Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn!Wohin ich forschend blick'in Stadt- und Weltchronik,den Grund mir aufzufinden,warum gar bis aufs Blutdie Leut' sich quälen und schindenin unnütz toller Wut!
Madness! Madness! Everywhere madness!Wherever I searchingly glance,Through chronicles of cities and the world,The grounds thereof to find,Why, to the point of drawing blood,People torment and mistreat each otherIn senseless frenzied rage!
Hans Sachs’s Monologue from Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
In 1869, Richard Wagner dedicated the second edition of his Oper und Drama to Constantin Frantz (1817–1891). Frantz belongs amongst the generation of liberal thinkers known as the Young Hegelians. However, Frantz remains somewhat neglected today compared to other better known Junghegelianer such as Max Stirner, David Strauss, Ludwig Feuerbach, Arnold Ruge—not to mention the most famous of all the Young Hegelians, Marx und Engels. In the June, 1878 edition of the Bayreuther Blätter (p.158-170), Wagner published Frantz’s Open Letter to Richard Wagner. It is without doubt one of the most illuminating essays on Wagner’s later political thinking for the period following his participation alongside leading anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, in the 1848–49 pro-democratic revolution ever published. Best of all, Frantz writes in an extremely readable and unambiguous style compared to the notoriously opaque prose writing style of Wagner, which Thomas Mann was to later decry as “ewig rotomontierend” (eternally rodomontading i.e. ranting):
A loveable person, no, that he was not. He was indeed an insufferable burden and provocation to his contemporary world. Wagner, the credit-whiz, the luxury-addicted revolutionary, the anonymously immodest one, entirely full of himself, eternally monologuing, rodomontading, the propagandist lecturing the world about everything, and acting out the role of himself.
Ein liebenswerter Mensch, nein, das war er nicht. Er war sogar eine unausstehliche Belastung und Herausforderung der Mitwelt. Wagner, das Pumpgenie, der luxusbedürftige Revolutionär, der namenlos unbescheidene, nur von sich erfüllte, ewig monologisierende, rotomontierende, die Welt über alles belehrende Propagandist und Schauspieler seiner selbst.
Thomas Mann: Wagner und unsere Zeit, Frankfurt am Main, 1963: letter dated 6th of December, 1949, p.167-9 (my translation).
As usual, these sorts of character assassinations, now almost traditional whenever speaking of Wagner, are never backed up with any citations to specifics that can be corroborated or confirmed, but necessary remain infinitely nebulous and unsubstantiated so as to permit comical and satirical exaggerations to masquerade as incontestable Eternal Truth, and simple historical fact. Mann’s attitude to Wagner is based on the sweeping prejudgement that Wagner’s political views can be so safely presumed to a priori be ultra right-wing, that not a shred of supportive evidence is required to prove anything plainly “obvious”. Thus convicted without trial on the basis of unproven “certitudes”, it is assumed he now deserves to be angrily condemned with every possible personal insult that can be hurled at him.
However difficult his prose may be, consideration needs to given for the fact that Wagner spent twelve years in exile, potentially facing the death sentence alongside fellow activists such as Bakunin and Röckel as a result of their direct involvement in the Dresden 1849 pro-democratic uprisings. Amongst Wagner’s more incriminating revolutionary activities included the publication of his clear and unambiguously pro-democratic Fatherland Union Paper. Here he called for universal suffrage in a paper that shows him perfectly capable of writing in a lucid style devoid of endless circumlocutions. In those days, however, obscurity was often a form of defence against the censor, and Wagner had every reason to feel the need for extreme caution following his lengthy period in exile, which clearly led him to avoid being too frank about his political views ever again. The end result is that subsequent generations have tended to read all sorts of dreadful misconceptions into opaque passages, under the curious assumption that obscurity can only possibly be a thin veil for a proto-fascist ideology. Fortunately, Frantz’s Open Letter is written with an unambiguous clarity approaching that found in the Fatherland Union Paper, and if your German reading skills are up to reading publications such as Der Spiegel or the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung then you should relish reading Frantz’s writing as he explicitly denounces Prussian militarism and pan-Germanism. The revelatory results go a long way towards thoroughly exploding the often fantastic myths surrounding Wagner.
To understand Wagner and Frantz correctly it is critical to contextualise their thoughts in the appropriate historical background. Way too many commentators rip Wagner’s words out of its rightful historical background, only to surreptitiously recontextualize them into the historical milieu of the 1930-40’s under the crude assumption that the only possible historical context to the entirety of German history could only ever be that of National Socialism anyway. That is to effectively render discussions of Wagner ahistorical since he died a good half century before that era. Such an ahistorical starting point further encourages the gross distortion of quotations both taken out of textural context as well as out of historical context. If the distortion inevitably introduced by such decontextualization is to be systematically eliminated, it is important to first reground ourselves in a proper understanding of the crucial historical background of the appropriate era. To that end, I cannot possibly recommend the following talk given by Sir Richard J. Evans strongly enough:
The fundamental question at stake here when dealing with German national identity is that of “What is German?” It is a question asked by Richard Wagner in an essay of the same title, but it is the very same question asked once more by Theodor Adorno in his postwar essay “On the Question: What is German?” (Auf die Frage: Was ist Deutsch? From p.691–701 of Suhrkampf complete works; Kulturkritik und GesellschaftII). There Adorno warns against perpetuating the sort of national stereotypes found in WWII propaganda:
The formation of national generalisations, however—common in the abominable war jargon that opines over the Russians, the Americans, and certainly also over the Germans—obeys a reifying consciousness, one that is not quite true to experience. They confine themselves within these stereotypes, which directly absolve them from thinking. It is uncertain if something like The Germans, or The German, or anything similar in other nations, even exists. The True and Better in every nation is probably rather what does not fit the collective subject, possibly that which withstands it. In contrast to that, the formation of stereotypes promotes collective narcissism. That with which one identifies as the essence of one’s insider-group will unwittingly be good; whereas that of the outsider-group—the Other—bad. Likewise, the image of the Germans fares contrariwise amongst that Other. However, since under National Socialism, the ideology of the primacy of the collective subject at the expense of the individual wreaked the most extreme disaster, there is doubly reason to be wary in Germany of a relapse into self-adulatory stereotypes.
Die Bildung nationaler Kollektive jedoch, üblich in dem abscheulichen Kriegsjargon, der von dem Russen, dem Amerikaner, sicherlich auch dem Deutschen redet, gehorcht einem verdinglichenden, zur Erfahrung nicht recht fähigen Bewußtsein. Sie hält sich innerhalb jener Stereotypen, die von Denken gerade aufzulösen wären. Ungewiß, ob es etwas wie den Deutschen, oder das Deutsche, oder irgendein Ähnliches in anderen Nationen, überhaupt gibt. Das Wahre und Bessere in jedem Volk ist wohl vielmehr, was dem Kollektivsubjekt nicht sich einfügt, womöglich ihm widersteht. Dagegen befördert die Stereotypenbildung den kollektiven Narzißmus. Das, womit man sich identifiziert, die Essenz der Eigengruppe, wird unversehens zum Guten; die Fremdgruppe, die anderen, schlecht. Ebenso ergeht es dann, umgekehrt, dem Bild des Deutschen bei den anderen. Nachdem jedoch unterm Nationalsozialismus die Ideologie vom Vorrang des Kollektivsubjekts auf Kosten von jeglichem Individuellen das äußerste Unheil anrichtete, ist in Deutschland doppelt Grund, vorm Rückfall in die Stereotypie der Selbstbeweihräucherung sich zu hüten.
Adorno: Auf die Frage: Was ist Deutsch? From p.691. My translation.
One of the commonest things stated about Wagner is that every fool “just knows” that his nationalism can only possibly be right-wing and proto-Nazi—something based on the crude stereotype perpetuated by war propaganda that all German nationalism had for centuries always been right-wing and proto-Nazi. In this view, the entire history of Germany is nothing but the history—past, future and present—of National Socialism: ‘em bloody Krauts are all the same—they’re all Nazis, always ‘ave been, always will be. National Socialism comes to be hailed as the very summation and supreme apotheosis of the entirety of German history: exactly the same idea found in both Nazi propaganda, as well as in its diametrical inversion in Allied anti-German propaganda.
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| “Once a German—Always a German!” British poster from immediately after WWI Sir Richard J. Evans: “the sort of gross oversimplification that propaganda always indulges in” |
As Evans succinctly explains, in World War II war propaganda, German national character was seen as constant and unchanging by both sides of the conflict. The Allies saw the Germans along the lines of “once a German—always a German” whereas the National Socialists saw the character of the German Volk as equally eternally immutable and monolithic because it was determined purely by race, rather than by history. Whether seen from the perspective of one side, or through its crude diametric inversion by the other, the gross oversimplifications of the assumptions indulged in through the “jargon of war propaganda”, as Adorno termed it, remained essentially exactly the same on both sides.
However, far from being monolithic and eternally unchanging, as Evans further mentions in his talk (at 15’55”), through most of the nineteenth century German nationalism had been left-wing, progressive-revolutionary, anti-Napoleonic, anti-imperialist, anti-monarchist, and pro-democratic. The same was true of nineteenth century Italian nationalism, which like German revolutionary nationalism flew a tricolour revolutionary flag. A similar left-wing nationalism even finds its expression in The German Ideology by Engels and Marx. The dominance of this left-wing brand of nationalism in Europe certainly prevailed through most of Wagner’s life, and formed the basis for his participation in the 1849 pro-democratic Dresden uprising, as well as the tone of his Fatherland Union Paper calling for democracy in the name of his fatherland.
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| Veit's Germania was displayed in the Frankfurt parliament during the 1848 revolution. She carries the German version of the revolutionary tricolour flag in one hand. In the other hand is a sword adorned with the olive branch of peace. The chains of oppression lay broken at her feet as a new dawn rises. |
A transformation started to occur in the character of German nationalism only around the time of German unification in 1871, lead by Bismarckian Prussia, 22 years after the Dresden uprising, and 12 years before Wagner’s death in 1883. At this time a more militant, right-wing version of German nationalism started to compete for attention, as Germany was united—not as the idealists of 1848 envisioned as occurring under a liberal constitution of democratic government—but under the pointy tip of the Prussian sabre and the “Blood and Iron” of Bismarckian Realpolitik.
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| Otto von Bismarck |
Today, it is universally assumed that merely because Hitler enjoyed Wagner’s music—just as he enjoyed Shakespeare’s plays and Beethoven's music—that therefore Wagner turned away from the liberal ideals he supported during the 1848–49 revolution to heartily embrace a right-wing Bismarckian Realpolitik and right-wing nationalistic pan-Germanic expansionism. Some even claim that right-wing German nationalism was the sole creation of Richard Wagner, whose operas constituted the libretto that history slavishly followed. The sheer implausibility of any theory attributing the origins of such seismic socio-political shifts pervading the entire structure of Bismarckian Germany, and extending another half-century into the future, to the influence of a single opera composer is virtually never considered.
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| It is assumed today that Wagner’s Germania is a belligerent and militaristic one, of a kind dating from another era well after his death, rather than Veit’s 1848 liberal and revolutionary Germania |
Unsurprisingly, as we will see in Wagner’s support for Constantin Franz, it turns out that any suggestion that Wagner’s based his views on German politics on Hitler’s—that is, on the views of someone born after Wagner died—turns out to be both utterly implausible and anachronistic. For in fact, on the contrary, we find Wagner and Frantz systematically denouncing any pan-Germanic form of unification under the pointy tip of the Prussian militarist sabre. Far from having turned away from the liberal ideals of the 1848-49 revolution to become a reactionary, as the ubiquitous yet baseless allegation goes, Wagner continued to think about alternative forms of liberal socio-political organisation well beyond 1848, as expressed in the thought of Constantin Frantz.
What we find here is that, rather than having been gifted Satanic powers upon mutating into a reactionary right-wing turn coat, allowing him to be the demonic playwright single-handedly scripting the entire course of German history for a whole half century after his death, Wagner’s pacifist anti-pan-Germanic views have been thoroughly ignored to the point of having been systematically buried by history, and ideas diametrically opposed to those he really espoused placed in his mouth. Even today few people actually bother to study the many volumes of prose writing Wagner left behind, beyond, that is, quoting a choice sentence here or there completely out of context.
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| A picture and caption from The Guardian (8th August, 2007) makes the unsupported claim that Wagner's views were “pan-Germanic” and supportive of militant right-wing expansionism. We are told that “Adolf Hitler’s love for the pan-Germanic operas of Wagner is well-known”, but not by whom, and what this “just-so” blanket statement is based on. |
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| Hitler’s personal copy of the complete Shakespeare. Hitler also loved Shakespeare yet oddly Nazified interpretations of Shakespeare are not considered “just-so” and “well known” |
It is critical that we candidly begin with the fact that National Socialist interpretations of Frantz have actually been put forward. For example, Peter Viereck tells us in the 2006 preface to his book, Metapolitics that:
My 1941 edition had explained (footnote, p. 4) that I took my title “metapolitics” from a letter that the anti-Semite and Wagnerian author, Constantin Frantz, wrote in June 1878, “Open Letter to Richard Wagner”. There Frantz coined the word to foretell their shared dream of a future racist and Führer-led Volk-state. In her diaries Cosima quotes Wagner, September 8, 1880 as saying, “There are only two people who seriously discuss serious questions—Constantin Frantz and I”. In 1971, imagine my surprise at reading that Kurt Waldheim had been appointed secretary general of UN. Later he was elected president of Austria, the surprising coincidence was that, during the war, Waldheim had written his Ph.D. thesis on Frantz, glorifying him as prophet of Nazism.
However, as we shall soon discover, absolutely nothing whatsoever about a “shared dream of a future racist and Führer-led Volk-state” can be found anywhere in the Open Letter. Readers are cordially invited to check carefully, word by word, through the entire full text of the Open Letter to confirm for themselves that there is nothing even remotely resembling such words anywhere. In this instance, we have not even been granted the grace of “choice words” quoted grossly out of context, words whose interpretation could be verified by a reading of the original text. Sadly, Viereck evinces not the slightest of evidence that he has even so much as bothered to read the Open Letter, which demonstrates that, as is usual practice for him, Viereck has completely made these words up. No such concept as a “Führer-led Volk-state” even existed in the nineteenth century, well prior to the rise of National Socialism, and it is a fantastic anachronism to read such concepts into the works of nineteenth century writers. Viereck is reading history backwards.
Nor should it be forgotten that National Socialist faithful also came up with nazified interpretations of Martin Luther and the Bible. Does this mean that rather than critically examining the veracity of such interpretations, we should obediently salute, before accepting with obsequious credulousness that, now and for all eternity, only nazified interpretations of Christianity remain credible, and that the Nazis altogether own Luther and the Bible—along with Wagner and Frantz? After all, a conveniently incriminating string of choice quilt quotations could be collated from the Bible like this:
I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews ... who... killed the Lord Jesus ... His blood be on [them], and on [their] children ... For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision ... they please not God, and are contrary to all men ... the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.... I came to cast fire upon the earth.. . . Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you. . . . Let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one ... the Reich of God [das Reich Gottes in Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible] is near.
With this sort of use of quilt quotations, a view of Jesus could be put forward “glorifying him as the prophet of Nazism”. The National Socialists did just that:
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| “If the Jew gains victory over the people of this world with the help of his Marxist Confession of Faith, then his crown will become the Dance of Death over the human race . . . That is why I believe that I am acting as the agent of the Almighty Creator. In that I am warding off the Jews, I am fighting to do the Lord's work”. Mein Kampf: Marxism as the Destroyer of Culture |
Yet sadly in the case of Wagner and Frantz, Viereck and his ilk often fail to even come up with such choice quotations that can be checked to determine the veracity of dubiously nazified interpretation of their writings. In its place, all we get is an obsequious credulousness in uncritically swallowing propaganda, whose veracity is then tenaciously defended through completely bogus “quotes” that bear not even the slightest of resemblances to the text it allegedly refers to. Following this method of planting blatantly fraudulent quotes in someone’s mouth in order to run a malicious prosecution off fake evidence, renders it child’s play to condemn Jesus as history’s greatest Prophet of Nazism, while allowing the accuser to put on the false air of being some heroic Nazi hunter.
For the sake of total transparency, lest anyone accuse me of underplaying or ignoring these passages, I will mention that the only possible basis for Viereck’s interpretation of Frantz’s Open Letter can be found in the following passages:
However, because Christianity is blatantly ignored, nothing is done, but since rather in this world ultimately only affirmatives ever count and prevail, it could hardly fail to come of pass that, in place of the former Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, an Empire [Reich] should arise, one which is actually already in full cry, and which turns out to be a German Empire [Reich] of a Jewish nation—which in Berlin has found itself the most appropriate capital, where we find communal life, just as much as economic and spiritual life, entirely under Jewish influence.
Weil nun aber mit dem blossen Ignorieren des Christentums nichts getan ist, sondern in der Welt zuletzt immer nur das Positive gilt und sich durchsetzt, konnte es auch kaum anders geschehen, als dass damit, an Stelle des ehemaligen heiligen römischen Reiches deutscher Nation, ein Reich entstand, welches tatsächlich schon in vollem Zuge ist, sich als ein deutsches Reich jüdischer Nation zu entpuppen, welches allerdings in Berlin, wo schon heute das Kommunalleben, wie das wirtschaftliche und das geistige Leben, ganz unter jüdischem Einfluss steht, die geeignetste Hauptstadt finden dürfte.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.157. Henceforth, all translations from an original text are my own.
The basis of Frantz’s anti-Semitism is old-fashioned common garden variety Christian anti-Semitism, in an age in which the emancipation of the Jews in Europe was still a relative novelty. Frantz goes on:
It is all the more ridiculous when the constitution of this alleged nation-state is based, for the greatest part, on imitations of foreign models, in which it is scarcely possible to find anything specifically German in it. It must finally must appear to us as downright disgusting to see the appearance of a primed and ambitious new German national spirit when there are actually Jews in there, who are behaving exactly the same as the most competent leading voices, and thus do business as they do on the stock exchange or in ragged clothes. Why, if we want to be German nationals as well, we should first and foremost expel Judaism, which, like a tapeworm lodges itself in our national body, corrupting and sucking dry the innermost life essence of the German people.
Um so lächerlicher, wenn in der Verfassung dieses angeblichen Nationalstaates das allermeiste auf Nachahmung fremder Vorbilder beruht, indessen spezifisch Deutsches kaum darin zu finden ist. Geradezu ekelhaft endlich muss uns der jetzt präparierte und so anspruchsvoll auftretende neue deutsche Nationalgeist erscheinen, wenn es tatsächlich Jude sind, welche sich als die berufensten Stimmführer desselben gebärden, und damit ebenso Geschäfte machen wie auf der Börse oder im Kleidertrödel. Ei, wenn wir so durchaus deutsch-national werden wollen, stossen wir doch zuvörderst das Judentum aus, welches sich wie ein Bandwurm in unserem Nationalkörper eingenistet, die innersten Lebenskeime deutschen Volkstums verderbend und aussaugend.
The tiresome and predictable old argument will be endlessly repeated, claiming that the “Empire” (Reich) here refers to the Dritte Reich. The crude assumption is that all German imperialism from the Carolingian Empire to the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire has always been a forerunner of the Dritte Reich. The tired argument will further be repeated that all anti-Semitism can only possibly represent an exterminationist variety of anti-Semitism. In both arguments, the underlying immovable sentiment is: ‘em bloody Krauts—they’re all Nazi, always ‘ave been, always will be. In this belligerent view, all German anti-Semitism has, since the time of Martin Luther, consistently been exterminationist—Frantz and Wagner being no different. The sweeping assumption is that there has only ever been one variety of German anti-Semitism, and that is Nazi exterminationist anti-Semitism. Likewise with the assumption that there is only one history of Germany past–present–future, this being the history of Nazi Germany. Every event in the entirety of German history, determined in the language of what Adorno calls “abominable war jargon”, is thus to be reinterpreted teleologically as a direct antecedent to Nazism, and its successors.
Firstly, the assumption that the German Empire is the same thing as the Dritte Reich is, to borrow Richard J. Evans’s words “to read history backwards”: the German Empire is not the Dritte Reich. Such an assumption is also a belligerently right-wing rewriting of history based largely on Allied war propaganda for which little academic justification exists to continue to perpetuate in this day and age. Secondly, academic historians worldwide universally reject crude Goldhagenist assumptions to the effect that German anti-Semitism had always been exterminationist, and strongly doubt whether even National Socialist anti-Semitism was convincingly exterminationist from the very outset. The majority of modern historians think rather that there was a cumulative radicalisation* of National Socialist anti-Semitism determined by critical structural elements and events colluding to engender it. Prior to that, in Germany—as in all Christian nations—a commonal garden variety of anti-Semitism was widespread. The German variety of anti-Semitism before the early twentieth century can hardly be considered any more exterminationist than English or French varieties. For example, there are anti-Semitic elements in the writings of Oscar Wilde:
That is to name only one non-German writer amongst many who wrote similar things. Yet, as with Wagner and Frantz, it would be equally an exaggeration to label this variety of anti-Semitism exterminationist. Frantz makes it clear that his variety is Christian. Wagner’s was too, but his was also an assimilationist anti-Semitism (one that the great Israeli historian, Saul Friedländer, calls anti-Judaism) that demanded the radical absorption of the Jewish minority into the Christian majority through their acceptance of Christ, resulting in the downfall (Untergang) of the Jewish religion, and of Jewish ethnic identity.
With this in mind, it must be noted that Frantz is actually attacking the German Reich united under the militarism of Bismarck as being a Jewish Reich. He is using it to express his hostility towards German imperialism and its Realpolitik as being un-Christian and un-German. It is like accusing the Realpolitik of the Dritte Reich of being “Jewish” because it is un-Christian and un-German, and indeed some of their critics in that era did precisely that. However unacceptable we find this manner of expression today, the variety of anti-Semitism on display here is that of a left-wing Christian variety, one of an entirely different character and origin to that of twentieth century National Socialist right-wing racial and exterminationist anti-Semitism. It is a huge mistake to conflate the two based on the sweeping assumption that ‘em bloody Krauts are all the same. It should come as a surprise to nobody that things are immeasurably more complexly nuanced than that.
I doubt that no matter how much I insist on reading Frantz and Wanger's statements in the correct historical context, the immovably dogmatic masses can be safely predicted to endlessly quote the comments about Jews as though it were the only thing Frantz said in the Open Letter, accompanied by some crude remark to the effect that ‘em bloody Krauts—they’re all Nazi, always ’ave been, always will be. That much can always be absolutely guaranteed. Yet any open-minded reader who makes the effort to study the rest of the Open Letter will find it immensely inspiring in its outspoken hostility towards the then newly emergent phenomenon of right-wing German nationalism and imperialistic pan-Germanism. For that purpose, I will take the reader carefully through the Open Letter so that readers can judge for themselves based upon substantial stretches of extended block quotations taken directly from the original text.
A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the centre of a soiled shirt. “Have a box, my Lord?” he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him, Harry, that amused me. He was such a monster.On the first night I was at the theatre, the horrid old Jew came round to the box after the performance was over, and offered to take me behind the scenes and introduce me to her. . . . He was a most offensive brute, though he had an extraordinary passion for Shakespeare.
Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
That is to name only one non-German writer amongst many who wrote similar things. Yet, as with Wagner and Frantz, it would be equally an exaggeration to label this variety of anti-Semitism exterminationist. Frantz makes it clear that his variety is Christian. Wagner’s was too, but his was also an assimilationist anti-Semitism (one that the great Israeli historian, Saul Friedländer, calls anti-Judaism) that demanded the radical absorption of the Jewish minority into the Christian majority through their acceptance of Christ, resulting in the downfall (Untergang) of the Jewish religion, and of Jewish ethnic identity.
With this in mind, it must be noted that Frantz is actually attacking the German Reich united under the militarism of Bismarck as being a Jewish Reich. He is using it to express his hostility towards German imperialism and its Realpolitik as being un-Christian and un-German. It is like accusing the Realpolitik of the Dritte Reich of being “Jewish” because it is un-Christian and un-German, and indeed some of their critics in that era did precisely that. However unacceptable we find this manner of expression today, the variety of anti-Semitism on display here is that of a left-wing Christian variety, one of an entirely different character and origin to that of twentieth century National Socialist right-wing racial and exterminationist anti-Semitism. It is a huge mistake to conflate the two based on the sweeping assumption that ‘em bloody Krauts are all the same. It should come as a surprise to nobody that things are immeasurably more complexly nuanced than that.
I doubt that no matter how much I insist on reading Frantz and Wanger's statements in the correct historical context, the immovably dogmatic masses can be safely predicted to endlessly quote the comments about Jews as though it were the only thing Frantz said in the Open Letter, accompanied by some crude remark to the effect that ‘em bloody Krauts—they’re all Nazi, always ’ave been, always will be. That much can always be absolutely guaranteed. Yet any open-minded reader who makes the effort to study the rest of the Open Letter will find it immensely inspiring in its outspoken hostility towards the then newly emergent phenomenon of right-wing German nationalism and imperialistic pan-Germanism. For that purpose, I will take the reader carefully through the Open Letter so that readers can judge for themselves based upon substantial stretches of extended block quotations taken directly from the original text.
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| Offener Brief an Richard Wagner Open Letter to Richard Wagner By Constantin Frantz Bayreuther Blätter, June 1878 |
After the total decline of the German character—following the almost total annihilation of the German nation in the wake of the indescribable devastation from the Thirty Years War—it was from its innermost sanctuary [innerlichst heimische Welt] that the German spirit was reborn. German poetry, German music, German philosophy today are highly respected by all peoples of the world. However, in yearning after “German glory”, the German usually dreams of nothing other than the resurrection of the Roman Empire, whereupon an unrecognisable lust for domination and desire for supremacy over other nations overcomes the good natured German. He forgets how injurious the Roman concept of the state had previously been to the prosperity of the German people.
Nach dem gänzlichen Verfalle des deutschen Wesens, nach dem fast gänzlichen Erlöschen der deutschen Nation in Folge der unbeschreiblichen Verheerungen des dreissigjährigen Krieges, war es diese innerlichst heimische Welt, aus welcher der deutsche Geist wiedergeboren ward. Deutsche Dichtkunst, deutsche Musik, deutsche Philosophie sind heutzutage hochgeachtet von allen Völkern der Welt: in der Sehnsucht nach „deutscher Herrlichkeit" kann sich der Deutsche aber gewöhnlich noch nichts anderes träumen als etwas der Wiederherstellung des römischen Kaiserreiches Ähnliches, wobei selbst dem gutmüthigsten Deutschen ein unverkennbares Herrschergelüst und Verlangen nach Obergewalt über andere Völker ankommt. Er vergisst, wie nachtheilig der römische Staatsgedanke bereits auf das Gedeihen der deutschen Völker gewirkt hatte.
Wagner: Bayreuther Blätter, February 1878.
In this you can already see Wagner’s opposition to the idea of resurrecting the Holy Roman Empire—in other words, a Germanic variant of the injurious “Roman concept of the state”. It is precisely the sort of feudal political order that the 1848-49 revolution sought to consign to the dustbin of history. This hostile rejection of the order represented by the Holy Roman Empire is a concept that is further developed in Frantz’s Open Letter to Richard Wagner. Yet this is precisely the Holy Roman Empire that the National Socialists, in their reactionary romanticisation of the ancient order, later referred to as the First Empire, or Erste Reich. After it, they called Imperial Germany, following Bismarck’s unification under Prussia, the Second Empire, or Zweite Reich. Finally, the third “repristination” (making pristine again) of a pan-Germanic Holy Roman Empire, which occurred under Hitler as a new Holy Roman Emperor, was dubbed the Third Empire, or Dritte Reich, by the National Socialists. Wagner’s attitude to such a yearning for “German glory” through the resurrection of a new imperialist Reich is unmistakable: he is horrified that the “good natured German” could possibly be rendered “unrecognisable” when overcome by such a “lust for domination and desire for supremacy over over nations”. “Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn!” is Wagner’s damning response to this. It is nothing less than the outright rejection of the sort of pan-Germanic imperialism that lead to the rise of the Dritte Reich as a repristination of an ultra-Germanic breed of Roman imperialism.
If what Wagner wrote were insufficiently clear, Wagner published Constantin Frantz’s Open Letter in the Bayreuther Blätter. Here Wagner makes his support for Frantz’s outright condemnation of pan-Germanic militarist expansionism totally and unambiguously clear.
I will take the reader through the salient points made by Frantz:
Despite its ornate Victorian prose, Frantz makes it clear that “the fatherland must be smaller”. The singing of praises for a larger fatherland is dismissed as complete madness—or in German, Wahnsinn. The Wahn in Wahnsinn is the Wahn of Hans Sach’s “Wahn monologue”. The idea Frantz is discussing is that of the so-called Grossdeutschland (large Germany) solution to unification, as opposed to the Kleindeutschland (small Germany) solution. In the case of Wagner and Frantz, for most of their lives no such nation as “Germany” had ever even existed—hence the question “What is German?” What we today know as Germany was once a conglomerate of independent German kingdoms such as Saxony, Prussia, and Bavaria. These kingdoms were once nations as fully independent as Austria remains today. In contrast to theKleindeutschland model excluding Austria, the Grossdeutschland solution to German unification was a model of unification which encompassed the Austro-Hungarian empire. It is the more aggressively grandiose (gross also means grand or large) pan-Germanic expansionist model favoured by the National Socialists, who finally realised this dream through the annexation of Austria under the Austrian-born Hitler. Hence why Frantz refers to the Danube, which runs through Vienna. Frantz’s expression “the most unashamed political realism” unmistakably refers to the thoroughly Bismarckian concept of Realpolitik. It is also a style of brutally expansionist pan-Germanic politics associated with National Socialism under Hitler.
So for Frantz, Bismarckian Realpolitik constitutes a “punch in the face” for German peoples, and a huge waste of expenditure on the military—money better spent on a system of social welfare (Wohlfarht). The German word for “welfare state” is Wohlfahrtsstaat.
Frantz’s position with respect to the Holy Roman Empire deserves particular consideration, as it is inevitable that someone will claim that he romanticised it exactly like the National Socialists, and pined for the resurrection of a militaristic pan-Germanic Empire. The one thing Frantz approves about the Holy Roman Empire is that it was grounded on Christian principles—unlike, in his opinion, the new German Empire:
Time and time again Frantz makes his objections to the idea of a resurrection (Repristination—i.e. to make pristine again) of the Holy Roman Empire:
Frantz unequivocally rejects any notion of the respristination of a pan-Germanic empire encompassing Austria in the Grossdeutschland model of unification. He even calls the newly founded German Empire a monstrosity (Mißgeburt).
Also of importance is the relation that Frantz has to the post-Kantian idealist philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte:
If what Wagner wrote were insufficiently clear, Wagner published Constantin Frantz’s Open Letter in the Bayreuther Blätter. Here Wagner makes his support for Frantz’s outright condemnation of pan-Germanic militarist expansionism totally and unambiguously clear.
I will take the reader through the salient points made by Frantz:
In Berlin, of course, one understood the matter differently. There one recognised the madness [Wahnsinn] that we so long sang “the fatherland must be greater”, and that in particular the country had to belong “where the Danube roars along”, something it really only does under Passau right where the vortex is—no, the fatherland must be smaller, namely only so big that it fits into our conceptual designs. Or said another way: so that it can be digested by our stomach without an all too great a discomfort, which in this case would be regarded as the Brandenburg trademark. In order to henceforth be considered German, something which makes things digestible for the Prussians, wherefore probably the whole of the Alpine country might prove itself appropriated. Politics, in which the merit of the most massive and—to speak at the same time in the Berlin-style—mostunashamed realism, is not denied, is however characterised by being un-German from the ground up, in that it expressly limits itself to its egotistical interests, all higher duties being rejected from the outset.
In Berlin freilich hat man die Sache anders verstanden. Da erkannte man den Wahnsinn, dass wir so lange gesungen „das Vaterland muss grösser sein", sowie dass insbesondere auch das Land dazu gehören müsse, „wo die Donau brausend zieht", was sie doch erst unterhalb Passau recht tut, wo der Strudel kommt, — nein, das Vaterland muss kleiner sein, nämlich gerade nur so gross, dass es in unsre Konzeptionen hineinpasst. Oder anders gesprochen: dass es von unserem Magen, als welcher in diesem Falle die Marke Brandenburg anzusehen wäre, ohne allzu grosse Beschwerden verdaut werden kann. Als deutsch hätte also [S.151] hinfort zu gelten, was sich für das Preußentum verdaulich machen liesse, wozu wahrscheinlich das gesamte Alpenland sich angeeignet erweisen dürfte. Eine Politik, der das Verdienst massivsten und — um zugleich berlinisch zu sprechen — unverfrorensten Realismus nicht abzustreiten ist, die sich aber auch damit als von Grund aus undeutsch charakterisiert, indem sie sich ausdrücklich auf ihre egoistischen Interessen beschränkt, alle höheren Aufgaben von vornherein ablehnend.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.151
Despite its ornate Victorian prose, Frantz makes it clear that “the fatherland must be smaller”. The singing of praises for a larger fatherland is dismissed as complete madness—or in German, Wahnsinn. The Wahn in Wahnsinn is the Wahn of Hans Sach’s “Wahn monologue”. The idea Frantz is discussing is that of the so-called Grossdeutschland (large Germany) solution to unification, as opposed to the Kleindeutschland (small Germany) solution. In the case of Wagner and Frantz, for most of their lives no such nation as “Germany” had ever even existed—hence the question “What is German?” What we today know as Germany was once a conglomerate of independent German kingdoms such as Saxony, Prussia, and Bavaria. These kingdoms were once nations as fully independent as Austria remains today. In contrast to theKleindeutschland model excluding Austria, the Grossdeutschland solution to German unification was a model of unification which encompassed the Austro-Hungarian empire. It is the more aggressively grandiose (gross also means grand or large) pan-Germanic expansionist model favoured by the National Socialists, who finally realised this dream through the annexation of Austria under the Austrian-born Hitler. Hence why Frantz refers to the Danube, which runs through Vienna. Frantz’s expression “the most unashamed political realism” unmistakably refers to the thoroughly Bismarckian concept of Realpolitik. It is also a style of brutally expansionist pan-Germanic politics associated with National Socialism under Hitler.
Only after the continued existence of the union had been questioned in the year ‘48, large wars broke out, and with its final destruction in the year ‘66, the whole European construct lost its inner cohesion. Since then only earnest instruments of power grant further security. It becomes thereby necessary to make military preparations everywhere, and, in order not to be threatened by the great success of ‘66 and ‘70 once again, we have had to remain standing uninterrupted by our [military] posts—only temporarily—as Moltke stated fifty years ago! It is a further consequence of such realist politics that it has made Germany the basis of European militarism, when instead it should be the basis of a European system of peace. And it must be questioned whether the welfare of the German people can flourish when the military budget bites to the bone. It seems that realism is punching itself in the face.
Erst nachdem im Jahre 48 die Fortexistenz des Bundes in Frage gestellt worden, brachen grosse Kriege aus, und mit seiner endlichen Zerstörung im Jahre 66 hat das ganze europäische Gebäude seinen Innern Halt verloren. Nur tatsächliche Machtmittel gewähren seitdem noch Sicherheit, daher gilt es überall rüsten, und um die grossen Erfolge von 66 und 70 nicht wieder gefährdet zu sehen, müssen wir seitdem ununterbrochen auf dem Posten stehen, vorläufig, wie Moltke gesagt, auf fünfzig Jahre! Das ist auch eine Konsequenz solcher realistischen Politik, dass sie Deutschland zur Basis des europäischen Militarismus gemacht hat, statt dessen es die Basis eines europäischen Friedenssystems sein sollte. Und ob nun dabei die Wohlfahrt des deutschem Volkes gedeihen kann, wenn ihm das Militärbudget das Mark angesagt? Es scheint, der Realismus schlägt sich selbst ins Angesicht.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.151
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| Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800 – 1891) Chief of staff in the Prussian Army |
So for Frantz, Bismarckian Realpolitik constitutes a “punch in the face” for German peoples, and a huge waste of expenditure on the military—money better spent on a system of social welfare (Wohlfarht). The German word for “welfare state” is Wohlfahrtsstaat.
Frantz’s position with respect to the Holy Roman Empire deserves particular consideration, as it is inevitable that someone will claim that he romanticised it exactly like the National Socialists, and pined for the resurrection of a militaristic pan-Germanic Empire. The one thing Frantz approves about the Holy Roman Empire is that it was grounded on Christian principles—unlike, in his opinion, the new German Empire:
How differently in former times during the previous Holy Roman Empire had the German nation regarded its calling! That would and should find its honour and its greatness in that it served the general interests of Christianity. This universal and international task was regarded thus as the German National calling. Though this idea made a deep impression upon minds, tradition held to it even more firmly in the 18th century, though the empire existed almost entirely as a shadow, however much official documents still spoke in the tenor of those lofty intentions. The choice of Emperor, it was said, would it come of pass: “praised be God, the Holy Roman Empire’s honour, Christendom, and the German nation, be it though for the sake of a common benefit”. Note that: Christianity leads the way, upon it follows firstly the German nation, then lastly the common benefit. On the other hand, the the common advantage of the German nation, is precisely the A and O of the modern Imperial Constitution.
Wie ganz anders hatte vor Zeiten die deutsche Nation ihren Beruf aufgefasst in dem ehemaligen heiligen römischen Reiche! Das wollte und sollte seine Ehre und seine Grösse darin finden, dass es den allgemeinen Interessen der Christenheit diente. Diese universale und internationale Aufgabe galt damit als der deutsche Nationalberuf. Tief hatte sich diese Idee den Gemütern eingeprägt, die Tradition hielt daran fest selbst noch im 18ten Jahrhundert, wo das Reich fast nur noch als ein Schatten existierte, indessen die öffentlichen Urkunden noch immer im Sinne jener hohen Intentionen sprachen. Die Kaiserwahl, hiess es, geschähe: „Gott an Lob, dem heiligen römischen Reiche zu Ehren, und um der Christenheit und deutschen Nation, auch gemeinen Nutzens willen”. Man beachte das: die Christenheit geht voran, darauf folgt erst die deutsche Nation, zuletzt der gemeine Nutzen, für die heutige Reichsverfassung hingegen ist gerade der gemeine Nutzen der deutschen Nation das A und O.
Time and time again Frantz makes his objections to the idea of a resurrection (Repristination—i.e. to make pristine again) of the Holy Roman Empire:
Let us get away from this unfortunate picture, and go back to our former Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, because we need to be quite clear about the nature of that beforehand in order to recognise what true German politics should be. ...
Never would this monstrosity of today’s German Empire have come into the world if one had grasped even the vaguest notion of the true German nation's calling, as once it found expression in the Holy Roman Empire, whose profoundest significance it is therefore essential to expound. Commodities, which of course are only retrospective considerations, resulted at any rate from practical consequence though it flatly contradicts the nature and purpose of Germany—even now, however, an attempt is being made to form a solitary nation-state. However, the interconnectedness of German circumstances and that of Europe by all means simply cannot be eliminated, and consequently the German National Constitution must likewise always have an international character. That much is certain. Now, do I somehow dream of the former empire’s repristination? Certainly not! ... For me the old German-Roman kaiserdom has been decisively extinguished.
Zurück von diesem unerfreulichen Bilde zu unserem ehemaligem heiligen römischen Reiche deutscher Nation, denn, über das Wesen desselben müssen wir uns vorweg klar werden, um zu erkennen, was eine wahre deutsche Politik sein soll. ...
Nie wäre diese Mißgeburt des heutigen deutschen Reiches in die Welt getreten, hätte man nur noch die leiseste Ahnung von dem wahren Berufe deutscher Nation gehabt, wie derselbe einst zum Ausdruck gekommen war in dem heiligen römischen Reiche, dessen tiefen Sinn darzulegen mir daher vor allein unerlässlich schien. Waren, das freilich nur retrospektive Betrachtungen, so ging doch jedenfalls als praktisches Resultat daraus hervor, dass es dem Wesen und der Bestimmung Deutschlands rundweg widerspricht, — wie aber jetzt eben versucht wird, — einen abgeschlossen Nationalstaat daraus machen zu wollen, weil die Verflechtung der deutschen Verhältnisse mit den europäischen schlechterdings nicht zu beseitigen ist, infolge dessen die deutsch Nationalverfassung immer zugleich einen internationalen Charakter haben muss. Soviel steht damit fest. Aber träume ich nun, etwa von einer Repristination des ehemaligen Reiches? Das sei ferne! ... Für mich war das alte deutsch-römische Kaisertum definitiv erloschen.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.158
Frantz unequivocally rejects any notion of the respristination of a pan-Germanic empire encompassing Austria in the Grossdeutschland model of unification. He even calls the newly founded German Empire a monstrosity (Mißgeburt).
Also of importance is the relation that Frantz has to the post-Kantian idealist philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte:
If the German spirit could no longer actualise itself outwardly, so it turned itself ever more so towards its inner depths, where it unlocked a world of thought. And just when the empire was nearing its complete dissolution, our classic poets created their greatest works, and German idealism rose to its boldest flight. Considered from a political perspective, absolutely no such thing as a Germany existed any more, whereupon there entered Fichte, who called upon the German nation: on it rests the salvation of the world. He summoned forth the German spirit in his speeches, which for him ought to:“Open up new battles, light and day in their abysmal depths, and hurl rock masses of thought from which the future age to build itself dwellings”.That was something: to lead the Berlin Academy using such language, while outside French military music passed by in the street! Only it prides itself—to mention it in passing—not unlike Berlinism [Berlinismus], in which this man was himself only as unto it as snow.
Konnte der deutsche Geist sich nicht mehr nach aussen hin betätigen, so wandte er sich um so mehr in seine eigene Tiefe, wo sich ihm eine Welt des Gedankens erschloss. Und gerade als das Reich seiner völligen Auflösung entgegenging, schufen unsre klassischen Dichter ihre grössten Werke, erhob der deutsche Idealismus sich zum kühnsten Flug. Schon gab es, politisch betrachtet, überhaupt kein Deutschland mehr, da tritt ein Fichte auf, welcher der deutschen Nation zuruft: sie sei es, auf der das Heil der Welt beruhe. Den deutschen Geist beschwört er in seinen Reden herauf, der soll ihm:
„neue Schlachten eröffnen, Licht und Tag in ihre Abgründe, und Felsmassen von Gedanken schleudern, aus denen die künftigen Zeitalter sich Wohnungen erbauen”.
Das war etwas: eine solche Sprache in der berliner Akademie zu führen, während draussen auf der Strasse die französische Militärmusik vorbeizog! Nur hat sich dessen — beiläufig bemerkt — nicht etwa der Berlinismus zu rühmen, in welchen dieser Mann selbst nur wie hineingeschneit war.
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| Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 – 1814) |
The text to which Frantz refers is that of Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation (1808). At the time of its writing, Germany was under Napoleonic rule. Once again, the German nationalism expressed here is idealistically left-wing, anti-Napoleonic, and anti-despotic as Fichte called upon Germany to unite and free itself from the grips of French imperialist rule. Prussia at this point in history belonged together with Britain amongst the Allies who fought to defeat Napoleon. Fichte’s Addresses express an ideology that is republican in its orientation—one that was considered radically liberal in a monarchist age. Isaac Nakhimovsky tells us in the Introduction to the translation of Fichte's Addresses that:
The power dynamics of the European states system had thoroughly infected economic life and distorted market relations into what Hobbes had described as a war of all against all: everybody sought to secure their own economic welfare at everybody else’s expense. By the eighteenth century, in Fichte's analysis, this contagion was beginning to become apparent in cultural life as well—particularly in England and France, where Fichte observed that intensifying economic competition had perverted love of country into hatred of foreign competitors or patriotism into what Fichte called “national hatred” (Nationalhaß). Fichte concluded that these pathological developments foretold an apocalyptic future along the lines that Rousseau had projected in his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1754). Rather than perpetual peace, Europe could expect centuries of mounting class conflict and cycles of intensifying imperialism and war. Only in the distant future, Fichte warned, would it become apparent whether the final outcome of this process would be the self-destruction of modern European civilization and a relapse into barbarism, as Rousseau and many other eighteenth-century writers had feared; or whether this conflict would turn out to be the catalyst for the founding of a more peaceful future age—one in which European states had resolved the “social question” and the rest of the world had acquired the means to end European exploitation.
Fichte concluded that the only way to provide Kant’s theory of perpetual peace with a less opaque vision of a transition to a moral world was to equip it with a less morally constrained approach to practical politics. The Addresses are the outcome of Fichte’s efforts to trace a clear path to the moral transformation of a world divided into warring states.Frantz’s ideas about a European Federation are very much the ideological continuation of Fichte’s political theories:
In the future, no overlordship [Oberherrschaft] of any kind whatsoever, but only a free federation can lead to the goal that remained inaccessible to the medieval kaiserdom. ... I have had this idea since the start of ‘48 which thereby explains my protest against the anachronism of a new German Kaiserdom.
In Zukunft nichts mehr von einer Oberherrschaft unter irgendwelche Form, sondern nur die freie Föderation kann zu dem Ziele führen, welches dem mittelalterlichen Kaisertum unerreichbar blieb. ... Ich habe diese Idee schon im Frühjahr 48 aufgestellt und damit meinen Protest gegen den Anachronismus eines neuen deutschen Kaisertums erklärt.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.159
The objection to a German imperialist overlordship mutating into a chauvinistic imperialism rivalling that of Napoleonic despotism is very clear:
Who does not know the phrase “l’empire c’est la paix”? Though the new German Empire brags of the very same thing, I however ask: how could it possibly be a guarantee of peace, when—as noted earlier—it assign itself no international calling at all, and on the contrary wishes to explicitly busy itself exclusively with its own interests? And it does not belong apparently to the most urgent needs of the present, that finally a universally accepted legal order of European state affairs should be created, whereas everything that exists today—merely blandly exists—with the guarantee of its continued existence being only in its own instruments of power? Hence the continuous readiness for war that has most recently threatened to plunge us back into barbarism.
Wer kennt nicht das Wort „l’empire c’est la paix”, das neue deutsche Empire rühmt dasselbe von sich, ich frage aber: wie soll es wohl eine Friedensgarantie sein, wenn es selbst — wie früher bemerkt — sich überhaupt; keinen internationalen Beruf zuschreibt, sondern ausdrücklich sich nur mit seinen eignen Interessen beschäftigen will? Und gehört es nicht offenbar zu den allerdringendsten Bedürfnissen der Gegenwart, dass endlich wieder eine allgemein anerkannte Rechtsordnung der europäischen Staatsverhältnisse begründet werde, wohingegen alles, was heute besteht, bloss tatsächlich besteht, und die Garantie seines Fortbestandes nur in seinen eignen Machtmitteln findet? Daher die permanente Kriegsbereitschaft, die uns zuletzt in die Barbarei zurück zu stürzen droht.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.164
Frantz wants to emphasise the fact that Germany must not make the same mistake as imperialist France whose liberal revolutionary nationalism under a tricolour republican flag had also progressively mutated into a malignant imperialism driven by a Napoleonic Realpolitik hungry for power and Lebensraum. Under no circumstances should imperialism be lauded as the basis of peace under the imperialist slogan of “l’empire c’est la paix”. There is no more recourse here to a Pax Germania, than to a Pax Romana or a Pax Gallia. Interestingly, it was Lord Byron who warned that one day “a new Napoleon might arise to shame the world again”—a prophecy that came true with the rise of Hitler. The alternative that Frantz desperately advocates as a means of averting Germany going down the path of a repetition of French imperialist errors is one of a European parliamentary federalism:
There will be no remedy except through that of a European Federal system, one that itself can never come into existence again, unless it arises from Germany, in which it reflects to a certain extent the different European nations and its various original peoples, in which Germany is as though prefigured from the outset for the Federation. If these natural arrangements were further developed, the German Constitution will be related in this regard to the North American, and we will be able to gleam the typical expression of the New World again in North America, so that at this point what I said at the outset is confirmed: that Germany too receptively accords to the life forms of the New World. ... Through Germany Europe has fallen, through Germany it must rise again.
And this would thus be the first task for the world: an international organisation. The other—social organisation. It definitely appears that the latter is much more urgent, because it brings us closer to a universal agreement, and directly affects the living conditions of the masses, so certainly makes clear how any deep-seated social reform is impossible as long it stems from a militarism arising from the lack of an international order that places an ever greater burden on the people, and the blatant violence surges in such a direction that military organisation becomes much more important for them than the organisation of labour. This quite palpably demonstrates the inseparable connection between the social question and the international one.
Da ist keine Hilfe, ausser durch ein europäisches Föderativesystem welches aber selbst wieder nie zu Stande kommen kann, ausser es muss von Deutschland ausgehen, in dessen verschiedenen Volksstämmen sich gewissermaßen die verschiedenen europäischen Nationen spiegeln, wodurch Deutschland von vornherein wie zur Föderation präformiert ist. Diese natürlichen Anlagen weiter ausgebildet, wird dann die deutsche Verfassung insofern der nordamerikanischen verwandt sein, und dürfen wir in Nordamerika wieder den typischen Ausdruck der neuen Welt erblicken, so bestätigt sich hier, was ich zu Anfang gesagt: dass Deutschland sich auch für die Lebensformen der neuen Welt empfänglich erweise. ... Europa ist durch Deutschland gefallen, durch Deutschland muss es wieder emporsteigen.
Das wäre demnach die erste Weltaufgabe: internationale Organisation. Die andere — die soziale Organisation. Erscheint zwar diese letztere als die noch viel dringender, weil sie dem allgemeinen Verständnis näher liegt, und unmittelbar die Existenzbedingungen der Massen betrifft, so leuchtet doch ein, wie jede tiefgreifende soziale Reform unmöglich bleibt, so lange der aus dem Mangel einer internationalen Ordnung entspringende Militarismus den Völkern immer grössere Lasten auflegt, und die öffentlichen Gewalten in die Richtung dringt, dass ihnen die Militärorganisation für viel wichtiger gilt als die Organisation der Arbeit. Da zeigt sich ganz handgreiflich der untrennbare Zusammenhang der sozialen Frage mit der internationalen.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.164
The European Federation described by Frantz is clearly very much the ideological predecessor of the European Union today. It is a civil union of nations bound by a central constitution. Frantz even says that the Federation should be based on a European union of states around a liberal constitution based on that of the United States of America. It is simply astonishingly forward thinking, almost movingly so. Even the extraordinary words “through Germany Europe has fallen, through Germany it must rise again” are breathtakingly prophetic of the future. Frantz is literally over a hundred years ahead of his time.
Instead of forming a civil European Federation, bemoans Frantz, “we have lost ourselves in narrow-minded nationalistic tendencies” (statt dessen hat man sich in enge Nationalitätstendenzen verrannt, p.161). Frantz further denounces blatant expressions of nationalism in art:
And under such circumstances Germany already tends to be isolated, least of all as a result of its geographic location, but did not experience an exclusive national development in earlier centuries, as communication was so difficult. Its great thinkers, poets and literati rather found fame by directing their spirit beyond crude nationalism, towards a universal humanity. Now Germany is supposed to assume an all the more unique national character in complete contradiction to the real developmental requirements of our age, in order to develop itself into a secluded nation-state!
Und unter solchen Umständen soll nun grade Deutschland, welches schon in Folge seiner natürlichem Lage sich am allerwenigsten isolieren kann, welches selbst in früheren Jahrhunderten, wo die Kommunikation noch so schwierig war, eine exklusive Nationalentwicklung nicht gekannt und dessen grosse Denker, Dichter und Literatoren vielmehr ihren Ruhm darin fanden, über das bloss Nationale hinaus ihren Geist auf das allgemein Menschliche zu richten — da soll dieses Deutschland, im offenbarsten Widerspruch zu den realen Entwicklungsbedingungen unseres Zeitalters nur um so mehr einen spezifisch nationalen Charakter annehmen, sich zu einem abgeschlossenen Nationalstaat ausbildend!
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.161
However, unlike the hostile position towards religion adopted by other Young Hegelians such as Marx and Engels, Frantz remains sympathetic towards liberal Christian ideals of universal social justice of a kind transcending national borders:
It should be no need of further words to say that these two great world problems—international organisation and social organisation—are once again, nothing other than the practical demands of Christianity. If the German nation wishes to prove itself as a Christian one, it then follows immediately that it it must feel compelled to tackle these two great problems. Both problems are supra-stately and supra-national, just as with Christianity, extending far beyond that of state and nationality. In the idea of the Holy Roman Empire the same latent idea was present, in that it was a supra-stately and supra-national cultivation.
Weiter aber bedarf es keiner Worte, wie diese beiden grossen Weltprobleme — die internationale und soziale Organisation — wiederum, nichts anders sind als die praktischen Forderungen des Christentums. Will die deutsche Nation sich als eine christliche bewähren, so folgt es dann unmittelbar, dass sie vor allem diese beiden grossen Probleme in Angriff zu nehmen, sich getrieben fühlen muss. Beides sind überstaatliche und übernationale Probleme, gerade wie das Christentum, weit über Staat und Nationalität hinausreicht. In der Idee des heiligen römischen Reiches lag dasselbe, es war eine überstaatliche und übernationale Bildung.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.166
For Frantz, the breadth of the German sphere of influence should be a spiritual and idealistic one driven by concern for universal human rights, rather than a realistic political domination pursued through a policy of expansionist Realpolitik:
Just as with German music, the German perspective of rights should be spread all over the world, and everywhere exerting their formative influence. That shall be an Empire of the German spirit. That alone has a future, that alone can truly elevate the nation.
Instead we have gotten ourselves a small German [kleindeutsches] military imperialism, which by its very nature is directed to transforming the entire nation into an army corps arranged in equal proportions, in which the survival of the German principality is no less undermined, and the unique way of life of the different Germanic peoples is extinguished—the result of the seven years of the existence of this new creation, which even supplied us with the critique of its very own self. It must be said that through the recession in the realm of our economic—as well as of our intellectual and moral—life, we are now reaping the consequences of this so-called grand success. That is a clear indication as to the sort of error into which we have lapsed. Not international organisation and social organisation, but rather disorganisation is promoted by it, and therefore the need for both of those former things has become all the more urgent.
Ähnlich wie die deutsche Musik, werden dann auch die deutschen Rechtsanschauungen sich über die Welt verbreiten, und überall ihren bildenden Einfluss üben. Ein Kaisertum des deutschen Geistes wird das sein. Das einzige was eine Zukunft hat, das einzige was die Nation wirklich zu heben vermag.
Haben wir statt dessen ein kleindeutsches Militärkaisertum erhalten, welches seiner eigensten Natur nach darauf gerichtet ist, die ganze Nation in eine nach Armeecorps eingeteilte gleichartige Masse zu verwandeln, wodurch nicht minder der Fortbestand des deutschen Fürstentums untergraben ist, als das eigentümliche Leben der deutschen Volksstämme erlischt, so haben die Resultate der siebenjährigen Existenz dieser neuen Schöpfung auch selbst schon die Kritik derselben geliefert. Will sagen, durch den Rückgang auf dem Gebiete unseres wirtschaftlichen, wie des intellektuellen und moralischen Lebens, worin wir jetzt die Folgen der sogenannten grossen Erfolge geniessen. Zum deutlichen Zeichen, in welche Verirrung wir gerieten. Nicht die internationale und soziale Organisation, sondern die Desorganisation, ist dadurch befördert, und darum das Bedürfnis in beider Hinsicht um so dringender geworden.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.166
Note particularly that Frantz writes about “the unique way of life of the different German peoples” (das eigentümliche Leben der deutschen Volksstämme) in the plural, the colourful variety of whose different cultures and dialects were being threatened by unification under an all homogenising Prussian overlordship. Frantz disagreed with the notion of a monolithic German Volk. As Richard J. Evans states in his talk, even the word for a potato differed from region to region in the nineteenth century: Kartoffel in the north, Erdapfel in the south, Grumbeere in the west, Schnucke in the east, and Knolle in parts of Saxony. That is why Frantz simply refused to accept that such a thing as a blandly homogeneous German people, in the singular, even existed. Likewise, as with Wagner, Frantz refused to accept the notion of a pure blooded Germanic people that radically excluded others on racial grounds:
It is completely vacuous what people prattle on about with some supposedly radical opposition which supposedly exists between the Germanic and Latin peoples! Does there not flow in the veins of the Latin peoples much Germanic blood? ... I have often been struck in Spain by how much of the Germanic still resides in the Spanish character. ... Whether Romano-Celtic [Welsch in modern spelling or Wälsch in old German spelling] or Germanic, whether Catholic or Protestant—when compared to the Russians character, we might as well all be Latins. ... [T]he whole of eastern Germany has Slavic blood in them, and has grown inseparable from other Slavonic people. Why then not allow Polish entry into the central European Union?
Nichtig überhaupt, was man jetzt von dem radikalen Gegensatz faseln will, der zwischen dem Germanentum und Romanentum bestehe! Fliesst nicht auch in den Adern der romanischen Völker gar viel germanisches Blut? ... Mich hat es in Spanien oft frappiert, wie viel Germanisches noch in dem spanischen Wesen steckt. ... Ob Welscher oder Deutscher, ob Katholik oder Protestant, — dem russischen Wesen gegenüber sind wir alle Lateiner. ... [D]as ganze östliche Deutschland slawisches Blut in sich hat, und bis heute untrennbar mit dem Slawentum verwachsen ist. Warum also sollte nicht auch das Polentum in den mitteleuropäischen Bund eintreten können?
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.162
This represents the diametric opposite of right-wing völkisch nationalism of the kind that Viereck ascribes to Frantz. Talk of sharp racial demarcations is dismissed by Frantz as little more than “prattle”. Compare this with what Richard Wagner had written a few months earlier in What is German? (Was ist deutsch?):
According to the results of the latest and most thorough research, the word “deutsch” does not denote the name of any particular people. There were no people in history to whom the original name Deutsch can be attributed. Jacob Grimm has demonstrated that “diutisk” or “deutsch” denotes nothing less than whatever was native [heimisch], to speak in readily understandable language. In earlier times this was thus diametrically opposed to the word “wälsch”, which the German tribes understood to mean the Gallo-Celtic tribes.
Das wort „deutsch” bezeichnet nach dem Ergebnis der neuesten und gründlichsten Forschungen nicht einen bestimmten Volksnamen; es gibt kein Volk in der Geschichte, welches sich den ursprünglichen Namen „Deutsche” beilegen könnte. Jacob Grimm hat dagegen nachgewiesen, daß „diutisk” oder „deutsch” nichts anderes bezeichnet als das, was uns, den in uns verständlicher Sprache Redenden, heimisch ist. So ward frühzeitig dem „wälsch” entgegengesetzt, worunter die germanischen Stämme das den gälisch-keltischen Stämmen Eigene begriffen.
Was ist deutsch? p.55. Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen Band X (old German spelling retained)
It is further absolutely clear that Frantz regarded it a monstrous calamity that Germany had failed to remain a purely spiritual and idealistic intellectual force that “conquers” the world only in the lofty and abstract sense, as the music of Bach (“the great cantor Sebastian Bach in whose works you [Richard Wagner] showed us what the German spirit can create out of itself”) has conquered the world:
However, we do not just blame those in power for guiding the development of Germany down this mistaken path. The nation itself has not willed otherwise, and not known better. It remained convinced that Germany had to become something similar to France—a completely secluded nation-state. ... That Parisian model was indeed all too seductive. It is, however, manifestly a totally un-German concept, by itself sufficient to demonstrate the un-Germanness of the whole undertaking.
Klagen wir aber nicht bloss die Machthaber dafür an, dass die Gestaltung Deutschlands diese verfehlte Wendung nahm. Die Nation selbst hat es nicht anders gewollt und nicht besser gewusst. Es stand ihr fest, dass Deutschland an etwas Ähnlichem werden müsse wie etwa Frankreich, überhaupt ein abgeschlossener Nationalstaat. ... Das Pariser Vorbild war doch allzu reizend. Offenbar aber ein vollkommen undeutscher Gedanke, allein schon ausreichend um die Undeutschheit des ganzen Unternehmens zu erweisen.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.167
At this point it needs to be pointed out that the accusation of being un-German and unpatriotic could still be used in those days by both sides of German politics, just as one finds the expression “un-American” being used by both sides of modern American politics today. The phrase “un-German” (undeutsch) has subsequently fallen out of modern use since the National Socialist era. However, Frantz and Wagner were writing a good half century before that period, and it would be absurd to rebuke them for having failed to refrain from using the term after thoroughly consulting their crystal ball. In any case, for them—as in modern America—they considered Germany to still have the potential to transform itself into an idealistic “force for good”, especially since German nationalism arose as an anti-Napoleonic, anti-despotic movement with Prussia belonging together with Britain on the side of the Allies in the Napoleonic wars. The use of the term “un-German” by Frantz is no more sinister than the term “un-American” when used today by American liberals. That this expression of nationalism has a left-wing orientation to it, just as during the 1848 revolution, is attested to by the mood of the essay as a whole. Frantz denounces right-wing calls for German unity under the pointy tip of Prussian militarism outright and unambiguously, complete with bitingly sardonic references to the Prussian Pickelhaube helmet spike:
Not once has has anyone recognised that Germany has never been a state, and nor should it ever become one, because it was from the outset, and remains, an assemblage of very different bodies, each laying claim to an independent life. ... Should Germany now be transformed into a single state—one that could, of course, only be enforced by means of the Prussian sabre. What, however, could emerge from that? Nothing other than the oxymoron of an imperial Prussian German Empire, or—as the common phrase proclaims—a German unity with a Prussian point. ... Or should perhaps the Prussian point, which strikingly presents itself in the form of the Pickelhaube, only serve as a lightning rod?
Nicht einmal das hat man also erkannt, dass Deutschland überhaupt nie ein Staat gewesen, noch jemals ein solcher werden kann, weil es von vornherein ein aus sehr verschiedenen, ein selbständiges Leben beanspruchenden, Elementen zusammengesetzter Körper war und ist. ... Sollte nun Deutschland zu einem Staat umgestaltet werden, so war das freilich nur mittels des preussischen Säbels durchzusetzen. Was aber konnte daraus hervorgehen? Nichts anderes als das hölzerne Eisen eines königl. preussischen deutschen Kaisertums, oder — wie die landläufige Phrase lautete — eine deutsche Einheit mit preußischer Spitze. ... Oder sollte etwa die preussische Spitze, die sich augenfällig als Pickelhaube präsentiert, nur als Blitzableiter dienen?
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.168
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| Otto von Bismarck wearing a Pickelhaube helmet |
The fact that Frantz refers to is that no national entity known as Germany had previously ever existed. Nor did he feel such a state should ever come into existence. In place of patriotically driven militaristic right-wing nationalistic union, he posited that there should be a European parliamentary federalism under a uniting constitution in which the “German” states of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria and Austria, amongst other European states, could peacefully participate. Richard Wagner, in What is German? also suggests that “German” be understood in a much more general transnational sense of Germanic and Northern, encompassing England, Austria, Holland, German Swiss, Flemish, and Nordic countries, most of which are Protestant, and all of which speak Germanic languages. Frantz explains:
All of this is nonetheless seen amid the acclamation of so many of our academic scholars, which only proves that they had no idea what is actually German. And this even today really only a few seem to know. For just as German art remained so long under the spell of foreign models and rules, so even more so does our political thinking. It is finally time to raise this issue to consciousness if all the chatter about national development is not to end up facing up to actualities in the matter of satire. So in order to develop a truly German political science, we must look back to the example of the Holy Roman Empire instead of experimenting with theories about the state, which is only a way to understand that Germany should be recognised as a supra-stately and supra-national entity.Ist trotzdem dies Alles unter dem Beifall so vieler unserer akademischen Gelehrten gesehen, so haben dieselben damit nur bewiesen, dass sie nicht einmal wußten, was überhaupt deutsch ist. Und wirklich scheinen dies bis heute nur Wenige zu wissen. Denn wie die deutsche Kunst so lange unter dem Banne ausländischer Vorbilder und Regeln gestanden, so noch mehr unsere politisches Denken. Es ist endlich Zeit, darüber zum Bewusstsein zu kommen, wenn nicht alles Gerede von Nationalentwicklung den Tatsachen gegenüber zur Satire werden soll. Damit sich also eine wirklich deutsche politische Wissenschaft entwickle, müssen wir, statt uns in Staatstheorien zu versuchen, vielmehr auf das Vorbild des heiligen römischen Reiches zurückblicken, welches eben nur dadurch an verstehen ist, dass Deutschland als ein überstaatliches und übernationales Wesen erkannt wird.
Next comes Frantz’s famous explanation of his concept of metapolitics (Metapolitik):
Now, to summarise All in One: in order to be really German, politics must therefore transcend itself. It must rise to a metapolitics, which stands in a similar relation to the common school politics, as physics does to metaphysics. Our Germanhood is not lost on us here. On the contrary, the more we turn towards the general task of humanitarian development, the more freer it will develop, and the more noble it will make itself, wrestling its way upwards to the highest ideas of the human spirit.
That is what I call German politics.
Hiernach Alles in Einem zusammengefasst: um wirklich deutsch zu sein muss daher die Politik über sich selbst hinaus gehen. Sie muss sich zur Metapolitik erheben, als welche sich zur gemeinen Schulpolitik ähnlich verhält, wie zur Physik die Metaphysik. Unser Deutschtum geht uns dabei nicht verloren. Im Gegenteil, je mehr wir uns den allgemeinen Aufgaben menschheitlicher Entwicklung zuwenden, um so freier kann es sich entfalten, und um so edler wird es sich gestalten, sich emporringend zu den höchsten Ideen des menschlichen Geistes.
Das nenne ich deutsche Politik.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.169
It becomes abundantly clear from the Open Letter that Metapolitik is a concept being held up as the idealistic diametric opposite of Bismarckian Realpolitik. Whereas Realpolitik emphasises the brutal realism of immediate nationalistic self-interest, Metapolitik emphasises wider humanitarian ideals. With this comes the realisation of the utter absurdity of Peter Viereck’s totally unsubstantiated allegation that National Socialist political ideology constituted the fullest realisation of Wagner and Frantz’s ideal of a Metapolitik. To even suggest that National Socialism was a pacifist, anti-militarist, anti-expansionist, anti-pan-Germanic movement based on American liberal constitutional principles is comical to the extreme. The fact that such breathtaking absurdities are even remotely taken seriously utterly beggars belief. This catastrophic failure of scholarship originates from Viereck’s undergraduate error of catapulting into a cavalier rodomontade about an author Viereck has obviously never properly read. Sadly, this sort of nonsense is almost universally accepted as being the “Eternal Truth”, with most people regarding it as utterly beyond credibility that anyone should even dare question such dogmas whose correctness is “self evident”.
Frantz ends with deeply moving words that seem once more to be astonishingly prophetic of the apocalyptic catastrophes of the twentieth century that were to soon come:
... We live in fast paced times—it is the era of catastrophes, of disappointments and of surprises. Soon, perhaps, the future will teach us who was the sentinel, and who the dreamer.
... Unser Zeitalter lebt schnell, es ist das Zeitalter der Katastrophen, der Enttäuschungen und der Überraschungen. Bald vielleicht wird die Zukunft lehren, wer der Wache und wer der Träumer gewesen.
Constantin Frantz: Open Letter to Richard Wagner, p.170
Indeed, history did teach those a lesson who thought of themselves as being in the right for being brutal political realists who pursued their own immediate self-interests at the cost of any broader idealistic vision of humanity. It took a long time, but history has proven Frantz and Wagner to be the true “realists”—the thinkers so utterly ignored, misunderstood, and outcast for being the foolishly unrealistic dreamers of their age that ideas diametrically opposite to theirs came to be universally ascribed to them—when in fact they were thinkers far more realistic in facing the truthful need for an ideal of community and peace, deeply mindful of the delusion (Wahn) of Realpolitik, and the horrific nightmare it was soon to unleash upon the world. How prophetic were Wagner’s words that he gave to Hans Sachs: “Wahn! Wahn! Überall Wahn”.
Notes:
* Here is a summary of the concept of cummulative radicalisationtaken from historian Robert Gerwarth’s book Hitler's Hangman—the Life of Heydrich:
Nazi Germany was not a smoothly hierarchical dictatorship, but rather a ‘polycratic jungle’ of competing party and state agencies over which Hitler presided erratically. The ‘cumulative radicalization’ in certain policy areas emerged as a result of tensions and conflicts between powerful individuals and interest groups who sought to please their Fuhrer by anticipating his orders. Within this complex power structure, individuals contributed to Nazi policies of persecution and murder for a whole range of reasons, from ideological commitment and hyper-nationalism to careerism, greed, sadism, weakness or—more realistically—a combination of more than one of these elements.
For more background reading to the issues regarding functionalism vs. intentionalism underlying this I refer the reader unfamiliar to the area to the following introductory articles:
Wikipedia overview (included as it is a reasonable article, brief and lucid)
I particularly quote from the essay by Friedländer:
Beyond the sociological theory of polycracy and administrative chaos, functionalism confronts us, implicitly, with Hannah Arendt’s thesis of the “banality of evil”. Functionalists can claim, quite correctly, that their position implies a much broader spread of responsibility for the crimes committed than that recognised by the opposite position which considers Hitler as the prime mover and the only authority. On the other hand, the intentionalist position implies a key element: premeditation. Planning and premeditation at the top lead, of necessity, to planning and premeditation at various levels of the hierarchy and to no less awareness of the events within the various agencies involved than is implied by the functionalist position.
At the more concrete level of historical inquiry, functionalism has undoubtedly added greatly to our understanding of the chaotic nature of the Nazi system and the complex interactions surrounding various decisions. However, as has been pointed out, while correcting past interpretations which may have been too simple, it went to the opposite extreme by trying to stress autonomous processes to such a degree that the role of Hitler was almost eliminated.