After France, Italy, Belgium, he ended up in Vienna, then in Geneva, where he earned a Bachelors degree in Science. Rome was destroyed by the Jews because it had not protected the purity of its race and because it was never able to lead a proper racial war: a total war of annihilation. The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. An Anthology of Texts, London, Routledge, 2002, 496p. 25 Es hat meine Gedanken beschftigt, wieso gerade Sie, der Sie in so seltenem Grade ein Erwecker der Seelen aus Schlaf und Schlendrian sind, mir einen so langen erquickenden Schlaf neulich schenkten, wie ich einen hnlichen nicht erlebt habe seit dem verhngnisvollen Augusttag 1914, wo das tckische Leiden mich befiel. Die Aufzechnungen Heinrich Heims, herausgegeben von Werner Jochmann. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Methodenkritik, in, Hellas: Griechische Geschichte und deutsche Geisteswissenschaft. Educated at Versailles, Geneva, and Vienna, Chamberlain became an admirer of Richard Wagner, publishing his first work, Notes sur Lohengrin (Notes on Lohengrin), in 1892. and not just in Germany. The main postulate was quite simple: everything in human history and culture could be explained by race, as Schemann would later emphasize in the three volumes of his, . Greetings to you, spiritual father. Nearly as significant and important was the fact that, thanks to the Roman conquest, the Greeks finally turned their back to the East, in other words to Asia: Without Rome, undoubtedly, Europe would have been a mere perpetuation of the Asian chaos. (). 23 Weindling, Paul, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, 463p. And Weindling, Paul, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989. Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 2 vols, Munich, Bruckmann, 1899. More importantly, they would prevent any further decadence and avoid mixing with inferior races, like the Jews or other crossbreds. Es hat meine Gedanken beschftigt, wieso gerade Sie, der Sie in so seltenem Grade ein Erwecker der Seelen aus Schlaf und Schlendrian sind, mir einen so langen erquickenden Schlaf neulich schenkten, wie ich einen hnlichen nicht erlebt habe seit dem verhngnisvollen Augusttag 1914, wo das tckische Leiden mich befiel. . What mattered to them was biology and race, not the law or a mere artificial citizenship. Jesus Christ was, strangely enough, of pure Germanic blood. ), British-born Germanophile political philosopher, whose advocacy of the racial and cultural superiority of the so-called Aryan element in European culture influenced pan-German and German nationalist thought, particularly Adolf Hitler's National Socialist movement. Meuchelmrderisch hatte sich der asiatische und afrikanische Knecht bis zum Thron des rmischen Imperiums hinaufgeschlichen, inzwischen der syrische Bastard sich des Gesetzeswerkes bemchtigte, der Jude die Bibliothek zu Alexandria benutzte, um hellenische Philosophie dem mosaischen Gesetze anzupassen (). 17Indeed, this encounter and interview left such an impression on Chamberlain that he considered Hitler as the epitome of many essential virtuessuch virtues as warmth, kindness and selflessness, all embodied by the Fhrer of the NSDAP: You are not at all, as you have been described to me, a fanatic. Fenske, Wolfgang, Wie Jesus zum Arier wurde. Decultot, Elisabeth, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. As a true Wagnerian, Chamberlain needed heroes and saviours. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. He holds my hand and won't let me go. He became a member of the Wagner circle and grew quite intimate with the family of the, whose daughter, Eva, he ended up marrying. Johann Chapoutot, From Humanism to Nazism: Antiquity in the Work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain ,Miranda [Online], 11|2015, Online since 23 July 2015, connection on 05 March 2023. It would be the official creed of the Deutsche Christen under the Third Reich; for instance, an official Protestant church pledged to the Nazi party20. There is the force that stems from chaos and in turn leads to chaos, and there is the force which shapes the cosmos27. Having learned, from a very young age, at least two foreign languages, he almost wrote better in French and in German than he did in English. 21From the Foundations of the 19th to the Myth of the 20th Century, the vision of antiquity remained the same: a Germanic golden age in Greece and Rome which was scattered and shattered by the Jews. In his book, we can read that Plato was, by all means, a great philosopher. by ; in john and livi come dine with me; on June 29, 2022 . He then joined the Nazi party before he passed away in 1927. This is one of the better clichs of the German historiography of the second half of the 19. century: only the Nordic king, Alexander of Macedonia, managed to unify Greece and put an end to endless campaigns by creating an Empire, like King Wilhelm of Prussia who succeeded in 1871 in unifying the different German tribes and states into a mighty Empire. This would be taught in the ideological courses every member of the party (among which, members of the SS) had to take. He was therefore read and admired by the major figures of the Nazi ideologyone of whom was Hitlerand became, just before he died, in the 1920s, one of the leading minds of their movement. As they wanted to destroy anything that was not Jewish, they fought against the Greeks. Bust of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.jpg 456 722; 99 KB. , New York, Columbia University Press, 1981, 565p. , Munich, Bruckmann, 1899, 1031p. (2 volumes). He holds my hand and won't let me go. Rome was destroyed by the Jews because it had not protected the purity of its race and because it was never able to lead a proper racial war: a total war of annihilation. An Anthology of Texts, London, Routledge, 2002. Off we go. houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary . If Germanic blood is not protected against the Jewish infection, Europe will perish. If politicians had been more aware of his work, states would be far better off now, writes Hitler: Those who had the government of the country in their hands were quite as indifferent to principles of civil wisdom laid down by thinkers like H. S. Chamberlain as our political leaders now are. He resented Chamberlain for not being aware of that scourge. Before praising the Romans for being good lawyers, he blames them for their lack of creativity: Can you find one single poetic genius among the Romans? Those three cities had been, throughout the 19. century, the epitome of Western culture: the Greeks had bequeathed philosophy and the arts, the Romans the Law and the Empire, and Jerusalem had opened a new path to salvation with the teachings of Jesus Christ. It was high time the saviour appeared.18. Twisted Cross. discovered the importance of the Spider Web doctrine. This idea allowed Chamberlain to combine both his vast amount of knowledge in history as well as in the humanities, in general. Being a Nazi in 1926 was just not the same than being a Nazi in 1938, 1942 or 1944. Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a British racial theorist and philosopher, the son-in-law of Richard Wagner, a prolific writer and also a significant contributor to Adolf Hitler's thinking about race and in general, to National-Socialist racial ideas and ultimately, policy. Not a Jew, by all means! Since the purpose of his Foundations of the 19th Century was to try and explain everything about life and history, it naturally had to start with Antiquity for the authors exhaustive survey to have any semblance of logic at all. Apart from being a compendium of all the cultural clichs of the time, Chamberlains. In the 1031 pages of the two volumes, Chamberlain borrowed ideas from the leading sciences of the time (history and the natural sciences) and stood up for the dominant ideas, at the. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Was sagt man zu einer Geschichte, die mehr als 1200 Jahre umfasst, und nicht einen einzigen Philosophen aufweist, ja, nicht einmal das kleinste Philosphchen? This is the decisive standpoint for men of action. allowed him to reach public fame. Jetzt glaube ich einzusehen, da dies grade Ihr Wesen bezeichnet und sozusagen umschliet: der wahre Erwecker ist zugleich Spender der Ruhe. Beck, 1999, 534p. NF, Beat, Von Perikles zu Hitler? She married Siegfried, Richard Wagners only son, and was considered the only true custodian and bailiff in Bayreuth after Siegfrieds death, as well as a sort of muse for Adolf Hitler, whom she greatly admired. Chamberlain devotes some 500 pagesnearly half the bookto that period, providing his reader with ample material on Rome, Greece and the Jews as well as on another sacrosanct trinity: Athens, Rome and Jerusalem. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005. , New York, Columbia University Press, 1981. , Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1960. , London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962. , Munich, Franz Eher Verlag, Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1926. , Wien, Zrich, New York, Europa Verlag, 1940. emphasizes the importance of race, nation, personality, the creative idea in history . An Anthology of Texts, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945. , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989. , Leipzig, 1869. I, chap. It was high time the saviour appeared. Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Omissions? He became somewhat of a war hero during the First World War, during which he was a talented propagandist against his own country, Great Britain. Corrections? He was, for the Germans, the thinker who popularized Gobineaus ideas on the social Darwinists, providing the German bourgeoisie with a sense of its mission: am deutschen wesen soll die welt genesenthe German essence must heal the world. British-American philosopher and educator. Chamberlains later works included studies of Kant (1905) and Goethe (1912), various essays defending Germanys military efforts and aims during World War I, the autobiographical Lebenswege meines Denkens (1919; Paths of My Thought), and Rasse und Persnlichkeit (1925; Race and Personality). Counter-revolutionary theoreticians exalted in Germany the biological idea of the Volk and coined the word vlkisch as an alternative to the French adjective national. The Jews of Semitic Carthage were defeated because the Romans (or Germans) were the best at fighting and winning. The Europe the Romans had ambitioned was saved by a racial messiah: the Germanic tribes which, by invading the Empire, preserved the continent and its civilization. The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, New York, Columbia University Press, 1981. By way of mixture and integration, the Romans changed and gave birth to a breed of mongrels, giving out the Roman citizenship (civitas romana) to every free man on earth. And this is the reason why it triumphantly . In 1907 he settled in Bayreuth and married Wagners only daughter Eva, his second wife. Long, long handshake! Why was the world precisely how it should be (the white population thus rewarded for its supremacy over the others)? Lu et admir par les principaux idologues nazis, dont Hitler, il devient, peu avant sa mort dans les annes 1920, un des matres penser de leur mouvement. Their existence is sin, their existence is a crime against the holy laws of life. Only 1869 did Richard Wagner authorize its publication under his name. Remaining in Germany during World War I, Chamberlain received the German Military Cross in 1915 and became naturalized the next year. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Historians must therefore make the effort to understand that, for Chamberlains coevals, his book was important in that it provided an answer, at the time, to important questions and, to a larger extent, tried to give a meaning to history. copies. . Broken, mumbling, tears in his eyes. Chamberlain's ideas on race were greatly influential to Adolf . Hitler saw in Christianity a lethal plague that had affected Europe because of the Jews who made Christians out of Germans to weaken them. 10Apart from being a compendium of all the cultural clichs of the time, Chamberlains Foundations is a form of prolonged indictment against the Jews, depicted as a race full of hatred, longing for might and vengeance. Auswirkungen der Entjudaisierung Christi im 19. und zu Beginn des 20. If the Greeks were philosophers, the Romans were lawyers. The main postulate was quite simple: everything in human history and culture could be explained by race, as Schemann would later emphasize in the three volumes of his Rasse in den Geisteswissenschaften. What were the problems caused by modernity and how could the world be improved for the sake of the better portionthe white portionof humanity? Still, the Greeks were far from perfect. In these publications, Chamberlain emphasized the heroic Teutonic aspects in the composers works. . Updates? After the shock of the First World War and of Germanys defeat, Chamberlain slowly faded away. In the 1920s, he met Hitler. They settled down in Greece and Rome, enjoying the benefits of cultural photosynthesis, thanks to the sun and mild climate of the Mediterranean. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927), who married Wagner's daughter Eva in 1908 but never met Wagner, . Dans sa dmonstration, lantiquit grco-romaine tient une place essentielle. , Hamburg, Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 1980, 496p., p.96. geschrieben hat, ist gelinde gesagt dumm, Hitler quoted in Rauschning, Hermann. 20Houston Stewart Chamberlain died far too early to witness the rise of the NSDAP and the Gleichschaltung of Germany under Nazi rule. The Europe the Romans had ambitioned was saved by a racial messiah: the Germanic tribes which, by invading the Empire, preserved the continent and its civilization. Lolita : Examining the Underside of the Weave, A digital resources portal for the humanities and social sciences, Catalogue of 609 journals. Please, do not mention this painstaking compiler, good enough to write mediocre encyclopaedias named Plinius, Chamberlain has nothing but contempt for Plinius, who might have been less of a mediocre, , as he puts it, than he was himself. What is left of Rome today is no other than a landscape of ruins which looks like the white skeleton of a dead civilization. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, "Kant: Excursus on the 'Thing in Itself,'" Immanuel Kant: A Study and a Comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruno, Plato and Descartes, vol. 13 As a true Wagnerian, Chamberlain needed heroes and saviours. The early, of the 1920s or the people who cast their ballot for the NSDAP in the 1930s did not want the annihilation of Poland or the Holocaust. Hitler and Goebbels got the chance to pay him another visit, in May 1926, just before he passed away. () Where are the roman scientists? 10, p.296, in the English translation by MURPHY, James, London, Hurst and Blackett, 1939, vol. What is left of Rome today is no other than a landscape of ruins which looks like the white skeleton of a dead civilization. Meuchelmrderisch hatte sich der asiatische und. This second visit was, according to Goebbels, a heartbreaking episode which Berlins new Gauleiter described in his diary, in May 1926: Shattering scene: Chamberlain on a couch. Samuel Beckett : Drama as philosophical endgame ? Jetzt glaube ich einzusehen, da dies grade Ihr Wesen bezeichnet und sozusagen umschliet: der wahre Erwecker ist zugleich Spender der Ruhe. Chamberlain criticized them for their lack of political sense: The Greeks have always been, and are still today, unfaithful, unpatriotic, self-centred, . Chamberlain addresses a most respected and dear Herr Hitler, the only one who could give him strength and peace, confidence and energy, everything that he had lost in August 1914, when Germany entered a fateful war: Es hat meine Gedanken beschftigt, wieso gerade Sie, der Sie in so seltenem Grade ein Erwecker de, I have been wondering why it was you of all people, you who are so extraordinary in awakening people from sleep and humdrum routines, who recently gave me a longer and more refreshing sleep than I have experienced since that fateful day in August 1914 when I was first struck down by this insidious sickness. En 1899, ses Fondements du 19me sicle le font connatre dun vaste public: il y relit la totalit de lhistoire de loccident au prisme de la race et du ncessaire avnement de la puissance germanique. Hitler wanted the support of someone whose work had become a canonical book for the racist nationalists in Germany. 5 Athens represented, for Chamberlain, the beauty of ideas and the greatness of philosophy, which as such is not a very original idea. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (September 9, 1855 - January 9, 1927) was a British-born German author of books on political philosophy, natural science and Richard Wagner. Thanks to the Romans, the legions saved mankind from this plague: People have not stopped complaining about the destruction of Carthage, from Polybius to Mommsen! Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1996. He also had quite a vast cultural knowledge for a self-made man. A translation from the German by JOHN LEES, M.A., D.Litt. In a criminal way, the Asian and African slave had crawled up to the throne of the Roman Empire. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (September 9, 1855 - January 9, 1927) was an English author of books on political philosophy, natural science. What Chamberlain wrote in his Foundations is just stupid, to put it nicely22. His most fundamental idea was that the Germanic race was the cornerstone and the pillar of civilization. It is no wonder that an Englishman like Chamberlain became part of the Wagner Circle for Britons were considered to be members of the Aryan race like any other German(ic) man. Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Sehr geehrter und lieber Herr Hitler 7. Die athenische Demokratie und die deutsche Althistorie bis 1945, Peter Lang, Bern, New York, 1986, 332p. 9 Decultot, Elisabeth, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. This beautiful race (in every regard) was dominant in Germany and Austria, but also within the elites of the British Empire and of the United States of America; it extended to the French elites as well, but only partly. cit., p.50. Athens was beautiful, but Greece was splendid: the people looked like statues, they had perfectly proportioned noses and marble skin, they spoke the language of books (written in Greek) and they invented not only mathematics but also the theatre and the art of warfare. A true anti-Semite, Wagner wrote an essay against the perversion of the arts by the Jews entitled Jewishness in Music (Das Judentum in der Musik1) that led Friedrich Nietzsche to break with him but that gained him the affection of many dubious devotees. Meuchelmrderisch hatte sich der asiatische und afrikanische Knecht bis zum Thron des rmischen Imperiums hinaufgeschlichen, inzwischen der syrische Bastard sich des Gesetzeswerkes bemchtigte, der Jude die Bibliothek zu Alexandria benutzte, um hellenische Philosophie dem mosaischen Gesetze anzupassen (). Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the Nordic race as a superior and sometimes as an endangered racial group. If politicians had been more aware of his work, states would be far better off now, writes Hitler: Those who had the government of the country in their hands were quite as indifferent to principles of civil wisdom laid down by thinkers like H. S. Chamberlain as our political leaders now are. foil letter balloons near me; wimbledon medical timeout. 9During ancient times, the Germans ruled over their conception of the world and could therefore explore and organize it: the science of the Greeks helped understand the cosmos, while the legions and the laws of the Romans imposed the Nordic order to the world. 8What is interesting, however, is the following statement: according to Chamberlain, the Romans and the Greeks, the founding fathers of our European civilization, were indeed Germans. Not a Jew, by all means! By HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN. ), British-born Germanophile political philosopher, whose advocacy of the racial and cultural superiority of the so-called Aryan element in European culture influenced pan-German and German nationalist thought, particularly Adolf Hitlers National Socialist movement. Indeed, I would also describe you as the opposite of a politician, in the commonly accepted sense of the word, for the essence of all politics is membership of a party, whereas with you all parties disappear, consumed by the heat of your love for the fatherland. Later, when the Jews rebelled in Palestine, under Vespasian and Titus, and then under Hadrian, they were beaten once again: There is a second roman, of overwhelming significance for world history: the. Chamberlain was brought up by relatives in France. 17 eine Versndigung gegen die Natur, Ibid. Summary With a . He also wrote numerous books on the theory of races, among which an important collection called, that earned him fame and glory in his later years, under the Third Reich. This attempt at completing the Nazi evangelium was not crowned with success: Hitler, who considered Mein Kampf as sufficiently self-explanatory, despised Rosenbergs reflections which Goering himself went as far as to call a mere philosophical burp. 1.7 Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Race Struggle of Western History Like Theodor Fritsch, Houston Stewart Chamberlain represents an important link between . , but this time for gooda word to the wise for people who were sent fighting the new Carthage of Jewish bolshevism on the Eastern front. Das Rassen- und Nationalittlose Vlkerchaos des sptrmischen Imperiums, In the end, Rome triumphed. Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, Munich, Franz Eher Verlag, Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1926. The Persians indeed were Jews, at least as much as the Greeks were Germans, and the Persian Wars were nothing else than a racial struggle which lasted over a century between Asia and Europe. The fanatic inflames the mind, you warm the heart. . houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary. While their cousins who had stayed in the north still ate raw meat and lived in caverns, the Germans of the Souththat is to say, the Greeks and the Romansate healthy food and created civilisation. While the Greeks rejoiced in the company of ideas, the Romans were materialists in both the best and the worst sense of the term. Summary With a collection of 300 sources--each accompanied by an introductory essay and review questions--this two-volume primary source reader emphasizes the history of ideas. Houston Stewart Chamberlain The real representative advocate of racial theory in the pre . One of the most important features of Darwin's theory was his proposed mechanism for evolution: natural selection through the struggle for existence. If the Greeks were philosophers, the Romans were lawyers. Sie sind ja gar nicht, wie Sie mir geschildert worden sind, ein Fanatiker, vielmehr mchte ich Sie als den unmittelbaren Gegensatz eines Fanatikers bezeichnen. But something is as clear as the sun at midday: if the Phenician people had not been exterminated () mankind would never have experienced () this 19, century that we can consider with pride and hope, For Chamberlain, the victory of the Carthaginians over the Romans would have been a catastrophe: We have been saved by the brutal, of Cato and the likes. 6 Drben, im asiatischen Osten, hatten und haben nicht einmal die Menschen Persnlichkeit, hier, in Hellas, ist jeder Fluss, jeder Stein belebt, individualisiert, die stumme Natur erwacht zum Bewusstsein ihrer selbst, in Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, op.