Arthur Moeller van den Bruck
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Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (April 23, 1876 – May 30, 1925) was a German cultural historian and writer, best known for his controversial book Das Dritte Reich (1923). From 1906 to 1922, he also published Elisabeth Kaerrick's first full German translation of Dostoyevsky's works.
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Biography
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (also Moeller-Bruck) was born in Solingen in 1876, the son of Ottomar Moeller, a government building official, and Elisabeth van den Bruck, the daughter of a building official.
He was expelled from a gymnasium (a type of German secondary school) for his indifference towards his studies. The young Moeller van den Bruck believed German literature and philosophy, particularly the works of Nietzsche to be a more vital education.<ref>G Krebs, Moeller van den Bruck: Inventor of the Third Reich, The American Political Science Review, Vol. 35, No. 6</ref> Afterwards, he continued his studies on his own in Berlin, Paris, and Italy.
1897 he married Hedda Maase (later Eulenberg). She divorced him in 1904.
Moeller van den Brucks eight-volume cultural history Die Deutschen, unsere Menschengeschichte ("The Germans, our people's history") appeared in 1905. In 1907 he returned to Germany and in 1914 enlisted in the army at the start of World War I. Soon thereafter, he joined the press office of the Foreign Ministry and was attached to the foreign affairs section of the German Supreme Army Command.
His essay "Der Preußische Stil" ("The Prussian Style"), in which he celebrated the essence of Prussia as "the will to the state", appeared in 1916, marking his embrace of nationalism. It showed him as an opponent of parliamentary democracy and liberalism, and exerted a strong influence on the Jungkonservativen ("young conservative movement").
After a nervous breakdown, he committed suicide in Berlin on May 30, 1925.
Moeller van den Bruck was the joint founder of the "June Club" (Juniklub), which sought to influence young conservatives in the fight against the Treaty of Versailles. Later, it was renamed "Deutscher Herrenklub" (German Gentlemen's Club): it became very powerful, helping Franz von Papen to become Reichskanzler in 1932.
Influence on Nazism
In his 1918 book Das Recht der jungen Völker ("The Right Of Young Nations"), Moeller van den Bruck presents a version of the Sonderweg theory, in which he developed the theme of Russia as representing Communist civilization and the United States representing capitalist civiliation, both of which are rejected. Germany is held up as the model between the two extremes. In the same book, Moeller van den Bruck advocated an expressly anti-Western and anti-imperialist philosophy of the state (Staatstheorie), which was Moeller van den Bruck attempt to bridge the gap between nationalism and concepts of social justice.
He had a major influence on the Jungkonservativen (Young Conservatives) in their opposition to the Weimar Republic. He may have also supplied the Nazis with some of the concepts underpinning their movement, though upon meeting Hitler in 1922, Bruck rejected him for his "proletarian primitiveness". The Nazis still made use of his ideas where they could, including appropriating the title of his 1923 book Das Dritte Reich (meaning "The Third Reich") as a political slogan.
Works
- Die moderne Literatur in Gruppen und Einzeldarstellungen (1900)
- Das Variété: Eine Kulturdramaturgie (1900)
- Die Deutschen: Unsere Menschheitsgeschichte (1904)
- Zeitgenossen (1905)
- Die italienische Schönheit (1913)
- Der preußische Stil (1915)
- Das Recht der jungen Völker (1918)
- Das Dritte Reich (1923)
Sources
- Sebastian Maaß, Kämpfer um ein drittes Reich. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck und sein Kreis. Regin-Verlag, Kiel, 2010.
- Stan Lauryssens, The Man Who Invented the Third Reich: The Life and Times of Arthur Moeller Van Den Bruck. Sutton Publishing, NY, 2003. ISBN 0-7509-3054-3.
- Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: a study in the Rise of Germanic Ideology, UCP, Berkeley, 1974. ISBN 0-520-02626-8.
- Gerhard Krebs, Moeller van den Bruck: Inventor of the Third Reich. The American Political Science Review, Volume 35, No. 6 (December 1941).
