Das Reich der Seele
Walther Rathenau’s
Cultural Pessimism and Prussian Nationalism
~
Dieuwe Jan Beersma
16 juli 2020
Master Geschiedenis – Duitslandstudies, 11053259
First supervisor: dhr. dr. A.K. (Ansgar) Mohnkern
Second supervisor: dhr. dr. H.J. (Hanco) Jürgens
Abstract
Every year the Rathenau Stiftung awards the Walther Rathenau-Preis to international politicians to spread Rathenau’s ideas of ‘democratic values, international understanding and tolerance’. This incorrect perception of Rathenau as a democrat and a liberal is likely to have originated from the historiography. Many historians have described Rathenau as ‘contradictory’, claiming that there was a clear and problematic distinction between Rathenau’s intellectual theories and ideas and his political and business career. Upon closer inspection, however, this interpretation of Rathenau’s persona seems to be fundamentally incorrect. This thesis reassesses Walther Rathenau’s legacy profoundly by defending the central argument: Walther Rathenau’s life and motivations can first and foremost be explained by his cultural pessimism and Prussian nationalism. The first part of the thesis discusses Rathenau’s intellectual ideas through an in-depth analysis of his intellectual work and the historiography on his work. Motivated by racial theory, Rathenau dreamed of a technocratic utopian German empire led by a carefully selected Prussian elite. He did not believe in the ‘power of a common Europe’, but in the power of a common German Europe. The second part of the thesis explicates how Rathenau’s career is not contradictory to, but actually very consistent with, his cultural pessimism and Prussian nationalism. Firstly, Rathenau saw the First World War as a chance to
transform the economy and to make his Volksstaat a reality. Secondly, he was a neoconservative intellectual who dreamt of a homogenous society. He distrusted the representative democracy of the Weimar Republic. Thirdly, after the war, Rathenau waged an ‘economic war’. Together with
Chancellor Joseph Wirth, Rathenau constantly obstructed peace negotiations to make his independent German empire a reality. The last part of the thesis discusses the interpretation of Rathenau made by the Austrian writer Robert Musil in his magnum opus Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften, a work which has been underdiscussed in the scholarship on Rathenau. This thesis argues that Musil’s literary caricature, Dr. Paul Arnheim, is a very insightful interpretation of Rathenau’s neoconservatism.
Bio
Dieuwe Jan Beersma received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science at the University of
Amsterdam. Due to his passion for history and literature he decided to write his master’s thesis at the History department. His thesis on Walther Rathenau combines his knowledge of international relations and politics with his passion for German history and literature. The incorporation of Robert Musil gives his thesis an interdisciplinary character and it deepens our understanding of Walther Rathenau’s legacy.
Nun folgt sofort ein Widerspruch: Damit das Spiegelbild klar und rein
erscheine, muß die projizierende Flamme gleichmäßig leuchten: nur
homogene Gemeinschaften haben Ideale.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 – Rathenau’s Intellectual Career 6
1.1. Der Geist – The rise of the educated middle class 6
1.2. Die Zukunft - The rise of neoconservatism 9
1.3. Höre Israel - Rathenau’s antisemitism 13
1.4. Mitteleuropa – Rathenau’s German Colonial Empire 15 1.5. Entgermanisierung - Rathenau’s cultural pessimism and racial theory 17 1.6. Von Kommenden Dingen - Rathenau’s technocratic Utopia 20
Chapter 2 Part One - Rathenau’s Career During the First World War 27
Chapter 2 Part Two - Rathenau’s Post-War Career 35
2.2.1. The Broader Context 36
2.2.2. Rathenau and Wirth’s Wirtschaftskrieg 40
2.2.3. The Genoa Conference and the Rapallo Treaty 48
2.2.4. Harry Graf Kessler and the myth of ‘preventive diplomacy’ 53
2.2.5. Rathenau’s assassination 55
Chapter 3 - Musil’s Arnheim:
An early interpretation of Walther Rathenau in ‘Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften’ 59
3.1. Robert Musil and Rathenau 59
3.2. Arnheim - Musil’s literary portrait 61
Conclusion 67
Introduction
Walther Rathenau was born in 1867 into a wealthy Jewish family in the rising industrial city of Berlin. Hans Fürstenberg (1890-1982), the man who would come to write an insightful memoir on Rathenau’s life, grew up in the same neighbourhood. In one of Fürstenberg’s childhood memories, he would later describe, his mother came to kiss him goodnight while Walther stood in the doorframe of his bedroom.1 The men met again during their student days and later in life through work and travels. They both served in the army and both of them were, what was called, Bildungsbürger: men with a broad education and a passion for the arts and literature.2 Their family businesses worked together intensively over the years. Hans’ father, Carl Fürstenberg (1850-1933), was one of the prominent Jewish bankers who financed projects of Walthers’ father, Emil Rathenau (1838-1915).
In all of Fürstenberg’s memories, Walther Rathenau acted as a ‘proud man, full of
self-knowledge’.3 Fürstenberg knew, however, that behind this ‘veneer of strength lied a persisting feeling of inferiority’.4 When he looked back on Rathenau’s life in 1962, Fürstenberg was surprised that many regarded him as a ‘patron saint of the Weimar Republic’.5 Fürstenberg outlived Rathenau by many years and wrote a memoire on his childhood friend in 1962 named Erinnerung an Walther Rathenau. According to Fürstenberg, the mythical- and saint-like image of Rathenau was caused by how he had been presented in the historiography. Fürstenberg stated that the biography written by Harry Graf Kessler (1868-1937) had been especially influential.6
Kessler’s biography Walther Rathenau: Sein Leben und Sein Werk (1928) has become the standard in Rathenau-scholarship. Its central thesis is that Rathenau had a contradictory character:
1Hans Fürstenberg,‘Erinnerung an Walther Rathenau, Ein Kommentar’ In: Kessler, Harry Graf, Walther Rathenau, Sein
Leben und Sein Werk (Wiesbaden 1962) 390.
2 Ibidem, 396-398. 3 Ibidem, 390.
4 Ibidem, 390. ‘Sofern er Minderwertigkeits-Komplexe besaß – und daran ist kaum zu zweifeln -, wußte er sie gut zu verbergen.’
5 Ibidem, 386. ‘Schutzheilige’ 6 Ibidem, 387.
[…] [der] Doppelbestimmung Walther Rathenaus, zu jenem nie in ihm ausgeglichenen Konflikt zwischen dem Hang zu weltfremder seelischer Verinnerlichung und der geheimnisvoll unwiderstehlichen Nötigung zu eng auf einen Zweck eingestelltem
kaufmännischem und technischem Schaffen, zu jener Doppelheit, die ihn schließlich tragisch innerlich zerriß und äußerlich zu einem Gegenstand des Anstoßes und des Hasses für
Millionen machte […].7
Kessler argued that there was a clear and problematic distinction between Rathenau’s intellectual theories and ideas and his political and business career.8 He stated that for Rathenau the differences between his intellectual and practical career were so strong, so contradictory, that this led to ‘internal divisiveness’. Many more biographies on Rathenau have been written in the meantime, which all differ in content and character. Kessler’s concept of contradiction, however, has stuck. In 1967, for instance, the Dutch historian H.W. von der Dunk emphasized the contradictory nature and ambivalence of Rathenau’s character.9 Peter Berglar emphasized Rathenau’s multiplicity (vielschichtige Gestalt) in 1970.10 In 1997 Dieter Heimböckel called Rathenau a ‘Widersprüchlicher Universalist’.11 This approach persevered and returned in the biographies of Wolfgang Michalka in 2008 and Lothar Gall in 2009.12 The ‘contradiction’-argument seems to have become a myth in itself, which has been haunting research on Rathenau for decades. Perspectives in the historiography might be changing slowly, however. In 2009, Dieter Heimböckel, who had once claimed differently, stated that a new approach to the study of Rathenau might be needed.13
Kessler also presented Rathenau as an ‘Erfüllungspolitiker’, working towards solidarity with both the Russians in the East and the Allied Powers in the West.14 Kessler presented Rathenau as a politician who brought peace to the continent.15
7Harry Graf Kessler, Walther Rathenau, Sein Leben und Sein Werk (Wiesbaden 1962) 25.
9 Hermann Von der Dunk, ‘Walther Rathenau 1867-1922, Leven tussen aanpassing en kritiek’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 80 (1967) 331.
10 ‘Peter Berglar, bekannt durch zahlreiche literarische, zeitkritische, philosophische und historische Arbeiten, bringt die vielschichtige Gestalt Walther Rathenaus (1867-1922) zur lebendigen Anschauung.’, Quote from the back cover of Peter Berglar, Walther Rathenau: Ein Leben zwischen Philosophie und Politik (Vienna 1987).
11 Dieter Heimböckel, ‘Widersprüchlicher Universalist : der Industrielle, Politiker und Schriftsteller Walther Rathenau.’ Schweizer Monatshefte : Zeitschrift für Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur (1997) 77.11.
12 Lothar Gall, Walther Rathenau, Portrait einer Epoche (Munich 2009) 258; Michalka, Wolfgang. ‘Vordenker der Moderne’ In: Michalka, Wolfgang e.a. ed., Walther Rathenau (Berlin 2008) 28: ‘Rathenau’s Vielseitigkeit und Widersprüchlichkeit.’ 13 Dieter Heimböckel, ‘Kunst contra Mechanisierung’, In: Delabar, Walther e.a. ed., Walther Rathenau: Der Phänotyp der Moderne. Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Studien zu Walther Rathenau (Bielefeld 2009) 12.
14 Kessler, Rathenau, 297, 300. 15 Ibidem, 352.
But we now know that Kessler tried to hide some of Rathenau’s intentions and most important decisions. After Rathenau’s assassination, the Rathenau family and some of his friends had given Kessler open access to source material. To strengthen societal
remembrance, the government actively participated with Kessler’s biography by opening all archives to him.16 The German Foreign Office, however, actively censured several sources used by Kessler and Kessler agreed to change his text in accordance with instructions from the Foreign Office’s legal advisors.17 In light of these findings, Kessler’s biography appears to be revisionist and unreliable.
But Kessler’s interpretation of Rathenau as a peaceful international politician and a defender of German democracy permeates until this day. Yearly, one of the most important prizes in German politics is handed out by the Rathenau-Stiftung: the Rathenau-Preis. This prize is handed out to politicians and statesmen who have made an exceptional contribution to international tolerance and cooperation. The Stiftung states that they want to spread Rathenau’s ideas of ‘democratic values, international understanding and tolerance.’18
Chancellor Angela Merkel, when handing out the prize to Hans-Dietrich Genscher in 2008, said that Rathenau was responsible for ‘die Gestaltung der Beziehungen zu unseren Nachbarn durch Einbindung Deutschlands in Europa.’19 When awarding the Rathenau-Preis to Hilary
Clinton in 2011, the former German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle stated: ‘Rathenau was a true champion of individual liberty. He saw clever minds as a driving force of our prosperity. He stressed the rights of all people. He worked for a world order where everyone meets as partners.’20 The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte accepted the price in 2014,
stating about Rathenau: ‘In the 1920’s he was already pleading for European cooperation. I share his belief in the power of a common Europe, of our shared European values and ideas.’21
16 Kessler, Rathenau, 386.
17 Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, ‘Rapallo-Strategy in Preventive Diplomacy: New Sources and New Interpretations’, In: Berghahn, Volker R. e.a. ed., Germany in the Age of Total War (Totowa, New Jersey 1981) 139.
18 Rathenau-Stiftung.de 2020.
19 Angela Merkel, ‘Rede von Bundeskanzlerin Dr. Angela Merkel zur Verleihung des Walther-Rathenau-Preises an Hans-Dietrich Genscher am 21. Oktober 2008 in Berlin, Bulletin der Bundesregierung’ (2008) 113-3: 2.
20 Guido Westerwelle, ‘Laudatio von Außenminister Westerwelle auf Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton anlässlich der Verleihung des Walther Rathenau Preises in Berlin (Englisch)’
21 Mark Rutte: 'Walther Rathenau was een Duits politicus in de vroege jaren 20 van de vorige eeuw. Toen al sprak hij over
Europese samenwerking. Ik deel zijn geloof in de kracht van Europa, van onze waarden en onze ideeën.' Source: EU-monitor.nl
This thesis shows that Rathenau held quite different views than the ones portrayed by Rutte, Merkel, Westerwelle and the Rathenau Stiftung. Through a close inspection of Rathenau’s intellectual ideas and his practical career, it shows that Rathenau’s life cannot and should not be summarized as contradictory, as Kessler and many after him have done. This approach in the historiography has contributed to the fact that Rathenau is now wrongly perceived as a democrat and a liberal. This thesis thus reassesses Walther Rathenau’s legacy fundamentally by defending the central argument:
Walther Rathenau’s life and motivations can first and foremost be explained by his cultural pessimism and Prussian nationalism.
The first chapter primarily focusses on Rathenau’s intellectual career. It argues that
Rathenau’s theories were neoconservative in character from the beginning of his life until its tragic end. In doing this, it argues that the current historiographic tradition which presents Rathenau as contradictory is fundamentally flawed. The analysis shows that Rathenau was very consistent in his cultural pessimism and Prussian nationalism.
The second chapter motivates that Rathenau put his neoconservative theories into practice. This means that Rathenau acted in accordance with his cultural pessimism and Prussian nationalism, both as an industrialist and as a politician. It also shows that the public
remembrance of Rathenau as a prime example of international cooperation and tolerance is not in accordance with the historical facts. The chapter is divided into two parts: the first part discusses Rathenau’s career during the First World War, the second part discusses Rathenau’s career after the war.
The third chapter shows how the thesis-argument (Walther Rathenau’s life and motivations can first and foremost be explained by his cultural pessimism and Prussian nationalism) can be recognized in the work of the Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880-1940). He understood that Rathenau was symptomatic for his time period. Musil’s magnum opus, Der Mann Ohne Eigenschaften (MoE), first published in 1930, works like a prism. It reveals a forgotten world, one that was in transition from the ninetieth to the twentieth century. Musil made a literary interpretation of Rathenau, a caricature in the form of Dr. Paul Arnheim. Musil knew Rathenau’s work in detail and he had also closely observed his political career. In his satire, Musil does not distinguish between his intellectual and practical career, he does not regard them as ‘contradictory’. In the historiography on Rathenau, the works of Musil have been referenced and used as a historical source, yet mainly the same parts of his work are used over and over again.22 The same is true the other way around. Many scholars of literature did not seem to have the time or will to study Rathenau’s history in detail.23 The third and final chapter takes the first step in analyzing Musil’s representation in more depth. By combining the analysis of literature and history this research has a unique interdisciplinary character.
22 Mainly the chapter on Arnheim as a Großschriftsteller is used in the historiography, and Musil’s critique on Rathenau in the <<Neuen Rundschau>> and not much else. See Ernst Schulin, Rathenau, 37; Brenner, Rathenau, 119; Shulamit Volkov, Walther Rathenau, Weimar’s Fallen Statesman (Yale 2012) 114; Lothar Gall, Walther Rathenau, 170-173.
23 A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil by Payne, Bartram and Tihanov consists of excellent essays, but does not offer much historical context when it comes to the character of Arnheim/Rathenau. This thesis shows there is much more to add.
Chapter 1 – Rathenau’s Intellectual Career
This first chapter discusses Rathenau’s intellectual ideas, by doing an in-depth analysis of his intellectual work and the historiography on his work. It motivates that Rathenau was actually a cultural pessimist and a Prussian Nationalist. Rathenau was not a defender of parliamentary representative democracy. He dreamed of a technocratic utopian German empire, led by a carefully selected Prussian elite. He did not believe in the ‘power of a common Europe’, but in the power of a common German Europe. The chapter starts with a broader introduction of the societal context to create a better understanding of Rathenau’s theories. After this, his theories are discussed in greater detail, especially his works Zur Kritik der Zeit (1912) and Von Kommenden Dingen (1917).
1.1. Der Geist – The rise of the educated middle class
During the nineteenth century, Prussia was known for its ‘Prussian particularism’. The political system benefitted the conservative-agrarian establishment by its voting system, the ‘three-class-franchise’. At the end of the century this ‘Old Prussia’ slowly came to an end. The agrarian establishment slowly started to lose its privileged position. Conservative intellectuals started to develop a Prussian ‘universalist’ tradition. They were inspired by the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) who taught in the 1820’s that the reformed Prussian state was to embody ‘the reconciliation of the particular and the universal.’24 In the new Prussian School the state was seen as an ‘impersonal, transhistorical instrument of change.’25 The German unification of 1871 was based on the ideas of the Prussian School. Under Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), a whole network of social legislation was built, starting from the 1880s, including medical, labour, age and invalidity insurance. According to Bismarck the Kaiserreich was to be a ‘social monarchy’.26 The Prussian School combined Prussian patriotism and nationalism with a strong focus on the state and national ‘social’ policies.
24 Christopher Clark, The Iron Kingdom, The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 (London 2007) 614-618. 25 Ibidem.
After the German unification in 1871, the industrialization and technological changes in Prussia went into overdrive, resulting in a Second Industrial Revolution. Especially Berlin changed drastically and turned into a sprawling, modern city. During the unification Berlin counted 865,000 inhabitants. By 1905 the city had grown to around 2 million residents.27 In the new metropolitan areas a novel and more independent middle class started to form. At first these more ‘independent’ citizens had consisted mostly of tradespeople and
technologically trained professionals. But slowly the civil servant also joined their ranks. Civil servants used to see themselves as direct representatives of the state. Yet with the vastly developing pluralization and differentiation of public organizations and institutions, their role became more independent and specialized. They were, for example, responsible for railways, the mail service, public housing and teaching. These civil servants had a lot of respect for and contact with those working in the freie berufe: the doctors, the journalists, the publishers and writers. All these social groups formed the new educated middle class. This neuen Bürgertum grew into a substantial class of around three million people.28 It was a class which prided itself on its newly received independence. It despised the agricultural aristocracy of ‘Old Prussia’. Some of those who reached independence had amounted huge substances of wealth and took pride in showing it.29
Being a member of the new middle class was not about having much wealth, however. Modesty was the prime virtue of this new class, in every aspect of life. In their clothing, their leisure, their spending, their comforts and especially in their spirit (Geist). They presented themselves as having the higher moral ground, not being interested in property, income and privileged positions.30 Those who mastered this Geisteshaltung had Bildung. Amongst the Bildungsbürgertum, the educated middle class, it was deemed fashionable to show that one had a personal, well cultured taste when it came to ‘the Higher Arts’, literature, music, theater, but also architecture. The amount of opera houses, theaters and art galleries in Berlin exploded. It was in fashion to build a house which reflected their well-developed taste.31 The Bildungsbürgertum also benefitted from shorter working hours, therefore they had plenty of time to spend their weekends or evenings consuming the latest cultural offerings.32
27 Shulamit Volkov, Walther Rathenau, Weimar’s Fallen Statesman (Yale 2012) 2. 28 Lothar Gall, Walther Rathenau, Portrait einer Epoche (Munich 2009) 16-17. 29 Ibidem, 16-17.
30 Ibidem, 21. 31 Ibidem, 14. 32 Ibidem, 25.
Best of all, it seemed people could become a member of this educated middle class by their own effort. The novelist Thomas Mann (1875-1955) was used as a prime example of the Gebildete Mensch, he had not finished university but had reached his prominence and fame on his own.33 Harry Graf Kessler became the biographer of this new generation. He knew every person of importance in Wilhelmine Germany. The ideal of the Bildungsbürger became the central identification marker for the new middle class. Slowly but steadily this new middle class became convinced that the way towards a better society was not offered by a specific ideology or political economic system, but by the Spirit, the Geist of the individual. A Gebildeter Mensch had the capacity to communicate with his inner self and therefore was capable of Selbstbestimmung. This was Bildungidealismus. A better world was imagined where every citizen could find his inner self. This new form of idealism created a new societal distinction, between Gebildeten and Ungebildeten.34
This change in social mobility meant a chance for Jews to finally integrate into society. With the unification of 1871, Jews were recognized as being equal citizens. But for a long time this legal equality did not change the practical reality of social exclusion of Jews.35 Their chances of rising in the ranks in Prussia had always been very slim and the Prussian bureaucracy remained as good as closed to Jewish applicants. But in the new metropolitan economy, Jews could contribute to society in the free professions.36 By the 1880’s, with the construction of the new railroads and the rise of electricity, the industrialization went into overdrive. The coal and iron of Silesia and the Ruhr could now be delved and transported in much more effective ways. Gustav Krupp (1870-1950) built his huge iron and steel manufacturing conglomerate; Werner Siemens (1816-1892) built his empire on the technology of the telegraph. But
companies such as Krupp and Siemens had to finance their huge industrial efforts. Many Jews were active in commerce and finance and were responsible for investing in these huge
projects. The role of Jews in the modernization of Germany, however, is often grossly overestimated. Only just over 1 percent of the population was Jewish.37
33 Gall, Rathenau, 20. 34 Ibidem, 27.
35 Volkov, Rathenau, 4-5. 36 Ibidem, 4-5.
Walther Rathenau was part of this 1 percent, as he was born into a Jewish family. His father Emil Rathenau (1838-1915) had inherited money from his grandfather and he had the opportunity to study engineering in Hanover and Zurich. When Emil returned to Berlin he married Mathilde Nachmann (1845-1926), a daughter of a very wealthy Jewish banking family from Frankfurt.38 But Emil was not yet the industrial magnate he came to be. Several of his business ventures failed, and many of his projects were severely damaged by the stock exchange crash of 1873. The economic crisis was so dire that Emil’s father-in-law took his own life. At the Paris World Exhibition of 1881 Emil finally found his fortune. He met with Thomas Edison (1847-1931) and immediately recognized the huge potential of the electric light bulb and seized the opportunity. He bought the very first patent on European soil and started to build his empire on the production of the light bulb and many other electrical goods. In his life, Emil was regarded as a very strong and successful man. Kessler later wrote that he had ‘features of Napoleon in him.’39 Without a doubt, Emil Rathenau, but also magnates such as Siemens and Krupp, laid the foundation of modern capitalism and mass production and consumption in Germany. The Rathenau family profited immensely from the opportunities and social mobility of the modern economy.
1.2. Die Zukunft - The rise of neoconservatism
The new social mobility and the cultural differentiation of city life came at a price.
Metropolitan life, in all its manifestations, with its impressions and its noise, could have an alienating effect on the citizen. Many of the new citizens had been uprooted. They had lost their job in the older disappearing industries and were searching for a new place in the city. What many found instead, was insecurity, poverty and a lack of social bonding and
connection. Those employed suffered from the lack of protection, bad housing and bad health care. They could lose their jobs at any moment due to the pressures of capitalist
competitiveness. The rise of mass media strengthened the anonymizing effect of modern life, seemingly splintering society in all kinds of subgroups.40
38 Volkov, Rathenau, 7-8.
39 Harry Graf Kessler, Walther Rathenau. Sein Leben und Sein Werk (Wiesbaden 1962) 13.
40 Helmut Lethen, ‘Chicago und Moskau: Berlins moderne Kultur der 20er Jahre zwischen Inflation und
Weltwirtschaftskrise’, In: Boberg, Jochen e.a. ed, Die Metropole: Industriekultur in Berlin im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich 1987) 206.
City life, therefore, was increasingly regarded in a more and more negative light. The conservative journalist Adolf Stein wrote: ‘Warum gingen denn die Menschen so ruhig weiter, als wenn überhaupt nichts geschehen wäre…? Die Straßenbahnen fuhren wie
immer’.41 The city was not seen as hopeful and dynamic, but cold and indifferent. The end of the 19th century was a time of insecurity. For many, this was reflected by the political system. To them, the Kaiser with his impulsiveness, mood swings and randomly improvised public speeches, was the perfect embodiment of the chaos and lack of direction of the Wilhelminian society.42
Many intellectuals sought to solve these tensions and negative effects of modernity. They wanted to convert technology and modernity into an ‘organic part of German Kultur’. Historian Jeffrey Herf has called this movement ‘reactionary modernism’: ‘the
“reconciliation between the antimodernist, romantic and irrationalist ideas’ and “modern technology”.’43 The German Kulturnation could in this way be technologically advanced while remaining true to its Geist. The reactionary modernist movement came to be known as the ‘Konservative Revolution’, a name invented by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), Walther Rathenau’s close friend.44 Reactionary modernism was a project of the political right. Neoconservatives like Ernst Jünger, Ludwig Klages and Oswald Spengler are the most well-known intellectuals. In its core, reactionary modernism was an anti-Western and cultural pessimist-ideology. Cultural pessimists believed that Germany had to be protected against the materialist ‘Anglo-Saxon’ world and the ‘backwards’ Eastern cultures of the Russians.45 Reactionary modernists believed in the ‘triumph of the spirit and the will over reason’, believing in a world of ‘hidden powerful forces’, a Divine Law, ein Göttliches Gesetz.46 Reactionary modernists wanted to reverse the process of materialist ‘degeneration’ by uniting the nations ‘body and soul’.47
41 Lethen, ‘Chicago und Moskau’, 208.
42 Joachim Radkau, Das Zeitalter der Nervosität, Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler (Munich 1998) 27. 43 Thomas Rohkrämer, ‘Antimodernism, Reactionary Modernism and National Socialism. Technocratic Tendencies in Germany 1890-1945’, Contemporary European History 8 (1999) 29.
44 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge 1986) 21.
45 Ibidem, 12-14. 46 Ibidem, 12-14. 47 Ibidem, 18.
Many Prussian conservatives were logically attracted to neoconservatism because it glorified the Prussian German Kultur. For the industrialist the positive attitude towards technology was practically free advertisement. The military and civil service liked the prominence and
glorification of the state.48 But many of the new educated bourgeoisie were attracted to new conservatism as well. The emphasis on the German Geist fitted the Bildungsbürger quite well. They were already well acquainted with the ‘romantic anti-capitalism’ of the
neoconservatives. Herf states: ‘the social basis of the conservative revolution was the middle class.’49 Herf mostly discusses reactionary modernist thinkers who were active after World War I.50 But long before the First World War, before Oswald Spengler and Ernst Junger, another person had received much attention with such ideas: Walther Rathenau.
Walther Rathenau had suffered under the struggles of his father’s career: ‘In Not bin ich nicht aufgewachsen, aber in Sorgen.’51 Rathenau was aware of his father’s many talents, but he increasingly despised the ‘one-sidedness’ of Emil’s talents. ‘Growth’ and ‘the end-goal’ had obsessed his father: ‘Sein Vater war nicht Herr, sondern Knecht der von ihm selbst
aufgerichteten riesigen Maschine.’52 In his father, Rathenau came to see the embodiment of the faults of modern capitalism. In the modern world everything had become a commodity or a ‘means’ (ein Zweck). Objects, nature, God, nothing could escape the grasp of the economic markets. The modern capitalists and modern citizens were obsessed with gathering these commodities or means, they had become Zweckmenschen. In the eyes of Rathenau, his father was a perfect representation of a Zweckmensch, a slave of his never-ending goal of gathering. To distance himself from his father, Rathenau started to form neoconservative ideas.53
This began when he was studying maths, physics and chemistry in Berlin and Straßburg. He also took courses in philosophy. He was close to his mother, and through her he came to love German romanticism and idealism. He especially loved the poems of Schiller.54 He was also greatly inspired by Fichte’s Deutschtum Metaphysik.55
48 Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 11. 49 Ibidem, 22.
50 Ibidem, 13.
51 Kessler, Rathenau, 15. 52 Ibidem, 23.
53 Ibidem, 23.
54 Ernst Schulin, Walther Rathenau, Repräsentant, Kritiker und Opfer seiner Zeit (Zurich – Frankfurt 1979) 47.
55Wolfgang Michalka, ‘Kriegsrohstoffbewirtschaftung, Walther Rathenau und die “kommende Wirtschaft”’, In: Michalka,
Rathenau strongly believed in a special German vitality, in a special German Seele.56 In 1906, Rathenau travelled to Greece, where he had a special ‘mystical experience.’ Being immersed in Ancient Greek culture he came up with his so-called Reich der Seele.57 In 1908, he
published Physiologie des Kunstempfindens in which he stated: ‘Ästhetischer Genuß entsteht, wenn eine verborgene Gesetzmäßigkeit empfunden wird.’58 Inspired by Schiller, Rathenau concluded that the Greeks, like the Germans, had a special relation with nature, that their art evoked a ‘religious experience’ that revealed the hidden laws of God and nature.59 Just like Wagner, Rathenau saw ‘German art’ as a crucial way to raise political and cultural
consciousness.60 Rathenau despised modern art and became attracted to the Prussian
neoromanticism of Hermann Bahr, because it sought to overturn the determinism, objectivism and rationalization of modernity.61 For Rathenau, neoromanticism was the perfect
philosophical system to distance himself from the materialistic world of his father and the negative aspects of modernity and city life.
He soon found a likeminded thinker in Maximilian Harden (1861-1927). Harden was born into a Jewish family of Polish descent. He was actually born as Felix Ernst Witkowski, but as a he was a stark admirer of Bismarck and the German empire he decided to change his name. More importantly, he converted to Protestantism. Like the baptized Heinrich Heine, Harden saw this as an entry ticket into the modern Prussian German society. Harden was a radical and very controversial neoconservative and neoromantic thinker.62 Under his influence
Rathenau’s neoromanticism developed into neoconservatism.
Harden founded the weekly Die Zukunft, which mainly consisted of vicious neoconservative critiques on the Kaiserreich. Harden and Rathenau were very critical towards Wilhelm II’s reign. Both Harden and Rathenau thought that Bismarck was a prime example of a ‘Great Man’, in line with political giants such as Friedrich II and Napoleon.63 They thought that after Bismarck the Reich had been in decline.
56 Schulin, Rathenau, 47. 57 Ibidem, 47.
58 Antje Johanning, ‘Die Kunst hat vom Baum der Erkenntnis nicht genossen, Anmerkungen zum Kunstverständnis Walther Rathenau’s’, In: Delabar, Walther ea. ed., Walther Rathenau: Der Phänotyp der Moderne. Literatur- und
kulturwissenschaftliche Studien zu Walther Rathenau (Bielefeld 2009) 38.
59 Ibidem, 43.
60 Joep Leerssen, ‘Notes towards a Definition of Romantic Nationalism’, Romantik 2 (2013) 9-35.
61 Dieter Heimböckel, ‘Walther Rathenau und die Literatur seiner Zeit’ In: Wilderotter, Hans ed., Walther Rathenau 1867-1922 Die Extreme berühren sich (Berlin 1993) 69.
62 Volkov, Rathenau, 42-44. 63 Ibidem, 44.
Due to the rapid industrialization and vastly changing industrial society the supremacy of the German Reich was under threat. According to Harden and Rathenau, the old agricultural aristocracy still had too much influence on the political system. This prevented the political system from reaching the ‘dynamic’ nature of parliamentary system like that of the British Empire. But the parliamentarism of the British Empire was deemed too ‘materialistic’. Harden and Rathenau wanted to maintain the Bismarck’s ‘social monarchy’ while infusing it with the ideals of the educated middle class.64 Rathenau and Harden believed that if the educated middle class could participate in the political system, new ‘great men’ would arise that would lead the Reich back to the glory of Bismarck’s reign.65
1.3. Höre Israel - Rathenau’s antisemitism
It did not take long until Rathenau published his very first article in Harden’s Die Zukunft. Rathenau had become very familiar with Harden’s neoconservative Nietzschean Kampfethik. He started to infuse it with racial theory whilst studying Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain intensely. He also practiced physiognomy, the pseudoscience of comparing the biological qualities of different races.66 There was only one problem holding him back. Rathenau’s new love for neoconservative theory did not mix well with his own Jewish
ancestry. While German idealism was national, Judaism was ‘international’. How could a Jew be loyal to the state? This resulted in Rathenau’s problematic relationship with his own cultural background, his so-called ‘Jewish self-hatred’.67
His friend Alfred Kerr (1867-1948) said that Rathenau, at the time, was obsessively
preoccupied with two things: ‘die soziale Zukunft Deutschlands und das Seitenproblem des Judentums.’68 It would become the central topic of his first published essay in Die Zukunft: Höre Israel (1897). Because he knew his opinions would be very controversial, he published it under a pseudonym: W. Hartenau. In a draft version, Rathenau confessed that he flirted with antisemitism: ‘Bedarf es einer Rechtfertigung, wenn ich zum Antisemitismus neige?’69
64 Volkov, Rathenau, 42-44. 65 Schulin, Rathenau, 40.
66 Ibidem, 43. For a visual example of one of Rathenau’s many physiognomic studies see: Braun, H.F. ‘Antisemitismus und Assimilation’, 321.
67 See Ritchie Robertson, The ‘Jewish Question’ in German Literature 1749-1939, (Oxford 1999) 296. Especially the chapter ‘Assimilation’ gives an excellent, very detailed account of the problems of Jewish assimilation and Jewish self-hatred. 68 Clemens Picht, ‘Walther Rathenau zwischen Antisemitismus und jüdischer Prophetie’, In: Wilderotter, Hans ed., Walther Rathenau 1867-1922 Die Extreme berühren sich (Berlin 1993) 121.
Rathenau’s first argument stated that the integration of the Jewish people in Germany had utterly failed.
Inmitten deutschen Lebens ein fremdartigen Menschenstamm [...] Auf märkischen Sand eine asiatische Horde [...] so leben sie in einem halb freiwilligen, unsichtbaren Ghetto, kein lebendes Glied des Volkes, sondern ein fremder Organismus in seinem Leibe.70
Rathenau stated that the Jews had not become part of the German Volk, but had remained separate, backwards ‘Asiatic’ people. Many scholars state that Rathenau’s argument was mainly aimed at the Jews who had fled from the East, the so-called Ost-Juden. These Jews who had fled from prosecution from the East had a bad reputation amongst the ‘cultivated and assimilated Jews’. They were seen as a societal problem, as the embodiment of backwardness with their strange Yiddish language. The writer Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) believed that the Eastern Jews were ‘medieval’.71 Like Rathenau, Döblin was a ‘cultivated Jew’ who tried to separate himself from this ‘world of primitivism’.
In Höre Israel, Rathenau did attack the Ost-Juden, denouncing their ‘unathletic, sloppy
shape’. However, it seems that Rathenau was very critical towards the ‘cultured’ Jews as well. Rathenau specifically targeted the community from which he came, the very rich
‘assimilated’ Tiergartenjuden, the Jewish elite.72 He called them ‘imitierte Germanen.’73 Rathenau’s solution was a radical transformation of the Jewish community. Rathenau seemed to attack the then recently established Centralverein der deutschen Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens. According to Rathenau, this society had not promoted integration into German society. They only tried to defend Jews, instead of urging them to reform. According to Rathenau, this was not enough. They had to be ‘Jews nurtured on German soil.’74 They had to assimilate fully in the German Kultur and by doing this become fully part of the German Volk. This should not be done with a baptism, by converting to Christianity, like Maximilian Harden did. This would be ‘unsuitable’. Baptism only leads to ‘secret Judaization’ and to even more materialism, driving the more conservatively oriented Jews into the arms of ‘destructive parties’, meaning the ‘materialist’ socialists and liberals.75
70 Picht, ‘zwischen Antisemitismus und jüdischer Prophetie’, 117; Ritchie Robertson, The ‘Jewish Question’ in German Literature 1749-1939 (Oxford 1999) 250.
71 Anton Kaes, Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War (Princeton 2009) 110. 72 Picht, ‘zwischen Antisemitismus und jüdischer Prophetie’, 117.
73 Ibidem, 117. 74 Ibidem, 117-118. 75 Ibidem, 117-118.
Rathenau’s approach to Judaism was very common in neoconservative circles. In the theories of most prominent reactionary modernists, anti-semitism wasn’t fundamental.76 Racial theory was not the foundation on which distinctions were made, but culture. That does not mean, however, that anti-semitism was not part of the Konservative Wende. The culture of materialism was more often than not associated with Jewishness or the Jewish Geist. 77
1.4. Mitteleuropa – Rathenau’s German Colonial Empire
In 1899 Rathenau joined AEG’s senior management.78 This meant, together with his publications in Die Zukunft, that Rathenau received more and more attention. He was eventually invited to meet the Chancellor, Bernhard von Bülow (1849-1929). When he met Von Bülow at a dinner in 1906, Rathenau joked about his Jewish heritage: ‘Eure
Durchlaucht, bevor ich der Gunst eines Empfanges gewürdigt werde, eine Erklärung, die zugleich ein Geständnis ist. [...] Durchlaucht, ich bin Jude.’79 Von Bülow was so impressed by Rathenau that he invited him to two official tours to the German territories in East Africa and Southwest Africa. Rathenau gladly accepted and temporarily resigned from AEG.80 This started Rathenau’s career in colonialism at the center of German authority.81
Rathenau’s attraction to colonialism had everything to do with his neoconservative ideas. Rathenau thought that Germany was threatened both culturally and economically, which fits within his cultural pessimism. Rathenau had written much about Germany’s poor
geographical location, stating that although the Reich was large, it had relatively few natural resources. Germany was vulnerable because it depended on imports from ‘materialist’ foreign cultures, it was ‘commercially encircled’.82 Rathenau’s solution was to expand the influence on the European mainland to counter the rise of Anglo-Saxon materialism. Rathenau invented the concept of Zollverein.
76 Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 35. 77 Ibidem, 35.
78 Galin Tihanov, ‘Robert Musil in the Garden of Conservatism’, In: Payne, Philip. e.a. ed., A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil (Rochester, New York 2007) 126.
79 Quote from German version of Volkov, Schulamit, Walther Rathenau: Ein Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland 1867-1922 (Munich 2012). Page number sadly unknown, source was only accessible through Google books due to inaccessibility of the archives (due to Covid-19).
80 Volkov, Rathenau, 67.
81 Wolfgang Brenner, Walther Rathenau, Deutscher und Jude (Munich 2006) 175.
82 Wolfgang Michalka, ‘Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft als Friedens- und Kriegsziel’, In: Wilderotter, Hans e.a. ed., Walther Rathenau 1867-1922 Die Extreme berühren sich (Berlin 1993) 179.
This Zollverein was not a forefather of the European Schengen system or the European Union, as some anachronistically interpret Rathenau’s idea today.83 In truth, it was a system for a united ‘Middle-Europe (Mitteleuropa) under German leadership.’84 Rathenau did not believe in the ‘power of a common Europe’, but in the power of a common German Europe. Only then, stated Rathenau, could Germany put pressure on England to have ‘a seat at the table on the division of the world’.85 Rathenau envied British colonialism. With a functioning Zollverein, the next step to a German colonial empire could be taken. Rathenau wanted this colonial empire to expand to ‘Middle-Africa and Smaller Asia’.86 To Rathenau, expansion was essential: ‘Wir brauchen Land dieser Erde.’87 Then the problem of lack of resources and dependence on foreign countries would finally be solved.
Rathenau thought that ‘active’ foreign policy would make the colonial empire a reality. He fully backed the German Flottenverein, a huge military effort instigated by Bülow and Kaiser Wilhelm II 1941), and further developed by Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg (1859-1941). Around 1912, under the leadership of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849-1930), the Flottenverein really gained momentum. Rathenau finally believed that Germany had gained power on the world stage to challenge the Anglo-Saxon materialist empire: ‘[...] mit jedem Schiff, das Deutschland baut, lockert sich ein Stein des britischen Kolonialgebäudes!’88 Rathenau also had his eyes on Morocco. In 1905 Kaiser Wilhelm II decided to occupy Tangiers. This utterly failed, and Germany had to recognize the French occupation of Morocco. But the German industry did not give up yet, they wanted to exploit Morocco by diplomatic means. Rathenau became a spokesman for this Marokko-Minensyndikat. He had been hired by the wealthy German industrial brothers Mannesmann.89 The syndicate was funded by the Alldeutsche Verband (ADV), an extreme right-wing nationalist organization which propagated German colonial expansion by use of force.90
83 An example: ‘The man who envisioned a customs union of central European countries and lectured about the dangers of sovereign debt was clearly a man of the future. Volkov's book gives us a glimpse into what twentieth-century Germany could have been had he been allowed to realize his full potential.’ Quote from: Sabine von Mering, ‘Walther Rathenau. Weimar's Fallen Statesman’, German Politics and Society (New York 2013): 116. A good friend of mine made the smart suggestion that Rathenau’s Zollverein could better be compared with the Confederation of Napoleon, who had envisioned a supreme leading role for France in a new economic union.
84 Michalka‚‘Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft’, 179. 85 Ibidem, 179.
86 Hans Wilderotter, ‘Walther Rathenau im Umkreis der ‘Weltpolitik’, in: Wilderotter, Hans ed., Walther Rathenau 1867-1922 Die Extreme berühren sich (Berlin 1993) 346.
87 Ibidem, 346.
88 Walther Rathenau, Über Englands Gegenwärtige Lage, In: Von Kritik der Zeit (Berlin 1925) 165. 89 Wilderotter, ‘Rathenau Umkreis Weltpolitik’, 355.
The ADV was founded and funded by the later National Socialist media magnate Alfred Hugenberg (1865-1951) and the board of the Friedrich Krupp AG.91 Through his connection with the Mannesmann brothers and their acquaintances like Stinnes, Thyssen and others, Rathenau was well involved in the agenda of the ADV at the time. The ADV started a huge propaganda offensive: West-Marokko Deutsch! The influence of the ADV and the
Minensyndikat led the German Foreign Office to send the German ship ‘The Panther’ to Agadir, starting the second Moroccan Crisis. This almost started a World War and further decreased the trustworthiness of the Wilhelm II’s Empire.92 This thesis shows that Rathenau continued to work, throughout his life, with the industrialists he met at the Minensyndikat.93
Rathenau’s positive attitude towards colonialism somewhat changed when he visited South-Africa. He learned of the Herrero genocide and called it the ‘die größte Atrozität, die jemals durch Deutsche Waffenpolitik hervorgerufen wurde.’94 But still he preferred the continuation of colonialism, dreaming of a German Mittelafrika. He continued to develop plans for a bridge between Congo and Cameroon.95 Rathenau was convinced of the need of colonialism for the survival of the German Empire.
1.5. Entgermanisierung - Rathenau’s cultural pessimism and racial theory
Rathenau did everything he could to prove his loyalty to the Prussian culture. He bought a beautiful country house in Freienwalde which had formerly been in the hands of the Prussian crown, and built a villa in Berlin in the Koenigsallee in Berlin/Grunewald.96 He saw his Berlin villa as an example of ‘classical beauty’ against the modern ‘kunsthistorischem Fassadenbabel’ in the rest of Berlin.97 To him, his neoclassical mansions represented his Prussian ‘Spartanentum.’98 In Freienwalde and Berlin/Grunewald Rathenau regularly held dinners where he received the Berlin cultural elite, including the Viennese Jewish writer Joseph Roth, Austrian writer Franz Blei and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.99
91 Wilderotter, ‘Rathenau Umkreis Weltpolitik’, 355. 92 Ibidem, 356-357.
93 Ibidem, 356-357. 94 Brenner, Rathenau, 209.
95 Wilderotter, ‘Rathenau Umkreis Weltpolitik’, 350.
96 Karl Corino, ‘The Contribution of Biographical Research to the Understanding of Characters and Themes of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften’. In: Payne, Philip. e.a. ed., A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil (Rochester, New York 2007) 291.
97 Johanning,‘Die Kunst’, 37.
98 Wolfgang Michalka, ‘Vordenker der Moderne’ In: Michalka, Wolfgang e.a. ed., Walther Rathenau (Berlin 2008) 65. 99 Volkov, Rathenau, 90-93.
In conversation Rathenau liked to talk the most and mostly about himself. Harry Kessler stated that Rathenau ‘would speak like a preacher or a rabbi, never less than quarter of an hour, a speech instead of an answer, little content, mostly dogma.’100 Many of the writers he received at his dinners published at the Fisher Verlag, the publishing house that had agreed to publish Rathenau’s own works. Zur Kritik der Zeit (1912) and Zur Mechanik des Geistes (1913), with the undertitle ‘Reich der Seele’ were published by Fisher. In these books Rathenau continued his idealization of the Prussian culture, while infusing it with his racial theories. During his entire life, Rathenau called Mechanik des Geistes ‘his most important work’.101 Rathenau’s racial thinking is well illustrated by the following passage:
Daß Doppelphänomen der Mechanisierung und Entgermanisierung erklärt restlos alle Erscheinungen der Zeit: die Mechanisierung als Folge und Selbsthilfe der Volksverdichtung und als Ursache des Dranges Zur Wissenschaft, Technik, Organisation und Produktion; die Entgermanisierung als Folge Der Umschichtung und als Ursache des Mangels an Richtkraft, Tiefe, Idealismus und absoluter Überzeugung.102
This passage shows that Rathenau foresaw a racial change within the German Prussian State, a ‘Rassenwechsel.’103 In Zur Mechanik des Geistes he distinguished between a lesser race (Unterschicht) and a ‘courageous superior race’ (muthafte Oberschicht).104 But slowly the superior race was being threatened with the coming of Anglo-Saxon unbridled liberalism and the materialist socialism. The materialist lesser race would win the Rassenkampf and would take over the power of the ‘brave’ superior races.105 The German Gemeinschaft would be ‘mechanized’.106 Germany would be rationalized and ‘disenchanted’. The German culture, identity and especially the German soul would disappear, replaced by a ‘grey and decaying racial mixture’.107 This process of Entseelung and Entgermanisierung had already begun.108
100 Volkov, Rathenau, 94. The German version of Volkov’s book could not be used due to the inaccessibility of the archive. 101David Felix, Rathenau and the Weimar Republic (Baltimore, Maryland 1971) 49.
102 Walther Rathenau, Zur Mechanik des Geistes (Berlin 1925) 50. 103 Michalka, ‘Vordenker der Moderne’, 36.
104 Ibidem, 36.
105 Walther Rathenau, Zur Kritik Der Zeit (Berlin 1925) 40. ‘Rassenkämpfe, Rassenkrieges’ 106 Michalka, ‘Rathenau Vordenker der Moderne’, 36.
107 James Joll, ‘Walther Rathenau – Intellectual or Industrialist?’ In: Berghahn, Volker R. e.a. ed., Germany in the Age of Total War (Totowa, New Jersey 1981) 53.
Rathenau continued his attack on the Prussian Kaiserreich. Rathenau argued in Staat und Judentum (1911) that the ‘Jewish Problem’ still existed. But now it was no longer caused by the Jews themselves, but by the old Prussian agrarian nobility. Like the educated middle class, it was very difficult for the Jews to enter the public service. He called this: ‘[...] die
verfassungswidrige Unduldsamkeit des Staates.’109 The closedness of the Prussian state led to a poor selection process, ultimately hurting the longevity of the Prussian state itself. If reform would not occur, Germany would end up like the United States. Rathenau often used the United States as the perfect negative example of the destructiveness of mechanization:
Den Vereinigten Staaten, die hinsichtlich ihrer Einschlagsverhältnisse dem europäischen Durschnitt entsprechen, fehlt die Vorschule germanischer Oberherrschaft und Leitung, sie konnten daher zwar die mechanistische Zivilisation auf den höchsten Gipfel treiben; kulturbildenden Kräften sind ihnen nicht entstanden [...].110
This passage shows that Rathenau thought that Germans had a special disposition, reflected in their culture, that could protect the Gemeinschaft from dangerous foreign influences.
Germany had to be culturally united to avert the process of mechanization that plagued the United States. The culture of the United States lacked ‘German leadership’ and became so racially degenerated that its citizens were only interested in reading stupid ‘mechanized’ detective novels.111 As he mentions in Zur Kritik der Zeit: ‘Das Volk bedurfte noch lange germanischer Geistesleitung und bedarf noch heute germanischen Einschlages.’112 To Rathenau, the strong will of the Germans was reflected by their biological qualities, proven by physiognomy: ‘Zweifellos ist dieses blonde und blauäugige Idealtypus der überlebenden germanischen Naturen entlehnt.’113 To Rathenau, the blond and blue-eyed Prussian was the definitive proof of the existence of the ‘reineren Germanentum.’114 The
Prussian embodied the ideals of courage.
109 Helmuth F. Braun, ‘Antisemitismus und Assimilation’, In: Wilderotter, Hans e.a. ed., Die Extreme berühren sich (Berlin 1993) 320.
110 Rathenau, Zur Kritik Der Zeit, 93-94.
111 Ibidem, 102-103. ‘Amerikanische Menschen des Erfolges beginnen den Massen zu imponieren, [...]; zum Lesebuch des Volkes ist nach Ritter- und Indianergeschichte der Detektivroman geworden.’
112 Ibidem, 93. 113 Ibidem, 101. 114 Ibidem, 101.
All the other races lacked these qualities: ‘Hinterlist, Betrug, Diebstahl, ja selbst Lüge, die im außergermanische kreise als zulässige Diplomatie gilt.’115 The lesser biological heritage of foreigners led them to steal, lie and deceit. Rathenau’s racial theory remained. Germans had fundamental biological and ‘cultural qualities’ (Kulturqualitäten) in their blood that could protect the society from mechanization. That also meant that, in Rathenau’s perfect society, Jews had no choice but to adapt to these ‘cultural qualities’.
1.6. Von Kommenden Dingen - Rathenau’s technocratic Utopia
Historian Wolfgang Michalka stated that Rathenau could best be classified as a ‘Vordenker der Moderne.’116 This had everything to with his neoconservatism. Rathenau’s perfect society was a utopian society. Rathenau focused on building and protecting the future Germany. His theories focused on how mechanization could be averted. In 1912, he had published England und Wir, in which he stated that a Schicksal kriege was imminent between Germany and the ‘materialist’ Anglo-Saxon world. According to Rathenau, England and its allies were doing everything to destroy Germany’s continental hegemony as created by Bismarck.117 Rathenau had clearly seen the First World War coming. At first, Rathenau seemed depressed and appalled by the outbreak of the War. But then he saw opportunities:
[...] dieses unermessliche Wirtschaftsgebiet dehnte sich vor dem geistigen Auge, und uns war die Aufgabe gestellt, diese Welt, diese webende und strebende Welt zusammenzufassen, sie dem Kriege dienstbar zu machen, ihr einen einheitlichen Willen aufzuzwingen und ihre titanische Kräfte zur Abwehr zu wecken.118
This passage shows that Rathenau immediately foresaw that the war effort could unite the German society in previously unimaginable ‘titanic’ ways. Germany would have ‘one will’. The War was a ‘singing open chord for an immortal song of sacrifice, loyalty and
heroism.’119
115 Rathenau, Zur Kritik Der Zeit, 102. 116 Michalka, ‘Vordenker der Moderne’, 28.
117 Walther Rathenau, England und Wir, Eine Philippika, In: Von Kritik der Zeit (Berlin 1925) 211. 118 Schulin, Rathenau, 65.
119 The original German source could not be found due to inaccessibility of the archives (due to Covid-19), Quote from: Joll, ‘Rathenau – Intellectual or Industrialist?’, 55.
Rathenau used the First World War to make his utopian vision of a ‘soulful’ German economy come to fruition. He saw the War not as a traditional, but as an economic war, a Wirtschaftskrieg.120 To Rathenau, the War was a clash between economic and ideological systems. He was convinced that Britain would be fighting for economic supremacy at all costs.121 To him, the First World War was a ‘Weltrevolution’ against mechanization.122 Rathenau saw the First World War as an opportunity to cure the ‘inner societal division’ of Germany. With one united country, Germany could be protected against the ‘westlichen, bürgerlichen idealen Werte des 19 Jahrhunderts.’123 The liberal West would not set foot on German ground, and the East would be pacified by the German Imperium. It becomes clear that Rathenau was motivated by his cultural pessimist ideas, trying to protect the decline of Germany and German Kultur at all costs.
During this incredible war effort, Rathenau developed his new philosophical theories. Die Neue Wirtschaft (1918) and Von Kommenden Dingen (1917) were all focused on the total transformation of society. The First World War was to be a definitive turning point, a start of the new German utopian Gemeinschaft. He stated: ‘Wir sind Ein Volk, aber wir sind es noch nicht genug.’124 Rathenau was convinced that unity was essential for the survival of Germany: ‘Nur homogene Gesellschaften haben Idealen.’125 His new society would be an ‘organism’ in which all societal class differences would disappear as much as possible. Because every action in society would be ‘organically linked’ to another, there would be no more conflict of interests within German society.126 This unity was essential for the survival of Germany. Rathenau thought that victory would not be achieved by politics, but by the united biological power of the German people: ‘sie liegen nicht in der Politik, sondern in den Kräften des deutschen Volkes begründet.’127
120 Michalka, ‘Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft’, 182. 121 Ibidem, 182.
122 Wolfgang Kruse, ‘Walther Rathenau und die Organisierung des Kapitalismus’, In: Wilderotter, Hans e.a. ed., Walther Rathenau 1867-1922 Die Extreme berühren sich (Berlin 1993) 156.
123 Ibidem, 156. 124 Ibidem, 159.
125 Rathenau, Zur Kritik der Zeit, 99.
126 Kruse, ‘Rathenau Organisierung Kapitalismus’, 157. 127 Rathenau, England und Wir, 213.
In Zur Kritik der Zeit Rathenau had already stated that the German Geist was the most important factor for developing a united Germany. In his works he wrote during the War Rathenau expanded on the irrational world of the Geist. Rathenau started to develop a new political religion.128 Organized dogmatic religions such as Judaism and Christianity only worked against the German unity, they embodied Mitleid (compassion) and Knechtschaft (slavedom).129 In Rathenau’s Nietzschean philosophy, compassion stands for weakness and that is dangerous for the ‘reineren Germanentum.’130
Rathenau’s alternative religion was a political religion. In Von Kommenden Dingen Rathenau spoke of an ‘organischer Theokratie.’131 His Volksstaat would be organized in accordance with the ‘divine law’, with ‘Göttliches Gesetz.’132 If this homogenous society would be able to live according to Gods divine law, the solutions for German survival would come by itself: ‘[...] die metaphysische Aufgabe soll uns ihr physisches Abbild enthüllen.’133
Not by religion, but by strength, the Germans had developed their ‘noble blood’: ‘[...] auch der Urahn des Ariers war ein düsteres Geschöpf, weit tiefer stehend als Mongole und
Neger.’134 These ‘primitive’ races had developed into courageous Germans because they were strengthened by the power of their Soul, their Seelenkraft. They came to this power by having ‘a spark of God in them’.135 The Germans had been successful in rediscovering their German Soul because they believed. ‘Dieser Glauben aber hat eine stärkere Evidenz als die des intellektualen Beweises.’136 The Germans were not to be spoiled by the intellectualism of the materialist cultures or dogmatic religion. The German people only had to go back to their original state of being: ‘wir kehren heim.’137
128 For an interesting article on Rathenau’s influence on the ‘political religions’ of the 20th century read: Thomas Rohkrämer, ‘Politische Religion, Civic Religion oder ein neuer Glaube, Walther Rathenau’s Vision einer anderen Moderne’, In: Delabar, Walther ea. ed., Walther Rathenau: Der Phänotyp der Moderne. Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Studien zu Walther Rathenau (Bielefeld 2009) 195-214.
129 Rathenau, Zur Kritik der Zeit, 104, 101; Von Kommenden Dingen, 68. 130 Rathenau, Zur Kritik der Zeit, 101.
131 Rathenau, Von Kommende Dingen, 53.
132 Kruse, ‘Rathenau Organisierung Kapitalismus’, 159. 133 Rathenau, Von Kommenden Dingen, 56.
134 Ibidem, 57.
135 Ibidem, 59. ‘das Volk aber ist seine Mutter’ 136 Ibidem, 60.
Germany would be born again: ‘So erscheint uns die Forderung der Wiedergeburt [...].’138 This rebirth of Germany was embodied by the Volksgemeinschaft, where everything that had formerly divided the German society had disappeared. The Germans should not believe in religion, but in the political religion of the Volksgemeinschaft. This was essential, or else society would again fall apart into division and classes: ‘[...] wo Volksgemeinschaft ermangelt, erzwingt es die Klassenscheidung.’139
Rathenau’s authoritarian Volksgemeinschaft ensured that these racial qualities of the Prussian Soul were to be protected against mechanization.140 Anschluss with Austria would lead to a perfect protection of the new united German state from the outside.141 When Germany finally had its empire and access to its own natural recourses, it could be fully autarkical.142 Then the German citizen could finally live in ‘Menschliche Freiheit’.143 The German state would be a Volksstaat, in which the ‘sittlichen und tätigen Gemeinschaftswillen’ was represented.144 The Gemeinschaft would be so perfect and harmonious that even the Rule of Law would be unnecessary:
Nicht Einrichtungen, nicht Verfassungsparagraphem und Gesetze schaffen den Volksstaat, sondern Geist und Wille.145 [...]‘Aristokratie und Demokratie, Parlamentarismus und
Absolutismus. [...] Die Institutionen zivilisierter Staaten, mögen sie verschiedene Namen und äußere Formen tragen, sind in der Zusammensetzung ihrer verwickelten Gleichgewichte ähnlicher als man vermutet, weit verschiedener ist der Geist, der sie erfüllt.146
This passage shows that according to Rathenau, every political system and ideology was futile because they lacked the German Geist. Rathenau invented a new word for his political
religion: ‘der Organokratie.’147 The Geist, in the form of the Organokratie, would make every other form of statehood unnecessary.
138 Rathenau, Von Kommenden Dingen, 85; Kessler, Rathenau, 116. 139 Rathenau, Von Kommenden Dingen, 50.
140 Hans Wilderotter, ‘Rohstoffversorgung und Kriegszieldiskussion’ In: Wilderotter, Hans e.a. ed., Die Extreme berühren sich (Berlin 1993) 363.
141Michael Dorrmann, ‘Von Kommenden Dingen, Revolution und Republik’, In: Wilderotter, Hans e.a. ed., Die Extreme berühren sich (Berlin 1993) 393. ‘Deutschland, mit Deutsch Österreich vereinigt’
142 Michalka, Vordenker der Moderne, 44; Kent, Bruce, The Spoils of War, The Politics, Economics, and Diplomacy of Reparations 1918-1932 (Oxford 1989) 46.
143 Schulin, Rathenau, 81. 144 Ibidem, 81.
145 Rathenau, Von Kommenden Dingen, 261-262. 146 Ibidem, 313.
Rathenau’s Organokratie needed a supreme monarchical leader. He called for a kräftige Monarchie, with a powerful ‘fatherfigure’ at the helm.148 The relation between the Volksstaat and the monarch should be one like between father and Son: ‘[…] gesunde Natur, Erfahrung und Überblick wird den Vater zum Führer auch des erwachsenen Hauswesens machen.’149 Rathenau’s supreme monarch would represent the total fusion between the monarchy and the Volksgemeinschaft.
But this total fusion would be very difficult to achieve within a traditional capitalist economy. Rathenau had to apply his irrational ideas to the economy as well. In 1919, he re-emphasized his message in Die Autonome Wirtschaft. Autonom did not mean independent, like in a liberal representative democracy, but an economy totally controlled by the state: ‘Wirtschaft [...] nicht mehr Sache der Einzelnen, sondern der Gesamtheit.’150 Only then there would be ‘harmonious cooperation’. Property would be heavily regulated. There would be no room for the ‘negerhafte’ primitivism of luxury goods.151 Luxury was deemed harmful to society.152 This was a daring standpoint for a man who owned two luxurious decorated palaces himself.
Private enterprise would be totally abolished. This would be the final step in the German Gemeinschaft, there would be no more division between the laborers and employers.153 In a harmonious society, with the harmonious production processes, labour would also be spiritualized. There would be no more competition in the new ‘Werksgemeinschaft.’154 The labor movements would have to be totally incorporated into the Volksstaat. The loyalty of the proletariat, with whom Rathenau was very much concerned, would show the perfection of Rathenau’s system: ‘Wenn uns aber gelingt [...] eine neue Wirtschaft aufzubauen, so ist uns die Mitwirkung der unteren Schichten gesichert.’155 He stated that his society would ‘destroy the foundations of socialism’.156 Class division would be no more, the Volksstaat would be complete.
148 Rathenau, Von Kommenden Dingen, 266. 149 Ibidem, 266-267.
150 Wilderotter, ‘Rathenau im Umkreis Weltpolitik’, 363.
151 Rathenau, Von Kommenden Dingen, 199. ‘negerhafte Urgeluste’ 152 Kruse, ‘Rathenau Organisierung Kapitalismus’, 159.
153 Schulin, Rathenau, 103-104.
154Dorrmann, ‘Von Kommenden Dingen’, 392. 155 Wilderotter, ‘Rohstoffversorgung’, 365. 156 Ibidem, 365.
