Will-o'-the-wisp – on the map because of their influence as an ideologue of racism, as an object of critique.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
For Chamberlain, European history was a struggle between “Germanic” peoples and Jews – an antisemitic construction that prepared National Socialist ideology.
Placement
British-born writer in Vienna and Bayreuth, son-in-law of Richard Wagner, whose “Foundations of the Nineteenth Century” (1899) spread an antisemitic racial view of history among the German educated public; he welcomed Hitler in 1923; on the map as an object of critique.
Key ideas
- Racial antisemitism as philosophy of history (refuted)
- “Germanic” peoples versus Jews (ideological construct)
- Bayreuth circle
- Forerunner of National Socialist ideology
Influence
Influenced by 1
Arthur de Gobineau
influenced by
Chamberlain took up Gobineau’s racial doctrine in Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) but rejected his pessimism about racial mixing; scholarship treats both as pseudoscientific race ideology. H. S. Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (1899); G. G. Field, Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1981)
Evidence: AI draft
Arthur de Gobineau › 1816–1882
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Georg Lukács
criticised by
Lukács placed Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century in the line of racial theory from Gobineau to fascism (Die Zerstörung der Vernunft, 1954, ch. VII). G. Lukács, Die Zerstörung der Vernunft (1954), ch. VII (“Der Sozialdarwinismus, die Rassentheorie und der Faschismus”)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Lukács › 1885–1971
Works
A sweeping account of European history as a struggle between “Germanic” peoples and Jews; a bestseller among the educated public and a source of National Socialist ideology.
Position
Chamberlain is on the map as an ideologue, because research on antisemitism and National Socialism treats him as one of its most effective forerunners. The Foundations presented European history as a struggle between “Germanic” peoples, as bearers of culture, and Jews, described as a racially foreign and destructive force; Christianity was reinterpreted to make Jesus a non-Jew. Chamberlain combined borrowings from Gobineau, Darwinian vocabulary and an idealist philosophy of culture, and claimed Kant and Goethe for his view – claims that the scholarship on both rejects. The book’s success among the educated public and its use by Alfred Rosenberg, whose “Myth of the Twentieth Century” (1930) continued it, made it a link between the völkisch movement of the Empire and National Socialism. Geoffrey G. Field’s biography “Evangelist of Race” (1981) traces this path; Georg Lukács (1954) placed him in the line from Gobineau to fascism.
Life & context
Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born on 9 September 1855 in Southsea near Portsmouth, the son of a British naval officer. He grew up mainly in France with relatives, attended Cheltenham College and studied natural sciences in Geneva. Through his enthusiasm for Richard Wagner he moved to Germany and Austria: he lived in Dresden from 1885 and in Vienna from 1889, wrote on Wagner and in 1899 published “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century”, which went through many editions and was promoted by Emperor Wilhelm II. Books on Kant (1905) and Goethe (1912) followed. In 1908 he married Wagner’s daughter Eva and settled in Bayreuth. During the First World War he wrote anti-British propaganda and became a German citizen in 1916. In September 1923 he met Adolf Hitler in Bayreuth and soon afterwards wrote to him that his appearance proved Germany was still alive. Paralysed in his last years, he died in Bayreuth on 9 January 1927; Hitler attended the funeral.
Further main works
- Richard Wagner (1895)
- Immanuel Kant (1905)
- Goethe (1912)
- War Essays (Kriegsaufsätze, 1914–15)
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