Prussian Socialism & Other Essays Page 2

  In 1927 Korherr had visited Spengler and wrote stating that Spengler had given him the means by which to oppose depopulation: returning to the ethos that marriage means children, and that woman is “regarded in the first instance as a mother.” Indeed, such a remedy is clear enough to anyone reading a chapter significantly entitled “The Soul of the City” in The Decline of The West:

  “The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman… Instead of children she has soul-conflicts, marriage is a craft-art for ‘mutual understanding’”.38

  Like Spengler, Korherr sought analogies in other Civilisations and found that Confucius gave China the ethos that “the man who dies without descendants receives no social recognition among the living.” Western Civilisation therefore needed a “western Confucius.” Korherr regarded Spengler as that individual, and anyone lesser as only causing harm.39

  In 1928, the year of his employment with the Bureau of Statistics, Korherr’s work drew the attention of the Italians and he met the Italian General Consul in Munich. Mussolini wished to personally translate Korherr’s Birth Decline adding his important May 1927 “Ascension Day” speech Numero come forza (“Strength in numbers”) as a preface along with a preface by Spengler, indicating the importance Spengler attached to Korherr’s work.40 The Italian edition is Regresso delle nascite.

  The influence of Korherr and Spengler on Mussolini’s ideas regarding population were expressed in the May 1927 speech: Mussolini regarded Italy’s declining birth-rate as a symptom of moral decadence, markedly so in the most industrialised cities (Turin, Milan, Genoa), again a Spenglerian theme on the role the city. The National Organisation for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy (ONMI) would be funded by a new “bachelor tax” which would also give Italy a “demographic jolt.”41

  Despite certain misgivings about Mussolini’s demagoguery, Spengler saw in him the precursor of the renascent Caesars who arise in the Late epoch of a Civilisation to overthrow the dictature of Money and pursue a course of grand politics. Mussolini at least was the nearest to such a figure that Spengler would ever see. Spengler had written: “The coming of Caesarism breaks the dictature of money and its political weapon democracy.”42 He hoped that Italian Fascism was the glimmer of something yet to come:

  “All attempts to gather up the content of the future into parties will soon be forgotten. The Fascist formations of this decade will pass into new, unforeseeable forms, and even present-day nationalism will disappear. There remains as a formative power only the warlike, ‘Prussian’ spirit – everywhere and not in Germany alone. Destiny, once compacted into meaningful forms and great traditions, will now proceed to make history in terms of formless individual powers. Caesar’s legions are returning to consciousness”.43

  During the mid to late 1920s demands for Spengler as a lecturer remained high, including an invitation to attend the International Philosophical Congress at Cambridge, Massachusetts in September 1926, which he was unable to attend due to financial reasons and pressures of writing.44

  On 17 July 1927 Spengler suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, which caused continuous ill-health until his death nine years later45 He did however continue to lecture and to travel about Europe.

  That year he addressed the “Patriotic Society,” a youth orientated organisation, at the suggestion of businessman Roderick Schlubach, who urged that personalities such as Spengler “come forward and let your warning voice be heard, not in a negative but in a positive sense… we must not be reproached later for having watched the decline of the West without doing anything.”46

  Despite the lasting effects of his stroke Spengler managed to write two major works in the 1930s. Man and Technics, published in 1931, foresaw the usurpation of Western technology - a creation of the Faustian soul - by the “coloured world,” which would be used in its revolt against The West.47 In 1932 a collection, Political Essays, was published. This brought further appreciation from noteworthy quarters. Albert Schweitzer, was “engrossed” by Spengler’s expositions.48 Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria thought it a “capital idea to have had the essays bound together.”49

  Hour of Decision

  1932 opened new opportunities for the destruction of the Weimer Republic. The future was being fought out between Communists, Conservatives, and Nazis.50 Spengler had always seen the Nationalist Right as lacking, hence his urging the formation of a new National party as early as 1923. His opinion of the Italian Fascists and particularly of Mussolini was altogether more positive, seeing them achieving results. His ideas on race in The Decline and elsewhere are antithetical to that of Nazi zoological conceptions,51 but found a closer affinity in Italian Fascism.

  While 1932 was the year in which Spengler was most vehement in his criticism of the Nazis, he nonetheless voted for Hitler in the presidential elections and even hung the swastika flag outside his home. Hitler was still a “fool’,” but it was evident by now that the NSDAP was the only party that could realistically achieve German resurgence. Spengler believed that something better might be made of it, stating that “we must not abandon the movement.” He had written in 1927 that he had done what he could to thwart the Nazis, referring to his lecture, The Political Duties of German Youth,52 given on the opening day of the court proceedings against Hitler in regard to the Munich Putsch, writing that “I am of the opinion that politics should be based on sober facts and considerations, and not on romanticism of the feelings.”53

  In 1933 Spengler was invited by Dr Hans Freyer (a noted Conservative philosopher with a following especially among youth) on behalf of the Saxon Ministry for Public Education, to a professorship at the University of Leipzig’s Chair of Culture and Universal History. Freyer urged him to accept the position as a means of influencing the education of youth.54 Such a position would have deprived Spengler of his independence, with the added burden of “a great number of administrative duties.”55 What Spengler did propose to Prof. Hartnacke was a conference on “school and education questions,” which Hartnacke welcomed “most heartily.”56

  During this first year of Nazi rule, when conservatives were still in positions of influence, the Conservative-Right was attempting to direct the course of events. Spengler was at the centre of such moves, and had written to Roderick Schlubach in April that he urgently desired to “discuss the new situation,” as “great possibilities” were representing themselves, but the Nazis were not the men to “grasp and deal with them.”57 However, many of these Nationalist-conservatives, including Hartnacke, were out of power once the Nazis had consolidated their rule, and Hartnacke, for example, ended up as a High School teacher from 1935.

  Spengler’s final major work, The Hour of Decision, was not published until 1933, after the Nazis had assumed government. In the “Introduction” he states that “no one can have looked forward to the national revolution of this year with greater longing than myself.”58

  “I shall neither scold nor flatter. I refrain from forming any estimate of those things which are only just coming into being. True valuation of any event is only possible when it has become the remote past, and the definitive good or bad results have long been facts: which is to say, when some decades have passed”.59

  Nonetheless, Spengler was not one to back down, and he stated in The Hour of Decision that the National Socialists “believe that they can afford to ignore the world or oppose it, and build their castles-in-the-air without creating a possibly silent, but very palpable reaction from abroad.”60

  The Hour of Decision was a great success, and Nazi press attacks only served to increase sales. It was after 150,000 copies were in print that the Nazis forbade mention of Spengler’s name and attempts were made to suppress the book. While the measures took effect, the thousands of copies already in circulation exchanged hands, keeping the circulation surreptitiously high.61

  The Hour of Decision was intended to influence the course of
events, and a copy was sent to Hitler in August, Spengler suggesting a meeting with him to discuss the work.62 While others saw The Hour of Decision for what it was, and were not at all optimistic about the Hitler regime, some Nazi efforts were still made to win Spengler over. Goebbels tried to persuade Spengler to write for the National Socialist press,63 but Spengler declined any such overtures.64

  For the next three years Spengler was left alone by the regime, but could not publish an intended second volume of The Hour of Decision, and could only prepare notes in the hope that one day he could again be published. In late 1935 he resigned from his long association with the Nietzsche Archive, protesting that Elizabeth Föster-Nietzsche had made the Archive an instrument of the regime.65

  Spengler’s final essay was an answer to a question on world peace put to well-known individuals such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi, by the Hearst magazine, International-Cosmopolitan, published in January 1936. Spengler began by stating that the question can only be answered by someone who knows history and the enduring characteristics of humanity. “There is a vast difference, which most people will never comprehend, between viewing future history as it will be and viewing it as one might like it to be… Peace is a desire, war a fact; and history had never paid heed to human desires and ideals.” 66

  Spengler explained history in Nietzschean terms as a will-to-power among all healthy life forms, which might take economic, social, political and military shape between individuals, classes, people and nations. Violence is always the ultimate recourse. “Talk of world peace today is heard only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous colored races. This is a perilous state of affairs.” When individuals talk of peace, their pleas are meaningless, but when entire peoples become pacifistic “it is a symptom of senility.”

  “Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. To adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a static, terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence. Should, the white peoples ever succumb to pacifism they will inevitably fall to the colored world, just as Rome succumbed to the Teutons”.67

  In the early morning of 8 May 1936 Spengler died of a heart attack at his Munich apartment. His sisters buried him quietly, with the request that there be no expressions of sympathy.68 Spengler was buried holding copies of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Goethe’s Faust.69 His grave is marked with a block of polished black granite, chosen by Paul Reusch, inscribed in white with “Spengler”: the monument austere, solid, enduring…

  * * *

  1 Keith Stimely, “Oswald Spengler: An Introduction to his Life and Ideas,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 17, no. 2, March/April 1998, p. 2.

  2 Stephen M Borthwick, “Oswald Spengler: A Biography’,” Institute for Oswald Spengler Studies, http://sites.google.com/site/spenglerinstitute/Biography

  3 Herbert Brune, “Oswald Spengler,” http://www.hubert-brune.de/spengler.html

  4 Keith Stimely, op. cit.

  5 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of The West, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1971, Vol. I, xiv.

  6 Keith Stimely, op. cit.

  7 Henry Stuart Hughes, Oswald Spengler: A Critical Estimate, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1992, p. 4.

  8 Ibid., p. 5.

  9 Hubert Brune, op. cit.

  10 Keith Stimely, op. cit.

  11 Ibid.

  12 Ibid.

  13 C F Atkinson, The Decline of The West, op. cit., Vol. I, x.

  14 Hans Erich Stier to Spengler, 16 May 1926, Spengler Letters, George Allen and Unwin, London, pp. 199-200.

  15 Spengler, ‘Pessimism?’ Preussische Jahrbücher, CLXXXIV, 1921.

  16 Herbert Brune, op. cit.

  17 Spengler, Prussianism and Socialism, “Introduction”.

  18 Spengler, The Decline of The West, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 506.

  19 Gregor Strasser to Spengler, 2 June 1925, Spengler Letters, op. cit., p. 181; Gregor Strasser to Spengler, 8 July 1925, p. 183.

  20 Herbert Brune, op. cit.

  21 Crown Prince William to Spengler, June 1922, Spengler Letters, op. cit., p. 110.

  22 Klara von Leipzig to Spengler, 15 July 1925, ibid., p. 191.

  23 H Stuart Hughes, op. cit., p. 117.

  24 Spengler to Gerhard von Janson, Spengler Letters, op. cit., pp. 134-135.

  25 Spengler to Reinhold Quartz, 30 October 1923, ibid., pp. 139-140.

  26 Spengler to Nicholaus Crossman, ibid., pp. 144-145.

  27 The trial of Hitler following the abortive Nazi putsch in Munich.

  28 Engelbrecht von Kerkerink zu Borg to Spengler, ibid., p. 150. General Ludendorff, the world war luminary, gave early support to Hitler and was involved in the Munich putsch, where his bravery in leading the Nazi column while police opened fire, became legendary. Ludendorff was a “Wotanist” heathen.

  29 Mussolini to Spengler, 24 April 1925, Spengler Letters, op. cit., p. 180.

  30 Spengler to Paul Reusch, 9 June 1923, ibid., pp. 123-124.

  31 Ibid., 6 June 1929, p. 245.

  32 Spengler, The Decline of The West, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 103-104.

  33 Ibid.

  34 See also Bolton, The Decline and Fall of Civilisations, Black House Publishing, London, 2017.

  35 R Korherr, The Richard Korherr Report, http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/korherr.html

  36 Korherr to Spengler, 21 October 1926, Spengler Letters, op, cit., p. 203.

  37 Spengler to Korherr, 28 October 1926, ibid.

  38 Spengler, The Decline of The West, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 105.

  39 Korherr to Spengler, 30 May 1927, Spengler Letters, op. cit., pp. 219-220.

  40 Korherr to Spengler, 2 March 1928, ibid., p. 233. Spengler’s preface is included below.

  41 Carl Ipsen, Dictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 66.

  42 Spengler, The Decline of the West, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 506.

  43 Spengler, The Hour of Decision, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1962, p. 230.

  44 Oscar von Müller to Spengler, 13 March 1931, Spengler Letters, op. cit., p. 254.

  45 R Schlubach to Spengler, 6 December 1929, ibid., pp. 248-249.

  46 Spengler to Schlubach, ibid., p. 250.

  47 Spengler, Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life, European Books Society, London, 1992.

  48 Albert Schweitzer to Spengler, 28 November 1932, Spengler Letters, op. cit., p. 273.

  49 Rupprecht to Spengler, 29 November 1932, ibid., p. 274.

  50 Hughes, op, cit., p. 123.

  51 Spengler, The Decline of The West, op. cit., Vol. II, Chapter V, “Cities and Peoples: (B) People, Races, Tongues.”

  52 Included below.

  53 Spengler to Prof. Andre Fauconnet, 15 March 1927, Spengler Letters, op. cit., p. 217.

  54 Hans Freyer to Spengler, 15 June 1933, ibid., p. 281.

  55 Spengler to Wilhelm Hartnacke, 24 June 1933, ibid., p. 281

  56 Hartnacke to Spengler, 1 July 1933, ibid., 282

  57 Spengler to Schlubach, 18 April 1933, ibid., p. 280.

  58 Spengler, The Hour of Decision, op. cit., ix.

  59 Ibid., x.

  60 Ibid., p. 7.

  61 H Stuart Hughes, op. cit., p. 131.

  62 Spengler to Hitler, 18 August 1933, Spengler Letters, op. cit., p. 284.

  63 Goebbels to Spengler, 20 October 1933, ibid., p 289.

  64 Spengler to Goebbels, 3 November 1933, ibid., p. 290.

  65 Elizabeth Föster-Nietzsche to Spengler, 15 October 1935, ibid., pp. 304-305.

  66 The article is included below.

  67 Spengler, “Is World Peace possible?,” Cosmopolitan, January 1936.

  68 H Stuart Hughes, op, cit., p. 136.

  69 Stephen M Borthwick, op. cit.

  Political Writings

  (1933)

  The collection of seven of Spengler’s essays, published as a volume in 1933. The following fore
word to that volume by Spengler outlines his primary political concerns. Four of those essays are included in this volume: Prussianism and Socialism, The Two Faces of Russia and Germany’s Eastern Problems, Political Duties of German Youth, Building of the New German Reich, the latter two probably rendered in English for the first time.

  - § -

  Foreword

  The seven works presented here1 contain what I had to say to Germany, especially their political and economic leaders, by their position and state of the world, their tasks and future. These were the years when, after the low point of disgrace, misfortune and dishonourable behaviour, national contemplation began and developed into a movement that has finally become very powerful, not only internally but also abroad.

  The two writings Prussianism and Socialism, and Building of the New German Reich, and the Würzburg Lecture, “Political Duties of German Youth”, immediately penetrated into the wider public. The four other lectures were made known through excerpts in the press, three of them also by reprints spread in the circles for which they were intended. They have all been widely read, they have been verbally attacked and, as far as I can see, have had little practical effect.

  Nevertheless, or for that very reason, they are in no way obsolete today. They sketch the great problems which are threateningly piled up before this age, and of which today not one is recognised, let alone fully understood or even solved, as no one else has done, wanted, dared: the fact of the progress of imperialism, the fact of the class struggle, the rise of Caesarism, the catastrophic economic catastrophe. I have not misunderstood, or erred in any significant points. The reader is now free to decide. I offered no general, nebulous theory, not a wishful ideology that could be swooned over by the dilettantes, no “optimistic” programme that elegantly ignored the problems and pushed them aside. Rather I offered a picture of the facts and nothing more.