Paul Krannhals

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Paul Krannhals (born November 14, 1883 in Riga ; † August 16, 1934 in Munich ) was a Baltic German cultural philosopher and publicist who spiritually anticipated and supported National Socialism . The title of his main work is The Organic World View .

Life

Krannhals was born the son of a doctor. He and his brothers attended high school in Jena . Krannhals then studied chemistry, but looked beyond the limits of his core discipline right from the start. He laid the foundation stone for his philosophical thought structure in Russian captivity. After his return he worked from 1920 to 1925 as a newspaper editor in Dessau and Essen .

In 1929 Krannhals was a co-founder of Alfred Rosenberg's Kampfbund for German Culture . He joined the NSDAP and the National Socialist German Student Union and in 1931 became head of the NSDStB working group “The Organic World View” . In 1933 and 1934 he was a speaker in the Nazi teachers' association . In 1934 he was co-editor of the völkisch magazine Die Sonne . Krannhals was a supporter of Jakob Wilhelm Hauer's German Faith Movement .

1934, shortly before his death, gave him the Faculty of Arts of the University of Marburg the honorary doctorate .

The reasoning for the application for the award of the honorary doctorate states that it is a matter of fulfilling an honorary duty "which German science owes a man who has earned early and hardly overestimated merits in reorienting the philosophical worldview at the current cultural change," and now struggles with admirable heroism with the last strength of someone already marked by death to finish his work and to ensure his thoughts continue to have an effect. "

The Nazi philosopher Otto Dietrich praised the work The Organic World View as “the first attempt, correctly seen from the National Socialist point of view [...], to scientifically clarify and present the organic or universalist world view as that which corresponds to our German nature within ".

The basic ideas of the main Krannhals work The Organic Worldview say: " Society " as a purely functional association without ideal goals destroy organic life and growth. Krannhals contrasted the “society” with the so-called “ethnic community ”. According to him, individualism leads to a meaningless and worthless existence; the pure intellect kills living forms and is the creator of "society" and annihilator of the "community".

Several of Krannhalsen's writings were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone and in the German Democratic Republic after the end of World War II .

Fonts (selection)

  • The organic worldview. Foundations of a newly emerging German culture , Munich 1928
  • The global sense of technology as the key to its cultural significance , Munich / Berlin 1932
  • Religion as the fulfillment of meaning in life , Leipzig 1933
  • Revolution of the Spirit , Leipzig 1935 (2nd edition 1937)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Ciupke, Education for German people: völkische and national-conservative adult education in the Weimar Republic , Klartext Verlag 2007, p. 210.
  2. ↑ Anne Christine Nagel (ed.): The Philipps University of Marburg in National Socialism: Documents to their history , Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000, p. 191.
  3. ↑ Otto Dietrich: The philosophical foundations of National Socialism, Breslau 1935 [number of pages missing: subsequent delivery! The quote is not on pp. 20–23, where it is about Krannhals!].
  4. ↑ Anne Christine Nagel (ed.): The Philipps University of Marburg in National Socialism: Documents to their history , Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000, p. 192 f.
  5. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-k.html
  6. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1947-nslit-k.html
  7. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-k.html
  8. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-k.html
personal data
SURNAME Krannhals, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION National Socialist cultural philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1934
Place of death Munich