Third Reich

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Third Reich has been a term for National Socialist Germany since the end of the Second World War , which is controversial because of its conceptual history. Since the 1920s, the term was used by the Völkische Movement and the National Socialists for propaganda purposes in order to place the dictatorship they were striving for in line with tradition with the Holy Roman Empire, which fell in 1806, and the Empire founded in 1871, but to differentiate the Weimar Republic from both and thereby to delegitimize .

The origins of the term lie in much older Christian - theological and philosophical - utopian traditions of the West . According to Christian ideas of the Middle Ages , the Third Reich denoted the post -eschatological rule of the Holy Spirit . The Nazis used the messianic expectation of salvation that resonates with them to give their movement a quasi- religious appearance. After Adolf Hitler's regime was established, Nazi propaganda only rarely used the term because of its Christian implications and eventually dropped it completely.

Background of the history of ideas

Philosophy of history

According to Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch , the later popularization of the term “Third Reich” can be traced back to the “ occidental obsession” to think of history in “three steps” and modern speech about the division of history into ancient , medieval and modern times . This division of history as total history is based on historical-philosophical thoughts that have their early roots in the history of ideas in Christian theology of history , especially in Paul and in the Revelation of John . Paul's division of world history into the three kingdoms - that of the pagan lex naturalis , that of the lex mosaica of the Old Testament and the third, Christian kingdom - represents the basic scheme of the religious interpretation of history in the West, which started with the proclamation of a third kingdom by Joachim von Fiore peaked in the 12th century through to Dante .

Above all, the Revelation of John is accordingly "the mother of the theology of history and the grandmother of modern theology of history". During the Renaissance, King Francis I of France applied for the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire , for example, on the eschatological expectation of salvation described in this writing, according to which the “ heavenly Jerusalem ” should be erected on earth forever . As a sign of this, he had Chambord Castle built, which in terms of its structural form and symbolism was based on the heavenly city described in the Revelation of John .

Gnosis and Chiliasm

In addition to the Pauline philosophy of history, Augustine's Christian philosophy of history took a prominent position in the interpretation of history as a whole. Augustine, who was a follower of the Gnostic religion of Manichaeism for several years before turning to Christianity, understood world history as a tremendous conflict between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of evil . In the end, he imagines, the civitas terrena will split off from the civitas Dei through the apostasy of the evil angels and the civitas Dei will become an angelic state that will end in a kingdom of God . Although Augustine did not divide history into three parts, but predicted six earthly ages ending with the Kingdom of Christ, his theology of history was of considerable historical importance with regard to its interpretation that a battle between good and evil would take place, right up to National Socialism . A thought that has become a central component of the Third Reich topos . Accordingly, Friedrich Heer took the view that Manichaeism was transported into Western culture of the 20th century via Augustinism . In his book Political Gnosis, however, the Gnosis researcher Sonnenschmidt did not commit himself to a direct connection between ancient gnosis and political gnosis in modern times. Rather, he himself specialized in the history of ideas and highlighted this aspect as a research perspective and asked himself, also with express and exemplary reference to Augustine: “The arc that is spanned in the investigation from the late antique gnosis to the modern gnosis opens up new research perspectives, which can be summarized under the general aspect of whether there is a developmental line or developmental ›logic‹ of Gnosis at least in the West. "

Decisive for the modern idea of ​​the Third Reich was what is generally undisputed in research, the thought that arose in the context of medieval chiliasm that the kingdom of Christ was not, as in the older representation, the last earthly kingdom, but another one for him would follow. This idea was formulated by the anti-Judaic history theologian Joachim von Fiore in the 12th century, who also based his thinking about history as a whole on the idea of ​​dividing into three status (literally "states") or ages or empires. In the first kingdom he saw the divine kingdom of the Old Covenant (the Old Testament “kingdom of the father”), in the second the Christian (“kingdom of the son”) and in the third that of the third divine person (“peace kingdom of the Holy Spirit”, “age of redemption ”). According to the philosopher Wolfgang Röd, gnostic and eschatological ideas played a role here. Röd wrote: “The members of the Third Reich, as those who really know, are assumed to be in contact with God independently of mediating authorities and external organizations. At the same time, the view of an end time was opened up. ”With these thoughts, Joachim von Fiore referred to the Revelation of John , chap. 20, v. 1-10. When describing his three realms, however, he emphasized that each of them was symbolically determined by its “ leader ”. After the precursors Zacharias and John stand Christ at the beginning of the second Empire and was in the Third Reich a phenomenon that he simply labeled "DUX". For Joachim von Fiore, the third empire was “not a new institution that would have to take the place of the church in a revolutionary way ”, but a process “of the spiritualization of the Ekklesia and the reshaping of the universal church into a new order of contemplative, spiritualized monasticism ”. In this third kingdom people would live “spiritually and poor, fraternally , all of the same rank, without a coercive order”. He also made calculations as to when the Third Reich would have started. He dated its beginning to the year 1200, the Joachite Franciscan Spirituals later to 1260, the latter seeing Francis of Assisi as the DUX proclaimed by Joachim von Fiore.

Volkish ways of thinking

The term “Third Reich”, which emerged on the background of the folkish ways of thinking of the 19th and 20th centuries, included not only religious aspects, but also political ones , whereby state and religion were described and interpreted in the closest context. The philosopher Eric Voegelin noted in general terms that “the terms of religion and state, as they are binding today in general European language usage, but also deep into the narrower [sic!] Of science”, are “determined” Models, which have their special meaning in the intellectual struggle of Europe ”, orient. Religion is understood to mean “phenomena like Christianity and the other great redemptive religions ” and the state “the political organizations of the type of the modern nation state ”. Accordingly, in the post-war period, numerous authors noted that modern nationalism contained a religious element. The historian and German scholar Klaus Vondung pointed out in his book Die Apokalypse in Deutschland that political nationalism in Germany was “ permeated and shaped by apocalyptic ideas from the hour of its birth ”. The historian Michael Ley described a connection between nationalist thinking and political romanticism in the modern age, also emphasizing: "The romantic worldview is gnostic-apocalyptic, the spiritual renewal is the so-called Third Reich or the coming millennial Reich". And in the context of his examination of the term “Third Reich”, Bärsch made an explicit reference between the Apocalypse and National Socialism, whereby he also drew attention to the optimistic perspective inherent in believing apocalyptists : “Nevertheless, John's apocalyptic is not - as many educated people think - pessimistic or nihilistic. The terrible events described in the Revelation of John, such as war, diseases, famine and the destruction of nature , are understood in the original sense of the word " catastrophé ", namely as a turning point; as a change for the better and as a change to redemption. The famous battle of Christ precedes the first age of redemption, the millennial kingdom. "

“Third Reich” in the 20th century

The German Imperium

The term Third Reich did not gain much importance in the social discourse of the 19th century. It only became the terminus technicus in the 1920s . Nevertheless, the term was used sporadically in the German Empire since the end of the 19th century, but with different references.

The first appearance of the term in Germany is dated in research to the year 1888. In that year, Henrik Ibsen's play Emperor and Galilean , written in Norway in 1873, was translated into German. Ibsen used the term in this piece to denote a synthesis between paganism and Christianity. In 1894 the term found its way into the novel Vigilien by the German-Polish poet Stanisław Przybyszewski and in 1896 in the poetry collection Woman and World by his friend Richard Dehmel . Schmitz-Berning noted in this connection that both “participants of the round table in the Berlin pub› Schwarzes Ferkel ‹› Unter den Linden ‹” and that this restaurant was also from Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , who later attributed the popularization of the term was visited.

In the novel The Third Reich by Johannes Schlaf , published in 1899, similarities with the later National Socialist ideology appear for the first time , as Bärsch stated. The main hero Dr. Emmanuell Liesegang "Gnostic writings, the apocalypse of John and dreams of the› superman ‹". The Swedish educational reformist Ellen Key used the term in her volume of essays The Few and the Many (1901) with reference to the mystic Maximos , to whom Ibsen also referred. In the novel Wiltfeber, the Eternal German (1912) by Hermann Burte , the term was used incidentally, but this in the context of the terms › Krist ‹, › Widerkrist ‹, › Swastika ‹ and the purity of the blond, which is already a connection between folkish - racist and religious worldview was given. Furthermore, the term was used in the book title of the journalist Martin Wust; likewise in 1916 with Gerhard von Mutius in his book The Three Realms . Both authors, however, used the term in a pacifist - Enlightenment sense.

Weimar Republic

Popularization of the term

In the Weimar Republic , the term was first used in 1918 in the essay Der Gedanke by the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege . Frege's concept of the third realm represents an independent meaning: “A third realm must be recognized. What belongs to this agrees with the idea that it cannot be perceived with the senses, but with things that there is no need for a carrier to whose consciousness it belongs. "

In complete contrast to Frege's terminology, which was generally neglected , it was primarily the work The Third Reich by the conservative anti-democratic nationalist Moeller van den Bruck , published in 1923, that contributed to popularizing the talk of the “Third Reich” . According to its division, the first empire was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation until 1806, the second the empire of Bismarck and Wilhelm II and the third, which was to follow, an empire in which nationalism was to be combined with socialism . In this construction, Moeller van den Bruck did not refer directly to Joachim von Fiore, but to his widespread idea. The Germanist Peter Philipp Riedl wrote: “The term 'Third Reich', which Arthur Moeller van den Bruck effectively put into circulation, which Julius Petersen also pursued after many years of preparatory work in 1934 'in German legend and poetry', interprets the spiritual theory of Joachim von Fiore to the inner-worldly redemption myth, to the völkisch-national salvation event. "

Adoption in the NS vocabulary

Ernst Bloch , in his essay on the original history of the Third Reich, first published in 1935, took the view that the National Socialists had adapted their concept of the “Third Reich” from Arthur Moeller van den Bruck. Since the publication of the book The Political Religion of National Socialism von Bärsch in 1998, this thesis has been considered controversial in recent research. Matthias Sträßner wrote:

"By Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch the thesis comes that the term of the 'Third Reich' neither of Ibsen still only directly by Moeller van den Bruck in the phraseology reaches the Nazis, but by the Ibsen translator Dietrich Eckart ."

Bärsch wrote exactly:

“It is not Moeller van den Bruck, from whom the National Socialists took the term 'Third Reich', but an influential co-founder of the entire movement had this term as early as 1919 - before the first edition of Moeller van den Bruck's book from the year 1923 - used in a clear context of political-ideological writings. It is the poet Dietrich Eckart who has mutated into a politician. "

In addition, Bärsch pointed out that the term Third Reich was neither “clearly defined by the National Socialists themselves” nor “dealt with in a systematic monograph in the literature on Nazi ideology”. And he added: “In no case is it based on a conception of state or constitutional law. A system of government based on the ideology of the 'Third Reich' was not drawn up either before or after 1933. "

Criticism from Christian Publicists

In June 1931, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy warned in the Hochland magazine that with the "Third Reich" a term from the Christian world of concepts was inadmissibly secularized and applied to a worldly substitute kingdom : instead of a truly comprehensive Johannine Christianity (after the " Petruskirche ") and the “ Paulus mission ”), the new ideologues are undergoing a secular political constriction. And the Baptist Arnold Köster described the danger that people would place their hope in “the kingdoms of this world” and now believe in “the third kingdom”, not “in the kingdom of God, in the kingship of Jesus”.

time of the nationalsocialism

Propaganda term

In retrospect, after taking power, the National Socialists described the Weimar Republic as an interim empire to make it clear that it had no place in the official census. In addition, the term system time was used for the years between the “Second Reich” - the ( Wilhelmine ) German Empire - and the “Third Reich”. With Systemzeit or Zwischenreich , the parliamentary system of government of the German Reich from 1918 to 1930/1933 was to be reduced in comparison to the authoritarian German government systems, which were recognized as a Reich, in National Socialist diction . The ideology of salvation propagated with this diction is recognizable ( millennial kingdom ), which is linked to religious ideas.

The National Socialists also adapted the term “ Thousand Year Reich ” in order to propagate a period of continuity under their rule after the eventful German history. On September 1, 1933, Adolf Hitler officially announced that the state he led was a “Third Reich” that would last “a thousand years”. The term "Thousand Year Reich" and the term "Third Reich", as used by the National Socialists, took up the "symbols of apocalyptic history speculation for the final phase of history". Vondung noted:

"With the acquisition of these symbols the German or Nazi Reich is transfigured: should <The> millennial kingdom known not last a thousand years but forever , to which Schumann symbol of> the kingdom eternal commander halls <also referred as Hitler's consecration of honor temple at the king place for 'Eternal Watch'. The ›Eternal Empire‹ in time is set as the final phase of the National Socialist ›salvation history‹ and in this respect as the final phase of the history relevant for National Socialists in general. "

In this context, it is also known that Heinrich Himmler , Reichsführer SS and chief of the German police and supporter of the occult , saw himself as the “ reincarnation ” of King Heinrich I , who was buried in the Palatine Chapel on the Schlossberg in Quedlinburg in 936 . On the 1000th anniversary of the king's death in 1936, the Wiperti Church and the Church of St. Servatii on the Quedlinburger Schlossberg were declared "Consecrations of the SS". This was done in order to draw a direct line to the National Socialists who wanted to rule "another thousand years".

Conceptual criticism

In the 1930s, the journalist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn , who was influenced by monarchist ideas, completely denied the Nazi state the right to use the term “Reich”. In his view, the term encompassed a variety of cultures, languages ​​and peoples of the Holy Roman Empire , but the ideology of National Socialism included exactly the opposite.

Avoidance of the term

Opponents of the National Socialist regime satirized its claim to eternity with the term “ Fourth Reich ”.

On June 13, 1939, Hitler had the further use of the term “Third Reich” prohibited in a “non-publication” circular. Reinhard Bollmus wrote, among other things, that Hitler made it clear that “even according to his views, the Fuehrer State hardly ever had anything in common with Moeller van den Bruck's ideas”. And he added with regard to Hitler's perspective: “He preferred expressions such as 'Germanic Reich German Nation' and 'Greater Germanic Reich', and if they were to evoke the memory of the time of the Great Migration, if Hitler was to - in this one-sidedness for typical for him - images of a period of constant campaigns of conquest, he characterized the system of rule he created quite correctly: as a conquering state, and as a conquering state not only in foreign policy but also in domestic policy. "

On 10 July 1939 the dismissed Reich Propaganda Ministry , the press in the "Old Reich" and in Austria at to avoid the term "Third Reich" in the future. The explanatory statement literally stated: “In order to express the changes in internal conditions within the Reich in a propagandistic way, the term 'Third Reich' was coined and used for the National Socialist Reich before and after the takeover of power. This historically derived name no longer does justice to the profound development that has taken place since then. It is therefore advised not to use the term 'Third Reich', which has already been replaced by the term 'Greater German Reich' as ​​a result of the events, in the context of current press work. "Officially desired alternative names to" Third Reich "were also "National Socialist Germany" and "German Reich".

Following the instructions, for the 12th edition of the spelling dudens from 1941 the keyword “Third Reich”, which was still contained in the 11th edition from 1934, was used with the meaning “the third Reich founded in 1933 after the old German Empire a. the empire of the Hohenzollern ”is no longer included. The Volks- Brockhaus from 1940 used the officially desired term “Greater German Reich” instead of “Third Reich” and the magazine Die Kunst im Third Reich called itself from 1939 Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich .

However, the term has not been completely erased. Cornelia Schmitz-Berning proved that the term continued to be used, for example, in the weekly newspaper Das Reich published by Joseph Goebbels . The term also appears in the Bormann dictates , which are sometimes referred to as Hitler's “political testament”.

Empire and Empire

After Austria's annexation in 1938, the term “ Greater German Reich ” was initially used unofficially, and from June 26, 1943 onwards as the official name of the state.

On March 21, 1943, the Reich Ministry of Propaganda required the press to use the generic term “ Reich” analogous to the use of the term “ Empire” in the British Empire .

holocaust

Regardless of the fact that the term “Third Reich” lost its meaning for the National Socialists and the so-called Jewish question during the Second World War “was no longer dealt with in the same way as before 1938/39, Catholic (and Protestant) theologians attempted the Shoah with salvation history To interpret arguments and thereby contributed to the trivialization of anti-Semitic crimes ”. The historian Urs Altermatt also wrote about this occasional phenomenon: “In the war years, individual theologians used the stigma of the 'depravity' of the Jews to explain their persecution and extermination by the National Socialists and their accomplices. They were of the opinion that only the conversion of the Jews to Christianity could save them from persecution. ”The historian Jacques Le Goff highlighted the apocalyptic idea underlying this thinking as a modern phenomenon. He wrote: "And if today's Europeans have eschatological ideas, they are unfortunately those of genocide or nuclear threat , they are more apocalyptic than those of medieval society, in which the utopias and fears of the apocalypse were generally only widespread among minorities ."

resistance

Heinrich Vogeler : The Third Reich , 1934

In the 29th edition of Georg Büchmann's winged words from 1943, it says:

“It was less the national circles themselves than their opponents who used the word more often, and with a malicious undertone. Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP explicitly never claimed that they would bring about the Third Reich, even officially it was only rarely mentioned. Nevertheless, people at home and abroad speak of the time since the takeover of power (January 30, 1933) only of the Third Reich. "

In the American feature film Casablanca (1942), the German Major Strasser accuses the Vichy-French Capitaine Renault of using the phrase “Third Reich” with an undertone as if he were expecting more.

post war period

Use of the term since the end of the war in 1945

Since the post-war period , the perspective on the term “Third Reich” has changed fundamentally. If the idea associated with the term content was related to the future for centuries , the term has since then generally referred to the time of National Socialism and thus to the historical past . After 1945, the term “Third Reich” prevailed in colloquial language, among historians, in journalism and in history lessons in schools, as it was a clear reference to Germany during the Nazi dictatorship and the National Socialists did not specific term for Germany established in the time of her rule.

In general, however, after 1945 there was a “heterogeneity of names” in the Federal Republic of Germany . In addition to the “popular” expression “Third Reich”, terms such as Nazi state , Nazi regime , Hitler's dictatorship and National Socialist rule are also used. A random study by Georg Stötzel of the daily newspaper taz (from 1989 to 1999) and the weekly newspaper Die Zeit (from 1995 to 1998) showed, for example, that for the respective period of study in these newspapers “the epoch designation Nazi time” was “predominant” over other designations. was ( taz with 90 percent, Die Zeit with 60 percent).

Critical discourse since the 1980s

From the perspective of language criticism , the lawyer Walter Mallmann published his objection in 1984 in the concise dictionary of German legal history that the term “Third Reich” was “legally and politically unjustifiable in terms of the history of ideas and constitution”.

In 1989 Dieter Gunst wrote an essay in which he investigated the question of how the term “Third Reich” was able to re-establish itself after 1945. He stated that on the one hand the term had been re-imported by the Allies as Anglicism in 1945 and on the other hand, according to Art. 131 GG, "the old extremists from the Nazi era had been taken over into the administration of the Federal Republic of Germany", "insofar as they were not criminalized" had (see 131er ). And he added in relation to this:

“The term 'Third Reich' has a neutral and not derogatory effect and is therefore used much more often in these circles than other terms, such as Nazi terror or the Hitler regime, which remind us of a time that one would like to suppress from consciousness. In this respect the term “Third Reich” is a product of the repression mechanism of those who followed the Hitler era. The term 'Third Reich' was also liked by the old Nazis and they liked to use it in their justifications, for example Diels , the first head of the Gestapo, Hitler's Vice Chancellor von Papen and Armaments Minister Speer . "

In addition, Gunst noted that the retrospective designation of the Hitler regime as the “Third Reich” was not only an “appreciation of National Socialism” but would also misrepresent the historical facts. As he added, Hitler founded neither a state nor a “special empire”.

Georg Stötzel, in his book Zeitgeschichtlichesverzeichnis der Gegenwartssprache, first published in 2002, pointed out the lack of recognizable reflections on the term “Third Reich” in both academic literature and the German press. Among other things, he noted that, for example, the historian Karl Dietrich Bracher had always used the term “Third Reich” with “distancing quotation marks” in 1964, but without explicitly commenting on the denomination problem, as did the “language-sensitive political scientist” Dietrich Thränhardt in his Book History of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1996. For example, the magazine Der Spiegel in 1950 would have written “Third Reich” without quotation marks in various editions. And he summarized:

“It cannot be clearly identified which works or texts and arguments from the specialist communication presented above or which historical knowledge in the population are responsible for the unmarked spelling in the German press after 1945 without any recognizable reason and without explanatory arguments Third Reich as well as the spelling ›Third Reich‹ appear with distancing quotation marks. "

literature

Background of the history of ideas

  • Ernst Bernheim : Medieval views of time in their influence on politics and historiography. Tübingen 1918 (reprint, Tübingen 1964, DNB ).
  • Gerhard Bauer: Kingdom of God and Third Reich. Göttingen 1934. DNB
  • Heinz Hertl: The third realm in intellectual history . Hamburg 1934. DNB
  • Julius Peterson: The longing for the Third Reich in German legend and poetry. Stuttgart 1934. DNB
  • Jean Frederic Neurohr: The Myth of the Third Reich. Cotta, Stuttgart 1957. DNB
  • Norman Cohn : The Struggle for the Millennium. Revolutionary messianism in the Middle Ages and its survival in modern totalitarian movements. (Original title: The Pursuit of the Millennium , translated by Eduard Thorsch). Francke , Bern / Munich 1961. DNB
  • Jacques Solé: Christian Myths. From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (original title: Les mythes chrétiens , translated by Henriette Beese). Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-548-35155-7 .
  • Johan Hendrik Jacob van der Pot: Meaning and periodization of history. A systematic review of theories and beliefs. Leiden 1999, ISBN 90-04-11605-2 .

Use of the term in the 20th century

  • Dieter Gunst: Hitler did not want a “Third Reich”. In: History, Politics and Their Didactics , 17, 1989, pp. 299–306.
  • Jost Hermand : The old dream of the new empire. Volkish utopias and National Socialism. Frankfurt am Main 1988 (2nd edition, Weinheim 1995, ISBN 3-89547-709-5 ).
  • Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-11-013379-2 , pp. 157-160 ( Google Books ).
  • Burchard Brentjes : The Myth in the Third Reich. Three millennia dream of salvation. Torch bearer, Hanover 1999, ISBN 3-7716-2112-7 .
  • Gábor Hamza: The idea of ​​the “Third Reich” in German philosophical and political thought of the 20th century. In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History , German Department. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar, Vol. 118 (2001), pp. 321–336.
  • Herrmann Butzer: The “Third Reich” in the Third Reich. The topos “Third Reich” in National Socialist ideology and political theory. In: The State . Journal for state theory and constitutional history, German and European public law. 42nd Vol., 2003, pp. 600-627.
  • Georg Stötzel: Contemporary history dictionary of contemporary German. 2nd, expanded and updated edition, Hildesheim 2003, ISBN 3-487-11759-2 ( Google Books ).

Newspaper articles

Web links

Wiktionary: Third Reich  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Stötzel: Contemporary History Dictionary of German Contemporary Language . 2nd, expanded and updated edition, Hildesheim 2003, p. 92.
  2. ↑ a b Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7705-3172-8 , p. 45 ff.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Eric Voegelin: The political religions . Edited by Peter J. Opitz. Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7705-2838-7 , p. 39.
  4. ↑ Rüdiger Safranski : The Evil or The Drama of Freedom . Munich / Vienna 1997, p. 50; Stuart Holroyd: Gnosticism . Translated from the English by Martin Engelbrecht. Braunschweig 1995, p. 73 ff.
  5. ↑ Eric Voegelin: The political religions . Edited by Peter J. Opitz. Munich 1993, p. 35.
  6. ↑ a b Friedrich Heer : God's first love . The Jews in the Tension Area of ​​History, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1986, p. 68 ff.
  7. ↑ Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . Munich 1998, pp. 131 ff. And 329 f.
  8. ↑ Reinhard W. Sonnenschmidt: Political Gnosis . Belief in alienation and the illusion of immortality in religion and political philosophy of late antiquity, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-7705-3626-6 , p. 261.
  9. ↑ Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . Munich 1998, p. 45 ff.
  10. ↑ Ruth Kerstenberg-Gladstein: The “Third Reich” - A fifteenth-century polemic against Joachism, and its background. In: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. Vol. 18, No. 3/4 (1955), pp. 245-295 .
  11. ↑ Eric Voegelin: The political religions . Edited by Peter J. Opitz. Munich 1993, p. 39.
  12. ↑ a b Wolfgang Röd: The way of philosophy. Volume 1: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance. Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-38388-2 , p. 382.
  13. ↑ a b Michael Ley: Apocalyptic movements in the modern age . In: Michael Ley / Julius H. Schoeps : National Socialism as a political religion. Bodenheim near Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-8257-0032-1 , p. 17.
  14. ↑ a b c d Eric Voegelin: The political religions . Edited by Peter J. Opitz. Munich 1993, p. 40.
  15. ↑ a b Eric Voegelin: The political religions . Edited by Peter J. Opitz. Munich 1993, p. 11 f.
  16. ↑ z. B. Barbara Ehrenreich: Blood rituals. Origin and history of the pleasure in war. From the English by Wolfgang Heuss, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, p. 248 ff .; Peter Berghoff: The death of the political collective. Political religion and dying and killing for people, nation and race. Berlin 1997; Axel Dunker: Organize pessimism. Eschatological categories in the literature on the Third Reich , Bielefeld 1994; Egon Meusel: The longing for anarchy . Rheinfelden / Berlin 1993, p. 161 ff .; Friedrich Hacker: The Fascism Syndrome. Analysis of a current phenomenon , Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 53 ff .; Wilhelm Kamlah: Utopia , eschatology , theology of history . Critical studies on the origins and futuristic thinking of the modern age, Mannheim 1969.
  17. ↑ Klaus Vondung: The Apocalypse in Germany . Munich 1988, ISBN 3-423-04488-8 , p. 152 ff.
  18. ↑ Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . Munich 1998, p. 344 f.
  19. ↑ a b c d Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . Munich 1998, p. 48 ff.
  20. ↑ a b Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998, p. 156/157.
  21. ↑ Ellen Key: Die Wenigen und die viel , 4th ed., Berlin 1905 (1901), p. 131.
  22. ↑ Gottlob Frege: The thought. A logical investigation . In: Contributions to the philosophy of German idealism , 2. (1918/19), p. 69; Dirk Koob: brought up social capital . Göttingen 2007, p. 133.
  23. ^ A b Wolfgang Wippermann: Third Reich . In: Wolfgang Benz et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 5th, updated and expanded edition, dtv, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-34408-1 , p. 479 f.
  24. ↑ Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . Munich 1998, p. 49.
  25. ↑ a b Peter Philipp Riedl: Epoch pictures - artist typologies. Contributions to traditional drafts in literature and science from 1860 to 1930. Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-465-03410-4 , p. 262 ( Das Abendland ; NF 33, edited by Eckhard Heftrich).
  26. ↑ a b Matthias Sträßner : Flute and Pistol . Notes on the relationship between Nietzsche and Ibsen. Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2539-3 , p. 76 (Source: Ernst Bloch: Zur Originalgeschichte des Third Reichs . In: ders .: Inheritance of this time . Complete edition vol. 4, Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 126– 160).
  27. ↑ Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . Munich 1998, p. 50.
  28. ↑ Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch: The political religion of National Socialism . Munich 1998, p. 48.
  29. ↑ Anabaptist Bote from Dec. 1931, p. 1. Quoted from Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer : Public criticism of National Socialism in the Greater German Reich. Life and worldview of the Viennese Baptist pastor Arnold Köster (1896–1960) (=  historical-theological studies of the 19th and 20th centuries ; Vol. 9). Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2001, p. 135.
  30. ^ A b Klaus Vondung: Revolution as a ritual. The myth of National Socialism. In: Ursula Härtl et al. (Ed.): "Here, here is Germany ..." From National Cultural Concepts to National Socialist Cultural Policy , Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-89244-279-7 , p. 52 .
  31. ^ A b c d Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Third Reich . In: Vokabular des Nationalozialismus , 2nd edition, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-092864-8 , pp. 159–160.
  32. ↑ Georg Stötzel: Contemporary History Dictionary of German Contemporary Language , 2nd edition, Hildesheim 2003, p. 93 f.
  33. ↑ a b Reinhard Bollmus: The office of Rosenberg and its opponents. Studies on the power struggle in the National Socialist system of rule. Stuttgart 1970, p. 236.
  34. ↑ a b Urs Altermatt: Catholicism and anti-Semitism. Mentalities - continuities - ambivalences. On the cultural history of Switzerland 1918–1945. Stuttgart / Vienna 1999, p. 117.
  35. ↑ Jacques Le Goff : Old Europe and the world of modernity. Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39269-5 , p. 65.
  36. ↑ See e.g. B. The Third Reich. Documents on domestic and foreign policy , ed. v. Wolfgang Michalka, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1985; Saul Friedländer: The Third Reich and the Jews. Persecution and extermination 1933–1945. Two volumes, CH Beck, Munich 1998 and 2006; The Third Reich - a turning point in world history . In: History and events of the modern age. Secondary level II . Ernst Klett Schulbuchverlag, Leipzig 2005 a. ö.
  37. ↑ a b Georg Stötzel: Contemporary history dictionary of contemporary German . 2nd, expanded and updated edition, Hildesheim 2003, p. 92.
  38. ↑ a b c Georg Stötzel: Dictionary of contemporary German contemporary language . 2nd, expanded and updated edition, Hildesheim 2003, p. 96 f.
  39. ^ Walter Mallmann: German Empire. In: Concise dictionary on German legal history. Volume III. Berlin 1984, p. 724.
  40. ↑ a b c Dieter Gunst: Hitler did not want a “Third Reich”. In: History, Politics and Their Didactics 17, 1989, p. 303 f.