While many völkisch-nationalists were anti-Semites, anti-Semitism was not the defining characteristic of völkisch-nationalism. Instead it was a consequential element of a general racist ideology. As Puschner points out, as the nineteenth century drew to a close a number of völkisch-nationalists were increasingly concerned that their ideology should not be identified as purely anti-Semitic.42 While this does not detract from their ideological debt to anti-Semitism, their primary concern was to promote an emphasis on the rebirth of the German Volk. The goal of the Volksgemeinschaft dominated their programme.
In an article in the pan-German journal Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert in 1893 Friedrich Lienhard argued that the ‘Jewish question’ would solve itself if the prerequisites for a healthy life for the German Volk were met. He therefore wrote that anti-Semitism was not a social, moral or even religious question;
40 Neumann, Völkisch-nationale Hebbelrezeption, p. 102.
41 Ibid., pp. 121; 125.
42 Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung, pp. 15–16.
it was ‘not a question in its own right,’ but instead ‘a negative part of a positive programme. And this positive programme is: Renewal of German culture in the German Geist and out of our German nature! This principled emphasis of Germanness is not chauvinism; it is a new principle.’43 Lienhard advocated cleansing the German Volk of damaging foreign influences, which included liberalism, social democracy, French culture, and cosmopolitanism. These were to be replaced with a return to traditional German culture.44
Both Lienhard and Bartels were also among the founders of the Heimatkunstbewegung, a movement concerned with the literature and art depicting the life of provincial Germans in non-urban settings, and with the customs, traditions and history of the regions.45 It provided a channel for the expression of racial views that did not directly engage with the ‘Jewish question’. Many of its representatives passively accepted the anti-Semitic views of writers like Bartels, but did not make them the centre of their world view. Bartels’ contribution to the Heimatkunstbewegung included a collection of novels about his Schleswig-Holstein homeland. Among them was his volume of childhood memories, Kinderland, and the 500-page novel, Die Dithmarscher, chronicling three generations of a Dithmarschen family between 1500 and 1559, and focusing on the ultimately unsuccessful struggle for independence waged by the Dithmarscher against the Danes and Holsteiner in the sixteenth century.46 It presents their cause as a heroic fight of the Volk against those forces that found their ultimate victory in the liberal culture of the industrial state.47
Concentrated in particular in border regions, the Heimatkunstbewegung promoted provincial life and traditions as the foundations of German society. It was inextricably linked to the völkisch movement and a precursor
43 Quoted in Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung, p. 55.
44 Ibid., p. 55.
45 Fuller, The Nazis Literary Grandfather, pp. 25–31, 83–84.
46 Adolf Bartels, Kinderland: Erinnerungen aus Hebbels Heimat (2nd edition: Leipzig:
Bürger, 1914) Die Dithmarscher: Historischer Roman in 4 Büchern (Kiel & Leipzig:
Lipsius & Tischer, 1898).
47 See also Uwe-Karsten Ketelsen, Völkisch-nationale und nationalsozialistische Literatur, p. 38.
to the Blut und Boden literature promoted by the Nazis thirty years later.
Kay Dohnke points out that völkisch literature developed beyond the provincial focus of the Heimatkunstbewegung, nationalist perspectives superseding local patriotism; nonetheless the roots of both movements were too multiple and can be traced too far back to make a simple progression from Heimat to völkisch movement convincing.48 A largely middle class phenomenon, the Heimatkunstbewegung was at once an assertion of local patriotism and an expression of nationalist sentiment. It was a conscious celebration of regional differences within the national whole; ‘Germanness’
was embedded in the history and customs of Germany’s many regions, whence it derived its strength.49 The Heimatkunstbewegung therefore shared many of the characteristics identified by Celia Applegate as belonging to the wider Heimat movement that also emerged in Germany at this time.
Applegate asserts, however, that in promoting regional identities, the his-torical unions, walking clubs, Heimat museums and other organisations that contributed to the Heimat movement were not necessarily engaging in a political or social discourse, but at most in a community-building exer-cise.50 The Heimatkunstbewegung, however, took the sentiments of regional romanticism and used them as the basis for a nationalist discourse based on the relationship of the Volk with its native landscape.51 This idea later influenced a number of leading Nazis, most notably Walter Darré.52 It was therefore inextricably linked to the völkisch ideology, which identified the
48 Kay Dohnke, ‘Völkische Literatur und Heimatliteratur 1870–1918’ in Puschner et al. (eds), Handbuch zur ‘Völkischen Bewegung’ 1871–1918 (Munich: Saur, 1999), pp. 652–653.
49 Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990), p. 80.
50 Ibid. pp. 3; 103–107.
51 The roots of this idea can be seen, for example, in the earlier works of Ernst Moritz Arnd and, particularly, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl. See Colin Riordan, ‘Green Ideas in Germany: A Historical Survey’ in Colin Riordan (ed.), Green Thought in German Culture: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997), pp. 3–41; on Arndt and Riehl, pp. 8–11.
52 Anna Bramwell’s controversial political biography of Walter Darré seeks to rescue the reputation of its protagonist by arguing for the existence of a ‘green’ wing in the
German Volk as the descendent of the Germanic tribes, each rooted in a dif-ferent region. The migration of these tribes led to a mixing of their blood, and the creation of the German Volk. Regional identification, epitomised by identification with the native landscape, was a sign of relating to the Germanic tribes of old, and demonstrated a deep feeling for the ancient roots of the modern Volk.
The Austrian literary historian Josef Nadler adopted these ideas as the basis for his literary theories, focusing his work on a version of the history of the German tribes adapted from the work of his teacher, August Sauer, Professor of German in Prague. Sauer approached every text as a product of a particular tribe, from which a writer inherited his or her most primi-tive cultural influences.53 Nadler adopted a more sophisticated argument that suggested that the tribe was one important element among a range of influences on a writer. According to Nadler, the individual belonged to the family, which in turn belonged to a tribe, which, under the right circumstances, belonged to a racially defined state.54 The development of the literature of the different tribes was, moreover, dependent on their native landscapes. The literature of the Saxons was, for example, informed by the River Elbe and wide northern vistas, making them the guardians of the Nordic myths and sagas; the Franconians, with the Rhine running through their country, were the tribe of German poetry.55 With his history of German literature, the first volume of which was published in 1912 as the Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften, Nadler felt he had given German literary scholars a new national direction. Through the historical development of the tribes to form the German Volk, he tied
NSDAP: Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darré and Hitler’s ‘Green Party’ (Bourne End: Kensal, 1985).
53 Sebastian Meissl, ‘Zur Wiener Neugermanistik der dreißiger Jahre: Stamm, Volk, Rasse, Reich. Über Josef Nadlers literaturwissenschaftliche Position,’ in Klaus Amann and Albert Berger (eds), Österreichische Literatur der dreißiger Jahre (Vienna: Böhlau, 1985), p. 133.
54 Ibid. pp. 133–134.
55 Josef Nadler, Literaturgeschichte der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften 4 vols (Regensburg: Habbel, 1912–1928), vol. 1, pp. 6–7.
the Volk firmly to the land. As a result, true German literature, formed by the relationship of the writer to his or her tribal landscape, and represent-ing the völkisch spirit, expressed a very deep relationship with the ancient roots of the German people.
The Heimatkunstbewegung was also part of the reaction against urbanisation in the Kaiserreich. Its attitude towards capitalism was marked by the experience of 1873, when Germany’s industry and financial markets were hit by a crisis from which the middle class only slowly recovered.56 The migration of people to the cities coupled with falling educational standards, were also seen by concerned völkisch commentators as pro-moting social democracy. The sinking birth rate in the cities was viewed in eugenic terms, presenting the danger of racial degeneration and an increase in deformity, especially among the poor. Industrialisation had lured many people away from the land with the promise of easy earnings and greater freedom. Morally the removal of large numbers of people from their natural habitats was seen not only to spur materialism, and wild behaviour, but also to prevent the growth of any feeling of belong-ing. The long-term result would be a Volk torn from its roots. The city was therefore seen as the fundamental antithesis to the integral relation-ship between the Volk and its landscape, against which Heimat writers propagated an idyllic vision of country life and the peasant as the bedrock of German society.57
Heimat literature, including works produced by advocates of the Heimatkunstbewegung, offered city dwellers a temporary escape from their environment and a connection to a set of local customs and history older than the cities in which they lived. Against modern society, it sought to provide an antidote to the alienation of its inhabitants.58 The rejec-tion of urban society and the idealisarejec-tion of rural life in Heimat and
56 Karl-Heinz Rossbacher, ‘Programm und Roman der Heimatkunstbewegung – Möglichkeiten sozialgeschichtlicher und soziologischer Analyse’ in Viktor Žmegač (ed.), Deutsche Literatur um die Jahrhundertwende (Königstein/Ts.: Verlagsgruppe Athenäum, Hain, Scriptor, Hanstein, 1981), p. 127.
57 Claß, Wenn ich Kaiser wär’, pp. 20–26.
58 Applegate, A Nation of Provincials, pp. 70–74.
völkisch literature referred back to nineteenth century village tales,59 and formed a representational basis for the interlocked ideologies of the Heimatkunstbewegung and the völkisch movement. Journals like Der Türmer (1898), Heimat (1900), Die Rheinlande (1900), as well as Die Gesellschaft provided a forum for the pastoral image of rural life.60
The works of the Heimatkunstbewegung reflected the paradoxical nature of völkisch-nationalism as whole. It was a bourgeois protest against bourgeois society, providing both an explanation of and an answer to a sense of crisis in German society. The Heimatkunstbewegung presented the völkisch-nationalist vision of rural life as the antidote to capitalist material-ism, the rise of Social-Democracy, and the misery of the industrial cities.
Numerous organisations were also established to enable city dwellers to live out the romantic idealism it provided. The Wandervogel, for example, was founded in Berlin to provide young people with the opportunity to hike in the German countryside, thereby obtaining the necessary relationship with their native landscape.61 The popularity of such organisations served to endorse further the idea of Heimat in the völkisch-nationalist imagination as the negation of everything encompassed by the term ‘Berlin’. Materialism was confronted with idealism in an attempt to raise German cultural life to a higher spiritual level.
Condemning the cold rationalism of the naturalist realism they opposed as the product of the Enlightenment, völkisch-nationalists drew a distinction between proof and instinct. The latter was represented in their literature by the peasant hero, a man of deeds not words, whose knowledge was based on life not books. Examples of such heroes include Harm Wulf in Hermann Löns’ Der Wehrwolf and Jörn Uhl in Gustav Frenssen’s work of that name.62 These protagonists were shown them in tune with their native lands, from which they drew strength in the face of
59 Rossbacher, ‘Programm und Roman der Heimatkunstbewegung’, p. 123.
60 Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, p. 98.
61 Walter Lacqueur, Die deutsche Jugendbewegung (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1978).
62 Gustav Frenssen, Jörn Uhl; Hermann Löns, Der Wehrwolf (Jena: Diederichs, 1912).
the difficulties presented by the modern world.63 Rootedness and belonging are the necessary foundations for life in these novels, and are to be found in the native community in its landscape. As such these ideas were easily combined with völkisch-nationalist definitions of the Volksgemeinschaft.
This belonging was not materialist, but had a metaphysical quality; the spiritual, moral and physical health of the German Volk were intrinsically connected.