German Monist Association

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The Deutscher Monistenbund was a free-thinking organization of the early 20th century. It was founded in Jena in 1906 by the natural scientist Ernst Haeckel . The aim of the federal government was to organize and spread a monistic worldview. Initially, the association was very popular and gained 6,000 members by 1912, including a number of prominent names such as Wilhelm Ostwald , Wilhelm Bölsche , Karl Hauptmann , Friedrich Jodl and Bruno Wille . The basic orientation was internationalist and pacifist , but there was seldom agreement on current issues. Within the Confederation, the question of the attitude to the First World War and the November Revolution were particularly controversial. In the early days of the Weimar Republic there were various splits. In 1929 the federal government still had 3200 members. The federal government was banned and dissolved by the National Socialists on December 16, 1933 .

Foundation of the Monistenbund

The foundation of the German Monist Association was completed on January 11, 1906 in Jena . Ernst Haeckel had already proposed such a founding act in September 1904 in Rome, where he took part in the International Freethinker Congress. There Haeckel was solemnly proclaimed " antipope " on the occasion of a joint breakfast .

With the Monistenbund the existing, very heterogeneous monistic efforts found an overarching organizational framework, which was decidedly on a scientific basis in the sense of Haeckel, in which however not all representatives of the monism were integrated. With the Monistenbund was supported by free-thinking-driven organizations, a new free-thinking movement that had a decidedly philosophical and scientific education character. The Monistenbund also had numerous Jewish members. Like other organizations of the free religious and free spiritual movement, he developed an independent secular celebration culture.

The aim of the Monistenbund is expressed in the call for founding:

“Thousands upon thousands no longer find satisfaction in the old worldview, sanctified by tradition or custom; they are looking for a new, scientifically based, unified worldview. "

The reform theologian Albert Kalthoff from Bremen became the first chairman . Heinrich Schmidt became general secretary .

The founding members and personalities who signed the founding appeal included the writers Wilhelm Bölsche , Albrecht Rau and Bruno Wille , the philosopher and poet Bartolomäus von Caneri , the painter and sculptor Franz von Stuck , the zoologist and writer , in addition to the personalities already mentioned Carl Hauptmann , the free religious preacher Carl Scholl , the preacher Oskar Mauritz , the zoologists Konrad Keller , Ludwig Plate , Richard Semon and Heinrich Ernst Ziegler , the botanist Arnold Dodel , the psychiatrist and ant researcher Auguste Forel , the doctor Wilhelm Schallmayer , the publisher Wilhelm Breitenbach , the publishing bookseller Walther Keller (Franckh'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung) and the private secretary Haeckels, Heinrich Schmidt .

As a result, the Austrian Monist Association (1909: local group Vienna of the DMB; 1913: Monist Association in Austria), the Swiss Monist Association (1913) and the Czech Socialist Monist Association (1913) further founded monist-oriented organizations.

Wilhelm Breitenbach, who had studied from 1877 to 1880 at Haeckel Zoology and its magazine for the Monistenbund 1906 monism served as publisher and editor, came out because of disagreements with other members in 1908 from the Monistenbund and founded the same year the magazine New belief and 1911 the Humboldtbund as an independent monistic organization.

Goals and direction of the Monistenbund

The monist union was intended to spread the ideas of the monist movement and the organization of its followers. To this end, the federation, which sees itself as non-partisan, relies on cultural policy . Members should be reached through pamphlets, books and lectures. The Monistenbund commented on current issues at its annual general meetings ("Monistenage").

While monism basically claimed to present a comprehensive explanation of the world in the form of holistic natural philosophy , scientific positivism and materialism , the implementation of monism was heterogeneous. Ernst Haeckel advocated a pantheistic approach based on the theory of descent and social Darwinism , in which Christianity was to be replaced by a religiously understood monism . Wilhelm Ostwald wanted to trace all world events back to energy ( energetism ). Ernst Mach relied on epistemological sensualism and August Forel on mediating the mind-body problem .

The general program of the Monistenbund attracted people from different political camps. The Monistenbund included folk- oriented members such as Willibald Hentschel and Wilhelm Schallmayer as well as the women's rights activist Helene Stöcker , the sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and the pacifist Carl von Ossietzky .

The Monistenbund was therefore able to position itself very differently on issues of day-to-day and cultural policy. Among other things, he campaigned for the simultaneous school with non-denominational "moral lessons", for a new formula of oath , complete separation of church and state, health certificates for marriages and for cremation . The question of whether the Monistenbund should limit itself to a role as a defense organization against church and state or should develop a free religious cult itself was controversial . The question of “euthanasia”, in which Haeckel had positioned himself as a proponent, was also controversial. When Roland Gerkan, who had a serious lung disease , called for the right to euthanasia for the terminally ill in the magazine of the Monistenbund in 1913 , Ostwald Gerkan agreed. Federal member Wilhelm Börner , however, raised concerns and criticized the imprecise definition of the group of people who, according to Gerkan, should receive euthanasia. Individual opinions were exchanged in such discussions. There was no official statement by the Monistenbund on racial hygiene or euthanasia.

Mainly through the commitment of Wilhelm Ostwald, the activities of the Monistenbund were directed against the churches. The federal “non-denominational committee” supported the “church exit movement” and carried out anti-clerical education work.

With the outbreak of the First World War , the internal contradictions of the Monistenbund, whose worldview tended towards internationalism and pacifism , could hardly be overcome . During the Weimar Republic , the federal government was primarily concerned with ethical and socio-ethical issues. Its internationalism and the fact that some leading monists called for anti-Semitism to be outlawed brought the Bund into opposition to the National Socialists .

Further development of the Monistenbund

The Monistenbund participated in the establishment of the Weimar cartel in 1907 . Several free-thinking and free-spirited organizations came together here. In addition to the Monistenbund, the German Freethinkers Association , which was founded by Ludwig Büchner in 1881 , the German Society for Ethical Culture (founded in 1892), the Association for Secular School and Moral Education , the German Association for Maternity Protection and Sexual Reform of the women's rights activist Helene Stöcker as well as some other smaller associations. The Federation of Free Religious Congregations in Germany did not join, but was close to the Weimar cartel. The aims of the Weimar cartel were the "free development of intellectual life and defense against all oppression", the separation of school and church and the complete secularization of the state ( separation of state and church , secularism ).

On December 29, 1910, the natural scientist and Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Ostwald declared in a letter to Ernst Haeckel that he was ready to take over the chairmanship of the Monistenbund. Ostwald was confirmed as the first chairman of the German Monist Association on September 9, 1911 by the general assembly at the fifth general assembly of the DMB in Hamburg. It was mainly thanks to his commitment that the Monist League was able to develop extremely successfully before the First World War. Ostwald arranged for the general meetings of the German Monist Union, held in 1911 (Hamburg), 1912 (Magdeburg) and 1913 (Düsseldorf), to be organized as international congresses, which met with a broad response both at home and abroad. The first international monist congress from September 9-11, 1911 in Hamburg with 850 active participants and more than three thousand listeners was a great success. Ostwald closed it with the words: "I hereby close the international monist congress and open the monist century". Since 1911, the social reform orientation of the Monistenbund also increased.

Despite the bourgeois-elitist orientation of the Monistenbund, he also cooperated with organizations of the labor movement and, in a joint committee of the Weimar cartel, called for people to leave the church. Karl Liebknecht and Wilhelm Ostwald appeared as speakers at four Berlin meetings on October 28, 1913 with a total of 8,000 participants .

At the beginning of the First World War, Haeckel and Ostwald, who had previously represented pacifist and cosmopolitan positions, defended German participation in the war and expressed themselves increasingly nationalistically . Haeckel and Ostwald signed the appeal to the cultural world against “England's blood guilt” in October 1914 , which was also signed by Max Planck and 90 other professors. The pacifist wing, however, put massive pressure on Ostwald. Forel, Kammerer and Goldscheid remained strictly pacifist even during the war. The resulting conflicts led to the resignation of Ostwald from the chairmanship of the Monist Union on May 14, 1915, mainly due to the massive protests of the Austrian Monist Union. In 1917 Ostwald resigned from the German Peace Society in protest . In 1920, based on the Hamburg theses, at a conference in Weimar, the Monistenbund was oriented towards socialism.

After the First World War, the Monistenbund became clearly pacifist again. The socialist orientation increased, which was partly due to the influence of the former president of the Austrian Monist Association Rudolf Goldscheid and the Swiss psychiatrist and neuroanatomist Auguste Forel.

Chairwoman of the German Monist Association

  • Albert Kalthoff (1906), Protestant theologian, pastor at St. Martini in Bremen since 1888
  • Eduard Aigner (1906/1907), neurologist in Freiburg
  • Heinrich Koerber (1907–1910), psychologist, board member of the Medical Society for Sexology and Eugenics / Constitutional Research
  • Johannes Unold (1910/1911), educator and sociologist
  • Wilhelm Ostwald (1911–1915), chemist and philosopher, professor in Riga and Leipzig, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1909
  • Franz Karl Müller-Lyer (1915/1916), psychologist, sociologist, general practitioner
  • Heinrich Schmidt (1919/1920), biologist and natural philosopher
  • Georg Graf von Arco (1921/1922), electrical engineer, technical director, high-frequency technician
  • Carl Riess (1923–1929), businessman, long-time chairman of the Hamburg branch of the DMB
  • Immanuel Herrmann (1929–1933), university professor for electrical engineering, Württemberg Minister of War 1919, SPD politician

Honorary presidents of the German Monist Association were Ernst Haeckel (from 1906), Wilhelm Ostwald (from 1915) and Rudolf Goldscheid (from 1917: Honorary President of the Austrian Monist Association; 1925 of the DMB). In 1913 Wilhelm Knaupp (1835–1916) was appointed an honorary member of the German Monist Association by the 7th general meeting of the DMB in Düsseldorf.

On June 17, 1913, the Vienna branch of the German Monist Union was constituted by changing the statutes to become the Monist Union in Austria, Vienna. Office: Bookstore Brothers Suschitzky, Vienna X. Favoritenstrasse 57. Between 1913 and 1920 was the sociologist, social reformer and social democrat Rudolf Goldscheid (1870–1931), who joined the Monistenbund in 1911 and was elected chairman of the Vienna branch on March 29, 1912, President of the Monistenbund in Austria.

opponent

In response to the work of the German Monist Association, the Protestant Kepler Association was founded in 1907 , in which the theistic scientific opponents of Darwin's theory of evolution and Haeckel's materialism were formed.

Succession organization

In 1946, the Monistenbund was founded in Munich as a Free Spiritual Action - Deutscher Monistenbund . The Freigeistige Aktion / Deutscher Monistenbund eV is a member of the umbrella organization of free ideological communities and of the International Humanistic and Ethical Union .

literature

  • Adrian Brücker: The monistic natural philosophy in the German-speaking area around 1900 and its consequences. Reconstruction and critical appraisal of scientific hegemonic claims in philosophy and science. wvb, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86573-641-3 (Simultaneously slightly modified version from: Bielefeld, Universität, Dissertation, 2011).
  • Ulrich Dankmeier: Science and Christianity in Conflict. The construction of competing world views under the influence of the scientific paradigm by the Deutscher Monistenbund and the Keplerbund at the beginning of the 20th century. Frankfurt am Main 2007 (Frankfurt am Main, University, dissertation, 2008).
  • Horst Groschopp : Dissidents. Freethinking and culture in Germany. Dietz, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-320-01936-8 .
  • Karl Hansel (eds.): Rudolf Goldscheid and Wilhelm Ostwald in their letters (= communications from the Wilhelm Ostwald Society in Großbothen eV special issue 21, ISSN  1433-3910 ). Board of Directors of the Wilhelm Ostwald Society, Großbothen 2004.
  • Horst Hillermann: The association-like union of bourgeois ideological reform reason in the monism movement of the 19th century. (= Series of publications on history and political education. Vol. 16). Henn, Kastellaun 1976, ISBN 3-450-07924-7 .
  • Arnher E. Lenz, Volker Mueller (eds.): Darwin, Haeckel and the consequences. Past and present monism. Lenz, Neustadt am Rübenberge 2006, ISBN 3-933037-56-5 .
  • Wolfgang Mattern: Founding and first development of the Deutscher Monistenbund 1906–1918. Berlin 1983 (Berlin, Free University, medical dissertation, 1983).
  • Rosemarie Nöthlich, Heiko Weber, Uwe Hoßfeld , Olaf Breidbach , Erika Krauße (eds.): "Substance monism " and / or "Energetics". The correspondence between Ernst Haeckel and Wilhelm Ostwald (1910 to 1918). On the 100th anniversary of the founding of the German Monist Association (= Ernst Haeckel Haus Studies. Vol. 10 = Edition Ostwald. Vol. 1). VWB, Publishing House for Science and Education, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86135-490-X .
  • Frank Simon-Ritz: The organization of a worldview. The free-spirited movement in Wilhelminian Germany (= Religious cultures of modernity. Vol. 5). Kaiser, Gütersloh 1997, ISBN 3-579-02604-6 (also: Bielefeld, University, dissertation, 1994/1995).
  • Heiko Weber: Monistic and antimonistic worldview. A selected bibliography (= Ernst Haeckel Haus Studies. Vol. 1). VWB, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86135-480-2 (A compilation of hundreds of monographs and essays that are more or less closely related to the monist union and the monism movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, excellent tool!).
  • Heiko Weber, Maurizio Di Bartolo, Olaf Breidbach: Editorial: Monism around 1900 - Organization and Weltanschauung. In: Yearbook for European Scientific Culture. Vol. 3, 2007, ISSN  1860-7837 , pp. 7-18.
  • Richard Weikart: "Evolutionary Enlightenment"? On the history of the Monistenbund. In: Mitchell G. Ash , Christian H. Stifter: Science, politics and the public. From Viennese modernism to the present (=  Viennese lectures. Vol. 12). WUV-Universitäts-Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85114-664-6 , pp. 131–145.
  • Paul Ziche (Ed.): Monism around 1900. Scientific culture and worldview (= Ernst Haeckel House Studies. Vol. 4). VWB, Publishing House for Science and Education, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86135-483-7 .

Magazines

  • 1906–1912: Monism. Journal for a unified worldview and cultural policy. Sheets of the German Monist Association. ZDB ID 516897-1 .
  • 1912–1915: The one-tier century. Journal for scientific worldview and world design. ZDB ID 516905-7 .
  • 1916–1919: Notices from the German Monist Association. ZDB ID 516890-9 .
  • 1920–1931: Monistic monthly books. Monthly for scientific worldview and lifestyle. ZDB ID 516898-3 .
  • 1932–1933: Voice of Reason. Monthly booklet for scientific worldview and lifestyle. ZDB ID 516883-1 .
  • 1947–1956: Monistic messages. New episode. ZDB ID 516891-0 .
  • 1957–1990: The free spirit campaign. For freedom of spirit and humanity. Against superstition and clericalism. ISSN  1615-6641 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Groschopp: Dissidents. 1997, p. 394.
  2. ↑ List of the founding members in: Heiko Weber: Monistic and Antimonistic Weltanschauung. 2000, p. 20 f.
  3. ↑ a b Joachim Mehlhausen, Daniela Dunkel: Art. Monismus / Monistenbund . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Vol. XXIII. Berlin 1994, p. 216.
  4. ↑ Uwe Hossfeld: History of biological anthropology in Germany. From the beginning until the post-war period. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, p. 247.
  5. ↑ Udo Benzenhöfer : The good death? History of euthanasia and euthanasia. 2nd Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, p. 86f.
  6. ↑ Uwe Hossfeld: History of biological anthropology in Germany. From the beginning until the post-war period. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, p. 248.
  7. ^ Uwe Hoßfeld, Olaf Breidbach: Ernst Haeckels politicization of biology . Thuringia Sheets on Regional Studies No. 54 (2005) PDF ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lzt-thueringen.de
  8. ↑ Joachim Mehlhausen, Daniela Dunkel: Art. Monismus / Monistenbund . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Vol. XXIII, Berlin 1994, p. 217.
  9. ^ A b Horst Groschopp: Dissidents. 1997, p. 393.
  10. ↑ Richard Weikart: "Evolutionary Enlightenment"? On the history of the Monistenbund. 2002, p. 143 f.
  11. ↑ Richard Weikart: "Evolutionary Enlightenment"? On the history of the Monistenbund. 2002, p. 144.
  12. ↑ Karl Hansel (Ed.): Rudolf Goldscheid and Wilhelm Ostwald in their letters. 2004, p. 20f.
  13. ↑ Free- spirited action