The German National Revolution, 1933–1934

This article analyses Ernst Jünger’s concept of the “New Man” (Der Neue Mensch), developed through his experience of the First World War, and examines how this notion can be situated within the interpretive framework of the Weimar Republic as a “post-war society” (Nachkriegsgesellschaft). War did not merely signify destruction and tragedy for Jünger; rather, he perceived it as a kind of “school” in which adventures occurred and human character was newly forged. The New Man, emerging from this school, embodied a unique ethical and behavioral code, distinct from that of ordinary men. According to Jünger, the New Man was not only willing to risk his own life and kill his enemies without hesitation; he was also capable of recognizing the overwhelming power of modern technology, which he sought to master. Nonetheless, it is historically significant that Jünger’s war diaries and early post-war writings revealed little admiration for nationalism. At the time, he expressed a strong aversion to the German Empire and nationalism. It was only after the mid 1920s that he began to reinterpret his own idea of the New Man in the context of nationalism. From this point on, he argued that the New Man, born out of war, should serve as the bearer of a new German nationalism. Violence, a key motif in his thought, functioned not only as a means of struggle against external enemies, but also against internal adversaries - namely, the democracy and liberalism of the Weimar Republic. This article thus argues that Jünger’s concept of the New Man did not remain a literary construct, but rather that it served as a political worldview that posed fundamental threats to the republic. His idea resonated especially strongly among the so-called “National Revolutionaries” (Nationalrevolutionäre) and became a central element of their new nationalism. In this sense, Jünger’s concept of the New Man contributes to understanding the Weimar Republic as a society profoundly shaped by the experience of the First World War.

Based on original research, this study asks how and why unification occurred in Germany. It reassesses the legacy of the revolutions of 1848-49 in the consolidation of German nationalism during the 1850s and 1860s, revising traditional accounts of Bismarck's role and concentrating, instead, on the emergence of political parties and a German public sphere. By examining the national ideas and actions of those in dominant liberal milieux, in conjunction with those of other parties, Revolutionary Nation questions the existence of a broad shift from liberal to conservative nationalism; it challenges the notion that cultural and ethnic forms of nationalism were particularly pronounced in Germany as a result of late unification; and it qualifies the idea of a ‘revolution from above’. It is the first full-length study of nationalism and politics in the decades after 1848.

The Enabling Act Ermächtigungsgesetz of 23 March 1933 as catalyst for building the Führer State in GermanyThe aim of the article is to analyze the origins and political repercussions of the Enabling Act formally known as the “law to remedy the distress of the people and the nation” of 23 March 1933. Combined with the previously passed Reichstag Fire Decree 28 February 1933, which abolished most constitutional civil liberties and transferred state rights to the central government, the act enabled Chancellor Adolf Hitler to assume dictatorial powers in the near future. Deputies from the Nazi Party, the German National People’s Party, and the Centre Party voted in favour of the act that allowed Hitler’s cabinet to pass laws without the consent or any involvement of the Reichstag parliament and the presidency. In effect it gave Hitler’s dictatorship an appearance of legality and a solid political base from which to carry out the first steps of his “national revolution” in order to seize unlimited power over every aspect of life in Germany. It was the dawn of the totalitarian regime of the Third Reich.

High, Jeffrey L. Schillers Revolutionskonzept und die Französische Revolution, Studies in German Language and Literature, vol. 35 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). Pp. 175. $109.95 Wilson, W. Daniel, ed. Goethes Weimar und die Französische Revolution: Dokumente der Krisenjahre (Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2004). Pp. 741. €74.90 As dominant literary icons in the history of German identity, Schiller and Goethe have been used again and again as referees to decide current issues in Germany, especially in the realm of politics. During the 19th century, the German revolutionaries of 1848 rallied around Schiller as a symbol of political freedom during the Schiller celebrations of 1859, while Goethe played a major role in the establishment of the ideological foundation of the German Empire of 1871. The standard Goethe biography of 1895 by Albert Bielschowsky reminded the German educated middle class that "without Goethe, [there was] no Bismarck" and likewise "without Goethe no German Reich!" The statues of Goethe and Schiller standing together, hand in hand, created by Ernst Rietschel and erected in front of today's Weimar National Theater in 1857, became a symbol of German identity. During the 20th century, Goethe's name was invoked in 1919, when the constitution of the Weimar Republic was ratified and its first president was elected, and again in 1949, when two German states were founded during the Cold War and both claimed to embody his heritage on their side of the iron curtain. While the Nazis had little use for Goethe, they celebrated Schiller as a fore-runner of their so-called "national revolution." Hitler placed red roses on Schiller's desk in the Schiller house in Weimar in 1934, while Thomas Mann completed his Goethe novel The Beloved Returns: Lotte in Weimar during his exile in Princeton in 1939, presenting a highly critical assessment of German nationalism during the Wars of Liberation (1813–1815). The Goethe and Schiller celebrations during the last fifty-six years have offered ample evidence of the ideological exploitation of these two national icons for political causes. Therefore it makes sense to combine the above titles for a review, especially since they are dealing with Schiller's and Goethe's relationship to the French Revolution, which is an ideal litmus test for their political stance. Both were affected [End Page 134] and deeply influenced by the French Revolution. Schiller was even inducted as honorary citizen of the French Republic in 1792—together with numerous other intellectuals and revolutionaries, among them Thomas Paine and George Washington. Research has shown that the nomination of Schiller was based on a poor translation of Die Räuber and a melodramatic production of the play as Robert, chef des brigands in Paris in 1792 that presented the dramatic characters as Jacobins. Jeffrey L. High's monograph is an attack on the traditional paradigm of a three-stage development of Schiller's concept of revolution: first his pro-revolutionary stance in his early dramas, then his disappointment by the French Revolution in 1793, and finally his escape into aesthetic theory. High seeks to replace this paradigm with a new reading that includes Schiller's major works before and after the French Revolution. His macro-analysis has all the benefits of a comprehensive documentation that includes not only Schiller's works and letters, but also the comments of his contemporaries with regard to Schiller's reactions. Moral-aesthetic education was most important for Schiller, and any rebellion that did not pass the test of avoiding barbarism was to be condemned. The French Revolution did not pass this test, while the Swiss, Dutch, and American revolutions did. Schiller had planned to write a treatise in defense of Louis XVI, but the king's execution took place before his German defender was able to begin this task. Schiller's position is often contradictory, and it takes a highly differentiated approach to show his opposition to feudalism, on the one hand, and his defense...

The analysis of fascist political thought is a difficult task for several reasons. The political genus of fascism is itself poorly defined, and the conclusion has sometimes been advanced that fascism primarily represented a form of praxis, inherently non-ideological and without formal thought or programme. Moreover, as early as 1923 there developed a growing tendency to generalise beyond the initial Italian example and apply the term ‘fascism’ or ‘fascist’ to any form of rightwing authoritarian movement or system. More broadly yet, Soviet Stalinists began to apply the term, usually hyphenated with some additional adjective, to any and all rivals. By the 1930s fascist had sometimes become little more than a term of denigration applied to political foes, and this usage as a very broad and vague pejorative has continued to the present day. A limited consensus has nonetheless emerged among some of the leading scholars in the study of fascism, who use the term to refer to a group of revolutionary nationalist movements in Europe between the two world wars, first in the cases of the Italian Fascist and German National Socialist parties and then in the cases of their clearest counterparts in other European countries. This limited consensus tends to agree that specific movements bearing all or nearly all of the same common characteristics did not exist prior to 1919 and have not appeared in significant form in areas outside Europe or in the period after 1945 (Griffin 1998, pp. 1–16).

144 SHOFAR Winter 2000 Vol. 18, No.2 Although Jewish Nietzscheanism may have been rather limited, Nietzscheans ofJewish heritage were at least as abundant as their Christian counterparts. Robert C. Holub Department of German University of California at Berkeley Deutsche-jiidische Symbiose-oder Die mi6g1iickte Emanzipation, by Julius H. Schoeps. Berlin: Philo, 1996. 418 pp. OM 64.00. This is not a monograph but a collection of Schoeps's essays about German-Jewish relations from 1750 to the present. While any such collection must inevitably lack the force ofa more clearly focused book-length study, the author has nevertheless attempted to impose a sort ofunity on these variegated studies. Schoeps thus identifies a single conviction shaping his research-namely, the beliefthat"Germans and Jews on German territory, especially in the last three hundred years, have had a common history" (p. 9). Moreover, he has organized his pieces into three categories, the first dealing with Jewish emancipation, the secondwith German antisemitism, andthe third with Zionism. These themes, he believes, exist in a dialectical relationship with one another, with "emancipation as thesis, modem antisemitism as antithesis, and Zionism as synthesis" (p. 11). Unfortunately, Schoeps's Zionist dialectic of failed emancipation contradicts his hope for a common German-Jewish history which would renew the Deutschejiidische Symbiose under a different name. After all, it is only from a Jewish (rather than a German) perspective that Zionism can be understood as a fmal synthesis ofopposing forces. Schoeps's collection is thus ultimately less about any attempted symbiosis between Germans and Jews than about the failure of Jewish emancipation itself. That emancipation, Schoeps suggests, was conditional upon the willingness of German Jews to give up the particular rituals which set them apart, and embrace what amounted to a "Christianity without Christ" (p. 39). In this context, Reform Judaism was invented as a kind of Jewish "Church" hardly distinguishable from the Protestant denominations (pp. 80-81). During the Frankfurt Assembly, its temporary Jewish vicepresident Gabriel Riesser thus saw Judaism as merely one more German "confession," and assimilation as just another aspect of the larger process of national consolidation around the Prussian state (pp. 110, 119). The failure ofthe Revolution of 1848 made Jewish integration more problematic. Conservative reactionaries joined nationalist revolutionaries in denouncing the project of conversion and demanding instead the long-delayed unification of Germans in opposition to the Jews. A key chapter, "The Flight into Hate," thus carefully delineates the well-known transmutation of Judeophobia into antisemitism, tracing the way in Book Reviews 145 which the image of the Jewish parasite was superimposed on the older picture of the demon Jew. Richard Wagner played a particular role in that transformation by denouncing even converted Jewish artists for allegedly poisoning German culture with their alien spirit (pp. 181-82). Adumbrating Hitler, Wagner vilified the Jews for their technically proficient but ultimately sterile mastery of German forms. Nor was it any accident that the sage ofBeyreuth first published his essay on "Judaism in Music" only a year after the failure at Frankfurt. It was just these increasingly shrill attacks, Schoeps believes, that caused the Zionist seed to finally germinate. To be sure, he concedes that Zionism arose as a variant of German nationalism. But by including an essay delineating the effect of Dreyfus's ceremonial degradation on Theodor Herzl's tum to Zionism, Schpeps ultimately implies that the triumph of the Zionist idea cannot be found within the German cultural sphere alone (pp. 345-346). It is thus precisely here that the book-as a book-goes awry. However interesting the individual essays, any coherent study of the origins of Zionism cannot limit itself to German conditions. Conversely, if this volume is supposed to be about the failure of Jewish assimilation in Germany (a very different topic altogether), it probably should not have ended with a discussion of the Zionists. This is because most German Jews not only wanted to remain Germans, but would have done so but for the improbable rise ofNational Socialism. It thus seems to me (if not to commentators like Goldhagen) that the failure of emancipation was far from inevitable. The very fact that Prussiaand its tradition ofGerman-Jewish symbiosis ruled until 1933...