& Age
0
— March 12 — June 25: Richard Wagner conducted 8 concerts in London. „At the best,“ Wagner wrote, „I have nothing to hope for here, and my presence as conductor of these concerts can only lead to fresh misunderstandings. [...] That the Jewish press here should cut me up is a matter of profound indifference to me“ (in an undated letter to August Roeckel.)
— Moldavia abolishes slavery.
0-1
— August 29: Death of his mother Elizabeth Jane Hall.
— End of the Crimean war.
2-3
3-4
— Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species.
4-5
— Alliance Israélite Universelle founded by Adolphe Crémieux.
6-7
8-9
— September 1: Neue Freie Presse founded. According to H. S. Chamberlain by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, „with the sole purpose to further Jewish interests.“ Some essays by Karl Marx were published in this newspaper. „The Freie Presse is a newspaper, that asks only two questions, whatever the subject — politics, commerce, science, art — may be: 1. does it harm or does it benefit Jewry? 2. does it pay or not?“ (In a letter to Leopold von Schröder, Dec. 26, 1907.)
— October 30: Denmark defeated. It lost the duchies Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg to Germany.
10-11
— June 14: Austro-Prussian War.
— August 23: Austria defeated. Treaty of Prague signed.
11-12
12-13
13-14
14-15
— July 13: Witnessed, in Bad Ems, count Benedetti handing over the French demands to the king of Prussia, which would lead to the outbreak of the war. See for Chamberlain's eyewitness account his essay Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1870.
— Autumn: Otto Kuntze became his private teacher.
— August: Switzerland, Luzern.
— July 19: Franco-Prussian war. The French excuse for this war was the candidacy of prince Leopold von Hohenzollern for the Spanish throne.
15-16
— May 10: End of the war. France was obliged to pay a war indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs. It took France two years to pay this sum.
To the right: 1870—1871. German invasion of France. Panic in the classroom. Click to enlarge.
16-17
— Summer: Monte Generoso.
— Autumn: Travelled from Engadin to Lugano.
— July 4: Bismarck forbade the Jesuit Order, in an attempt to diminish the influence of the Catholic Church on state affairs.
17-18
— Winter: Cannes.
18-19
— Autumn: Cannes. In boarding-house Bel Air he met Anna Horst, Prussian lady & his future wife.
19-20
20-21
— June 30: Serbia declared war on the Ottoman empire.
— August 13: 1st Bayreuther Festspiele.
21-22
22-23
— May 9: Marriage with Anna Horst in Geneva.
— Autumn: Attended for the first time a Wagner opera, Tannhäuser. Disappointment.
— November: Attended the Ring-performance in Munich. Became member of the Bayreuther Patronatsvereins. Met Hermann Levi.
— Winter: Relocated to Florence to study botany at the university. Learned to play the violoncello.
— June 2: 2nd assassination attempt on Wilhelm I, this time by anarchist Dr. Karl Eduard Nobiling. The emperor was severely injured, but survived.
— June 13: Congress of Berlin. Meeting between the European Great Powers and the Turks, discussing Balkan affairs.
— October 19: Bismarck instituted the Sozialistengesetz, anti-Socialist laws.
— December 18: Joseph Stalin was born.
23-24
— September: Enlisted at the faculty of natural sciences of the university of Geneva.
— Wrote an essay for the Bayreuther Blätter in German. Rejected by Hans von Wolzogen.
24-25
25-26
— March 13: Assassination of Czar Alexander II by anarchists. Pogroms against the Jews followed.
— April 19: Death of Benjamin Disraeli, writer, politician. He had written (in Tancred or The New Crusade) that „all is race; there is no other truth“, and „the decay of a race is an inevitable necessity, unless it lives in deserts and never mixes its blood“. Even the horse Tancred rides is „of high race“. H. S. Chamberlain mocked Disraeli and his racial misconceptions; as a biologist, he didn't believe in the theory of the purity of races.
— End of the First Boer War.
26-27
— September: relocated to Vert Pré.
— May 20: Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.
— October 13: Death of Comte de Gobineau.
27-28
— March 14: Death of Karl Marx, London.
28-29
— First meeting with the French writer Édouard Dujardin in Munich. Dujardin's appreciation of Wagner's opera's was influenced by Chamberlain.
29-30
— Relocated to Dresden (3 Reichenbachstraße) to rest.
— Read Plato and Immanuel Kant, visited musea, attended opera and vaudeville.
— Wrote Notes sur Lohengrin, for the Revue Wagnérienne, first essay published.
— February: Founding of the monthly journal La Revue Wagnérienne, by Édouard Dujardin and Théodore de Wyzewa. H. St. Chamberlain wrote several essays for this magazine.
30-31
— March: Meeting with wagnerites Édouard Dujardin, Teodor de Wyzewa, van Santen Kolff and Jules Laforgue in Berlin.
— July 23: Attended the première of Tristan und Isolde in Bayreuth.
To the right: Richard Wagner (at the piano) and King Ludwig II, in a nocturnal scene, castle Neuschwanstein. Painting by Kurt von Roszinsky. Click to enlarge.
— July 31: Death of Franz Liszt, Bayreuth.
31-32
— Rückversicherungsvertrag (rear cover pact), Bismarck's treaty with Russia promising neutrality in the case of attacks by others, in exchange for Germany's acknowledgement of Russia's claims in Balkan affairs.
32-33
— July 20: His first published essay written in German, Die Sprache in Tristan und Isolde und ihr Verhältnis zur Musik.
— Attended the première of the Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Bayreuth.
— Wilhelm II crowned emperor of Germany.
33-34
— Research into plant physiology.
34-35
— September 11—25: Vacation in Bosnia and Herzegovina with his wife Anna.
— November: Cosima Wagner visited Chamberlain in Vienna.
— H. S. Chamberlain's brother, the japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain, published his book Things Japanese.
— Rückversicherungsvertrag (rear cover pact) with Russia denounced by Bismarck's successor Caprivi, fearing that certain secret parts of the pact concerning Russia's interest in the strategic Dardanelles-region would annoy England and France in case of disclosure. As could be expected, the Czar was not amused.
35-36
— May, June, July: At rest. Vacation on horseback with his wife Anna in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a few months.
— Winter: Planned books to write. Lectures for the Wiener Wagnerverein.
— September 11: Jewish Colonization Association founded by multi-millionaire Maurice baron de Hirsch.
— September 16: Karl Dönitz was born.
— November 15: Erwin Rommel was born.
36-37
— February 9: Meeting with Massenet in the home of Oesterlein, founder of the Viennese Wagner-museum. According to Chamberlain, Massenet's opera Werther was „a vomitory“. See Chamberlain's letter to Cosima Wagner, Feb. 10, 1892.
— February: Wrote his first stage-play Der Tod der Antigone.
— Summer: First book published: Das Drama Richard Wagner's. It didn't sell.
— December 18: H. St. Chamberlain and Siegfried Wagner attended the première of Bruckner's 8th symphony, conducted by Hans Richter, in Vienna.
— Winter: Lectures for the Wiener Wagnerverein.
— May: Ijebu war. Nigerians massacred at the Yemoja River by British troops using machine guns.
— Treaty between France and Russia, the Franco-Russian Alliance, signed.
37-38
— November: On his way back to Vienna he visited the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé in Paris.
— December 26: Mao Zedong was born. Already in 1899 Chamberlain wrote that „in the communistic State of the Chinese bestial uniformity predominates“ (Foundations, Vol. II, p. 353).
38-39
— Published Richard Wagner's echte Briefe an Ferdinand Praeger.
— June: Asked and got Cosima Wagner's permission to write his Richard Wagner biography.
— September: Health-resort Herkulesbad.
— Gobineau Vereinigung (Gobineau Society) founded in Freiburg, with Professor Ludwig Schemann as president. Chamberlain became the most influential member of this society, though he rejected Gobineau's racial theories as „scientific phantasmagorias“.
— October 15: Dreyfus affair.
39-40
— Winter: Resumed his research into botanics. Wrote an unpublished survey of literature concerning the ascending of plant saps.
40-41
— February: Publisher Bruckmann charged him with a new work. Subject: the nineteenth century.
— March: Richard Wagner book sales reached 2000 copies. Remarkable, because the book was quite expensive (30 Mark).
— April 8: Première of Chamberlain's play „Der Weinbauer“ in Zurich.
— May 6: Finished the manuscript of Recherches sur la Sève ascendante.
— May 17: Delivered a Wagner-lecture for the Viennese Jugendbund.
— June: Wrote the preface to Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.
— Autumn: Vacation in Switzerland and Venice, where he worked on the corrections of his dissertation concerning the ascending of plant saps.
— October: Wrote the „Gardone-manuscript“, Die Lebenslehre, an outline of a posthumously published but unfinished work (Natur und Leben) while travelling by train to visit friends in Gardone.
— Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). Assimilation was no option for the Jews; a Jewish state was needed, according to Herzl.
41-42
— April 1: Started writing Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts.
— Published Heinrich von Stein und seine Weltanschauung.
— Jewish industrialist and politician Walther Rathenau published his Höre, Israel! (Hear, Israel!) in which he summoned the Jewish population in Germany to assimilate and to adopt German virtues.
42-43
— September 10: Elisabeth von Wittelsbach (Empress Sissi) assassinated by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni.
43-44
— Second Boer War. 28,000 Boers, most women and children, died in British concentration camps. H. S. Chamberlain referred to these events as a typical example of British evilness (Neue Kriegsaufsätze p. 54). Some 17,000 black civilians starved to death in special „black“ camps.
— August 15—18: Third Zionist congress held in Basle.
44-45
— Parsifal-Märchen published.
— Plans for books on Immanuel Kant and Goethe.
— April 27, 15:00: Imperious impulse to begin writing his Kant-book. Hurried home.
— Visited family in Engeland, four weeks.
— First meeting with the Austrian mystic and writer Rudolf Kassner, author of Das neunzehnte Jahrhundert (1947). Kassner later distanced himself from Chamberlain and his ideas.
— August 13—16: Fourth Zionist congress (held in London).
— August 25: Death of Friedrich W. Nietzsche.
45-46
— October 29: First meeting with theologian Adolf von Harnack.
— Worte Christi published.
46-47
— Met Hermann Graf Keyserling for the first time.
47-48
48-49
— August: Finished his Kant-book.
— April 8: Entente Cordiale treaty signed between the UK and France.
— July 3: Death of Theodor Herzl.
49-50
— December 7: Immanuel Kant Published. 6,000 copies were printed in 1st edition, it sold 1,000 copies in one year.
50-51
— A cheap edition (Volksausgabe) of the Grundlagen was published, 10,000 copies were sold within one week.
— Autumn: Began writing his Goethe-book.
— Germany built her first U-Boot.
51-52
— August 31: Anglo-Russian Convention signed. Together with the Entente Cordiale, signed between the UK and France (1904), and the Franco-Russian Alliance (1892) this completed the series of treaties directed against Germany. Later, during WW1, Chamberlain and with him lots of Germans wondered if not the war was prearranged.
52-53
— December 27: Married his second wife Eva, the daughter of Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima.
— Adolf Hitler relocated to Vienna to study arts, but was rejected by the academy.
53-54
— Grundlagen book sales reached 60,000 copies.
54-55
— May: Return of Halley's comet. End of the world predicted by woo-woos.
56-57
— Commenced writing Einführung in die Betrachtung der Natur für Nichtgelehrte, never finished due to the intervention of the „writing demon“ (Chamberlain's words). Started writing another, unnamed book instead (probably „Mensch und Gott“), but the outbreak of WW1 made it impossible to continue this work.
57-58
58-59
— Grundlagen book sales reached 87,000 copies.
— Shortly after the outbreak of the war suspected — unjustly — of spying for England, because of the telescope on the rooftop of his house.
— October 28: Finished first series of Kriegsaufsätze (war essays, propaganda for the German cause). 8,000 copies were sold within a few days.
— December: Kriegsaufsätze book sales reached 33,000 copies, another 20,000 were printed in a 4th edition.
— July 24: The Russian government warned Austria-Hungary for war with Serbia.
— July 28: Austria proclaimed war on Serbia. Russia and France mobilized their armies.
— July 31: Russian troops accumulated at the German frontier.
— August 1: Mobilization of the German army. Russian troops crossed the German frontier. Beginning of the first world war.
— October 9: Fall of Antwerp.
59-60
— February 12: Finished Neue Kriegsaufsätze.
— March: Kriegsaufsätze book sales reached 150,000 copies.
— April: Kriegsaufsätze book sales reached 175,000 copies. A special trenches-edition sold 50,000 pieces.
— April Grundlagen book sales reached 100,000 copies.
— April 24: Received the iron cross for his services to the German empire.
— Politische Ideale published.
— Die Zuversicht published.
— October: Nearly half a million copies of the Kriegsaufsätze sold.
— November 17: Meeting with Count Zeppelin in Frankfurt.
To the right: Enlist. Mother and child, passengers of the Lusitania, drowning. Poster by Fred Spear. Click to enlarge.
— April 22: First use of chlorine gas by the Germans on the Western front. This was an invention by the Jewish chemist Fritz Haber,a genius whose investigations also led to the production of Zyklon B. According to Haber, it were the French and not the Germans who made first use of poison-gas, albeit unsuccessfully, in rifle ammunition.
60-61
— August 9: Naturalized and became a German citizen.
— September: Visited health resort Bad Gastein.
— Deutsches Wesen published.
— Hammer oder Amboß published.
— July 1: Somme offensive. In November, when the offensive ended, the Entente forces had gained 12 km. 1,1200,000 soldiers lost their lives.
To the right: L'enfer, the inferno of Verdun, detail. Painting by Georges Leroux. Click to enlarge.
61-62
— Demokratie und Freiheit published.
— Chamberlain joined the Deutsche Vaterlandspartei, founded by Wolfgang Kapp and admiral Tirpitz.
— September 2: Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (DVP) founded.
— November 2: Balfour Declaration, the British government promised to yield Palestine territory to the Zionists.
— October: Russian revolution.
— Oswald Spengler wrote the first part of Der Untergang des Abendlandes.
62-63
— Rasse und Nation published.
— August: Orderly A. Hitler received the Iron Cross for shown courage.
— November 7: Coup of Jewish socialist Kurt Eisner in Bavaria. He founded a revolutionary parliament, and constituted soldiers' and workers' councils.
— November 9: Proclamation of the German Republic.
— November 11: End of the first World War.
— November: Riots of communists in all major cities of Germany.
— Emperor Wilhelm II fled to Holland.
— Alfred Rosenberg introduced the anti-Semitic Protocols of the learned elders of Zion to Germany.
63-64
— January 15: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, Jewish communists and instigators of the Spartacus plot, arrested and executed.
— February 21: Bavarian revolutionary president Kurt Eisner murdered by German patriot Lieutenant Anton Graf Arco auf Valley, because of his willingness to provide the British authorities with „evidence“ proving Germany to be solely responsible for the outbreak of WW1. Arco, being half-Jewish, was denied membership of the Thule-gesellschafft, and hoped to prove his loyalty to Germany with this assassination. He was sentenced to death but released from prison after 5 years.
— March 21: Communist revolution in Hungary led by the Transsylvanian Jew Béla Kun. He is held responsible for the extermination of Tatars and other ethnic minorities.
— April 7: Communist takeover in Munich.
— April 30: Communists tortured and murdered 10 hostages in the cellar of the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich. Among them Prince von Thurn und Taxis and Thule-gesellschaft secretary Countess Heila von Westarp.
— May 12: Winston Churchill proposed to use poison gas to pacify „uncivilised“ Arab and Kurdish tribes.
— June 28: Versailles treaty signed.
64-65
— February 17: The Netherlands refused to extradite Emperor Wilhelm II.
— February 24: First mass-meeting of the NSDAP in the Hofbräuhaus, Munich. Hitler joined.
— March 13: Kapp-putsch in Berlin.
— March 15: Communist revolt in Ruhr-area.
— June 3: 1 dollar = 50 mark.
65-66
— Herrn Hinkebein's Schädel published.
— March 8: French, Belgian and English troops occupied German territory.
— April 1-6: 3rd. Solvay Conference. German scientists were not invited nor welcome, despite chairman H. A. Lorentz' efforts.
— August 26: German minister Matthias Erzberger, first signer of the armistice, murdered by right wing extremists.
— September 9: 1 dollar = 110 mark.
66-67
— June 24: German (and Jewish) minister of foreign affairs Walther Rathenau assassinated. He had end-responsibility for carrying out the hated Versailles-resolutions.
— July 12: France expelled 500 German civilians from Elsaß-Lothringen and confiscated their possessions.
— August 15: 1 dollar = 1,040 mark.
— December 31: 1 dollar = 7,500 mark.
To the right: portrait of Rathenau by Edvard Munch, 1907. Note the ominous shadow on the wall. Rathenau said about this painting: “Isn't that a nasty looking fellow? That's what one gets when one let oneself be portrayed by a great artist: one becomes more real than one really is...“
67-68
— October 7: H. St. Chamberlain's letter to Hitler.
— January 31: 1 dollar = 50,000 mark.
— March 31: French troops shot 13 German workers on strike in front of the Krupp-factory in Essen.
— June 1: 1 dollar = 75,000 mark.
— August 8: 1 dollar = 5,500,000 mark.
— September 17: 1 dollar = 150,000,000 mark.
— October 16: Famine revolt in Berlin.
— October 19: 1 dollar = 12,000,000,000 mark.
— October 22: 1 dollar = 40,000,000,000 mark.
— November 9: Unsuccessful coup of Adolf Hitler in Munich (beer hall putsch). NSDAP forbidden.
— November 15: 1 dollar = 4,200,000,000,000 mark.
— December: Death of Dietrich Eckart, one of the founders of the Nazi party, and member of the occult Thule-Gesellschaft.
68-69
— Hitler dictated Mein Kampf in prison in Landsberg am Lech to Rudolf Hess. He was released at the end of the year.
69-70
— April 16: Terrorist attack on St. Nedelya Church, Sofia, by Bulgarian communists. 150 People were killed.
— April 26: Hindenburg elected Reichspresident.
— Der Proceß, from the Jewish author Franz Kafka, published. Story about a man who has to stand trial, but no one explains what he is charged for. Might be meant as a metaphor for the position of the Jews at that time.
— September 5: Article in the Völkischer Beobachter in honour of Chamberlain's Grundlagen.
70-71
— September 8: Germany joined the league of nations.
— December 27: Zyklon-B patented as insecticide by Dr. Walter Heerdt.
71
— February: Hitler appeared on the cover of the Illustrierter Beobachter.
— October 13: New York stock exchange crash.
— September 14: For the first time the national-socialists won more seats for the Reichstag elections than the communists (107 against 77).
— NSDAP number of members reached 400.000.
— April 13: SA and SS officially forbidden.
— December 31: 5,773,000 unemployed in Germany.
— March 5: Adolf Hitler won the elections for the Reichstag with 44% of the votes.
— June 27: Beginning of the Autobahn-project.
— October 14: Germany left the league of nations.
— August 2: Death of Hindenburg.
— October 3: Italian-Abessinian war.
— August 1: Opening of the olympic games in Berlin by Adolf Hitler.
— September 25: Mussolini visited Hitler.
— December 20: Death of Ludendorff.
— September 19: France and England agreed on a plan involving the annexation of Czecho - Slovakian Sudeten-regions to Germany.
— September 22: The English prime minister Neville Chamberlain met Hitler in Godesberg.
— October 1: German troops invaded Czecho-Slovakia.
— November 9: Kristallnacht, night of pogroms all over Germany against the Jews.
— December 17: Otto Hahn split the uranium-atom.
— April 1: End of the Spanish civil war. General Franco came to power.
— August 22: England warned Germany for war.
— September 1: Germany invaded Poland, to reconquer former German territory, lost after WW1. England declared war on Germany. Outbreak of WW2.