The foundations for the Nazis’ Kulturpolitik were laid in the Weimar Republic, not only within the NSDAP itself, but in the development of regulation of the cultural sphere, in particular the Republic’s censorship measures. While the constitution of the Republic upheld freedom of speech, in the course of the 1920s and early 1930s concern regarding the production of works considered dangerous for young Germans led to the passage of the
‘Law for the Protection of Youth against trashy and filthy Writing’ (Gesetz zur Bewahrung der Jugend vor Schund- und Schmutzschriften), and the establishment of an office to compile indices of unsuitable works.4 Most effective in censoring literary works in the Weimar Republic, however, were laws that legitimated prosecution of left wing and liberal authors for blasphemy and legislated against high treason and for the protection of the Republic. It was not, however, only the left-wing writers who suffered from the courts’ de facto censorship, but also writers who were in favour of the Republic: Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Carl von Ossietzky, Erich Maria Remarque and Carl Zuckmayer were all victims of the legal system, which continued to be dominated by conservative and nationalist officials.5 As a result, between 1918 and 1933 literary modernism faced significant institutional opposition from a censorship apparatus, on which the Nazis were able to build after 1933.
4 Barbian, Literaturpolitik, pp. 49–51.
5 Ibid. pp. 49–51.
At the Nuremburg Party Rally in 1927, it was decided that a National-Socialist Society for Culture and Science should be formed to counter the negative image of Party members as instigators of street violence and political agitation.6 Intended as a means to disseminate the National Socialist worldview to those who were not reached by the mass events of the Party, it sought in particular to appeal to the Bildungsbürgertum. In a letter to Hans Grimm, Alfred Rosenberg called for support for the new organisation, explaining the thinking behind the initiative: ‘As you will see from the enclosed, we are working to establish a National Socialist organisation, that plans to work on the foundations of our völkisch cul-tural work through lectures and similar events. It will be aimed less at the wider social classes, that can be won through mass assemblies, and more at the national intelligentsia, students etc.’7 It was officially called into being at the beginning of 1928 as the Nationalsozialistische Gesellschaft für deutsche Kultur, its name changing to the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur (KfdK) a year later in order to play down its association with the NSDAP.
Alongside several Party functionaries, the dramatist Hanns Johst and the industrialist Wilhelm Weiß were both on the steering committee. Other members included Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer and Adolf Bartels, as well as the publishers Julius F. Lehmann and Hugo Bruckmann, and Winifried Wagner and Eva Chamberlain, widow of Houston Stewart Chamberlain.8 Hans Grimm did not become a member.
The new organisation’s debt to völkisch-nationalism was evident in its efforts to win support. A declaration enclosed with Rosenberg’s letter to Grimm argued that the assertion of völkisch values was part of a struggle that could be reduced to two basic factors: first, the need to counter inter-nationalism with the idea of a racially defined Volkstum. The international idea was allegedly manifested in politics that aimed to dismantle völkisch boundaries, promoting the melting-pot idea and demanding a united states
6 Rolf Düsterberg, Hanns Johst:‘Der Barde der SS’: Karrieren eines deutschen Dichters (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), p. 124.
7 Alfred Rosenberg to Hans Grimm, 11.10.1927, DLA, A: Grimm, Rosenberg to Grimm, 11.10.1927.
8 Düsterberg, Hanns Johst, pp. 124–125.
of the world. The last was presumably a reference to the League of Nations, associated on the German right with the victors’ justice of the Paris peace negotiations in 1919. Economically, it was evident in the separation of eco-nomic activity from its regional or local roots, placing it under the control of a few international trusts and world banks. This tendency, the declara-tion argued, would lead to a purely materialist order.9
Parallel to these forces, the same pamphlet argued, were attempts to transcend national art and national culture in favour of the so-called art and culture of humanity (Menschheitskunst; Menschheitskultur). The idea of ‘humanity’ (Menschheit) represented limitless and unbounded individualism. Just as the goal of the international economic system was focused on profit and the economic sustainability of the trusts and big banks, so the idea of ‘humanity’ taught that the individual should be able to establish his or her life without any obligations to race, Volk, state, lan-guage and history. There was, however, a growing recognition that these tendencies would lead to chaos, inspiring the gathering of forces to counter this negative trend. At the head marched the National Socialist movement.
It represented a rounded expression of a new life experience, demanding complete re-evaluation of Germany’s economic, social and cultural life.10 Rosenberg’s declaration continued by stating that nationalism had been damaged by the materialism of the nineteenth century. Similarly, interna-tional Marxism had corrupted pure socialism, uprooting it from its foun-dations in the Volk, preaching the abnegation of race and Volkstum and canonising class struggle. For the National Socialist movement, therefore, the only prerequisite for the revival of the Völk and for the rebirth of true culture was the conjunction of nationalism and socialism. The national-ist idea needed cleansing of its profit orientation; the socialnational-ist movement required purification to remove the poison of internationalism, class strug-gle and materialist individualism. It would become evident that the essence of nationalism and socialism in their pure forms were the same: the care
9 Alfred Rosenberg to Hans Grimm, 11.10.1927, DLA, A: Grimm, Rosenberg to Grimm, 11.10.1927.
10 Ibid.
and cultivation of race and Volkstum. Cultural, political, economic and social concerns thereby intertwined, shaping the intellectual and physical existenc of each member of the Volk.11
The formal aim of the KfdK was ‘to defend the value of the German being in the midst of the cultural degeneration of today, and to promote every outward expression of German cultural life.’12 Rosenberg, already Chief Editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, was appointed director of the new organisation. Its tactics varied from articles in the Völkischer Beobachter’s cultural section, and other Nazi publications, to the production and pro-motion of National Socialist works designed to counter the degenerate effects of republican and humanist writers.13 A ‘Denkschrift’ of 21st June 1932 proposed the foundation of a Kampfbund für deutsches Schrifttum.
This was to be led by Hanns Johst, who had himself suggested to Rosenberg at the beginning of that year that he be employed, at some considerable expense, by the Party as a cultural official responsible for monitoring the spheres of literature and theatre. A veteran of the First World War whose playwriting moved away from its Expressionist roots in the 1920s in response to Germany’s defeat and the revolutionary events of 1918–1919, Johst also campaigned for Hitler in the Presidential elections of 1932.14 While his proposal to Rosenberg was not adopted, Johst was already close to the Party leadership and his loyal involvement with the NSDAP in the Weimar Republic made him one of its most prominent members in the literary sphere and placed him in a prime position for advancement in the Third Reich. In the end power came with his role in the Reichsschrifttumskammer, dominated by Goebbels, rather than any of the institutions through which Rosenberg sought to wield influence.
Rosenberg’s völkisch message appealed to several prominent writers, including Kolbenheyer. And while Grimm, maintained his distance from the KfdK and never became a member of the Party, he did get involved
11 Ibid.
12 Quoted in Barbian, Literaturpolitik, p. 57.
13 Ibid. pp. 56–61.
14 Düsterberg, Hanns Johst, pp. 128, 131.
informally with the NSDAP during the later years of the Weimar Republic.
The inclusiveness that characterised Rosenberg’s declaration in 1927 was also evident in Goebbels’ contacts with Grimm. That it would give way to coercion after 1933 was not clear to the latter at this stage. In these years, therefore, a misconception found its roots, namely that the position of Grimm and his völkisch colleagues in relation to the NSDAP would remain unchanged after the Nazis came to power. They wrongly assumed that they would make an important and active contribution to determining the direction of German culture under the Nazis, who were not an end in themselves but would establish the necessary basis on which a truly völkisch social order could be achieved.