(Nationalist Literature) Date Tue, 17 May 1994 22 54 25 -0500 Reply-To: German History list Sender: German History list From: H-GERMAN MODERATOR Dan Rogers Subject: Nationalist Literature Submitted by: Martin Travers It is important to bear in mind that German nationalism was not a single phenomenon, but a complex and often contradictory set of ideologies and political practices. The nationalism of Fichte and Jahn at the beginning of the century differs substantially from the nationalism of a Paul de Lagarde and a Julius Langbehn towards the end of the century. It is here, I feel, that any course on the Holocaust should begin, for it is in the writings of this generation of nationalists that the distinctly xenophobic and anti-semitic ideology of the National Socialists (with its biologistic and eugenicist fixations) has its origins. Few of the seminal texts of that period (1890-1914) have been translated. One exception is Houston Stuart Chamberlain's monumental Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899). The student should also consider looking at Max Nordau's Degeneration, which did much to popularise notions of health and decadence (of biological otherness) in the same period. The best introductions to this body of work in English remain George Mosse's The Crisis of German Ideology and Fritz Stern's The Politics of Cultural Despair. Martin Travers School of Cultural and Historical Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia Information provider: Unit: H-Net program at UIC History Department Email: H-Net@uicvm.uic.edu Posted: 20 Jul 1994 .