which the spiritual world and the material world work together. Life consists precisely in this cooperation; we designate matter which has spirit (soul) as "living."

In the case of the spiritual sciences, the basic data do not come to the investigator from the outside, through the portal of his senses, but from within, from his own spirit. The representative of the spiritual sciences is mainly concerned with animate, inspirited nature, and he uses his senses essentially only for commerce with other matter-bound spirits, mostly with other human beings.

The endeavor of the spiritual sciences should produce a new cognition wrested from the spiritual world. Nevertheless, in reality such new knowledge reaches us only seldom, and it does not come from the professional representatives of the spiritual sciences. The great founders of religions, of whom barely one appears every thousand years on earth, are the bearers of such knowledge. Also true artists, thinkers, poets in words and music, and true statesmen, of whom perhaps one may be given to us every hundred years. The spiritual scientists at the universities should, at least, administer this knowledge, but not in such a manner that the knowledge at hand or that which can be reclaimed from the past is eruditely tossed back and forth, with the result that the best of this knowledge remains mostly unnoticed. Rather it should be exchanged in a manner that feeds and nourishes the spirit of the people and thus truly educates the people. This obviously has been entirely lacking during long periods of history, in consequence of the profound decline of the German spirit. One did not understand how to provide the German spirit with a nourishment suitable to it because not even spiritual scientists were sufficiently conscious of the most fundamental differentiations in the spiritual world -- namely, that every organism has its own special spirit (that portion of the total spirit world which its body is able to hold on to) and that the greatest differences among spirits are based on groups varying in physical structure according to their inherited physical constitution. They did not grasp clearly enough that, just as fleas and elephants have different spiritual constitutions, so the spirits of different human races and ethnic groups are totally different from each other. Down the centuries attempts have been made to nourish the spirit of the German people with "the spirit of humanity," as though spirits could be patched together at will, as though fleas could be educated profitably by elephants, or vice versa. Thus the spiritual sciences were incapable of increasing the spirit of the German people, or even of preserving the sterling quality which it had already achieved in the lap of nature, without these sciences....

The Truth-Value of the Investigation of Nature

The conceptions and laws derived from the observation of natural processes, which are adapted to them and constantly tested against them and which are the main results of the investigation of nature, are cognitions of realities, of things and structures which exist independently of us and of our thinking and existed long before us. These findings have a truth-value. The true is that which, in our own spirit, corresponds to the reality which is independent of the arbitrariness of our spirit. The true is not that which is "verified" here or there, but that which must always verify itself because it is derived from a wholly interconnecting reality.

The perception of a total interconnectedness in nature is one of the most distinguished achievements of the investigation of nature. The progress of natural science has shown with increasing clarity and comprehensiveness that all processes of the observable world are closely tied to other processes in that world; every discovered natural law is seen to be linked to a number of other laws in such a way that they mutually support each other and none could be valid without the others....

Hence it can be asserted that the understanding of things that are as yet unintelligible also depends on discovering and on making evident in detail their interconnection with what is already known to us and with everything else in nature. It was precisely the yearning of Nordic man to investigate a hypothetical interconnectedness in nature which was the origin of natural science. His guess was correct, but after following it down paths strewn with unexpected difficulties, reality was in most cases constituted very differently from the way it was first imagined. The marvels of reality were not to be found in our own spirit; they had first to be discovered in the external world before our spirit, surprised at first, could assimilate them, and thereby grow truer and richer in conscious harmony with the totality of nature.

The intuition that all of nature is interconnected -- which spurred on the great researches -- was also correct when it included our own spirit within this interconnectedness. The simplicity of the results seemed to point in this direction, for what is suitable to our spirit, what is arranged for its comprehension, seems simple to us ....

The Limits of Understanding

Some of the laws which transmit to us the understanding of nature have been shown to be valid only within definite limits. This means that their applicability is dependent on the fulfillment of certain conditions. The progress of knowledge, therefore, has frequently shown what is valid outside of these limits and has thereby discovered even more general laws which encompass the narrower concepts. In this way we can also expect further progress.

The complete comprehension of any given natural process must be regarded as impossible. Because of the interconnectedness of nature, such comprehension would involve understanding the totality of the infinite world -- from which we, in the true sense of the word, must remain forever infinitely removed, if for no other reason than because of the finiteness of our body to which our cognitive spirit is bound. We know from experience that we are not capable of understanding everything at once, and even the successive comprehension of an infinite number of things of limited extent would take an infinitely long time. This accounts for the fact that beyond every uncovered mystery of nature we find an even greater mystery.

But progress in the investigation of nature has also shown that even in the material world -- hence apart from the spiritual world -- there exist things more difficult to understand than others. If we consider matter alone, we are dealing with mechanisms of which the spirit can form pictures, or models, which behave according to the laws of mechanics and with which it is relatively easy to work. But even the phenomena of heat pose difficult cases of matter in motion. More difficulties arise when we observe the ether, because of its component light and energy. To be sure, concepts have been formulated which give solid support to our notions of the ether, but we have sought in vain for mechanisms in the ether; every experimental presumption in this direction fails to tally with reality. The ether seems more difficult to grasp than matter; it seems already to indicate the borderline of comprehensibility. It is obvious that these borders have been definitely crossed in the attempt to understand the spiritual world; for no human mind can even comprehend its own spirit. ...

Materialism: A Delusion

The peculiar tendency to recognize only matter and not spirit must be mentioned here since it is an outgrowth of natural science. The great achievements of natural science in understanding hitherto insufficiently known portions of the totality of the world have led to an arrogant dismissal of what is incomprehensible. The greatest investigators never shared this attitude; they were always aware of the limits of understanding; even if they crossed old borders, they immediately saw new borders ahead before which they had to come to a halt. But the lesser spirits, for whom the great ones had already blazed a trail and made their work easy, adopted an insolent omniscient attitude. Such was the case after Newton and again after Darwin.

In recent times, the successes of technology have produced a special form of arrogant delusion with respect to matter. The actualization of practical possibilities opened up by a greater comprehension of nature gave rise to the notion of the "mastery" of nature. "Man has slowly become the master of nature." Such utterances on the part of spiritually impoverished "grand technicians" acquired a great influence because of the impressive display their new techniques and inventions made possible. And that influence has been even strengthened by the all-corrupting foreign spirit [2] permeating physics and mathematics. In the face of this development, the spiritual sciences -- increasingly estranged from the comprehension of nature and not cultivated in a truly German manner -- have utterly failed.

From Philipp Lenard, Deutsche Physik. Vol. I: Einleitung und Mechanik (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1936), pp. 1-2, 11-13.

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Notes:

1. Geisteswissenschaften -- that is, the social sciences or the "humanities."

2 The Jews are meant here.

Respect for Facts and Aptitude for Exact Observation Reside in the Nordic Race, by JOHANNES STARK

The slogan has been coined, and has been spread particularly by the Jews, that science is international. It refers not so much to science as such as to scientific researchers and demands a special position in the nation for them. They ought not to be considered from a national point of view, but are to be evaluated strictly on the merits of their scientific activity without regard to their ethnic origin. According to this concept, Jewish scientists ought to be inviolable even in the National Socialist state and should be allowed to continue to exert a standard-setting influence. From the National Socialist side, in opposition to this view, it must be insisted upon with all possible emphasis that in the National Socialist state, even for the scientist, the duty to the nation stands above any and all other obligations. The scientist, too, must consider himself a member and a servant of the nation. He does not exist only for himself or even for his science. Rather, in his work he must serve the nation first and foremost. For these reasons, the leading scientific positions in the National Socialist state are to be occupied not by elements alien to the Volk but only by nationally-conscious German men.

But aside from this fundamental National Socialist demand, the slogan of the international character of science is based on an untruth, insofar as it asserts that the type and the success of scientific activity are independent of membership in a national group. Nobody can seriously assert that art is international. It is similar with science. Insofar as scientific work is not merely imitation but actual creation, like any other creative activity it is conditioned by the spiritual and characterological endowments of its practitioners. Since the individual members of a people have a common endowment, the creative activity of the scientists of a nation, as much as that of its artists and poets, thus assumes the stamp of a distinctive Volkish type. No, science is not international; it is just as national as art. This can be shown by the example of Germans and Jews in the natural sciences.

Science is the knowledge of the uniform interconnection of facts; the purpose of natural science in particular is the investigation of bodies and processes outside of the human mind, through observation and, insofar as possible, through the setting up of planned experiments. The spirit of the German enables him to observe things outside himself exactly as they are, without the interpolation of his own ideas and wishes, and his body does not shrink from the effort which the investigation of nature demands of him. The German's love of nature and his aptitude for natural science are based on this endowment. Thus it is understandable that natural science is overwhelmingly a creation of the Nordic- ermanic blood component of the Aryan peoples. Anyone who, in Lenard's classic work Grosse Naturforscher (Great Investigators of Nature), compares the faces of the outstanding natural scientists will find this common Nordic-Germanic feature in almost all of them. The ability to observe and respect facts, in complete disregard of the "I," is the most characteristic feature of the scientific activity of Germanic types. In addition, there is the joy and satisfaction the German derives from the acquisition of scientific knowledge, since it is principally this with which he is concerned. It is only under pressure that he decides to make his findings public, and the propaganda for them and their commercial exploitation appear to him as degradations of his scientific work.

The Jewish spirit is wholly different in its orientation: above everything else it is focused upon its own ego, its own conception, and its self-interest -- and behind its egocentric conception stands its strong will to win recognition for itself and its interests. In accordance with this natural orientation the Jewish spirit strives to heed facts only to the extent that they do not hamper its opinions and purposes, and to bring them in such a connection with each other as is expedient for effecting its opinions and purposes. The Jew, therefore, is the born advocate who, unencumbered by regard for truth, mixes facts and imputations topsy-turvy in the endeavor to secure the court decision he desires. On the other hand, because of these characteristics, the Jewish spirit has little aptitude for creative activity in the sciences because it takes the individual's thinking and will as the measure of things, whereas science demands observation and respect for the facts.

It is true, however, that the Jewish spirit, thanks to the flexibility of its intellect, is capable, through imitation of Germanic examples, of producing noteworthy accomplishments, but it is not able to rise to authentic creative work, to great discoveries in the natural sciences. In recent times the Jews have frequently invoked the name of Heinrich Hertz as a counter-argument to this thesis. True, Heinrich Hertz made the great discovery of electromagnetic waves, but he was not a full-blooded Jew. He had a German mother, from whose side his spiritual endowment may well have been conditioned. When the Jew in natural science abandons the Germanic example and engages in scientific work according to his own spiritual particularity, he turns to theory. His main object is not the observation of facts and their true-to-reality presentation, but the view which he forms about them and the formal exposition to which he subjects them. In the interest of his theory he will suppress facts that are not in keeping with it and likewise, still in the interest of his theory, he will engage in propaganda on its behalf. Only his theory is valid for him, and in the face of doubts he demands a faith in his theory as if it were a dogma. The dogmatic zeal and propagandistic drive of the Jewish scientist leads him to report on his achievements not only in scientific journals but also in the daily press and on lecture tours. The phenomenon, for example, of Jews pushing themselves prominently to the foreground at scientific congresses, such as the gatherings of German natural scientists and physicians, can be explained in the same way.

From Johannes Stark, Nationalsozialismus und Wissen schaft (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Frz. Eher Nachf., 1934), pp. 10-12.

Nature Presupposes a Spiritual Disposition, by BRUNO THURING

Einstein's work can be understood only as counterpart and antithesis to the intellectual tendency of a Kepler or a Newton. Whereas, still intoxicated with the tremendous successes of Kepler and Newton, their successors and spiritual heirs already became partly conscious, but increasingly less so, of the fact that the creative power of these two great men did not rest so much on their logical intellect as on their world-embracing outlook on life, with its simultaneous and equal concern for the realm of the material and the realm of the spiritual and non-material -- that is, on qualities of soul and disposition. Others of their followers turned deliberately toward what was essentially a purely materialistic conception of spiritual and material nature, in the hope of being able eventually to grasp the whole of nature in one mathematical formula. However, Kepler and Newton made their own anti-materialistic mode of thinking perfectly clear. The instinctive knowledge that nature and creation were not to be divorced from their creator and that the world of our paltry five senses, the world of matter, simply could not be the whole world, was so valuable and essential to their investigations that they expressed this knowledge not only in numerous private letters but also in their justly famous treatises. Their scientific aspirations, their drive to understand, and their inquiry into nature were in the first instance born of a deep religious feeling -- the word being used here in its true meaning -- and whenever they raised the question of the meaning and purpose of scientific inquiry, they never furnished any answer except their desire to comprehend and explain the existence and operation of God in the investigation of His plan of the world and His works. The ancient magnanimity of soul of the Germanic man, directed away from the world and all external appearance, posed the first world-encompassing question about nature and thus became the mother of natural science. If the generation from which Kepler and Newton sprang had been exclusively devoted to materialism -- if indeed it had been incapable of an inner view extending far beyond mere sensory perceptions -- Kepler's search for the divine harmony of nature would have been impossible and therefore unsuccessful. At the same time, his success did not come to him easily. Not only for years but for decades, he exerted all his genius for mathematics and creative combinations, which he knew how to subordinate to the primacy of exact. observation. No failure, no disappointment could ever shake his rocklike conviction that the world had to be in harmony, for its progenitors were perfection and beauty. "With God's help I shall certainly conclude this undertaking -- and indeed in a military manner, by issuing my orders boldly, daringly, and triumphantly today, and worrying about my funeral tomorrow," he wrote in a letter. And in another letter: "My whole being strives to penetrate form and existence, God Himself, the architect of creation -- and here is where the greatest joy beckons me." And again: "Here I throw the dice, and write a book either for my contemporaries or for posterity. Maybe it will have to wait centuries for its readers, but then God Himself waited thousands of years for someone to describe His works." Kepler wrote all this in the glowing flame of supra-terrestrial exultation over having finally succeeded in finishing his work. The drive to comprehend what can be perceived by the senses, born of a conviction and faith in what cannot be grasped by our senses, and a modest yet persevering devotion to the exact observation of nature, determined the scientific attitude which made Kepler the prototype and example of the German natural scientist. Therefore, his scientific achievements were, and remain, de spite their international reputation, the products of a thoroughly German and nationally conditioned conception of nature. The fairy tale of an international and absolute natural science that is independent of Volk, history, and race is smashed to pieces on Kepler. Conversely, a liberal theory of science could have come into being only in a period which, under the influence of persons of alien blood, increasingly fell victim to materialism and which was no longer able to see Kepler and Newton as anything more than great intellectualists and mathematicians.

But how can such a conception do justice to a man like Newton, who found it necessary in his main work, Principia Mathematica, to delve extensively into the problem of divinity and who, on the basis of his world-encompassing view of nature, could demand that divinity be evaluated as a problem of natural science? "Thoroughly similar only to itself," he describes divinity, "entirely ear, eye, brain, arm, feeling, insight, activity, and all in a manner not human, even less corporeal, but in an entirely unknown manner. We see only the structure and color of a body; we hear its sounds, we feel its exterior surface, we smell and taste it. But as regards the inner substances of matter, we can comprehend them neither through our senses nor through our intelligence. Even less do we have a conception of the substance of God." And he concluded this part of his contemplations as follows: "This I had to say about God, whose works it is the task of natural science to investigate." Is not such thinking and such knowledge of the threads that bind the realm of matter to the realm of the spirit, is not this awareness of the fact that with our limited number of senses we are able to grasp only a restricted part of the whole world, worlds apart from materialism, worlds apart from that relativistic conception according to which every description of nature may deal only with relations of matter to matter and according to which even space and time are only attributes of matter because there is, allegedly, nothing but matter? The formulation of general relativity as a principle of nature, as is done in Einstein's theory, can be nothing more than the expression of a thoroughly materialistic attitude of mind and soul. The feeling for nature and the racially determined concept of nature possessed by Nordic man, who strives to comprehend nature not only with his intellect but also with his heart and soul and with his imagination, are here opposed by a concept of nature which aims to set up the intellect alone as the cognitive principle in the investigation of nature and which consequently disregards the possibility of conceptions geared to our spirit in favor of a purely symbolical, mathematical, formalistic, and non-concrete representation of nature....

By starting out from facts alone, even though based on observation and experiment, we cannot arrive at a "decision" with respect to the "correctness" of either [the Nordic or the Einsteinian conception of nature]. Rather, the complex of facts is identical in both cases. The difference between the two concepts goes deeper; it lies on another level, namely, where natural science as an activity takes its point of departure. For that reason, the assertion of books popularizing the theory of relativity that it is a conception of nature based on experience is utterly untrue. For the substratum and essence of natural science are not to be found in this or that measurement, in this or that experiment, or in the exact reading of an instrument. All these are merely its exterior forms of expression, its results. and as such something which is objective, a datum provided by nature. But what is essential in connection with what concerns us today is to determine what lies at the base of inquiry, what it springs from, what use the investigator makes of it and what it can be utilized for. It is not the What which is the decisive factor, but the How, Whence, and Why. If that were not so, there would be no explanation for the fact that the natural sciences came into existence and blossomed among the valuable peoples and races of Europe, and among these overwhelmingly in the Germanic segments thereof. This fact cannot be ignored; it attests to the communality of an identical basic attitude of mind and spirit which coincides with the communality of racial and Volkish characteristics. Not only Kepler and Newton, but also Galileo, Guericke, Faraday, Gauss, Maxwell, Robert Mayer, and many others attest to this fact.

But a word about the space-time problem. The conceptions of space and time are thought frameworks given to us by nature, into which we order and arrange all physical and chemical phenomena, but also all manifestations of life, mind, and soul. They are forms of thinking of our innermost being, so to speak, Our "weapons" for confronting the outside world. Newton, as a true Germanic natural scientist, was fully conscious of that and he regarded space and time not as purely logical concepts, but as concepts strongly anchored in intuition. It is altogether different with the Jew Einstein. The attempt to view space and time as attributes of matter exclusively and the desire to understand them solely as matter, so that on the basis of this mental attitude it had to be claimed that the motion of matter is meaningful only in relation to other matter, are fully in keeping with the thoroughly and onesidedly materialistically oriented spirit of the theory of relativity. For the relativist, this is a self-evident concept and in return he acquiesces in all the violence done to intuition. Intuition and feeling are sacrificed to the worship of matter and pure logic....

Still another closely connected difference between the relativistic, Jewish and the Nordic-Germanic conception and representation of nature lies in their attitude toward the concept of energy. Power, strength, energy, is something immediately clear and understandable to the Nordic man; not only does he possess it himself, but it has confronted him from the primordial beginnings of his history and from the beginning of his personal life in his work as a craftsman, in the effort of physical activity. He knows from experience that through energy one can set bodies in motion or bring moving bodies to a stop. For Kepler and Newton, as Germanic men, it was immediately obvious, whenever they encountered such changes in motion, to speak of the effects of energy. Kepler was the first to give voice to the idea that the sun was the source of an energy which determines the trajectory of the planets. Newton founded his general mechanics on an exact and measurable definition of energy.

It is no coincidence that the half-Jew Heinrich Hertz [1] and the full-Jew Einstein attempted to create a structure of mechanics from which the concept of energy has wholly vanished. The Jewish philosopher Spinoza likewise was ignorant of the concept of energy. It seems to be entirely alien to the world-feeling of the Jew, and he is therefore at pains to exclude this alien phenomenon from his consideration of nature. Hertz clothed this aspiration in his demand that all anthropomorphisms, such as energy, be excluded from natural science. But in doing so he overlooked the fact that every construction of a scientific concept arises in principle from human experience, that is, from a cognitive process in which the specific nature of the cognizing subject is as essentially involved as the specific nature of the cognized object. Finally, even Hertz's attempt is anthropomorphic if in place of energy he postulates the coupling of mechanical systems, whose motions thereupon lose all freedom.

Einstein's theory of relativity, however, sets aside the concept of energy through the most radical upheaval of all space-time concepts. He postulates, in a purely mathematical, formalistic way, a curvature of space in the environment of all matter and necessarily connected with it. In this curved space the planets follow trajectories analogous to the so-called geodetic lines, that is, to the shortest possible lines between two points in curved planes. Thus, through the elimination of the concept of energy, dynamics become, with Hertz as well as with Einstein, a kind of cinematics.

We can see by this example what is involved here: Not new cognitions of natural events, not new findings of scientific research, but something relating to human inwardness, something concerning the soul, world-feeling, attitudes, and racial dispositions.

There have been repeated attempts in lectures and books to present the theory of relativity as the grand capstone of centuries of progressive scientific development, which began with Copernicus and Galileo and led, via Kepler and Newton, to Einstein. No! Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton are not Einstein's predecessors and pathfinders, but his antipodes. Einstein is not the pupil of these men, but their determined opponent; his theory is not the keystone of a development, but a declaration of total war, waged with the purpose of destroying what lies at the basis of this development, namely, the world view of German man. Therefore, it could be so joyfully saluted and enthusiastically celebrated only by a generation that had grown up on purely materialistic modes of thought. This theory could have blossomed and flourished nowhere else but in the soil of Marxism, whose scientific expression it is, in a manner analogous to that of cubism in the plastic arts and the unmelodious and unharmonic atonality in the music of the last several years. Thus, in its consequences. the theory of relativity appears to be less a scientific than a political problem.

The flooding of the book market shortly after the war with popular and semi-popular expositions of the theory of relativity naturally could not aim to acquaint the large public interested in natural sciences with the highly difficult logical and mathematical thought-content of the theory. Such a goal cannot be attained in this way. Rather, the effect of these books was to be found mainly on the level of the inner soul and a world view. Some even ventured -- and they were not altogether wrong in this assumption -- to look upon the theory of relativity as a typical expression of our time. Colin Ross, [2] in his book Die Welt auf der Waage (The World in the Scales), declared that Einstein's theory could have been discovered only in our time, that the principle of relativity gave our time its keynote and left nothing untouched, no moral law, not even Kant's categorical imperative.

In this manner, assisted by advertising in the newspapers and lectures from the professorial chairs, this purely scientific theory, whose main ingredient was the postulate of relativity, grew into a physical world view. And since it is always impossible for several world views -- say, a physical, a philosophical, an astronomical, or a religious world view -- to exist simultaneously without affecting and influencing each other, the theory of relativity threatened to become the dominant world view altogether and in every direction. This development be. came possible only because of the general recognition accorded natural science as a scientific discipline, characterized by the highest objectivity since it supposedly deals exclusively with established facts, whose existence is in no way subject to being conditioned or determined by the cognizing subject. It was deliberately overlooked that all interest in nature in itself presupposes a certain spiritual disposition, and that the perceiving subject has his own manner and content of conception and his Own method of inquiry, all of which must depend On himself and his particular endowments. The few who were of different opinions were disregarded. Nevertheless, it remains forever true that the natural scientist in his work remains a son of the people and a representative of their feelings and yearnings, as is also true in the case of the artist and the statesman. This obvious fact could be misunderstood only because nobody took the trouble to delve deeply enough into the wellsprings of natural-scientific inquiry; everyone remained suspended at the point where facts were observed, experiments made, results recorded. To prove the dependence of natural science on racial stock requires less study of results in textbooks and more study of the original works of the great discoverers and their personalities as scientists. Kepler and Newton as Nordic men on one side, Einstein as a typical Jew on the other, are the most illuminating examples -- the former because they did not shrink from allowing the reader an insight into their own spiritual life, the latter as a contrast to them.

May the young generation of natural scientists and philosophers recognize, therefore, what is meant by the concept of German natural science! If, however, someone asks: How can we arrive at a German natural science? our answer must be: A new National Socialist science cannot create, as if by sorcery, arbitrary and amateurish world systems and conceptions -- only infinite damage could come of this. Rather, it must reverentially immerse itself in nature itself, and in the great Nordic discoverers and interpreters of nature, to find there the essence of German being in glorious abundance. As for the rest, let us keep as far away as possible anything that comes from the hands of the Jew, and let us be Germans and National Socialists in all our work and thought! Then everything will be all right. I shall close with a variation of a quotation from R. Eichenauer: "Natural science is not a root, but a blossom. Let us take care of the roots. The blossom will appear by itself." [3]

From Deutsche Mathematik, edited by Theodor Vahlen (Leipzig: Kommissionsverlag von S. Hirzel, 1936), pp. 706-711.

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Notes:

1. Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894), physicist, discoverer of the electrical frequencies. Johannes Stark praises him because his Aryan half may have broken through (see page 207). The Nazis had it both ways.

2. A writer, chiefly famous for his Unser Amerika: Der deutsche Anteil an den Vereinigten Staaten (Our America: The Part Played by the Germans in the United States) (1936), which claimed that the German racial stock in America was superior to the other races in this country.

3. Richard Eichenauer, racial theorist, became director of the peasant adult education school (Bauernhochschule) in Goslar. Author of works such as Die Rasse als Lebensgesetz fur Geschichte und Gesittung (1938) (Race as an Attitude toward Life in History and Morals).

Psychotherapy and Political World View, by KURT GAUGER

I have chosen as the subject of my address "Psychotherapy and Political World View."

It is clearly indicated that the sense of my talk will be political, since I am standing before you in the uniform of a political soldier, of an SA man.

The connection between psychotherapy and politics may appear strange to many of you, especially those who have come from abroad to participate in this congress, and you may probably look upon the relationship between psychotherapy and politics as a purely tactical matter.

Hence you might, perhaps, be of the opinion that a political address at an international scientific congress, as far as the participants from abroad are concerned, could have only the purpose of winning sympathy for our new state. And our German participants may be of the opinion that such a political report, for them, signifies a directive to the action which we know adequately enough as coordination. [1]

To be sure, it would give me great joy if, through my talk, I were to succeed in giving those of you from abroad a better understanding of what is happening today in Germany. But my utterances, in this sense, are not exclusively directed to our foreign participants. My remarks are made ad hoc. I do not want to persuade....

Even the one-sided exponents of the scientific research tendencies in medicine have not dared to assert that such an entity as a human soul does not exist.

They have avoided, however, taking a position on this phenomenon -- either by declaring that it was of no interest to them, that it did not fit in with their alembics, levers and screws, or by saying that the psychic life, by its nature, is only apparently different from the physical processes. They meant to say that just as there are definite chemical transformations which can be perceived subjectively as color changes, likewise are there highly complicated chemical physical proc esses which can be observed with relative convenience as psychic life. It is only because of the temporary inadequacy of our chemico-physical research methods that we cannot yet express a feeling directly as a chemical formula.

For us, on the other hand, it is evident -- that is, something not requiring further proof -- that this conception of psychic life is not presuppositionless, not extra-scientific, bit rather the expression of a philosophical decision along the lines of materialism.

For us it is certain that even perfect chemico-physical research methods, applied to living brains, will always register only chemico-physical processes, and will never show even a trace of a thought or a feeling.

In the same way we reject the twin brother of materialism, namely that "idealism" which, conversely, holds the non-corporeal alone to be essential, but which can just as little find a trace of a corporeal substratum in the most thoroughgoing analysis of thoughts and feelings.

Freud did not look for chemical processes in mental illnesses. In the investigation of mental illnesses he limited himself strictly to psychological methods, but only because he considered that the path of chemistry was not yet traversible. In one passage he expressly states that he regarded all psychological findings so far as provisional, which eventually would be replaced by chemical formulae.

Thus he took an unequivocal position in favor of the materialistic world view and deprived the sphere of the soul of the value peculiarly its own. According to this opinion, even though we have not yet reached the point, one day we shall be able to spare ourselves all spiritual battles and upheavals through the simple medium of a well-mixed intravenous injection.

The philosophical premises of scientific materialism, of which Freud himself obviously was unaware, made it possible for psychotherapy at first to conduct itself exclusively like an exact science. Freudian psychoanalysis is the attempt to apply chemico-physical methods to the investigation of the human psychic life.

[admin]

PART 2 OF 2

We do not dispute the value of physics and chemistry. Nor do we assert that in the future things will depend entirely and only on ideology....

I do not at all oppose the fact that there is and should be a special pathology and therapy in the treatment of neuroses. We do not dispute the value of physics and chemistry. Hence we do not dispute the value of certain theses of Freudian psychoanalysis which were formulated on the basis of such quasi-scientific observation of human psychic life.

Philosophical enmity develops only with the interpretation of the results of such research! To express it differently: We do not fight astronomy, but we will obstruct any astronomer who would want to use astronomical science as a weapon for Communist anti-religious organizations.

Or, let us take a medical example: A genius and a moron could easily at the same time come down with a severe cold. Despite the fact that they have a sickness in common, we would not be apt to mistake the one for the other. Thus we use yardsticks which have nothing directly to do with the common cold. To express it differently: What we miss in Freudian psychoanalysis is a system of values.

To return to the example of the common cold: casuistically, everything relative to the cold which psychoanalysis has etiologically collected may be correct. What is still missing, however, is the sure criterion for the evaluation of the man who has the cold....

The scientific materialism of Freudian psychoanalysis is closely related to the economic materialism of the Marxists.

The specific National Socialist concept of feeling and disposition is alien to both of them, as is the specific National Socialist concept of community.

In turn, materialism is closely connected with individualism.

The political expression of individualism is egoism. Materialism is the world view of egoism. True, even materialism does not teach unbridled egoism. It always calls attention to the fact that other individuals also exist in addition to the single individual. It teaches, rather, a "well-considered egoism," that is, an egoism moderated by a regard for the egoism of others.

The illegitimate political child of Freudian psychoanalysis, namely, Adler's individual psychology, moves in this direction. Adler's individual psychology provided the former German Social Democratic state with a ready-made surrogate for religion, though it must be added that even before 1933 German individual psychology exhibited certain resistances to its establishment on a Marxist basis.

Fidelity, honor, love, comradeship -- heroism, Volkdom, homeland -- as words with philosophical weight and hence as political factors, have no place in the world view of materialism.

For materialists, for egoistical individualists, a man ready to sacrifice himself for an idea is necessarily a fool, a pathological individual.

If we consider whether the convinced egoist can achieve his philosophical goal, his subjective well- being, the gratification of his egoism, the pitiful fiasco is at once evident. It needs no sharp-sighted speculations, in the manner of Schopenhauer, to know that everything can be satisfied in this world, except egoistic strivings.

Freud speaks of overcoming the pleasure principle. But he cannot name the value system which can be experienced only outside of every egoistic evaluation. Such a system of values is possible only as an expression of a world view that does not have the individual and his wellbeing as its exclusive goal.

Hitherto, psychotherapy was largely individualistically oriented, and precisely at the point where one spoke of the relationship of the individual to the community. To us, the concept of the individual is at the outset false; it is the expression of an attitude which we call liberalistic.

For us it is not at all the concept of personality but rather the concept of the individual as ens existens per se that from the outset constitutes the negation and falsification of a biological datum, namely, that of a reality that is not merely "metaphysical" but indeed biological, the German people.

As inheritors of the individualistic epoch, we know much about individual conditions of mental illnesses. What we did not hear so much about, however, before Adolf Hitler, are the general conditions of the health of the soul.

If you ask me about the connection between psychotherapy and National Socialism, I must answer that the problem of the health of Our people's soul is the basic question with which National Socialism is concerned. Adolf Hitler did not start out from purely economic considerations.

He did not promise his first followers and later the whole German people "more earnings and less work," as had been done earlier by Marxist demagogues. He promised us nothing. He achieved something psychologically unprecedented, in that he made demands rather than promises.

He demanded of every individual the utmost in terms of participation and a disposition prepared for action. And precisely by so doing, he reopened the wellsprings of the healthy soul of our people which had begun to run dry. Since the advent of Adolf Hitler, Volkdom and homeland, discipline, fidelity, and honor, are again words of biological value in Germany! ...

The term "mental illness" requires, empirically speaking, a more exact explanation. Most people know or think they know what is meant when we speak of mental illness. A mentally ill person is someone who continuously makes senseless and illogical assertions and commits correspondingly irrational and illogical actions, or someone who no doubt thinks and acts logically as it were, but on the basis of emotional and logical presuppositions which nobody but himself considers valid. The layman also usually includes among the mentally ill people who act and think logically but on the level of small children, while in terms of bodily development and age they are adult human beings. It may be questionable whether the traditional designation "mental illness" is actually meaningful in connection with these cases. But under no circumstances can the sick people with whom psychotherapy is concerned be summarily designated as "mentally ill" or as "mentally ill to a lesser degree." The Intelligence Quotient of these patients, if measured against that of healthy people within the same walk of life, is in fact frequently higher than the average.

Soul is a designation that encompasses the whole area of individual human existence, so far as it is not of a corporeal nature. Sickness of soul, therefore, always designates the whole area. The line of demarcation between psychoses (insanity) and psycho-neuroses (soul sickness) becomes perceptible only through a consideration of the total man.

"Health of soul," "sickness of soul," and "insanity" are, therefore, terms indicating the "gradations of the capacity to relate to others."

Hence the concept of illness espoused by German psychotherapy is oriented toward the basic premise that man is a community-building being. At the same time, community building must here be understood in the specific National Socialist or German sense of an essentially psychic process. An association of stockbrokers is in no sense a community according to us.

Hence the German psychotherapeutic concept of illness is "politically" determined, and this means politically in the sense of a definite decision about a world view.

The term "relationship" implies a connection with something extrapersonal and supra-personal.

Like every other illness, mental illness can be immediately perceived in the impairment of the vital capacities. As with every other sickness, there are those who come by sickness of soul through heredity and those who come by it through accident, and in both forms there exist degrees of intensity, as in the case of every purely physical sickness. The feeble-minded, the hereditarily insane, and the constitutional psychopath are to be mentioned among those' afflicted with hereditary soul sickness.

Heretofore, when dealing with these patients, it was not customary to regard their capacity for forming psychic relationships as a yardstick to measure the degree of their illness. Yet everything depends on just that.

It is entirely analogous with ethnological research: blond or dark-haired, slender or stout, brachycephalic or dolichocephalic, is of "scientific" interest only if these racial features are not evaluated as expression. Only when racial difference also signifies a psychic difference is it of vital importance to us.

And where does the danger of certain racial mixtures lie if not in psychic depravity? Physically, the union of Negroes and whites is entirely possible. Physically, bastards are healthy if their procreators were healthy. Wherein should the incompatibility of such a union lie if not in the realm of the soul?

The situation is similar in the case of those suffering from congenital psychic sickness. For instance, feeble-minded persons frequently -- and unfortunately -- enjoy the best of physical health. Their health is not animal, but animal-like. The great physical strength of many feeble-minded professional criminals is well known. Equally well known is the animal procreative faculty of feeble-minded persons that is so dangerous in the Volk-biological sense. [2]

But is the term "sickness of soul" -- that is, the lack of psychic relationship -- at all applicable to these near human beings? The answer is that it is, but only in consideration of their psychic possibilities; only in reference to their "world view" can they be viewed as dangerously sick in a Volk-biological sense. This means that they are not dangerous because they are unable to count and write, but because psychically they cannot relate.

The world view of the feeble-minded embraces his own person, and other persons only to the extent they can serve the gratification of the most primitive instincts. Good-natured feeble-minded persons attach themselves to those who give them food and drink and a bed. Their relationship to other people is therefore essentially of an egoistic nature, hence not a relation in the true sense.

This psychic inability to relate is even more explicit when viewed as a decisive symptom of severe illness in schizophrenics. There are lesser degrees of congenital feeble-mindedness which can be so designated, not because the patient can count up to 20 instead of up to 5, but because some beginnings of true psychic relationship are still at hand, that is, because the patient is still capable of being educated instead of merely drilled. The schizophrenic, on the other hand, is characterized by a total absence of a psychic capacity to relate. The world which he views and perceives is exclusively a dream world. Other persons may enter this dream world in speaking and acting roles, as they may in the normal dream of a healthy individual. But this does not yet constitute a true psychic relationship to real human beings. The schizophrenic, for instance, does not talk to someone who visits him-he talks to an apparition of unknown origin that may perhaps have been stimulated by the visit or that may have been created in his mind purely by accident and entirely independent of the visit. The schizophrenic only seems to talk to his visitor, if he speaks at all. And he may also simultaneously converse with others who are not present, such as someone long dead, or with fabulous beings which he sees.

The diseased state of the constitutional psychopath is of the same kind, if not of the same degree. In contrast to schizophrenics and feeble-minded persons, the psychopath is often entirely capable of truly perceiving the actual world -- persons and situations. The psychopath is frequently not lacking in intelligence. Nor is his physical condition decisive. There are both physically strong and physically weak psychopaths.

Again the absence of psychic relationship to others is the decisive and sociologically important symptom of the sickness. The psychopath is the born egoist. Measured by the degree of his sickness, the psychopath, despite his intellectual endowment, is more closely related to the schizophrenic than is the good-natured half-wit. Only to a very inadequate extent is the psychopath capable of a true love relationship of real passion, of true dedication. The talented psychopath, from a Volk-biological point of view, is infinitely more dangerous than the obvious severely mentally ill person, or the feeble- inded person, or the psychotic. The psychopath is incapable of a true bond with a symbol, with a vital happening. But his talents may enable him to simulate such a bond.

An untalented psychopath, a liar who believes his own lies, may also believe that he has a relationship with others but only as long as he is not called upon to serve such a bond, as long as he can follow his own egoism, his ambition and desire for power.

This does not mean that ambition and desire for power should fundamentally be designated as psychopathic. They can be thoroughly manly virtues. It is a question of emphasis; the key word is "only." "Only" ambition, "only" desire for power, are the distinguishing marks of the psychopath.

For a normal human being, this distinction, once he has grasped its importance, is not difficult to make, since it is not an abstract scientific matter, but an emotional, spontaneous expression of his ethical capacity. At the same time, for the healthy and non-sentimental human being, there can be no doubt that the successes of the pathological egoism which marks the psychopath (just as sit venia verbo the successes of psychopathological nations) are only apparent. There is no injustice in the world. The final accounting always balances if one never loses sight of the realm of the soul. In the life of the individual as in the life of whole peoples, the final fate is the immediate expression of the attitude of psychic engagement, even if, from a materialistic point of view, the final accounting should not balance. Here again, men differ along philosophical and political lines, namely, between those who can experience the defeat of a hero as a victory and those who are not capable of doing so. Or expressed in another way: There is a fulfillment of life, but never a gratification of egoism. Happiness is necessarily unattainable on the level of egoistic gratification, since it is possible to satisfy everything but egoism itself.

Of necessity, therefore -- and as the expression of an implacable inner-worldly justice -- the liberalistic-materialistic world view, with its goal of "the greatest happiness for the greatest possible number," ended in the deepest dissatisfaction, in the inferno of the deepest sickness of our people's soul.

The Third Reich has not inscribed happiness on its banners, but virtue....

Since it is my purpose to discuss, to the best of my ability, some aspects of the fundamentals of German psychotherapy, it is necessary also to say something about the healing process, about the methodology of treating patients with psychic disorders.

In order to treat any sickness and to investigate the path to a cure, it is necessary to know the etiology, the cause of the illness. To a large degree this is identical with a thorough knowledge of the genesis of the development of the illness.

No doubt it is possible to heal many illnesses without an accurate knowledge of the etiology. Pains in the upper stomach frequently disappear if the patient is sent to bed and a special diet and warm bandages are ordered. Such treatment is beneficial under all circumstances, regardless whether the organs of the upper stomach are suffering from a slight inflammation or more serious disorders. But with sicknesses of more severe character it will always be necessary to diagnose not only the affected organ but also the kind of illness.

The same is true with psychic illnesses. A great number of so-called psychic disorders will disappear as the result of suggestive persuasion on the part of the doctor. Frequently the psychotherapist needs only to mention things which the patient has already told himself often enough, but the fact that a qualified physician says them encourages him.

It depends upon the process of perception, which is a necessary ingredient in the healing power.

Perception is a total process and only distantly related to knowledge; just as it defies comparison if a young midwife directs hundreds of births and then should become a mother herself.

Methodologically the road of retrospection is the road of Freud. At the risk of being considered a "Freudian," on this road one must deal with events that have given a name to a whole segment of life in every human being, the age of puberty. Methodologically and taken by themselves, many of Freud's findings are correct, but the interpretation of their meaning and their assigned place in the totality of human affairs appears unbearably wrong to us.

The road of Jung looks forward. Freud asks: Whence? Jung asks: Whither? Freud is the scientist, only the scientist; Jung is an ethician. One could also call him a seer, in the deepest and most reverent sense of the word. Jung is the poet among psychologists. His subconscious is full of living forms with whom one speaks and consorts like human beings, who can give counsel and warning, with whom one tries to be on a good footing because otherwise they may become "angry." Jung's psychology is a demonology. The essence of a demon is contained in its name. Primordial wisdom has it that one can disarm a demon, even make servant of him, if one knows his name.

This is nothing but the process of perception, which heals like any other form of cognition.

While the true magician knows that his forms are always his forms, even if occasionally they overwhelm him, it can still happen to the sorcerer's apprentice that he seriously believes he can lead German youth to TAO, [3] while we are satisfied with the choral music from the carillon of the Potsdam Garrison Church: "Always practice fidelity and honesty!"

Freudian psychology incorporates all the advantages and dangers of the Jewish spirit, Jungian psychology all those of the Germanic soul.

Freud is atheistic; Jung, not in terms of doctrine but in terms of attitude, is marked by a Catholic piety....

Perception is courageous, active, clear-eyed self-responsibility -- an attitude which accepts personal responsibility even for those matters for which the individual human being himself is not responsible. This in the face of the Biblical saying "Man is wicked from youth," or in the face of personal, undeserved calamity.

In such circumstances, the "ego" and the unconscious are not two different entities; they are one, as horse and rider are one when the rider truly knows and understands his horse, can tell him what he wants him to do, and when the horse has understood that it has a good rider.

It is, therefore, not necessary to try to explain that mind and soul do not have to be enemies, or that the destiny of man is his intellectuality, a progressive cerebration. The man who is condemned to die is mistaken if he assumes that the world is coming to an end.

We have described personality as a configuration of actualized possibilities. We can add here that ... there may be individuals who not only have lived a full, well-rounded life, but also have been gifted with perception: they are the men whom we call the true leaders of the people, the thinkers, poets, and politicians....

A ground plan is an essential part of every architectural design, even if it does not indicate exactly how the rest of the building is to be constructed. The following closing remarks concerning the profession of the psychotherapist should be regarded as a ground plan.

Psychotherapy is closely related to pedagogy. Psychotherapy points up the importance of a correct education by showing that, as a rule, a wrong education, even in the case of healthy material, not only leaves the individual badly educated but frequently leads to the sickness of his soul. (To prevent misunderstanding, let us add here that, from a psychotherapeutic point of view, an especially "good" education frequently turns out to be a particularly "bad" one.)

Psychotherapeutically speaking, the development of specific ethnic virtues must be mentioned as the goal of a healthy education. Our educational ideal is not the education of the personality, but to bring up German boys and girls; young Germans. Personality is the fruit, the organic result, of the ripening of the given ethnic propensities.

At the same time, it must not be forgotten that the term "virtue" does not have an ascetic connotation in Germany. Indeed, the binding National Socialist demand is: "Common interest before self-interest," a demand which, like all the other demands of National Socialism, derives from the biological sphere. Biologically, self-assertion is a necessity of life, and only that self-interest is reprehensible and destructive which harms the common interest. This differentiation is purely psychic and is therefore, for One whose soul is healthy, no more difficult to understand than the equally important distinctions between breeding and training, hardihood and brutality, compassion and weakness, passion and fanaticism, steadfastness and dogmatism, enthusiasm and elation, love and sexual gratification, deep emotion and sentimentality.

Psychotherapy, therefore, can serve as a critic of pedagogy, but it can also have a direct, practical relationship with pedagogy since in many cases the treatment of neuroses is tantamount to overcoming educational mistakes. But in the case of adults, the physician should never be or try to become an educator. Rather, he must undertake only the function of introducing the process of self-education, which is more in keeping with the biological situation of an adult, in contrast to the situation of a child.

Psychotherapy is also related to pastoral work, but only in subject matter. The essential difference between the two is frequently misunderstood. It can best be made clear by the equally customary and equally wrong comparison between the psychotherapeutic session and the Catholic confession. For one thing the confession is based on a fixed moral system and a clear understanding of that system, secondly the concept of sin as a violation of this moral system, and finally a confessor with the power of absolution.

A psychotherapeutic session contains none of this. One may, perhaps, see a certain similarity between a neurotic's feeling of guilt and the religious feeling of transgression. But it would be blasphemy to equate the two. If a sick person with a compulsion to wash his hands, for instance, is in utter despair because on one occasion he shook someone's hand without having had a chance to wash his hands first, it is obvious that the moral system of the compulsion to wash is not of a religious nature, but of a highly private nature. It is also obvious that in such a situation the physician has only an apparent relationship to the confessor. In the beginning the patient may, perhaps, perceive it as such, but great progress in psychotherapeutic treatment will have been achieved when the patient relinquishes the desire for absolution because he begins to understand that it is perception which will set him free. One can perhaps say that basically a deep religious conflict is hidden in each neurosis. But that does not make every neurosis also a religious conflict. The essentially religious conflict can be fought only when, for instance, the patient is no longer concerned with the cleanliness of his hands, but when, with the courage of responsibility, he begins to think about the purity of his heart.

Psychotherapeutical activity can therefore be called pastoral work only in a special sense.

Psychotherapy, as we have described it, has two different tasks -- one general, the other particular.

Psychotherapy is first and foremost the philosophical-political foundation of all medical practice and should therefore occupy an essential place in all medical studies.

It is well known that up to now hardly any beginnings have been made in this direction. Lectures on psychology in general and medical psychology in particular that have been introduced here and there are certainly useful, but scientifically they are still based on the concepts of the nineteenth century. A relationship to the problems that have been discussed here is hardly noticeable.

The task of psychotherapy in the narrower sense is to educate physicians with special qualifications for treating soul sickness. In practice, this means that these physicians will have to undergo another course of study in addition to their general medical studies. They must know and should have absorbed the history of thought, especially that of their Own people; they must have arrived at a certain judgment with respect to philosophical and metaphysical problems; they must be fully conversant with the social sciences, and especially racial science, to mention only a few "non-medical" disciplines.

The question can also be raised as to whether the opposite way would not be equally possible, namely, to start from the humanistic sciences and then add the necessary medical and biological knowledge. It is known that the leaders of psychotherapeutic schools who are physicians themselves are aware of this possibility and have used it in practice by admitting non-medical students.

From a lecture given at the Medical Congress for Psychotherapy, Bad Nauheim, 1934, published in Politische Medizin: Grundriss einer deutschen Psychotherapie (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934), pp. 7, 12-14, 16-17, 23-27, 49, 52-54, 61-63.

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Notes:

1. Gleichschaltung: a term used to describe the absorption or control of organizations by the Third Reich.

2. See "The Hereditary Health Law," page 90.

3. TAO, for Jung, is the unity-giving symbol of Chinese philosophy, an irrational unity of contraries. See Psychologische Typen (Zurich, 1930), pp. 303 ff.

The Physician Must Come to Terms with the Irrational, by HANNS LOHR

We National Socialists are of the opinion that the physician, leaving his "ivory tower" work at a university clinic far behind, must first of all, in close contact with the Volk community, come to terms with the "irrational" which forms the bridge between the physician and man if the patient is not to be only a "case" or "material" for study.

Hence the National Socialist state is not interested in stuffing a medical student with a great mass of individual, disconnected facts and imparting anemic bits of knowledge which he usually learns ad hoc -- that is, only for his examination -- and entirely forgets four weeks later. Rather, it wishes to lead him, through a knowledge of the great biological interconnections to a deep reverence for life....

By no means are we against science. Indeed, we demand from the future physician a great measure of scientific knowledge. However, this can be achieved only by reinvigorating the course of instruction with considerably more emphasis on its relationship to human biology than it has received heretofore through the transmittal of purely abstract and dead subject matter. It is precisely here that a truly rational reform of studies must be inaugurated.

Johannes Stein correctly points out that the medical student comes into contact with the living human being -- that is, the patient -- much too late. If he has no experience with a sick person until after he has passed his first examination, frequently a profusion of regulations and preconceived notions stands between him and his patient. Let no one misunderstand us. We have no intention of imitating the medical schools of France or even their specific method of instruction, which from the very beginning puts the student in contact with patients, concentrating almost exclusively on medical techniques and methodology and, for the average student, putting no great emphasis on theoretical knowledge.

We believe, however, that it would certainly be useful to require service as a nurse and orderly as a precondition for medical studies. While performing this selfless service for his fellow men, the young student will soon find out whether or not he has chosen the right profession.

On the other hand, this practical nursing service, involving, as it does, sacrifice and self-denial, also presents us with an opportunity for a strict selectivity. A principle of selection which leaves the decision, at the end of the course of instruction, entirely up to the teachers on the basis of purely intellectual abilities must be rejected as altogether wrong. How many highly important men were told by their high-school teachers that they had no ability at all! Nor is the process of selection completed even after the pupil meets all qualifications for medical studies. A year of labor service and an additional half year as a practical nurse allow a much more certain judgment of a young man's character endowments. But even during his academic studies -- which will soon undergo a fundamental change, whereby the emphasis will be shifted from the "spectacle" of illnesses in the lecture hall to the sickbed itself -- in fact at the end of each semester, instead of receiving the usual probationer's certificate the medical student should be repeatedly subjected to evaluation. In the case of the large institutions this may appear to be a practical impossibility. It is, however, a most important task for every lecturer and every department head in clinics and hospitals, and their qualifications as teachers ultimately on how well they perform it.

[Wilhelm Frick [2] has said]: "Only he who is his whole being is fully committed to the Volk and seeks nothing for himself and for his own advantage belongs in the university. Whoever is called to study or to teach will not be recognized for his grand words but for his deeds and accomplishments in the service of the Volk community. The National Socialist concept of knowledge and the newly defined task of university studies have by no means lowered the intellectual standards of the university. Rather, it has raised them so that they can be satisfied only by stricter spiritual discipline. If the German student can draw his energies from the deepest dedication to National Socialism, he will do his duty in the way the Volk expects him to do it."

In former years standards of selection sank progressively lower as the number of medical students increased, and more particularly as the medical schools received individuals who neither racially, ethically, nor philosophically were suitable for the medical profession. Consequently, the personal relationship between teacher and student was lost, and with it, naturally, the living model of leadership. The greater the influx of the multitude, the lower the individual accomplishment. In addition, Jewish lecturers occupied the chairs of medicine and despiritualized the art of healing. [According to Reich Physician Leader Gerhard Wagner]: "They have imbued generation after generation of young physicians with their mechanically oriented spirit."

A culture ideal prevailed in the liberalistic period, now definitely overcome, that entirely disregarded the character education of the individual.

Hence the building of character and personality, through our teachers, must again be placed in the foreground; next to scientific training, this is the main task of our teachers. Only thus can we return to the ethics and high moral status of an earlier generation of physicians (one has only to read the Hippocratic Oath), which stood on solid philosophical ground and has no peers in terms of its professional knowledge....

Enemies of National Socialism have for years spread the lie that National Socialism by nature stands for an anti-intellectual attitude and has no understanding of the uniqueness of genuine scientific inquiry. Thus the National Socialist. movement is considered anti- intellectual and alien to the spirit of learning. Allegedly National Socialism would rob science of its inheritance and would restrict all scientific thought in such a way that, in the words of Heinrich Hasse, [3] "the proud mountain ranges of former German culture are leveled into swampy lowlands, fit only to serve as a refuge for intellectual castrates."

Literary emigres especially tried to make it appear that in Germany today all culture and civilization are endangered -- as if a horde of un leashed savages threatened the ideals of all mankind....

The concept of an "unbiased and objective" science, aiming at "absolute truth" based on pure reason, which arose in the liberalist period, has today entirely lost its reason and justification for existing, since we have now come to understand that a realistic science is al ways based upon a personal contemporary-historical premise. Science can project itself into reality only out of the mainstream of the specific present. Volk community and science are not opposed to each other. The concept of Volk community, heretofore regarded only as a political concept, has now also become a basic scientific principle....

Since the ultimate process of life can never be fully explained through causal-mechanical analyses, the question arises whether the physician, aside from his diagnosis based on the methodology of natural science, may not also have at his disposal some other means of knowledge. At once such concepts as empirical knowledge, consideration of the whole, and intuition spring to mind.

Unquestionably the physician cannot dispense with empirical knowledge, yet, as Hippocrates said, experience is deceptive. Many items of knowledge based solely on experience, no matter for how long they have been considered valid, may one day be discovered to be fundamental errors.

Another question is whether intuition is really a new kind of knowledge, whether or not there is a difference between purely emotional comprehension and the ordinary thought processes. Without a scientific foundation, without a thorough knowledge of biology, there would certainly be no room for intuition in medical science. But what differentiates the truly brilliant, intuitive researcher from his average colleague is that he suddenly receives great, trail-blazing insights which would never occur to the other. According to Bumke, [4] intuition is an exceedingly great concentration; it is the eye for the "essential which puts not only a great number of single observations and numerous recollections into focus, but at the same time is able to gather the great interconnections into a single thought."

It is self-evident that we cannot train all our students to become geniuses; rather, now as ever, a basic and thorough education in the total biological interconnections is what is required. Anyone who believes he can dispense with scientific knowledge and medical training and depend entirely on intuition in the diagnosis of sickness would soon meet disaster in his diagnostic and therapeutic methods.

We readily admit that from time immemorial there have been "faith healers," people endowed with great medical insight, that is, with intuition. But even these lay practitioners do not always make instantaneous diagnoses; they, too, in the final analysis, make use of a store of experience and empirical knowledge. For, involuntarily, every man, either by inclination or from passion, occupies himself with the field in which he is especially gifted. For example, I have frequently found among the simplest and wholly uneducated strata men with unmatched empirical knowledge of breeding birds, dogs, butterflies, etc., who have never actually studied these subjects. Naturally, these are their favorite hobbies or pursuits. But one will have to admit that here, too, the role of intuition can be seen.

A further cause for the distortion of the concept of the physician in recent times has unquestionably been the progressive Judaicization of our profession. Jewish colleagues soon managed to become the leaders of our professional associations and medical groups. According to Gerhard Wagner: "They debased the concept of professional honor and undermined the ethics and morals intrinsic to our racial stock." Anyone who follows the collection of statistics which show how our profession, especially in the big cities, is dominated by Jews -- and they were gathered according to religious and not ethnic or racial principles -- will be able to appreciate fully the National Socialist counter-reaction. Reich Physician Leader Gerhard Wagner, in his sweeping report at the Reich Party Convention in 1934 dealing with race and national health, called attention to the fact that in February 1934 -- that is, a full year after the National Socialist revolution -- in Berlin alone 46.8 per cent of the physicians participating in the State Sick Benefit Fund were Jews. In other big cities the situation is essentially the same. In the light of these facts one can no longer speak of brutal persecution and annihilation of Jews in the medical profession.

But the great influx of Jewish physicians also brought with it a parallel intrusion of Marxist-liberalist thought, which in turn distorted the concept of the physician ever further. The physician became a businessman; moreover, as a servant of the social security and insurance systems, he frequently did shoddy work if he did not want to suffer economically. The art of healing was solely valued in figures and fees!

Simultaneously, the medical practitioner was deprived of what remained of his professional pride by Marxist-oriented insurance administrators and fiduciary physicians. [5] They ordained -- and he had to submit-what medicines he could prescribe for his patients.

What was the consequence of all this? The prestige of the medic cal profession sank lower and lower in the eyes of the people. Because of its dogmatic rejection of all lay medical thought, medical science became alienated from the Volk -- simply because it ignored reality. To regain the confidence of the people, it would have been much more correct to submit the ideas and suggestions of Volk medicine to objective study and examination rather than to reject them out of hand....

The social upheaval of the present time will help us to turn from an undue concentration on individual symptoms and organs to the consideration of the "whole" human being, and thus will lead to truly medical-biological thinking. This change in viewpoint has already been reflected of late in numerous contributions to medical publications by leading physicians in all specialized areas of medicine....

The physician has an almost unique opportunity to offer the people real "pastoral care." For the decrease in the birth rate not only is influenced by economic factors but is decisively determined by the inner attitude of the people.

Asking the people to assume moral responsibility is meaningless if at the same time they are not given economic incentives for childbearing. The National Socialist state, however, through its tax legislation [6] and other promulgations, offers economic incentives to those desirous of founding a family and raising children. On the other hand, the appeal to purely economic advantages is completely meaningless if the inner attitude of the individual is not renewed. And here the purposeful work of the physician must begin. It must not be concerned only with the present generation, but should strive to transcend it and direct its efforts toward the health of the eternal Volk.

In this respect the sterilization law is likewise a pillar of the National Socialist state. [7] If the congenitally healthy person intentionally restricts the number of his children, and the congenitally ill person unrestrictedly and rapidly reproduces himself, after a hundred years, according to the famous calculations of Lenz, [8] the descendants of the healthy people will constitute only 11 per cent of the population whereas the hereditarily defective will represent 88.9 per cent (on the basis of a generation lasting thirty-three years and a uniform rate of reproduction). Thus the quality of the Volk sinks ever lower. Of what use is any attempt to change the spiritual attitude of a people if it consists overwhelmingly of inferior types? We will make no mention here of the enormous costs imposed on our society by congenital defectives, which Dr. Wagner has calculated to be 1.2 billion marks yearly.

The National Socialist physician has the holy obligation to the state not merely to induce patients with congenital diseases to undergo voluntary sterilization but also to report such cases to the authorities. Many a physician may perhaps ask: "But what becomes of the confidence between physician and patient? I for one have no intention of ruining my practice." But the fact is that under the law for the unification of the public health system of July 3, 1934, this crucial problem of medical practice has already been transferred to the public health agencies soon to be established in city and rural districts.

But this does not free the physician from his most important obligation, namely, to do his duty as an alert biological soldier. It is his foremost task to defend the state and his people and their future against asocial elements. I need not emphasize here that the National Socialist physician occupies a basically different position from that taken by the physician of the Marxist-liberalistic period with respect to the problem of artificial interruption of pregnancy. We know of no social need for the destruction of the fruit of the womb.

What tremendous tasks are open to the physician and medical science in the National Socialist state! Our responsibilities and our obligations are greater than ever before. As a Volk physician in the truest sense of the word, the medical practitioner will be able to regain a great deal of his importance as well as the confidence of the people....

Adolf Hitler and his associates have shown the way to the German medical profession.

We university teachers, however, are obliged to teach the student that the health of the Volk stands above the health of the individual as the ultimate aim of the art of medicine, hence to be a doctor to the people is mare important than science itself!

We must transmit to the medical student living knowledge taken from the immediate everyday struggles and disputes. We must do this not only by refashioning the curriculum to include such new disciplines as demographic policy and racial eugenics. We are responsible for much more than the growth and advance of science. Rather, those working in Volkish occupations -- physicians, judges, and teachers -- on whom in the last analysis depends the reconstruction of the Reich, must all be gathered together under the great idea of the National Socialist biological state structure. Hence we also demand for university institutions Volkish teachers, Volkish students, and Volkish physicians. With his biological concept of science and state, the Volkish academician, whether teacher or student, will never run the danger of losing himself in abstract formulations or arid paragraphs.

For him, all work has only one great meaning: the Volk. Here the doctor is restored to the priesthood and the holiness of his calling, which for centuries he possessed in the life of all great nations.

I would like to end my discussion with words from the last important speech by Gerhard Wagner at the Reich Party Congress in 1934:

"Loyal to the will and the instructions of the Fuhrer, we shall fulfill our tasks in the future: to form the new German man, the new German people, which will assert its place in the world in strength, in honor, and in freedom."

From Hanns Lohr, Uber die Stellung und Bedeutung der Heilkunde im nationalsozialistischen Staate (Berlin: Nornen-Verlag, 1935). pp. 19-23, 26-29, 32-35.

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Notes:

1. Johannes Stein was professor of internal medicine (from 1934) and Director of the University Hospital at the University of Heidelberg (from 1936).

2. Minister of the Interior.

3. Author of Schopenhauers Religions Philosophie (1932) and of works attempting to define the tasks of learning in the Third Reich.

4. Oswald Bumke was the author of Das Unterbewusstein (The Subconscious) (1926).

5. Those physicians who administered the state medical insurance system.

6. See page 357.

7. See page 90.

8. Fritz Lenz was a writer concerned with racial eugenics. Hans F. K. Gunther (see page 61) based much of his theory on Lenz's calculations.

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PART 1 OF 2

7. Christianity

Editor's Introduction

NAZI OPPOSITION to Christianity took the form of elevating its own world view into a matter of direct religious expression. The prayer for children on page 241 represents an extreme example of this aim. It was given to the children by the party welfare organization (NSV) in a suburb of Cologne -- to be recited before and after the free lunch that was served. But however much the Nazis wanted to substitute their world view for Christianity, they were careful to keep the traditional forms intact. Even the language they used in their speeches often employed familiar Christian imagery. Hitler and Goebbels talked about the "miracle of belief" (now meaning the Nazi faith), appealed to "Providence," and were not loath to call Mein Kampf the "sacred book of National Socialism." Indeed, the Fuhrer's closest companions were called his "apostles," while he himself was often referred to as the "savior." [1]

The attempt to fill the traditional framework with their own content meant bending Christianity itself into conformity with Nazi ideology and culture. The "German Christians," a group within the Protestant Church, sought to accomplish this end. Their articles of faith (1933) stress the figure of Christ and the Scriptures but integrate them into the community of blood through which they find their sole expression. The German Christians were formed by the Nazi party in 1932 in order to influence the elections to the Prussian State Church which took place in that year. The attempt was a failure and the Nazis learned their lesson.

Hitler now approached the desired transformation of Christianity in a more indirect manner. In its platform the Nazi party had declared its neutrality in religious matters, and Hitler after 1932 repeatedly assured the Churches that he would abide by that principle. In reality the ideas of the German Christians lay in wait, to be applied at the proper time. That the German Christian movement itself suffered many splits after the seizure of power was of scant significance in this regard.

The appointment of Hans Kerrl as Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs in 1935 should have been a sign for a11 to read, for he sympathized with German Christianity. His time came in 1938 when the crisis produced by Hitler over the fate of the Germans within Czechoslovakia was at its height. At that point Karl Barth, the famous theologian, who was the spiritual leader of the resistance to a Germanized Christianity, wrote a sympathetic letter to the head of the Czech Protestant Church. The shibboleth of a11egiance to the nation could now be invoked against dissidents within the German Protestant Church in order to bring them into line with the desired world view.

The instrument lay at hand. The Thuringian Christians, a splinter group of German Christians, whose membership was not confined to Thuringia, had issued a Manifesto for a new order of the Evangelical Church. This "Godesberg Manifesto" (1937) shrewdly makes use of Hitler's decree of February 15, 1937, which called for a new Church constitution while declaring the Fuhrer's own neutrality as to its form and content: let the communicants themselves choose. This was, after all, in accord with the Nazi party platform. Under the mantle of this decree the Thuringian Christians shrewdly appeal to the separation between Church and politics, a sound Lutheran doctrine. The call for "clear principles" is also in accord with the tradition by which the authorities had always regulated the Lutheran Church. But now this call is turned against the Lutheran concept of "faith alone" and infused with a "God- created Volkdom." When Luther had supported "the Powers that be," for they are "ordained of God" (Romans, xiii, I), the idea of enforcing a Germanic Christianity in the name of clear principles had not occurred to him -- or to his successors. In this manner the Thuringian Christians perverted the Lutheran traditional faith in order to bend it toward the Nazi religion.

Hans Kerrl seized this opportunity and attempted to have the declaration adopted as the official order of the Protestant Church. The bishops balked, and he had to make some changes. But in essence he got his way; the opposition was temporarily disorganized by the accusation of treachery toward the Sudeten Germans. The promised Synod never met; no risks of dissent need be taken when legislation by decree was the order of the day. Hitler could maintain his supposed neutrality, and yet attain many of his true aims.

The real face of the leadership is represented by Martin Bormann in his confidential memorandum sent to all party district leaders (Gauleiters) in 1942. Martin Bormann had been the chief of staff of Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess since 1933, and a year before this memorandum was written had advanced to the position of chief of Hitler's own Chancellory. This, then, represents the thoughts of an official who by 1942 was regarded by many as the second most powerful man in the Reich. This memorandum eventually came into the possession of pastors opposed to the Nazis, who tried to spread it abroad in order to show the party's enmity to Christianity. This, in turn, led to a series of arrests as the secret police attempted to keep Bormann's remarks from receiving wide publicity.

In this revealing document Bormann goes far beyond the German Christians. He opposes what he calls "science" to Christianity, and the very use of this word in connection with his ideology clearly shows a belief in the Nazi world view as the final truth. God is present, but as a world-force which presides over the laws of life which the Nazis alone have understood. This non-Christian theism, tied to Nordic blood, was current in Germany long before Bormann wrote down his Own thoughts on the matter. It must now be restored, and the catastrophic mistakes of the past centuries, which had put the power of the state into the hands of the Church, must be avoided. The Gauleiters are advised to conquer the influence of the Christian Churches by keeping them divided, encouraging particularism among them -- proceeding in the opposite direction from that taken by the medieval Hohenstaufen emperors, who had restored order in Rome.

This plain speaking revealed the real aims of the Nazis, but in practice they maintained a slow pace: holding out the carrot of institutional freedom and, at the same time, using pressure to eliminate any divergence from their world view. The Protestant Church did react, but in a confused way. Only one consistent group in opposition to official policy emerged. The so-called Emergency Association of Pastors (Pfarrernotbund) was founded by Martin Niemoller in 1933. However, increasing pressure upon dissenting ministers led to the formation of a larger organization, the Confessional Church (Bekennende Kirche). It first met in 1934, and from then on throughout the existence of the Third Reich it managed to hold together. It was not a separate organization, but worked within the German Protestant Church to resist the pressure of the state. These men attempted to expose the tactics by which the Third Reich sought to mold Christianity into its own image. They also protested, with some courage, to the authorities themselves.

The example of such a protest which is reproduced here was addressed, in 1937, to Deputy Fuhrer Hess. This particular pastor was arrested for asserting the Jewish origins of Christianity-the very idea which the German Christians had condemned and which the Thuringian Christians promised to fight "in the name of our unsullied Volkdom."

The education of youth was the key here also: to remove them from religious instruction would, in Bormann's terms, remove the influence of the pastors -- and therefore of their "swindle" -- from future German generations. Once more the Nazis used an indirect approach in order to accomplish their ends. But it was blatant enough to cause the Ecclesiastical Council (Oberkirchenrat) of Wurttemberg in 1939 to send a letter to all clergymen under its jurisdiction exposing the Nazi pressure tactics which were being used. In view of the pressures described in this open letter, the pathetic inquiry by some mothers whether Hitler's religious neutrality was still valid is significant. Coming as late as 1939, it can serve to illustrate the success of Hitler's twofaced ecclesiastical policy, the kind of faith in the "justice" of the Fuhrer which many Germans retained to the very end. Ideological instruction never won out over religious instruction before the collapse of the Third Reich, but it certainly made important inroads in the schools.

The Catholic Church faced much the same pressure as the Protestants, and their common concern is acknowledged in the letter of the Wurttemberg Ecclesiastical Council. Though individual priests and even some bishops resisted this pressure and suffered persecution, no resistance group like the Confessional Church developed. Hitler had made a treaty (Concordat) with the Papacy early in the Third Reich (1933) and this worked to inhibit opposition to the regime. The Concordat was supposed to guarantee non-interference with Church institutions and organizations, including religious instruction in the schools. But it was constantly eroded through Nazi pressure. To the last, the majority of Catholic bishops clung to the view of the Reich as just another type of government, which in return for political support would give security to the Church and respect its rights. This view of Nazi Germany conflicted with the reality of Nazi aims -- and the dilemma which resulted is well illustrated by Cardinal Faulhaber's Advent sermons of 1933.

Cardinal Faulhaber (1869-1952), Archbishop of Munich, was an important and powerful figure in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. His aim in these sermons was to defend both the Old Testament and the Jewish origins of Christianity from the Nazi onslaughts. But this defense had to be made in such a way as to avoid a direct attack on Nazi policies. Faulhaber emphasized the Christian tradition which distinguishes between the Jews before the coming of Christ and those that came after. Modern Jews are cut off from Revelation, their Talmud is merely a human document, and the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament have no validity. These remarks, though they may be well founded from the standpoint of Christian theology, must be read against the accelerating policy of excluding Jews from German life. By the time Cardinal Faulhaber preached his sermon, Jews had already been excluded from the professions and public office and were being forced out of the business world as well. Seven months earlier (April 7, 1933) the term "non-Aryan" had been officially defined to mean any person of Jewish parentage or with at least one Jewish grandparent. To be sure, in view of these circumstances the Cardinal's call to reverence the Jewish religion must have sounded a note of courage. But his distinction between the modern Jews and those who lived before Christ, his denial of the divine inspiration of the holy books of the Jews, introduced a more ambivalent note. When, On November 10, 1938, the synagogues went up in flames there was no open protest by any Catholic bishop, but Cardinal Faulhaber, though he remained silent, was said to have sent a truck to rescue some of the religious objects. [2]

In his sermons Cardinal Faulhaber resolves his ambivalence by making a distinction between the natural order and the order of salvation -- one being the province of the state and the other belonging to the Church. But this traditional doctrine had already failed in the Middle Ages, and it was to do no better in Nazi Germany. National Socialism was, after all, no mere "political" movement but a total way of life; both the natural order and salvation were contained within its world view. A similar distinction between politics and religion had been used by the Thuringian Christians to press for a Germanic Christianity, and it would not prevent the Nazis from encroaching upon the tasks of the Catholic Church.

The actual inroads made by the Nazis are illustrated by one example: the decline of denominational nurses. Though most of the hospitals were not owned by the Churches, Catholic and Protestant nursing orders played a large part in German hospital care. Their destruction would further extend Nazi influence and at the same time would work to the disadvantage of the Churches. The Nazis formed a nursing order of their own, and these women took the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler (1936). The Catholic orders were weakened by the fact that nuns were forbidden to assist in operations performed under the Hereditary Health Law (see page 90). The Church came to realize the handicap of this prohibition and in 1940 the nuns were freed from it. Part of the reason given by the Papacy for this ruling shows what was at stake: if the nuns did not assist in the operations, they would be replaced by others (presumably National Socialist nurses). [3] Here is an example which can be added to the tapestry of actions by which National Socialism attempted to penetrate all institutions that tended to lead a separate life.

Had the Nazis won the war their ecclesiastical policies would have gone beyond those of the German Christians, to the utter destruction of both the Protestant and the Catholic Church. Martin Bormann's religion would have triumphed and the children's prayer become the rule -- the liturgical element so strong in Nazi culture would have been the only liturgy available.

G.L.M.

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Notes:

1 Werner Betz, “TheNational Socialist Vocabulary," The Third Reich (London, 1955), pp. 786-789.

2 Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (New York, 1964), p. 284.

3. Cuenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, p. 263.

The Fuhrer Bequeathed to Me by the Lord

The new God, in which German youth were to believe, manifests himself in these "invocations" which children in Cologne, local branch Reinau, were instructed to recite at the NSV children's lunch program:

Before Meals:

Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, bequeathed to me by the Lord,
Protect and preserve me as long as I live!
Thou hast rescued Germany from deepest distress,
I thank thee today for my daily bread.
Abideth thou long with me, forsaketh me not,
Fuhrer, my Fuhrer, my faith and my light!
Heil, mein Fuhrer!

After Meals:

Thank thee for this bountiful meal,
Protector of youth and friend of the aged!
I know thou hast cares, but worry not,
I am with thee by day and by night.
Lie thy head in my lap,
Be assured, my Fuhrer, that thou art great.
Heil, mein Fuhrer!

From Johann Neuhausler, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz: Der Kampf des Nationalsozialismus gegen die katholische Kirche und der kirchliche Widerstand (Munich: Verlag Katholische Kirche Bayerns, 1946), p. 251.

Christ In the Community of Blood and Fate

Guidelines for the Movement of German Christians (National Church Movement) in Thuringia (1933)

1. We "German Christians" believe in our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the power of His cross, and in His resurrection. The life and death of Jesus teaches us that the way of struggle is also the way of love and the way of life.

Through God's creation we have been put directly into the community of blood and fate of the German people and as the bearers of this fate we are responsible for its future. Germany is our task, Christ our strength!

2. The source and confirmation of our faith are God's Revelation in the Bible and the witness borne to the faith by the Fathers. The New Testament is to us the holy attestation of the Saviour, our Lord, and of His Father's Kingdom.

The Old Testament is an example of divine education of a people. For our faith, it is of value to the extent to which it permits us to understand our Saviour's life, cross, and resurrection.

3. As with every people, the eternal God also created a Law for our people especially suited to its racial character. It acquired form in the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler and in the National Socialist state which he formed.

This Law speaks to us in the history of our people, born of our blood and soil. Loyalty to this Law demands from us the struggle for honor and freedom.

4. The way to the fulfillment of this German Law is through the German community of the faithful. In it Christ, the Lord, rules as grace and forgiveness. Here burns the fire of the holy willingness to sacrifice. In it alone does the Saviour meet the German people and bequeath to it the gift of a strong faith. It is from these communities of German Christians that the "German Christian National Church" must rise in the National Socialist state of Adolf Hitler, embracing the whole people.

One People! -- One God! -- One Reich! -- One Church!

From Kirchliches Jahrbuch fur die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1933-1944, edited by Joachim Beckmann (Giitersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag, 1948), pp. 32-33.

The Task of Proclaiming Christ among the German People

Principles for a New Order of the Evangelical Church in Keeping with the Needs of the Present Time

Through a decree of the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor, issued on February 15, 1937, it has been ordained that the Church, in full freedom and according to the decision of the communicants themselves, shall provide itself with a new constitution and thereby with a new order.

Clear principles are required to assure the fruitful preparation and execution of a general synod in the form of an Evangelical Church Congress of Greater Germany.

Such principles are:

1. The Evangelical Church has learned from Martin Luther to distinguish sharply between the realms of reason and faith, politics and religion, state and Church.

The National Socialist world view is the Volkish-political doctrine which determines and forms the German man. And as such it is also binding upon German Christians. The Evangelical Church honors a divinely established order in the state and demands from its members a total service in this order.

2. The Gospel applies to all people and all times. The Evangelical Church, however, has learned from Martin Luther that true Christian faith can powerfully unfold only within a God-created Volkdom. We, therefore, decisively reject the political universalism of Rome and international Protestantism.

3. The National Socialist philosophy fights relentlessly against the political and intellectual influence of the Jewish race on the life of our Volk. In obedience to the divine order of creation, the Evangelical Church affirms its responsibility to preserve the purity of our Volkdom.

Beyond that, in the realm of faith, there is no sharper contrast than that between the message of Christ and the Jewish religion with its sterile legalism and its hope for a political Messiah.

4. The Evangelical Church has the task of proclaiming the message of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ among the German people in the manner in which the great Reformers, especially Martin Luther, have taught us to understand it.

5. The question whether it is possible to reach a unanimous agreement on this divine message can be solved only if the existing tensions within German Protestantism are borne with a powerful vivifying spirit and if the necessary dialogue is continued in a spirit of truth and conciliation. Therefore, a clear order must be created which assures the preaching of the Gospel and fully provides for the spiritual needs of all members of the Church.

(1937)

From Kirchliches Jahrbuch fur die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1933-1944, pp. 299-300.

National Socialist and Christian Concepts Are Incompatible, by MARTIN BORMANN

National Socialist and Christian concepts are incompatible. The Christian Churches build upon the ignorance of men and strive to keep large portions of the people in ignorance because only in this way can the Christian Churches maintain their power. On the other hand, National Socialism is based on scientific foundations. Christianity's immutable principles, which were laid down almost two thousand years ago, have increasingly stiffened into life-alien dogmas. National Socialism, however, if it wants to fulfill its task further, must always guide itself according to the newest data of scientific researches.

The Christian Churches have long been aware that exact scientific knowledge poses a threat to their existence. Therefore, by means of such pseudo-sciences as theology, they take great pains to suppress or falsify scientific research. Our National Socialist world view stands on a much higher level than the concepts of Christianity, which in their essentials were taken over from Judaism. For this reason, too, we can do without Christianity.

No one would know anything about Christianity if pastors had not crammed it down his throat in his childhood. The so-called loving God by no means reveals the knowledge of His existence to young people, but amazingly enough, and despite His omnipotence, He leaves this to the efforts of a pastor. When in the future our youth no longer hear anything about this Christianity, whose doctrine is far below our own, Christianity will automatically disappear.

It is also astonishing that prior to our own era nothing was known to mankind about this Christian God and even since then the great majority of the inhabitants of our earth have known nothing about Christianity. Because of this, according to the arrogant Christian dogma, they are damned from the outset.

When we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, [1] by God we do not understand, as do naive Christians and their clerical beneficiaries, a manlike being who is sitting around in some corner of the spheres. Rather, we must open the eyes of mankind to the fact that in addition to our unimportant Earth there exist countless other bodies in the universe, many of them surrounded, like the sun, by planets and these again by smaller bodies, the moons. The force which moves all these bodies in the universe, in accordance with natural law, is what we call the Almighty or God. The assertion that this world-force can worry about the fate of every individual, every bacillus on earth, and that it can be influenced by so-called prayer or other astonishing things, is based either on a suitable dose of naivete or on outright commercial effrontery.

In contrast, we National Socialists call upon ourselves to live as naturally as possible -- that is, in keeping with the laws of life. The more thoroughly we know and attend to the laws of nature and life, the more we adhere to them, the more do we correspond to the will of the Almighty. The deeper our insight into the will of the. Almighty, the greater will be our success.

It follows from the incompatibility of National Socialist and Christian concepts that we must oppose any strengthening of existing Christian denominations and must refuse to give them any assistance. We can make no differentiation between the various Christian confessions. That is also why the idea of establishing an Evangelical Reich Church by gathering together the various Evangelical Church bodies has to be finally abandoned. For the Evangelical Church op poses us with the same hostility as the Catholic Church. Any strengthening of the Evangelical Church would merely work against us.

It was a mistake of historical consequence for the German emperors in the Middle Ages to take it upon themselves again and again to establish order at the Vatican in Rome. It is indeed a mistake that we Germans are all too often prone to make, namely, to establish order where our own interests would call for disunity and division. The House of Hohenstaufen should have had the greatest interest in the fragmentation of ecclesiastical power. From the point of view of the German Reich it would have been highly profitable if there had not been only one Pope, but at least two or, better, even more Popes to fight among themselves. Instead, the German emperors and especially those of the House of Hohenstaufen always worked for ecclesiastical order and aided one Pope to gain power over his competitors, with the result that, as soon as the Pope was strong enough, the emperors got it in the neck from their "own" Pope. Yet, to strengthen its Own power position the Church has always exploited, and encouraged to the best of its abilities, the particularism of princes and later on that of political parties.

In earlier generations, the leadership of the people lay exclusively in the hands of the Church. The state limited itself to passing laws and regulations and above all to the task of administration. The actual leadership of the people was not vested in the state, but in the Church, which, through the agency of the pastor, exercised the strongest influence over the lives of individuals, families, and the community as a whole. Anything that was not to the liking of the Church was suppressed with unexampled ruthlessness. For centuries the state had to borrow from the influence of the Church through the most varied donations. The Church alone decided whether it would aid the state or range itself against it. The state was fully dependent on the assistance of the Church. The struggles of the German emperors against the Pope, in the Middle Ages and in modern times, were always bound to fail, since it was not the emperor but the Church that exercised leadership over the people.

This ideological dependence of the state on the Church, and the fact that the state had relinquished the leadership of the people, eventually became so obvious that no one dared seriously to question it. Not to take this indisputable fact into consideration was regarded as the acme of political stupidity -- up to the time of the [Nazi] seizure of power.

For the first time in German history, the Fuhrer consciously has the leadership of the people entirely in his own hands. With the party, its subordinate apparatus, and the associations connected with it, the Fuhrer wrought for himself and the German Reich leadership an instrument that made him entirely independent of the Church. Any influence that would impair or damage the leadership of the people exercised by the Fuhrer with the aid of the NSDAP has to be eliminated. To an ever increasing degree the people must be wrested from Churches and their agents, the pastors. Obviously, the Churches, from their standpoint, will and must defend themselves against this loss of power. But never again must the Church regain an influence in the leadership of the people. This must absolutely and finally be broken.

Only the Reich leadership, together with the party and the organs and associations connected with it, has a right to lead the people. Just as the harmful influence of astrologists, soothsayers, and other swindlers has been suppressed by the state, so it must be made absolutely impossible for the Church to exercise its old influence. Only after this has been done can the state leadership exert full influence over all racial comrades. Only then will the future of Reich and Volk be secured for all time.

We would be repeating the catastrophic mistakes of past centuries if after our comprehension of the ideological hostility of all Christian denominations we were now in any manner whatever to contribute to the strengthening of the various Churches. The interest of the Reich does not lie in overcoming ecclesiastical particularism but, rather, in maintaining and strengthening it.

M. Bormann
Reich Leader
(1942)

From Kirchliches Jahrbuch fur die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1933-1944, pp. 470-472.

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Notes:

1. Gottglaubigkeit: non-Christian theism.

The Epistle of St. Paul Is in Error

Memorandum from the Confessional Church

In submitting the following facts [of persecution] as they have been reported to us, we would like to address this question to you, Herr Reichminister [Rudolf Hess]: In your opinion, how long will it be possible to maintain domestic peace among our people, among whom doubtless many racial comrades are convinced members of the Christian Church and whose government, on the basis of Article 24 of its party platform, claims to extend protection to positive Christianity, if state officials openly impede and persecute Christianity and the Church? The following will show what we mean.

On Saturday, February 27 -- that is, on a day which was clearly within the purview of the Fuhrer's decree on choice [1] -- Pastor Zedlacher in Hamburg, an Austrian citizen, was interrogated by the Gestapo in connection with a Bible class he had conducted on February 24, 1937. We must call it utterly unworthy of a German official that the material for this interrogation was procured by a professional informer who managed by stealth to gain entrance to the Bible class. We must, furthermore, designate as intolerable and a mockery the fact that, contrary to all assurances that the freedom of preaching would be inviolable, Zedlacher was specifically criticized for using Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Verse 11, as a text for his lesson. It is indisputably asserted in the Epistle to the Romans, Verse 11, that the choice of Israel by God is unalterable. Zedlacher was only acting in accordance with his duties as a Bible teacher when he passed on to his pupils what is written in the Bible. The same applies to the assertions for which the Gestapo criticized Zedlacher-namely, that Jesus was not an Aryan but a Jew, and that despite Reichminister Kerrl's [2] contrary opinion, it cannot be denied that Christ's sonship from God is the fundamental dogma of Christianity from the standpoint of a confessing evangelical Christianity....

More monstrous even than his interrogation was the treatment to which Zedlacher was exposed during the time he spent in protective custody. How can responsible state officials justify the fact that in the concentration camp an official of the Church was called a Jew-lover and a Jew-slave, and was told that the best thing would be to save mankind from the likes of him? How can the protectors of positive Christianity account for the fact that a helpless prisoner was mocked and ridiculed by SS troopers On duty because he still happened to believe in the Bible, and was told that they would soon cure him of his piety? One of these SS men -- a guard paid by the state -- even had the insolence to ask the prisoner: "Would you like me to give your greetings to your God, Jehova? He's coming to visit us today." When Zedlacher answered that this would not be necessary and that they should not mock the Lord, he was rudely barked at and ordered not to be so impertinent. Seemingly [they said] he did not know where he was, and they warned him that if he said just one mare word, he would get a severe beating and be sentenced to five days' solitary confinement on bread and water.

We also see a brutal mockery of Christian belief in the fact that Zedlacher was asked whether he thought the Jew Jesus would help him escape from the concentration camp and from the treatment he was receiving from the guards. We shall spare ourselves the recital of further revolting details, but in this connection we must point out one thing:

To us the deep significance of Zedlacher's reports lies not alone in the fact that they establish how grossly the Christian faith can be mocked and persecuted within the framework of the state, but also in that they force upon our consciousness the renewed awareness that the very existence of concentration camps constitutes a heavy burden for the Christian conscience. Zedlacher's release from the concentration camp, upon the intervention of the Austrian Consul-General, can by no means be considered a reparation for the wrong done, since Zedlacher was expelled from the territories of the Reich and left Hamburg On March 31, 1937, after, by the way, being bid farewell by a large circle of the people among whom he worked.

(1937)

From Deutsche Kirchendokumente: Die Haltung der Bekennenden Kirche im dritten Reich, compiled by W. Jannasch (Zollikon-Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag A.G., 1946), pp. 44-47.

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Notes:

1. This decree made religious instruction in schools a voluntary matter.

2. Hans Kerrl, Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs.

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PART 2 OF 2

To Capture Youth

Stuttgart, June 19, 1939

To: All Deanery Offices
Subject: Ideological Instruction Courses

The attempt by both school authorities and special organizations to induce Evangelical parents in Wurttemberg to remove their children from classes in religious instruction in school and to register them in so-called classes in ideological instruction, continues even though, according to reports received by us, the actions of parents have clearly indicated how they feel about the question.

In a secondary school for boys, though the parents were openly solicited, only 17 pupils out of 250 registered for the ideological instruction course; in a girls' secondary school, the total was 23 students out of a total of 600. In both cases, the overwhelming majority of parents clung tenaciously to their right to Evangelical or Catholic instruction for their children. It appears necessary to keep our parishes constantly informed of these developments and to provide them with detailed information on the methods by which ideological instruction in the schools of Wurttemberg is to be furthered.

In one parish in Lower Wurttemberg, the parents had several months ago declared themselves strongly in favor of regular special children's religious services, and were successful in their demands. Now these same parents with equal decisiveness have rejected the ideological instruction classes. The school principal gave each of the children who had not yet been registered for the ideological instruction classes a mimeographed notice to take home to his parents, dated May 17, 1939, which read as follows:

Your child is to attend a Recreation Camp at __ for the period from __ to __. According to the latest regulations, this vacation will depend on whether you profess the world view of the Fuhrer and, accordingly, send your child to the government-sponsored National Socialist ideological instruction class. As you have not done so, you are herewith requested to register your child for the ideological instruction. In case you do not wish to do so, please inform us accordingly by a short, written notice.

The Principal

In C., the children of an elementary-school class were told that they had to choose between ideological and religious instruction. They would no longer be graded in religious instruction; instead, only ideological instruction would be entered in their annual progress reports. If any of them planned to attend a higher school later, they would no longer be examined in religion, but only in ideology. Hence they could draw their own conclusions as to what they had to do.

In a municipality in the district of L., the school principal informed the children that their parents would soon be called upon to send them to ideological instruction classes. On May 10, 1939, the parents held a meeting, attended by about 20 men and 150 women, which categorically rejected this demand.

At the same time about 50 fathers were suddenly summoned to the Town Hall without being told why. There they were addressed first by the mayor, then by the local group leader, and finally by the senior master. Then a preprinted form was read to them and they were asked to sign it. All the fathers, with the exception of three or four, did so. It was obvious that the signatures were largely motivated by the senior master's disclosure that ideological instruction was bound to come anyhow and it would therefore be better to sign now.

The event produced tremendous agitation in the community. On the following day, groups of aroused citizens stood in the streets until late at night and discussed the problem of ideological instruction in the schools. Numerous women tearfully implored their husbands to withdraw their children's registration for ideological instruction; again and again one heard the question whether mothers no longer had any rights over their children and whether the Fuhrer's assurance that everyone could seek salvation in his own fashion was still valid. In the morning, before school, some mothers sent their children to their fathers to beg them to withhold or recall their registration for ideological instruction. These requests were all the more justified in view of the fact that the fathers had had to register their decision at the Town Hall within less than half an hour, without being able to form a judgment as to the consequences of their signatures. The distress of consciences and the agitation of the community were markedly great.

In a community near H., recruitment for the ideological instruction was carried out under especially overt pressure and threats. As was reported from the community, a teacher said to a girl in the seventh grade: "If you don't take part in the ideological instruction class, I'll make you read the Bible until you're blue in the face." To another child the teacher said: "What does your father do?" "He's a letter- carrier." "If he doesn't sign, he'll see what will happen; he'll have to become a street-sweeper." The school principal himself flatly told children who arrived without the desired signature: "This stuff in the Bible about the last being the first no longer applies." In this connection, the fathers and mothers, numbering about 100, who had not withdrawn their children from the religious instruction class were invited to a parents' meeting at the schoolhouse on April 28, 1939. The local Evangelical pastor, himself the father of an elementary-school child, was not invited. When he came nevertheless, on the basis of his right as a father, it was most sharply pointed out to him and his wife that he had no right to enter the schoolhouse, that he would be charged with trespass, and that he would only disturb the unanimity of the meeting. Several parishioners witnessed this treatment of their pastor. The evening, therefore, was a very stormy one. It had been planned not to allow any discussion from the floor. The principal's speech, interrupted by many excited catcalls, was followed by sharp and loud protests. The attacks against the clergy were decisively and solidly rejected. The excitement reached new heights when the flying police squad of H. was called to the scene. It could establish only that the parents had vigorously rejected this attempted unprecedented pressure on their consciences. The meeting broke up and the school principal excused himself to a few of those who had remained behind: the hard words that had been exchanged should be forgotten on both sides, since it concerned, in any case, a matter of a voluntary character.

At a meeting on May 4, 47 Evangelical parents and guardians signed and sent the following letter to the Wurttemberg Minister of Religion:

For several days the parents of children of school age of this locality have been pressured by teachers to declare their agreement with the introduction of ideological instruction in the classroom. The parents most decisively reject this coercion and demand full freedom of conscience as well as the cessation of the collection of signatures under pressure.

Heil Hitler!

In T., the boys' seventh-grade class had its so-called ideological instruction on April 24, 1939, from 9:30 to 10:30, that is, at a time fully within the regular school schedule. Out of 32 pupils, only 5 attended. The other 27 were gathered in another room for a spelling lesson and were given such a difficult dictation that the best pupil made seven mistakes, the lowest forty-three. As punishment for this allegedly poor performance, all the pupils were kept in school the next day from 2 to 4 o'clock, and several of them even until 4:30. Complaints were answered by the principal with "This is perfectly in order."

In A., the principal of a secondary school told a father who asked for information on the ideological instruction course: "You know that I myself left the Church and you know my position toward Christianity. I shall introduce ideological instruction along these lines. There are to be no polemics, but the various religious faiths will naturally be dealt with in the upper grades."

When he asked whether it was not true that the Reich Ministry of Education had taken a different position on the problem of ideological instruction and bad in fact issued contrary regulations, the father was told: "The regulations of the Reich Ministry of Education are not binding for Wurttemberg; the official publications of the Reich Ministry are not generally read and only this or that regulation which is important is given any attention here."

Referring to the traditional pre-confirmation instructions, the school principal continued: "Those who attend the ideological instruction could not also attend the confirmation classes." He had told his students in the ideological instruction class that he could not understand why any of them would want to be confirmed anyway. In some places a special celebration was to take place after the fourth grade, but so far there were no general regulations about this.

He denied that any pressure would be exerted to secure registrations for the ideological instruction classes. When told that some teachers had actually used high-pressure tactics, the principal made no answer.

In a community in Franconia, the principal of the two-grade elementary school distributed a form letter to his pupils on Saturday, May 20, at noon, which was to be signed by their parents and returned on the next day, Sunday, May 21, at noon. The form letter contained the well-known text:

The ideological disputations of our time have already led to numerous withdrawals of children from religions instruction and are bound to lead to more. For all pupils who, at the request of their parents, no longer wish to attend religious instruction in school, the Minister of Religion has instituted classes in ideological instruction. A course in ideological instruction has also been initiated at the elementary school in __, Those desirous of further information are referred to the school principal, who will also accept registrations.

In contrast to similar form letters distributed in other communities, this one carried the notation: "signed Mergenthaler."

This circumstance greatly depressed parents who were economically dependent upon him and caused immeasurable agitation among the independent farmers. On Ascension Day, at a parents' meeting, the school principal propagandized for ideological instruction: From now on, every child simply had to participate in it; if on top of this children were also to take two hours of religious instruction in school and two more hours of denominational instruction from their local pastor, this would be too much for them. Therefore, the parents should take their children out of the religious instruction class at school. The end result was that the school principal had only two registrations for the ideological instruction class -- both from his own children.

On Tuesday, May 23, at a meeting of the local school board, the principal tried again to push through the introduction of ideological instruction. He had invited larger numbers of people to the board session. At the first offensive remark about the local pastor, who was present, a storm broke loose against the school principal. He was shouted down. One member of the school board jumped at him, his fists waving, and uttered unmistakable threats. The school principal was told that the form letter with the notation "signed Mergenthaler" was a matter for the courts. The principal from now on should adhere strictly to the legal regulations, which recognized the wishes of the parents as the only criteria for the religious instruction of their children. The principal was told that he was creating chaos in the whole community and was deceiving the people. Ever since he had arrived the whole town had experienced nothing but strife and turmoil; the community had built several schoolhouses at great sacrifice and now he had driven the pastor from the school and declared that he was no longer to be allowed to teach there. This was a grievous offense against the community.

"We would like to see whether we are no longer the masters of the school buildings which we have built with our money!" There were loud shouts of acclaim when it was demanded that the pastor be rein· stated as religious instructor in the school. The principal declared that the decision in this matter was not his to make, since it had to be referred to higher authorities. This caused a renewed uproar.

The principal closed his speech with the request that the meeting should arrange a peaceful settlement in the interests of the children. Thereupon the local pastor said that a peaceful settlement could most easily be achieved by permitting him to resume his religious teaching at the school, just as he had done the previous school year. The principal could rest assured that this would restore harmony in the community and that no further difficulties would be raised. All present agreed that this was the only solution which they could advise the principal to take, in his own personal interest. With that the meeting came to an end.

In a number of municipalities, standard-bearers of the Hitler Youth ordered their subordinates to see to it that relatives of Hitler Youth members withdrew from religious instruction classes and applied for ideological instruction within three weeks.

By such procedures a matter that is one of the inalienable rights of parents is withdrawn from the free decision of the parents and propelled toward an anti-Christian solution, despite all official utterances to the contrary.

These matters should, in suitable form, be brought to the attention of all parishes. All rectories are requested, if they have not done so already, to report by July 1 on the methods used and the results attained in all campaigns for ideological instruction classes in the schools. Attention should be given to particular events, for example, to remarks concerning the future education and occupational prospects of children who have not withdrawn from their religious instruction classes; whether there have been threats to withhold child support payments from some families, [1] or whether means of economic pressure have been employed.

WURM [2]

From Kirchliches Jahrbuch fur die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, 1933-1944, pp. 343-347.

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Notes:

1. Child support payments were granted to families with more than three children.

2. Theophil Wurm (1868-1953), Protestant Bishop of Wurttemberg, was one of the leaders of the Confessional Church (Bekennende Kirche).

Judaism, Christianity, and Germany, by CARDINAL FAULHABER

Already in the year 1899, On the occasion of an anti-Semitic demonstration at Hamburg, and simultaneously in Chamberlain's book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, [1] a demand was raised for the total separation of Judaism from Christianity, and for the complete elimination from Christianity of all Jewish elements. Nearly two decades later these ideas were once more propagated in such books as The Sin Against Blood, The Great Fraud, and The False God. [2] Judaism and Christianity, it was maintained, were incompatible; the Jewish Bible must be replaced by a German Bible; Martin Luther had done only half his work, for in his Bible he had included the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Today these single voices have swelled together into a chorus: Away with the Old Testament! A Christianity which still clings to the Old Testament is a Jewish religion, irreconcilable with the spirit of the German people. Children at school must no longer be bothered with Bible stories of Joseph the Egyptian or the ancient Moses.... Given the present general attitude of mind, this outcry is well calculated to shake the foundations of the faith in the souls of the German people.

Even the Person of Christ is not spared by this religious revolution. Some have indeed tried to save Him with a forged birth certificate, and have said that He was not a Jew at all but an Aryan, because there were Aryans among the inhabitants of Galilee. But so long as historical sources count for more than surmise, there can be no doubt about the fact. The first chapter of the first gospel gives us the genealogy of Jesus, with the title: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham." Similarly, the Epistle to the Romans attests the origin of Jesus from the seed of David (i, 4). Undoubtedly the Galileans, a borderland people, were of mixed origin. But Christ was not born in Galilee; He was born in Bethlehem, the city of David, in the land of the tribe of Juda, and officially He was entered in the register as a descendant of David. And so others now take up the cry: Then we must renounce Him, if He was a Jew -- and the scene of the Gospel is re-enacted: "They thrust Him out of the city and brought Him to the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong" (Luke iv, 29). "Again they took up stones to stone Him" (John x, 31).

When such voices are raised, when such movements are afoot, the bishop cannot remain silent. When racial research, in itself not a religious matter, makes war upon religion and attacks the foundations of Christianity; when antagonism to the Jews of the present day is extended to the sacred books of the Old Testament and Christianity is condemned because it has relations of origin with pre-Christian Judaism; when stones are cast at the Person of our Lord and Saviour, and this in the very year in which we are celebrating the centenary of His work of Redemption, then the bishop cannot remain silent. And therefore I preach these Advent sermons on the Old Testament and its fulfillment in Christianity.

On this subject I may claim to speak as a specialist, having spent eleven years of my life lecturing on these questions in the University of Wurzburg, and having held the chair of Old Testament Scripture in the University of Strassburg....

So that I may be perfectly clear and preclude any possible misunderstanding, let me begin by making three distinctions. We must first distinguish between the people of Israel before and after the death of Christ. Before the death of Christ during the period between the calling of Abraham and the fullness of time, the people of Israel were the vehicle of Divine Revelation. The Spirit of God raised up and enlightened men who by the law, the Mosaic Torah, regulated their religious and civil life, by the Psalms provided them with a prayer book for family devotion and a hymn book for the public liturgy, by the Sapiential books taught them how to conduct their lives, and as prophets awakened the conscience of the nation with the living word. It is only with this Israel of the early biblical period that I shall deal in my Advent sermons.

After the death of Christ, Israel was dismissed from the service of Revelation. She had not known the time of her visitation. She had repudiated and rejected the Lord's Anointed, had driven Him out of the city and nailed Him to the Cross. Then the veil of the Temple was rent, and with it the covenant between the Lord and His people. The daughters of Sian received the bill of divorce, and from that time forth Assuerus wanders, forever restless, over the face of the earth. Even after the death of Christ the Jews are still a "mystery," as St. Paul says (Rom. xi, 25); and one day, at the end of time, for them too the hour of grace will strike (Rom. xi, 26). But -- I repeat -- in these Advent sermons I am speaking only of pre-Christian Judaism.

In the second place we must distinguish between the Scriptures of the Old Testament on the one hand and the Talmudic writings of post-Christian Judaism on the other, whether these be glosses and commentaries on the biblical text or separate religious works; I mean especially the Talmud, the Mischna, and the medieval code of laws, Schulchan Arukh. The Talmudic writings are the work of man; they were not prompted by the Spirit of God. It is only the sacred writings of pre-Christian Judaism, not the Talmud, that the Church of the New Testament has accepted as her inheritance.

Thirdly, we must distinguish in the Old Testament Bible itself between what had only transitory value and what had permanent value. The long genealogies had value in ancient times, but their value was not permanent; similarly the numerous regulations for the ancient sacrifices and ceremonial cleansings. For the purpose of our subject we are concerned only with those religious, ethical, and social values of the Old Testament which remain as values also for Christianity....

Let us venerate the Scriptures of the Old Testament! We do not set the Old Testament and the New On the same level. The Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse must hold the place of honor. But the Scriptures of the Old Testament are also inspired, and therefore they are sacred books, precious stones for the building of God's kingdom, priceless values for our religious guidance. And therefore the Church has stretched forth her protecting hand over the Scriptures of the Old Testament; she has gathered together the forty-five books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New into one volume, and she has used the text of the Old Testament also in her liturgy. By accepting these books Christianity does not become a Jewish religion. These books were not composed by Jews; they are inspired by the Holy Ghost, and therefore they are the word of God, they are God's books. The writers of them were God's pencils, the Psalm-singers were harps in the hand of God, the prophets were announcers of God's revelation. It is for this reason that the Scriptures of the Old Testament are worthy of credence and veneration for all time. Antagonism to the Jews of today must not be extended to the books of pre- Christian Judaism.

In the New Testament, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. 11), Abel, Enoch, and other figures of Old Testament history are held up as models of faith to be imitated by Christians. St. Francis of Assisi once picked up a scrap of paper from the ground. "Let no man tread this under foot," he said, "for the name of God can be written thereon." Let no man trample under foot the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament; for the name of God is written there. Cardinal Manning once said to the Jews: "I should not understand my own religion, had I no reverence for yours."

Let us venerate the Scriptures of the Old Testament! And let us not allow Bible history to be abolished in our schools! These biblical stories have a great educational value in the school, so long as they are well selected and told in attractive language, and if the teacher knows how to make them live.

Side by side with the Bible there is a second source of revelation, the Tradition of the Church. Side by side with the Book stands the living teacher, the authority of the Church. Beside the good pasture stands the good shepherd, beside the precious materials for the building stands the good architect. Therefore the anti-Moses movement does not affect us Catholics so vitally as our separated brethren, who regard the Bible as the sale foundation of their faith. To these separated brethren we stretch forth our hand to make common cause with them in defense of the sacred books of the Old Testament, so that we may save them for the German nation and preserve this precious treasury of doctrine for the Christian schools....

From the Church's point of view there is no objection whatever to racial research and race culture. Nor is there any objection to the endeavor to keep the national characteristics of a people as far as possible pure and unadulterated, and to foster their national spirit by emphasis upon the common ties of blood which unite them. From the Church's point of view we must make only three conditions: First, love of one's own race must not lead to the hatred of other nations. Secondly, the individual must never consider himself freed from the obligation of nourishing his own soul by the persevering use of the means of grace which the Church provides. The young man who is always hearing about the blessedness of his own race is apt too easily to conceive that he is no longer bound by duties to God and His Church, duties of humility and chastity. Thirdly, race culture must not assume an attitude of hostility to Christianity. What are we to say of the monstrous contention that Christianity has corrupted the German race, that Christianity -- especially because it is burdened with Old Testament ideas -- is not adapted to the genius of the nation, and that therefore it is an obstacle in the way of the national consciousness?

What is the relation of Christianity to the German race? Race and Christianity are not mutually opposed, but they do belong to different orders. Race is of the natural order; Christianity is a revealed religion and therefore of the supernatural order. Race means union with the nation; Christianity means primarily union with God. Race is nationally inclusive and exclusive; Christianity is a world-wide message of salvation for all nations. The concepts of revelation and redemption, of supernature and grace must not be watered down. The fourth gospel makes a neat distinction between those who are born of blood and those who are born of God (John i, 13). Christ also clearly distinguished between what flesh and blood had revealed and what was revealed by the Father in Heaven (Matt. xvi, 17 foll.). We are Christians not because we are born of Christian parents; we are Christians because after our birth we were reborn and made a new creature by baptism in Christ (2 Cor. xv, 17).

No nation ever insisted more on race and ties of blood than the Israelites of the Old Testament. But in the fullness of time the dogma of race was eclipsed by the dogma of faith. Around the cradle of Bethlehem there were Jews and pagans, shepherds from the land of Juda and wise men from the East. In the kingdom of this Child, according to the words of His Apostle, "there is no distinction of the Jew and the Greek, for the same is Lord over all" (Rom. x, 12).

What is the relation of Christianity to the German race? The Christian, so long as he observes the above conditions, is not forbidden to stand up for his race and for its rights. It is possible, therefore, without divided allegiance, to be an upright German and at the same time an upright Christian. Hence there is no need to turn our backs upon Christianity and to set up a Nordic or Germanic religion, in order to profess our nationality. But we must never forget: we are not redeemed with German blood. We are redeemed with the Precious Blood of our crucified Lord (I Pet. i, 9). There is no other name and no other blood under Heaven, in which we can be saved, but the name and the blood of Christ.

From His Eminence Cardinal Faulhaber, Judaism, Christianity, and Germany: Advent Sermons Preached in St. Michael's, Munich, in 1933, translated by Rev. George D. Smith (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd., 1934), pp. 1-6, 13-16, 107-110. (Reprinted by permission of the Macmillan Company, New York. Copyright 1934 by the Macmillan Company; and Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd., British Commonwealth copyright.)

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Notes:

1. Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Die Grundlagen des XIX. Jahrhunderts (1899) was one of the most influential books, not only for National Socialism but for German nationalism in general.

2. These were anti-Christian tracts, of which the most famous was Artur Dinter's Die Sunde wider das Blut (1918). This novel praised Aryan purity and saw the Jews as the incarnation of evil.

Nurses and Philosophy

For the first time, National Socialist nurses have taken the oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor in the Cologne-Aachen district, according to a report by the National Socialist Party Press Service. District Leader Grohe, who administered the oath in the presence of Reich Women Leader Scholtz-Klink and District Superintendent Hilgenfeldt, explained why the formation of National Socialist Sisterhoods had become necessary.

The number of denominational nurses had fallen off to such an extent that there was no longer any guarantee for efficient nursing service in the future. In addition the future would present tasks which could properly be performed only by men and women fully imbued with the philosophical attitude of National Socialism. The bishops had forbidden nuns working as nurses to assist in the case of certain operations, in consequence of which in the interest of the patients the formation of National Socialist Sisterhoods became an unconditional necessity.

From the Frankfurter Zeitung, Oct. 6, 1936. (Wiener Library Clipping Collection.)