Arnold Ruge (philosopher)

Arnold Ruge (born January 1, 1881 in Görlitz , † December 24, 1945 in Karlsruhe ) was a German philosopher, university professor of philosophy and ethnic nationalist and anti-Semite .

Family, Studies, and First Political Writings

The son of the banker of the Reichsbank Albrecht Ruge (1849–1910) in Görlitz was the great-nephew of the writer Arnold Ruge . His mother's name was Emeline (short form: Lina) Treutler. He was also related to the surgeon Rudolf Virchow .

After attending grammar schools in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt / Oder and Berlin, Ruge studied philosophy from 1903 in Zurich, in Strasbourg in 1904 and in Heidelberg from 1905, where he worked as an assistant in the philosophical seminar. In 1905 he wrote two pamphlets with the content of a nationalist idea on a racist basis. In these writings he railed against socialism , the Freemasons , clericalism and materialism. In doing so, he relied on extreme anti-Semitism and against all phenomena that stood in the way of a German national spirit that he understood. The university reprimanded him for these writings.

Doctorate and habilitation

He received his doctorate on February 2, 1908 with Wilhelm Windelband on the subject of transcendental freedom with Kant . In the same year he was the organizer of the III. International Congress for Philosophy in Heidelberg. In 1910 he achieved his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg with the thesis The Deduction of Practical and Moral Freedom from the Principles of Kant's Moral Doctrine , which was printed in the same year under the title The Problem of Freedom in Kant's Epistemology . There he then taught as a private lecturer in topics that included the areas of contemporary philosophy and the philosophy of Kant.

Women's movement, anti-Semitism and world war

In the following years there was a dispute between him and the women's movement in Heidelberg, in which Marianne Weber was also involved. This resulted in a clash with her husband, Max Weber , which escalated into a demand for a duel in 1911 . In this and other legal disputes he saw himself persecuted by Jewish professors and lawyers, and he found support from the physicist Philipp Lenard .

At the beginning of the First World War , he did not have to follow the draft because of an eye problem. However, he was active as a war speaker and represented the propaganda of a war of perseverance. Although he saw himself as an opponent of the women's movement, he wrote a pamphlet in 1915 with the title Mobilization of German Women's Forces for War . For this mission he was awarded the Baden War Merit Cross in September 1916. He then emerged as the editor of the series "Feldgraue Flugschriften".

Withdrawal of the license to teach

In 1919 the University of Heidelberg celebrated its founding date. He appeared on November 22nd as a speaker at an accompanying event of the German National Guard and Defense Association . In his performance he fell into violent attacks on the university and its Jewish teachers. He had spoken publicly against the "excesses of Jewish rule". This led to a complaint from the Heidelberg Working Group on Defense against Anti-Semitism and the Israelite Upper Consistory in Karlsruhe. The Baden Ministry of Education and Culture then initiated disciplinary proceedings against him. The university then revoked his license to teach in July 1920.

German Volkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund

Ruge was one of the "most violent Schutz- und Trutzbund agitators". In the spring of 1920, Ruge, together with Richard Kunze and Reinhold Wulle, founded the "Deutschvölkischer Arbeitsring Berlin", a company that competed with the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, but transferred to it in June of that year. From then on Ruge was active in the Bavarian part of the Schutz- und Trutzbund, where he, together with Lorenz Mesch and Rudolf John Gorsleben, operated its secession from the Federal Association and was therefore excluded from the Schutz- und Trutzbund in early 1922.

Freikorps and acquaintance with Himmler

In his biographical note with Degener, Ruge had stated that he was a private lecturer in Heidelberg until April 1933. Afterwards he was the head of cultural policy at the Berlin School of Politics.

Politically he was active in the Freikorps Oberland . When a faction split off from it in 1922/23, he assumed the leading role in the Blücherbund through his acquaintance with Rudolf Schäfer (* 1885) . Ruge moved to Munich and got to know Heinrich Himmler there. With him he founded a publishing house Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH in Munich. In Munich, too, he was involved in numerous legal disputes that made him widely known. In early 1923 he distanced himself from the NSDAP, but not from Hitler . Ruge accused the National Socialists of having betrayed the true nationalist and anti-capitalist commandments through an alliance with the DNVP ; in addition, Hitler was surrounded by “scrap”.

In June 1923, Ruge had to serve a one-year prison sentence in Landsberg . After his release from prison, he temporarily returned to Baden, where he founded the German Volkische Reichspartei (DVRP) together with National Socialists and Völkische, who opposed the leadership of the National Socialist Freedom Party (NSFP) . The NSFP served as a substitute organization for the NSDAP, which was banned after the Hitler putsch . In the Reichstag election in December 1924 , Ruge was the top candidate for the only DVRP running in Baden. The party remained meaningless with around 3,400 votes or 0.3% of the vote in Baden.

Rejection by the NSDAP

In 1926, Ruge wrote a pamphlet Mortal Sin, Ways and Ways of a People , which no longer contained attacks only on Judaism, but also on Christianity. At the end of 1932, Ruge, who saw himself as an early National Socialist, offered the NSDAP to work, but was rejected. He was believed to be a troublemaker, and continued to do so after he joined the party in 1933.

After the NSDAP came to power, he was given a position as archivist in the General State Archives in Karlsruhe from June 1934 . In 1936 he wrote a book for Heinrich Himmler entitled “The medieval witch trials. A section from the German Kulturkampf ". In March 1938 he took up a teaching position at the TH Karlsruhe .

Ruge's estate included a photo of a painting by the painter Oskar Hagemann , which was on view in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in 1938 . It was called the pioneer Prof. Dr. Arnold Ruge . In the exhibition catalog, where it has the number 87, there is the note: Bought from the guide . There is no information about the whereabouts of this oil painting.

On March 28, 1912, he was married to Elisabeth Kundt (* 1888), whose father ran a well-known bookshop in Karlsruhe. The son Albrecht Ernst Ruge (January 13, 1913) emerged from the marriage.

Fonts

• Critical consideration and presentation of German student life , 1906
• The Philosophy of the Present , 1910 to 1915, as editor of an international annual report
• The Nature of the University and the Study of Women , 1912
• Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences , in conjunction with Wilhelm Windelband Ruge as publisher, Tübingen 1912
• Introduction to Philosophy , 1914
• Mobilization of the German women's forces for the war , 1915
• Wilhelm Windelband , 1917
• Mortal sin, ways and astray of a people , 1926
• National Science , 1940

Sources and literature

• Herrmann AL Degener , who is it? , Berlin 1935
• Emil Julius Gumbel , Conspirator - On the History and Sociology of the German Nationalist Secret Societies 1918–1924 , Frankfurt / Main 1984, pp. 210–212
• Hansmartin Schwarzmaier: Ruge, Arnold Paul. In: Bernd Ottnad (Ed.): Badische Biographien . New series, volume 4. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-17-010731-3 , pp. 244-247 ( online ).
• Konrad Krimm : The Baden General State Archives in the Nazi state. Battleground, niche, storage room? In: Archive and Public, Stuttgart 1997, pp. 75–108
• Klaus Graf : An anti-church martial art by Himmler by Arnold Ruges (1881–1945) on the witch trials (1936) , in: Himmler's Hexenkartothek. The interest of national socialism in the witch hunt, ed. by Sönke Lorenz, Dieter R. Bauer, Wolfgang Behringer and Jürgen Michael Schmidt (= Hexenforschung 4), Bielefeld 1999.
• Bruno Jahn: Biographical Encyclopedia of the German-Speaking Philosophers . Munich 2001.
• Werner Bergmann / Christof Czech: Ruge, Arnold jr. , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/2, 2009, pp. 704–706

Web links

• Rough's role in the Blücherbund

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Uwe Lohalm: Völkischer Radikalismus: The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923 . Leibniz-Verlag, Hamburg 1970, p. 224. ISBN 3-87473-000-X .
2. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 258.
3. ↑ Lohalm 1970, pp. 261f.
4. ↑ ^{a b} John Peter Horst Grill: The Nazi movement in Baden, 1920-1945. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1983, ISBN 0-8078-1472-5 , pp. 105 f.