Introduction
The people of any country, even when from different ethnic backgrounds, often feel a strong bond to each other. These nationalistic feelings are in regard to the country and its symbols. The cultures and traditions are regarded as belonging to all of the people. During the 1800’s, Germany’s concept of nationalism (the Volk) was bigger than just the people or the nation. What Volkish thinking and the Nazi movement both shared was a sense of cultural superiority along with intolerance for people or cultures within their borders that did not fit their cultural ideal. This sense of commonality of the people fit the objectives for Hitler and the Third Reich. In speeches, they appealed to the betterment and welfare of the Volk seeking to bring back Volkish culture.
Germans wanted a clearly defined distinction between Germans and the other peoples of Europe. This discussion analyzes the influence of Volkish thought in the shaping of Nazi policies beginning with a historical definition of the term ‘Volk’ and the reasons for its integration into German society of the 1800’s. It will also address how the Nazi party utilized these precepts as an idealistic tool, why they established these concepts and how effective this tactic was in congregating the people.
The idea od united nation
The ideas intended to unify a nation advanced by Volkistic philosophies evolved for over a century into a national impression of superiority. The Third Reich did not expose the German people to beliefs to which they were not originally pre-disposed. The regime had to be supported by the German people for it to have experienced the heights of popularity that it achieved during the 1930’s and this support came from a nationalistic narcissism.
Nazi ideology was not an overnight event, it had evolved for over a century with a beginning in Volkish beliefs. During the early 1800’s Germans began thinking of themselves as more than just a disassembled collection of Bavarians, Prussians, Saxons and the like living within the same borders. The idea of Volk became not simply the people of a country, but a unifying spiritual force of a people’s traditions and customs.
Literature, music, art, folklore, and religion are all manifestations of the spirit of the people, or the volkgeist. This draw to unify inspired a considerable interest in the German people’s common culture, myths, legends and folksongs. “This idea found many adherents, reacting to both the Napoleonic conquest of Germany from 1806 to 1811 and the rationalism and scientific advances of the English and the French later in the century” (Iggers 1988).
Though still not politically united, Germans were learning to take pride in their cultural accomplishments. There was, unfortunately, a dark aspect to unification. The tendency for cultural nationalism produced cultural superiority and intolerance, which, when combined with racism, was a powerful political force of nineteenth-century Europe. Volkish writers, in-step with the people of the mid to late 1800’s Germany were becoming increasingly intolerant of cultures other than their own.
Anti-Semitic League
In the mid-1800’s, the term ‘semitic’ became widely adopted by as a result of German philologist Wilhelm Marr’s foundation of the Anti-Semitic League. In 1879, he determined the Hebrew language was ‘semitic’ and not Indo-European (Wegner 2002 p. 2) “The mysticalized, Volkish linguistic foundation for the Aryan myth was a popular concept in the mid-1800s that both Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel, among others, had argued vociferously for, to overflowing university classrooms and in their voluminous writings” (Wegner 2002 pp. 8-9). This linguistic difference provided a means for those of Volkish thought to further identify themselves as different from and superior to anyone of Jewish descent well before the Nazis came to power.
It was widely held that the true German spirit was rooted in nature. The people perceived the rural culture as genuinely German. The peasant who lives close to nature is closest to the German volkgeist. Wilhelm von Polenz’s 1895 “The Peasant from Buttner” is the story of a German peasant who hanged himself after becoming indebted to a Jewish landlord. The Semite creditor in the story had the peasant’s land foreclosed and sold the property to a manufacturer who then built a factory on it.
The basis of Volkish thought of the late eighteenth century was a reaction against modernity, and the rapid industrialization of Germany as well as decidedly against the Jewish people. Volkish writers viewed German nationality as fundamentally a sacred soul. True Germans are spiritually united by the volkgeist and, like Polenz, portrayed Jews as adversaries of the German volk. The consensus of the time was that the Jew is spiritually incompatible with the German spirit, strangers on German lands.
Anti-Semitism propaganda
For the Nazis, the Volk could only be described as the Aryan race, thus the concept of excluding the Jews. Anti-Semitism propaganda under the Third Reich fulfilled its objective to represent the combination of older, culturally stereotyped perceptions of the Jewish people with the racialism in the Nazi curriculum (Iggers 2000). Germans were constantly encouraged by the Reich to view the Aryan people of Germany as part of the Volk and to envision themselves as a superior and eternal collection of people.
The influence of the ideology of the Volk was motivating in the 1920’s and 30’s to Germany. It supported regaining a sense of nation broken in their WWI defeat. “During this period of discontent, Germans showed a growing interest in the volkish movement, a movement calling for the revival of the German people so the nation would regain its honor, strength and position in the world community” (Foundation of the Nazi Party 2003).
Widespread confusion and discontent ruled Germany immediately after the WWI surrender. Both workers and soldiers revolted against the imposed government. “The Kaiser fled the country, and the Weimar Republic was created but many Germans were disappointed with the Weimar Republic for signing the Treaty of Versailles. Germany was in chaos as the new republic tried to reestablish order, calling upon the Army to quell the revolution of soldiers and workers” (Foundation of the Nazi Party 2003). Volkish groups of that time period frequently held Jews responsible for the loss of World War I. They maintained that Jews joined forces with socialists and communists to defeat Germany. The anti-semitic ideas of the right wing volkish faction opposed the democratic principles of the leftwing liberal parties.
The volkish groups showed contempt for the Weimar Republic, condemning its willingness to sign the Treaty of Versailles. “From the perspective of extreme rightwing groups, the Weimar Republic was equated with the ‘Jew’ Republic. One of the many volkish groups that existed in 1919 was the German Workers’ Party, precursor to The National Socialist German Workers’ Party (The organization that launched Hitler’s accent to power). The party was based in Bavaria, where there were pitted battles between rightwing nationalist groups and the radical leftwing groups sympathetic to Communist ideas” (Foundation of the Nazi Party 2003).
The concept of the Volk for the ‘German Race’ to remain pure was loudly voiced by the Third Reich. The two identities, the German nationalistic influence of the Volk and the Jewish 2000-year-old persona as the Chosen People, were in direct contention. Conflicts of the two strong national identities in Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s developed over time. “The centrality of the Volkish, mystical base is emphasized, as is the position that the ideological framework for education was based on ideas found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and reflected in a 1919 letter by Hitler asserting that a ‘rational anti-semitism’ must be devised that would include facts establishing Jews as a ‘racial tuberculosis of the people, a race, rather than a religion, which must be removed.’” (Wegner 2002 p. 1). The Volkish ideology viewed the Aryan race of Germans as the successors to genuine western culture.
The original Aryan race theory was brought to the fore in the late 1800’s by Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He linked science with a mysticism of race combined with realistic thinking “at a time when social Darwinism enjoyed growing support among the newly emerging social sciences, especially anthropology” (Wegner 2002 p. 9). Chamberlain’s work abounds with quotations dedicated to the greatness of the Aryan nature as described in explicitly theological terms (Chaimberlain 1968 pp 19-20, 37).
The need for bloodline purity and the treacherous influence of the Jews was formed from the Volkish ideology regarding racial soul transmittal through bloodlines. “Julius Langbehn espoused the notion that the Aryans possessed the ‘life-force’ in a ‘life-fluid’ which flowed from the cosmos to the Volk. ‘Jews did not possess this ‘life fluid’ because they had ‘long ago forfeited their souls.’” (Mosse 1985 pp. 97-99). Nazi science could not be comprehended without the power of mysticism, an element with deep roots in the Volkish thought of the nineteenth century.
In 1962, Thomas Kuhn, in an attempt to understand the relationship between ideology, politics and a national identity, said, “Scientific knowledge, like all forms of knowledge, was and is culturally bound. One may well ask whose science was practiced and for which political and social ends” (Wegner 2002 p. 12). Race and science were used interchangeably by the Third Reich. Substituting racial prejudice as scientific fact remains a significant part of the legacy of Nazi education.
The manipulation of history as a propagandistic educational mechanism in Nazi Germany was a means of legitimizing the state. The Nazis decided whose history would be legitimized as an ideologically suitable agenda for interpreting the past (Wegner 2002 pp. 117, 141, 120). Nazi education policies and materials were effective as Hitler and his followers gained complete control of the German system of education, formal and informal.
History textbooks began to be rewritten from the Nazi point of view in the spirit of national character and of international reconciliation. “This led Nazi educator H. J. von Schumann to decry ‘the emphasis on everything foreign and neglect of the national values, both marks of the liberal school of the Marxist system, with the result that many pupils, especially in the secondary schools, were more familiar with foreign countries than with their own Fatherland.’” (Kandell 1935). Kandel quotes a Nazi writing on history: “Objectivity in the teaching of history is only one of the numerous fallacies of liberalism.”
Conclusion
Volkish ideology led to the emergence of a political theology with national socialist leanings. While the end of the second World War saw an end to ever-present references to the Volk, it remains viable and popular, if just in concept, even today by influencing German art, politics and religious life. Not all of the German nationalists were anti-Semitic or predisposed to volkish ideas but the romanticism of nationalism was not only a German occurrence.
In the history of England, for example, one finds a different kind of cultural nationalism than in Nazi Germany but what these ideologies share, whatever the particular nationality, is a sense of cultural superiority along with a degree of intolerance for people or cultures that do not fit the popular cultural ideal. Many would agree that a nation should consist of a people who share a common history, a common culture, and a common language. What some Germans added to culture definitions, as do some English, in their definition of nationalism, is race. Cultural nationalism, as has been discussed in this paper and, as was the conception of Volkism, is not always a harmless attempt to learn more about one’s own culture. As with any ideology, its practice is in the hands of the beholder.
References
Chamberlain, Houston Stewart. (1968). The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Vol. II. New York: Howard Fertig.
“Foundation of the Nazi Party.” (2003). Florida Holocaust Museum: Virtual History Wing. Web.
Iggers, George G. (1988). The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present. Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University/University Press of New England.
Iggers, George G. (2000). “The Uses and Misuses of History.” Apollon. pp. 1-3. Web.
Kandel, I. L. (1935; reprint 1970) The Making of Nazis. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Mosse, George L. (1985). Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Wegner, Gregory Paul. (2002). Anti-Semitism and Schooling Under the Third Reich. New York: Routledge Falmer Press.