As the weakness of the Academy became apparent, six writers (Hans Grimm, Rudolf G. Binding, Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer, Wilhelm Schäfer, Emil Strauß and Börries von Münchhausen) increasingly displayed the symptoms associated by scholars with ‘inner emigration’. They referred to themselves as the ‘Munich Consensus’ or Münchner, denoting the informal but close nature of their association, which arose from a series of meetings held in Munich beginning in 1934. Their partial retreat from public life towards the end of the 1930s has led historians, including Hildegard Brenner and Jan-Peter Barbian, to conclude that the Academy was increasingly insignifi-cant in the Third Reich.70 On the other hand an unexpectedly advanced degree of intellectual opposition to the policies of the Nazi regime can also be seen among these same writers, despite the fact that they have typi-cally been held to have represented the Third Reich in the literary sphere, both by their contemporaries and by later commentators. This opposition never amounted to outright resistance however; they were not alienated by the Nazi ideology or programme, but by the popular character of the Nazi movement and the failure of its leaders to recognise them above the masses. As the self-appointed literary judges in Germany, their antagonism towards the regime also possessed a moralising character as they sought to prevent German literature from degenerating into a political tool.
The formation of a group like the Munich Consensus within the lit-erary structures of the Third Reich was made possible by the Academy’s marginal position in the institutional landscape of the regime. Having allowed the Academy little influence, the Nazis seem to have paid the pri-vate associations of its members little attention. As long as they did not appear to be contaminating the wider public with ideas that conflicted with the ideology of the regime they could be considered safely contained in the Academy. From the government’s point of view, moreover, their
70 Brenner, Ende einer bürgerlichen Kunst-Institution, Introduction; Barbian, Literaturpolitik, pp. 71–79.
presence in the Academy was a sufficient public endorsement of the regime by the nation’s leading völkisch-nationalist writers. Paradoxically, it was the Academy itself that allowed their opposition to grow by providing a space in which they could discuss and exchange ideas. Even after the Academy had finally descended into political oblivion, these networks did not die out, but instead found new, less formal outlets for their expression. This was in part due to the role the Academy played in their development in the four years immediately following the Nazi Machtergreifung.
By the time the members of the ‘Munich Consensus’ were called to join the Academy, they were all in advanced middle age, if not elderly. With their most productive years of work already behind them, they were set in their ways and opinionated. Well established as the writers of the German right, they represented the völkisch literary tradition in the Third Reich.
They were elitist and independent, refusing to bow without protest to the dictates of the Nazi government or to the demands of colleagues in the Academy. They believed they belonged to the organisation through ‘God’s grace’ rather than earthly appointment.71 Although their approaches to the issues they faced and their reactions to specific events often differed, the concerns of the members of the ‘Munich Consensus’ for the Academy and their belief in the role of German literature and the responsibility of German writers to the Volk provided them with a common foundation.
They were bound together by their determination to create their version of a völkisch-nationalist state, which conformed to the völkisch model developed from the end of the nineteenth century. Finally, their associations from the pre-1933 era meant that their relationships were not based wholly in the Academy context. As a result their correspondence indicates a degree of trust that allowed sometimes surprisingly candid interactions.72
In addition to their common vision of the importance of völkisch literature for the future of Germany, the second major factor holding the
71 Grimm to Schäfer, 25.3.1934, DLA – A: Grimm, Grimm to Binding, 1933–1934.
72 See, for example, Kolbenheyer to Grimm, 11.9.1933, DLA – A: Grimm, Kolbenheyer to Grimm, 1918–1938. Also undated letter from 1933 from Grimm to Kolbenheyer in DLA: Nachlaß Grimm, Grimm to Kolbenheyer, 1933–1959.
Munich Consensus together was a feeling of dissatisfaction. The Munich Consensus grew out of and was an expression of the increasing antipathy of a group of leading völkisch-nationalist writers towards the Nazi regime.
As early as July 1933, Grimm wrote to Binding: ‘I feel too tormented by the times I myself so longed for. But exactly because I longed for them I also feel responsible for their dreadfulness, for their tortuous, useless dreadfulness.’73 In the same letter, he described his disappointment in the Academy after the constitutional meetings of 7th and 8th June, express-ing his dissatisfaction at the way in which competencies had been defined and offices distributed before the Academy was in possession of sufficient power to act.74 Any encouragement he gained from further meetings in October 1933, which indicated an improvement in the situation, was short-lived. In spite of Grimm’s initial welcome for the RSK, it was not long before its foundation had more or less crushed the optimism of the six writers, casting its shadow over the Academy.75 Nonetheless, their sense of responsibility not only for the shortcomings of the nationalist state but also towards the German Volk, to whom the Academy was accountable, drove them on.76 What began as a casual alliance in Academy meetings gradually became a recognisable bloc that increasingly stood apart from the more pragmatic politics of National Socialism, which left its members disillusioned and bitter.
Mittenzwei suggests that the ‘Munich Consensus’ was formed out of a ‘Kreis um Münchhausen’, or Münchhausen Circle, in the Academy.
He places particular emphasis on the role of Münchhausen not only in the Academy, but also with regard to the relative influence of the writ-ers in question on the literary sphere in the Third Reich as a whole.77 Münchhausen was indeed a significant figure in the völkisch-nationalist
73 Grimm to Binding, 5.7.1933, DLA – A: Grimm, Grimm to Binding, 1933–1934.
74 Ibid.
75 Grimm to Strauß, 21.12.1933, DLA – A: Grimm, Grimm to Binding, 1933–1934.
76 Further expressions of the dissatisfaction of the Münchner writers with the regime were evident, for example in Kolbenheyer to Grimm, 26.4.1934, DLA – A: Grimm, Kolbenheyer to Grimm, 1918–1938.
77 Mittenzwei, Der Untergang einer Akademie, pp. 322–323.
literary networks of the 1920s and early 1930s. His family connections, legal training and diplomatic manner enabled him to maintain contacts with many important literary and political figures. His völkisch-nationalist worldview, particularly the racist views he cultivated in the second half of his life, drew on a long family history and aristocratic upbringing which distinguished him from his colleagues in the Munich Consensus. His worldview was influenced by the attempt to reconcile the milieu from which he came with the world in which he lived. By 1933 he had moved far from the Bohemian circles in Berlin in which he moved in the first decade of the twentieth century. There, he had counted a number of Jews among his close friends. During the Third Reich, he took pains to distance himself from Juda, the anthology of ballads with Jewish themes he had published in 1900 and dedicated to the artist Ephraim Moses Lilien, who provided the illustrations.78 His increasingly conservative point of view and retreat from the city to his family estate at Windischleuba after the First World War were accompanied by the cultivation of an anti-Semitism that made him susceptible to National Socialism. Nonetheless, he particularly objected to the mass character of that movement.79 As we have seen, his aristocratic views also shaped his attitude to the Academy.
Münchhausen’s literary renown was based on his success as one of the revivers of the German ballad in the first decade of the twentieth century.
His prominence as a poet had, however, already faded by 1920 when modernist forms of literary expression, particularly expressionism, overtook his nostalgic style.80 While he remained active in völkisch-nationalist circles during the Weimar Republic and Third Reich, on the literary front both Hans Grimm and Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer were more significant after 1918. While Kolbenheyer was the recipient of the largest number of literary prizes of any writer during the Third Reich,81 Hans Grimm’s identification
78 Börries von Münchhausen, Juda: Gesänge (Berlin: Fleischel, 1900); Mittenzwei, Der Untergang einer Akademie, pp. 161–162, 373–374.
79 For Mittenzwei’s summary of Münchhausen’s early ideological development see Der Untergang einer Akademie, pp. 157–165.
80 Sarkowicz and Mentzer, Literatur in Nazi-Deutschland, p. 288.
81 Ibid., pp. 243–244.
as a political writer even before 1933 made his public support for the Nazis a significant prize for Goebbels.82 As a result, Grimm was rewarded in 1933 with his appointment to the Präsidialrat of the RSK. Münchhausen was, like Grimm, invited to join the Literature Academy, but he received little further recognition from the Nazi leadership.
Grimm’s best-selling novel Volk ohne Raum was among the most famous völkisch-nationalist works to emerge in the Weimar Republic.83 Its ca.1350 pages engaged directly with Germany’s ills and its success even surpassed that of Kolbenheyer’s Paracelsus-Trilogie, a work that also gained recognition for its author following its appearance in three volumes in 1917, 1921 and 1925 respectively. Finally, while Grimm’s publicly critical views of the Nazi regime, coupled with his continuous activity and the success of his Lippoldsberger Dichtertreffen between 1934 and 1939 caused him to fall from grace with the Nazi rulers, in particular Goebbels, they also meant that he retained a greater degree of independence than Münchhausen during the Third Reich. In particular, the Lippoldsberger Dichtertreffen not only remained independent of Nazi influences, unlike Münchhausen’s Wartburg Dichtertage, but also attracted widespread public attention.84 Grimm cannot therefore be written off as either a ‘Don Quichote’ or ‘Querulant’ among völkisch-nationalists, as Mittenzwei suggests;85 the impact of his activi-ties meant that he was a greater force to be reckoned with after 1933 than Münchhausen.
With regard to the other members of the Munich Consensus, Münchhausen was more actively engaged in the political sphere than either Schäfer or Strauß, both of whom were older than he was. He also compro-mised his position with regard to the Nazis to a greater degree than his colleagues. While Strauß was the only member of the Munich Consensus who belonged to the NSDAP, this was little more than a sign of his initial enthusiasm for the Nazis in the early 1930s. He was not active in the Party.
82 See chapter two, pp. 155–157. Münchhausen is not, moreover, mentioned in Goebbels’
diaries.
83 Mittenzwei, Der Untergang einer Akademie, pp. 191–195.
84 See Chapter 4.
85 Mittenzwei, Der Untergang einer Akademie. p. 377.