Houston Stewart Chamberlain

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Houston Stewart Chamberlain (born September 9, 1855 in Portsmouth , England , † January 9, 1927 in Bayreuth ) was an English-German French and German-speaking writer , author of numerous popular scientific works, including on Richard Wagner , Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , with a Pan-Germanic and anti-Semitic attitude. His best-known work is The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), which became a standard work on racist and ideological anti-Semitism in Germany .

Childhood and Adolescence (1855–1878)

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born in Portsmouth, Southsea, and came from a wealthy aristocratic family. Chamberlain's mother died soon after he was born. Chamberlain and his father, Rear Admiral William Charles Chamberlain , remained strangers throughout their lives, mainly because Chamberlain and his brothers spent the next ten years in Versailles with their grandmother and an aunt and hardly ever saw their father. His older brother, Basil Hall Chamberlain, was a Japanologist and professor at the Imperial University of Tokyo . He is not closely related to the politician Neville Chamberlain .

In 1866 Chamberlain returned to England, as his father did not like to see his son becoming more and more estranged from his homeland and starting to speak better French than English . The shy and sensitive boy did not get along in the new school and was exposed to constant hostility from his classmates. This feeling of being a stranger in his own country - developed at an early age - later favored his turning to Germanness. In 1869 he returned to France due to health problems and spent the next nine years traveling through Europe with his aunt.

Probably the most important influence on Chamberlain's newly awakened love for Germanness was the German theology student and later pastor of the German Protestant community in San Remo Otto Kuntze . He helped the poorly ill but very interested boy to organize his studies and encouraged his interest in Shakespeare and the studies of nature. Chamberlain himself, stimulated by Kuntze's German lessons, began to occupy himself more and more with German literature in addition to French classics. Goethe, Schiller and Kant were among his favorite authors.

In 1873 Chamberlain had to return to England under pressure from his father, who hoped for his son a career in the British Army. Since the harsh English climate was detrimental to Chamberlain's health and Chamberlains had no ambitions for his father's ideas, he was allowed to return to France. He was given an annual annuity, which enabled him to live a relatively independent life outside of his family's sphere of influence. During a stay in Aarmühle, Switzerland, renamed Interlaken in 1891 , he met the renowned lawyer Oscar Borchardt (1845-1917) through Lieutenant Reinhold von Twardowski (1851-1933) . Chamberlain writes in his memoirs, life paths of my thinking about Borchardt: "I would find it difficult if I wanted to list all the germs of future education that I owe to this friend". The fact that Borchardt came from a Jewish family will probably have remained hidden from him. In the winter of 1874 Chamberlain met his future first wife Anna Horst in Cannes . In 1878, after the death of his father, the two married and traveled for several months through Europe until they settled in Geneva in 1879 and Chamberlain began studying science at the University of Geneva .

Study and stay in Dresden (1879–1888)

Franz von Lenbach : Portrait of Houston Stewart Chamberlains, around 1902

Due to his diligence and ambition, Chamberlain passed the Baccalaureus exam in 1881 and soon afterwards began his doctoral thesis, which dealt with root pressure in plants. Unexpected problems and time-consuming experiments kept delaying completion. A severe nervous breakdown in the autumn of 1884 resulted; it led to years of interruption in his scientific research.

Bad health and financial difficulties due to various stock market transactions, Chamberlain found himself again dependent on his family. Once again with an annuity, he moved to Dresden with his wife . On the one hand, life in Germany was cheaper than in Switzerland ; on the other hand, the two were attracted by the cultural offerings of theater and music there. Convinced by his doctors that an academic career would damage his compromised health even more, Chamberlain not only filled his excess free time with numerous cultural activities, but also delved into the study of Kant and Plato . Both authors found careful consideration in his later works.

He was also actively involved in the local Wagner club. At first relatively unknown, Chamberlain published his first German-language article in 1888, which aroused the attention and interest of the so-called inner Wahnfried circle around Cosima Wagner . The introverted Chamberlain had a lifelong friendship with her, which is documented in an extensive correspondence.

Vienna (1888–1908)

Houston Stewart Chamberlain 1895

After Chamberlain recovered from his nervous breakdown , he decided to complete the science studies he began in Geneva as part of his doctoral thesis within a year. When his work was published in 1897 under the title Recherches sur la sève ascendante , Chamberlain was no longer interested in submitting it to the University of Geneva as a doctoral thesis. He received fame and recognition even without an academic title, and the avowed dilettante was now able to devote himself fully to writing.

Chamberlain was also in constant contact with the Wahnfried Circle in Vienna. Cosima Wagner recommended Arthur de Gobineau's essay on the inequality of human races to read ( Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (1853–1855) ). He compared the statements in the book with the ethnicity conflicts observed every day in Vienna (e.g. in connection with the Baden language ordinance ), and he increasingly felt that German culture should be protected from “foreign” influences and the consequences of “racial mixing “Having to protect. The “degeneracy” of Vienna, which he believed he was seeing, made him all the more receptive to the political and religious “redemption” propagated by the Bayreuth circle around Cosima Wagner.

After Bayreuth, Vienna was the second major center of the Wagner cult. It was in these environments that Chamberlain began to work on his first major work, a biography of Richard Wagner, whom he admired (published in 1895), which, however, does not focus on biographical data, but on Wagner's motivations in the fields of politics, philosophy and trying to play the music.

In February 1896 he began work on his major work, Nineteenth Century Foundations , and completed the 1200-page work in just 19 months. The book became a great success and sparked numerous controversies after it was published:

“The conventionalists and pamphleteers of primitive anti-Semitism received unexpected confirmation from the area of ​​high education. Chamberlain's teachings could easily be combined with the theory of social Darwinism , and this soon happened in pan-German circles who venerated him. The ' German Christians ' later referred to him, as did Paul de Lagarde , Julius Langbehn and Arthur Bonus , the herald of the Germanic religion. "

With the foundations of the nineteenth century, Chamberlain created a standard work on theoretical racial anti-Semitism that had a great influence on the ideas of Alfred Rosenberg and later Adolf Hitler . In his main work, Chamberlain postulated that the Germanic race, which he also referred to as "Aryan", was destined to lead the world. The philosopher of history, as he also called himself, had no doubt that the Germanic origins lay in the German people. But since he had to admit that not all Germans corresponded to the physical ideal of the Aryans, he invoked a common "racial soul" determined by blood, which is the origin of honesty, loyalty and diligence of every German. The Teutons, characterized by “hard work and enterprise”, are, in Chamberlain's opinion, at the top of the Aryan race and thus of all other races. Chamberlain admits certain Jews "nobility in the fullest sense of the word". At the same time, however , the fundamentals emphasize the inability of the Jews or Semites to build a state and their inferiority to the Aryan race.

But the readership of the basics was not only found in anti-Semitic and German national circles . Kaiser Wilhelm II was just as taken with Chamberlain as DH Lawrence , Winston Churchill and Albert Schweitzer . Wanda Kampmann comments on the book's outstanding success: “At the end of the positivist century, one was tired of detailed research and its contradicting results. (...) and then it was probably the enthusiasm for culture, the glorification of art, culture and religion as the creative achievement of the Germanic spirit, which accommodated the educational enthusiasm of a broad readership, furthermore the racial theory that strengthened an insecure generation in their self-esteem and not least the persuasive power of simplification at all times. "

Motivated by the great success of his works, Chamberlain wrote numerous essays on Richard Wagner and Bayreuth in the following years, some stage plays and numerous monographs, including an introduction to the work of Immanuel Kant (1905).

During these very productive years as a writer, there were also changes in his private life. The relationship with his wife Anna had cooled down over the years, and Chamberlain, who went in and out of Haus Wahnfried , married Eva Wagner , daughter of Richard and Cosima Wagner , in 1908 after a quick, amicable divorce . The 41-year-old shook his hand after he had written love letters to her sister Blandine in 1896 and had also got a basket from Isolde Wagner.

Bayreuth (1909-1927)

House of Houston Stewart Chamberlain in Bayreuth, Wahnfriedstrasse 1
(now the Jean Paul Museum)

Chamberlain spent the years up to the First World War relatively quietly in his house in Bayreuth. The only monograph from these years was a treatise on the life and works of Goethe (1912). He also wrote several essays on Kant, Goethe and Wagner and otherwise enjoyed his life as a respected author. But the global political situation, the rattle of sabers between his old homeland England and his promised land Germany, led Chamberlain to a change in consciousness. The result was a flood of articles and publications dealing with the causes and consequences of the war. In August 1916 he became a German citizen. His partisanship for the German Empire earned him the reputation of an apostate in the British press, and he almost completely gambled away the reputation he had acquired abroad with his foundations . In 1917 he joined the German Fatherland Party .

Chamberlain was very much surprised by the defeat of the German Reich. He could not understand that the country was surrendering, although German soldiers were still occupying enemy territory. Analogous to the stab-in-the-back legend , which was very popular at the time , Chamberlain saw the cause of Germany's defeat in a conspiratorial conspiracy by the Jews. Since he was now paralyzed from mercury poisoning and severely affected by his nervous disease, his productivity as a writer also declined.

His last major publication during his lifetime was an autobiographical compilation of various letters and texts, published in 1919 under the title Life Paths of My Thinking . Tied to his sick bed and isolated from the outside world, Chamberlain placed his hope in Adolf Hitler, then 34, who visited him in his house in 1923 shortly after the German Day in Bayreuth. Chamberlain was very impressed and wrote in a letter to Hitler: “You are not at all the fanatic that you have been described to me as. […] A fanatic kindles the mind, you warm the heart. A fanatic wants to overwhelm people with words; You want to convince, only convince, and that is the reason why you are successful. "

Houston Stewart Chamberlain's grave at Bayreuth City Cemetery

He was hostile to the Weimar Republic ; He also rejected the democratic system as such and believed that it did not correspond to the nature of the German people. On January 26, 1926, almost a year before his death, he joined the NSDAP , under membership number 29,206. Chamberlain died on January 9, 1927 at the age of 71. On January 12th, a memorial service followed by cremation took place in the Coburg city cemetery . Among others, Adolf Hitler , Wilhelm von Prussia and Ernst von Hohenlohe-Langenburg were present .

In summary, Chamberlain must be seen as one of the most important intellectual trailblazers of National Socialist racism. David Clay Large sums up in his article on Richard Wagner and Chamberlain: “Chamberlain himself considered his understanding of the race question to be an advance on what Wagner said . At this point it should be noted that the National Socialists did not have to improve Chamberlain's ideas - it was enough to bring them to a logical conclusion and to turn them into reality. "

Chamberlain was an honorary citizen of the city of Bayreuth from 1922 until his posthumous revocation in 2013 . He left a great inheritance to the city and his home now serves as the Jean Paul Museum. A street named after him in 1937 was renamed in 1947, and one created in 1958 in another part of the city was also renamed in 1989. The common grave with his wife Eva geb. von Bülow is in the city cemetery in Bayreuth.

Publications (selection)

  • Richard Wagner's drama. A suggestion. Breitkopf & Härtel , Vienna 1892.
  • Richard Wagner . Illustrations by Alexander Frenz . F. Bruckmann , Munich 1895.
  • The foundations of the nineteenth century . Bruckmann, 1899. (Volume 1 as digitized version and full text in the German Text Archive ; Volume 2 as digitized version and full text in the German Text Archive )
  • Aryan worldview . Bruckmann, 1905.
  • Heinrich von Stein and his worldview . Georg Heinrich Meyer, Leipzig 1903 (with Friedrich Poske )
  • Immanuel Kant . The personality as an introduction to the work . Bruckmann, 1905.
  • Goethe . Bruckmann, 1912.
  • War essays. Bruckmann, 1915 (Contains the six essays: "Deutsche Friedensliebe", "Deutsche Freiheit", "Deutsche Sprach", "Germany as a leading world state", "England", "Deutschland").
  • Life paths of my thinking. Bruckmann, 1919.
  • Paul Pretzsch (ed.): Cosima Wagner and Houston Stewart Chamberlain in the correspondence 1888–1908 . Reclam, Leipzig 1934.

Literature (selection)

Essays
  • Sven Fritz: Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Wahnfried's entry into daily politics. War writings, Pan-German Association and Fatherland Party . In: Hannes Heer (Ed.): Weltanschauung en marche. The Bayreuth Festival and the Jews from 1876 to 1945. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8260-5290-3 , pp. 193-218.
  • Udo Bermbach : Chamberlains Wagner - a sketch. In: Richard Wagner. Personality, work and impact. Edited by Helmut Loos , Dresden 2013, pp. 265–272.
  • Udo Bermbach: Bayreuth theology. Aryan Christianity and German Protestantism with Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Hans von Wolhaben. In: Udo Bermbach: Richard Wagner in Germany. Reception - falsifications. Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, pp. 179-230.
  • Thomas Gräfe: The denazified Chamberlain and the Nazified Wagner. Critical remarks on the historical political aberrations of Wagnerianism research , in: Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 26 (2017), pp. 415–433.
  • Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner : Wahnfried and the "basics". Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In: Karl Schwedhelm (Ed.): Prophets of Nationalism. Paul List, Munich 1969, pp. 105–123. (based on a series of programs by the SDF )
  • Wanda Kampmann: The theorists of racial anti-Semitism . In: Dies .: Germans and Jews. The history of the Jews in Germany from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the First World War . Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-596-23429-8 , pp. 293-321 (EA Heidelberg 1963; with a detailed chapter on the reception and effect of the fundamentals of the nineteenth century).
  • David Clay Large: A Mirror Image of the Master? The Racial Doctrine of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In: Dieter Borchmeyer (Ed.): Richard Wagner and the Jews. Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01754-0 , pp. 144-159 (very detailed and up-to-date article on Chamberlain's racial doctrine).
  • Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Language and Race at Houston Stewart Chamberlain . In: Dietrich Busse, Thomas Niehr, Martin Wengeler (eds.): Brisante Semantik. Newer concepts and research results of a cultural studies linguistics. (German Linguistics Series; Vol. 259). Niemeyer, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-484-31259-9 , pp. 187-208.
  • Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Leo Spitzer . A linguist struggles . In: Journal for German Linguistics. Vol. 33 (2006), Issue 2/3, ISSN  0301-3294 .
  • Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Houston Stewart Chamberlain's racial history “philosophy” . In: Werner Bergmann , Ulrich Sieg (ed.): Antisemitic historical images. (Anti-Semitism. History and structures: Vol. 5). Klartext Verlag, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0114-8 , pp. 139–166.
  • Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Cultural chauvinism. Germanic Christianity. Elimination Racism. Houston Stewart Chamberlain as the leading figure of the German national bourgeoisie and key word for Adolf Hitler . In: Hannes Heer (Ed.): Weltanschauung en marche. The Bayreuth Festival and the Jews from 1876 to 1945 . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8260-5290-3 , pp. 169–192.
  • Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Houston Stewart Chamberlain . In: Handbook of the Volkish Sciences . Actors, networks, research programs. Volume 1: Biographies. Edited by Michael Fahlbusch / Ingo Haar / Alexander Pinwinkler. 2nd completely revised edition. Boston / Berlin 2017. Walther de Gruyter, pp. 114–119.
Monographs
  • Udo Bermbach : Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Wagner's son-in-law - Hitler's mastermind. J. B. Metzler publishing house. Stuttgart, Weimar 2015. ISBN 978-3-476-02565-4
  • Sven Brömsel: eccentricity and bourgeoisie. Houston Stewart Chamberlain among Jewish intellectuals. Ripperger & Kremers, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-943999-70-9
  • Bruno Baentsch: H. St. Chamberlains ideas about the religion of the Semites spec. of the Israelites. (Pedagogical magazine; Vol. 246). Beyer, Langensalza 1905.
  • Geoffrey G. Field: Evangelist of race. The Germanic vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Columbia University Press, New York 1981, ISBN 0-231-04860-2 .
  • Gertrud Frischmuth : Houston Stewart Chamberlain as a Christian. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1937.
  • Michael Karbaum: Studies on the history of the Bayreuth Festival (1876–1976). Gustav Bosse, Regensburg 1976, ISBN 3-7649-2060-2 . (a critical retrospective on the Bayreuth Festival and the Wahnfried Circle)
  • Wolfram Kinzig : Harnack , Marcion and Judaism. In addition to an annotated edition of Adolf von Harnack's correspondence with Houston Stewart Chamberlain. (Works on the history of the church and theology; Vol. 13). Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-374-02181-6 .
  • Barbara Liedtke: Völkisch thinking and proclamation of the gospel. Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Reception in Evangelical Theology and Church during the Third Reich. (Works on the church and the history of theology; Vol. 37). EVA, Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-374-02999-0 . (also dissertation, University of Bonn 2011)
  • Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Houston Stewart Chamberlain. For the textual construction of a worldview. An analysis of the history of language, discourse and ideology. (Studia linguistica; vol. 95). De Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020957-0 . (Also habilitation thesis, University of Trier 2008).
  • Doris Mendlewitsch : Racism and Christology. Houston Stewart Chamberlain . This: people and salvation. Pioneer of National Socialism in the 19th century. Daedalus, Rheda-Wiedenbrück 1988, ISBN 3-89126-022-9 . (also dissertation, University of Duisburg 1987)
  • Helmut Schaller: National Socialism and the Slavic World. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2002, ISBN 3-7917-1820-7 . (The dominant influence of Chamberlain's "concept of race" on National Socialist ideology and the resulting extreme devaluation of the Slavic peoples and their culture is dealt with in detail)
  • Leopold von Schroeder (Ed.): Houston Stewart Chamberlain. An outline of his life based on his own reports . Lehmann Publishing House, Munich 1918.

Web links

Wikiquote: Houston Stewart Chamberlain  Quotes
Commons : Houston Stewart Chamberlain  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dagmar Frings, Jörg Kuhn: The Borchardts. On the trail of a Berlin family. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-942271-17-2 , pp. 38-39.
  2. ↑ See Paul Pretzsch (ed.): Cosima Wagner and Houston Stewart Chamberlain in the correspondence 1888–1908 . Reclam, Leipzig 1934.
  3. ↑ On his image of science and history see: Houston Stewart Chamberlain: Dilettantismus, Rasse, Monotheismus, Rom. Preface to the 4th edition of the fundamentals of the XIX. Century . Bruckmann, Munich 1903.
  4. ↑ On effect and reception, especially in educated middle class circles: Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Houston Stewart Chamberlain. For the textual construction of a worldview. An analysis of the history of language, discourse and ideology. (= Studia linguistica, Volume 95) De Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020957-0 , pp. 35-57.
  5. ^ Wanda Kampmann: Germans and Jews. Studies on the history of German Jewry. Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1963, p. 319.
  6. ^ Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Houston Stewart Chamberlain. For the textual construction of a worldview. An analysis of the history of language, discourse and ideology. (Studia linguistica; vol. 95). De Gruyter, Berlin 2008, pp. 613-654. ISBN 978-3-11-020957-0 .
  7. ↑ p. 827
  8. ↑ p. 324
  9. ↑ pp. 596-597
  10. ↑ Michael Vetsch: Ideologized Science: Racial Theories of German Anthropologists between 1918 and 1933. ( Licensed thesis , University of Bern, 2003), p. 30.
  11. ^ Wanda Kampmann: Germans and Jews. Studies on the history of German Jewry. Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1963, p. 317 f.
  12. ↑ Oliver Hilmes: Cosimas Kinder Verlag Pantheon 2010, p. 102f.
  13. ↑ Wagner's son- in -law in the Nordbayerischer Kurier of September 15, 2014, p. 9.
  14. ^ Back translation into German from: Geoffrey G. Field: Evangelist of race. The Germanic vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Columbia Univ. Press, New York 1981, p. 436.
  15. ^ Udo Bermbach : Houston Stewart Chamberlain: Wagner's son-in-law - Hitler's thought leader . Springer-Verlag, 2015. p. 507.
  16. ↑ Harald Sandner: Coburg in the 20th century. The chronicle of the city of Coburg and the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha from January 1, 1900 to December 31, 1999 - from the "good old days" to the dawn of the 21st century. Against forgetting . Verlagsanstalt Neue Presse, Coburg 2002, ISBN 3-00-006732-9 , p. 93.
  17. ↑ Rosa and Volker Kohlheim: Bayreuth from A – Z. P. 34.
personal data
SURNAME Chamberlain, Houston Stewart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English-German writer and cultural philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Portsmouth , England
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1927
Place of death Bayreuth