Evangelist Of Race: The Germanic Vision Of Houston Stewart Chamberlain by Geoffrey G. Field
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Overview: AT HIS DEATH in 1927 H. S. Chamberlain was famous in and outside Germany as the “renegade” Englishman who had repudiated his native land to become a leading champion of German racial nationalism. He was known as a successful publicist of Wagnerism, as the author of numerous works on race, politics, art and philosophy, and as one of the most extreme propagandists of German victory during the First World War. His friends and admirers included not only members of the völkisch right, but large numbers of Germany’s cultural elite, powerful political figures, and Kaiser Wilhelm II. As the first writer of national and even international reputation to embrace Nazism, Chamberlain occupied a special place of honor in the Nazi pantheon and was widely hailed as the spiritual father of the Third Reich.
In Evangelist of Race, Geoffrey Field has given an absorbing account of the life and times of this transplanted Englishman, piecing together his story from a very wide range of private papers, unpublished and published sources. The result is a book that throws a flood of light on German attitudes and cultural ambivalences from the era of Bismarck to the emergence of Nazism. Treating Chamberlain’s intellectual development in this wider context, Field describes the evolution of Wagnerism and analyzes Bayreuth’s cultural crusade as part of the broad movement of German nationalist thought and aesthetic social criticism. He also illustrates the complexity and pervasiveness of racial concepts in nineteenth-century society, and demonstrates the changing character and appeal of anti-Semitism and its role in German political culture. The three themes of Wagnerism, anti-Semitism, and Aryan racism intersect in Chamberiain’s career, illuminating the history of the German right and providing fresh insights into the roots of Nazism.
Evangelist of Race is the first full-scale study of this enigmatic but influential man. Field’s learned and graceful biography achieves the remarkable feat of depicting an entire era through Chamberlain’s life. It improves our understanding of such contemporaries as Kaiser Wilhelm, Prince Eulenburg, Adolf von Harnack, Adolphe Appia, and many more; it analyzes the powerful impact of Wagner; and it reminds us that racism is a central, if often neglected, element of the western intellectual tradition. Lastly it suggests how the legacy of Wilhelminian anti-Semitism helped desensitize Germans to the murderous possibilities inherent in racial theorizing and ideological hatred of Jews.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Biographies & Memoirs
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