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Childhood
Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born on September 9th, 1855, in
Southsea,
England. His mother, Eliza
Jane Hall, died before he was a year old and
he was raised by
his grandmother in France. Chamberlain's father, Rear-Admiral William
Charles
Chamberlain, had planned a military career for his son, and at
11 years
old he was sent to a boarding school for future army and navy officers.
But the young Chamberlain was more interested in studying music,
literature
and astronomy, and the prospect of serving as an officer in India or
elsewhere
in the British Empire held no attractions for him.
(To the right:
The comet
Donati's appearance in 1858 made a big impression on the 3-year-old
Chamberlain,
and he attributed to it his lasting interest in natural phenomena. Click
here for pictures of the comet and for Chamberlain's memories of
its
appearance.)
Health
resorts
By the age of
14
Chamberlain was in poor health. Doctors wrongly suspected that he had a
disease of the respiratory organs, and he left England to visit one
health
resort after another — Bad Ems, Montreux and Cannes. He was accompanied
by his aunt and a Prussian private teacher, Otto Kuntze, who taught his
studious pupil German and interested him in German history, literature
and philosophy. In 1874 Chamberlain's father arrived in Switzerland to
persuade him to finish his studies in England, but Chamberlain refused.
By now, his bad experiences in England had coupled with his French
upbringing
to alienate him from his fatherland. It was in Cannes that he met his
first wife, Anna Horst,
whom he married in 1878.
Study
Chamberlain
moved
to Florence to study botany at the university. As things turned out,
though,
Florence offered so many artistic impressions that Chamberlain spent
seven
months there in a kind of cultural intoxication. He was caught in a
comparable
situation later on when he encountered the works of Shakespeare and the
music of Richard Wagner
(13).
In 1879 Chamberlain enrolled in the faculty of natural sciences at the
University of Geneva, where he obtained his bachelor's degree. He then
moved to Dresden and began work on a dissertation about the rise of
plant
saps. But his illness flared up again, and this time the doctors
diagnosed
neurasthenia — a popular disease at the time. Chamberlain had to rest,
and while recuperating he began studying history, philosophy,
literature
and music, as well as writing his first essay in German.
The writing
demon
Chamberlain
moved
to Vienna in 1889 to continue his research into plant physiology. But
on
the morning of January 19th, 1892, he was captivated by something he
called
the „writing demon“. It was a demon that couldn't be ignored, according
to Chamberlain, and it controlled him so much that, after writing a
piece,
he often didn't recognise it as his own work. Some occultists have
assumed
that Chamberlain was clairvoyant and possessed by demons. But he
himself
was adamant that this entity was a kind of alter ego like Socrates' daimon (1).
Henceforward Chamberlain was determined to become a writer.
The
Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century
Chamberlain's
most
important work is 
Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of
the Nineteenth Century), 1899. The book's central idea is that
Western
civilization's moral, cultural, scientific and technological
superiority
comes largely from the positive influence of the Germanic race (Slavs
and Celts included) on the progress of
history down the ages:
„Certain anthropologists would
fain teach us that all races are equally gifted; we point to history
and answer: that is a lie! The races of mankind are markedly different
in the nature and also in the extent of their gifts, and the Germanic
races belong to the most highly gifted group, the group usually termed
Aryan. Is this human family united and uniform by bonds of blood? Do
these stems really all spring from the same root? I do not know and I
do not much care...“ (30).
Opponents of the Germanic race would be the Roman Catholic Church („the
shield-
and armour-bearer of all Anti-Germanic movements“ (31)), Jewry, the Jesuit Order and
other obscure forces, who fought and still fight a racial war, „the war
still waged among us between those elements that advance and those that
retard culture“ (12). Although
the book was received with reservation (to say the least) by the Church
and in Jewish circles, it became a best-seller in Germany, was
translated into English
and
French, and had an important influence on its contemporaries. In his
review of The Foundations George Bernard Shaw wrote:
- „It is a masterpiece of
really scientific
history. It does not make confusion, it clears it away. He is a great
generalizer
of thought, as distinguished from the crowd of our mere specialists. It
is certain to stir up thought. Whoever has not read it will be rather
out
of it in political and sociological discussions for some time to come.“
(2)
And President Theodore
Roosevelt,
although not an admirer of Chamberlain's work, wrote:
- „... a man who can write
such a really beautiful
and solemn appreciation of true Christianity, of true acceptance of
Christ's
teachings and personality, as Mr. Chamberlain has done, [...]
represents
an influence to be reckoned with and seriously to be taken into
account.“ (3)
Count Gobineau
A predecessor of Chamberlain was Joseph Arthur, Comte de
Gobineau (1816–1882), who argued for the superiority of Nordic
Aryans
in
his Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines
(1853–55) (14)
but also forecast their decline owing to mingling with other races:
„Nous ne descendons pas du singe, mais nous y allons“ (We
do not descend from the
ape,
but are headed in that direction). But
Chamberlain used his biological training to refute the latter (4),
although he agreed with Charles
Darwin about uncontrolled racial mixing: „Free
crossing obliterates characters“ (5).
Count Gobineau, incidentally, was a friend of Richard Wagner.
The non-Jewish
Jesus
A recurring
theme
in Chamberlain's work is that Jesus
was not a Jew (17).
He has no hard proof, he admits, but he does offer some plausible
circumstantial
evidence. To wit:
- King Solomon sold Galilee
to
the king of
Tyrus (1 Kings 9:11) because the
region
was scarcely inhabited by Jews.
- Jesus was born, not in
Jewish
Judaea, but
in foreign Galilee, and Gelil haggoyim means „district of
heathens“.
- Jesus himself denounces
Jews: Matthew
8:12: „...but the children of the kingdom [i.e., the Jews] shall be
cast
out into outer darkness...“; John 8:47: „He that is of God
heareth
God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
Then
answered the Jews, and said unto Him, Say we not well that thou art a
Samaritan...“; Matthew
23:33: „Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers...“
According to
Chamberlain,
Christianity developed into a murderous totalitarian system because of
two factors — the Catholic Church's emergence from racial chaos after
the
fall of the Roman empire; and the laws of the Old Testament, which can
be attributed to Jewish influence. Only after centuries of Roman
Catholic
terror did the Germanic forces, embodied by Francis of Assisi, Martin
Luther
and others, turn Christianity into the religion that Jesus had
envisioned.
In Chamberlain's day, Emperor
Wilhelm II was convinced by these
theories
and even argued that the Old Testament should be removed from the Bible
(with the exception of a few psalms) to sever any
remaining
links between Christianity and Judaism (18).
Brahmanism
Another
recurring
theme in Chamberlain's work is the similarity between Germanic thinking
and Indian brahmanism, the ancient Indo-Aryan philosophy. He often
cites
the Upanishads, the Vedas and other sacred Hindu texts
to
illustrate this idea, and he wrote a whole book, Arische
Weltanschauung (
Aryan World View) on the subject. In this book he expressed the
opinion that knowledge of the Indo-Aryan philosophy would serve as a
counter-balance against a Semitic world-view, and that the Indian sages would show the Westerner the
goal of his civilization (25).
Richard
Wagner
Chamberlain
became
fascinated by the composer Richard
Wagner. He attended the
première
and the following five performances of Wagner's Parsifal in
Bayreuth
during July 1882. Wagner died the following year before the two men had
ever met, but his genius had a lasting influence on Chamberlain. In
1896
he published his second Wagner-book (Richard Wagner), a popular
and important work, still regarded as a classic. He became honorary
member
of the Viennese Akademische Wagnerverein. During his life he
wrote
an estimated 50 essays about Wagner and his music. One of these, Künstlerische
Dankbarkeit, which compared Wagner and Franz Liszt, was read by
Liszt's
daughter, Cosima Wagner,
and in 1888 she invited Chamberlain to a
meeting.
Thus began a lasting friendship, and the two carried on an
extensive
correspondence until 1908. In that year Chamberlain married his
second
wife, Eva, the daughter
of Richard and Cosima Wagner.
Emperor
Wilhelm II
Germany's
Emperor Wilhelm II
invited
Chamberlain to his palace at Potsdam. Wilhelm was
delighted
by the Englishman who had praised the Germanic race to the skies, and
in
a letter to Chamberlain he wrote: „It was God who sent the German
people
your book and you personally to me“ (6).
Chamberlain became Wilhelm II's friend and counsellor. In one of his
letters
Chamberlain advised the Emperor:
- „Deutschland [...] kann dahin
gelangen, die
gesamte Erdkugel (teils unmittelbar politisch, teils mittelbar, durch
Sprache,
Kultur, Methoden) zu beherrschen, wenn es nur gelingt, beizeiten den
'neuen
Kurs' einzuschlagen, und das heißt, die Nation zum
endgültigen
Bruch mit den angloamerikanischen Regierungsidealen zu bringen. Die
Freiheit,
die Deutschland braucht, ist die [...] unbeschränkte Freiheit des
Denkens, der Religion, der Wissenschaft — nicht die Freiheit, sich
selber
schlecht zu regieren.“
- („Germany
[...] can
achieve complete control of the world (partly by direct political
means,
partly by language, culture, methods), only if it succeeds in taking a
new direction in time, which means the final rupture with
Anglo-American
ideals of government. The freedom that Germany needs is the [...]
unlimited
freedom of thought, of religion, of science — not the freedom to rule
itself
badly.“) (19).
The First World
War
 After England
allied
with the Entente forces in World War I (1914–1918), a
disappointed
Chamberlain accused his fatherland of treason to the Germanic race.
During
the war he wrote a series of Kriegsaufsätze as German
propaganda;
highly successful war-essays, which have sold hundreds of thousands of
copies. The earnings went to the Red Cross. More than once he mentions
in his essays the coming of a future leader, „the man with the lion's
heart“ (26). In his essay Der
Wille zum Sieg,
1916, he wrote: „Die Deutschen stehen bereit; ihnen fehlt nur der vom
heiligen Geist
eingesetzte Führer“ — The Germans are ready for it; all that is
missing is a God-sent
Führer (27). Furthermore he
lays in his essays the foundation for what came to be known as the
„Dolchstoßlegende“, the dagger-blow legend, that would play an
important role in post-war Germany: the idea that some infamous
(„Niederträchtige“) elements within Germany would like to see
Germany losing the war, and strive after the destruction of the empire (28). In contradistinction to what certain
historians claim, this point of view isn't entirely unjustified: it was
felt within anti-imperial circles that if Germany would win, Kaiser
Wilhelm's position would be stronger than ever, and „life would become
impossible“: „Wenn Deutschland den Krieg gewinnt, dann bleibt das
wilhelminische System und dann ist das Leben unmöglich“. A
prominent representative of this movement was Albert Einstein (29).
To the right: The Russian army, defeated by von
Hindenburg, surrenders. Tannenberg 1914. Click here for more WW1 photo's.
In 1915 H. S. Chamberlain received the Iron Cross for services to the
German
empire.
Having shown his loyalty to Germany, Chamberlain became a German
citizen
in 1916. But Germany lost the war and had to sign the Treaty of
Versailles
— a treaty intended to ruin Germany economically and ensure that it
could
never fight a major war again, although the treaty also had a financial
aspect:
„The occupation of German
territory by the
Allied troops should be accompanied by the destruction of all the large
industries within the sphere of occupation. It is held that if it were
known and felt here and in France that such a scheme of organised
destruction
was to be carried out on German territory, capital would be at once
stimulated
in steady streams in aid of the home industries, which would profit
enormously
by the course taken“ (7)
This ill-fated
plan was
indeed carried out. The ensuing hyperinflation and chaos in Germany
made
an excellent playground for extremist political groups. And by the time
the Allies alleviated their measures it was already too late: Adolf
Hitler
won the elections for the Reichstag on March 5th, 1933.
The Third
Reich
Many argue that
Chamberlain's
work influenced Adolf Hitler, although the precise links are unclear.
The
two men did meet in Bayreuth on September 30th, 1923, on a so-called
„German
day“. Chamberlain, who was by now elderly, ill and embittered, regarded
Hitler as Germany's future saviour, and after this meeting he wrote to
Hitler: „In no way do you resemble the descriptions depicting you as a
fanatic. I even believe that you are the absolute opposite of a
fanatic.
[...] The fanatic wants to persuade people, you want to convince them,
and to convince only.“ (8)
This letter meant a success for
Hitler,
because the famous writer's approval would certainly attract new
members
to his nascent political movement (22).
After staging an unsuccessful coup that began in a beer-hall, Hitler
was
imprisoned in Landsberg, where he wrote his political manifesto, Mein
Kampf. Unfortunately, Hitler's letters from Landsberg to
Chamberlain
are now lost, and no one knows what Hitler told his fellow-author about
writing the book. Mein Kampf refers just once to Chamberlain:
- „...die offiziellen Stellen
der Regierung
gingen an den Erkenntnissen eines H. S. Chamberlain genau so
gleichgültig
vorüber, wie es heute noch geschieht. Diese Leute sind zu dumm,
selbst
etwas zu denken...“
- („Those
who had the
government of the country in their hands were quite as indifferent to
principles
of civil wisdom laid down by thinkers like H. S. Chamberlain as our
political
leaders now are. These people are too stupid to think for
themselves...“) (16)
The title of Mein Kampf
echoes Der
Kampf, the third section of Chamberlain's Foundations,
which
discusses the physical and intellectual battle of Germanics against
Roman
Catholic imperialism and Jewish theocracy, although this supposed echo
might be coincidental. At any rate, Hitler condemned nationalist German
scholars who would write and write but never act:
- „Nobody of common sense
would appoint to
a leading post [...] some Teutonic Methuselah who had been
ineffectively
preaching some idea for a period of forty years, until himself and his
idea had entered the stage of senile decay. [...] It is typical of such
persons that they rant about ancient Teutonic heroes [...] whereas in
reality
they themselves are the woefullest poltroons imaginable.“ (20)
It is possible that Hitler didn't
have Chamberlain
in mind here, and that he had a genuine respect for a fellow-Wagnerite.
But Hitler did disagree with Chamberlain's opinions about Germanic
Christianity. „The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and
serene,“
Hitler
said in one of his Table Talks, „was that it knew nothing of the two
great
scourges: the pox and Christianity.“ Hitler added, in another
conversation,
that, „in my opinion, H. S. Chamberlain was mistaken in regarding
Christianity
as a reality upon the spiritual level.“
Chamberlain was convinced of
a Jewish
threat to the Germanic world, and that Jewry poses „a danger to
every culture“. (9)
But he opposed a violent solution to the „Jewish question“ — „we may
not
even injure a single hair on their heads...“, he insisted (21)
— and he didn't believe in Jewish world-conspiracies:
- „...doch
glaube ich,
dass wir geneigt sind, unsere eigenen Kräfte [...] sehr zu
unterschätzen
und den jüdischen Einfluss sehr zu überschätzen. Hand in
Hand damit geht die geradezu lächerliche und empörende
Neigung,
den Juden zum allgemeinen Sündenbock für alle Laster unserer
Zeit zu machen...“
- („...yet
I think that
we are inclined to under-estimate our own powers [...] and to
exaggerate
the importance of the Jewish influence. Hand in hand with this goes the
perfectly ridiculous and revolting tendency to make the Jews the
general
scapegoat for all the vices of our time...“) (11)
According to Chamberlain's
biographer, prof.
Geoffrey G. Field, „Hitler,
Hess, Goebbels, Eckart, Himmler, von
Schirach,
and above all Rosenberg
(10)
had read Chamberlain and professed to have been influenced by him. Hans
Kerrl, the Minister for Church Affairs, and Hans Schemm, the Bayreuth
schoolmaster
who became Bavarian Kultusminister, were also firm admirers,
while
Nazi intellectuals such as Hans
F. K. Günther, Alfred
Bäumler,
Walter Frank, Ernst Krieck, and the Nobel physicist Philipp Lenard
showered
him with filial respect.“ (24)
Other admirers were Lord
Redesdale, Winston
Churchill, D. H. Lawrence, the American senator Albert J. Beveridge,
Nobel prize
winner Albert Schweitzer,
and the Dutch mystic philosopher P. H.
Hugenholtz. (15)
In May 1926 Hitler visited the
old writer
for the last time. A passage in Goebbels' diary describes the meeting:
- „Erschütterende Szene:
Chamberlain
auf einem Ruhebett. Gebrochen, lallend, die Tränen stehen ihm in
den
Augen. Er hält meine Hand und will mich nicht lassen. Wie Feuer
brennen
seine großen Augen. Vater unseres Geistes, sei
gegrüßt.
Bahnbrecher, Wegbereiter! Ich bin im Tiefsten aufgewühlt.
Abschied.
Er lallt, will sprechen, es geht nicht — und dann weint er wie ein
Kind!
Langer, langer Händedruck! Leb wohl! Du bist bei uns, wenn wir
verzweifeln
wollen. Draußen klatscht Regen! Ich hab das Bedürfnis zu
schreien,
zu weinen.“
- („Shattering
scene:
Chamberlain on a couch. Broken, mumbling, tears are in his eyes. He
holds
my hand and won't let me go. His big eyes burn like fire. Greetings to
you, spiritual father. Trailblazer, pioneer! I am deeply upset.
Leave-taking.
He mumbles, wants to speak, can't — and then weeps like a child! Long,
long handshake! Farewell! You stand by us when we are near despair.
Outside
the rain patters! I want to cry out, to weep.“) (23)
Houston Stewart Chamberlain died
of his
nervous disease a few months later, on January 9th, 1927, in Bayreuth.
He was 71 years old. The last book he had written was Mensch und Gott
(Man and
God), a plea for a new Christianity without dogmas and
sacraments. Upon his gravestone were engraved the words of
Luke
17:21: „Das Reich Gottes ist inwendig in euch“. The Kingdom of God is
within
you. |
A predecessor of Chamberlain was Joseph Arthur, Comte de
Gobineau (1816–1882), who argued for the superiority of Nordic
Aryans
in
his Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines
(1853–55) (14)
but also forecast their decline owing to mingling with other races:
„Nous ne descendons pas du singe, mais nous y allons“ (We
do not descend from the
ape,
but are headed in that direction). But
Chamberlain used his biological training to refute the latter (4),
although he agreed with Charles
Darwin about uncontrolled racial mixing: „Free
crossing obliterates characters“ (5).
Count Gobineau, incidentally, was a friend of Richard Wagner.