Artur Dinter

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Artur Dinter

Artur Dinter (born June 27, 1876 in Mulhouse ; † May 21, 1948 in Offenburg ) was a German anti-Semitic writer , founder of the German Volkskirche and ethnic politician .

Life

Artur Dinter was born in Mulhouse in Alsace as the son of the customs councilor Joseph Dinter and his wife Berta, nee. Hoffmann, born and baptized Catholic. After passing the school leaving examination, he studied natural sciences and philosophy in Munich and Strasbourg from 1895 . From 1901 to 1903 he was employed as an assistant for chemistry at the University of Strasbourg. In 1903 he received his doctorate with the final grade "summa cum laude" . He had already made attempts at writing during his studies. His play The Smugglers (1906) won a first prize.

After receiving his doctorate, Dinter was director of the botanical school gardens in Strasbourg. In 1904 he went to Istanbul as a senior teacher at a German school . In 1905 he changed his job and became director of the theater in Thann , in his native Alsace. From 1906 to 1908 he worked as a director at the Stadttheater in Rostock and at the Schillertheater in Berlin and at the same time founded the “Association of German Stage Writers” (VDB) in 1908, from which he was excluded in 1917. From 1909 to 1914 he was director of the associated theater publishing house. Dinter was also a member of the anti-Semitic and colonialist Pan-German Association .

First World War

At the First World War Dinter participated as a lieutenant in the reserve of an Alsatian Infantry Regiment and was soon part to captain promoted the reserve and with the Iron Cross awarded second class. In 1915 he fell ill with cholera , in 1916 he was in hospitals for a long time due to severe wounds and then had to be discharged from military service. During his stay in the hospital he had become acquainted with the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and quickly became a supporter of the Volkish movement .

Volkish bestselling author

In 1919 he settled in Weimar as a freelance writer , after his “sexual anti-Semitic” (Gerhard Henschel) bestseller The Sin Against the Blood had appeared in 1917 . In this propagandistic novel, Dinter accentuates the alleged preference of Jewish men for blonde women several times in order to then point out the supposedly fatal consequences of such connections. By 1934 he had a total print run of over 260,000 copies and translated the racist and folk ideas of his time into literary stereotypes . After the First World War, he decisively strengthened the anti-Semitism of Wilhelm II in his Doorner exile . Encouraged by its great success, this novel became the first volume in a trilogy to be called The Sins of Time .

Völkische Movement and NSDAP

Dinter's thinking became increasingly radical and racist in the years after the war. In 1919 he had already taken part in the founding of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and was a member of the board until it was banned in 1922. He then became a founding member of the German National Freedom Party (DVFP) and came into closer contact with Adolf Hitler . After the Nazi coup attempt in Munich in 1923, Dinter was elected to the Thuringian state parliament in 1924 as a representative of the “ Völkisch-Sozialer Block ” (VSB) and parliamentary group leader. He increasingly approached the positions of the NSDAP. While still in custody in Landsberg am Lech, Hitler appointed him NSDAP Gauleiter of Thuringia . At the same time, Dinter was the editor of the Weimar newspaper Der Nationalozialist . Hard arguments followed with his companions from the VSB, which led to his exclusion. In 1925, after the early dismissal of Adolf Hitler, the NSDAP was re-established. For his loyalty to the party, Dinter received the low party number 5.

Religious special course

It soon emerged that Dinter had primarily religious goals. In 1927 he founded the “Spiritual Christian Religious Community”, which was renamed “German People's Church” in 1934, which proclaimed an “Aryan heroic teaching of Jesus”. Their goal was to “de-Jew” Christian teaching. The Old Testament was rejected as Jewish. Dinter's special course immediately led to conflicts with Adolf Hitler, who deposed him as Gauleiter on September 30, 1927 . Dinter was deeply affected by this and launched attacks on Hitler in his magazine Das Geistchristentum , which led to his final expulsion from the NSDAP on October 11, 1928. The polemics against Hitler continued over the next few years . In 1932 he and his “Dinterbund” even became an election competitor of the NSDAP.

The end of the road

Three months after Hitler came to power , Dinter applied to the NSDAP for his resumption, which was rejected. In 1934 he published Die Deutsche Volkskirche as a servant of the National Socialist People's State , with which he again tried to ingratiate himself with the Nazi system. He found himself increasingly under surveillance by the Gestapo , who took him into custody for a short time. In 1937 Heinrich Himmler banned his "German People's Church" . In 1939 he was even expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer and had to answer for a violation in 1942 before a special court in Freiburg im Breisgau . In 1945 he was sentenced to a fine of 1,000 Reichsmarks in a denazification process in Offenburg . Although his outsider position had been taken into account, the court saw in him one of the spiritual fathers of the Nuremberg race laws .

Artur Dinter died on May 21, 1948 in Offenburg at the age of 71.

reception

Well-known parodies of Dinter's novel The Sin Against the Blood are The Ink Against the Blood. A Zeitroman (1917) by Hans Reimann and a parody published by Robert Neumann in his volume Unter Falscher Flagge (1932). Emil Felden resolutely fought Dinter's anti-Semitism in his novel Sin Against the People (1921). Like Dinter, he made use of both a fictional (main) part and an extensive commentary part in the structure and structure of this work . In this appendix, Felden refutes Dinter's pseudoscientific anti-Jewish allegations with theological-scientific arguments, which he also underpins by citing various sources.

The Protestant theologian, orientalist and professor of Old Testament exegesis Hermann Leberecht Strack described the novel as a “sin against art”, “against the fatherland” and as a “sin against science”. In Dinter's theological remarks, he showed him numerous errors. The racial hygienist and professor Fritz Lenz , who on the one hand rejected the “mixing of very different races” such as “Teutons” and “Jews”, nevertheless strongly criticized the scientific foundation of the novel: Dinter wanted to explain “facts about racial biology”, but needed this explanation First and foremost himself. Also the theory of impregnation or telegony advocated by Dinter (which was later mainly propagated by Julius Streicher in his anti-Semitic smear newspaper Der Stürmer ), according to which an “Aryan” woman never after one-time sexual intercourse with a “non-Aryan” man could have "pure" offspring again (not even from "Aryan" partners), was rejected as scientifically untenable by Lenz, who also noted a corresponding superstition in animal breeding circles, citing "the numerous experiences and attempts of scientific hereditary research".

Works (in selection)

  • Youth crowd. Letters and diary sheets from a youth , 1897
  • D 'smuggler. Alsatian comedy. Play in 4 acts , 1904
  • The demon. Play in five acts , 1906
  • The Iron Cross. Volksstück in 5 acts , 1913
  • World War I and the Schaubühne , 1916
  • My exclusion from the "Association of German Stage Writers" in 1917
  • Rays of light from the Talmud , 1919
  • The Sins of Time (Trilogy)
  • The Struggle for Spiritual Teaching , 1921
  • The Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, according to the reports of John, Mark, Luke and Matthew in the Spirit of Truth , 1923
  • Volkish program speech in the Thuringian state parliament , 1924
  • Origin, goal and path of the German national freedom movement. The Volkisch-Social Program , 1924
  • 197 theses on completing the Reformation. The Restoration of the Pure Doctrine of Savior , 1924

literature

  • Hermann Ahrens : We are suing! The former party comrade No. 5, Artur Dinter, Gauleiter of the NSDAP in Thuringia. In: Structure: Kulturpolitische Monatsschrift , 3, Berlin 1947, pp. 288–290.
  • Hans Beck: Artur Dinter's Spiritual Christianity. The attempt at a “species-appropriate” transformation of the Word of God. Evang. Press association for Germany, Berlin-Steglitz 1935.
  • Manfred Bosch : Race and religion are one! Artur Dinter's “Sin against the Blood” or autopsy of a terrible bestseller. In: The Ortenau. 71 (1991), pp. 596-621.
  • Hans Buchheim : Faith Crisis in the Third Reich. Three chapters of National Socialist religious policy. German publishing company, Stuttgart 1953.
  • Günter Hartung : Artur Dinter, successful author of early National Socialism , in: Günter Hartung: German Fascist Literature and Aesthetics , Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2001, ISBN 3-934565-92-1 , pp. 99–124
  • Gerhard Henschel : "The sin against the blood". Visiting a sexual anti-Semitic bestseller. In: Gerhard Henschel: Envy Scream. Anti-semitism and sexuality. Hoffmann & Campe , Hamburg 2008, ISBN 3-455-09497-X , pp. 25–46 - detailed presentation ( reading sample with excerpts from Dinter's text ( memento of June 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ); PDF; 111 kB).
  • Uwe Hirschauer: Artur Dinter, the anti-Semitic spiritualist. In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-89528-719-0 , pp. 49-74.
  • Kurt Meier : The German Christians. The image of a movement in the church struggle of the Third Reich. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1964.
  • Kurt Meier: Cross and Swastika. The Protestant Church in the Third Reich (= dtv Wissenschaft; 4590). Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag , Munich 1992, ISBN 3-423-04590-6 .
  • Ingrid Rauschenbach: Anti-Semitism and Colportage Novels. On the structure and ideology of AD's novel “Sin against the Blood”. With special consideration of the literary and intellectual historical requirements and the reception of the book. Master's thesis in German studies, TU Berlin 1981 (1980?); unpublished.
  • Hans Reimann (under the pseudonym "Artur Sünder"): The ink against the blood. 39th, runaway and screwed up edition, 640. – 683. Ts. Muchm. verb. u. Probably edition, 11. – 20. Ts .; Steegemann, Hannover 1921. (Parody of Dinter's "Sünde ..." with 39 pages. The stated number of copies is meant satirically.)
  • James M. Ritchie: Artur Dinter's Anti-Semitic Trilogy. In: Fernand Hoffmann, Joseph Kohnen (ed.): Festschrift for Alfred Schneider. Mélanges pour AS (= Publications du Center Universitaire de Luxembourg, German Studies, Fasc. 3). Saint-Paul, Luxemburg 1991, pp. 179-194.
  • Volker Roelcke: novel of racial purity. "The sin against the blood" by Artur Dinter (1917/1918). In: Dirk van Laak (ed.): Literature that wrote history. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-30015-2 , pp. 165-181.
  • Josef Schmidt: Artur Dinter's 'Radical Novel' “The Sin Against the Blood” (1917): Trivial Stereotypes and Apocalyptic Prelude. In: Friedrich Gaede u. a. (Ed.): Behind the black curtain. The disaster and the epic tradition. Tübingen 1994, pp. 129-138.
  • Andreas Schulz, Matthias WolfesDinter, Artur. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 18, Bautz, Herzberg 2001, ISBN 3-88309-086-7 , Sp. 350-360.
  • Paul Weyland : The sin against common sense. An argument with Artur Dinter. Self-published, Berlin 1921.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Kay Dohnke: Short biography of Artur Dinter. In: Uwe Puschner , Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Saur, Munich 1996, p. 902.
  2. Gerhard Henschel: Envy Scream. Anti-semitism and sexuality. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2008.
  3. Mirjam Kübler: Judas Iskariot: the occidental image of Judas and its anti-Semitic instrumentalization in National Socialism , publisher: Spenner 2007, p. 207.
  4. Lothar Machtan: The Emperor's Son with Hitler. Hamburg 2006, p. 144.
  5. ^ A b Jürgen Hillesheim, Elisabeth Michael: Lexicon of National Socialist Poets: Biographies, Analyzes, Bibliographies . Königshausen and Neumann (1993), ISBN 978-3-88479-511-8 , p. 101 online
  6. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second, updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 112.
  7. Myriam Spörri: Pure and mixed blood: On the cultural history of blood group research, 1900-1933. transcript, Bielefeld 2013, p. 82 f.
  8. Dinter was therefore initially a member of the German Workers' Party , the forerunner of the NSDAP. Hitler had the NSDAP no. 7. Dinter's DAP membership is not proven anywhere else. Ahrens was a Nazi insider.