scholarly journals Now is the “We-Time.” Heidegger’s ‘Black Notebooks’ read as self-critical reflection of Nazi involvement

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 729-738
Author(s):  
Rastko Jovanov
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Socialist Revolution ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Private Writing ◽  
Metaphysical Tradition

The article analyzes Heidegger?s relation to National Socialism based on his private writing in the ?Black Notebooks,? published in their entirety (nine volumes) this year. Although it is indisputable that Heidegger was an enthusiastic adherent of the National Socialist program between 1930 and 1934, his private writings show his avowed philosophical delusion that the National Socialist ?revolution? in Germany was going to bring about a new beginning of philosophy beyond the metaphysical tradition. The article shows how Heidegger criticized National Socialism after 1934, and the circumstances of his resignation from the post of Rector of Freiburg University in that year.

Hitler, for Example: Registers of National Socialist Exemplarity in Contemporary Germany

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract This article examines whether and how the figure of Adolf Hitler in particular, and National Socialism more generally, operate as moral exemplars in today’s Germany. In conversation with similar studies about Mosely in England, Franco in Spain, and Mussolini in Italy, it seeks to advance our comparative understanding of neofascism in Europe and beyond. In Germany, legal and discursive constraints limit what can be said about the Third Reich period, while even far-right nationalists often condemn Hitler, for either the Holocaust or his military failure. Here I revise the concept of moral exemplarity as elaborated by Caroline Humphry to argue that Hitler and National Socialism do nevertheless work as contemporary exemplars, in at least three fashions: negativity, substitution, and extension. First, they stand as the most extreme markers of negative exemplarity for broad publics that understand them as illustrations of absolute moral depravity. Second, while Hitler himself is widely unpopular, Führer-substitutes such as Rudolf Hess provide alternative figures that German nationalists admire and seek to emulate. Finally, by extension to the realm of the ordinary, National Socialism introduces a cast of exemplars in the figures of loving grandfathers or anonymous fallen soldiers. The moral values for which they stand, I show, appear to be particularly significant for young nationalists. An extended, more open-ended notion of exemplarity, I conclude, can offer important insights about the lingering afterlife of fascist figures in the moral life of European nationalists today.

scholarly journals Effects of German Romanticism on National Socialist Education Policies: “Steely Romanticism”

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Murad Karasoy
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Foundations ◽  
The 19Th Century

National socialist education policies put into practice between 1933–1945 in Germany, has been under the influence of romanticism, which is one of the important currents in the history of German thought that began in the middle of the 19th century. Such “being under the influence” does not refer to a passive situation, but it rather means intentional “exposure” by Nazi ideologues. The meeting of Romanticism with National Socialism led to the most dramatic scenes of the history. Educational institutions, where the victims of war were trained, bipartitely fulfilled the task assigned to them regarding to ideological instrumentalism: to destroy and to be destroyed. Putting an end to both their lives own and the lives of others due to this romantic exposure, primary, secondary and higher education students have been the objects of the great catastrophe in the first half of the twentieth century. It will be possible to see the effects of German romanticism, through getting to the bottom of the intellectual foundations of the period’s tragic actions, such as burning books, redesigning the curriculum on the line of National Socialism, and preventing the dissemination of dissenting opinions by monopolizing the press. This historical research, which is conducted by examining sources like Arendt (1973), Fest (1973), Giles (1985), Bartoletti (2005), Herf (1998), Heidegger (2002), Hitler (1938), Huch (2005), Hühnerfeld (1961), Schirach (1967), Pöggeler (2002), Thomese (1923), Zimmerman (1990) aims to reveal in a scientific way that it is necessary to be careful against the extreme romantic elements in the practices of education.

‘We Mature into a Resilient People’ Publishing House De Amsterdamsche Keurkamer

Quaerendo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 284-304
Author(s):  
Gerard Groeneveld
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Dutch Translation

AbstractDe Amsterdamsche Keurkamer, founded in 1932, was the first National Socialist publishing house in the Netherlands. Under the management of author and poet George Kettmann the firm grew to become one of the major cultural mainstays of National Socialism in Holland. Kettmann earned himself some sort of reputation in the late thirties when he brought out a Dutch translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In the years of the occupation his company succeeded in defining the position and character of the ‘official’ literature ‐ ‘official’ meaning in line with National Socialist ideology.

Fritz: Nazi Propagandist

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Socialist Movement

This chapter showcases a Dutch collaborator named Fritz. Fritz shared many of Tony's prewar conservative opinions in favor of the monarchy and traditional Dutch values, although he was of working-class origins, unlike Tony and Beatrix, who were Dutch bourgeoisie. But unlike Beatrix or Tony, Fritz joined the Nazi Party, wrote propaganda for the Nazi cause, and married the daughter of a German Nazi. When he was interviewed in 1992, Fritz indicated he was appalled at what he later learned about Nazi treatment of Jews but that he still believed in many of the goals of the National Socialist movement and felt that Hitler had betrayed the movement. Fritz is thus classified as a disillusioned Nazi supporter who retains his faith in much of National Socialism, and this chapter is presented as illustrative of the psychology of those who once supported the Nazi regime but who were disillusioned after the war.

Der Tod und die Rente: Tuberkulosebekämpfung und Sozialversicherung im Nationalsozialismus

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-149
Author(s):  
Patrick Bernhard
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Pension System ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Pension Insurance ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Tuberculosis Patients ◽  
State Pension

Zusammenfassung Historisch betrachtet ist die Rentenversicherung einer der wichtigsten institutionellen Akteure des deutschen Sozialsystems im Kampf gegen die Volkskrankheit Tuberkulose, die noch zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts die Statistik der Todesursachen anführte. Wie der Beitrag auf der Basis umfangreicher Archivrecherchen zeigt, blieb die Rentenversicherung auch nach der nationalsozialistischen Machteroberung strukturell in erheblichem Maß in die öffentliche Gesundheitspolitik eingebunden und arbeitete eng mit den für die Tuberkulosebekämpfung zuständigen Stellen von Staat und NSDAP zusammen. Das geschah jedoch nicht ausschließlich, weil die nationalsozialistische Diktatur Druck auf die Rentenversicherung ausübte, wie nach 1945 in apologetischer Absicht zu lesen war. Neben Zwang spielten noch andere Faktoren eine entscheidende Rolle: starke institutionelle Kontinuitäten und ein spezifisches Traditionsverständnis innerhalb der Rentenversicherung, ideologische Schnittmengen im Denken von NS-Gesundheitspolitikern und leitenden Mitarbeitern der Rentenversicherung sowie Eigeninteressen von Heilanstalten, die das nationalsozialistische Zwangssystem für Tuberkulosekranke nutzten, um sich unbequemer Tuberkulosepatienten zu entledigen. Im Extremfall bedeutete das die eigenständige Ermordung von Patienten durch Ärzte der Rentenversicherung. Abstract Death and Social Security: The German State Pension System and Anti-Tuberculosis Battles under National Socialism Seen in historical context, the state pension system was among the most important institutional actors in the German social system in the fight against the widespread public health crisis of tuberculosis, which remained a major statistical cause of death at the beginning of the 20th century. Based on extensive archive research, this paper demonstrates that to a significant extent, the pension system remained structurally embedded in public health policy after the National Socialist seizure of power, working hand in hand with the NSDAP and the government agencies responsible for combating tuberculosis. Their close cooperation was not merely the result of pressure exerted by the Nazi dictatorship on pension insurance, as one reads in post-1945 apologetic texts. Alongside coercion, other factors played a critical role, including major institutional continuities and a specific understanding of tradition within the pension insurance system, ideological overlap between the thinking of National Socialist health policy-makers and leading state pension officials, and the self-interest of sanatoria, which used the coercive National Socialist system for tuberculosis patients to rid themselves of undesirable tuberculosis patients. In extreme cases, this meant the deliberate murder of patients by pension system doctors.

scholarly journals How 'Afro-Americanophilia' became Polyphilia: Joachim-Ernst Berendt’s Journey from Jazz to “Weltmusik”

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Wright Hurley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
World Music ◽  
West Germany ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Stuart Hall ◽  
1960S And 1970S

This article contributes to our understanding of the continuities and disconnects in the way that ‘race,’ and in particular African-American culture, were conceived of in the long postwar era in West Germany. It does so by examining some salient racial aspects in the writings and production activities of West-German ‘jazz pope,’ Joachim-Ernst Berendt, between the late 1940s and the mid-1980s. I demonstrate that the late 1960s brought about a sharpening in talk concerning the racial ‘ownership’ of jazz, and that in these circumstances, Berendt proceeded beyond his earlier, liberal elaborations about jazz, race, and African-Americans to advance an inclusive, ecumenical model of ‘Weltmusik’ (world music). Germany’s National Socialist history figured in important ways in his conception of both jazz and then Weltmusik. Whilst he initially saw jazz as an antidote to National Socialism, by the late 1960s and 1970s, he regarded certain traits of jazz discourse to be, themselves, proto-fascist.  Far from being a boon, Afro-Americanophilia—or at least one strain of it—now became something from which to distance oneself. What was important for Berendt, as for others of his generation, was distance from the past, as much as seeking out racial Others in Germany, engaging with them on their own terms, and yielding to a new racial ‘relationships of representation’ (Stuart Hall). 

German archaeology and National Socialism. Some historiographical remarks

2005 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martijn Eickhoff
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Past ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Academic Exchange ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Post War ◽  
Do So

This paper reconsiders German reflection on National Socialist pre- and protohistoric archaeology from 1933 onwards. It tries to do so by means of a case study of the academic contacts between the Dutch prehistorian A.E. van Giffen (1884–1973) and his German colleague H. Reinerth (1900–90). The approach adopted here differs from traditional historiographical writing on National Socialist archaeology in two respects. First, in its analysis of the academic exchange between the two scholars, the case study seeks to bridge the classical caesura between a pre- and post-war period. Second, contemporary and historical studies of National Socialist archaeology and archival sources, as well as interviews, have been incorporated in the research alongside the usual publications of the scholars involved. It is argued that with the approach taken here we may arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the different ways archaeologists have reacted to National Socialism over the past seven decades.

Fichte and National Socialism

1942 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. W. Kaufmann
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German Nation ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Humanitarian Values ◽  
German People ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right ◽  
External Form

Next to Hegel and Nietzsche, Fichte is the German philosopher most frequently blamed as one of the principal inspirers of the National Socialist ideologies of state despotism and the superiority of the German people. Indeed, it is not difficult to find in Fichte's work any number of passages which might be interpreted in such a way as to corroborate these views. In the writings of his middle period, around 1800, Fichte arrives at a despotism of reason which in its practical application might be even more consistently restraining than the rule of our modern dictators. In his programmatic speeches for the restoration of the German nation, he ascribes to his people a divine mission which has shocked many of his interpreters. Therefore we cannot be surprised that historians who, in accordance with the demands of their profession, lay more stress on the effects of thoughts and actions than on the intentions which motivate them, attribute to Fichte a good share of responsibility for the ideology of the National Socialist party and its hold on the German people. Yet these historians are right only with regard to the external form, while the intended aims of the two systems of thought are diametrically opposed to one another.On the whole, Fichte is a moral idealist whose principal concerns are the political and inner freedom of the individual, the right and duty of the individual to contribute his best to the welfare and the cultural progress of his nation, the independence of all nationalities, social security, and an acceptable standard of living for every human being. These demands are based on a genuine respect for the dignity of man and the desire to contribute to the rule of humanitarian values in all human relations. The National Socialist, on the contrary, is fundamentally an egotistic materialist, a ruthless Herrenmensch, with a deep-rooted contempt for freedom, equality, and all humanitarian values.

scholarly journals Neither Hitler nor Quisling: The Ragnarok Circle and Oppositional National Socialism in Norway

Fascism ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-133
Author(s):  
Terje Emberland
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Active Resistance ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Winter War

From 1935 to 1945, Ragnarok was the most radical national socialist publication in Norway. The Ragnarok Circle regarded themselves as representatives of a genuine National Socialism, deeply rooted in Norwegian soil and intrinsically connected to specific virtues inherent in the ancient Norse race. This combination of Germanic racialism, neo-paganism, and the cult of the ‘Norwegian tribe’, led them to criticize not only all half-hearted imitators of National Socialism within Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling, but also Hitler’s Germany when its politics were deemed to be in violation of National Socialist principles. In Germany they sought ideological allies within the Deutsche Glaubensbewegung before the war, and the ss during the war. But their peculiar version of National Socialism eventually led to open conflict with Nazi Germany, first during the Finnish Winter War and then in 1943, when several members of the Ragnarok Circle planned active resistance to Quisling and the German occupation regime.

The Legal History of the Dual State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Fraenkel
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
National Socialist State ◽  
German Ideology ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Objective View

This chapter aims to take an objective view of the appeal of National-Socialism. However, it is argued, people who had an ambivalent attitude toward National-Socialism suffered from two principal misconceptions. Firstly, the German ideology of Gemeinschaft (community) is just a mask hiding the still existing capitalist structure of society. Secondly, this ideological mask equally hides the existence of the prerogative state operating by arbitrary means. Any critical examination which attempts to reveal the social structure of the National-Socialist state, it is stated, must discover whether or not the essential criteria of the dual state have appeared in any earlier historical period. The chapter, therefore, looks in detail at the history of the dual state in Prussia and Germany as a whole.

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