Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , born on April 23rd 1876 with Solingen, in Westphalia, dead on May 30th 1925 with Berlin, was a Historien and a German writer .

Youth

By his father Ottomar Victor Moeller, adviser of the intendance of the buildings and architect of the royal administration of Prussia, originating in Erfurt, it goes down from a family originating in Thuringe, installed in a field of the Harz, close to Nordhausen at the beginning of the XIXe century, and which counted in its rows of the officers, the civils servant, of the landowners, like some Pasteur S Lutherans. By his mother, Elisabeth van den Bruck, girl of a civil servant to the buildings, it belonged to a Rhenish family of origin Spanish Dutchwoman and . It passed its youth to Dusseldorf, where it studied in a Gymnasium. Leaving this establishment three years before the Abitur, it was sent in parents to Erfurt in April 1895 to pass its abitur there. Hedda Maase, to which it had just become engaged, accompanied it. To the Easter 1896, it left for Leipzig, where it carried out a life of Bohème. Registered to the University, it irregularly followed the courses of the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt and the historian Karl Lamprecht. Self-educated, it was to be especially formed in the literary coffees, the first theatrical ones, the workshops of the painters of avant-garde S, the Exposition S and by its personal readings.

The esthète

In August 1896, it Maria with Hedda Maase and settled with Berlin. A heritage of his/her maternal grandfather made it possible the couple to move in a small villa at the edge of the Lake Tegel. In Berlin, it bound with various literary circles " modernistic " , meeting " libertaires" like Frank Wedekind, " naturalists " like Gerhart Hauptmann or " formal " like Stefan George. He collaborated in the Zukunft of Maximilian Hardent and started, as from 1889, to publish his personal work. In 1902 Das Variété appeared, analyzes of one kind to the mode illustrated by the Überbrettei of Wedekind. The same year, it gathered under the modern title of Die Literatur ten monographs devoted to contemporary authors, in whom it devoted to a criticism literary Impressionnisme and naturalism. At the time, it did not have political commitment yet, although it already read the Genèse of the XIXe century of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, of which it did not share all the sights. It especially was very influenced by Nietzsche.

In 1902, it left his wife, enclosure, and flees in France while passing by the Suisse, to flee the obligation of the military service, with the idea to join the the United States, idea to which it was to finally give up. It indeed had little taste for the life of barracks, and the bureaucracy wilhelmienne inspired a sharp antipathy to him. Its marriage, already well badly in point, was not to resist this separation. Little time after having been confined of a son, on December 26th, 1902, Hedda remaria with Herbert Eulenberg, young dramatic author that Moeller had presented to him in 1901 and with whom it will have a child in 1904. Installed finally with Paris, where it carried out a precarious life, it knew a decisive evolution of its thought. Discovering its fatherland of outside, it started to look it of a different eye and became aware that France, contrary to Germany, seemed " penser" its policy and that this policy exerted an influence on the culture. It is at that time that it started to affirm " nationalist " , not in the direction of a Pan-Germanism with which it hardly felt affinities, but rather of a solidarity with the culture to which it felt the heir. The esthète was moulted as a committed writer.

The committed writer

In 1908 Die Deutschen appeared, in eight volumes, collection biographical of large characters brought together by affinities: statesmen, philosophers, artists, etc a whole volume was devoted to Goethe. By this book, Moeller van den Bruck understood to bring the German nation to " the assertion of soi" and its critic of the Libéralisme It started to develop published also a test on the French theater and Die Zeitgenossen , study where it analyzed the work of several artists and foreign writers.

In Paris also, it became acquainted with a young Latvian, Lucy Kaerrick, who was to become his second wife. This one made him discover the poet and mystical Russian Dimitri Merejkovski, under the influence of which it was plunged in the work of Dostoïevski. It was a revelation for the young German emigrant, who was discovered important affinities with the Russian great writer: a certain tendency to prophecy, a criticism of the occidentalism, a direction of the tragedy and an assertion of the existence of " people vieux" and of " people jeunes". With Less Kaerrick, the sister of Lucy, he undertook the translation of his complete works (1905-1915), published in twenty-two volumes. This work of translation had an enormous success, with 179.000 specimens sold in 1922.

In 1906, after a four years stay in France, Moeller van den Bruck left in Italy. Installed with Florence, he worked in particular with the files and the library of the city. This stay marks a turning in its work. Convinced from now on that each people have his rate/rhythm, its interior life clean, which is expressed in a homogeneous national style, it was devoted to their study. At that time, he wrote Die italienische schönheit , test on the culture, the art and the history of Italy of the origins to the Renaissance, in which he placed the apogee of the " classicité" Italian during the time going of XIIIe in XVe centuries. In this book, which did not have any success, Moeller appealed, to explain the genius of the culture and art, as well with the history as in the human beginnings and the landscapes.

As from 1907, it launched out in ceaseless voyages. With his wife, it went back initially to Berlin, where it made regularize its military situation. Then, in 1910, the couple travelled to England, to France and Italy. In 1912, it went to Finland, Russia and in the Baltic States. In 1914, he visited Denmark and Sweden.

When the First World War burst, in 1914, it stopped its voyage, him, the former unsubmissive person, and returned to Berlin. In spite of the adverse opinion of the doctor of the armies, it made its military service with Küstrin and went voluntary like Landstummann, i.e. soldier of second class. It was sent at once on the face of the East. Two years later, with the autumn 1916, it was reformed because of nervous disorders. Thanks to an intervention of his friend Franz Evers, it joined the press service and of propaganda of the military Section of the foreign affairs, service created by the general Ludendorff, who was transformed in May 1918 into Section external of the high command of the German army. At this station, its vocation of political writer was confirmed definitively. It acquired in this work the style which was to characterize it later, made formulas incisors. In the same way, it started to attend journalists, publicity agents, senior officials, economists and politicians, medium very different from the world which it knew before.

He wrote more and more, publishing articles in various newspapers, Der Tag , Die Kreuzzeitung , the Berliner Börsenzeitung or the Badische Landeszeitung , like in reviews considered like Das neue Deutschland , the Deutsche Rundschau and the Preussische Jahrbücher , being made thus soon know. In 1916, also, it made appear a test DER preussische Stil ( the Prussian Model ), regarded as one of its best books, in which, through a study on the Prussian architectural style, it delivered a meditation on Prussia and the " prussianisme" , renting these Roman virtues of Prussia against which it had seemed to revolt in its youth, and celebrating the gasoline of Prussia as a " will in État". In its eyes, the Prussian example testified that, in the modern societies, the history overrides the race, the culture on nature, and the German nation, heiress of the " Mutterland" Germanic, was to receive a " form prussienne".

The political theorist

After the revolution of November 1918, Moeller van den Bruck became the intellectual guide of a circle of writers and publicity agents hostile at the same time of the nationalist Communisme and liberalism, , but without nostalgia for the era wilhelmienne, and which refused to stick to any political party. This circle was born at the end of the month of the May 1919 and named initially the name of I-Klub, before taking the name officially, after the signature of the Traité of Versailles, on June 28th, 1919, of Juni-Klub (" Club of Juin"), whose symbol was the ring. Around this group, installed at the end of 1920 in the building of the 22 of Motzstrasse, in Berlin-Moabit, soon one of the poles most representative of the current of Jungkonservativen (" developed; young people conservateurs") preserving Revolution. The club was attended as well by national-German as members of the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP), democrats, catholics of the Zentrum, social democrats or Communists. Indeed, the leaders of Juni-Klub were not posed like adversaries of principle of the Weimar Republic or Démocratie, rather seeking to provide the foundations of a " democracy allemande" , i.e. a democracy in conformity with the tradition of their country, and stressed more the principles that on the Institution S. Moeller van den Bruck was to define this democracy " nationalisée" like " the participation of people in his destin".

April 9th, 1919, the group launched a weekly magazine, Das Gewinssen (" Conscience"), which knew a great favor near the cultivated mediums, would be this only by the quality of several of his/her collaborators. In 1922, the newspaper, renamed Gewinssen on January 1st, 1920, announced a pulling of 30.000 specimens. One year later, at the worst time of inflation, he asserted of them 10.000 more. Moeller van den Bruck held an essential place in this success, fixing the orientations, determining the general line and writing many articles, under its name, pseudonyms or anonymously. In parallel, it continued to collaborate in many publications.

In 1919, Moeller van den Bruck published Das Recht DER jungen Völker , work started during the war in which it tried to show that the war had been the product of the resentment of the " people vieux" with regard to the " people jeunes" , he envied vitality. For him, the Japan and the Italy had made an error by supporting the old nations, whereas their interests carried them as regards young people, with the number of which it counted the Finland and the Bulgaria. In the same way, the United States being identified with civilization and Russia with the culture, only Germany, according to him, could carry out the synthesis of these two concepts. Moreover, only Germany that the western powers would have taken guard not to weaken too much could be likely to protect them from the danger Bolchevik. In addition, faithful to the feelings pro-Russian which the reading of Dostoïevski had inspired to him, he thought that between Germany and Russia existed " a community of destin" , that the safety of the German nation " prolétarisée" could not come from an arrangement with the western powers nor of the servile imitation of their liberal model, but from an alliance with the forces " neuves" and " intactes" is, whose geopolitical and spiritual interests corresponded to his. On this point the Révolution of 1917 basically did not modify the thought of Moeller van den Bruck, which thought that the " Russia éternelle" would override imported communist doctrines. This idealistic analysis was to find besides a realization by the means of the Realpolitik of the young German republic.

Influential among Junkonservativen, Moeller van den Bruck was brought to be opposed to the current national-revolutionist, of which the ideology " soldatique" had been nourished by the experiment of the face. It was thus one of rare to interpret the assassination of Walter Rathenau by members of the Irregular forces like " a confirmation of the political lack of direction allemand". In spring 1922, Hitler spoke in Juni-Klub and met it. Moeller van den Bruck was shown, however, reticent in front of the offers of the chief of NSDAP. In November 1923, at the time of the Putsch of the brewery, with Munich, the group was to even make a severe assessment on the company; the leading article of Gewissen , probably about the hand of Moeller van den Bruck, spoke with " crime imbécile" and described Hitler as guided by a " primitivism prolétarien". The Nazis made use nevertheless of its ideas and adapted even the title of its book Third Reich , appeared in 1923, like political Slogan. But these are the currents Völkisch that it fought most clearly. Their theorists, it thus reproached for confusing " race" and " peuple" , affirming that the race, which had been able to play a part in the formation of the prehistoric populations, and whose myth had been able to contribute to the blossoming or the consolidation of the national conscience, it was not for a long time any more an operational or relevant criterion, which it had disintegrated as appeared the historical nations. In the same way, he showed holding them of the " race aryenne" of drowning in a vague concept specificities of the German nation, going until distinguishing, in a article published in 1924, " races biologiques" and " races of the esprit".

In 1922, Moeller van den Bruck directed, with Heinrich von Gleichen and max Hidelbert Boehm, the publication of a collective book, Die neue Front , associating some thirty-eight authors members of Juni-Klub or close to him. The following year appeared Das Dritte Reich ( Third Reich ), in which he pronounced a solemn warning statement. Speaking about a " third voie" between liberal capitalism and the Marxism, it defined third Reich as a " idea of synthesis, resolution of the contradictions". The " third parti" , for him, the " wanted; Third Reich" , just as Germany, " country of the milieu" , had vocation to constitute a " third force" in the center of the continent and a crucible between Is and Western.

However, in 1924, the general situation developed, one period of stability was outlined after the crisis of 1923 and several members of Juni-Klub dispersed in circles and clubs which started to clear with the national-liberals mediums. Despaired by this evolution, Moeller van den Bruck had the feeling to be abandoned of all and to meet around him only incomprehension. Its nerves had always been fragile. At the beginning of 1925, it was victim of a nervous breakdown, from which it never went back. May 30th, 1925, one week after the election of Hindenburg to the presidency of Reich, it gave itself death to Berlin-Weissensee. It was buried with the cemetery of Lichterfeld, in Berlin, in the presence of some rare close relations. The funeral praise was pronounced by max Hidelbert Boehm. After its death, which remained of Juni-Klub was dislocated, and the weekly magazine Gewissen disappeared on January 1st, 1928.

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