The 'intellectual' contents of National Socialism (IV)

Teutomania, ‘An obsession with Germanness’

This is the fourth and final excerpt from a research chapter examining the intellectual strands that combined to form the basis of National Socialism. National Socialism (Nazism) emerged in a particular context, both in terms of material causes, but also - and in an often underexplored way - intellectual causes. The essay attempts, therefore, to explain how the intellectual sources of Nazism emerged and were, in places, perverted to justify the Nazi regime: first, the intellectual framework of Michael Freeden’s morphological approach to ideology is explained; subsequently, the components of Nazism are established, specifically: Nietzschean philosophy; Schmitt’s concept of the political; the ideology of fascism; and the emergence of Teutomania.

• Part One

• Part Two

• Part Three

Section Four - Teutomania, ‘An obsession with Germanness’

In this final section, I explain how the polysemic “historical community” identified in fascism was re-articulated as racial in National Socialist thought. This strand of thought emerges almost entirely out of what Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wipperman refer to as “Teutomania” (1991: 25) or, as Glover terms it, “the idea of the tribal nation-state” (1999: 319); consequently, I shall show how a tradition of thought understanding German identity as one constituted through a distinct racial identity predetermined the understanding of politics encouraged by fascism as a racial one in National Socialist thought; furthermore, the belief in racial supremacy influenced the National Socialist vision of utopia and the Overhuman.

First, the phenomenon of Teutomania was the obsession with “German-ness”, coinciding historically with a time when European racial supremacy theories were proliferating. Glover notes that the existence of a tribal nation-state “required a sense of tribal identity, with favourable emotionally charged characteristics authenticated by a tribal narrative”, a narrative provided by the rediscovery of Tacitus’ Germania, a Roman text that depicted German people as “rough, brave warrior tribes” who had “never been tainted by intermarriage with other peoples” (Ibid). As a result, a distinct German racial identity was theorised. Furthermore, as Burleigh and Wipperman note, the Teutomania phenomenon became entwined with the philosophy of Johann Herder, specifically “his claim that each ‘nation’ disposed of a specific ‘national character’ and ‘national spirit’ gradually acquired exclusive overtones”. This unification of a racial identity with the German national identity resulted in a stereotype of German people as “bearers of civilisation” (1991: 25-26).

Battle of Grunwald by Jan Matejko (1878), a depiction of the Teutonic Knights in battle in 1410