Product Code Database
The Völkisch movement ( , , also called Völkism) was a Pan-Germanism ethno-nationalist movement active from the late 19th century through the dissolution of Nazi Germany in 1945, with remnants in the Federal Republic of Germany afterwards. Erected on the idea of "blood and soil", inspired by the one-body-metaphor ( Volkskörper, "ethnic body"; literally "body of the people"), and by the idea of naturally grown communities in unity, it was characterized by organicism, racialism, populism, agrarianism, romantic nationalism and – as a consequence of a growing exclusive and ethnic connotation – by antisemitism from the 1900s onward. Völkisch nationalists generally considered the Jews to be an "alien people" who belonged to a different Volk ("race" or "folk") from the Germans. After World War II, the Völkisch movement became viewed as a Proto-fascism or proto-Nazism phenomenon in the context of German society.
The Völkisch movement was a "variegated sub-culture" that rose in opposition to the socio-cultural changes of modernity. The "only denominator common" to all Völkisch theorists was the idea of a national rebirth, inspired by the traditions of the Germanic peoples which had been "reconstructed" on a romantic basis by the adherents of the movement. This proposed rebirth entailed either "Germanizing" Christianity or the comprehensive rejection of Christian heritage in favor of a reconstituted pre-Christian Germanic paganism. In a narrow definition, the term is used to designate only groups that consider human beings essentially preformed by blood, or by inherited characteristics.Hans Jürgen Lutzhöft (1971). Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920–1940 (Stuttgart. Ernst Klett Verlag), p. 19.
The Völkischen are often encompassed in a wider Conservative Revolution by scholars, a German national conservative movement that rose in prominence during the Weimar Republic (1918–1933). During the period of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis believed in and enforced a definition of the German Volk which excluded Jews, the Romani people, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and other "foreign elements" living in Germany. Their policies led to these "undesirables" being rounded up and murdered in large numbers, in what became known as the Holocaust.
If Völkisch writers used terms like Nordische Rasse ("Nordic race") and Germanentum ("Germanic peoples"), their concept of Volk could, however, also be more flexible, and understood as a Gemeinsame Sprache ("common language"),Georg Schmidt-Rohr: Die Sprache als Bildnerin. 1932. or as an Ausdruck einer Landschaftsseele ("expression of a landscape's soul"), in the words of geographer Ewald Banse.Ewald Banse. Landschaft und Seele. München 1928, p. 469.
The defining idea which the Völkisch movement revolved around was that of a Volkstum, literally the "folkdom" or the "culture of the Volk". Other associated German words include Volksboden (the "Volk's essential substrate"), Volksgeist (the "spirit of the Volk"), Volksgemeinschaft (the "community of the Volk"), as well as Volkstümlich ("folksy" or "traditional") and Volkstümlichkeit (the "popular celebration of the Volkstum").
Völkisch thinkers tended to idealize the myth of an "original nation", that still could be found at that time in the rural regions of Germany, a form of "primitive democracy freely subjected to their natural elites." The notion of "people" ( Volk) subsequently turned into the idea of a "racial essence", and Völkisch thinkers referred to the term as a birth-giving and quasi-eternal entity—in the same way as they would write on "the Nature"—rather than a sociological category.
The movement combined sentimental patriotic interest in German folklore, local history and a "back-to-the-land" Anti-urbanism populism. "In part this ideology was a revolt against modernity", Nicholls remarked.A. J. Nicholls, reviewing George L. Mosse, The Crisis in German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, in The English Historical Review 82 No. 325 (October 1967), p. 860. Mosse was characterised as "the foremost historian of völkisch ideology" by Petteri Pietikäinen 2000:524 note 6. As they sought to overcome what they felt was the malaise of a Scientism and Rationalism modernity, Völkisch authors imagined a spiritual solution in a Volks essence perceived as authentic, intuitive, even "primitive", in the sense of an alignment with a primordial and cosmic order.
Despite the previous lower-class connotation associated to the word Volk, the Völkisch movement saw the term with a noble overtone suggesting a German ascendancy over other peoples. Thinkers led by Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882), Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), Ludwig Woltmann (1871–1907) and Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) were inspired by Charles Darwin's Evolution in advocating a "race struggle" and a hygienist vision of the world. They had conceptualized a racialist and hierarchical definition of the peoples of the world where Aryan race (or Germans) had to be at the summit of the White people. The purity of the bio-mystical and primordial nation theorized by the Völkisch thinkers then began to be seen as having been corrupted by foreign elements, Jewish in particular.
Although the primary interest of the Ariosophy was the revival of native pagan traditions and customs (often set in the context of a quasi-theosophical esotericism), a marked preoccupation with purity of race came to motivate its more politically oriented offshoots, such as the Germanenorden (the Germanic or Teutonic Order), a secret society founded at Berlin in 1912 which required its candidates to prove that they had no "non-Aryan race" bloodlines and required from each a promise to maintain purity of his stock in marriage. Local groups of the sect met to celebrate the summer solstice, an important neopaganism festivity in völkisch circles (and later in Nazi Germany), and more regularly to read the as well as some of the .
Not all folkloric societies with connections to Romantic nationalism were located in Germany. The Völkisch movement was a force as well in Austria.Austrian manifestations were surveyed by Rudolf G. Ardelt, Zwischen Demoktratie und Faschismus: Deutschnationales Gedankengut in Österreich, 1919–1930 (Vienna and Salzburg) 1972, not translated into English. Meanwhile, the community of Monte Verità ('Mount Truth') which emerged in 1900 at Ascona, Switzerland is described by the Swiss art critic Harald Szeemann as "the southernmost outpost of a far-reaching Nordic lifestyle-reform, that is, alternative movement".Heidi Paris and Peter Gente (1982). Monte Verita: A Mountain for Minorities. Translated by Hedwig Pachter, Semiotext, the German Issue IV(2):1.
A major political vehicle for the Völkisch movement during this era was the German Völkisch Freedom Party (Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei, DVFP), founded in December 1922 when key antisemitic figures split from the conservative German National People's Party. The DVFP openly called for a "völkisch dictatorship" and briefly formed a major electoral alliance with the banned Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1924. Campaigning together as the National Socialist Freedom Movement, the alliance won 32 seats in the Reichstag, demonstrating that Völkisch ideology had a significant electoral presence independent of the early NSDAP.
In January 1919, the Thule Society was instrumental in the foundation of the German Workers' Party (DAP), which later became the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), commonly called the Nazi Party. Thule Society members or visiting guests of the Thule Society who would later join the Nazi Party included Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart and Karl Harrer. Notably, Adolf Hitler was never a member of the Thule Society and Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg were only visiting guests of the Thule Society in the early years before they came to prominence in the Nazi movement. After being appointed Chairman of the NSDAP in 1921, Hitler moved to sever the party's link with the Thule Society, expelling Harrer in the process; the Society subsequently fell into decline and was dissolved in 1925.
Notes
Bibliography
|
|
