The Conservative Revolution During the Weimar Republic and its Impact on the Young German Generation in the Years 1919–1933

Abstract

In the historical and political literature we will not encounter such a diverse and, in its impact, individually ambiguous term as the “conservative revolution”. Although it is possible to place it within one of its creators, in the application of its practices we will come across many substantive discrepancies. This is certainly due to the creative idea of the people and the language that the revolutionaries used. In the basis of this historical-political dialogue, although the dissertation is concerned only with the period of the Weimar Republic, we can see the changes already taking place in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Thus to this day Friedrich Nietzsche is regarded as the spiritual father of the “conservative revolution”. The cult of the “superman” (Übermensch) he created (Übermensch) broke the ties with the hitherto values of Christianity in favour of crossing out God's universe in the world. For many intellectuals, it represented a theoretical-cognitive pluralism in the recording of moral tables for modern humanity. Nietzschean nihilism, as a construct of the “superman”, uprooted youth from bourgeois structures, and thus from their duty of service to their elders, guiding them towards the heroic realm. In its dimension, it overcame the statu quo of the time in favour of renewal and liberation towards the inner evolution of the “superman”. It resulted from the constant struggle and persistence of a reality which the “superman” then created himself. The significance of the Nietzschean construct for the fundamental ideas of the “conservative revolution” was best summed up by Thomas Mann. In his original reflections on the apolitical man, he shattered the previous norms of political structure in favour of the heroism awakening in youth. Subsequent intellectuals who were unquestionably counted among the founders of the revolutionary idea of the Weimar period agreed with this thought: Ernst Jünger, Ernst Julius Jung, Carl Schmidt, Wilhelm Stapel. The acolyte of the young revolutionaries' thought became the First World War. It broke the link with the pre-industrial mentality in favour of militant-apologists, from whom a new state elite was to crystallise. It was to create a hierarchy of cadres based on society. Thus, among the soldiers on the battlefield, the idea of defence of the homeland and sacrifice on the altar of war was born. Internally, it created an anthropology and philosophy of war to which the German youth was called. This sense of struggle was to evolve from defeat into a new different Germany: “we had to lose the war in order to win Germany”. The National Socialists, after coming to power in 1933, were keen to use the educational concept of the „conservative revolution” and the youth organisations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nazi pedagogy drew on these reservoirs as a model for creating the Third Reich's ideal of the “new man”.