He reciprocated by paying a tribute to Chamberlain in Mein Kampf. His most fundamental idea was that the Germanic race was the cornerstone and the pillar of civilization. He defined himself as an Ungelehrter, taking pride in not being a trained scholar, which he deemed was unworthy of his natural talents. Still, the Greeks were far from perfect. This idea according to which the Greeks and the Germans shared the same taste for beauty had been a commonplace for Konversationslexika since Johann Winckelmann published, in 1764, his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of Ancient Art).9 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 mistaken10. As a true Wagnerian, Chamberlain needed heroes and saviours. Sie kennen Goethes Unterscheidung von Gewalt und Gewalt! There are links between the Hindus of India and the Germans hence the inverted swastika of the nazis. We have to thank Rome () that it transferred the centre of gravity of civilization to the West and that the Jewish-Asian spell was broken, so that Germanic Europe became the beating heart and the thinking brain of whole mankind. Chamberlain was brought up by relatives in France. Off we go. Houston Stewart Chamberlain 4: Hans Gnther 5: Hitler and Mein Kampf . The book goes into a lot of analysis to explain what the tuetonic race is the greatest race the world has ever been give and has merged into many other races at the same time also. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1912). In a criminal way, the Asian and African slave had crawled up to the throne of the Roman Empire. Outside the rain patters! Samuel Beckett : Drama as philosophical endgame ? Not a Jew, by all means! 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. Houston Stewart Chamberlain - a Darwinist whom was identified as racist theorist was also a cultural critic. 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, Demandt, Alexander, Politische Aspekte im Alexanderbild der Neuzeit. Johann Chapoutot. cit., pp. """Na taj nain pripremljeno je tlo za novu rasu nadovjeka"", . houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary. 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. Houston Stewart Chamberlain b. An Anthology of Texts, London, Routledge, 2002. Houston had an enthusiasm towards superiority of the "Teutonic" race, a category that he used synonymously with "Aryan" and "Germanic." because of Houston's beliefs, he soon became a well-known writer for his articles on . Enqute sur la gense de lhistoire de lart, Paris, PUF, Perspectives Germaniques, 2000. houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary . . In fact, I would call you the complete opposite of a fanatic. The Jews of Semitic Carthage were defeated because the Romans (or Germans) were the best at fighting and winning. 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. As for Aristotle, he would not have been remembered in the same way had it not been for Plato. But in his book, Chamberlain laid down the foundations for a vision of history that was to nurture the Nazi Weltanschauung. After attending a lyce in Versailles and a boarding school in Cheltenham, he visited destination spas and various health resortshe did not have a very sound constitutionwith his chaperon and a tutor. 15 Wie viel hat man nicht ber die Vertilgung Karthagos durch die Rmer gewehklagt und moralisiert, von Polybius bis zu Mommsen! Ein Beitrag zur historischen Methodenkritik, in Archiv fr Kulturgeschichte, 64, 1972, pp. An Anthology of Texts, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945. , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989. , Leipzig, 1869. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Methodenkritik, in, Hellas: Griechische Geschichte und deutsche Geisteswissenschaft. This would be taught in the ideological courses every member of the party (among which, members of the SS) had to take. 77-78. He spent his winters in Cannes and springs in Florence. The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, New York, Columbia University Press, 1981. In this monumental piece of work, he tried to answer the following questions: what made (t)his period the most remarkable one in history? 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. More importantly, they would prevent any further decadence and avoid mixing with inferior races, like the Jews or other crossbreds. The known world, the oekoumene, reached its apex around the first century A.D., when the Romans, having conquered Greece, managed to combine their chtonian gravitas with the celestial intelligence and inspiration of the Greeks. Jahrhundert, auf welches wir jetzt () mit Stolz und zu Hoffnungen berechtigt zurckblicken, niemals erlebt, Ibid., p.161. In 1899, his Foundations of the 19th Century allowed him to reach public fame. But in his book, Chamberlain laid down the foundations for a vision of history that was to nurture the Nazi. 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. He defined himself as an Ungelehrter, taking pride in not being a trained scholar, which he deemed was unworthy of his natural talents. not object to Chamberlain's making the Germanic race (which means for him Celts, Teutons, and Slavs, the . Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 - 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. , New York, Columbia University Press, 1981, 565p. , Munich, Bruckmann, 1899, 1031p. (2 volumes). Updates? 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. 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. But it also disappeared. 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 delenda of overwhelming significance for world history: the delenda est Hierosolyma. 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. 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. 22 Den Jesus knnen Sie nicht zum Arier machen, das ist Unsinn. 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. Omissions? Remaining in Germany during World War I, Chamberlain received the German Military Cross in 1915 and became naturalized the next year. Beck, 1999, 534p. NF, Beat, Von Perikles zu Hitler? 14Contrary to what is being taught by those who are too lazy to think and by flagrant historical lies, the Germanic invasions did not destroy the Empire but saved it from its fatal jewification and degeneration. The son of a naval officerhis father was an admiral in the Royal Navy , he spent his whole youth travelling around Europe. Chamberlain is not the first eccentric who is championing this very bizarre causeperhaps bizarre only to us. Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the Nordic race as a superior and sometimes as an endangered racial group. 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. 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 [email protected], 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. captain america costume endgame. Trailblazer, pioneer! 2 diciembre, 2021 | . 10, p.296, in the English translation by MURPHY, James, London, Hurst and Blackett, 1939, vol. , Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989. 7Chamberlain has nothing but contempt for Plinius, who might have been less of a mediocre Konversationslexikonsredakteur, as he puts it, than he was himself. 1.7 Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Race Struggle of Western History Like Theodor Fritsch, Houston Stewart Chamberlain represents an important link between the vlkisch anti-Semitism of the late 19th century and the ideology of Hitler and the Nazi party. He holds my hand and won't let me go. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Core tenets of Hitler's worldview were that the primacy of race in determining historical developments, Aryan superiority (with the Aryans being the sole creators of culture), the Darwinian racial struggle, the need for eugenics policies, and the evils of racial mixing. Both an art lover and a dilettante, he was welcomed into Richard Wagners larger circles when he became his son-in-law. For todays readers, it is nothing more than a flood of words and phrases, an accumulation of commonplaces, false ideas and lies without any firm structure or real coherence. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. Those three cities had been, throughout the 19th 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. 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. Chamberlain's ideas on race were greatly influential to Adolf . of his time. (). The known world, the, , reached its apex around the first century A.D., when the Romans, having conquered Greece, managed to combine their chtonian. 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. The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. "In this manner the ground was prepared for the emergence of a new race of'Supermen'," said Houston Stewart Chamberlain. 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. He then joined the Nazi party before he passed away in 1927. 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. Results for 'Houston+Stewart+Chamberlain' 11 found. This is summed up by Chamberlain who, contrary to Hegel who wrote Ex oriente lux, pretends that Ex septentrione lux: the beacon of civilization lies in the north with the white Germanic race. Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, Sehr geehrter und lieber Herr Hitler 7. Historic antisemitism , the rise of eugenics and nationalism , the aftermath of the First World War, the rise of the Nazis, the role of Adolf Hitler, the internal operation of the Nazi state, the Second World War and collaboration all played key roles in the timing and scale of the final catastrophe. In it, he provides his readership with a new approach to Western history in relation to the question of race and the necessary rise of Germanic power. Oktober 1923, quoted in. He wrote these excerpts to make Germany aware of what he . Doch nicht etwa der fleissige Konversationslexikonsredakteuyr Plinius?, in Chamberlain, op. He eventually settled in Dresden, Germany, after his Prussian tutor had filled his young mind with Teutonic tales of Germanic greatness. is a form of prolonged indictment against the Jews, depicted as a race full of hatred, longing for might and vengeance. 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. Chamberlain scorned this racial chaos of the late Roman Empire, which destroyed any racial and national principle16this chaos of peoples of the decadent Roman Empire being a capital sin against nature17. He mumbles, wants to speak, he can'tand then weeps like a child! Only 1869 did Richard Wagner authorize its publication under his name. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Houston-Stewart-Chamberlain, The Official Site of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Encyclopdiste et dilettante la fois, amateur dart, il a pntr le cercle des wagnriens et est devenu le gendre de Richard Wagner. Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, Munich, Franz Eher Verlag, Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1926. Sie sind ja gar nicht, wie Sie mir geschildert worden sind, ein Fanatiker, vielmehr mchte ich Sie als den unmittelbaren Gegensatz eines Fanatikers bezeichnen. , Mnchen, C.H. 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. Houston Stewart Chamberlain (September 9, 1855 - January 9, 1927) was a British-born naturalized German natural scientist, and author of popular scientific and political philosophy books (includes those on Richard Wagner, Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang Goethe) as well as proponent of a nationalist and pan-Germanic antisemitism. 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. Shattering scene: Chamberlain on a couch. Racism in National Socialism. 1 Wagner, Richard, Das Judentum in der Musik, Leipzig, 1869. This book has the reputation of being hard, if not impossible, to read. For many people in the 19, : many Christian racists of the period could not bear the idea of their Messiah being a Jew. If the Greeks were philosophers, the Romans were lawyers. 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. In the 1031 pages of the two volumes, Chamberlain borrowed ideas from the leading sciences of . Die Aufzechnungen Heinrich Heims, herausgegeben von Werner Jochmann. (1855-1927) Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the Anglo-German race theorist and philosophical and . Es gibt eine Gewalt, die aus Chaos stammt und zu Chaos hinfhrt, und es gibt eine Gewalt, deren Wesen es ist, Kosmos zu gestalten. 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. 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. and not just in Germany. In the 1920s, he met Hitler. ), with an introduction by Lord REDESDALE, G.C.V.O., . As they wanted to destroy anything that was not Jewish, they fought against the Greeks. 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. 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. He resented Chamberlain for not being aware of that scourge. What can you say of a 1200 years long history that does not offer a single philosopher, not even the most modest one? This is a draft section of a chapter in my forthcoming Ph.D., in which I explore the racial and theological theories of 19th-century German philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain. 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. Das Rassen- und Nationalittlose Vlkerchaos des sptrmischen Imperiums, In the end, Rome triumphed. 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. Decultot, Elisabeth, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. They settled down in Greece and Rome, enjoying the benefits of cultural photosynthesis, thanks to the sun and mild climate of the Mediterranean. 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. After attending a, in Versailles and a boarding school in Cheltenham, he visited destination spas and various health resortshe did not have a very sound constitutionwith his chaperon and a tutor. Die Aufzechnungen Heinrich Heims, herausgegeben von Werner Jochmann, Hamburg, Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 1980, 496p., p.96. [11] Ulterior a devenit cetean german i ginere al lui Richard Wagner, dup ce s-a cstorit cu fiica acestuia, Eva von Blow. The immigration of strangers to the race was recurrently presented as the invasion of microbes and viruses into a healthy and sound body. Jahrhunderts, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2005. The Jews are a case in point; if a man possesses a sacred book, which contains all wisdom, then all further investigation is as superfluous as it is sinful: the . A true anti-Semite, Wagner wrote an essay against the perversion of the arts by the Jews entitled, ) that led Friedrich Nietzsche to break with him but that gained him the affection of many dubious devotees. After the shock of the First World War and of Germanys defeat, Chamberlain slowly faded away. In Chamberlains work, the past is a warning for the present. Two of his uncles were generals, and a third was a . While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Despite his English birth and family, his early indifference toward England and all things English developed into a lifelong hatred. Hitler and Goebbels got the chance to pay him another visit, in May 1926, just before he passed away. The self-taught student had found his philosophical stone and was ready to share his revelation4 to the public. 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. 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. This book had already been published in 1850, but anonymously. The Germanic giants from the forests of the north were blood from their blood and spirit from their spirit12 and, as such, the true heir of the Romans and of the Greeks13. To prove the excellence of Germanic blood, scientists and race specialists had argued, since the 1830s, that every light came from the North, and not from the East. Both an art lover and . 9 Sep 1855 Portsmouth, Hampshire, England d. 9 Sep 1927 Bayreuth: Geneagraphie - Families all over the world In a criminal way, the Asian and African slave had crawled up to the throne of the Roman Empire. Racism, including racial antisemitism, was always an integral part of German National . ), 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. 325-363. 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 English-born German writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) formulated the most important theory of Teutonic superiority in pre-Hitlerian German thought. If Greece had fathered the spirit, Rome had mastered the organisation. Published in 1853-55, his Essay on the Inequality of Human Races was widely read, embellished, and publicized by many different kinds of writers. Chamberlain criticized them for their lack of political sense: The Greeks have always been, and are still today, unfaithful, unpatriotic, self-centred, . 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. Some 19th-century philosophers weren't content with the racism of White over Black people and other ethnicities. 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? Field, Geoffrey G., Evangelist of Race. houston stewart chamberlain, the importance of race summary. What then could possibly have happened? 10, p.153. , Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1960, 141p., in the English translation: , London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962, 156p., p.77. In Aryan Worldview Houston Chamberlain discusses the importance of Indology in the effort to gain deeper insight into the essence of Indo-European thought. 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. Please, do not mention this painstaking compiler, good enough to write mediocre encyclopaedias named Plinius11. Farewell! 18 Ohne ihn ging der Tag des Indoeuropers zu Ende. And Chamberlain would not be the last to perform such a tour de force. (). 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. In 1923, ten years before Adolf Hitler was appointed as Reich . Houston Stewart Chamberlain, (born Sept. 9, 1855, Southsea, Hampshire, Eng.died Jan. 9, 1927, Bayreuth, Ger. 2A passionate and self-educated man, Houston Stewart Chamberlain studied and read a lot, eager to explore many different fields at once: history, philosophy or the natural sciences. Corrections? Trailblazer, pioneer! For todays readers, it is nothing more than a flood of words and phrases, an accumulation of commonplaces, false ideas and lies without any firm structure or real coherence. Jesus Christ was, strangely enough, of pure Germanic blood. by ; in john and livi come dine with me; on June 29, 2022 . Bundesarchiv Bild 119-1600-06, Houston Stewart Chamberlain.jpg 367 599; 94 KB. Both an art lover and a dilettante, he was welcomed into Richard Wagners larger circles when he became his son-in-law. The Jews of Semitic Carthage were defeated because the Romans (or Germans) were the best at fighting and winning. 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. 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. In it, he provides his readership with a new approach to Western history in relation to the question of race and the necessary rise of Germanic power. 8 Demandt, Alexander, Politische Aspekte im Alexanderbild der Neuzeit. As they wanted to destroy anything that was not Jewish, they fought against the Greeks. Silent nature awakes to the consciousness of itself, . Wie Jesus zum Arier wurde. Auswirkungen der Entjudaisierung Christi im 19. und zu Beginn des 20. "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century". Es war hohe Zeit, dass der Retter erschien, Ibid., p.549. What Chamberlain wrote in his Foundations is just stupid, to put it nicely22. What were the problems caused by modernity and how could the world be improved for the sake of the better portionthe white portionof humanity? Why was the world precisely how it should be (the white population thus rewarded for its supremacy over the others)? cystic fibrosis foundation evidence-based guidelines for management of; 1986 world cup england squad; . I, chap. This race of heroes which carried out a Herculean task by creating the, 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.
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