Herr Chamberlain's encyclopaedic learning, his brilliant powers of intellect and reasoning, and his truly stimulating originality and insight, qualify him more highly than [Henry Thomas] Buckle was qualified in the past. He has written a book of really surpassing interest, and of a fascination far exceeding that of fiction.

Siegend bezwingt Chamberlain mit seiner Lebendigkeit der Anschauung läppischer Altvätertorheit, die noch für Weisheit gilt, und als wahrhaftes Erbauungsbuch erquickt uns gar manche Seite seines Werkes.

(Triumphing, Chamberlain defeats with his vividness the views of trifling patriarchal foolishness, still regarded as wisdom, and many a page of this veritable book of edification works refreshing.)

Ich muß bekennen, daß mich der starke, frische Hauch des freien Geistes, der mir aus jeder Zeile entgegenweht, bei der Lektüre der Grundlagen in eine Stimmung frohen Genießens versetzte, wie sie nur ein Kunstwerk zu erzeugen vermag.

(I must confess that the strong, fresh breath of a free spirit, which comes to meet me from each line, put me in a happy enjoying mood while reading the Grundlagen, like only a work of art could.)

...sein Buch [ist] ungemein lehrreich, für den Katholiken aber zugleich sehr wenig erfreulich; denn Chamberlain [...] gelangt zu dem Resultate, das er wohl hundertmal klipp und klar ausspricht, die katholische Kirche und das katholische Christentum sei der eigentliche Feind des germanischen Wissens, der germanischen Zivilisation und der germanischen Kultur [...] Das ist eine harte Anklage, die mich tief ergriffen hat. [...] Ich muss auch gestehen, dass die harte Anklage vernichtend wäre, wenn man sie als wissenschaftlich berechtigt anerkennen müsste. Glücklicherweise ist sie es aber keineswegs. Um das nachzuweisen, müsste ein ganzes Buch demjenigen Chamberlain‘s entgegengestellt werden, und ich wünsche lebhaft, dass dieses Buch geschrieben werde.

(...his book is uncommonly instructive, for Catholics however at the same time very unpleasant; because Chamberlain [… ] arrives at the result, which he expresses probably a hundred times, loud and clear, that the Catholic church and Catholic Christianity is the actual enemy of Germanic knowledge, Germanic civilization and Germanic culture [...] That is a strong accusation, which seized me deeply. [...] I must also confess that this strong accusation would be devastating, if it had to be considered as scientifically correct. Fortunately this is not the case. In order to prove that, a whole book would have to be set against Chamberlain's, and I wish fierily that this book will be written.)

Noch mehr als er es thut, hätte Chamberlain auf die Wirkung des semitischen Blutes, die sich bei den Spaniern offenbart, hinweisen können. Durch den semitischen Zusatz sind die Spanier fanatisch geworden, haben sie jeden Begriff ins äusserste Extrem ausgebildet, so dass er seinen vernünftigen Sinn verliert: die religiöse Hingebung bis zum „Kadavergehorsam“ gegen die Befehle des Oberen, die Höflichkeit bis zur peinlichen, ceremoniellen Etiquette, die Ehre zur wahnwitzigsten Empfindlichkeit, den Stolz zu lächerlicher Grandezza, so dass   s p a n i s c h   bei uns im Volksgebrauch fast gleichbedeutend mit   u n v e r n ü n f t i g   geworden ist.

(Chamberlain might have gone further than he does into the influence of Semitic blood in Spain. By the addition of Semitic blood the Spaniards have become fanatical, they have carried every idea to its extreme, so that it loses all its reason and sense: religious devotion even to “cadaver-obedience“ towards their superiors, politeness which is painful, ceremonious etiquette, honour which has become the most insane sensitiveness, pride which is ridiculous grandezza, so that Spanish in popular speech among us has become almost equivalent to absurd.)

....einer unserer glänzendsten modernen Schriftsteller...

(....one of our most brilliant modern writers...)

Nor will Zionism solve that [the Jewish] question; as H. S. Chamberlain has pointed out, since the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem, Judaism has ceased to be national, and has become a spreading parasite, straggling all over the earth and finding true root nowhere. Before Zionism is possible, the Jew must first conquer Judaism.

Weininger, a Viennese Jew, converted to protestantism, committed suicide at the age of 23 in van Beethoven's home, 1903. Of course this attributed to the success of his mysogynistic, anti-Semitic book, that appeared in the same year. Chamberlain called Weininger "a genius" (Immanuel Kant, 1905, p. 483). In one of his Tischgespräche (Table Talks) Hitler said that „Dietrich Eckart once told me that in all his life he had known just one good Jew: Otto Weininger, who killed himself on the day he realized that the Jew lives upon the decay of other people“.

It ranks with Buckle's History of Civilization, and still more with Gobineau's Inégalité des Races Humaines, for its brilliancy and suggestiveness and also for its startling inaccuracies and lack of judgment. A witty English critic once remarked of Mitford that he had all the qualifications of an historian — violent partiality and extreme wrath. Mr. Chamberlain certainly possesses these qualifications in excess...

It is a rich book, in which one may delve to good purpose ... it is a remarkable book. It is a monument of erudition, and the skilful handling of erudition.

This is unquestionably one of the rare books that really matter. His judgments of men and things are deeply and indisputably sincere and are based on immense reading.

The book and its author are remarkable in every way ... Mr. Chamberlain can write as well as think ... Ideas are the breath of his life. Lord Redesdale, in a singularly interesting, illuminating, and sympathetic introduction ... fills fifty printed pages, and they certainly are not too many.

Nothing ... will compare with this German product of the pen of English Mr. Chamberlain for range of erudition, brilliancy of style, and originality of thought-awakening thought.

It is a most remarkable production and will be read by everyone who tries to keep up with and enlarge his mind by what I may, with some degree of accuracy, call the philosophy of history. Too much cannot be said of the splendid preface of Lord Redesdale. It never flags, and his English is so luminous that all the time it conveys even the shades of his true meaning.

The book furnishes food for most serious thought, stimulates to more intimate acquaintance with the freely cited authorities for his conclusions. The reader will find rich stores of information, valuable and stimulating discussions of great men, great movements, sciences, music, the arts and history viewed from a refreshingly independent point of view, but always buttressed by testimony from the most authoritative sources. The work is one to be assimilated slowly even by the enthralled admirer.

This is a notable work by a remarkable man ... His great effort to give a history of civilisation ... is one of the finest achievements of our age, and we may well be proud that it proceeds from a man of our race.

The greatest Protestant Manifesto ever written, as far as I know, is Houston Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth Century: everybody capable of it should read it.

Si la vérité réside dans les nuances, M. Chamberlain manque ordinairement de vérité. Sa synthèse, originale et simpliste, peut satisfaire des esprits absolus. La somme, relativement considérable, de vérités générales et particulières qui s'y trouvent, est compromise par la rigueur du système où il les a emprisonnées; et ce système qui, à le bien prendre, est un système religieux, présente sous un jour passablement incomplet et faux l'histoire de la religion.

(If the truth is layn in the nuances, Mr. Chamberlain just misses truth. His synthesis, original and simplistic, may be satisfying for absolute spirits. The sum, relatively considerable, of general and particular truths which are there, is compromised by the rigour of the system wherein it is imprisoned; and this system which is, after all, a religious system, presents in a false light a rather incomplete and forged history of religion.)

...Les événements tragiques dont nous sommes les spectateurs désolés doivent être attribués pour une bonne part à l'influence malfaisante de ce livre et d'autres similaires ... A tous ceux donc qui se donneront comme tâche de retrouver les aberrations mentales qui ont conduit à cette horrible guerre, ce livre offrira des documents intéressants.

(...the tragic events of which we are the sad witnesses must be attributed, to a great extent, to the malicious influence of this book and other, similar ones ... For all of those who want to explore the mental aberrations which led to this horrible war, this book will offer interesting material.)

It is false in it's theories; ludicrously inaccurate in it's assertions; pompous and extravagant in its style; insolent to its critics and opponents. It is so dominated by a spirit of stormy rhetoric that it contradicts itself with passion at every turn. It asserts as dogmas fancies of whose futility the author would have been aware even had he consulted his Jew-baiting baby. He frequently uses the terms „lie“ and „liar“ of others, while claiming that he himself is incapable of lying. He can never quote an opponent without covering him with abuse: his critics are „shallow, venal, ignorant babblers, slavish souls sprung from the chaos of peoples.“ [See Foundations, Vol I, p. 256, 542] He is a twentieth century exaggeration of the pompous and vapid bully who used to lord it in the „Quarterly“ of the early nineteenth; he is a street-corner preacher now assuming the toga of Roman oratory, and now the robes of Christian ceremony; but he is a violent and vulgar charlatan all the time. We say, and say it deliberately, that he is the only author we have read to whose work Sidney Smith's phrase, „the crapulous eructations of a drunken cobbler,“ could appropriately be applied.

...la verdadera biblia del germanismo...

...he is consistently so self-contradictory that one can attribute anything to him and fortify allegation with an appropriate quotation.

My nature — so I felt — wanted something other than that which science offered; only I did not know what it wanted, for the men of spirit in whose circle I had moved till then had been exclusively scholars, just as the spiritual traditions of my family had been those of scholarship. It was then that I read Houston Stewart Chamberlain's "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century". The impression produced on me was tremendous. It suddenly became clear to me that if I could meet the man who had written the book, I should soon find what my purpose in life was; for toward him alone, among all I had read, I felt a sense of relationship. It was really in order to become acquainted with Chamberlain that I went to complete my studies in Vienna. A happy chance, in the shape of a friend of my father's — the Indologist and student of comparative religion, Leopold von Schroeder — enabled me to meet, on the very day of my arrival, the object of my distant admiration. The effect of the living impression was even profounder than I had hoped. I looked up with enthusiastic veneration to this man, a quarter of a century older than I; and he requited my veneration with a friendship filled with wise and understanding guidance. The effect of Chamberlain's continuous influence was extraordinarily fruitful. In his nature, closely related to mine in many respects, I believed that I saw myself, such as I really was, in a mirror. I found there that centre of polarization which I needed in order so to readjust my nature that it could, on the one hand, begin to unfold, and on the other, emerge from its state of chaos in order to become a cosmos. In any case, I rightly recognized in him the artist nature which was in me, and in this wise discovered a relationship toward my own especial structure which till then I had no more understood than those around me.

In 1920 Keyserling founded the Schule der Weisheit, the School of Wisdom, for the support of a world-wide cultural renewal. Much to the annoyance of the Nazi's, who limited his freedom after they came to power.

On this work, from the standpoint of racial science we may pass a judgment somewhat like that of Eugen Fischer: „Undeterred by the weak foundations of many details, and recklessly changing even well-established conceptions to serve his purpose, he raises a bold structure of thought, which thus naturally offers a thousand points for attack, so that the real core of the matter escapes attack — and it would stand against it.“

...No such doctrine will ever find wide acceptance here in Italy...

Den Jesus können Sie nicht zum Arier machen, das ist Unsinn. Was der Chamberlain da in seinen Grundlagen geschrieben hat, ist gelinde gesagt dumm.

(You cannot make an Aryan out of Jesus, that is nonsense. What Chamberlain wrote in his Foundations is just stupid, to put it nicely.)

Mein erstes kleines Buch erschien auf meine Kosten: es blieb völlig unbekannt; in einem Jahre wurden summa summarum fünf Exemplare verkauft — und diese hatte   i c h   gekauft! —

(My first little book I financed myself: it remained unnoticed; in one year summa summarum 5 copies were sold — and those were bought by me!)

The small treatise of our marvellous countryman, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain, ... is thoughtful and suggestive, and quite worthy of close attention...

Chamberlains Wagnerwerk ist eine Tat, die ihm zu dauerndem Ruhme und dem deutschen Volke zu dauernder Freude gereichen wird.

(Chamberlains Wagner-work is an accomplishment, which will bring him lasting fame, and lasting joy to the German people.)

L'ouvrage est et restera classique.
(This work is and will remain a classic.)

Ich weiß niemanden, der jetzt so deutsch schreibt.

...Dies Buch wird mehr als unzählige andere dazu verhelfen, großen Kreisen die Augen zu öffnen für die wahrhaft göttliche Hoheit der Worte Christi.

Ob nun Altes Testament oder Neues, ob bloß Jesuworte wie der Houston Stewart Chamberlain will: alles das ist doch nur derselbe jüdische Schwindel. Es ist alles eins und macht uns nicht frei. Eine deutsche Kirche, ein deutsches Christentum ist Krampf. Man ist entweder Christ oder Deutscher.

(Whether the Old or the New Testament, whether only the words of Christ, as Houston Stewart Chamberlain wanted it: all that is nevertheless just the same Jewish swindle. It is all one and the same and does not make us free. A German church, a German Christianity is a nuisance. One is either a Christian or a German.)

H. S. Chamberlain has most successfully pointed out the importance of Hindu thought for us in his small work, Arische Weltanschauung (1917). We find in the Hindus, and especially in them as a feature characteristic of all peoples with a Nordic element, a harmony of belief, thought, and invention...

Chamberlain ist bei allen Themen, denen sich sein reicher Geist immer zuwenden mag, in erster Linie und durchaus Künstler, Gestalter. [...] Dass dieses Verfahren die wissenschaftliche Wahrheit zugunsten einer höheren künstlerischen benachteiligen muss, liegt auf der Hand; und trotz seines enormen Wissens, seiner grossen Gewissenhaftigkeit wird es Chamberlain daher den zünftigen Gelehrten niemals recht machen können — schon darum nicht, weil bei ihm die systematische (organisierende) Befähigung die analytische weitaus überwiegt. Doch macht ihn gerade dieser Umstand zu einem kulturellen Lebenspender, wie wir deren heute keinen grösseren besitzen. Als Kunstwerk muss daher auch der Kant verstanden werden.

(Chamberlain is, whatever theme his abundant spirit may turn to, primarily and entirely an artist, a creator. [...] It's obvious that his way of working has to disadvantage the scientific truth in favour of a higher artistic one; and therefore, despite his enormous knowledge and his conscientiousness, Chamberlain will never please the professional scholars — not in the last place because his systematic (organizing) capacities outweigh his analytic ones by far. But it's exactly this circumstance that makes him a bearer of cultural life, like there is no other in our time.)

Noch einmal: wer Kant kennen und verstehen will, muss ihn studieren; wer ihn lieben und begreifen will, bevor er ihn noch zu verstehen vermag, beginne das Studium Kant‘s mit dem Werke Chamberlain‘s!

Es hat für mich seit langem kein Buch gegeben, das mich so restlos glücklich gemacht hätte, wie dieses. Eine so reine und klare Luft weht darin, Höhenluft von ganz hoch oben her, und was Chamberlain von Kant sagt, gilt auch von ihm: er ist ein Jungbrunnen und er vermittelt uns das Gefühl der Freiheit und Würde unseres Selbst.

Though we wholly believe that Mr. Chamberlain has the root of the matter in him, there is no doubt that his impassioned style sometimes leads him into exaggerations. We cannot always follow his frequent denunciations of Monism, the less as he appears himself to be a kind of Monist. Occasionally he falls into flat absurdity, as, for instance, when he permits himself to talk of the “soul-less yellow race, the race of Laotse, of Komio, of Ashikaga art!

Sie sind wirklich von einem antijüdischen Dämon besessen, der Ihnen den Blick trübt und Ihr herrliches Buch mit einem Flecken entstellt. [...] Ich glaube nicht, daß die Vorsehung ein Schandvolk heraufgeführt hat; ich glaube überhaupt nur in sehr bedingter Weise innerhalb der einzelnen Zweige der Arier und der Semiten an scharfe Rassen-Charakterlinien. [...] Der schlimme Jude ist heute eine furchtbare Kalamität für uns; aber um so grösser muss unsre Weisheit und Liebe gegen sie sein. Ihre Worte aber sind nur verletzend; dazu können sich die Juden sagen: da wir nun durch unsre Rasse notwendig so sind, wie wir sein müssen, wollen wir auch mit Bewusstsein so bleiben.

(You really are possessed by an anti-Jewish daemon, which clouds your view and defaces your wonderful book with a stain. [… ] I do not believe that Providence has created a people of turpitudes; over all, I believe only very conditionally in sharply drawn racial character-lines within the individual branches of Aryans and Semites. [...] The evil Jew is today a terrible danger to us; but the more our wisdom and love for him must be. Your words however are nothing but hurting; as a reaction the Jews can say to themselves: since we necessarily are what we should be according to our race, we consciously want to stay that way).

While waiting for these transshipments we retired to the country for the summer. We found shelter and board with the lessee of an estate. Once again I was able to read and paint in peace. In 1912, I had received as a gift Chamberlain's Goethe. To me it seemed the best thing Chamberlain had ever written. I read the entire book to Hilda [Hilda Leesmann, Rosenberg's future wife - they married in 1915] who listened patiently to much that cannot be grasped immediately.

Alfred Rosenberg wrote his memoirs while awaiting execution at Nuremberg. In this passage, it is 1912 and Rosenberg was waiting for his Technical College to relocate from St. Petersburg to Moscow, where Rosenberg was residing at the time. It was here that he discovered the wonder of Chamberlain's Goethe.

...Es ist äußerst erquickend, die politische Ideale Chamberlains kennen zu lernen. Soll eine neue deutsche Zukunft entstehen, dann muß sich das deutsche Volk diese politischen Ideale zu eigen machen.“

(… It is very refreshing to get acquainted with Chamberlain's political ideals. If we want a new German future, the German people must make these political ideals its own.)

In unvergleichlicher Anmut hat er es verstanden, uns in diese Welt einzuführen. Wenn wir die Lebenswege entlang wandeln, dürfen wir das Wachsen, Blühen und Früchtetragen dieser Welt miterleben wie in einem von Sonnenschein durchfluteten Garten...

I agree with you on Houston Stewart Chamberlain's estimate of Wagner. I have been reading his Lebenswege Meines Denkens. I cannot go with him when he rates Wagner equal to Beethoven as a musician, and to Shakespeare as a dramatist. But Chamberlain is a man of such formidable intellect that I am not sure by any means that it is not I who am wrong and do not understand the comparison.

For three weeks now the Emperor has read to us the latest book from Chamberlain, Gott und Mensch [sic]. The book has made a deep impression on him, and he finds many things in it that are entirely new to him. He wholly agrees with the writer, and can't find a contradiction anywhere. This will be an important hold-fast for the faith of der Kaiser. „Chamberlain is a new prophet, a second Luther“, he once said.

Man muß das letzte, bereits halb aus der Ewigkeit stammende Werk H. St. Chamberlain "Mensch und Gott" lesen, um klar zu begreifen, was vorgeht: es ist das suchen nach einem unmittelbaren Weg zur Persönlichkeit Christi. Herder forderte einst, daß die Religion an Jesum zu einer Religion   J e s u   werde. Gerade dies erstrebte Chamberlain. Ein ganz freier Mann, der über die Gesamtkultur unserer Zeit innerlich verfügt, hat das feinste Gefühl für die große übermenschliche Einfalt Christi gezeigt und Jesus als den dargestellt, als der er einst erschienen war: als Mittler zwischen Mensch und Gott.

(One has to read the latest work of H. St. Chamberlain, already descending from eternity by half, to understand what is going on. This book, Man and God, grasps clearly what is taking place. It is a search for a direct way to express the personality of Christ. Herder once demanded that the religion dedicated to Jesus should become a religion of   J e s u s.   This was what Chamberlain strove for. A completely free man who disposed inwardly over the entire culture of our times, he has shown the deepest sensitivity for the superhuman simplicity of Christ. He represented Jesus as what he had once appeared to be: a mediator between Man and God.)

Es ging von der Persönlichkeit Chamberlain's ein Zauber aus, dem sich niemand entziehen konnte, weil er in der völlig ungewollten Ausstrahlung der Welt bestand, in der Chamberlain lebte. Man konnte sich dem Eindruck nicht entziehen, daß die Welt, die ihn umgab, nicht bloß reicher und schöner, sondern vor allem viel harmonischer war als die Alltäglichkeiten unseres Daseins.

...Aber wie Chamberlain selbst ein großes Sammelbecken ist, in dem nicht nur das Wissen eines unvergleichlich bewegten Jahrhunderts, sondern auch alles zusammenströmt, was von geistigen Problemen hier wirksam war, so gehen auch von ihm neue Ströme aus, deren Stärke und Lauf wir noch nicht ermessen können...

...Auch er war einer der "edelsten, fähigsten, freiesten Geister", die imstande sind, "die menschen auf eine höhere Ebene emporzuheben, ihnen Herz und Hirn zu steigern, ihre Urteilskraft zu schärfen und namentlich zu befreien".