. If Greece had fathered the spirit, Rome had mastered the organisation. The immigration of strangers to the race was recurrently presented as the invasion of microbes and viruses into a healthy and sound body. 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. One of the most important features of Darwin's theory was his proposed mechanism for evolution: natural selection through the struggle for existence. This race of heroes which carried out a Herculean task by creating the Imperium was defeated by hybrid weaklings from Asia minor, Greeks and Jews who infiltrated the Empire and the most inner circles of imperial power, thus becoming the juridicial counsellors of the throne. Nineteenth century racist thinkers, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Guido von List as well as racist politicians like Georg von Schnerer exerted a significant influence on many in the generation of Adolf Hitler. 29 Goebbels, Joseph, Das Tagebuch von Joseph Goebbels, 1925-1926, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1960, 141p., in the English translation: The Early Goebbels Diaries, 1925-1926, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962, 156p., p.77. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. What were the problems caused by modernity and how could the world be improved for the sake of the better portionthe white portionof humanity? In this monumental piece of work, he tried to answer the following questions: what made (t)his period the most remarkable one in history? These people are too stupid to think for themselves28. Der Grieche war von jeher, was er noch heute ist, untreu, unpatriotisch, eigenschtig, Demandt, Alexander, Politische Aspekte im Alexanderbild der Neuzeit. 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). Weindling, Paul, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 1890-1945, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003. (1855-1927) Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Anglo-German race theorist and philosophical and . Houston Stewart Chamberlain was an Englishman who had married Richard Wagner's daughter. He mumbles, wants to speak, he can'tand then weeps like a child! 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. However, it was quite successful from the 1900s to the 1930s; it sold over 200000 copies. In this monumental piece of work, he tried to answer the following questions: what made (t)his period the most remarkable one in history? Both an art lover and a dilettante, he was welcomed into Richard Wagners larger circles when he became his son-in-law. The most important promoter of racial ideology in Europe during the mid-19th century was Joseph-Arthur, comte de Gobineau, who had an almost incalculable effect on late 19th-century social theory. they believed that the Nordic race had become superior because harsh climatic conditions . Some 19th-century philosophers weren't content with the racism of White over Black people and other ethnicities. , the vision of antiquity remained the same: a Germanic golden age in Greece and Rome which was scattered and shattered by the Jews. 11For Chamberlain, the victory of the Carthaginians over the Romans would have been a catastrophe: We have been saved by the brutal delenda est Carthago of Cato and the likes. Christ, Karl, Hellas: Griechische Geschichte und deutsche Geisteswissenschaft, Mnchen, C.H. sand hollow state park camping. The Superior Aryan Race . The immigration of strangers to the race was recurrently presented as the invasion of microbes and viruses into a healthy and sound body. 1.7 Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Race Struggle of Western History Like Theodor Fritsch, Houston Stewart Chamberlain represents an important link between . Twisted Cross. He also had quite a vast cultural knowledge for a self-made man. What is left of Rome today is no other than a landscape of ruins which looks like the white skeleton of a dead civilization. This attempt at completing the Nazi evangelium was not crowned with success: Hitler, who considered. 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. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/6680; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/miranda.6680, Professor of History - Junior Member, Institut Universitaire de FranceSorbonne Nouvelle Universityjohann.chapoutot@univ-paris3.fr, Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/, Site map Legal information & Credits Links Directories and labels Syndication, OpenEdition member Published with Lodel Administration only, You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search, Expressions of Environment in Euroamerican Culture / Antique Bodies in Nineteenth Century British Literature and Culture, Antique Bodies in Nineteenth Century British Literature and Culture, From Humanism to Nazism: Antiquity in the Work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a social Darwinist and a true racist. 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. They then left testimonies of their genius in immaculate and pristine temples that were currently used, in the 19. century, to demonstrate the superiority of white mankind. Jahrhunderts wurde ein Weltbestseller. Field, Geoffrey G., Evangelist of Race. In Chamberlains work, the past is a warning for the present. Es war hohe Zeit, dass der Retter erschien, 1941-1944. In 1907 he settled in Bayreuth and married Wagners only daughter Eva, his second wife. Literature. Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the Nordic race as a superior and sometimes as an endangered racial group. This second visit was, according to Goebbels, a heartbreaking episode which Berlins new, Das Tagebuch von Joseph Goebbels, 1925-1926. Ohne ihn ging der Tag des Indoeuropers zu Ende. cystic fibrosis foundation evidence-based guidelines for management of; 1986 world cup england squad; . Feb by Claudio. 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. Ein Beitrag zur historischen, 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, the importance of race summary . Both an art lover and . Jahrhundert, auf welches wir jetzt () mit Stolz und zu Hoffnungen berechtigt zurckblicken, niemals erlebt, Ibid., p.161. 5 Athens represented, for Chamberlain, the beauty of ideas and the greatness of philosophy, which as such is not a very original idea. allowed him to reach public fame. Furthermore, his belonging to the Wagner family was a letter of credit and a sign of distinction in the small but growing world of the far right movements. Wo ist ein grosser, schpferischer Naturforscher unter den Rmern? The self-taught student had found his philosophical stone and was ready to share his revelation, to the public. 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. 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. He published in 1899, in Munich, a very large book entitled the Foundations of the 19th Century5 (Grundlagen des 19 Jahrhunderts). Chamberlain scorned this racial chaos of the late Roman Empire, which destroyed any racial and national principle, this chaos of peoples of the decadent Roman Empire being a capital sin against nature. While the Greeks had given Europe a soul, the Romans were busy shaping the body: the Imperium, the jus romanum, the legions. Chamberlain indulges in the most appalling stereotypes of the. 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. He could have been a typical character from A Room with a View; he who could not embrace the military career his father had ambitioned for him and went on travelling instead. , The Early Goebbels Diaries, 1925-1926, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962. Oktober 1923, quoted in. Furthermore, his belonging to the Wagner family was a letter of credit and a sign of distinction in the small but growing world of the far right movements. houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary. Despite this biological disaster or the inevitable fall of the Romans, the Nordic race did not disappear. Introduction Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) is best known for his cultural history Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Foundations of the Nineteenth Century; Munich, 1899) as well as for his studies of Kant, Goethe, Wagner, and Heinrich von Stein. () Where are the roman scientists? Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1996. 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, . In the 1920s, he met Hitler. 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 . If only those elites would come to that same awareness, they would crush any opposition and rule the world for good. 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. Chamberlain compiles here a collection of the most trivial commonplaces which anyone could have easily uttered, if only to appear literate at the table of a. in Germany or of a first baronet in England. After years of travelling and wandering/wondering about new ideas, he found in the racist theories of Schemann and other Rassentheoretiker of the time a unified vision of the worlda true Weltanschauung. (). 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. An early Lord Haw-Haw of sorts who was even awarded the iron cross by Kaiser William II, not for fighting in the muddy trenches of the Somme, but for insulting London in vindictive articles. Blut von ihrem Blut und Geist von ihrem Geist, What 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. Assistance with short selling your home Greek and Roman antiquity play an essential part in his argumentation. He spent his winters in Cannes and springs in Florence. Schemann, who held a doctorate in history from the University of Berlin, made a living as a raciologist (, ) at the University of Freiburg and translated Gobineaus work in German. 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. Doch nicht etwa der fleissige Konversationslexikonsredakteuyr Plinius?, in Chamberlain, op. Why was the world precisely how it should be (the white population thus rewarded for its supremacy over the others)? If Germanic blood is not protected against the Jewish infection, Europe will perish. Chamberlain could very well have been a poor mans Hegel: rewriting the history of civilization in a less than talented way, apologizing for not being able to elaborate further on what he was talking about because it would take too long and writing much nonsense on the science of the time which he was already busy repudiating. I want to cry out, I want to weep. In a criminal way, the Asian and African slave had crawled up to the throne of the Roman Empire. Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a social Darwinist and a true racist. The son of a naval officerhis father was an admiral in the Royal Navy , he spent his whole youth travelling around Europe. 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. And Chamberlain would not be the last to perform such a, under the Third Reich; for instance, an official Protestant church pledged to the Nazi party, . (). (). Only 1869 did Richard Wagner authorize its publication under his name. Dass der Schwerpunkt der Kultur endgltig nach Westen verlegt, dass der semitisch-asiatische Bann gebrochen (), dass das vorwiegend indogermanische Europa nunmehr das schlagende Herz und das sinnende Hirn der ganzen Menschheit wurde, das ist das Werk Roms, Ibid., p.168. And this is the reason why it triumphantly . In that respect, he is not being entirely fair to the author. The Jews of Semitic Carthage were defeated because the Romans (or Germans) were the best at fighting and winning. Bundesarchiv Bild 119-1600-06, Houston Stewart Chamberlain.jpg 367 599; 94 KB. Jetzt glaube ich einzusehen, da dies grade Ihr Wesen bezeichnet und sozusagen umschliet: der wahre Erwecker ist zugleich Spender der Ruhe. circular tooth thickness formula; toba catastrophe theory; raising baby ducks for beginners; medical emergency number belgium; louise belcher hat, baby. Long, long handshake! View all Houston Stewart Chamberlain Quotes. 10, p.153. Die athenische Demokratie und die deutsche Althistorie bis 1945. , Peter Lang, Bern, New York, 1986, 332p. Wo ist ein grosser, schpferischer Naturforscher unter den Rmern? 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. I, chap. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. 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. 8 Demandt, Alexander, Politische Aspekte im Alexanderbild der Neuzeit. 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. More importantly, they would prevent any further decadence and avoid mixing with inferior races, like the Jews or other crossbreds. 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 Belle poque, of the European bourgeoisie: in other words, racism, social Darwinism and colonialism. 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 (). This would be taught in the ideological courses every member of the party (among which, members of the SS) had to take. 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. The fanatic wants to overwhelm people with words, you wish to convince, only to convince themand that is why you are successful. 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. (M a h b h r a t a) 4 Translation from the German, based upon the 8th edition of Arische Weltanschauung, published by F. Bruckmann A.-G., Munich 1938 5 Dedicated to the indologist Leopold von Schroeder The Teutonic warrior is therefore celebrated by Chamberlains book with the same resonating fury as Wagners operas: Without him, the Indo-Europeans would have disappeared. discovered the importance of the Spider Web doctrine. 10, p.153. , Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1960, 141p., in the English translation: , London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962, 156p., p.77. The Teutonic warrior is therefore celebrated by Chamberlains book with the same resonating fury as Wagners operas: Ohne ihn ging der Tag des Indoeuropers zu Ende. The The Jews of Semitic Carthage were defeated because the Romans (or Germans) were the best at fighting and winning. with the celestial intelligence and inspiration of the Greeks. Still, the Greeks were far from perfect. Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a social Darwinist and a true racist. Omissions? copies. These people are too stupid to think for themselves, . As a tribute to Chamberlain, and in the similar style of his book, Alfred Rosenberg, the chief ideologist of the Nazi party, entitled his own work, The Myth of the 20th Centurya book which was meant to be, with Mein Kampf, the gospel of Nazism. The known world, the, , reached its apex around the first century A.D., when the Romans, having conquered Greece, managed to combine their chtonian. 7Chamberlain has nothing but contempt for Plinius, who might have been less of a mediocre Konversationslexikonsredakteur, as he puts it, than he was himself. 15The second Saviour (with a capital S) is Jesus Christ himself whom Chamberlain celebrates at length in his book. But something is as clear as the sun at midday: if the Phenician people had not been exterminated () mankind would never have experienced () this 19th century that we can consider with pride and hope15. 10, p.296, in the English translation by MURPHY, James, London, Hurst and Blackett, 1939, vol. 2 Schemann, Ludwig, Die Rasse in den GeisteswissenschaftenBand II: Hauptepochen und Hauptvlker der Geschichte in ihrer Stellung zur Rasse, Munich, Lehmanns Verlag, 1930, 419p. 3 Puschner, Uwe, Die vlkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. For many people in the 19, : many Christian racists of the period could not bear the idea of their Messiah being a Jew. Sie kennen Goethes Unterscheidung von Gewalt und Gewalt! Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Der Fanatiker erhitzt die Kpfe, Sie erwrmen die Herzen. Was der Chamberlain da in seinen Grundlagen geschrieben hat, ist gelinde gesagt dumm, Hitler quoted in Rauschning, Hermann, Gesprche mit Hitler, Wien, Zrich, New York, Europa Verlag, 1940, p.51. 13 der rechtsmssige Erbe des Hellenen und des Rmers, ibid. Hitler wanted the support of someone whose work had become a canonical book for the racist nationalists in Germany. Language. He resented Chamberlain for not being aware of that scourge.