Trying on the inequality of human races
The attempt on the inequality of human races ( French Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines ) is the best known work of the French diplomat and writer Joseph Arthur de Gobineau . The book, published for the first time in 1853–1855, sets up the theory of an Aryan master race and is considered a major work of racism .
content
The first edition is dedicated to His Majesty Georg V , King of Hanover .
The extensive work consists of four volumes, which in turn contain six books. Volumes I and II correspond to books 1 to 4 and appeared in Paris in 1853. The last two volumes with books 5 and 6 were also published in Paris in 1855.
Gobineau starts from a pessimistic view of the world: man is the evil animal par excellence.
At the beginning of the first book is the claim that the general disintegration of states and societies is based on a common cause. Fanaticism, luxury, softness, moral corruption and a lack of religious conviction are ruled out as causes for Gobineau. On the other hand, nations would perish as soon as they consisted of degenerate or degenerate elements. The author does not understand this term in a moral sense, but sees the degeneration caused by increasing racial mixing. This brings him to the question of whether the human races differ in value from one another. He characterizes the "three great races": the black, yellow and white races, which he attributes to physiological differences , although he is not entirely convinced of it himself . At the bottom of the hierarchy is the "black race", to which he ascribes an animal-like character; only the senses of taste and smell are above average. He attributes tendencies towards mediocrity and a narrowly limited practical sense to the yellow race. The white race is at the top of this hierarchy, it is characterized by "immensely superior intelligence", a pronounced love of life and a concept of honor that is unknown to the yellow and black. However, the white is inferior to the two other races in the sensual area. The first book closes with a listing of ten great human civilizations which the author associates with the white race and which the author attributes mainly to Aryan influence.
The second book deals with different peoples of the ancient Orient : Hamites , Semites , seafaring Canaanites , Assyrians , Hebrews , Hurrites , Egyptians and Ethiopians . The third book first deals with the Aryans , who are admired by the author, establishing an etymological connection with the German word honor , then contesting the historicity of the yellow race and describing their wandering movements.
The fourth book is entitled Semitized Civilizations of the Southwest . It begins with the claim that history was only made by the white race and that almost all civilizations developed in the western world . This is followed by remarks about the Zoroastrians and the ancient Greeks , the latter being attributed a Semitic influence. Deucalion , the son of Prometheus , was half-Semite.
The fifth book, under the title Semitized European Civilization , deals with the indigenous peoples of Europe. It begins with explanations of the Bronze , Iron and Stone Ages and then mentions the Thracians , Illyrians , Etruscans , Iberians , Gauls and Italiots ( Greek colonists in Magna Graecia in southern Italy and Sicily ).
The sixth book, entitled Western Civilizations , turns first to the Slavs . In the next five chapters, longer explanations about the Germanic peoples follow , with the sense of rulership and the alleged superiority of the Aryan in terms of intelligence and energy. In Germany, the slow decline of the nobility is contrasted with the Hanseatic League , which appears to the author as a bourgeois masterpiece, a mixture of Celtic and dominant Slavic influences. The two final chapters deal with Native Americans and European colonialism in America. This is where Gobineau begins to criticize the behavior of the Anglo-Saxons towards the black slaves and the indigenous people:
“He shows himself to be no less bossy with the negroes than with the natives: the latter he robbed to the bone; He bends the former without hesitation to the ground, which they work for him; and this practice is all the more remarkable as it is inconsistent with the humanitarian principles of those who practice it. "
The General Conclusion foresees the end of all human community and contains a formula that deeply impressed Gobineau's contemporaries, including Heinrich von Stein :
"The nations, no, the human herds, drowsy in dull solitude, will henceforth live numbly in their nothingness, like ruminating buffaloes in the standing puddles of the Pontine swamps ."
effect
Gobineau's essay was translated into German by Karl Ludwig Schemann and published in 1900. Not least because of this translation, the work received far more attention in Germany than in France or other European countries. Even Richard Wagner was among the admirers Gobineaus. However, Gobineau's racism contains neither evidence of anti-Semitism nor of German nationalism . These ideological elements were only added by the Gobineau reception in Richard Wagner's environment and in particular by Houston Stewart Chamberlain . Chamberlain came across Gobineau's essay through the recommendation of Cosima Wagner and in 1899 published the foundations of the nineteenth century . The anti-Semitic and German national statements contained therein formed the basis for the racism of the völkisch movement and later of National Socialism , whose ideology of “ subhumanity ” and the “ final solution of the Jewish question ” claimed millions of victims.
Henry Hotze , a Swiss who emigrated to the United States in 1850 and advocated slavery, translated Gobineau's book into English in 1856 under the title Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races . Gobineau was not enthusiastic about the translation and criticized the fact that Hotze had left out the passages in which the decline of America in general and slavery in particular came up.
The Haitian politician and anthropologist Joseph-Anténor Firmin published De l'égalité des races humaines (“On the equality of the races ”) in Paris in 1885, in response to Gobineau. Firmin does not deny the existence of the term race, but points out that the definitions in question have been kept fuzzy and that the hierarchy of races is inadequately justified. He also emphasizes the value of the cultural achievements that have arisen on African soil.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Experiment on the inequality of human races, Book 6, Chapter III.
- ↑ Experiment on the inequality of human races, Book 6, Chapter VIII.
- ↑ Attempt on the inequality of human races , Conclusion générale , in: Eric Eugène: Wagner and Gobineau ( Memento des original from January 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Houston Stewart Chamberlain - On the textual construction of a worldview . P. 500.
- ↑ Michael Lausberg: The resonance of the Gobinist concept of race in Wagner and Nietzsche . In TABVLA RASA , issue 38, October 2009.
- ^ Lonnie A. Burnett: Henry Hotze, Confederate Propagandist . University of Alabama Press, p. 5.
literature
- Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann: Houston Stewart Chamberlain - On the textual construction of a worldview: an analysis of the history of language, discourse and ideology. Volume 95 of Studia Linguistica Germanica. Walter de Gruyter, 2008. 719 pp., ISBN 978-3-11-020957-0 .
