Herr Zebaoth and the German nation: bible and nationalism in the anti-Napoleonic wars

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article discusses the Hebraist political rhetoric of the German national movement in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, focusing on the cult of the ‘national god’ [Nationalgott] – an extreme manifestation of the national shift in German Christianity. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, preachers and propagandists active in the German principalities adopted a distinctive biblical rhetoric. In the period approaching Napoleon’s defeat, a new Christian political rhetoric took shape in Prussia that combined Old Testament ideas of chosenness, New Testament sacrifice mysticism, and the political components of patriotism and nationalism. By examining religious sermons, political tracts and patriotic hymns, I demonstrate how Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860) and others created a novel theological terminology during the Anti-Napoleonic wars – a synthesis between Old Testament images of the fighting God, Gospel-like metaphors of sacrifice, and nationalist political rhetoric.