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Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews (; 1 November 1865 – 15 July 1935) was a German people writer, historian, philosopher, and important representative of German Monism thought. He was born in Uetersen, Holstein, in present-day Germany.
The international controversy provoked by the "Christ Myth" was an early part of Drews's lifelong advocacy of the abandonment of Judaism and Christianity, both of which he regarded as based on ancient beliefs from antiquity, and shaped by religious dualism.See also "Dualism (philosophy of mind)" and "Dualism" ( Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) He urged a renewal of faith Glaubenserneuerung based on Monism and German idealism. He asserted that true religion could not be reduced to a cult of personality, even if based on the worship of the "unique and great personality" of a historical Jesus, as claimed by Protestant liberal theologians, which he argued was nothing more than the adaptation of the Great Man Theory of history promoted by Romanticism of the 19th century.
Drews was considered a dissenter. Many German academics didn't accept his "dilettantism" ( abweichungen von der communis opinio, that is, "straying from common opinions"). Drews was a reformer, and stayed involved in religious activism all his life. He was, in his last few years, to witness and participate in an attempt by the Free Religion Movement to inspire a more liberal form of worship. This was his reason for parting with the German Faith Movement, a venture trying to promote (without success) an awakening of a German Faith, an unusual form of nationalistic and racist faith with Hinduism overtones — far removed from the elitist German idealism Drews expounded in his last book, The German Religion ( Deutsche Religion, 1935) which he had hoped to see replace Christianity and what he considered its primitive . Later, Drews came back to the same subject in The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present (1926), which is a historical review of some 35 major deniers of Jesus historicity, covering the period 1780–1926.
Drews was a staunch supporter of Wagner and wrote many books and articles on Wagner's religious and nationalistic ideas, which are still considered by some scholars to be important works on the subject. He also embarked on a critique of Nietzsche, who was a lifelong critic of Christianity and Christian morality. Drews reproached Nietzsche for being an apostle of unbridled individualism — a stance which put Drews in an awkward position in the German establishment. His criticisms were never well received by academics nor by German society as a whole, since Nietzsche had become a national figure.
In 1904, Drews gave a critical lecture in Münich on the philosophy of Nietzsche, Nietzsches Philosophie. "Nietzsche is not aiming at bypassing morality as such, only the external morality which imposes its commandments to the individual, and results in the decay and submission of the Self. He would like to counter this old morality enemy of the Self with a new morality springing from the individual will and in conformity with his nature." emphasisArthur Drews, Nietzsches Philosophie, Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1904, p.331 ff. Quoted by Gianni Vattimo, Introduction to Nietzsche, De Bœck & Larcier, Paris, Bruxelles, 1991 p. 121 Drews continued with his philosophical critique of Nietzsche in Nietzsche als Antipode Wagners, 1919 ''Nietzsche,. His 1931 book on Wagner came out with a supplement on Nietzsche and Wagner, for which Bernhard Hoffers asserted that many of Drews' views later borrowed by the standard scholarship on Wagner without giving him credit.
Drews delivered his last public critique of Nietzsche in his article italic=unset "Nietzsche, in the journal Nordische Stimmen No. 4 (1934: 172–79). There Drews again attacked Nietzsche on philosophical grounds, in direct opposition to the Nazi effort to enlist Nietzsche in its propaganda, and unconcerned about potential consequences. Wolfang Müller-Lauter, in Experiences with Nietzsche, quotes Drews:
One finds in Nietzsche neither national sympathy nor social awareness, Drews. Nietzsche is, on the contrary, and particularly after his break with Richard Wagner, an enemy of everything German; he supports the creation of a "good European," and goes so far as to accord the Jews a leading role in the dissolution of all nations. Finally, he is an individualist, with no notion of "the National Socialist credo: 'collective over individual utility'...After all this, it must seem unbelievable that Nietzsche has been honored as the Philosopher of National Socialism, … for he preaches in all things the opposite of National Socialism", setting aside a few scattered utterances. The fact that such honors have repeatedly been bestowed on him has as its main reason, that most people who talk about Nietzsche tend only to pick the 'raisins' from the cake of his philosophy and, because of his aphoristic style, lack any clear understanding of the way his entire thought coheres. emphasis Jacob Golomb et Robert S. Wistrich (dir.), Nietzsche, godfather of fascism ?: On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy, Princeton UP, 2002, Wolfang Müller-Lauter, Experiences with Nietzsche, p. 70, note 8. Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, 1999 (Harvard UP) p. 277, 300
Drews expanded his views in Die Religion als Selbst-bewusstsein Gottes: eine philosophische Untersuchung über das Wesen der Religion, (Religion as Self-Consciousness of God: A philosophical inquiry in the Essence of Religion, 1906). The text expressed that religions are conscious expressions of the unconscious, and philosophy and religion can finally be united. The absolute Spirit was not another separate entity, and Hartmann and Drews rejected the idea of any personal God and mind-matter dualism.
In Christ Myth II, Drews specified his motivation: "The chief danger that has come to our time, especially to religion, under the influence of science is the denial of objective purpose in the universe. Let men be taught to believe again in ideas, and then monism, in its idealistic form, will become the first principle of all deep religious life." emphasis Drews goes on to proclaim a need for the "religion of the future" to be a "concrete" monism. The advocacy of this system of monism became Drews's life program and the subject of his philosophical and religious writings. It was also the motivation for his social activism in the Free Religion Movement, which had been sprouting cultural associations ( Kulturbünde) in Germany, especially in the search for a new religion anchored in European and, more specifically, German culture. Both Hartmann and Drews shared an infatuation with history, and the belief in the direction of history, transmuted into a philosophical axiom by Hegel, was applied to the history of religion and mythology.
In Die Religion als Selbst-bewusstsein Gottes : eine philosophische Untersuchung über das Wesen der Religion ( Religion as Self-Consciousness of God: a Philosophical Inquiry in the Essence of Religion, 1906), Drews saw the phenomenon of religion through his philosophical approach as the self-consciousness of God through the mind of mankind. "Godmen" were to be replaced by "God-mankind", an adaptation of Georg Friedrich Hegel's "World-Spirit".
In The Strong Personality, Ch. 12 of "The Witness of the Gospels", Part IV of Christ Myth II, Drews argues that the force of personality of ahuman Jesus cannot be at the source of Christendom's spread:
First, Each man fights for his own chimera, not for history...in matters of religion the belief of many generations proves nothing but their own credulity... A great error is propagated more easily than a great truth, because it is easier to believe than to reflect, and men prefer the wonders of romance to the plain facts of history... we might urge against Christians that the faith of any people in the miracles and oracles of its religion proved its truth; I doubt if they would admit the argument, and we will do the same with theirs. I know that they will say that they alone have the truth; but the other people say the same.
The...the Persian Mithra was a very shadowy form beside Jesus, who came nearer to the heart, especially of women, invalids, and the weak, in his human features and on account of the touching description of his death. But that shows at the most that the more concrete idea has the better prospect of triumphing in a spiritual struggle than the more abstract; it proves nothing as regards the historical reality of the idea. Moreover, history teaches us that it was quite different causes—partly external and accidental causes of a political nature, such as the death in the Persian war of the Emperor Julian, one of the most zealous followers of Mithra—that gave Christianity the victory over Mithraism. emphasis
He had been outspoken in presenting his views on religion with extreme clarity in Idea and Personality: Settlement of the Religious Crisis, Ch. 14 of The Witness of the Gospels, and Part IV of Christ Myth II. Drews asserted that mankind cannot let the present be still shackled by what he called "past of ancient times". He outlined what he called the religion of the future, which he said must acknowledge the World-Spirit (geist) proclaimed by Hegel as God-mankind, which is God manifesting himself through history with human actors and oracles who are merely major agents. The cult of "great personalities" he dismissed as an illusion; individuals could no longer be seen as godmen, just as revealers and oracles of the divinity.
The purely historical conception of Jesus cannot satisfy the religious consciousness of our age. It obsolete. Humanity has not merely broken with the geocentric and anthropocentric view of the origin of Christianity, but has seen through the superstitious nature of ecclesiastical Christology. Modern humanity has, therefore, the task of again universalising the idea of divine redemption, or enlarging the idea of a god- man...to the idea of a god-humanity...
It returns in a certain sense to pre-Christian religion and its numerous "god-men,"... filled with the idea of the one reality and its spiritual nature, to which the various individuals are related only as modi, phenomena, or'revelations, confiding in the divine control of the world, and therefore in its rationality and goodness...Thus man secures a faith in himself, in the divine nature of his being, in the rationality of existence; thus he is placed in a position to save himself, without a mediator, simply on account of his own divine nature... The religion of the future will either be a belief in the divine nature of the self, or will be nothing... no Christ is needed for it, and there is no ground for concern that religion may perish with the denial of the historicity of Jesus...
The is not only superfluous, but mischievous. It loads the religious consciousness with doubtful historical ballast; it grants the past an authority over the religious life of the present, and it prevents men from deducing the real consequences of their Monistic religious principles. Hence I insist that the belief in the historical reality of Jesus is the chief obstacle to religious progress...No to whom this high appreciation of the present above history may be traced, as well as this vindication of "personalities of world-history." The great personality has clearly a value even in our own view: in it the unity of God and man, the God-mankind, attains a clearer expression. It serves as proof to the religious consciousness that God raises up the right man at the right time. It reveals the living connection of the common individual life with the universal spiritual life. The divinity lives in history, and reveals itself therein. History is, in union with nature, the sole place of divine activity... one continuous stream of divine activity flows through time... To bind up religion with history, as modern theologians do, and to represent an historical religion as the need of modern man, is no proof of insight, but of a determination... to recognise the Christian religion alone.
Drews was especially drawn to Plotinus, who founded Neoplatonism 600 years after the time of Plato. A year later, Drews edited Der Monismus: dargestellt in Beiträgen seiner Vertreter, where he analyzes the major philosophers of monism. In 1913, he published History of Monism in Antiquity (1912) throughout the various schools of hellenistic philosophy.
Drews thus managed to produce a modern system of philosophy joining the ancient idealism and monism of Plotinus's Neoplatonism and the modern historical idealism of Hegel, for whom the World-Spirit manifests itself in History. Towards the end of his life, Drews started writing more explicitly on what the idea of a monist God means in the context of modern Germany in the 1930s. God (1930) and The Word of God (1933) demonstrated his trend towards a German-inspired form of religion.
Drews was involved too deep into the subject to stop there, and went boldly further, exploring how Christianity could become a world religion without a historical founder or core group described in scripture... During the First war, Schweitzer published more essays in a weak attempt to justify theology, which strengthened Drews' attitude and endeavor. emphasis
In The Legend of Peter (1910, translated into English in 1997 by Frank Zindler), Drews complains that "the confusion in educated circles...is so great and the posture of Rome so impudent", and exposes the completely legendary character of the figure of Saint Peter, both in the Gospels and the fantastical history of Peter in Rome. According to Drews (in Klaus Schilling's "English Summary" of The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus):
The Gospel is a poetic retelling of the astral mythical journey of the sun god, dressed in Tanakh pictures... The order of the tales follows almost strictly the astral mythical cycle. Mark's gospel is of astral magical, Gnostic origin from the middle of the second century... Drews had published an introduction to astral mythology in the cultures of the Mediterranean and Iranian region up to imperial times, in order to decrease the above ignorance. But theologians continued to indulge in their self-induced ignorance. emphasis
In his 1924 book The Origin of Christianity in Gnosticism, Drews developed the hypothesis of the derivation of Christianity from a gnosticism environment. In Drews's own words (in Klaus Schilling's "English Summary" of The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus):
Gnosticism is undeniably pre-Christian, with both Jewish and gentile roots. The wisdom of Solomon already contained Gnostic elements and prototypes for the Jesus of the Gospels...God stops being the Lord of righteous deed and becomes the Good One...A clear pre-Christian Gnosticism can be distilled from the epistles of Paul. Paul is recklessly misunderstood by those who try to read anything Historical Jesus-ish into it. The conversion of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles is a mere forgery from various Tanakh passages... The are from Christian mystics of the middle of the second century. Paul is thus the strongest witness against the Historical Jesus hypothesis...John's Gnostic origin is more evident than that of the synoptics. Its acceptance proves that even the Church wasn't concerned with historical facts at all. emphasis
In The Myth of Mary (1928), which reads as Jesus's Family and Entourage Exposed, Drews asserted that all the characters around Jesus were as imaginary and fantastic as Jesus himself.
Drews felt an urgent need to reform the structure of established religion, free it from its attachment to the primitive features of the early mythical Christianity. In Christ Myth II he glorifies the greatness of the German mind and complains: "How, then, can we be asked to admit that the salvation of modern times depends on a belief that has, in the Churches, degenerated into a stupid superstition?...Why, then, should we be compelled to take our religious possessions from the past? ...Are the ideas of a remote age and a degenerate culture to keep us under their power for ever?" Drews's books were released during a phase of profound turmoil in Germany and a restructuring of its religious scene. Repeatedly, Drews came back to the same theme of reform and started thinking about the nature of religion in the future.
Drews threw in his lot with both the Free Religion Association and the Monist Association, which were part of the Free Religion Movement ( Freireligiöse Bewegung). In addition, Drews was a member of the new No-Confession Committee ( Komitee Konfessionslos), formed in 1909, becoming president in 1912. The Komitee supported the Church Exist Movement Kirchenaustrittsbewegung, which became very successful since its inception in 1905 for attracting lapsed members of other churches as well as scientists, academic personalities, and cultural celebrities. In 1924 Drews, who was the leader of the Free Religion Society of Karlsruhe, joined a few other Societies of the Southwest to form a new Association of Free Religion for the Southwest( Verband Freireligiöser Gemeinden Süd- und Westdeutschlands), with a more religious and less political orientation than the other movements.
Drews had seen in early Christianity a religion of promise of rebirth and transfiguration for a defeated and oppressed country (announcing the coming of the Kingdom of God), and the creation of a national myth giving hope to ancient occupied Palestinian Jews (an expectation of a Messiah leader and liberator). Jews were expecting that Palestine was going to go through its own course of death and rebirth.
Aging and close to death, Drews was struck by the theoretical parallel of early Christianity with modern National Socialist mysticism, a promise of national rebirth and transfiguration from an oppressed state and ofrenewed hope for a defeated country under the leadership of a new charismatic liberator, which resonated with his own concept of a future religion based on German monist idealism.
Feeling in touch with the new cultural spirit of national rebirth and exalted hope in the future then prevailing in Germany, Drews started evangelizing on the theme of German nationalism, using it as another argument against Christianity. Thus, he wrote in Das Wort Gottes ( The Word of God, 1933, p. 11):
Free are "German and not Romans…and a determination of our faith on the Bible and its knowledge...Christendom is the expression of sunken times and of the mindset of a race foreign to us… Christendom has absolutely nothing to do with Germanness Deutschtum...and a German Christendom would nonsense ... As with the blows it delivers on the Gospels, it is straight on its way to Rome... Jesus the Aryan is a pure ideal. There no reason to a Nordic origin of Jesus. But...Contrary believers in the Bible for whom Palestine is the 'Holy Land', for devotees of Free Religion, Germany is the Holy Land. The, as an Aryan, fundamentally Monist, (Pantheist), contrary the manifestation of the essence Wesensausdruck of our German people. emphasisArthur Drews, Das Wort Gottes. Zur religiösen Lage der Gegenwart, Mainz 1933, p. 11, 26 - In Christian G. Langenbach, Freireligiöse Gemeinden im Nationalsozialismus, 2004 ''The, p. 59, 61, 66, 69, 87]
Drews systematically used monism in his battle against Christianity. Drews concluded that free religion was "the very expression of the being of our German people".Arthur Drews, Richtlinien der Gemeinde Deutsch-Idealistischen Glaubens, in Freie Religion, 1933, p. 77 - In Christian G. Langenbach, Freireligiöse Gemeinden im Nationalsozialismus, 2004, ''The p. 77 Using the accoutrements of the rampant nationalistic fervor for his own agenda, Drews was still upholding his lofty ideals, but now in the form of a German monist idealism.
Drews -- is a philosopher of the Hartmann school. In his capacity as an Hartmannist, he preaches a religion of pure spirit. And he fights against the historicity of Jesus Christ in the name of a religion of spirit, he contends against the religious materialism which he detests. He is prepared to admit the existence of Christ, as the Logos. But for him the Logos never could have been incarnated into a man upon the earth, within earthly history. The religious materialism of Christianity is a legacy inherited from Judaism, it is a Semitic graft, and Drews in his capacity as a religious anti-Semite, struggles against this materialistic Semitic graft for the religious life of Aryanism, expressing itself in its purest guise in India. Drews, just like E. Hartmann, is a resolute antagonist against Protestantism and the religion of Jesus. For him Jesus was not real, in the metaphysical sense that Christ is real. He is the antipode to Harnack, a result of the splitting apart of the God-Man -- the polar opposite to the Jesusism of the Protestants. (With the Christian Myth was connected the teaching of Drews and E. Hartmann about the unconscious Divinity, which in a fit of madness created the vale of being and comes to consciousness through man. cf. Drews, Die Religion als Selbstbewustsein Gottes.) emphasis Nikolai A. Berdyaev, "The Scientific Discipline of Religion and Christian Apologetics" (1927), Journal Put' , No. 6, p. 50-68Drews was opposed to the theology of ancient Hebraism as much as he is opposed to Christianity, and even more opposed to liberal Protestantism. This cannot be construed as a claim that Drews was a social anti-semite, as he was firmly opposed to social anti-semitism.
Drews shared the intense belief with the German elite of the sublimity of German consciousness (in art, literature, philosophy, and science), again re-iterated in his book Das Wort Gottes. However, he saw religion as an expression of the unconscious World-Spirit anchored in a community tightly rooted on an ancestral territory. In the late 1920s and '30s, hoping to see Germany pull away from Christianity, his writings took on an even stronger German nationalist fervor left in the wake of the Nazis.
Hauer had started a religious movement that he wanted to expand with a larger group from the Völkish movement. Reventlow's cultural (but not racial) antisemitism led him to accept an alliance with Hauer in organizing a conference in July 1933 that would create another entity, the German Faith Movement. This new religious group became active in 1934. Hauer's ambition was to use Reventlow's NSDAP connections to engineer a unification of the Free Religion movement with the Völkish movement. As the movement developed, its objectives were revealed as follows: A state religion, anti-Christian with a Hinduism coloration, veneration of the sun, and pursuing a "species-true faith" for Germany, (a goal that resonated with Drews' hopes to see the emergence of a German religion). Also included were Blood and Soil ( Blut und Boden), racist values (blood descent), nationalism (ancestral land occupation), Völkish populism (fusion with the racist/antisemitic Völkish movement), and German neopaganism.
The Southwest Association for Free Religion, including Drews' Karlsruhe Society, had formed and Drews was invited to sit on the Working Committee of this new movement. The collaboration was short-lived, however. The new group's political objectives (dreams of becoming a state religion) clashed with the basic program of the Free Religion Societies, which were pursuing more limited interests of freer religion. In addition, racism and antisemitism, which had become more overt in the NSDAP's national policy after it had reached political power, became also quickly apparent as a major goal of Hauer and Reventlow. As a result, the Southwest Association of Free Religion, in which Drews' Karlsruhe Free Religion Society was a member, soon withdrew from the German Faith Movement.
The two leaders of the new group proved that they didn't have enough political pull. Hauer could not implement the planned fusion with the Völkish movement. Reventlow's connections did not bring any benefits from the Nazi government. Contrary to their hopes, the German Faith movement never became endorsed as a Nazi party organization, never obtained the privileges Hauer was seeking, and never achieved its latent goal of becoming legitimized as the state religion by the NSDAP, in a vain hope to duplicate the endorsement of the Catholic Church by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I in 380 AD. Disillusioned, Hauer left in 1936, and joined the Party in 1937; Reventlow also left the movement early to resume the practice of Christianity and was still unable to gain Hitler's favor.
The anthropologist Karla Poewe has devoted her book New Religions and the Nazis (2005) to Hauer's attempt at founding a national religion.Karla Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis, (2005, Routledge) p. 96 - Amazon listing & reviews Richard Steigmann-Gall, author of The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 (2004), is another expert on this period. Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 (2004) He contends that Poewe, sharing "Hauer's sense of grandiosity", portrays Hauer as more significant than he was, making of "Hauer a 'truer' exemplar of Nazism than its own institutional incarnation". Whereas Hauer was at most a fellow traveler of the Nazis, a hanger-on with big ambition, "intent to appear relevant but ultimately rejected..." Richard Steignmann-Gall, Review of Karla Poewe's New Religions and the Nazis. The movement never achieved more than the status of a small esoteric fringe group. It never managed to dent, let alone replace, Christianity in the land of Martin Luther. It turned out to be merely a cultural flash-in-the-pan, a curiosity in the complex landscape of Germany's religious life in the mid '30s. The NSDAP government changed its name in 1938 and jettisoned it as a nuisance that was incapable of displacing the two strong Christian churches in Germany, and only risked to alienate them against the new regime. Koenraad Elst, The religion of the Nazis - Review of New Religions and the Nazis
So, in spite of Drews' hope to promote a new religion based on idealistic monism and pantheism of a distinct German character, the participation of the Karlsruhe Free Religion Society in Hauer's effort to unify the provincial Free Religion associations with the Völkish movement was short-lived and produced no results. Drews, an elitist thinker in the Hegel and Hartmann tradition, had been an advocate of the unconscious World Spirit as being the fundamental engine of religion acting in history through agents and oracles. He remained hostile to any religion based on a historic personality cult and, late in life, was confronted with the practical difficulty of translating his lofty ambitions to the simpler drives and requirements of a mass movement.
Drews a Jew cannot be driven by liberty and courage... Drews fights for freedom of the Maccabees, the fatal defense of Jerusalem against the Romans and the last desperate fight of the Jews in the Bar Kokhba wars the. In poor Jews of the medieval Ghetto who preferred to endure a thousand dead rather than renounce their faith, and climbed, still self-controlled, to the stakes...the impassioned by freedom and courage...who never feared jail, exile, or death...In the desert god Yahweh of the Old Testament has become larger, more tolerant, more humane, more friendly...so from an angry and authoritarian god he changed into a merciful god, who is all goodness and love, the god from the Psalms, the Proverbs and the Wisdom writings. emphasisArthur Drews, Jesus der Arier "Jesus,, In Freie Religion, 1934, pp. 18–26 - In Christian G. Langenbach, Freireligiöse Gemeinden im Nationalsozialismus, 2004,''The p. 50
Contrary to other Free Religion devotees who parroted the slogans of the NSDAP propaganda, Drews engaged in a real discussion with Jewish intellectuals and scholars. He was able to deliver a tribute to the Jewish faith, which, on one hand, brought to light its differences with Free Religion, but also showed respect to people who had other thoughts. Christian G. Langenbach, Freireligiöse Gemeinden im Nationalsozialismus, [ The Free Religion Societies in the NSDAP] 2004, p. 51
"Christianity is the expression of sunken times and of the mindset of a race foreign to us ... Christianity has nothing to do with Germanness."Arthur Drews, Das Wort Gottes: Zur Religiosen Lage der Gegenwart (Mainz, 1933), 11
According to Bernhard Hoffers, his affinities for the German Faith movement bordered on that of J. Goebbels' own views.See Klaus Schilling's summary, "Klaus Schilling's summary in English of Bernhard Hoffers' April 2003 Lecture about Arthur Drews" http://www.egodeath.com/hofferslectureonarthurdrews.htm Drews likewise served as the primary advisor for Eugen Diederichs Verlag, which was a focal point for the rise of extreme conservatism, nationalism, and antisemitism.Stark, Gary D. (1981). Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890-1933. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.Michael Barker, "Carl Jung's Selective Consciousness (Part II of II)," Swans Commentary (2013), http://www.swans.com/library/art19/barker128.html As such, while Drews may have been against antisemitism earlier in his life and even later, he still voiced a German superiority and had a spiritual opposition to the religion of a "foreign race" by his later life.
Drews' support of Wagner and opposition to Nietzsche did nothing to improve his standing. He met with the studied indifference das and the silence das of the academic pundits, while his international public popularity and press coverage were increasing. Even the University of Karlsruhe, in the very town where he lived and taught, didn't want to mention his name. His treatment at the hands of academics was similar to those of William B. Smith in the US, John M. Robertson and later George A. Wells in England, and Paul-Louis Couchoud in France.
After his death his name was largely forgotten. He was mentioned in the German media mostly for having advocated the need for a religion renewal, and in the literature about Wagner and Nietzsche. His work was omitted or grossly misrepresented and discredited in major German reference books. His books in Germany are now hard to find. However, his book on Plotinus is still in demand, the Christ Myth is widely available in the English-speaking world, and Hermann Detering of Radikalkritik continues to make the Denial of the Historicity of Jesus still available..
Drews had been fighting all his life for acceptance and recognition in Germany and for tenure at a university. In spite of his enormous scholarly output, and his popularity, he never was able to obtain a university position. One has to understand why, at the end of his life, Drews was expressing a hope for a renewal of Germany. Hoffers, for the sake of fairness, remarked that Drews never was a member of the Nazi party, and spoke out early against growing antisemitism in the 1920s . He never was involved in any action against Jewish intellectuals, artists, and academics. Whereas, for instance, a philosopher like Heidegger was more visibly active in the Nazi movement, as Rüdiger Safranski has described in detail in (1994).
Hoffers emphasized that "As a scholar, Drews had always been objective and honest." In spite of scholarly differences, he maintained a friendship with Schweitzer for a while. He was a polyglot and collected Japanese art prints. He was a gifted, energetic man, with a tremendous capacity for work. He gained the esteem of van den Bergh van Eysinga, the leader of the Dutch Radical school, who viewed him as a" good guy" ( ein netter Kerl).
In conclusion, Hoffers urged scholars to renew an acquaintance with Drews' books. Claiming that the arguments developed in his work were outmoded or refuted überholt is unjustified. As a parting shot, Hoffers asks a pertinent question: "Is it really true that the question of Jesus's historicity has been absolutely clarified and is moreover uninteresting, as can be heard in discussions with theologians? ( Ist es wirklich so, dass die Frage nach der Historizität Jesu absolut geklärt und obendrein noch so nebensächlich ist, wie man in Gesprächen mit Theologen zu hören bekommt?)." Hoffers concludes that Drews's life was a fascinating chapter of the zeitgeschichte (history of our times). Dr. Bernhard Hoffers, "Arthur Drews (1865 – 1935)" - a eulogy and biographical lecture, Karlsruhe, April 2003 (in German). Klaus Schilling's English summary: "Bernhard Hoffers' April 2003 Lecture about Arthur Drews"
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