Günther Anders offers one of the first phenomenological analyses of broadcast radio (in 1930) and its transformation of the contemporary experience of music. Anders also develops a reflection on its political consequences as he continues his reflection in a discussion of radio and newsreel, film and television in his 1956 ‘The World as Phantom and Matrix’. A reflection on the consequences of this transformation brings in Friedrich Kittler’s reflection on radio and precision bombing. A further reflection on Jean Baudrillard’s notion (...) of ‘speech without response’ permits a review of digital culture and the self-creation of the digital consumer absorbed in what Anders named a schizo-topia, that is, today, an autistic culture of distraction, displacement, and self-driven surveillance. (shrink)

Anton Bruckner, the Austrian composer famous for his monumental and sophisticated symphonies, has never been among the most popular composers in the English-speaking world. However, the fact that his works became the favourites of the Nazis before and during WWII has been the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate since the 1990's. Not only did Hitler show personal approval of the symphonist, the National Socialist Party used the orchestral music of Bruckner to accompany a number of important party (...) events. For example, in the 1939 video footage of Hitler's 50th birthday celebration, we hear the final climax of the Fifth Symphony accompanying images of the F??hrer. After the German radio announced the death of Hitler on 1st May 1945, the Adagio of the Seventh Symphony was played, perhaps as a kind of funeral music for the Nazi dictator. (shrink)

The everyday realities of educational practices of the Third Reich are reconstructed in the memoires of involved observers of these processes. The most of them can be used as a factual supplement to theoretical reflections on totalitarian transformations in education as their subjective perceiving. Despite of different origin and life attitudes all the authors of translated fragments are concentrated on those features of totalitarian educational innovations which show their completely incompatibility with the humanistic tradition in education. The everyday (...) life of universities’ and school’s communities in the Third Reich was determined by the national-socialist ideology. The recalling on Heidegger’s activities as the rector of the University in Freiburg (H. Gottschalk, H. Jonas, K. Löwith, G. Cesar) expose the ambiguity of his way of thinking and acting, what was also noticeable in his habitus. His nationalism was not combined strong with the anti-Semitism in the university’s management. The race theory as a part of national-socialismideology wasn’t definitive for the everyday life in those educational institutions, where the educational traditions were connected with the humanistic values existing in families (L. Schmidt, G. Cesar). Some attempts to stimulation of the pro-social behavior of pupil and students (helping and solidarity) were not effective in the Third Reich because of their directive nature (G. Cesar). The comparison of the national-socialism model of the school and the Lichtwark School taking by L. Schmidt demonstrates the advantages of non-indoctrinated educational institutions withthe pedagogical and socialfreedom used for the all-side development of pupil personality. The experience of the membership in BMD (League of German girls), connected with the force working is critically analyzed by G. Cesar and L. Schmidt. The social status of women and their educational influence in the family of the Third Reich design is reconstructed by B. Vinken. She shows that the fascist ideology provides only the subordinated role of women in all spheres of the social life including the educational practices. (shrink)

Before 1933 commentaries on laws were exclusively juristic texts, written and read only by legal professionals. Beginning in 1934, scholars from different disciplines, especially medical scientists, began writing juristic commentaries. The essay examines the reasons for this development and explores how it changed the genre, using the example of the most important commentary on theBlutschutz-andEhegesundheitsgesetz, which resulted from the collaboration of two medical professionals and a legal professional. The article argues that the recruitment of non-juristic authors and the corresponding methodological (...) changes were caused by a debate on a possible “reform” of juristic commentaries which took place in law journals. From the perspective of the National Socialist regime, the genre in its traditional form was not compatible with the Third Reich’s philosophy of law.In this new genre, commentaries not only referred to legal problems, but also dealt with issues from other disciplines, such as medical questions. The essay modifies Mitchell G. Ash’s theoretical approach regarding the “entanglement” of jurisprudence and other disciplines. Law and other sciences became, according to Ash, “resources for one another”: Legal scholars could claim that legal decisions were based on scientific facts and therefore “unquestionable.” The affected disciplines also gained greater importance as a result of this process in which their findings becoming legally relevant. This transformation also enabled them to acquire resources for new research projects.Moreover, the essay examines the connection between this development and the change of audience within German courts. Not only did the authors of the commentaries change, but also the recipients: Many laws passed after 1933 introduced new courts using lay judges, professionals with a non-law background. These “experts” came from multiple fields connecting them to the new law, such as medical professionals. (shrink)

In this article I try to answer one central question: how can it be explained that the most intense reception of American pragmatism in Germany took place during the Nazi dictatorship (and not in democratic political environments before – during the Weimar Republic – and afterwards – in the first 20 years of the Federal Republic)? The answer is complicated: it starts with an academic exchange programme between Germany and the USA which brought the young post-doc Eduard Baumgarten in the (...) mid -20ties to America and put him in contact with John Dewey and some of his pupils. After his return in 1929 he hoped to write and teach about pragmatism. This project came to an abrupt end, when Martin Heidegger denied him a promised position at the university of Freiburg. After the Nazi “seizure of power” the situation became worse when a completely negative expert opinion by Heidegger, by then the leading Nazi philosopher, blocked Baumgartens habilitation in Göttingen. Baumgarten fought back and established ties to a rising star in Nazi-philosophy, Alfred Baeumler, a devoted follower of Nietzsche’s “Will to Power.” This move secured in the end the publication of Baumgarten´s two books on American philosophy and especially on pragmatism. But this triumph came at a cost: a “reinterpretation” of the democratic content of pragmatism and an effort to show similarities between it and Nietzsche´s philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTheodor Haecker’s translation and reception of Kierkegaard exerted a strong influence on interwar German readings of Kierkegaard. Recent scholarship has drawn renewed attention to Haecker’s World War I Kierkegaardian polemics and the dampening of his enthusiasm for Kierkegaard after his conversion to Catholicism in 1921. This article offers a twofold refinement of current accounts of Haecker’s Kierkegaard reception. First, it shows that Haecker’s attempt to describe a Catholic theological anthropology after 1931 was less a turn away from Kierkegaard and more (...) a turning of Kierkegaard toward the Catholic intellectual tradition. Second, the article shows how this anthropological project collided with the ideology and censorship of the Third Reich, where Haecker became a key voice in the Catholic ‘inner emigration.’ Revisionist methodologies in German studies have modelled how to retrieve the resonance of inner-emigration texts – literary, philosophical, theological, etc. – that were written against the grain of dictatorship. As inner emigrant, Haecker draws instinctively on Kierkegaard’s authorship, life, and thought as a paradigm for his own regime-critical writing and existence. With the claim that Haecker’s inner-emigration writings depend on his ongoing encounter with Kierkegaard, this article offers new access to Haecker’s late thought for philosophers, theologians, and literary scholars alike. (shrink)

This publication is an article 2, expanding on the topic, outlined in article 1, published earlier in “Philosophical thoughts” (1019, No. 1). The author considers the constitutional prerequisites of the anthropological anti-Utopia of the Third Reich, the main principles of which were deduced from the folk-political and folk-cultural versions of the German philosophical anthropology completed with ideological statements of the industrialism. The functional potential of the human ideals is regarded. These ideals are canonized in the ideology of the (...) national-socialism with the symbolic representation as Leader, Worker and Soldier as practical persons are conceptualized as antipodes, which in the further myth creations of the national-socialism are concretized and became the features of heroes. The idea and realities of the folk educational state are analyzed including the chronological and topological characteristics of this anti-utopia with the practically unrestricted life-time and the dialectic of the European idea with paradox prescribing to it the Nordic origin. The significance of sacral meaning of the Third Reich is clarified in the categorical schemes of the political romantic. The consequences of intentional primitivism of the world view culture of the youth are detected in the landscapes of the anthropological anti-utopia with the transforming of the normal student into “the political soldier” and recognition of the masculine community as a structuring model of society. The anti-human intentionality of biological reduction of the new world view, which is founded on the myth of the origin and the race theory, is unveiled as a distinction between a “worse” and “non- worse” life what makes this anti-utopia a repressive one and legitimates the crime practices of the re-education and liquidation. (shrink)

How does a person become Hitler's enemy number one? Not through espionage or violence, it turns out, but by striking fearlessly at the intellectual and spiritual roots of National Socialism. Dietrich von Hildebrand was a German Catholic thinker and teacher who devoted the full force of his intellect to breaking the deadly spell of Nazism that ensnared so many of his beloved countrymen. His story might well have been lost to us were it not for this memoir he penned in (...) the last decades of his life at the request of his wife, Alice von Hildebrand. In My Battle Against Hitler, covering the years from 1921 to 1938, von Hildebrand tells of the scorn and ridicule he endured for sounding the alarm when many still viewed Hitler as a positive and inevitable force. He expresses the sorrow of having to leave behind his home, friends, and family in Germany to conduct his fight against the Nazis from Austria. He recounts how he defiantly challenged Nazism in the public square, prompting the German ambassador in Vienna to describe him to Hitler as 'the architect of the intellectual resistance in Austria.' And in the midst of all the danger he faced, he conveys his unwavering trust in God, even during his harrowing escape from Vienna and his desperate flight across Europe, with the Nazis always just one step behind. Dietrich von Hildebrand belongs to the very earliest anti-Nazi resistance. His public statements led the Nazis to blacklist him already in 1921, long before the horrors of the Third Reich and more than twenty-three years before the famous assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944. His battle would culminate in the countless articles he published in Vienna, a selection of which are featured in this volume. 'It is an immense privilege,' writes editor John Henry Crosby, founder of the Hildebrand Project, 'to present to the world the shining witness of one man who risked everything to follow his conscience and stand in defiance of tyranny'. (shrink)

Hans Baron, Karl Popper, Leo Strauss and Erich Auerbach were among the many German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who fled continental Europe with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Their scholarship, though not normally considered together, is studied here to demonstrate how, despite their different disciplines and distinctive modes of working, they responded polemically in the guise of traditional scholarship to their shared trauma. For each, the political calamity of European fascism was a profound intellectual crisis, requiring an intellectual response which (...) Weinstein and Zakai now contextualize, ideologically and politically. They exemplify just how extensively, and sometimes how subtly, 1930s and 1940s scholarship was used not only to explain, but to fight the political evils that had infected modernity, victimizing so many. An original perspective on a popular area of research, this book draws upon a mass of secondary literature to provide an innovative and valuable contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history. (shrink)

What was the connection between the structure of the German economy in the 1930s and German aggression in World Warii? Adam Tooze’sWages of Destructionforcefully poses this issue, but fails to adequately resolve it. Instead, on this decisive question, his analysis oscillates uneasily between two equally unconvincing models: rational-choice theory and cultural determinism. This surprising explanatory failure derives from an inadequate theorisation of German imperialism as the expression of the combined and uneven development of the German economy and society in the (...) late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. (shrink)

Hans Baron, Karl Popper, Leo Strauss and Erich Auerbach were among the many German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who fled Continental Europe with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Their scholarship, though not normally considered together, is studied here to demonstrate how, despite their different disciplines and distinctive modes of working, they responded polemically in the guise of traditional scholarship to their shared trauma. For each, the political calamity of European fascism was a profound intellectual crisis, requiring an intellectual response which (...) Weinstein and Zakai now contextualize, ideologically and politically. They exemplify just how extensively, and sometimes how subtly, 1930s and 1940s scholarship was used not only to explain, but to fight the political evils that had infected modernity, victimizing so many. An original perspective on a popular area of research, this book draws upon a mass of secondary literature to provide an innovative and valuable contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history. (shrink)

Romano Guardini was one of the most important intellectuals of German Catholicism in the twentieth century. He influenced nearly an entire generation of German Catholic theologians and was the leading figure of the German Catholic youth movement as it grew exponentially in the 1920s. Yet there are many open questions about his early intellectual development and his academic contribution to religious, cultural, social and political questions in the Weimar Republic and in National Socialist Germany. This article draws upon Guardini’s publications, (...) the secondary literature on Guardini and on some archival material, seeking to outline his early development and his engagement with the ideological context following World War I and in National Socialist Germany. Here Guardini’s criticisms of the modern age are presented. Besides this many other issues are addressed, such as his criticism of the women’s movement, his understanding of the youth movement, reception of Carl Schmitt, views of race, interpretation of the controversial Volk-concept, contribution to a Jewish journal in 1933, and his basic positions on the issues of obedience, order and authority. While Guardini was viewed critically by some National Socialists in the Third Reich, the administrative correspondences on him in the 1940s actually show that there was an internal debate about him among the National Socialist officials. This involved different figures, including a diplomat who came to Guardini’s defense. The internal disagreements were made more complicated because Guardini’s brothers were apparently members of the Fascist Party in Italy at this time. (shrink)

The Synthetic Theory of Evolution (SyntheticDarwinism) was forged between 1925 and 1950.Several historians of science have pointed outthat this synthesis was a joint venture ofSoviet, German, American and Britishbiologists: A fascinating example of scientificcooperation, considering the fact that theevolutionary synthesis emerged during thedecades in which these countries were engagedin fierce political, military and ideologicalconflicts. The ideological background of itsAnglo-American representatives has beenanalyzed in the literature. We have examinedthe scientific work and ideological commitmentsof the German Darwinians during the ThirdReich. We based (...) our analysis on four criteria:1) General attitude towards the Third Reich. 2) Membership in the NSDAP and other nationalsocialist organizations. Endorsement anddisapproval of the state ideology in 3) scientific and 4) other publications. We willmainly discuss the various authors that havecontributed to Die Evolution derOrganismen (1943), a collection thatrepresented the evolutionary synthesis inGermany. Most of the authors promoted eugenicideas, but not all of them adopted the racistinterpretation of the Third Reich. Anotherfinding is that there existed no directconnection between party membership andpromotion of the state ideology. (shrink)

At least Herf put his hands on a good problem. He begins with a critique of what remains the most common approach to the explanation of Nazism, namely, an anti-modern revolt against reason, progress, and the political values of the French Revolution, a pathological consequence of Germany's peculiar social and political development in the 19th century. In one typical statement, Nazism was the ideological expression of a “crisis of modernization,” a “utopian anti-modernism,” whose essence was “an extreme revolt against the (...) modern world and an attempt to capture a distant mythic past.” This view was popularized in the 1960s by historian like George Mosse and Fritz Stern, although it also had plenty of license in the earlier traditions of Marxist and non-Marxist social commentary going back before the war. (shrink)

In a wonderfully written and engaging text, Christopher Clark has crafted both a specific analysis of German politics and history over three-hundred years and a broad review of the changes in histo...

This essay analyzes one of Germany's former premier research institutions for biomedical research, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWIA) as a test case for the way in which politics and human heredity served as resources for each other during the Third Reich. Examining the KWIA from this perspective brings us a step closer to answering the questions at the heart of most recent scholarship concerning the biomedical community under the swastika: (1) How do (...) we explain why the vast majority of German human geneticists and eugenicists were willing to work for the National Socialist state and, at the very least, legitimized its exterminationist racial policy; and (2) what accounts for at least some of Germany's most renowned medically trained professionals' involvement in forms of morally compromised science that wholly transcend the bounds of normal scientific practice? Although a complete answer to this question must await an examination of other German biological research centers, the present study suggests that during the Nazi period the symbiotic relationship between human genetics and politics served to radicalize both. The dynamic between the science of human heredity and Nazi politics changed the research practice of some of the biomedical sciences housed at the KWIA. It also simultaneously made it easier for the Nazi state to carry out its barbaric racial program leading, finally, to the extermination of millions of so-called racial undesirables. (shrink)

Explaining the seizure of power by the National Socialist Party and the totalitarian workings of the Nazi regime in the Third Reich is still difficult not only with respect to the atrocities committed but also to understanding whether the German population and society had to be terrorized into complying with the regime or were part and parcel of it. The paper introduces a notion of swarm to advance the idea that the German population was terrorized into a (...) deliberate compliance with the regime. The notion of swarm is sociologically controlled by a complementary notion of form, which serves to reconstruct and model the social calculus realized by the swarm to differentiate and reproduce itself inside a complex society. The data I use are the results of historical research done in the last 60 years. (shrink)

This article deploys Spinoza’s ethic of joy alongside Deleuze and Guattari’s exposition of micropolitics to expose how fascist desires and affects bloom and circulate through digital communications ecosystems that generally promote a diffusion or decentralisation of power. Beyond the steady barrage of alt-right content conscientiously documented by liberal journalists and progressive watchdogs, a more persistent and widespread fascist impulse permeates the very forms of some of our most banal digitally mediated acts and encounters. Rather than a sole looming authoritarian figurehead, (...) the network itself – particularly with the new image paradigms propelled by apps such as Instagram and TikTok – has become the rallying point for the circulation of fascistic affects, burnished through the art and ethos of following: of rules, routines, protocols, accounts. I contend that a joyful passion accompanies much of this everyday experience of keeping up with one’s feeds, engaging the platforms, participating in the spectacles. This is what Sontag, interrogating the appeal of the Third Reich, calls the ‘joy of followers’, a joy in fascist belonging, which is to suggest that fascist movements thrive not only on the circulation of negative affects like hatred and fear, but also on the profusion of pleasure and affiliation. Deleuze’s Spinoza, resolutely anti-fascist, helps us parse this situation as it plays out in the social media sphere. Spinoza offers a bipartite conceptualisation of joy that allows us to diagnose the pleasures particular to fascist belonging and network belonging alike as passive, partial and indirect. Ultimately, what we today share with historical fascisms is a ubiquitous aesthetic that merges art with life and bodies with information, and a corresponding ethos that cultivates conformism, barbarises critical thought and redirects joyful impulses into reactionary social forms. As fascistic power relations spread anew through digital cultures’ newly evolving modes of visuality, hapticity, vibration and expression, one can observe something of what Deleuze calls ‘sad joy’, a sort of joy rooted in conquest and domination. The aim of this article is to root out such sad joys, to appreciate their appeal, and ultimately to reject them in all their various forms. (shrink)

This qualitative study used descriptive phenomenology to examine experiences of healing and reconciliation, for children of Holocaust survivors, through dialogue with children of the Third Reich. Descriptive phenomenological interviews with 5 participants yielded several common essential elements. The findings indicated that participants experienced a sense of healing of intergenerational trauma, a reduction in prejudice, and increase in motivation for pro-social behaviors. The degree to which these findings may reflect a shift in sense of identity, as well as the (...) implications of the findings for conflict resolution, intergroup conflict reduction and peace psychology are discussed. (shrink)

This book explores the phenomenon of the Third Reich from a philosophical perspective. It concentrates on the ways in which the subjects and experiences of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and Anti-Semitism are conceived by eight German thinkers from the Continental tradition. These eight intellectuals include Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger, Jean Améry, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jan Assmann. Based on careful philosophical examinations of both known and unknown texts of these eight thinkers (including an (...) English translation of two forgotten texts by Schmitt and Jünger), this study exposes and then explores the tension between ideology and philosophy, between submission to authority and genuine critical thinking, all of which constitute the essence of the Continental philosophical tradition. This title was made Open Access by libraries from around the world through Knowledge Unlatched.--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

While Superman’s fantastic abilities make him the most powerful being on Earth, his upbringing on the Kents’ farm is what makes him a hero. Unfortunately, moral philosophy often understates the importance of such character. One popular approach to ethics, utilitarianism, asks us to act in ways that maximize the happiness or well‐being of all the people affected. We are not born with virtues (or vices), and this is critical for understanding Superman's heroic personality. The question of how Superman's upbringing would (...) be affected by landing in another nation was explored in Mark Millar's Superman: Red Son (2004). Instead of truth, justice, and the American way, Hitler's Superman would value the totalitarian ideals of propaganda, obedience, and serving the führer. Imagine how some of the major events of World War II may have been different had Superman been involved with Hitler's cause. (shrink)

Argument -/- Focus of this paper is on the historiographical fate of Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei in Nazi Germany. Both played interesting roles in Nazi propaganda and the legitimization of Nazi political goals. In the “Third Reich,” efforts to claim Copernicus as a German astronomer were closely linked to revisionist policies in Eastern Europe culminating in the war-time expansion. The example of Galileo’s condemnation by the Catholic Church in 1633 became a symbol of its unjustified opposition to (...) new “scientific” results, namely Nazi racial theory. After Catholic opposition against Nazi racial theory had reached a peak in 1937, the Galileo affair was turned into an instrument of Nazi propaganda against the Catholic Church. -/- Auch der Historiker steht in der Zeit, nicht über ihr. -/- Das Ewigkeitspostament hat er verloren. -/- Siegfried Giedion. (shrink)

Attempting to trace the intellectual history of any political movement is, at best,problematic. Humans construct political movements and the intellectual, philosophical underpinnings of those movements, and, in general, it is not one person who is doing the creating, but rather a multitude of people are involved; the circumstance of how politics is created is a web, which makes it difficult for researchers to trace the historical roots of movements. Nazi Germany has been the focus of numerous research projects to understand (...) the intellectual roots of Nazism and the how and why they were successful in gaining and consolidating power. In line with popular theories in Sociology and History, earlier researchers have traced the intellectual roots of the Nazis in order to situate Nazi Germany as anti-modern, which by extension would situate their crimes against humanityand fascism in the same camp. In particular, Romanticism has been the movement that some historians have cited as a possible root for Nazism. The primary goal of this paper will be to disrupt the historical continuation argument, deconstruct the main parts of each of the camps, and provide support for the appropriation argument. This goal is designed to connect to the much larger debate of the state of anti-modern/modern of Nazism, and aid in showing Nazism as a modern movement. It is through researching and analyzingthe how and why the Nazis appropriated Romanticism that allows academics to study the influences from the past in the development of National Socialism, while accounting for the frame that the Nazis used to read the Romantics and the purpose for the way that Romantic literature was framed within Nazi-Germany. (shrink)