9 - Paladins of the Right

Summary

Chapter 9 analyzes Germany’s conservative intelligentsia as it has developed by the middle of the 1920s and the various institutions it has established in pursuit of a young conservative political agenda. Most of the individuals discussed in this chapter – Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Oswald Spengler, Heinz Brauweiler, Heinrich von Gleichen, and Wilhelm Stapel among others – define themselves as “conservative revolutionaries” who do not to wish to return to the way things were before World War I but who espouse an apocalyptic view of the political and envision a revolutionary transformation of the world in which they live through direct political action. Some like Martin Spahn and Eduard Stadtler are connected to the DNVP, but for the most part they are politically unaffiliated and in most cases opposed to the German party system as it has developed since the founding of the Second Empire. But they are united in a pedagogic mission to educate the younger generation and to instill in it the values and virtues they believe necessary for Germany’s national rebirth.