Paul de Lagarde

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Paul de Lagarde

Paul Anton de Lagarde , originally Paul Anton Bötticher (born November 2, 1827 in Berlin , † December 22, 1891 in Göttingen ), was a German theologian , cultural philosopher and orientalist . His scientific ambition was directed early on to the development of the Septuagint according to the historical-critical method and the writing of articles on religious studies, but the recognition in scholarly circles remained despite numerous efforts. In 1853 he gave the speech Conservative? and About the current tasks of German politics , in which he said goodbye to monarchist conservatism and represented a German nation, the expansion of the empire, internal colonization such as assimilation or expulsion of the Jews. After he was appointed to the chair of oriental languages ​​in 1869, he gained the necessary reputation to address his culturally critical treatises outside of the university to a broad readership. In his reaction to the social and political upheavals in the middle of the 19th century, he took sides against innovations in the educational system, demanded a national religion due to the loss of importance of traditional religiosity and firmly rejected the social change that took place before and after the unification of the empire , including women's emancipation . In his political views he was a representative of “modern anti-Semitism ”, which he primarily justified culturally.

De Lagarde is considered to be one of the most important figures of the Völkisch movement and the originator of numerous ideologemes. As a theoretician of radical conservatism, he worked by advocating a national religion instead of conservatism with a monarchist character, overcoming class differences, denominations and educational differences in a national body such as the idea of hidden Germany , a utopian ideal of Germany that was supposed to abolish immanence and transcendence , on ethnic, young conservatives and National Socialism .

Life

origin

Lagarde was the son of the pedagogue and theologian Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Bötticher and his wife Luise Klebe. The mother died in the year of his birth. In 1831 the father married Pauline Seegert. When his stepmother died in 1854, Lagarde was adopted by his maternal great aunt, Ernestine de Lagarde.

education

Lagarde's school education took place at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Berlin, from 1844 he studied Protestant theology with professors Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg and August Neander as well as oriental studies with Friedrich Rückert . In the winter semester of 1844/45 he took Persian with Max Müller at Rückert . In 1849 Lagarde finished his studies with the dissertation Initia chromatologiae arabicae . He moved to the University of Halle on August Tholuck and was able in 1851 to work Arica habilitation .

Professional activities

Lagarde's professional activity was highly controversial. He was also unpopular among his scientific colleagues "because of his antiquated worldview and lack of methodological awareness" and had many enemies. His contentiousness was considered so notorious that it was discussed in Meyer's Konversationslexikon from 1897.

First of all, his lexicological, grammatical and text-critical work made him well known among his colleagues. Theodor Benfey described him in this context as a " black hussar among the young orientalists". The Prussian ambassador Christian von Bunsen promoted him and arranged for him to study in London for the years 1852/53 .

In 1853 Lagarde went to Paris - again with Bunsen's support - and made the acquaintance of Ernest Renan . At the end of 1853 he returned to Germany, hoping for a chair at the University of Halle . These hopes were dashed and Lagarde took a job at the Köllnisches Realgymnasium in Berlin. In 1858 he moved to the Friedrichwerdersche Gymnasium in Berlin, where he taught until 1866.

During his time as a high school teacher, Lagarde researched and published; In 1866, King Wilhelm I granted him three years of paid research leave. By 1869, Lagarde settled in Schleusingen ( Province of Saxony ). During this time, a critical edition of the Greek translation of Genesis was created , for which he was awarded the title Dr. phil. hc was honored.

University professorship

Göttingen, Stadtfriedhof: grave of Paul Anton de Lagarde

In March 1869, Lagarde was appointed royal full professor and successor to Heinrich Ewald at the University of Göttingen . There he took over the chair for oriental languages ​​and - after initial hostility - was accepted as a member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen . There he worked until his death, whereby his scientific work quickly took a back seat to his work on the examination of the role of Germany. He and the Royal Extraordinary Professor Hermann Strack (Groß-Lichterfelde) were commissioned by the Minister of Culture von Goßler to assess the sexual offense case Max Bernstein on March 30, 1889 (the anti-Semite had already had a ritual murder case in Tisza-Eslar, Hungary) Lagarde on October 7, 1882 declares that in its religious and legal writings, Judaism "never required the use of human blood for religious purposes"). On December 1, 1890, the Secret Government Council was accepted as a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

Lagarde was in correspondence with Moritz von Egidy , Julius Langbehn , Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk , Ferdinand Tönnies and Richard Wagner . The only important student of Lagarde is Alfred Rahlfs .

estate

Lagarde succumbed to cancer shortly after returning from a study trip to Italy on December 22, 1891 in the Mariahilf Hospital in Göttingen. His estate is looked after by the Göttingen University Library. New York University bought his large private library, the catalog of which was published in 1892, as a whole. In 1897 his widow Anna de Lagarde published a complete edition of his poems.

Political interests: national Christianity, imperialism, anti-Semitism and misogyny

Book advertisement of de Lagarde's writings in the Bozner Nachrichten of 1913

In parallel to his academic work, he tried to found a German national religion, the most striking manifestations of which were aggressive anti-Semitism and expansionist thinking. For he had little concrete religious information or even a creed ready for the required national religion, such as his first political work on the relationship of the German state to theology, church and religion. An attempt to orientate non-theologians from 1873 shows. First of all, he demands that the state's most important task is to create a climate in which a national religion can flourish. For the time being, he obliges people who hope in God to distinguish exclusively between “duty and sin” in every action in a radical morality. Because a formal language has to be developed for the religiosity of the newborn. In the second part of his 1875 book About the present situation of the German Reich. He then adds a report and specifies it as follows:

"Germany is the entirety of all Germans who feel German, think German, and want German: each and every one of us a traitor if he does not consider himself personally responsible for the existence, happiness and future of the fatherland at every moment of his life, every individual a hero and liberator if he does. "

The historian Ulrich Sieg classifies his position as follows: "He despised what he saw as bland and half-hearted Christianity and hoped for a future religion with a folkish tinge." Lagarde was known to the founder of the anti-Semitic Berlin movement , Adolf Stoecker . He also showed interest in ethnic anti- Semitic associations such as the German People's Association by Bernhard Förster and Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg , and for the German Social Party of Theodor Fritsch . In 1886 he sent him his writing The next duties of German policy to contact him , the core of which he saw as a German settlement policy in Eastern Europe. In his German writings , in which he compiled his already published political essays in the editions that followed from 1878, there are numerous anti-Jewish passages from which it emerges, among other things, that he saw Jews as the greatest barrier to German unification, while at the same time he considered the concept persecuted a German settlement in Southeast Europe and proposed to relocate the local Jewish population to Palestine or Madagascar . Because for him there was only the alternative of complete assimilation or emigration of the Jews.

In his pamphlet “Jews and Indo-Europeans” in 1887 he wrote: “It takes a heart the hardness of crocodile skin in order not to feel pity for the poor drained Germans and - which is the same thing - not to hate the Jews, not to them to hate and despise those - out of humanity! - speak to these Jews or who are too cowardly to trample on these vermin. Trichinae and bacilli are not negotiated, Trichinae and bacilli are not raised either, they are destroyed as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. ”For this reason, he is one of the pioneers of modern anti-Semitism.

In addition to his influence on anti-Semitism, Lagarde's thinking is important for the emerging German imperialist thinking. In this regard, he concentrated on Europe in the sense of a German border colonialism and did not think of acquiring colonies overseas. This comes close to the German concept of living space in the direction of Eastern Europe , which was later designed primarily by Friedrich Ratzel . In 1875 Lagarde considered the “gradual Germanization of Poland” to be the main goal of German politics. Since he was concerned about how many Germans emigrated when they were looking for land, he was interested in acquiring colonizing land near the border for a peasant class, which he saw as the “real basis of the state”. This land acquisition was aimed at a Central Europe under German leadership, "which extends from the mouth of the Ems to the Danube, from the Memel to Trieste, from Metz to around the Bug".

In his 1918 concluded in the United States Booking The new Europe is one of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk Lagarde's leading philosophical and theological spokesmen of Pangermanism , where he continues to Heinrich von Treitschke as its historian, William II. As its politicians and Friedrich Ratzel as its geopolitical referred geographers . In all of them he sees representatives of the “German drive to the east ”, which threatens the Slavic countries imperialistically.

The 1901 handbook of the women's movement named Paul de Lagarde as one of the leading opponents of women's rights. He wrote about the educational opportunities for girls: "Every woman really only learns from the man she loves, and she learns what and as much as the beloved man wants to have as pleasing through his love."

effect

While Paul de Lagarde is more or less forgotten today, his immediate afterlife and fame were intensely widespread in the German bourgeoisie up until the time of National Socialism. Via the publishing house Eugen Diederichs , from 1921 with the expiration of the term of protection for his works via the publishing houses Bärenreiter (Augsburg), Langenscheidt (Berlin), Insel Verlag , Alfred Kröner Verlag , Reclam-Verlag and BG Teubner (Leipzig), the publishing house Ferdinand Schöningh (Paderborn), especially through Julius Friedrich Lehmann and his Munich publishing house , found his cultural-philosophical works, especially the ideas from the German writings , widely distributed in anthologies.

His best-known readers included Houston Stewart Chamberlain , who saw Lagarde as one of his most important informants, the chairman of the Pan-German Association Heinrich Claß , Adolf Hitler , Karl Lamprecht , Julius Langbehn , Friedrich Nietzsche , Alfred Rosenberg , who von Lagarde came up with the idea of ​​the so-called Madagascar Plan took over, Artur Dinter , who dedicated his novel The Sin Against Love (1922) to him, Hans Rothfels , Richard Wagner , but also Thomas Mann (see considerations of an apolitical ) and Martin Buber . His posthumous success can also be seen in the 180 Lagarde celebrations that are said to have taken place across Germany on the 50th anniversary of his death on December 22, 1941.

Fonts

  • Initia chromatologiae arabicae (1849)
  • Arica (1851)
  • Conservative? (1853)
  • On the Present Tasks of German Politics (1853)
  • Didascalia apostolorum syriace (1854)
  • Notes on the Greek translation of the proverbs (1863)
  • Collected Treatises (1866)
  • Genesis graece (1868)
  • About the relationship of the German state to theology, church and religion. An attempt to orient non-theologians (1873)
  • About the current situation in the German Empire. A report (1875)
  • Armenian Studies (1877)
  • Symmicta (1.1877-2.1889)
  • Semitica (1878)
  • German writings (1878, 5th edition 1920, continuously collects all political writings)
  • Orientalia (1.1879–2.1880)
  • Persian Studies (1884)
  • Jews and Indo-Europeans (1887)
  • Overview of the usual formation of nouns in Aramaic, Arabic and Hebrew (1.1889–2.1891)

Posthumous editions

  • Memories from his life compiled for the friends by Anna de Lagarde. Kaestner, Göttingen 1894.
  • Poems. Complete edition, arranged by Anna de Lagarde. Horstmann, Göttingen 1897.
  • Memories of Friedrich Rückert . Dieterich, Göttingen 1897.
  • Fonts for Germany. Edited by August Messer . Alfred Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1933.
  • Commitment to Germany. Selection from his writings. Edited by Friedrich Daab. Diederich, Jena 1933.
  • National religion. Edited by Georg Dost. Diederichs, Jena 1934.
  • Franz Overbeck's correspondence with Paul de Lagarde. Edited by Niklaus Peter and Andreas Urs Sommer . In: Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 3, 1996, pp. 127–171.

literature

  • Hans-Georg Drescher: Ernst Troeltsch and Paul de Lagarde . In: Mitteilungen der Ernst-Troeltsch-Gesellschaft 3, 1984, pp. 95–115.
  • Jean Favrat: La Pensée de Paul de Lagarde (1827-1891). Contribution à l'étude des rapports de la religion et de la politique dans le nationalisme et le conservatisme allemands au XIXème siècle . Atelier de Reproduction des Thèses, Univ. de Lille III u. a., Lille et al. a. 1979, ISBN 2-7295-0071-5 .
  • Massimo Ferrari Zumbini: The Roots of Evil. Founding years of anti-Semitism: From Bismarck to Hitler . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 978-3-465-03222-9 .
  • Göttingen Working Group for Syrian Church History (Ed.): Paul de Lagarde and the Syrian Church History . Goettingen 1968
  • Roman Heiligenthal :  Lagarde, Paul Anton de . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 20, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1990, ISBN 3-11-012655-9 , pp. 375-378.
  • Robert W. Lougee: Paul de Lagarde. 1827-1891. A study of radical conservatism in Germany . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1962 (first comprehensive monograph).
  • Ina Ulrike Paul: Paul Anton de Lagarde . In: Uwe Puschner , Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918 . Munich 1996, pp. 45-93
  • Ina Ulrike Paul: Paul Anton de Lagardes racism . In: Ina Ulrike Paul, Sylvia Schraut (ed.): Racism in past and present. An interdisciplinary analysis (= civilizations & history, vol. 55), Peter Lang, Berlin a. a. 2018, pp. 81–111.
  • Jürgen Schriewer:  Lagarde, Paul de. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , pp. 409-412 ( digitized version ).
  • Hans Walter Schütte: Lagarde and spruce. The hidden speculative requirements of Paul de Lagarde's understanding of Christianity . Mohr, Gütersloh 1965.
  • Ulrich Sieg : The sacralization of the nation: Paul de Lagardes "German writings" . In: Werner Bergmann / Ulrich Sieg (eds.): Antisemitic historical images (= anti-Semitism: history and structures, volume 5) . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0114-8 , pp. 103-120
  • Ulrich Sieg: Germany's prophet. Paul de Lagarde and the origins of modern anti-Semitism . Carl Hanser, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-446-20842-1 .
  • Andreas Urs Sommer : Between agitation, religious foundation and "high politics". Paul de Lagarde and Friedrich Nietzsche . In: Nietzsche research. A yearbook . Vol. 4, 1998, pp. 169-194
  • Fritz Stern : The Politics of Cultural Despair . Los Angeles 1961. German: Cultural pessimism as a political danger. Scherz, Bern a. a. 1963 / dtv, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-04448-9 / Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-608-94136-3 ( Review Deutschlandradio Kultur ).
  • Ludwig Techen:  Lagarde, Paul Anton de . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 51, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, pp. 531-536.
  • Michael Welte:  Lagarde, Paul Anton de. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 984.  ( Article / beginning of article in the Internet archive )

Web links

Wikisource: Paul Anton de Lagarde  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Paul de Lagarde  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Sieg (2007), p. 11 ff.
  2. ↑ Jürgen W. Schmidt: No case of “ritual blood drawing” - the criminal trials against the rabbinate candidate Max Bernstein in Breslau in 1889/90 and their sexual psychological background. In: Specialized prose research - Border Crossing 8/9, Deutscher Wissenschaftsverlag, Baden-Baden 2014, ISSN 1863-6780, pp. 483–516, here: pp. 489 and 497.
  3. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Paul Anton de Lagarde (Bötticher). Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed September 27, 2015 (Russian).
  4. ↑ The catalog of Paul de Lagarde’s library . Göttingen 1892, is now available in digital form: Göttingen Digitization Center, PPN550074570 , last accessed on July 7, 2009.
  5. ↑ See reviews on Ulrich Sieg (2007) .
  6. ↑ German writings ; Göttingen, 1920 5 , p. 81. Cf. Ulrich Sieg (2007), pp. 162–166.
  7. ↑ German writings ; Göttingen, 1920 5 , p. 186.
  8. ↑ Interview with Ulrich Sieg , accessed on September 1, 2012.
  9. ↑ Ulrich Sieg (2007), p. 253.
  10. ↑ Magnus Brechtken : "Madagascar for the Jews". Anti-Semitic Idea and Political Practice 1885–1945. Oldenbourg Wissenschaft, Munich 1998, p. 16f. (Compare Madagascar .)
  11. ↑ See Ulrich Sieg (2007), p. 62f.
  12. ^ Paul de Lagarde: Jews and Indo-Europeans 1887 , cited above. according to A. Bein: Modern Antisemitism , in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , vol. 6, 1958, also online.
  13. ↑ See, inter alia, Lagarde: The position of religious societies in the state , chap. 5; Program for the Conservative Party , chap. 10.
  14. ↑ Quoted in Ulrich Sieg (2007), pp. 173f.
  15. ^ Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk: The new Europe. The Slavic point of view . Berlin 1991, pp. 13-44.
  16. ↑ Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer : Handbook of the women's movement. Berlin: Moeser, 1901, p. 68.
  17. ↑ 1884, quoted in: Helene Lange and Gertrud Bäumer : Handbuch der Frauenbewegung. Berlin: Moeser, 1901, p. 71.
  18. ↑ See the chapters Prophet des Deutschtums and Ein Vordenker des Nazism in Ulrich Sieg (2007).
  19. ↑ Review: Klaus Epstein: Lougee, Robert W., Paul de Lagarde 1827-1891. A Study of Radical Conservatism in Germany, Cambridge, Mass. 1962 . In: Historische Zeitschrift 198, 1964, pp. 135-138.
  20. ↑ Reviews: Carsten Hueck: Vordenker des Antisemitismus . In: Deutschlandradio , broadcast on April 10, 2007; Guy Thomas Tourlamain: Review of: Sieg, Ulrich: Germany's prophet. Paul de Lagarde and the origins of modern anti-Semitism. Munich 2007 . In: H-Soz-u-Kult , January 28, 2010; also in: Archive for Social History online , May 2007. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 12, 2008. Historische Zeitschrift 287, 2008, pp. 787ff. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , July 25, 2007. Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 20, 2007. Die Zeit , April 19, 2007. Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 55, 2008, pp. 972ff.
personal data
SURNAME Lagarde, Paul de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lagarde, Paul Anton de; Bötticher, Paul Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cultural philosopher and orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1891
Place of death Goettingen