Alfred Baeumler

Alfred Baeumler (sometimes Bäumler; German: [ˈbɔʏmlɐ]; 19 November 1887 – 19 March 1968), was an Austrian-born German philosopher, pedagogue and prominent National Socialist ideologue. From 1924 he taught at the Technische Universität Dresden, at first as an unsalaried lecturer Privatdozent. Bäumler was made associate professor (Extraordinarius) in 1928 and full professor (Ordinarius) a year later. From 1933 he taught philosophy and political education in Berlin as the director of the Institute for Political Pedagogy.

Alfred Baeumler
Portrait of Alfred Baeumler in 1914.
Born19 November 1887
Neustadt an der Tafelfichte, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary
Died19 March 1968 (aged 80)
Eningen unter Achalm, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany
NationalityGerman
EraContemporary philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolContinental philosophy
Nietzscheanism

Biography

An influential philosopher in the Third Reich, Baeumler used Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy to legitimize National Socialism. Thomas Mann read Baeumler's work on Nietzsche in the early 1930s, and characterized passages of it as "Hitler prophecy".[1] Baeumler's 1931 book Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker states:

A theory of the state is not to be found in Nietzsche's work – but this work has opened all paths towards a new theory of the state. … His attack on the "Empire" arises from the feeling of a world-historical task that awaits us. He wanted to hear nothing of the state as a moral organism in Hegel's sense, he also wanted to hear nothing of Bismarck's Christian Lesser Germany ("Kleindeutschland"). Before his eyes stood the task of our race: the task of being leader of Europe. … What would Europe be without the Germanic North? What would Europe be without Germany? A Roman colony. … Germany can only exist world-historically in the form of greatness. It has the choice to exist as the anti-Roman power of Europe, or not to exist. … The German state of the future will not be a continuation of Bismarck's creation, but will be created out of the spirit of Nietzsche and the spirit of the Great War (from pp. 180–183. Italics in the original).

His books were published in Italy in the late 1990s by the Edizioni di Ar, an Italian publishing house.[2]

Works
  • Studien zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1937.
  • Politik und Erziehung. Reden und Aufsätze. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1937. (Collected speeches and essays).
  • Männerbund und Wissenschaft. Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1934.
  • Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker. Leipzig: Reclam, 1931.
  • Nietzsches Philosophie in Selbstzegunissen. Ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Alfred Baeumler. Leipzig: Reclam, 1931.
  • Die Unschuld des Werdens. Der Nachlass, ausgewählt und geordnet von Alfred Baeumler. Leipzig: Kröner, 1931. (Collection of unpublished writings by Nietzsche).
  • Bachofen und Nietzsche. Zurich: Verlag der Neuen Schweizer Rundschau, 1929.
  • Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, ihre Geschichte und Systematik. 2 vols. Halle (Saale): Niemeyer, 1923.

Notes
  1. Thomas Mann und Alfred Baeumler, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1989, p. 185
  2. Founded in 1963 by Franco Freda.
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