houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary. Chamberlain criticized them for their lack of political sense: The Greeks have always been, and are still today, unfaithful, unpatriotic, self-centred7. 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. If you read the book carefully, the notion of plague as a potential threat is omnipresent. No surprise there, because, according to him, Christ was also a German. And this is the reason why it triumphantly . Bergen, Doris L., Twisted Cross. Chamberlain saw in Hitler the new William II who could save Germany, as he wrote to him in a moving letter in the form of an accolade from the old philosopher of the race to the young racist politician.24 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: 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. Off we go. The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, New York, Columbia University Press, 1981, 565p. 5 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Munich, Bruckmann, 1899, 1031p. (2 volumes). 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. What were the problems caused by modernity and how could the world be improved for the sake of the better portionthe white portionof humanity? 10, p.296, in the English translation by MURPHY, James, London, Hurst and Blackett, 1939, vol. The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, New York, Columbia University Press, 1981. allowed him to reach public fame. Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the Nordic race as a superior and sometimes as an endangered racial group. ). This idea according to which the Greeks and the Germans shared the same taste for beauty had been a commonplace for, since Johann Winckelmann published, in 1764, his, In the words of Chamberlain: This assumption of the importance of the arts corresponds to a specific character of the German mind, if I am not mistaken, But what was to be said about Rome? Reassured though he was to have met the saviour of Germany and of the German race, Chamberlain did not die right away and had to wait four more years before falling into a deep and peaceful sleep. 15The second Saviour (with a capital S) is Jesus Christ himself whom Chamberlain celebrates at length in his book. The Superior Aryan Race . As a true Wagnerian, Chamberlain needed heroes and saviours. 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. He could have been a typical character from, ; he who could not embrace the military career his father had ambitioned for him and went on travelling instead. Houston Stewart Chamberlain. 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. In 1907 he settled in Bayreuth and married Wagners only daughter Eva, his second wife. Silent nature awakes to the consciousness of itself6. Chamberlain chose to revisit this holy triangle through the vlkisch perspective. 8 Demandt, Alexander, Politische Aspekte im Alexanderbild der Neuzeit. Chamberlain's most important . Die vlkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (Q57737) Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Chamberlains theories owed much to the writings of Joseph Arthur, comte de Gobineau, who was the first to claim to prove the superiority of the Nordic race. Houston Stewart Chamberlain died far too early to witness the rise of the NSDAP and the, of Germany under Nazi rule. 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. Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Sehr geehrter und lieber Herr Hitler 7. Not a Jew, by all means! Oktober 1923, quoted in. 9 Sep 1855 Portsmouth, Hampshire, England d. 9 Sep 1927 Bayreuth: Geneagraphie - Families all over the world The self-taught student had found his philosophical stone and was ready to share his revelation, to the public. If Greece had fathered the spirit, Rome had mastered the organisation. I also examine Chamberlain's influence on Nazism and suggest that What is left of Rome today is no other than a landscape of ruins which looks like the white skeleton of a dead civilization. Chamberlain now expressed this philosophical allegiance to German imperialism with the most brutal cynicism: "Nobody can prove that Germanic supremacy is a blessing for all the Earth's . 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. Greetings to you, spiritual father. Die Aufzechnungen Heinrich Heims, herausgegeben von Werner Jochmann, Hamburg, Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 1980, 496p., p.96. This would be taught in the ideological courses every member of the party (among which, members of the SS) had to take. Der Fanatiker erhitzt die Kpfe, Sie erwrmen die Herzen. 22 Den Jesus knnen Sie nicht zum Arier machen, das ist Unsinn. The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1899) is a book by British-born German philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain.In the book, Chamberlain advances various racialist and especially vlkisch antisemitic theories on how he saw the Aryan race as superior to others, and the Teutonic peoples as a positive force in European civilization and the . Ludwig Schemann exerted a great intellectual influence on the other members of the Wagner circle, popularizing what people started to call the Vlkisch ideology3: to fight against the (revolutionary) French idea of Nation based on the (false) assumption of equality. race - race - Gobineaus Essay on the . If you read the book carefully, the notion of plague as a potential threat is omnipresent. ., Evangelist of Race. Despite his English birth and family, his early indifference toward England and all things English developed into a lifelong hatred. Houston Stewart Chamberlain. I want to cry out, I want to weep.29. The English-born German writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) formulated the most important theory of Teutonic superiority in pre-Hitlerian German thought. Auswirkungen der Entjudaisierung Christi im 19. und zu Beginn des 20. they believed that the Nordic race had become superior because harsh climatic conditions . Among them were Houston Stewart Chamberlain and many members of what historians later called the Bayreuther Kreis, an informal circle of members and friends of the Wagner family, including Cosima Wagner, the wife of the Master, and Ludwig Schemann. Der Fanatiker will berreden, Sie wollen berzeugen, nur berzeugen, und darum gelingt es Ihnen auch; ja, ich mchte Sie ebenfalls fr das Gegenteil eines Politikers dieses Wort im landlufigen Sinne aufgefat erklren, denn die Asche aller Politik ist die Parteiangehrigkeit, whrend bei Ihnen alle Parteien verschwinden, aufgezehrt von der Glut der Vaterlandsliebe. This book had already been published in, Die Rasse in den GeisteswissenschaftenBand II: Hauptepochen und Hauptvlker der. Es gibt eine Gewalt, die aus Chaos stammt und zu Chaos hinfhrt, und es gibt eine Gewalt, deren Wesen es ist, Kosmos zu gestalten. As they wanted to destroy anything that was not Jewish, they fought against the Greeks. Sie haben Gewaltiges zu leisten vor sich, aber trotz Ihrer Willenskraft halte ich Sie nicht fr e, Resorting to antique concepts and quoting Goethe, Chamberlain celebrates Hitler as the creator of a, , the hero who fights against every sort of, : You know Goethe's distinction between force and force. 5 Athens represented, for Chamberlain, the beauty of ideas and the greatness of philosophy, which as such is not a very original idea. Doch nicht etwa der fleissige Konversationslexikonsredakteuyr Plinius?, in Chamberlain. If only those elites would come to that same awareness, they would crush any opposition and rule the world for good. He wrote these excerpts to make Germany aware of what he . From his anthropological research, . This obsession with diseases and the assimilation of blood-mixing with infection is a common characteristic, as well as a deep concern, among the most convinced racists of the time,23 and not just in Germany. In the 1920s, he met Hitler. houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary. The edict of Caracalla in 212 was the beginning of the end: the Romans were to die of a slow death, all victims of this blood disease, after having mixed their blood with Arabs, Africans and Jews. 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. If the Greeks were philosophers, the Romans were lawyers. is a form of prolonged indictment against the Jews, depicted as a race full of hatred, longing for might and vengeance. HomeIssues11Antique Bodies in Nineteenth CentPart I: Utopian BodiesTraining the Body: The Antique ModelFrom Humanism to Nazism: Antiquit Darwiniste social et raciste convaincu, Houston Stewart Chamberlain sest constitu une vaste culture dautodidacte. Outside the rain patters! An analysis of Wagners drama (1892) and a biography (1895) followed. Hitler and Goebbels got the chance to pay him another visit, in May 1926, just before he passed away. Sample translated sentence: . Order: Apart from being a compendium of all the cultural clichs of the time, Chamberlains. 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.