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| Author | Houston Stewart Chamberlain |
|---|---|
| Translator | from the German: by John Lees, MA, with an introduction by Lord Redesdale |
| Subjects | Nineteenth century History--Philosophy Civilization--History |
| Published | 1911 |
| Publisher | London, New York, John Lane |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 2 v. illus., maps. 22 cm. |
| OCLC | 1219756 |
| 901 | |
| LC Class | CB83 .C45 1911 |
| [1] | |
The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1899) is aracialist book by the British-German philosopherHouston Stewart Chamberlain. In the book, Chamberlain advances various racialist and especiallyvölkischantisemitic theories on how he saw theAryan race as superior to others, and theTeutonic peoples as a positive force in European civilization and the Jews as a negative one. The book was his best-selling work.
Published in German, the book advocates a form ofNordicism and focuses on the controversialpseudoscientific notion thatWestern civilization is deeply marked by the influence of theTeutonic peoples. Chamberlain grouped all European peoples—not just Germans, butCelts,Slavs,Greeks, andLatins—into the "Aryan race", a race built on the ancientProto-Indo-European culture. At the helm of the Aryan race, and, indeed, all races, he saw theNordic or Teutonic peoples.
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 ... Physically and mentally the Aryans are pre-eminent among all peoples; for that reason they are by right ... the lords of the world. Do we not see thehomo syriacus develop just as well and as happily in the position of slave as of master? Do the Chinese not show us another example of the same nature?[2]
Chamberlain's book focused on the claim that the Teutonic peoples were theheirs to the empires ofGreece andRome, something whichCharlemagne and some of his successors also believed. He argued that when Germanic tribesdestroyed the Roman Empire, Jews and other non-Europeans already dominated it. The Germanic tribes, in this scenario, savedWestern civilization fromSemitic domination. Chamberlain's thoughts were influenced bywritings ofArthur de Gobineau (1816–1882), who had argued the superiority of the "Aryan race".This term was increasingly being used to describeCaucasian or European peoples, as opposed to Jews, who wereconceptualised as "infusing Near Eastern poison into the European body politic".[citation needed] For Chamberlain the concept of an Aryan race was not simply defined byethno-linguistic origins. It was also an abstract ideal of a racial élite. The Aryan, or "noble" race, was always changing as superior peoples supplanted inferior ones in evolutionarystruggles for survival.
Building somewhat on the theories of de Gobineau andGeorges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), Chamberlain developed a relatively complex theory relating racial origins, physical features and cultural traits. According to Chamberlain, the modern Jew (Homo judaeica) mixes some of the features of theHittite (H. syriaca) – notably the "Jewish nose", retreating chin, great cunning and fondness forusury[3] – and of the trueSemite, the Bedouin Arab (H. arabicus), in particular thedolichocephalic (long and narrow) skull, the thick-set body, and a tendency to be anti-intellectual and destructive.[4] According to this theory, the product of thismiscegenation was compromised by the great differences between these two stocks:
All historically great races and nations have been produced by mixing; but wherever the difference of type is too great to be bridged over, then we have mongrels. That is the case here. The crossing between Bedouin and Syrian was — from an anatomical point of view — probably worse than that between Spaniard and South American Indian.[5]
Chamberlain also considered theBerbers from North Africa as belonging to the Aryan race.
The noble Moor of Spain is anything but a pure Arab of the desert, he is half a Berber (from the Aryan race) and his veins are so full of Gothic blood that even at the present day noble inhabitants of Morocco can trace their descent back to Teutonic ancestors.[6]
Chamberlain (who had graduate training in biology) rejectedDarwinism,evolution andsocial Darwinism, and instead emphasized "gestalt", which (he said) derived fromGoethe. Chamberlain regarded Darwinism as the most abominable and misguided doctrine of the day.[7]
Chamberlain used an old biblical notion of the ethnic makeup ofGalilee to argue that whileJesus may have been Jewish by religion, he was probably not Jewish by race, claiming that he descended from theAmorites.[8] During theinter-war period, certain pro-Nazi theologians, such asWalter Bauer andWalter Grundmann, and AmericanAssyriologistPaul Haupt[9] developed these ideas as part of the manufacture of an Aryan Jesus. Chamberlain's admirerAdolf Hitler held a similar view, as evidenced in histable talk, where he canvassed the idea of Jesus as the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier stationed in Galilee.[10]
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TheFoundations sold extensively: eight editions and 60,000 copies within ten years, 100,000 copies by the outbreak of World War I and 24 editions and more than a quarter of a million copies by 1938.[11] The Russian translation was especially popular and was carried by White Russians all the way to Siberia.[12]
The 1911 translation received positive reviews in most of the British press.It was praised inThe Spectator as "a monument of erudition"; theBirmingham Post wrote that it was "glowing with life, packed with fresh and vigorous thought"; theGlasgow Herald thought that it would be difficult to "over-estimate the stimulating qualities of the book."In theTimes Literary Supplement it was declared to be "one of the books that really mattered".In the left-wingFabian NewsGeorge Bernard Shaw called it a "historical masterpiece".Those who failed to read it, he continued, would be unable to talk intelligently about contemporary sociological and political problems.In the U.S.,Theodore Roosevelt attributed an extreme bias to the author. Roosevelt wrote in 1913 that Chamberlain "represents an influence to be reckoned with and seriously to be taken into account."[13]
The book was important toWilhelm II, who became Chamberlain's friend (the two held a correspondence), and as a "spiritual" foundation ofNazi Germany. Chamberlain'sideas on race were greatly influential toAdolf Hitler, who readily adapted them into his Nazi ideology.[14]Chamberlain himself joined theNazi party[when?][citation needed], and both Hitler andNazi chiefpropagandistGoebbels visited Chamberlain whilst he was on his deathbed.
Galilee was a colony where the Romans had probably installed Gallic legionaries, and it's certain that Jesus was not a Jew. The Jews, by the way, regarded Him as the son of a whore — of a whore and a Roman soldier.
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