Cultural Aspects of National Socialism (2/24/1941)
The final proposal for the ISR's Germany-project.
Editor’s Remarks: Reconstructing CANS.
“Cultural Aspects of National Socialism” (hereafter: CANS) was the ISR’s final attempt to secure external funding for their long-planned “Germany-project,” which they first mentioned as early as their 1938 program and began drafting in 1939 alongside the earliest outlines for the anti-Semitism research project.
CANS as Compromise-formation.
These remarks directly build off of the introductory editorial remarks published in two previous Substudies posts:
The first of these posts covers the “de-conceptualization” process to which CANS was subjected during a period of intensive revisions under the advisement of the American historian Eugene Anderson; the second identifies the ambivalent concept of democracy as the unifying thread that runs through all of the successive versions of the ISR’s versions of the Germany-project from the Summer of 1939 through the last version of CANS in the Spring of 1941—viz., liberal-democratic capitalist societies have reached a crisis-point in which they are forced to decide between fighting for true democracy or endlessly engendering its opposite: socialism or barbarism. (The specific conceptual idiom the early Frankfurt School used to discuss this historical threshold is the consistently misunderstood notion of “late capitalism.”) Taken together, these points give us a clearer picture of the revision process for CANS: the de-conceptualization of CANS was driven by the attempt to smooth the ambivalence from the concept of democracy at its core.
As Roderick Stackelberg (1987) argues, in every case that significant revisions were made, there was “a weakening of the dialectical notion of National Socialism as a movement that grew to fruition within liberal institutions rather than conquering them from without.”1 This is particularly evident in the revisions to “Anti-Christianity,” one of the most compromised sections, especially when compared to the least compromised sections, Adorno’s “Literature, Art, and Music” and Löwenthal’s “Mass Culture,” which John D. Rockefeller Jr. would, unsurprisingly, single out as particularly offensive.2 As Stackelberg remarks, “if the ostensible aim of [‘Anti-Christianity’ in] the final proposal was to trace the anti-Christian antecedents of National Socialism, the original version advances the suggestion that tendencies within Christianity itself contributed to Nazism,” a task for which Horkheimer originally recruited Nietzsche himself—against the latter’s reception by National Socialism.3 Anderson admonished Horkheimer not to “make it an ideological study […] but use Nietzsche as a manifestation” of ‘Anti-Christianity’ instead.4 Though the final draft of the proposal suggests that Nietzsche’s ideas have been “distorted” by National Socialism to a certain extent, the question of what in Nietzsche’s thought made him on the one hand susceptible to cooptation by the National Socialists and on the other hand the severest possible critic of their “chauvinistic nationalism”—this is removed from the section entirely. Nietzsche is presented as a means by which National Socialism attacked the modern German traditions of Christian thought from the outside, or “the way in which National Socialism tries to mold the religious feelings of the population to its own needs.” The effect of the revisions is precisely the kind of un-self-enlightened enlightenment, incapable of reflexively appropriating the regressive consequences of its self-professed progressive character, that Dialectic of Enlightenment would be written to rectify.
Stackelberg further points out that while the enlightened forces of German social life, and particularly the aspiration to become a modernized liberal-democratic capitalist country, are largely absolved from any responsibility in the development of fascism, Anderson makes the strong recommendation that whenever a proto-fascist or Nazi organization, publisher, or political movement is mentioned—and particularly if the ‘proto-fascist’ outfit in question is quasi-liberal—a “left-wing” example of the same tendencies be listed as well.5 In his study of CANS, Stackelberg effectively subscribes to the “long farewell” interpretive convention of the development of early critical theory in the 1940s—viz., of the ISR core’s increasing isolation, institutionally and theoretically, from both empirical social research and from Marxism. What is unique about his essay is that he treats the revisions to CANS as a microcosm of the ‘farewell’ to Marxism he assumes becomes more or less complete well before the publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947. The problem with Stackelberg’s study of CANS isn’t that he misrepresents the nature of the compromises made in the revision process, but that his model for interpreting the revisions to CANS as the removal of dialectical ambivalence in fact applies to every single research proposal and report the ISR would author for the rest of the 1940s. To the same extent the ISR feels compelled to perform the same self-censorship in each proposal and report they present to potential or actual American patrons of their work in the 1940s, the purported ‘farewell’ to Marxism never truly occurs. If it had, they would not have needed to make last-minute revisions to the manuscript for Dialectic of Enlightenment in the summer of 1946 removing the majority of references to “monopoly” (capitalism) to avoid accusations of being Soviet agents that were being made more and more frequently in the hostile environment of the postwar Red Scare.6
In a letter to William and Charlotte Dieterle from early March, 1941, when Horkheimer is still optimistic about the chances CANS will be approved by the Rockefeller Foundation, he refers enthusiastically to the “strenuous” but “fruitful” collaboration with Anderson on the revisions and remarks that the process should become “a kind of model” for the ISR going forward.7 In a letter to Adorno dated June 23rd, 1941, written shortly after both CANS and Adorno’s independent proposal submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation for a music-sociological study had been summarily rejected, Horkheimer presents the process as a whole, from the obligatory compromises in revision to the ultimate judgment passed on the ISR’s program in rejection, as an instantiation of the same logic of social control (viz., of the racket) CANS was originally meant to comprehensively criticize:
The rejection of your grant proposal seems to me to constitute proof of the fact that the institute will never be able to expect anything from the “outside.” The sign from on high that even this individual grant is to be denied makes it easy for us to figure out how the board operates. In the decisive meeting in which the project came up someone stood up (or didn’t stand up, as the case may be) and argued something like the following: “We know these people from their time in Europe. Here's a report from our representative based on reports of Mr. Marr, Mr. Salomon, and other Frankfurt University professors. The document is, of course, twelve years old, but what's the record of these people in this country anyway? It only confirms the old testimony that we're dealing with a group of friends who don’t want to let anyone else see their cards and who have little to do with genuine science. They have provided proof neither that they truly pursue social research nor that they want to fit in properly with life here. What we’ve heard about their disreputable mindset is confirmed by their organizational setup. They haven't at all accommodated to local customs, according to which the director of every scientific institution—truly, of every one—and, along with him, the other members of the institution are dependent on a board of well-known businessmen, not only nominally but actually. One doesn't know how and for what purposes money is spent here; one can only guess, based on the mindset of these gentlemen. In any case, I'm against supporting this.”8 The speech probably sounded something like that and consisted of two brief phrases or lasted half an hour, depending on the speaker’s familiarity with the details. —But I view this as the surface. Underneath it is hidden a much more common context: the universal law of monopoly society. In this society even science is controlled by trusted insiders. They are part of the same elite as the economic interests, and the names of scholars in this area do not reappear less frequently than the names of the big directors of industrial advisory boards. Whatever does not absolutely submit to the monopoly—body and soul—is deemed a “wild” enterprise and is, one way or another, destroyed—even at the cost of sacrifices. The judgment that the newcomer is immoral is probably based on the prevailing situation since, with the transformation of a form of human relations, once viewed as beneath contempt, to the characteristic form of society, its characteristics will set the moral standard. We justifiably laugh at the ideologue who speaks about a gang, referring to how it takes control of protection money from laundries in a section of the city, when what’s at issue is “the protection” of countries and control over Europe or over industries and the state. The scale simply does alter the quality. And shouldn’t what is justified for the broadcasting industry and other custodians of the objective spirit be fair for science as well? —We want to escape control, remain independent, and determine the content and extent of our production ourselves! We are immoral. The person who conforms, on the other hand, may even commit extravagances, even political ones, at least occasionally. That’s not so bad and can even be desirable. Occasionally, those who fit in are also served a warning, more for disciplinary reasons than out of fear. Fitting in, however, would mean in this instance, as in others, primarily making concessions, many of them, giving material guarantees that submission is sincere, lasting, and irrevocable. Fitting in means surrendering, whether it turns out favorably or not. —Therefore, our efforts are hopeless, as even appeals to other foundations would be—their variety is just a pretense, and we should be careful about calling attention to ourselves anyplace else. But had this not all played itself out on such a high level, Mr. Marshall would have told you: “Abandon these outsiders quickly, as quickly as possible, otherwise you'll go down with them. I'm advising you to do this with good intentions. If you do it our way, your chances won't be that bad. Now you must do it our way, the orderly, honorable, proper way.” This, of course, is what he actually meant to the extent he had an inkling! —And even the institute as a whole can benefit from this; it just has to deposit its entire endowment, including future income, in a financial institution that is subordinate to a board, not only juristically but also in very real terms, whose members inspire Mr. Willits’s trust. The board would be active in the politics of appointments, in production, and in the liquidation of wealth and would tend to the necessary Aryani– ... I’m sorry! ... the necessary Americanization of the institute.9 Dare we be shocked or even surprised by this? It's all part of the forms in which reproduction takes place during this period. These are forms of domination to which, in terms of their productivity, not only negative but also positive significance is to be attributed. The principle of civilization that we know from history is identical to domination. Their separation is the new puzzle, and we don't know whether and how it will be solved. These theoretical relationships should be preserved even in our reactions that are conditioned by sensitivity. Nil admirari—if one should happen to experience the living conditions of society oneself instead of always only the others doing so. The members of the masses are called “idiots” because nothing is left for them but admirari: respect or hatred, as opposed to the thinking that is found among equals, among patricians. We, of course, find ourselves in an intermediate state that is appropriate for neither one nor the other. Perhaps this was always the situation of theory—even for Marx. ...10
If CANS nevertheless became “a kind of model” for the ISR, it was because they would internalize Anderson’s admonishing recommendations, as well as Rockefeller Jr.’s profound resentment over the implication that fascism could break out in America, in all of their subsequent—and, most often, failed—efforts to find patrons for their work in the United States. When in the Summer of 1944, Löwenthal provided Horkheimer with lists of revisions that would need to be made to the manuscript of the Philosophische Fragmente (the earliest version of Dialectic of Enlightenment), he opened his list of suggested revisions for the most “serious problems” in the content of the text by expressing concern that it was full of “formulations which may bring about the impression that democratic society is everywhere conceived as a preceding stage to fascism.”11 In one respect, Löwenthal’s concern was justified for intra-critical-theoretical reasons: Adorno and Horkheimer’s ambivalent concept of democracy did not maintain that all liberal democracies would inevitably become fascist, but that democracy had been thrown into question between, to the one side, the economic and social crises engendered by capitalist liberal democracies and, to the other, the pseudo-solution or false alternative to actually existing liberalism promised by fascist demagogues. (This is not to say that Löwenthal and Horkheimer always agreed about how to conceptualize or present the connection between liberal democracy and fascism, however.) In another respect, however, Löwenthal’s concern was purely ‘tactical’: an almost word-for-word repetition of Anderson’s critical comments on the earliest drafts for CANS.
While Stackelberg provides us with a model for the self-censorship the ISR would practice throughout the 1940s, the fact that the ISR continued to censor itself so aggressively during that period itself requires an explanation. If the lesson Horkheimer draws from the revision process and fateful rejection of CANS was “the fact that the institute will never be able to expect anything from the ‘outside,’” and, further, that “our efforts are hopeless, as even appeals to other foundations would be,” then why didn’t the ISR begin to moderate its ambitions when drafting future projects? Why repeat the same process whenever the ISR was in need of a new source of external funding?
In a letter dated January 25th, 1945, Adorno informs Horkheimer about the progress he’s made on the application for extending the funding for the Berkeley-study on prejudice (the results of which would be published in 1950 as The Authoritarian Personality), describing his proposed expansion of the study into research on the economic factors of social prejudice, the “objective presuppositions” of the Berkeley-study, as “the implementation of the German studies carried out by the Institute in the first year to the American situation and their continuation with genuinely American material.”12 After the rejection of CANS in mid-1941, the ISR may have given up on sending out new drafts of the Germany-project, but for all of the compromises they were forced to make in revising it, they never really give up on the Germany-project itself.
Reading Key 1: CANS as Critique of Capitalist Social Domination.
The importance of the Germay-project for the self-conception of the ISR (and what would remain of it after its effective dissolution in 1942/43) is clear from Horkheimer’s letter dated March 10th, 1941, to Harold Laski (1893-1950), British political economist and militant Labour-party politician who’d first referred Franz Neumann to the ISR, with both the outline for CANS and instructions for reading it against the grain of its compromises.
Dear Dr. Laski:
The outline of our most recent research project, which I send you here, gives me an opportune pretext to resume contact with you after an unduly long silence on my part. This silence may be partly explained, though not excused, by the situation. Our sad experience that the world is actually as horrid as we imagined it to be, is nowise tempered by the fact that we imagined it this way.
In addition we had a very heavy personal loss to suffer: our staff member, Walter Benjamin, committed suicide after an unsuccessful attempt to cross the Franco-Spanish border. He was one of the most productive men in our circle and, moreover, according to my conviction, one of the very few independent and spontaneous thinkers left. But all this does not imply that we have become passive and gaze into the flames, hands in our laps. You can very well imagine that, in a practical way, we are able to do very little for the time being, except to attempt to pull from the hell of the German orbit as many of our endangered friends as we can. We are making every effort. But the impotence of the individual, and the individual institution, in [the] face of the juggernaut, comes more clearly to our consciousness every day.
So we try to continue our theoretical work tant bien que mal (for better or worse), and to bring our problems as close to reality as possible. Everything that stays aloof appears more superfluous today than ever before, whereas one burns one’s fingers as soon as one snatches at the real questions.
I have attempted to state some of my more basic ideas concerning the present situation in an essay that bears the simple title, “The Authoritarian State” (Autoritärer Staat). For the time being, it remains unpublished. It pursues the line of the article, “The Jews and Europe” (Die Juden und Europa), published in the last German language issue of our periodical. Perhaps it came to your attention. In the meantime, we have started publishing the journal in English, under the title, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. But it will take us some time before we are able to express our ideas adequately in English—that is to say in such a way that language per se conveys some of the meaning we hope to attach to it.
It appears to me that the matter of the authoritarian state is actually the most important we have to ponder. I visualize authoritarianism as a universal system of repressive domination, aiming fundamentally to preserve obsolescent forms of society by ruthlessly keeping down all their inherent antagonisms. But one has only to set down that it is “important” to ponder this and one sees how grotesque such a statement has become by now. Language, and in a certain sense even thinking, are powerless and inadequate in [the] face of what appears to be in store for mankind.
It is with such a sous entendu and with all these qualifications that I beg you to read our new project on “Cultural Aspects of National Socialism.” Like most of such projects, it had to be drafted rather hurriedly, and the conditions were not entirely favorable. It is influenced throughout by the task set us, to set forth what American democracy might learn from the fate of Germany. The limitations imposed are obvious, yet I hope you will find something in it that will not be entirely boring.
Your last two books circulated in the Institute and have been read with great interest. It is needless for us to say how very much we agree with the conclusions of Where do We Go from Here? We sincerely hope that the historical way out, which you point, will be used not only in England but elsewhere.
Should you find the time to write us a few lines we would be most happy and proud.
—Very sincerely yours,13
In the letter, Horkheimer connects CANS directly to two of the most intransigently communistic texts he would ever author: “The Jews and Europe” (1939), which the council communist journal International Council Correspondence (ICC) helmed by Karl Korsch and Paul Mattick would recommend in 1940 as “the best short exposition of fascism,”14 and “The Authoritarian State” (1942), “which, with its defense of worker’s councils, was perhaps the most politically radical essay [Horkheimer] had written.”15 Though Horkheimer confesses in his letter to Laski that he feels the theoretical perspective offered in these essays—on the development of the authoritarian state from capitalist forms of social domination—is somewhat inadequate in the face of the juggernaut, the fact that he nevertheless claims the same perspective as his own is a testament to what he’d previously called “the most dogged unswervingness [which] is needed not to lose sight of those tendencies of social life which we once recognized as those which are most fundamental through the chaos of facts.”16 Just as much as “The Jews and Europe” and “The Authoritarian State,” CANS is a sign of the refusal of the critical theorists to “become passive and gaze into the flames, hands in our laps,” and to instead fulfill “the task set us, to set forth what American democracy might learn from the fate of Germany.” This is the attitude of understanding with which Horkheimer asks Laski to read through CANS, which, despite the fact that “[t]he limitations imposed [on it] are obvious” in the end result, he hopes Laski will not find “entirely boring.” If the antipathy towards the proposal by the board of the Rockefeller Foundation is any indication, CANS was not nearly boring enough.
CANS as Freudo-Marxism.
In earlier English drafts of the “Introduction” to CANS, the authors write:
[D]emocracy per se by no means guarantees the rights of the demos. […] Since American democracy, though its foundations are incomparably deeper than Germany’s were, may not be entirely beyond this danger, our project hopes to make a modest contribution to American interest. It will analyze the powers that threaten to pervert the consciousness of a democratic people into its opposite. Our approach is based on the conviction that what we have to face is not a fated, inescapable, and irrational ‘wave of the future,’ but is rather something due to social forces open to scientific investigation.
It is only in the earlier German drafts of the “Introduction,” however, that the ISR’s own, unique approach to ‘scientific investigation’ is expressly stated. It is one of the clearest professions of the ISR’s distinctive tack on Freudo-Marxism:
There is no scarcity of scientific contributions to the end of insight into the non-political-economic “issues” of National Socialism. In general, however, these contributions either concentrate on the problem of propaganda or are of a purely psychological kind (e.g., W. Reich’s Massenpsychologie des Faschismus). Without underestimating the importance of the problem of propaganda, we are of the opinion that [analysis of] this alone is by no means adequate to the task of explaining the changes in consciousness of the German people, and, moreover, that it is to a large extent description of a mere epiphenomenon, and that the effect of Hitler’s propaganda on the German people is more an expression of the cultural crisis than one of its decisive causes. The belief that Hitler “seduced” the masses, through advanced propaganda technique, into opposition toward their own interests seems to us naive. Instead, we shall attempt to show the deeper conditions that account for why they fell prey to this propaganda in the first place. To this end, psychological methods—in particular, that of depth-psychology—will be used to a considerable extent. But “psychology” alone does not seem sufficient to us. The Germans who turned to Hitler did not respond merely as individuals, nor even as neurotic, powerless individuals submissive to authority, but rather under the pressure of objective social and cultural forces and in the context of an entire culture of a determinate kind subject to determinate ‘changes.’ Only if we succeed in presenting, on a fundamental level, the interplay between these objective cultural powers and the individuals at their mercy do we believe we can actually, substantively solve the problem we have posed.
In a letter to Franz Neumann dated March 23rd, 1943 concerning the latest draft of the research proposal to the American Jewish Committee (AJC) for funding for their “Studies in Anti-Semitism” project, Horkheimer defends his use of the term “socio-psychological” to describe the ISR’s approach to the problem of prejudice because it gives them the freedom to pursue the same Freudo-Marxist program—viz., investigation of the asymmetrical intermediation of economic relations and psychological formations—outlined in the above-quoted draft of the CANS introduction:
I know very well that you are skeptical with regard to the role of psychology in social problems. Your skepticism is not deeper than mine. On the other hand it looks like the Committee had liked my draft on a “socio-psychological” approach to our subject. I used that awful word because it leaves us a great freedom in our actual research. It also appears to me that the Committee’s fight aims to a great extent not directly at the economic foundation which is inaccessible to its forces, but at human behavior which, though rooted in economic relations, may be influenced somewhat by legislature, education, propaganda, a.s.o. There are at least some so-called psychological conceptions or rather misconceptions which should be analyzed in order to evaluate the Committee’s efforts. What kind of research do you think could do the most good in this direction?17
As Eva-Maria Ziege (2009; 2014) has argued, the ISR’s social research proposals and reports in the 1940s are characterized by the conscious adoption of an “esoteric form of communication” used both to conceal and, to those ‘in the know,’ exemplify a “secret orthodoxy” in their partisanship to “a distinct school of Freudian Marxism.”18 By way of demonstrating the continued relevance of this Freudo-Marxist paradigm for the Frankfurt School following the rejection of CANS for addressing the problem of investigating “the powers that threaten to pervert the consciousness of a democratic people into its opposite” (the basic orientation of their speculative proposals from 1945 through 1949 for postwar German reconstruction), I’ve included my own transcription of Horkheimer’s 1943 review of Richard M. Brickner’s Is Germany Incurable?, “The Psychology of Nazidom.” In the review, Horkheimer criticizes Brickner’s psychologistic misapprehension of the asymmetrical character of the intermediation of economic relations and psychological formations. The review is an atypically clear application of the Freudo-Marxist core paradigm of the 1940s Frankfurt School for a more popular audience.
CANS in the Archive.
In the Max-Horkheimer-Archiv [MHA], there are four Bände, containers 696-699, reserved entirely for the materials generated during the ISR’s revision of CANS before it was submitted for review to the Rockefeller Foundation in late early March 1941.19 The material below is divided into three main parts: first, a transcription of the final version of the proposal dated February 24th, 1941;20 second, my own reconstructions, which involved both transcriptions of earlier English drafts and translations of the earliest German drafts, of two individual sections of the proposal: the “Introduction” to the proposal as a whole and Horkheimer’s thematic section on “Anti-Christianity” in particular.21 The third part is a reconstruction of the supplementary memorandum for CANS. The memorandum seems to have been written more than a month after the proposal was first submitted, and with the purpose of providing the reviewers a clearer picture of the materials the ISR would have access to, or collect, for the project and their methods—in particular the method for the interview process for other German refugees and the principles for creating a “Living Record.”
Method of Reconstruction.
Because there are more than 26 different drafts, in both English and German, of the same individual sections of CANS, I had to develop a unique approach in reconstruction to both avoid redundancy and highlight variation. Thus, in reconstructing the two earlier variants of the individual sections I selected—again, the “Introduction” and Horkheimer’s “Anti-christianity”—I adopted the following procedure.
Step 1: Choose one English draft of a given section of the ‘final’ version of the proposal (2/24/1941) both most complete in its form and most divergent in its content relative to its ‘finalized’ counterpart.
Step 2: Use the chosen English draft as a new point of departure for choosing one earlier German draft of the same section according to the same criteria (completeness-form; divergence-content).
This is particularly evident in the reconstruction of the “Introduction” below, which consists of a transcription of one, earlier English draft and a translation of one, earlier German draft of the section. For the reconstruction of the “Anti-Christianity” section, I found my own two-step model insufficient because of the greater variations between each of Horkheimer’s individual drafts—particularly the German drafts. Accordingly, I added another step:
Step 3: After completing steps 1 and 2, check the alternate versions of both the earlier English draft (chosen in Step 1) and the earlier German draft (chosen in Step 2), then create a ‘composite’ by integrating the most significant variations in form/content of the section from these alternates in both English and German.
This accounts for the fact that there are three variants of “Anti-Christianity” included below: the first, a composite transcription from two English drafts, both of which were titled “Nietzsche and the Struggle against Christianity”; the second, a translation of a German draft titled simply “Nietzsche”; the third, a composite translation of two versions of a German draft titled “Anti-Christianity and Nietzsche.”
Tasks for Future Reconstruction.
In the near future, I hope to finish the full reconstruction (or de-compromising) of CANS in the interest of recovering the more radical critique of liberal and social democracy that was all too obvious in the earlier drafts of each section: Adorno’s unique methodological reflections on the investigation of aesthetic productions as “unconscious historiography,”22 Löwenthal’s sociology of liberal Weimar press under the aspect of conflicts between industrial and financial-commercial capital,23 Neumann’s unsparing critique of the role of the reformist labor movement in facilitating the rise of fascism,24 and Marcuse’s references to the ambivalence of the young post-war generation that clung “unconsciously and quasi-neurotically, to the very things it attacked.”25 In any case, despite all of the limitations of the below reconstruction, I hope you will find something in it that will not be entirely boring!
—James/Crane (7/13/2025)
Contents.
I. Cultural Aspects of National Socialism (2/24/1941).
BUREAUCRACY — Pollock.
MASS CULTURE — Lowenthal.
ANTI-CHRISTIANITY — Horkheimer.
THE WAR AND POST-WAR GENERATION — Marcuse.
IDEOLOGICAL PERMEATION OF LABOR AND THE NEW MIDDLE CLASSES — Neumann.
LITERATURE, ART, AND MUSIC — Adorno.
II. Earlier Variants of Individual Sections.
A. “Introduction.”
“Introduction.” (English Draft)
“Introduction” (German Draft).
B. “Anti-Christianity.”
“Nietzsche and the Struggle against Christianity.” (English Draft)
“Nietzsche.” (German Draft 2)
“Anti-Christianity and Nietzsche.” (German Draft 1)
III. Memorandum to supplement the Research Project “Cultural Aspects of National Socialism.”
IV. Horkheimer—The Psychology of Nazidom [Review of: Brickner’s Is Germany Incurable?] (1943)26
I. Cultural Aspects of National Socialism (2/24/1941).
The research project on CULTURAL ASPECTS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM is designed to fulfill a dual purpose: to contribute to the psychological attack against totalitarian Germany and to elucidate one problem for Europe’s post-war reconstruction, namely, the attitude of the German people towards their regime.
The breakdown of the imperial German system in 1918 was not so much the result of military and economic defeat as the consequence of the complete disruption of Germany’s national morale. A military defeat need not necessarily lead to revolution. Germany’s defeat resulted in a revolution because of the superiority of the Wilsonian theory of New Freedom, his fourteen points, and because of the passionate faith of the masses of the German people in the validity of the democratic doctrine. This much is recognized even by General Ludendorff in his war memoirs.
Today, two different trends appear in discussions of the attitude of the German people to National Socialism. While the one tries to drive a wedge between the National Socialist party and the people, the other believes every German to be in fact, or at least potentially, a National Socialist giving full backing to the regime’s imperialist aims. It is obvious that this problem is of decisive significance. The character of the psychological struggle against Germany must be determined by the answer to this problem. Scientifically designed propaganda within Germany can only be successful only if the degree of the permeation of the German people with the National Socialist ideology is ascertained. European reconstruction will be largely determined by whether the German people are inherently aggressive and imperialistic or whether they are merely tools in the hands of an aggressive minority.
Our project is centered around these problems. We hope to ascertain the real facts by an analysis of those cultural processes which led to National Socialism and the ideological ties that keep National Socialism together.
The problems are set out in the outline which is the joint work of Professor Eugene Anderson of the American University, Washington, D.C., and of the Institute of Social Research, affiliated with Columbia University.
A supplementary statement, available upon request, discusses the research method which the group intends to apply. This supplement devotes considerable attention to the utilization of the collective experience of those German refugees who played some role in Republican Germany and in the underground opposition to early National Socialist Germany. A provisional list of these refugees who are to be questioned is supplied. Finally the additional memorandum discusses the extent to which our proposed study differs from existing publications on National Socialism. For this purpose an extensive bibliography of English works is included.
Convinced that such a research project will be of value only if the needs of the U.S. are fully considered, the study group has set up for each section of the project advisory committees as follows:
Bureaucracy: Lindsay Rogers, Columbia University (Chairman); W. Richter, Chicago; Leon C. Marshall, American University, Washington, D.C.
Mass Culture: Robert M. MacIver, Columbia University (Chairman); Theodore Abel, Columbia University; Frank Mankiewicz, College of the City of New York.
Anti-Christianity: Reinhold Neibhur, Union Theological Seminary (Chairman); Paul Tillich, Union Theological Seminary; Adolf Keller, World Council of Churches, New York.
The War and Post-War Generation: Robert S. Lynd, Columbia University (Chairman); Robert Ulich, Harvard University; William H. Kilpatrick, Teachers College, Columbia U.
Ideological Permeation of Labor and the Middle Classes: Harold D. Lasswell, Washington D.C. (Chairman); Max Lerner, Williams College; Alfred Vagts, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.
Literature, Art, and Music: John B. Whyte, Brooklyn College (Chairman); Mayer Schapiro, Columbia University; Ernst Krenek, Vassar College.
The members of the advisory committees have pledged themselves to cooperate actively in the formulation of the frame of reference of the questions to be put to the German refugees and in the final formulation of the results.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
(The name in parentheses indicates the scholar directing the work for the section concerned. The entire group will assist in the preparation of each section.)
INTRODUCTION.
BUREAUCRACY — Frederick Pollock.
MASS CULTURE — Leo Lowenthal.
ANTI-CHRISTIANITY — Max Horkheimer.
THE WAR AND POST-WAR GENERATION — Herbert Marcuse.
IDEOLOGICAL PERMEATION OF LABOR AND THE NEW MIDDLE CLASSES — Franz Neumann.
LITERATURE, ART, AND MUSIC — Theodor W. Adorno.27
INTRODUCTION.
The project aims to provide an understanding of National Socialism by placing the movement in its cultural setting. It is guided by the interest to determine the forces that produce totalitarian society and hold it together. The time has arrived to analyze in all its aspects this menace to the value system of Western civilization and to do so with the different instruments science places in our hands. The economic problems of totalitarianism are covered by other studies now in progress, but the cultural problems have not yet been treated on the basis of an integrative method. They will form the subject matter of this project.
The studies proposed in this memorandum focus on typical problems and situations in order to elucidate basic processes. They do not aim to cover the whole field of National Socialist culture. The topics, however, have not been casually chosen, but have grown out of the intellectual interests and the actual experience which the scholars participating have acquired in their collaboration over a period of years. They will draw upon their combined knowledge of Germany and the cultural changes taking place throughout the world. The sketches that follow indicate some of the problems that will be dealt with in each section of the project.
Bureaucracy. The decisive problem is to determine where the seat of political power lies in contemporary Germany. An analysis of the origin, function, and social composition of the various types of National Socialist bureaucracy may enlighten us as to the relation between the party and the civil service and may help us to learn what conflicts can arise out of this relation.
Mass Culture. The uniformity of life under National Socialism contrasts sharply with the diversity and richness of individualistic culture. It is an urgent problem to determine and examine the factors that prepared public opinion for authoritarianism prior to its advent to political power. The non-political section of the daily press, the illustrated magazines, and the popular biographies may play a considerable role in transforming independent men into beings ready to surrender their individual rights, and in maintaining such a state among them.
Anti-Christianity. The anti-Christian activities of National Socialism go far beyond its anti-church policy and may be an expression of social currents that lay deep in the German nation. Why did the efforts to combat anti-Christian ideologies meet with failure? An investigation into the specific nature of German anti-Christian thought, its exponents and the groups supporting them, should help to solve this problem.
The War and Post-War Generation. “Youth in Distress” is a key group in every totalitarian movement. A considerable section of National Socialist leadership has been molded by the youth movement. What definite part did such factors as economic insecurity, the disintegration of the family, and educational shortcomings play in building the totalitarian mentality among the youth?
Ideological Permeation of Labor and the New Middle Classes. The strength of National Socialism depends largely upon the degree to which its philosophy has penetrated great masses of people. Precise conclusions as to the resistance of labor and the new middle classes to the Regime may be indicated by changes in the National Socialist slogans, the National Socialist manipulation of pre-Hitlerian doctrines, and the shifting direction of the terroristic apparatus.
Literature, Art, and Music. The intellectuals as a group play a major part in the rise of totalitarianism as well as in the struggle against it. Their ambivalent role in Germany will be inferred through an interpretation of their works. Art under totalitarianism, more than any other government-controlled activity, may yield a clue to the forces and tendencies prevalent among the population.
These problems are the more disquieting since they arose within the framework of a democracy, the very progressive constitution of which gave every opportunity to the people to obtain representation for their actual interests. It appears that the consciousness of the people had been modified to such an extent that they voted against their own rights, thus inducing collapse of all that democracy stands for. Since American democracy may not be entirely beyond this danger, though its foundations are incomparably deeper than Germany’s were, our project hopes to make a contribution to American interest. It will analyze the powers that threaten to pervert the consciousness of a democratic people into its opposite. Our approach is based on the conviction that what we have to face is not a fated, inescapable, and irrational “wave of the future,” but is rather something due to social factors open to scientific investigation.
The studies will be largely based on the rich material in the possession of the Institute of Social Research, some of which is not available elsewhere. It will be supplemented by interviews with German refugees from all walks of life. In view of the fact that the authoritarian governments are rapidly falsifying the picture of European culture and particularly in view of the German regime’s willful destruction of all kinds of documents, it appears the more timely to utilize material and information available in this country.
The members of the group recognize that objectivity will be difficult to preserve in these studies, but they feel that their experience in countries other than Germany should enable them to interpret on a comparative basis the course of events in Germany. They also believe that social science methodology has provided some means and developed some habits of control over one’s prejudices and assumptions.
Dr. Eugene N. Anderson has assumed the co-directorship of this project and has already collaborated in the preparation of this outline. He will, jointly with Dr. Horkheimer, supervise the work of the entire group and will continuously advise in shaping the material to the best uses of the American intellectual public. The Institute’s affiliation with Columbia University may afford an opportunity to draw in qualified students and to make them acquainted with the methods applied.
BUREAUCRACY.
Director: FREDERICK POLLOCK.
This study will discuss the character and significance of bureaucratism during the Weimar Democracy and under National Socialism. It will deal with all types of bureaucracy, governmental as well as industrial (including labor and party) and will to some extent contrast the role of bureaucratism in Germany with that in other Western countries.
I. The mere numerical extension of the public servants or salaried employees is not in itself enough to characterize a condition of bureaucratism. Therefore we shall endeavor to dissect the concept of bureaucratic rule into its constituent elements.
The relevance of distinctions in the method of appointment, promotion, dismissal, and pensioning for the creation of a bureaucratic type will constitute the first group of investigations. We shall attempt to compare American and German methods.
There must exist certain political constellations allowing us to speak of the rule of bureaucracy. Of special importance in this connection will be the waning of parliamentary legislative power and the decay of the influence which parliamentary committees have over the administration.
We shall try to determine whether the control of positions of political power by the bureaucracy is sufficient or whether such control has to be supplemented by that of certain positions of economic and social power.
Psychological considerations may play a considerable role. They may be operative in two directions. First, we must examine whether the German bureaucracy (in contrast e.g. to the American one) developed a caste spirit which marked it off from the public and, if so, what historical forces shaped it. Secondly, we shall try to determine the reaction of the public towards the bureaucracy. One of the many problems involved here will be the character and the extent of the security which the civil services enjoyed and the reaction it produced in the various strata of the people.
We shall have to work out a typology of the German bureaucracy. This typology will distinguish between the public, party, and the private bureaucracies, between the huge masses of the lower civil servants and the higher ones, between the managerial bureaucracy in the industrial organizations and big corporations and the labor bureaucracy within the parties and the trade unions, etc.
This typology will be utilized for an intensive study of the interaction between public, party, and private bureaucracies.
II. The growth of the bureaucracy, in numbers and functions, during the first world war, had begun to shift power to the bureaucrats and threatened to widen the gulf between the civil service and the public. The attempts of the Weimar Democracy to draw the state machinery closer to the people by devices supplementing the parliamentary system will be investigated under three categories:
Appointing non-careerists to the civil service. This was unusual in the Empire. The methods used and their success or failure will be set forth in special studies of the Prussian, the Thuringian and the Bavarian developments.
Extending the self-government of municipalities as well as of the administrative bodies handling economic and social matters, e.g., the social security administration. Success or failure of these attempts to establish the principles of a pluralistic collectivism within the parliamentary system will be studied in the developments of the respective agencies (arbitration boards, labor courts, etc.)
The growth in the function of private bureaucratization (cartels, trade associations, giant corporations, trade unions) will be studied through the following problems:
The economic sectors in which this process is most conspicuous;
The role played by the universal trend toward a split between ownership and control;
The methods of selection for the higher bureaucratic positions.
III. At the end of 1932 the political power of the ministerial and army bureaucracies had attained heights beyond any previously held. We propose to investigate the character and background of this development and the relation between it and the destruction of self-government, the decline of parliamentary supremacy in legislation, the decline of parliamentary control of administration, and of the budget right.
The attitude of the civil service toward parliamentary democracy will be investigated, with particular attention paid to the following problems:
The psychological effects of bureaucratic power;
The efforts of the Republic to imbue the bureaucracy with a democratic spirit and the methods it developed for selecting and training young civil servants;
The social composition of the bureaucracy.
The discussion will be used to clarify the question as to whether and in what degree the anti-democratic slogans met with the approval of the bureaucracy.
The role of the German teachers as civil servants will be compared with the political role of teachers in France and the U.S.A.
An analysis of the criticisms that the various political parties advanced against the bureaucracy will help to clarify the situation during the Weimar Republic.
IV. We shall analyze the changing attitude of National Socialism toward the civil service and its function and role, dividing the discussion into three periods:
In the first stage, up to June 1934, we shall deal with the rapid growth of the influence of the permanent bureaucracies upon National Socialism and its ideology, and with the economic and social reasons for this development, and with the relation between the party and the old bureaucracy. (The doctrine of the totalitarian state.)
In the second stage we shall analyze the complete break with the Prussian tradition which appears in the subordination of the state bureaucracy to that of the party. (The doctrine of the “movement’s state.”)
In the third stage we shall investigate the National Socialist theory concerning the relationship between the three originally competing bureaucracies (state, party, estates). Then we shall discuss the new type of bureaucratic leadership which seems in the process of making. This type is composed, it would appear, of the state bureaucracy, the party bureaucracy and the estates bureaucracies (industrial managers, cartel officers, etc.). We shall try to find out where the decisive social, political and economic discussions are reached, what the social composition of the newly emerging bureaucracy is, and what the principles and processes are for selecting, training and indoctrinating the younger generation.
MASS CULTURE.
Director: LEO LOWENTHAL.
This will be a study of the character of the mass culture prevalent in contemporary Germany and of the emergence of it out of the diversity of cultural types found in Germany before the World War. It will discuss how far attempts to prevent the formation of a mass culture succeeded or failed during the Weimar Republic and in what respect this culture provided a foundation for National Socialism. A study will be made of the patterns of mass thought and action by way of their manifestations in certain newspapers and popular biographies. One such pattern involving ideas of purity and corruption will be studied in detail. The manifestations will be related to the conditioning background of industrial capitalism and urbanism as basic factors in producing the mass culture, and to the defeat in the World War and the effects of the inflation, as additional factors especially significant for Germany.
The newspapers will be selected in such a way as to cover representative social groups in Germany. The contents of the papers will be analyzed in order to ask whether or not there emerged mass-patterns irrespective of party, class and interest. The impact of big industry upon newspaper policy, incident upon a change in ownership, will be studied in the case of the Frankfurter Zeitung, a characteristic democratic paper which claimed to safeguard individualism but which nonetheless had to make concessions to prevalent mass tendencies. The Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, as the most popular illustrated weekly, and Vorwärts, the Social Democratic organ, are two others that will be used. The reciprocal influence of advertisers and reading public on the one hand and of newspaper policies in the selection of news items and the formulation of popular culture types on the other will particularly be investigated—for example, the enthusiasm for sport, the standardization of taste, modes and habits, the close resemblance between editorial and advertisement, text and picture. In this way light should be thrown on the question of whether the characteristics of man as revealed in totalitarian society were already ripe in the Weimar Republic. A study will be devoted to the National Socialist press (Völkischer Beobachter, Schwarzes Korps, Stürmer). We shall try to find out in how far this press was what it pretended to be: an opposition to the materialism of modern society, to the rule of money and internationalism, and in how far, per contra, it showed the features of the metropolitan press. It will be asked to which impulses and sentiments the National Socialist press appealed and through which mechanisms it attracted particularly certain backward groups of the German population. For this purpose we shall compare the National Socialist press with the anti-rationalistic, sectarian publications which it resembled in the beginnings, the gutter press, the astrology magazines, the natural cure periodicals.
The popular biographies will be analyzed for evidence of current social and cultural ideals. The extent to which their liberalistic ideal of personality expressed common traits with the totalitarian cult of the leader will be discussed, and the methods, style, structure of thought used by the authors will be analyzed in terms of the cultural setting. The social significance, for example, of the interest in great personalities, of the longing for guidance by some heroic figures, of the deep concern with emotional factors, will be brought out, and the direct and specific reaction of the public to these biographies will as far as possible be investigated.
Among the cultural patterns to be studied, those concerned with purity and corruption will be treated in particular. The keen and widespread interest in these two forms will be explained, and the significance of the change in the public attitude toward them will be shown. The forms will be dealt with as possible expressions of the incompatibility of social standards with the economic and political conditions of post-war German society. The political use of scandals, the practical bearing of the attitude toward purity and corruption in both public and private affairs upon the emergence of National Socialism (the relation to racialism, for example), and the peculiar fact that the National Socialists who protested against corruption during the Weimar Republic become themselves arch-corruptionists—all these problems will be discussed.
This study has its specific value for the whole project in the fact that it deals with the intermediary instruments for reflecting and shaping the standards of popular thought and conduct. Even though these instruments are expressions of more basic forces, the popular social forms conditioned by the basic forces are most clearly revealed in them.
ANTI-CHRISTIANITY.
Director: MAX HORKHEIMER.
This study undertakes to explain the anti-Christian trends of National Socialism in their historical as well as ideological significance. We shall try to determine whether or not the anti-Christian tendency of National Socialism reflects a far-reaching change in European culture. Special attention will be given to the relation between such cultural manifestations as industrialization, urbanization, and power politics, on the one hand, and the change in the social position of the Christian religion, on the other.
This section will deal with three main groups of problems.
The historical aspect will be brought to light through an analysis of the anti-Christian movements and activities that have flourished especially since Bismarck established the Reich by force. We shall try to determine and explain the inroads of anti-Christian sentiments among the various strata of the population. A sociological analysis of the role of the church during this period will supplement the discussion.
The ideological roots of the movement will be approached through an analysis of representative writings, such as those of Richard Wagner and particularly Friedrich Nietzsche. By comparing them with the aims voiced in the contemporary popular movements, we shall investigate in how far Nietzsche’s and Wagner’s attitudes made manifest ideas and sentiments that were prevalent among the population.
A study will be made of whether and to what extent the National Socialist system corresponds with Nietzsche’s ideas about replacing Christian morals with a new order of values, and whether and in what ways National Socialism attempts to transform religion according to its own power-purposes. We do not aim to give a survey of church politics under National Socialism, since this has been done expertly by others. We shall try instead to use certain ideas as a basis for a historical sociology of the Christian religion in an era of swift change in moral ideas and practices.
[Under 1]
As documents of the anti-Christian movements we shall scrutinize pamphlets, party programs, leaflets, etc., as well as discussions on this subject in the Reichstag and the different state diets, anti-Christian feeling in the right political wing, the revival of old pagan cults, the struggle against the Old Testament and the Catholic Church will be studied as revealed in the newspapers, speeches of anti-Christian leaders (Reventlov, Hauer), confessions of dissident pastors of this political shade. The expressions of left-wing anti-Christian trends will be analyzed in the anti-religious policy of the Socialist and Communist parties, as crystallized in the Socialist newspapers and theoretical writings of these parties, especially Die neue Zeit (since 1883). Monists and freethinkers figured in the general current and may yield important clues as to the social composition of the anti-Christian groups and influence of the natural sciences on their opinions. An analysis of the content of novels, such as Fontane’s and Raabe’s, may prove helpful to discover anti-Christian tendencies in certain other social groups, such as the army, the teachers, the bureaucracy, the lower middle classes.
[Under 2]
Wagner’s and particularly Nietzsche’s work will be used as outstanding examples of certain anti-Christian traits of the German mentality. Through the analysis of their philosophy we hope to establish the categories of anti-Christian thought which we shall check against those unconsciously prevalent in the present-day German mentality and even in that of certain sections of the population of other countries. Other anti-Christian ideologies that had an inner bearing upon German culture during the last decades (Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Oswald Spengler, Stefan George and his school, Moeller van den Bruck, Ludwig Klages, and Martin Heidegger) will be discussed in this connection. Works officially recognized by National Socialism (Alfred Rosenberg) as well as speeches of National Socialist leaders will be evaluated both linguistically and psychologically in order to determine in how far they are influenced by Nietzsche and to what extent Nietzsche’s ideas are really alive in National Socialist ideology, or whether they have been, either consciously or unconsciously, distorted in it. By showing the relation between Wagner and Nietzsche on the one hand and the currents of popular thought and action on the other, we hope to contribute to an understanding of the social role of the intellectual in modern life.
[Under 3]
We shall investigate the way in which National Socialism tries to mold the religious feelings of the population to its own needs, by an analysis of the schoolbooks, ministerial decrees, teachings in the army, governmental policies concerning the family, and other related media. As a basis for this analysis we shall use the discussions inside the churches during the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism, in particular the material showing the positive and negative influence that the world war and the inflation had on the church and on religious thought in Germany. The doctrines of protestant religious leaders (Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten) and of the promoters of a Catholic Renaissance (Guardini, Przywara, Scheler) and their influence will be studied. The general problem here is to determine whether and in what respect efforts to renovate religious education and to restore the original impulses of Christianity eventually facilitated the acceptance of a new authoritarian scheme. We shall use not only printed and unprinted material but shall also interview German theologians who have taken an outstanding part in German religious life and who are now living in this country. We shall supplement our study of protestant and Catholic religious theories with regard to anti-Christian trends in Germany by a cultural and psychological study of those representative religious leaders who succumbed to the National Socialist doctrine and of those who opposed it.
THE WAR AND POST-WAR GENERATION.
Director: HERBERT MARCUSE.
The problem of this section will be to examine the German youth as a decisive agency through which the fundamental political, social and economic experiences of the war and post-war years transformed the prevalent ways and philosophies of life. The main object of this discussion will be the effect of war, economic crisis and unemployment on the family, and on the ideals and attitudes of the young generation. It is our intention to analyze these changes in order to discover in how far they contributed to the disintegration of democratic and to the promotion of authoritarian ideas among the young generation.
This study will be based primarily on the following material:
The programs and official publications of the German youth movement.
The reports on the meetings of the youth congresses.
Interviews with representative figures of the German youth movement and of German progressive education who are now in this country, some of whom will be used as experts for this section.
The biographies and memoirs of some leaders of the war and post-war generation supplemented by fictional material of documentary and reportage value.
The reports on some characteristic trials of German youths (see below under III).
The Institute possesses a valuable collection of material pertinent to this study (questionnaires, manuscripts written by experts and participants, published literature).
The German youth experienced the breakdown of the Imperial system as the change from a relatively stable and evenly progressing culture to one of extreme insecurity. The reaction of this youth to such phenomena as inflation and technological unemployment will be studied through an analysis of the activities and ideas of the youth organizations. Special attention will be given to the question as to what agencies focused and transmitted the growing anti-democratic tendencies, and to the part played by those literary and philosophical currents which had been undermining the standards of liberalism ever since the turn of the century (Nietzsche, Burckhardt, Dostoyevsky, George).
We propose three special studies:
The youth movement proper.
The so-called Front Generation and the Free Corps.
“Youth in Distress”—an attempt to discover types of juvenile delinquents and asocials that are of social and political significance in the transition to National Socialism.
1. The Youth Movement Proper.
The unusual phenomenon that will first have to be explained is the politicization of the German youth. The situations and agencies will be studied which made the German youth a political youth to such an extent that it regarded all existential conditions and problems immediately as political questions. We shall see in how far this attitude transformed the traditional patterns of life and hampered all endeavors to establish a unified democratic culture.
The structure, organization, and activity of the youth movement has to be examined with a view to determining in how far they reflect the conflicts that came with the social and economic liquidation of the first World War. Special attention will be given to the activity and ideas of the hiking clubs, “Wandervogel”, so-called, (which had tremendous appeal for the emancipated types of German youth) and the experimental country private schools. The thoughts and acts of representative personalities like Gustav Wyneken and Hans Blueher will be analyzed.
We shall discuss the struggle between liberal and authoritarian tendencies in the activity and literature of the youth movement. Special stress will be laid upon the role played by the youth “leader”. Moreover, it will be shown to what extent even the democratic and non-partisan youth movement fostered the ideals of strength, obedience, and collectivism and thus adumbrated the fascist ideology.
The discussion within the youth movement seems to indicate family conflicts and conflicts in adjustment such as Freud designated as causing dislocations between the individual and his environment. The methods and concepts of modern psychology, particularly of psychoanalysis, will be used as a clue to understanding the psychological make-up of the German youth.
These three studies will be supplemented by a comparative analysis of the youth movement in France and England in order to find out in how far the German youth movement represented a specific type of the war and post-war generation and in how far it shows features common to the French and English youth movement as well.
2. The Front Generation and the Free Corps.
The situation of the so-called front generation provides an appropriate ground for a study of the cultural changes involved in the transition from war to peace. We propose to attack the problem through a study of the right radical free corps, the organization of young war veterans. It will be asked how German democracy approached the task of leading those young people who had learned the habit of violence in the World War back to a life and culture of peace-time and transforming their war-time habits of violence into productive activity.
We shall investigate in how far this task was complicated by the economic crisis which prevented any permanent adjustment and drove these groups to band together in private armies and semi-military organizations of their own.
The study on the front generation will be centered around a series of case studies of the life of representative leaders among the front generation. Such case studies may be justified by the fact that the free corps later contributed a large part of the National Socialist leader personnel; this connection, therefore, might elucidate the psychological set-up of those strata which influenced the transition from democracy to National Socialism. We suggest also a study of the terrorist methods of the German right radical organizations, which may yield excellent parallels for an understanding of the source and character of National Socialist terror.
3. Youthful Delinquents and Asocial Types.
In this section, we intend to study certain types of juvenile delinquents and asocials in order to investigate the connection between a permanently unemployed youth and social and political extremism. The question will be discussed as to whether this quantitatively small number of cases offers insight into the rapidly progressing radicalization of the German youth in the post-war period. This study of youthful delinquents and asocials may illustrate a method we intend to apply throughout our project, namely, to select certain extreme cases and situations that aroused public opinion in Germany during the transition from democracy to authoritarianism, and to analyze these cases in such a way that they throw light upon the social and psychological make-up of the German population (cf. the problem of corruption in our section on mass culture).
The typology of delinquents and asocials will have to be established as a preliminary to looking for decisive traits common to these and the National Socialist terrorists. Homosexuality may be an important factor in this connection. The study will be documented with the memoirs of Roehm, Salomon, Schlichter, Strasser, and such. The Institute will also utilize the material which it collected on the psychological attitude of certain groups of German unemployed.
THE IDEOLOGICAL PERMEATION OF LABOR AND THE NEW MIDDLE CLASSES.
Director: FRANZ NEUMANN.
This study will be developed around the problem of how far the National Socialist philosophy has penetrated among the German masses and to what degree that philosophy actually corresponds to certain longings among a definite strata of the German people. We shall attempt to infer the real attitude of the masses (I) from an investigation of whether the National Socialists have made any fundamental changes in their ideology, (II) from the relationship of the constituent elements of the ideology to doctrines formerly prevalent in Germany, (III) especially from the doctrine of the new imperialism as it relates to previous trends, and (IV) from the relationship between the principles of National Socialist social organization and those formerly prevalent in Germany. This indirect method seems mandatory for a cultural approach to National Socialism, because, in contrast to democratic societies, the [former’s] policy of synchronizing the whole life of the people does not allow of directly ascertaining the real feelings and sentiments of the masses.
I. We shall first examine the social function of official National Socialist political philosophy, contrasting it with the way public opinion is formed in democratic societies. This will permit us to determine the relation of National Socialist philosophy to the socio-political reality. We shall thus analyze typical slogans of National Socialism in the different stages of its growth, with a view to determining to what social strata they appeal. The slogans cited below will be used as clues to the nature of the regime’s appeal to certain institutions and groups.
We shall discuss only in passing the slogans that held sway prior to the conquest of power (i.e., “breaking the fetters of interest”), and shall concentrate on those changes that occurred during the regime. Only a few slogans, such as that of the “Totalitarian state”, which were current during the first stage of the National Socialist rule, were later abandoned. The others were continued but with characteristic shifts of emphasis to take in different strata of the population. We shall investigate the shifts with a view to the various groups they were intended to influence, somewhat as follows:
Totalitarian state – civil service, army industry.
“Movement’s” state – the party, especially the brown-shirts and elite guards.
Leadership state – middle classes, army, civil services.
Race superiority (anti-Semitism, blood and soil) – farmers, middle classes, free professions.
Proletarian racism against plutocratic democracies – workers.
The catch-word of anti-bolshevism merits special attention. We shall investigate in how far certain groups (i.e., the army and industry) took it seriously from the very beginning, and whether it was changed in recent years for other reasons than those of foreign policy.
The material for this analysis will be collected from the reports of the party congresses and those of their affiliated organizations, official periodicals and newspapers, as well as from the legislative enactments and decisions of the law courts, disciplinary courts, and courts of honor. The material collected by the anti-National Socialist refugee organizations will supplement the above documents.
II. The study of the ideological appeals made by National Socialism to the different social groups will be supplemented by an analysis of the state of mind of those masses, as this was shaped in the Weimar Republic. We shall restrict this examination to the workers and the new middle classes. Special attention will be given the question of what attitudes towards authority prevailed among their political and social organizations and found their way into their philosophies.
Nationalism and Militarism: The nationalist unions of salaried employees (white collar); the agrarian unions (Landbund); company unions; “peaceful” unions; the Stahlhelm;
Nationalism and Militarism: The nationalist unions of salaried employees (white collar); the agrarian unions (Landbund); company unions; “peaceful” unions; the Stahlhelm;
Catholic Solidarism: The Center party; the Catholic unions; their leisure organizations;
Progressive Liberalism: The Democratic party; the salaried employees unions;
Reformist Marxism: The Social Democratic party; The Free Trade Unions, consumers cooperatives; sport and other leisure organizations; the republican militia (Reichsbanner); labor welfare organizations;
Syndicalism: The Allgemeine Freie Arbeiter-union; heretic groups within the labor movement;
Revolutionary Marxism: The Communist party; the Red Trade Union Opposition, the Red Front Fighting League, the Red Help.
This analysis will be focused on two problems, (a) that of the development of submissive traits; (b) that of the affinity between the ideology of groups named above and the ideology of National Socialism.
(a) The roots of the peculiar amenability to authoritarian control that characterizes the masses in totalitarian Germany will be traced through analysis of the social and psychological status of labor and of the new middle classes ever since the Empire. We shall attempt to determine the types of obedience and submissiveness as these were manifested among the two groups and at different periods:
The Untergangengeist of the imperial period and the problem of whether (and how) the behavior patterns of the army hierarchy found their way into civil life (the role of the non-commissioned officer and of the reserve officer).
The influence of party discipline and of an organizational bureaucracy on forming the character structure of German labor. Special attention will be given to the relation between proletarian emphasis on “solidarity” and organizational discipline.
The relation of the National Socialist pattern of leader-follower to the two previous types.
(b) The transformation by National Socialism of symbols, slogans, and doctrines mentioned above will be studied in light of whether National Socialism did not fulfill cravings that were already operative within the Communist, Social Democratic, Catholic and Democratic labor movement. We shall examine whether the incorporation of the old Marxist slogans into the National Socialist philosophy conceals or expresses an identity of contents:
Classless Society – People’s Community
The proletariat as the bearer of truth – The supremacy of the Germanic race
Socialism – The common welfare preceded selfish interest
Class Struggle – The war of a proletarian race against plutocratic democracies
The material for this section is contained in biographical and autobiographical materials (Erzberger, Bernstein, Bebel, Ebert, Noske, Scheidemann, H. Mueller, Otto Braun, Grzesinsky, Sender, Radek, Muenzenberg, Thaelmann, Valtin); in proletarian novels, in the periodicals issued by political groups (Neue Zeit, Gesellschaft), in parliamentary debates, in the polemic literature against the rule of the “Bonzen” (bosses). We shall also make use of an inquiry which the Institute of Social Research, then in Frankfurt on Main, conducted in 1932, as a means of determining the specific character traits of German workers and salaried employees. For the last stage of the Weimar Republic, the returns in parliamentary and Works Councils elections will be of special value. The latter statistics have never before been utilized. Interviews with refugee leaders will be introduced.
III. The studies outlined above prepare the ground for an evaluation of the decisive stage of National Socialist ideology, namely, that which accompanies the present war. We wish to answer the question which strata the policy of “racial-social imperialism” relies on. The historic role of the following groups will be studied in their contribution to shaping the doctrine of the new imperialism:
The agrarian sector — Eastward expansion, naval policy.
The industrial sector — Westward colonial, Asiatic and South American expansion. The problem of “hatred of England.” Army and naval expansion.
Middle class liberalism — The pan-German union; colonies; naval expansion; the dream of a Grossdeutsches Reich.
The working classes — “Social imperialism” within the social democratic party and the trade unions, (Lensch, Schippel, Winnig, Renner) (Material see under II).
IV. The understanding of the appeals of National Socialism to the various strata will be facilitated by comparing the National Socialist principles of social organization with those of the Weimar Republic. We shall find out to which social strata the following categories of National Socialist organization are applied, how far a terroristic machinery is used to carry them out, and against whom it is primarily directed.
(a) The principle of mass atomization. We shall deal with the problem of how National Socialist collectivism actually entails the complete dissolution of all occupational and personal solidarity of interests, especially among youth and labor.
(b) The principle of “divide and rule.” We shall ask whether the slogan of a “people’s community” does not allow of a privileged treatment of small groups within each social stratum, especially among the peasantry, old middle classes, and labor.
(c) The principle of elite selection. We shall attempt to explain how the continual spread of National Socialist organizations over all strata of the population coincides with the selection of small but reliable elites within them. For example,
The general SS — The “troops on call” (Verfuegungstruppen) and the “death’s head formations.”
The general Hitler youth — the stem (Stamm), Hitler youth.
The German Labor Front — The National Socialist troops in the plant (Werkscharen).
Study of these principles may provide a key for determining how far National Socialism relies on consent and repression.
The material is to be found in the legislative enactments, decisions and administrative rulings, in the statistical material, especially on labor relations, the publications of the Labor Front, the police, the party, the women’s organizations, the estate organizations, the decisions of the Erbhofgerichte.
The labor institutions and the wage policy of the regime have been studied for the past seven years by the Institute. In addition, studies have been published or are about to be published which can be used for our purpose here.
LITERATURE, ART, AND MUSIC.
Director: THEODORE W. ADORNO.
This study will use significant material in the German literature, art, and music of the Weimar Republic and also of National Socialism as a basis for disclosing underlying social or cultural tendencies. In order to explain the general cultural setting of artistic movements during the Weimar Republic, (I) we shall analyze the characteristics and position of the intellectuals, the group that produced artistic works and also determined the mental climate of the Weimar Republic. (II) We shall analyze, through the form and content of typical works, the artistic currents that were especially closely connected with the political and cultural movements in Germany (expressionism and modern music), in order thereby to obtain clues to the social forces that consciously and unconsciously mirror themselves in these works. (III) We shall study both governmental and public reactions to modern art. The comparison of art policy during the Weimar Republic with that under National Socialism will provide leads as to how art attains a new social function in the totalitarian state. The transformation from the Weimar Republic to National Socialism will be studied in the example of art.
I. We shall here select out of the whole body of intellectuals primarily the avant-gardist poets, artists and composers, whom we shall subject to sociological analysis. (Other intellectual groups will be treated in the section on Christianity.)
(a) To give the background for their activity, we shall sketch the intellectual atmosphere of Berlin since the close of the first World War. Material for this will be found primarily in the reports on theater life, the cinema, art exhibitions, and furthermore, in the periodicals of small intellectual groups that sprang up suddenly and as quickly vanished and that had an importance far out of proportion to their actual number of subscribers.
(b) The question of how far the vanguard intellectuals can be regarded as a “key group” in German pre-Hitlerian culture will be studied through a survey of the dependence of provincial cultural life on the cultural fashions of Berlin, as they reflected themselves in the program of the provincial theaters and in the discussions of the provincial press.
(c) Using the biographies of men who played outstanding roles in the “modernistic” movements and later became converted to National Socialism (Benn, Johst, Heynicke), we shall determine in how far modern art itself, despite its opposition to old-fashioned artistic tastes of the masses, bore within it tendencies to National Socialism.
II. The manifestos and programs that marked the expressionist course in poetry, art and music proclaimed time and again in the decade following the first World War that expressionism was the adequate form of articulation for man in these periods. We shall investigate in how far this claim is justified, that is, to what extent it permits us to recognize social tendencies in the art works of that time, tendencies that are important for judging the German situation before and during National Socialism.
This will be done in:
Selected works of Expressionist poetry;
Modern musical works.
We are conscious that the methods of interpretation which have to be applied here are in part new. They will have to prove their own fruitfulness within the circle of this research.
[Under 1]
(a) Form analysis.
We shall select individual expressionist works and try to find in them formal traits that are characteristic for the whole of expressionism; for example, we shall choose the dramas of Fritz von Unruh, poems of Johannes R. Becher, novels of Franz Kafka, manifestos of Ludwig Rubiner. We shall endeavor to show in how far the formal and not necessarily the contextual traits of these works correspond to or contrast with the social reality. For example, we have in mind characteristics like the “chaotic”, the “dreamlike”, the exaggerated outburst of feeling. We believe that the psychoanalytical method, which brings this artistic style medium into relation with neurotic symptoms, is not sufficient. Without slighting this method, we shall compare these traits with those of other provinces of life in order to discover in how far they expressed fundamental realities in the German life of this period, and in order to trace their connection with individual groups of society. Particular attention will be given to the style medium which the expressionists described as having the intent to “shock” and “hammer in”. We shall make inquiry as to how far pre-forms of National Socialist propaganda technique are at hand here.
(b) Content analysis.
Comprehensive analysis of typical art works will also supply the material here. We shall seek to learn in how far such figures as, say, the son in Hasenclever’s drama, correspond to German types developed in other sections of this project (Youth Movement) and in what characteristic traits the figures of art are distinguished from those of reality. Hasenclever’s son and Bronnen’s patricide deal with youthful criminals, the plays of Kaiser and Sternheim with typical German industry and the proletariat. In the characteristic patterns that art produced out of German life, we shall discuss whether or not those traits point to the coming of National Socialism.
(c) The Idea of Expressionism.
The expressionist claim to be not a mere direction for art but also a philosophy of life will be considered in its social significance, bearing in mind that the tendency to a comprehensive Weltanschauung is also characteristic of National Socialism. Through the programs of other vanguard art movements (symbolism, impressionism, surrealism), we shall study the extent to which this tendency has its background in the cultural sphere of Western Europe. In other words, the question will be put, to what degree does art pre-contain the claim that a movement is universal, a claim such as National Socialism has realized in the political sphere.
[Under 2]
With regard to music, we shall analyze compositions characteristic of the time, much the way an independent teacher of composition would analyze the works of his mature pupils, observing not so much whether they obey the rules but whether they are inherently consistent. We shall then try to understand in what way the inconsistencies to which such analysis may lead are expressive of underlying social antagonisms. Two major currents will have to be studied:
(a) The community music of post-war inflation years (Hindemith, Weil) and
(b) The radical atonal music
(a) The study of community music will investigate whether the inherent structure of the material permits of attempts to create good music that better conforms to the audiences’ consciousness than poor music, without necessarily compromising the music itself. We shall have to examine whether the attempt to produce music in conscious reference to a definite audience could be interpreted as a pre-form of cultural manipulations such as later becomes the rule in National Socialism. An analysis of the psychological appeal and intent of this music will furnish the material for answering this question.
(b) Atonal music, in contrast to community music, will be used to determine in how far it expresses deeper-lying problems of the present social phase, such problems as those of adjustment and anxiety. Here, we shall have to study such prevalent characteristics as discord and large intervals, the condensation of musical forms to aphorisms, and the new approach to the problem of musical expression. We shall use methods analogous to those outlined in 1.a of this section (form analysis).
III. With regard to public reactions to modern trends we shall see whether the negative ones predominated over the positive ones, and shall check this reaction against the “modernistic” influences permeating everyday life. Particular emphasis will be given the bearing on political development of artistic trends and counter-movements in the life of the Weimar Republic. Under this, we shall have to make psychological as well as sociological analysis of the violent reactions voiced by large sections of the German middle classes against features of what they termed “modernism”, such as the putative distortion of the human face by radical painters, dissonance in music, the flat roof, and even jazz. These reactions will be compared with National Socialist writings on non-artistic subjects, and an attempt will be made to understand aspects of the National Socialist mentality by providing a psychological identification of the fury against “art alien to” art.
Audience and governmental reactions will be studied with primary reference to painting and sculpture on the basis of newspaper articles, particularly in the provincial press, pamphlets, resolutions of organizations such as the Werkbund or the Kampfbund fuer Deutsche Kultur, ministerial decrees, speeches of political leaders (Stresemann), and parliamentary debates. We shall have to examine the sociological reasons for National Socialism’s liquidation of serious modern art. Conversely, the vain attempt of a certain section of the younger National Socialists to maintain modern art as against folk art will have to be studied. The National Socialist concept of the beautiful, and its counter-concept, the “ugly,” with which the National Socialists brand every opposing group, will also fall within the scope of this study.
Debates in provincial town assemblies, reports of unveilings of modern statues, of disturbances over theater and movie presentations will make up the material out of which clues will be sought for the attitude to art of different sections of the population. We shall particularly examine such documents to determine in how far liberalism in art policy (which was accepted and self-evident to the democratically educated French people) led in Germany, even under the Weimar Republic, to violent anti-democratic actions. This investigation will form a contribution to the problem of how far the lack of democratic education makes itself felt in so aloof a sphere as art.
The plan for this entire section has been elaborated with particular regard to the material available to us as well as with regard to the background of the scholars in charge. One of our research associates has succeeded in salvaging from Germany his special library on expressionism. This library, which in the greater part consists of periodicals and publications that are all but inaccessible today, will have to be fully exploited. Our specialist on expressionism has been in intimate connection with the most important publishing firms of the expressionist movement. The music study will fall in line with previous work done by the Institute on the subject of music sociology. The scholar in charge of the section on art held a high executive post in German art administration and had the opportunity to observe at the closest hand German administrative policy in this field.
II. Earlier Variants of Individual Sections.
A. “Introduction.”
“Introduction.” (English Draft)
This project aims to study the relationship between Nazism and the cultural transformation occurring in Germany both prior to and since 1933. It wishes to provide understanding of Nazism by placing this movement in its total cultural setting.
The term culture is used in the sense of cultural anthropology. In employing this approach, the group proposing this studies is trying to evaluate the character and strength of the forces […] for and against Nazism. They are not attempting to supply descriptive or functional analyses of special aspects of Nazism, but rather to provide perspective and orientation upon the whole Nazi movement. They seek to give background and a basis of judgment for the special studies which are already published or being made. They propose studies which are integrative. They will utilize all methods and materials—political, economic, sociological, psychological, religious, institutional—which are necessary for arriving at an understanding of the basic forces in the total culture. The works on Nazism which we have at present fall into three general categories: 1) the writings of journalists who do not judge the relative significance of the material, 2) the memoirs of refugees who recount their own experiences and offer, on the whole, subjective evaluations of them, 3) ideological analyses by scholars who do not relate these ideas to the situation out of which they arise, 4) special studies of a technical nature, for example, [on] Nazi monetary policy and practice.
These studies are valuable, but there are decisive tendencies in National Socialist Germany which cannot be understood without a thorough knowledge of cultural problems. Thus, we cannot understand in purely economic terms how it came about that the German masses, and particularly organized labor, renounced their political rights without any serious attempts at resistance. It is equally puzzling to understand that groups whose tradition had kept them in strict opposition to the authority of state and economy [bowed to]28 the very same authoritarian powers whom they were accustomed to regard as their sworn enemies. Moreover, it is similarly difficult to understand, though often mentioned, that in a country as proud of Germany was of its humanistic and Christian tradition, the new barbarism could so easily triumph. Furthermore, it is a special problem that the Germans, after a lost war, and after they had got rid of their old rulers, should forget as quickly as they did—how it is possible for a complete reversal of public consciousness to have taken place, with the result that the desperately disillusioned masses of yesterday were today ready to be driven anew into an imperialist, offensive war.
Such problems, which go beyond the borders of economics and politics, are the more disquieting since they arose within the framework of a democracy, the very progressive constitution which gave every opportunity to the people to obtain effective representation for their actual interests. This fact indicates that democracy per se by no means guarantees the rights of the demos. The consciousness of people may be modified under certain conditions to such an extent that they vote against their own rights. This induces the collapse of all that democracy stands for. Since American democracy, though its foundations are incomparably deeper than Germany’s were, may not be entirely beyond this danger, our project hopes to make a modest contribution to American interest. It will analyze the powers that threaten to pervert the consciousness of a democratic people into its opposite. Our approach is based on the conviction that what we have to face is not a fated, inescapable, and irrational ‘wave of the future,’ but is rather something due to social forces open to scientific investigation. The studies proposed in this memorandum are intended to supply the need for these cultural evaluations. They will keep ideas and details in intimate working relation, checking each against the other in order to discover the common cultural forces of the Nazi movement, their character and strength. They will combine the methods and viewpoints of the social sciences, the humanities, philosophy and history to the extent of, and in the manner necessary for, the broadest and deepest explanation of Nazism. The philosophical, psychological and historical approaches will be used primarily to provide perspective and a basis for social evaluation; the approaches of the social sciences29 are necessary as a supplement […] as a means of selecting the institutions, ideas, actions and personalities most significant for the cultural analysis.
The topics which are proposed in this memorandum have been selected in such a way as to illuminate all the [most] fundamental cultural processes. They do not aim at inclusiveness in detail; rather they aim to employ typical cases and situations, the analysis of which will reveal basic processes. The topics are as follows: (1) Bureaucracy; (2) Mass Culture; (3) Anti-Christianity; (4) War [and Post-War Generation]; (5) Response [to] N.S. politics [by] labor + the new middle class; (6) Literature and music.
The group of scholars proposing to write these integrative studies believes that the intimate cooperation of scholars, each of whom is a specialist and all of whom are trained in the broad fields of the social sciences, the humanities, and philosophy, is essential for the execution of a project of this kind. It has cooperated in this way for over a decade, and has developed a common conceptual structure and methodology which permits the variety of interests on the part of the members to be related to a basically unified approach.30
The studies which are selected for treatment are not casually chosen, but have grown out of the intellectual interests and the actual experience of the members over a period of years. In a sense they will [written in: embody] [crossed out: contain] the results of the thinking about Germany and the modern world which the members of the group have reached up to this time.
The studies will be primarily based on the rich material in the possession of the Institute, some of which has not yet been published. It will be supplemented by interviews with certain refugees who played a leading part in Germany during the Weimar Republic. [X]31
The members of the group recognize that objectivity will be difficult to preserve in these studies, but they feel that their experience in countries other than Germany should enable them to [interpret]32 on a comparative basis the course of events in Germany. They also believe that social [scientific] methodology has provided some means and developed some habits of control over one’s prejudices and assumptions. The group desires to associate an American scholar in its project. It wishes to have his continuous advice in shaping its handling of the material to the best uses of the American intellectual public.
“Introduction” (German Draft).
It is the aim of the project presented here to study National Socialism in its relationship to the crisis of German culture before and after Hitler came to power.
By culture we understand the sum of all forces and institutions in Germany that do not directly belong to the domain of the economy and the struggle for economic power. To the extent National Socialism has been analyzed to date, the latter problems were, and are, the first to be addressed. Such investigations, however, appear to us in great need of supplementation. Decisive tendencies in Nationalist Socialist cannot be understood without knowledge of its cultural problems. From a purely economic [perspective], it is not clear how it came about that the German masses, and the organized labor movement in particular, renounced their political rights without serious resistance. It is equally puzzling that groups whose traditions placed them in opposition to economic and state authority became the vanguard of the very authoritarian powers they had long held to be their sworn enemies. Further, it is extremely difficult to understand how the new barbarism could triumph so easily and comfortably in a country that took as much pride in its humanistic and Christian past as Germany did. Finally, it is a problem of a special kind that the Germans, after losing the war and disposing of their old rulers who were responsible for it, a short time later, in a complete reversal [Umschwung] of public consciousness, turned to the direct and indirect successors of those very rulers, [and that] those so desperately disappointed by the war of yesterday allowed themselves to be driven without resistance into the imperialist war of aggression of today.
None of these problems can be resolved simply by reference to the rational, economic, and political objectives of the groups in question. The are, however, all the more disturbing because they developed in the framework of a democracy in which the people were given every opportunity, through an extremely progressive constitution, to effectively represent their actual interests. That this very people, with all the means of democratic will-formation [Mitteln der demokratischen Willensbildung] at their disposal, threw away their inheritance of these same means of will-formation is in itself a phenomenon of the most disturbing kind. It shows that democracy as such in no way guarantees the rights of the demos, but that democratic consciousness can, under certain circumstances, be changed in such a way that it votes against its own rights and thereby brings about the collapse of “what democracy stands for.”33 In this regard, there are some signs [Anzeichen] that American democracy, despite its incomparably deeper foundation in the country’s history and the consciousness of its inhabitants, is not entirely exempt from this danger. It is here that our project hopes to make a contribution. It aims to analyze the forces that threaten to pervert the consciousness of a democratic people into its antithesis. If we succeed in exposing the mechanisms which bring this about and, through knowledge of them, destroying the belief that [such perversion] is a fateful, inevitable, and irrational “wave of the future,” then something will have been done to counteract the danger. Only the unknown is truly threatening; to the same extent knowledge extends, there is also the hope of conscious resistance.
There is no scarcity of scientific contributions to the end of insight into the non-political-economic “issues”34 of National Socialism. In general, however, these contributions either concentrate on the problem of propaganda or are of a purely psychological kind (e.g., W. Reich’s Massenpsychologie des Faschismus). Without underestimating the importance of the problem of propaganda, we are of the opinion that [analysis of] this alone is by no means adequate to the task of explaining the changes in consciousness of the German people, and, moreover, that it is to a large extent description of a mere epiphenomenon, and that the effect of Hitler’s propaganda on the German people is more an expression of the cultural crisis than one of its decisive causes. The belief that Hitler “seduced” the masses, through advanced propaganda technique, into opposition toward their own interests seems to us naive. Instead, we shall attempt to show the deeper conditions that account for why they fell prey to this propaganda in the first place. To this end, psychological methods—in particular, that of depth-psychology—will be used to a considerable extent. But “psychology” alone does not seem sufficient to us. The Germans who turned to Hitler did not respond merely as individuals, nor even as neurotic, powerless individuals submissive to authority, but rather under the pressure of objective social and cultural forces and in the context of an entire culture of a determinate kind subject to determinate ‘changes.’ Only if we succeed in presenting, on a fundamental level, the interplay between these objective cultural powers and the individuals at their mercy do we believe we can actually, substantively solve the problem we have posed.
The design of our project seeks to take this into account. It is divided into six individual projects in which an attempt is made to advance from the organizational-sociological “setting”35 of the culture of the Weimar Republic to progressively more precise and fundamental features of this culture in order to explain its crisis and the cultivation of the National Socialist condition of consciousness.
1) The connection between cultural forms of consciousness and the political-economic, real forces of society will be addressed in a section on bureaucracy, the object of which is the growth, in the very heart of democratic institutions themselves, of those forms of domination which, in the end, take possession of the consciousness of the people. [...]
2) A section [titled] “The Masses and National Socialist Ideology” will attempt to gain an understanding of the reactions of the masses to those active forces by, on the one hand, dealing with authoritarian tendencies of masses prior to the authoritarian seizure of power, and, on the other hand, drawing conclusions about the response of the masses from an analysis of the changes in National Socialist domestic policy.
3) The section “War and post-war generation” will research the influence of war and inflation on the German population, “the impact of urban civilization upon [its] outlook”36 and the connection between social “uprooting” with the rise of National Socialism.
4) The section on anti-Christianity will attempt to answer the question of the grounds for the impotence of the humanistic and Christian forces opposed National Socialism through a careful analysis of their internal decomposition [inneren Zersetzung].
5) A section on mass culture will undertake research into the formation of atomized, leveled-out, and standardized cultural forms in pre-Hitler Germany—independent of their actual, political sphere of influence—which made it possible to “capture” [“erfassen”] the people in a way that greatly facilitated their eventual synchronization [Gleichschaltung].
6) A section on literature, art, and music sets itself the task of analyzing German intellectuals, attempts to draw conclusions about unconscious social tendencies from intellectual production, and, finally, show how, in part as a result of such tendencies and in part in resistance to them, National Socialism manipulates the whole of culture and ultimately degrades it to a mere instrument of propaganda.
Insofar as these investigations are occupied with the conditions and currents in the Weimar Republic, this is exclusively in light of their relation to the more prevalent tendencies of National Socialism. Through this, the forces of the Weimar Republic which, in accord with or against their own will, came to serve National Socialism are to be critically identified, as are the positive forces of opposition, with a view to the defense of a democratic culture.37
B. “Anti-Christianity.”
“Nietzsche and the Struggle against Christianity.” (English Draft)
A thorough investigation of the historical and social foundations of the anti-christian currents prevalent in National Socialism is of utmost importance for the democracies of today. The tendencies that have come to light in present-day Germany, though they have assumed a form determined by the specific content of German culture, are part and parcel of modern civilization as such. For example, it is no accident that the history of the French Revolution, which initiated the triumphant march of democracy on the continent, was infused with anti-christian movements such as the cult of Reason and of the Être supreme. These were certainly quite different from similar trends in contemporary National Socialism, but they have at least one essential feature in common, which is a religious exaltation of political institutions, the Fatherland, the nation, or the Volksgemeinschaft.
The struggle against Christianity is deeply rooted in German history. In contrast to the Anglo-Saxon countries, German protestantism was permanently confronted with the power of the Catholic church, in which the decisive social strata saw a remnant of the obsolete feudal system still hampering the world of middle class society. In contradistinction to the manorial economy, the French system, and Catholicism, the Lutheran teaching merges easily with nationalistic movements and their anti-christian currents. After the wars of liberation at the beginning of the 19th century, such a merger was consummated in Germany in the Teutonism of the Academic Youth Movement (Burschenschaften). The youth, together with large sections of the middle class, strove for a unified German Reich, and in so doing made their appeal to strong Germanic, pagan and anti-Semitic instincts. The connection between nationalism and anti-christian racism remained operative throughout the 19th century.
Friedrich Nietzsche was the philosopher who made the crisis that had come to a head within Christianity the central theme of his work. [He, as no other philosopher did, expressed and comprehended the frustration of modern man and the antagonisms of modern society.]38 He understood and portrayed, as no other philosopher did, the plight of modern man amid the cleavages of society. The defenders of democracy, humanity, and Christianity, in Germany as well as in other countries, have left to their opponents the interpretation of Nietzsche's work. This neglect has proved fateful, because Nietzsche’s attack has been turned into a political weapon which, had it been employed by the protagonists of democratic ideals and made part of the general consciousness, could have contributed to the salvation of European culture. In place of this, Nietzsche was made the spokesman for Prussian power-politicians whom he detested. Consequently, outside of Germany, his doctrines have been decried as megalomaniac, and authoritarian leaders, caricatures of Nietzsche’s superman, have set out to lay waste the old Europe instead of trans-shaping it into a better one, as Nietzsche intended his superman to do.
All elements of National Socialist ideology may be found in Nietzsche’s work, though in a radically different configuration: the claim that man can of his own will erect the highest values, the irrational dynamism, the faith in might, the advances of racial breeding. But he betrays the secret that lies at the root of all these desperate ideas, namely, disappointment in Christianity and particularity in Christian morals.
According to him, the proper task of man is to develop all human capacities. This can be fulfilled only if man relinquishes all vain hope in a world hereafter and becomes the self-reliant master of his life, propelled by an unerring will to higher forms of existence. Nietzsche held that Christianity had prostrated this will in its innermost essence; it had everywhere obstructed the advent of the virtuous because its nature forced it to side with the status quo. Christianity surrounded the powers-that-be with a halo and thus protected the personal rulers and the social groups that had come to power. It fostered the attitude that the old and vested is ipso facto the legitimate and right, instead of deciding for the right of the superior (which, according to Nietzsche, was by no means equivalent to the physically superior). The governing as well as the governed had been corrupted because the relation between them was veiled by belief in a compensatory hereafter. The seriousness of the domination exercised on the social ordering was made light of through reference to the beyond. Christianity sowed confusion in the external world as well as in the internal world, the human soul. It justified the renunciation of drives forced upon many by the existing social system, by demanding such renunciation in the name of a questionable beyond, and not in the interest of a higher development of humanity. Thus, the suppressed instincts could not be liberated and transformed, but generated a resentment deleterious to the best powers of man which were bottled up within.
There can be no doubt that Nietzsche misinterpreted Christianity, but he gave voice to a trend that was latent in German history of the last century and that finally burst into the open. His influence can hardly be overstated. Though his philosophy was opposed to that dominating German university life, and to that of the prevailing pattern of culture, his work eventually was transformed and adjusted to the self-same chauvinistic nationalism he violently repudiated.
We propose three studies which are intended to make clear to the American public the nature and significance of modern German anti-christian currents.
An analysis of the most significant anti-christian tendencies in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to be based on such materials as newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, parliamentary debates. This analysis will place the anti-christian movement in its proper social setting by investigating the social and educational position of those strata which participated in the movement. In the same manner, the statistical material on church attendance and in-attendance will be studied and evaluated.
A thorough analysis of Nietzsche’s philosophy to demonstrate its influence on all provinces of European, particularly German life. German literature and philosophy in the pre-fascist period may be understood as the manifold response to the challenge implied in Nietzsche’s radical critique of European culture—particularly in the elaboration of a new psychology (Freud and Klages), a new metaphysic (especially in the development of Husserl’s phenomenology in the doctrines of Scheler, Jaspers and Heidegger), and the philosophy of history which leads directly to the authoritarian ideology (Spengler). Special attention will be made of Nietzsche’s philosophy by Stefan George’s school and the other schools of German literature (expressionism).
An analysis of the present anti-christian teaching within National Socialism, to be studied with respect to background, content and political aims end in connection with the changing goals of German nationalist imperialism.
“Nietzsche” (German Draft 1).
[The aim of] this study is to contribute to the explanation of Anti-Christianity under National Socialism. Both the historical and ideological foundations of anti-Christianity will be dealt with. The historical foundation consists in the anti-Christian movement. This movement will be studied across its manifestations since the founding of the Kaiserreich: pamphlets, brochures, party programs, and novels. Through this process, conclusions will be drawn about the distribution of anti-Christianity through the various social classes and the influence of industrialization and urbanization on relation of the German population to Christianity. The ideological roots of anti-Christianity will be investigated through individual, exemplary writers. Wagner’s writings and Nietzsche work in particular will be analyzed for their anti-Christian features. Through a comparison between their content with the content of popular movements, the extent to which their works can be considered a manifestation of the feelings and perspectives of the people due to social relations can be determined. On the other hand, their own influence on German literature, and, through such media, the broader masses, will be investigated as well. This study will also ascertain the extent to which National Socialism realized Nietzsche’s design to replace the Christian order of values with a new one. From the debates in print within the Christian churches under National Socialism and the documents of National Socialist church- and social-policy, a judgment will be made as to whether, and to what extent, National Socialism itself satisfied religious or quasi-religious needs.
The Institute possesses valuable material for the study of the anti-Christian movement since the founding of the Empire. Further printed documents are available in this country.39 Among right-wing circles, anti-Christianity is manifest in the cultivation of old pagan cults, in intensified nationalism, and in the struggles against the Old Testament and the Catholic Church. In addition to pamphlets and newspapers, the debates in the Reichstag and the various state parliaments, particularly during the period of the Kulturkampf from 1872 through 1879 (e.g., debates about the introduction of civil marriage). Among left-wing circles, it is manifest in the anti-religious politics of the socialist and communist parties. This politics is expressed in the socialist daily papers and the theoretical organs of these parties (particularly Neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of German social democracy since 1883). The monistic and free-thinking movement occupies a middle position. From their journals one can gain insight into the social composition of the anti-Christian circles as well as the arguments against Christianity in the context of the natural-scientific spiritual attitude of the urban populace. Further insight into the anti-Christian movement is provided by the statistical figures of church departures. This statistical curve must be compiled from the public records of the churches themselves.
In the writings of Wagner and Nietzsche we find the anti-Christian arguments of the popular movements and, furthermore, in Nietzsche in particular, unique anti-Christian features of the academic youth which can be traced back to the founding of German fraternities. With Nietzsche’s works, these unique anti-Christian arguments, through which anti-Christianity is expressed, will be clearly outlined. In this connection, works that have exerted a direct influence on the spiritual life of Germany—such as the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Spengler, the George Circle, Freud, and Heidegger—will be investigated regarding their affiliation to Nietzsche’s philosophy. This influence will be traced back into the speeches of National Socialist leadership through the works of these writers, and not only those available in print but also unpublished manuscripts (for example, Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche, which he held under National Socialism). Particular attention will be given to the problem of the extent to which Nietzsche has been correctly understood or distorted in the various channels through which his works have reached the German people.
From church and anti-Christian circles, there is comprehensive literature on the National Socialist attempt to establish a new, un-Christian order of values in the Nietzschean sense. Of particular interest are printed confessions and other statements by Lutheran clergy which attempt to interpret and revise Christianity in a National Socialist sense. An attempt will be made to discover the roots of such trends in German churches: in their history, the social composition of their clergy and congregations, and their theology. We have an eminent theological adviser at our side who knows the most recent history of German churches and the most modern developments in theology, in detail, on the basis of his own experience, and who has even played a paramount role in them. An attempt will be made to give a cultural analysis of individual pastors and professors who are typical for National Socialist anti-Christianity or who have opposed it.40
“Anti-Christianity and Nietzsche.” (German Draft 1)
National Socialism is rightly understood by many as an attack on Christian civilization. However much its theory may change, whether it declares submission to Führer and party, devotion to race and Volksgemeinschaft, or sacrifice for the rise of the Reich as the highest virtue, contradicts in all its forms both Christianity and secularized, Christian humanity. By its own absolute authority it switches in and out a spiritual God for a finite being. In practice, absolute obedience, which, according to the Christian tradition is due unto God alone, is claimed on behalf of earthly powers. The idea of the infinite value of the individual soul is ruthlessly denied in all areas of domestic policy. Foreign policy, however, is determined solely by considerations of power. In National Socialism, the intellectual-spiritual can, as a matter of principle, only be thought of as a means. Even though this phenomenon has been clearly identified again and again, particularly in this country, in-depth studies are necessary to investigate it.
The in-depth illumination of the historical and social roots of National Socialist anti-Christianity is a concern of the utmost importance for all existing democracies, because the tendencies that are now stepping into the light of day in Germany are closely linked to the whole of modern culture, even if in specific, national configurations. It is no coincidence that the historical legacy of the French Revolution, with which democracy began its triumphal march across the European continent, is shot through with anti-Christian movements. For all of the differences between the French-revolutionary cults of “reason” and the “supreme being” exhibit in comparison with National Socialism, they nevertheless have in common with it the fact that they set up political institutions—the fatherland, nation, or Volksgemeinschaft—as the highest aim of religious worship.
In Germany, anti-Christianity has a long history. As opposed to that in Anglo-Saxon countries, Protestantism in Germany constantly has to confront the Catholic Church in the flesh. Important social strata perceive it to be a remnant of degenerated feudalism which yet protrudes into the bourgeois world. In opposition to Catholicism, the economy of the court, and to France, Lutheran Protestantism is connected with anti-Christian, nationalist currents. At the beginning of the 19th century, after the Wars of Liberation, anti-Christian nationalism emerged as the Teutonism of the Youth Associations [Burschenschaften]. The strivings of the academic youth and large parts of the bourgeoisie for the unification of the Reich awoke Germanic, pagan, and anti-Semitic instincts, and this association held through the end of the 19th century. Both the subjectivism of Fichte and the transcendental and nature-philosophy of Schelling bring to a close the dualism that is characteristic of the Christian religion and which dominates Kantian philosophy. For both of them, the world becomes the product of an immanent spontaneity. Philosophically, they provide grounds for the dynamism which, today, celebrates its political triumphs in the idea of infinite activity and the deification of the powers of nature. Naturally, neither of them were conscious of their opposition to Christianity.
The thinker in whose work the crisis of Christianity in the modern world is brought to consciousness most forcefully is Friedrich Nietzsche. He formulated the plight of modern man and the fragility of modern society with a precision no other philosopher has. The fact that the friends of democracy, humanity, and Christianity in Germany, as well as those abroad, left the interpretation of his work to their opponents has taken its revenge in politics; his critique of Christian culture, had it been raised in its correct form to general consciousness, might have facilitated the rescue of European humanity. Instead, the Prussian power-politickers, whom Nietzsche hated until his death, were allowed to make him their champion. Throughout the rest of the world, his teachings have been decried as the offspring of megalomania for so long that the caricature of the Übermensch, the authoritarian Führer, is now obliterating the old Europe instead of making it better, or “overcoming” it, as Nietzsche wanted.
In Nietzsche we find all the elements of the National Socialist worldview, albeit in a radically different configuration: the delusion that one can establish which values rank highest according to one’s own will, the dynamism, the belief in power, the breeding of human beings. But Nietzsche also articulates the secret at the ground of all such desperate notions: disillusionment [Enttäuschung] in Christianity and particularly Christian morals.
(According to Nietzsche, the true concern of the human being is the unfolding of their inherent abilities. This can only be fulfilled if one forgets all vain hopes of help from the world beyond and takes their own destiny into their own hands with consciousness and the irrepressible will to higher forms of being. According to Nietzsche, Christianity has paralyzed this will at its very core. It has everywhere inhibited the elevation of the capable [die Heraufkunft der Tüchtigen]. In its essence, it is on the side of the status quo. By cloaking given [social] relations with the veneer of respectability, it protects the individuals, social groups, and peoples who have come to dominate recent centuries. Instead of actual superiority—by which Nietzsche does not mean something essentially physical—being the decisive factor, age is invoked as grounds for legitimacy. Dominators and dominated are corrupted by the fact that their relation is veiled by the belief in a compensation in the beyond. The order of domination in actual society has been deprived of its seriousness by pointing to an afterlife. As in the external world, Christianity has caused confusion in the world of the soul. Because the renunciation of drives [Triebverzicht] human beings must perform due to their earthly relations is not demanded of them within a design for the higher development of such earthly relations of these relations but rather on the basis of the rather questionable idea of an afterlife, these drives, though renounced, cannot actually be overcome. They transform into ressentiment, and the best forces of humanity atrophy through wear and tear in the internal conflict characteristic of modernity.)41
Without a doubt, Nietzsche misunderstands Christianity. It is no less certain, however, that he only articulates a subterranean, occasionally erupting, current in German history over the course of the last century. Thus, the influence of Nietzsche can hardly be overestimated. The content of his philosophy follows a course opposed to philosophy of the university and the dominant powers of culture. To the extent these powers ultimately assimilate him, they change the content of his work into the chauvinistic nationalism he so deeply despised.
The three investigations we propose each have the purpose of making modern German anti-Christianity understandable to the American public. First, a survey of individual German anti-Christian currents of the 19th and 20th centuries will be carried out with the use of newspapers, journals, pamphlets and parliamentary debates. The Bildung and social position of the strata that participate in each will be taken into consideration. This will also include a study of church attendance and church departures based on statistical material such as that available in Schneider’s Kirchlischem Jahrbuch and other sources.
Second, on the basis of a precise analysis of Nietzsche's philosophy, its effect on all areas of European, and particularly German, life will be presented. Above all, philosophy and literature will be examined. It will become clear that the majority of the great intellectual currents of the 20th century in Germany are substantially connected to Nietzsche: first and foremost the new psychology (Freud and Klages) and metaphysics (Spengler, later Scheler and Heidegger). The George School deserves special attention, as it snatches Nietzsche from the clutches of petty-bourgeois “free spirits” but emphasizes the authoritarian-irrationalist features of his doctrine at the expense of the critical ones (Bertram, Wolters).
Third, National Socialism’s agreement with and opposition to Nietzsche’s philosophy can be thrown into relief by an overview of its programmatic omissions [programmatischen Auslassungen] [from his work] before and after it seized power. This part of the work could contribute more to knowledge of the intellectual atmosphere in Germany than all of the given data about the persecution of the clergy or even the conditions of the concentration camps. It should also contribute to preempting serious mistakes in the handling of Germany’s cultural affairs after the war.
III. Memorandum to supplement the Research Project “Cultural Aspects of National Socialism.”
Contents.
Notes on the Organization and Method of the Project
A. The Organization of the Work in the Research Group
B. The “Living Records”
C. Remarks on Methods and Approach
Preliminary List of Refugee Experts42
A Bibliography of Literature on National Socialism
The memorandum that follows offers some remarks to clarify the organization and methods to be employed in the project CULTURAL ASPECTS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM, submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation on February 28, 1941. These remarks deal primarily with problems which grow out of the inability to do independent research within present-day Germany.
[Interviews with German refugees and the utilization of their experience will constitute one of the principal means of discovering how a democratic society degenerates into authoritarianism. This approach requires a constant reformulation of the problems of the project and may even affect the project’s scope, so that emphasis will be shifted according to results obtained.]43
This memorandum is concerned with (A) the organization of the work in the research groups, (B) the interviewing of refugees (one of the principal sources for discovering how a democratic society degenerates into an authoritarian one), and (C) some remarks on methods and approach.
We are seeking to obviate any possible danger on our part of emotional bias and intellectual dogmatism by associating an American as co-director of the project, by securing the cooperation of advisory committees composed largely of American scholars, and by controlling each other’s judgment through our regular group discussions. In addition we know that good social science procedure requires that the methods and points of view be changed and adjusted as we progress in the research on the particular topics. With respect to the material we shall constantly take care to test cliches, slogans, and generalizations by reference to concrete details.
A. Organization of the Work in the Research Groups.
We wish to stress that this is a group project of integrated studies where individual authorship is subordinated to the best interests of the entire project.
The procedure which we have been accustomed to employ in our cooperative efforts for a decade is as follows:
The group meets regularly once a week for half a day. It breaks down the project in its subdivisions and discusses such matters as:
The methodological difficulties as they arise in the course of the work;
Whether some point should be elaborated, what further material might be used for that purpose;
Whether some part should be handled by the director of the section or may be taken care of by an assistant.
The group assigns to each member the task of reporting on the progress of his work. The reports are written and distributed to the members beforehand, discussed by the entire group, and referred back to the responsible person for further treatment. In case the group decides that some point or part elaborated by one member for his section belongs in the section of one of the other members, the necessary exchange will be made. This method is used from the stage of preliminary outline to that of the finished product. The discussions are intended to allow many points of view and interests to be taken care of with respect to each section; they are also intended to dovetail the material of the various sections and to establish consistency and prevent duplication of efforts.
Special advisory committees, one for each section, have been set up to facilitate the interchange and integration of German and American experience. The director of each section expects to keep in contact with his advisory committee. He will do so primarily by submitting from time to time to his committee the results of his work in writing. Each member of the committees has expressed his willingness actively to collaborate.
Bureaucracy: Lindsay Rogers, Columbia University (Chairman); W. Richter, Chicago; […]44
Mass Culture: Robert M. MacIver, Columbia University (Chairman); Theodore Abel, Columbia University; Frank Mankiewicz, College of the City of New York.
Anti-Christianity: Reinhold Niebhur, Union Theological Seminary, NYC (Chairman); Paul Tillich, Union Theological Seminary; Adolf Keller, World Council of Churches, NY.
The War and Post-War Generation: Robert S. Lynd, Columbia University (Chairman); Robert Ulich, Harvard University; William H. Kilpatrick, Teachers College, Columbia.
Ideological Permeation of Labor and the Middle Classes: Harold D. Lasswell, Washington, D.C. (Chairman); Max Lerner, Williams College;45 Alfred Vagts, Institute for Advanced Study.
Literature, Art, and Music: John B. Whyte, Brooklyn College (Chairman); Meyer Schapiro, Columbia University; Ernst Krenek, Vassar College.
In the course of the work, we may enlarge the one or the other committee or consult scholars whose advice would be particularly useful on special problems.
The advisory committees will be asked to criticize the frame of reference for each problem to be investigated so that the relevance of these studies for American needs will be taken care of. They will assist the study group in the selection and formulation of questions to be put to the German refugees who are to be interviewed.
B. The “Living Records.”
The presence in this country of so many German refugees offers a unique source of information, most of which, unless utilized in the near future, will, in the course of time, be lost. The inability to do scholarly research within present-day Germany enhances the need for securing information from them. Many of them are persons who were formerly prominent in German affairs and were thereby able to observe and to judge the course of events from an advantageous position. Both their judgments and the factual information which they possess should be obtained, and case studies of a few of these persons will be valuable. In addition to these prominent persons there are many refugees of the middle and lower groups of society, men and women, all of whom have had personal experiences of great value for our study.
We shall ask certain of the refugees for memoranda on questions which can be answered in precise detail and we shall also seek memoranda from some refugees outside the United States. More important as a source of information from the refugees will be the personal interviews. It is clear that we cannot interview all of them; but we shall try to talk to most of the formerly prominent ones and a representative sampling of the others. The interviews will be carefully planned beforehand and for this preparation we hope especially to obtain the assistance of our advisory committees. The plan and procedure of the interviews will doubtless have to vary from person to person in order to obtain a maximum insight into his experience.
In order to obtain as objective results as possible we shall plan our interviews in such a way as to get behind the party slogans and cliches used by the persons interviewed to their concrete experience. We shall check the statements made by each person against the factual material which he offers. Wherever the results of the interviews reveal an inner inconsistency we shall, in important cases, return to the person for further information. In addition, we shall in the second interview obtain the reactions of the person to remarks made by others in their interviews. We shall also employ other methods of source criticism to these statements, e.g. that of checking the data against the authentic documents such as legislative enactments, party records, parliamentary records, judicial and administrative decisions. We shall supplement these data by ascertaining the subjective responses of the person interviewed toward the course of events and we shall plan the interview in such a way as to clarify, as far as possible, the changes in the attitude. We consider these attitudes as essential material for our study.
The refugees in formerly prominent positions left Germany at an early date and will therefore have information primarily about pre-Nazi Germany and the transitional period. A good many, however, have come over since then and particularly a large number of the rank and file have recently arrived in this country. From these elements we shall be able to obtain information not only about the Weimar Republic and the transitional period but also about the character and operation of National Socialism.
We recognize that this information from refugees is only one source and that we shall need to correlate it with the large body of published source and secondary material.
We append below a list of prominent refugees whom we shall approach for interviews. The list is provisional and will be supplemented from time to time. It does not include the names of refugees holding teaching positions here or abroad, but their names and cooperation can be easily secured. The key persons whose names we list will direct us to many others in all walks of life. Most of these important persons are known by one or the other member of this study group.
[“Living Records.” (English draft) (4/11/1941)]
The aim of the project is to make useful for the current American scene the experience and knowledge of the members of the Institute of Social Research and of those refugees, formerly in prominent positions in German cultural and practical life, who witnessed the rise of the authoritarian state. Care must be taken,
1) To eliminate personal bias. The actual experiences of the refugees have to be sifted so as to separate out any personal interpretations of present and past events. While there are numerous interpretative books on the authoritarian state, no attempt has been made on a sufficiently large scale to collect and make a critical analysis of the factual material contained in the recollections, unpublished diaries, and similar private documents in the possession of emigres from the authoritarian states. There is a great danger that this material may be lost with the passage of time.
2) To formulate German experience in terms of American culture. Even if the personal equation is excluded, the German refugees will still present their experience in specifically German terms. In most cases, the living records of those who witnessed events in Germany are so closely bound to specifically German relationships that the use of this material in relation to the American scene may lead to grave misinterpretations. Our task, therefore, will be to formulate and organize the experience in such a way that it can be related to comparable American problems and conditions.
3) To use German experience for contemporary problems in America. The German experience, finally, has to be used and applied so that it will be helpful to us in coping with the cultural tasks we face in this country. It is our belief that the scientist’s task does not end with his unprejudiced establishment of the precise facts, but that true objectivity in the social sciences requires that facts be fused with proper values and ends. The difficulty in combining scientific objectivity with the social problem that confronts us is intensified by the fact that the refugees are not yet assimilated into American life and that, conversely, the American public has but slight knowledge of the German scene.
In order to overcome these difficulties, we have elaborated a technique and methodology we propose to use in executing this project.
4) Interviewing outstanding refugees. We append below a list of the persons whom we shall approach for voluntary cooperation in the work. This list is provisional and will be supplemented from time to time. It does not include the names of refugees now holding teaching positions here or abroad, but their names and cooperation can easily be secured. The names we do mention are those of key persons who will lead us to many others in all walks of life, and who themselves can be expected to contribute much special information on the rise and practice of National Socialism, information that is not obtainable from any other source. Most of them are known personally to members of the Institute.
The questions to be asked of these refugees will be submitted to them in personal interview or by letter, and, in each case, will be adapted to the particular field, experience and qualification of the person concerned.
In order to obtain the maximum objectivity in the utilization of the living records, we shall examine the internal consistency of the utterances and memoranda of each refugee. New questions will have to be developed where inconsistencies occur. Moreover, we shall cross-check the data elicited and shall compare them with authentic documents (parliamentary records, records of party congresses, legislative enactments, judicial and administrative decisions), eliminating everything contradicted by these documents. In other words, we hope to develop something like a source criticism of the living records.
[We shall seek to utilize this material from the refugees in an objective way by the following methods: 1) Within the statement of each we shall check the generalizations made by means of details offered in the interview. This will be a check by means of the inner consistency of the statements. 2) By means of the methods of source criticism (for example, checking the data gained against the authentic documents…). 3) By means of a second interview to confront the person with points of view obtained from other interviews.]46
The data that result will be submitted to the advisory committees and to American scholars and administrators who work in the particular field. We hope to secure the assistance of the Social Science Research Council in selecting people who will cooperate along these lines, These will be asked to choose those answers that need to be expatiated upon and clarified. They will also be asked to formulate additional questions relevant to urgent American problems. In this way, we hope to achieve precision and concreteness in the matter of eliciting and organizing the material which the refugees possess.
In the course of the work, we intend to invite American collaborators and refugees to the meetings at the Institute. Such personal contact, we feel, is necessary if the living records we speak of are to be used properly, as well as for a constant interchange of American and German experience and information.
C. Remarks on Methods and Approach.
The information which we derive from all sources will be utilized according to the established methods of the social sciences. The group believes that its particular contribution lies in the fact that it will bring these methods to bear upon a common body of material, that it will utilize all methods of social analysis appropriate to the particular studies to be made. Some methods taken from cultural anthropology will be useful in some cases, others from sociology in other cases and so on. A few instances may suffice to illustrate our approach.
[In every instance all methods will be used wherever necessary. The group feels that by these cooperative efforts it can arrive at a synthesis of material and viewpoints and it believes that this total approach will be its main contribution. The methods of cultural synthesis have been much less developed than those of analysis and the experiences gained in the writing of these volumes may well lead to useful conclusions about the methods of cultural synthesis. These conclusions might lead to a separate publication. Some Special Methods. Apart from the difficulties outlined above, there are others that arise from the fact that the National Socialist state is completely closed to the outside world. There are no possibilities for direct, first-hand investigation of the pertinent facts. All research in this field thus depends upon a special set of methods, and the paragraphs that follow attempt to outline some of these. We are fully aware that they are distinctly probationary in character and have to be developed and tested during the actual work itself. Some of them may later have to be discarded, some, we hope, may lead to their goal.]47
(1) We shall endeavor to discover the actual social and political meaning of slogans and also of literary and artistic forms.48 [The situation necessitates that the project employ textual analysis to a much greater degree than is usual in the social sciences. We shall therefore attempt to develop this method, which at first gives us information as to the philosophic background of National Socialism, in such a way as to permit us to gain as much insight as possible, given the lack of field work opportunities, into the effect of these writings on the German population. The external analysis will not be limited to the actual content of writings. It will also treat their form, and particularly the formation of certain slogans. In other words, the analysis will endeavor to elaborate, as far as is possible, the immediately effective propagandistic aspect of the texts to be analyzed.]49
(2) We shall make a study of the transition of certain fundamental ideas from their original formulation through various classes and other groups of the population, that is from the originator down to the most popular form of these ideas. This might be called a linear approach to the social functioning of an idea.50 [The analysis of texts will be followed by a study of the ways in which the ideas were disseminated among specific strata of the German people. How has an author like Nietzsche shaped the policy of the German Youth Movement, the ideology of school teachers, of popular philosophical literature and provincial newspapers? If we can trace the path of ideas, such as Nietzsche’s, through the various levels of “popularization” and “interpretation” as they percolate down to the masses, we may be able to construct certain hypotheses relative to their effects on the “ultimate consumer” of them. In the establishment of these processes, the experience of the refugees will play a considerable role.]51
(3) Marginal or extreme cases. We shall attempt to apply this method, which is familiar in anthropology, psychology, and political science, to German society.52 [Case studies of youthful delinquents might lead to conclusions about the normal behavior of certain key groups that practiced violence, such as the Brown Shirts and Elite Guards. Similarly, case studies of corruption during the Weimar Republic and during the first stages of the National Socialist regime may lead to helpful revelations of the propagandistic nature of National Socialist moral conceptions.]53
(4) The method of “back inference” has already been explained in the project.54 [The measures adopted by the National Socialist regime and the changes they underwent will be analyzed in order to determine how far they reflect important changes in the attitude of the German people towards the regime.]55
[We plan a comparative analysis of the content of representative German writings and the ideology and practice of the National Socialists. What role is played in the works of eminent German thinkers by, say, the doctrine of open violence, of cruelty, of Jewish inferiority and of eulogies on treaty-breaking and similar doctrines? Consistencies and inconsistencies between these writings and the National Socialist ideology and practices will provide another means whereby we can infer back to the ideological permeation of the German people.]56
(5) In addition, the results of a previous German field study which we have made will be used to illustrate and supplement our work, that mainly pertaining to family conflicts and to authority.57 In this study, made in 1932, we inquired into the attitude of a carefully selected sample of German workers and employees. The questionnaires, of which 1150 were filled out, contained 271 questions, and will be found printed in the Institute’s publication, Autorität und Familie.58 An English translation of the questionnaire was prepared and published by the State Department of Social Welfare and the Department of Social Science, Columbia University.59 [The material is itself not quantitatively sufficient for a definitive interpretation. But it will be of use to illustrate and concretize results obtained through other methods, these mainly pertaining to family conflicts and to authority.]60
The group believes that in general the methods of cultural analysis have been much more developed than those of synthesis. It feels that its cooperative approach will enable it to achieve a cultural synthesis in the areas selected for its investigation. The experiences gained thereby may well lead to a separate publication on this difficult methodological problem.61
IV. Horkheimer—The Psychology of Nazidom [Review of: Brickner’s Is Germany Incurable?] (1943)
Brickner, Richard M. Is Germany Incurable? J.B. Lippincott Company, New York 1943. pp. 318; $3.00.62
Brickner’s book is intended as a doctor’s contribution to the problem of this war. It attempts to answer such big questions as: Why did Germany attack the world? What are we fighting? What can we do after this war to remove the causes for similar ones in the future? Brickner thinks that he is able to solve them by applying psychiatric and neurologic concepts to Germany’s past and actual conduct. He is convinced that economists, sociologists, historians, and other experts, who have so far treated the German enigma, “have been handicapped by lack of specialized knowledge of human behavior” (29). Therefore, the medical expert takes the stand, not in order to point to the manifold methods, findings, and theories of psychology, which might be integrated with those of other disciplines in an adequate explanation of present-day history, but in order to give his own solution unbiased by any specialized knowledge of factors alien to medicine.
In reality, Brickner’s theory refers to only one basic concept: the medical diagnosis of paranoia. This term refers not only to the psychosis, in which the ties of a patient with reality are severed altogether, but also to the characteristics of the disease, which, though they exist in some individuals, do not prevent some adjustment to reality. These psychopathic trends, “psychoses-in-miniature” (52), may not develop to a harmful or dangerous intensity during the entire lives of the individuals who display them. However, if the latter find themselves exposed to conditions particularly in line with their own trends, they may turn into acute cases of the illness to which they were susceptible. Since, in the average individual, traces of all kinds of character structures can be found, certain social conditions may be able to bring psychopathic spells to the fore in individuals in whom they would have otherwise remained completely hidden.
Up to now Germany has been an excellent breeding ground for paranoia. German society was so constructed that it encouraged and even rewarded paranoid thinking. As far as we can see, the main and almost only cause which Brickner offers as an explanation for this state of affairs is his contention “that German leaders manifest and have manifested for a considerable time recognizably paranoid thinking” (90). Long before Hitler, both the prominent figures and the decisive groups in Germany showed striking paranoid features. In other countries paranoid-tending persons are held in less responsible positions or are induced to assert and expand those of their psychological attitudes which are unaffected by paranoia. Paranoid characters, in Western civilization, are forced to build up their own groups—strange sects, followers of astrology and spiritualities, and political shirt-movements with their special rituals and observances. They become, so to speak, isolated in society, just as in the individual paranoiac trends are isolated by the successful psychiatrist in order to allow the “clean areas” of his mind to remain uncontaminated. In Germany, on the contrary, “the whole arsenal of paranoid gratifications is part and parcel of every-day life, as well as high political, academic, and military life” (140). Towards other nations, Germany as a whole behaves as a dangerous paranoiac towards his victims.
The main traits of this national paranoid character Brickner describes as the need to dominate, suspiciousness (the “persecution-complex”), the enormous sense of one’s own importance, the readiness to reinterpret past events so as to make them fit into one’s own self-centered and strictly logical system, and, finally, the abnormal tendency to project one’s own wrath and guilt on any person with whom one happens to be in contact. Where most or all of these symptoms occur, the psychiatrist speaks of a paranoiac character. He asserts himself in a most aggressive way. In his world, there is only one kind of human relations: domination. To the paranoiac everyone is an enemy, whose only purpose is to subdue or to annihilate him. As a result, he feels that he can only subdue or annihilate the enemy in turn. The world’s diversity and richness—all the potentialities of human intercourse—are devoured, as it were, by the one scheme of subjugation. The ultimate means to which the desperate individual paranoiac quite logically resorts is murder; the ultimate means of a paranoiac nation is aggression and war.
Whatever rational course the prospective victim may take, whether he gives proof of his good will or refutes the paranoiac’s allegations, is doomed to failure. The paranoiac either suspects a trap or becomes convinced of the weakness of that particular opponent. In the latter case, he will raise his demands, and if they are met, raise them again and again until the appeaser will be unable to fulfill them. Brickner’s description of these mechanisms is so conceived as to fit perfectly the events which led to the failure of Mr. Chamberlain’s policies. Appeasement, indulgence, benevolence, he points out, only encourage the paranoiac trends. The diseased group as well as the diseased individual should be subjected to conditions under which they cannot do any harm. With regard to Germany this can be achieved by complete disarmament. Furthermore, post-war policy should make a decent living available for the conquered and then try to work with that part of the German population which is predominantly non-paranoid. “On the existence and stamina of this non-paranoid group in Germany hangs the future of the world” (305).
Brickner’s style is lucid. It expresses the common inhibition among the learned that the expert must speak very plainly and repeat statements several times so as to be understood by the layman. In order to prove his thesis of the existence of group paranoia, he exhibits selections from anthropological monographs and from the writings of chauvinistic Germans. Nevertheless, it is quite obvious that the book does not answer the question expressed in its title. Since a present-day psychiatrist can never know whether or not a case of paranoia is curable, the analogy between German political constructions and that illness does not allow of any plausible prognosis. Furthermore, in the advice which Brickner gives for the post-war period, he seems to stress the fact that the therapeutic value of his theory is inconsiderable. His recommendations are of a very general political nature; they seem to be derived from plain common sense. But if one were to try to make his simple propositions workable, one would have to analyze the economic and social conditions which made for paranoiac leadership in Germany; one would have to study why the non-paranoiac groups, which, after all, had their opportunities more than once, were defeated and rendered impotent; one would have to know what the numerical relationships between the social forces in Germany really are; in short, psychiatry would have to tilt over into political science and the expert psychiatrist would have to follow his course as a layman.
And even then he would find it difficult to adapt a psychiatric concept, such as paranoia, to historical problems. Usually psychological illness can be diagnosed by evidence of maladjustment of an individual to his environment. But in analyzing the behavior of nations, aggression and its concomitant psychological manifestations can be considered as evidence of an inferior ability to adjust only insofar as a world-wide social environment can be defined and enforced. A series of standards of international conduct, in terms of which a national maladjustment might be understood, has in fact never existed, and will never exist so long as adjustment in international affairs depends on irrational factors. Aggression has very often expressed a full grasp of reality. In Western civilization there is a whole succession of aggressive wars from the conquest of the Peloponnesian Peninsula by the old Greeks, who used to hold all other peoples in contempt as barbarians, to the conquest of colonies and even whole continents by Christian peoples in modern times. Let us suppose that the barbarians and the aborigines had produced expert psychiatrists—would they not have been justified in calling those ruthless conquerors cases of psychosis? The utterances of such aggressor nations were neither more humane nor more reasonable in a true sense than Brickner’s quotations from German authors. Their deeds were certainly as atrocious as those of our modern Teutons. This is true with regard to their behavior not only towards other nations but also towards groups in their own countries. Since the most advanced Greek philosophers pretended that the people, whom their own group subjugated as slaves, were born as such, since the Latin language even refused the honor of speaking of them as human beings, since Roman agricultural slaves and in fact all groups which were unprotected and unable to defend themselves when they came into any conflict with the more powerful were subdued and in some cases annihilated, Brickner would then have to term almost all great and highly respected nations glaring cases of group paranoia.
It is just this paradoxical consequence which reveals the merits of Brickner’s book. The category of paranoia, crude as it is with regard to the complicated problems of today’s international situation, may lead to the core of many intriguing phenomena. If it is true that the behavior of the oppressors, as viewed by the oppressed, has shown at least a majority of the character traits which Brickner lists as paranoid, we may then study under this category—not the international behavior of national groups—but the impulsions toward paranoia given by certain economic and social conditions and expressed in the behavior of individuals toward each other. Indeed the development towards rationality in modern history has favored certain character structure which Brickner terms as paranoid. There is, for instance, the cold economic subject who views the whole world only in its relation to the interests of his business or industry—who cannot even conceive of any other action than that by which he expands his economic power. He is unable to react in any other way but the one which is dictated by his own material interests. He is completely dominated by this one aim to increase his power and “by definition incapable of satisfaction in any triumph” (32) because it only doubles his responsibilities and his ambitions. Naturally he is not a mental case, but according to Brickner’s explanation, it is certainly possible that the majority of the individuals in a paranoid group are not psychotic; the paranoid features are made preponderant in the individuals by the specific conditions of the respective social structures. Some of the most inspiring parts of the book are the pages in which Brickner takes over the old concept of contagion once applied in a similar connection by Tarde. He shows how not only the individuals tending to paranoia are completely infected under the impact of paranoiac influences in society, but even the victims and opponents are hypnotized and driven in the same direction. Here Brickner’s ideas should be expanded by an analysis of the psychotizing influence of terror in its manifold appearances. For terror, both as an actuality and as a potentiality, has been the keynote of the main chapters of history.
The theoretical considerations which Brickner’s book motivates go far beyond his own intentions. It seems to us that the concept of paranoia can be more helpful to the historian and the sociologist than many other psychological categories. It points to the madness in domination and subjugation and more generally to any social system, as far as it tends to use men only as means and never as an aim—to use Kant’s expression. Paranoia is the treacherous image of reason with all its unflinching conclusiveness and inflexible alternatives. A study into its historical causes and ramifications would be a tempting task for the convinced layman, the philosopher.
Roderick Stackelberg. “‘CULTURAL ASPECTS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM’: An Unfinished Project of the Frankfurt School.” Dialectical Anthropology 12, no. 2 (1987), 258.
For “Mass Culture,” see: Ibid., 255. For “Literature, Art, and Music,” see: Ibid., 256-257.
Stackelberg (1987): “The section on “Anti-Christianity,” too, illustrates the simpler, more monocausal, less dialectical interpretative framework of the final proposal. Originally entitled “Nietzsche and the Struggle Against Christianity” (and in its German version, “Antichristentum und Nietzsche,”) this section contained an ambivalence that was largely removed from the final version. For if the ostensible aim of the final proposal was to trace the anti-Christian antecedents of National Socialism, the original version advances the suggestion that tendencies within Christianity itself contributed to Nazism. Particularly striking is the very differing assessment of Nietzsche in the original and in the final versions. The original draft combines a surprisingly appreciative evaluation of Nietzschean thought with an expression of regret that the friends of democracy, humanity, and Christianity have left the interpretation of Nietzsche to their opponents. “This neglect has proved fateful, because Nietzsche's attack has been turned into a political weapon, which had it been employed by the protagonists of democratic ideals, and made part of the general consciousness, could have contributed to the salvation of European culture.” In this plea to recapture Nietzsche for anti-fascist purposes, Horkheimer echoed certain themes of his devastating 1937 review of Karl Jaspers’ Nietzsche and anticipated the appeal to Nietzsche in Dialectic of Enlightenment.” In: Ibid., 257-258.
For the author’s translation of Horkheimer’s polemical 1937 review of Karl Jaspers’ Nietzsche, see:
Quoted in: Ibid., 258.
Stackelberg (1987): “On Anderson's suggestion, the final proposal was expanded to include examples of both the left-wing and the Nazi press. The broadening of the scope of the project was also accompanied by a redirection of its critical thrust. Subtly but noticeably the emphasis in the final version is changed; instead of exposing the susceptibility of democratic societies to insidious processes of authoritarian control the revised proposal accentuated the subversive activities of the Nazis as the agents of totalitarianism. The Nazi conspiracy, which hardly figured in the earlier version, supplanted, as it were, the elite manipulation of mass culture as the more important factor in the demise of Weimar democracy.” In: Ibid., 256.
On the archival evidence for the late-stage elimination of “monopoly” from the Dialectic of Enlightenment as an argument against the “long farewell” interpretive convention, see:
Horkheimer to William and Charlotte Dieterle, 3/6/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17. (1996), 23. Author’s translation: here.
Horkheimer evidently finds this fictional ‘speech to the board’ rhetorically effective, and uses it almost verbatim in a letter to Löwenthal dated two days prior. “The rejection of Teddie’s grant confirms our old theory that we shouldn’t expect to be given anything at all, and that we should expect only further difficulties ahead if we fail to find the source of resistance behind the rejection of the big project [viz., “Cultural Aspects of National Socialism”]. Marshall's comment that he wanted to consider how T[eddie] might find the right “status” is a clear insult to us. It means: so long as one is connected with the institute, they will accomplish nothing. There must have been someone who, in the manner of our old friend A. Flexner, raised the following points: “I already know these people from Europe. There is the former report by [van Sickels] which is based on information from Mr. Marr and others. This report is years old, but what a record of these people here! Their organization is unusual, to put it mildly. They don’t have a board of directors made up of native-born or at least business-minded people who are known to be reliable. …” Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 6/21/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 75-76. Author’s translation.
In his reply, Adorno extends Horkheimer’s assessment of the parallelism between economic liquidation of small enterprises by monopolies and the fate of the ISR itself in the field of science: “Dear Max, thank you so much for your detailed letter of June 23, which made me infinitely happy. I completely agree with you in your assessment of the Rockefeller affair, as well as the whole Foundation-problem: socially, it is akin to the relation between a cartel and an independent small business. But, just as in economics, you cannot say in advance whether you will manage to slip through one of the loopholes. One just has to be able to stop the efforts you characterize as Don Quixote-like in good time if the opposite turns out to be the case. I wrote the letters to the prominent experts who are supposed to intervene at the New York Foundation together with Neumann. …” Adorno to Horkheimer, 7/2/1941. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 95. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer to Adorno, 6/23/1941. In: A Life in Letters: Selected Correspondence, Max Horkheimer. Translated by Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 177-179.
Quoted in: James Schmidt, “The Making and the Marketing of the Philosophische Fragmente: A Note on the Early History of the Dialectic of Enlightenment (Part I),” on “Persistent Enlightenment” (blog), 1/9/2017. Link: https://persistentenlightenment.com/2017/01/09/philfrag1/
Adorno to Horkheimer, 1/25/1945: “… The one I am sending you in the next few days is the last thing I am planning here. It is, so to speak, the skeleton of the other investigations. It means at the same time the implementation of the German studies carried out by the Institute in the first year to the American situation and their continuation with genuinely American material. It is therefore intended to bring in the capital advanced last year and, at the same time, the objective presuppositions for the other, “subjectively” directed, more or less psychological investigations. I would recommend it to you not only for this reason in particular, but also because it requires far less statisticians, field workers and other enemies, and can essentially be carried out by the Institute’s staff. I have another Hintergedanken: since the war now seems to be coming to an end and the problem of Neumann, Kirchheimer and Marcuse is becoming acute, the former two, at least, can be integrated into the project, thus creating a transitional period for them without burdening the Institute. Whether an economic project in the narrower sense is needed to complement this project is something we can consider in New York—after all, I think an additional, and specifically economic, project would not look bad. …” In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel 1927-1969. Band II: 1938-1944. Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz. (Suhrkamp, 2004), 37. Author’s translation.
Horkheimer to Harold Laski, 3/10/1941. In: A Life in Letters (2007), 173-174.
Quoted in: “The Frankfurt School and Council Communism,” Felix Baum and Jacob Blumenfeld. The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. Edited by Beverley Best, Werner Bonefeld, and Chris O’Kane (SAGE, 2018).
James Schmidt: “The lengths to which Horkheimer was willing to go in order to avoid even the appearance of radicalism border on the comic: before sending a colleague a copy of the mimeographed volume that the Institute for Social Research published in memory of Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer instructed Leo Löwenthal to “simply take a complete copy and cut the last article out. You may explain that the last pages were so misprinted that we had to destroy them—or find some other explanation” (17, p. 345). The article Löwenthal was instructed to remove was Horkheimer's essay “The Authoritarian State,” which, with its defense of worker’s councils, was perhaps the most politically radical essay he had written.” In: “Language, Mythology, and Enlightenment: Historical Notes on Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment.” Social Research 65(4) (1998), 813.
Horkheimer to Juliette Favez, 9/11/1939. In: MHGS, Bd. 16 (1995), 628–629. Author’s translation here.
Ziege (2014): “The concept [viz., of the marginality of the scientist in forced exile] is useful also for understanding the Institute of Social Research (ISR) and its innovations in research on antisemitism. For the ISR, three aspects are of specific interest with regard to this approach. First, in the Weimar Republic the majority of associates of the ISR came from assimilated German Jewish families; an orthodox family background was the exception. Second, in the Weimar Republic all of them belonged to the Left, encompassing communists and in rare cases even anarcho-communists as well as Social Democrats. Third, irrespective of these differences, the inner circle shared as a paradigm Marx’s critique of political economy. Perhaps what linked them was a discreet orthodoxy. All of them were more or less influenced by Freud, who introduced the notion of the unconscious into the analysis of the individual and society. A distinct school of Freudian Marxism emerged. Precisely the intense success of differing schools of Freudianism in the United States was a major prerequisite of the success of the Institute of Social Research in this country. Its Marxism, though, was rendered nearly invisible. For the Frankfurt School in the 1930s and 1940s, an esoteric form of communication has to be distinguished from an exoteric one. This distinction between what one can formulate explicitly and what one can articulate only very selectively, hoping that those “in the know” will recognize and understand all the same, had been important to Enlightenment thinkers and featured prominently in the thought of Leo Strauss (1899– 1973), who emigrated to the United States in 1932 and argued that contemporary thinkers too needed to maintain this distinction in an age of persecution and dictatorship. At the core of critical theory, philosophical assumptions were presupposed that were nevertheless negligible in everyday research; they remained esoteric. It is possible to conceive of this distinction between esoteric and exoteric, as well as of the process of transcending Marxist orthodoxy, not as a corruption or decline of, let alone a contradiction to, Marxism or critical theory but as the normality of any evolving school. The Marxist core paradigm in fact remained paradigmatic for social thought with the key members of the Institute. Nevertheless other associates did not necessarily share these tenets to the same extent. As Horkheimer defined it in the 1930s, the Institute’s purpose was the development of a theory of society based on the Marxist assumption that the antagonism between labor and capital was the key driving force in the dynamics of society. In 1937 Horkheimer published a famous article entitled “Traditionelle und Kritische Theorie,” juxtaposing traditional and critical theory. It established the term critical theory for the Institute’s specific form of Marxist social theory.” In: “The Irrationality of the Rational. The Frankfurt School and Its Theory of Society in the 1940s.” Antisemitism and the Constitution of Sociology, Edited by Marcel Stoetzler. (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 275-276.
Cf. Eva-Maria Ziege. Antisemitismus und Gesellschaftstheorie. Die Frankfurter Schule im amerikanischen Exil. (Suhrkamp, 2009), 9-10.
There are, in total, seven separate containers that are categorized under the heading of the ISR’s 1940-1941 drafts for the group “German[y] Project / Deutschlandsprojekt,” which includes drafts of the two prior (and partly overlapping) 1940 proposals for (1) “German Economy, Politics, and Culture, 1900-1933” and “The Collapse of German Democracy and the Expansion of National Socialism.” The four containers reserved exclusively for drafts and revisions of CANS are: MHA Na [696], [697], [698], [699].
The final copy of the proposal submitted in early March, 1941 (dated 2/24/1941) is in a different container altogether (which also contains the multiple drafts of the “supplementary statement”): [695], S. [43]-[159]. This copy serves as the reference point for the above transcription of the full proposal.
The transcribed/translated variants of individual sections of the proposal are sourced from the four containers from 696-699: here, two variants of the “Introduction” (English—“z),” dated Feb. 22, 1941; German—“oo),” titled ”Zur Einleitung”) and three variants of Horkheimer’s “Anti-Christianity” (the first a composite of two English drafts titled “Nietzsche and the Struggle against Christianity,” “k)” and “l)”; the second, a stand-alone earlier German draft simply titled “Nietzsche” and dated 2/5/1941; the third, a composite from two versions of an even earlier German draft of the section titled “Antichristentum und Nietzsche”).
Because I haven’t yet had the time to go back and generate more precise archival references for the materials I used to reconstruct the early “Introduction” and “Anti-Christianity” sections of the proposal (which I will try to do as soon as I have the chance!) last fall, I will list the contents of each of the first three CANS Bände here:
Na 1 Nachlass Max Horkheimer, 696 - Cultural Aspects of National Socialism. A Research Project, Band 1 (p. IX 170.5):
5. ‘Introduction’ (enthalten in 3.), Typoskripte und Manuskripte (u.a. Entwurf von Theodor W. Adorno und Manuskript von Max Horkheimer), insgesamt 117 Blatt;
Na 1 Nachlass Max Horkheimer, 697 - Cultural Aspects of National Socialism. A Research Project, Band 2 (p. IX 170.6 - 170.10)
'Bureaucracy' verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 51 Blatt; Handschriftliche Notizen, 4 Blatt;
'Mass Culture' verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 40 Blatt ; zwei Manuskripte, eins von Max Horkheimer, 3 Blatt;
'Anti-Christianity' verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 51 Blatt; Eigenhändige Notizen von Max Horkheimer, 1 Blatt;
'The War and Post-War Generation' verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, darunter ein Typoskript auf deutsch, mit eigenhändigen Korrekturen von Max Horkheimer, circa 67 Blatt;
'Ideological Permeation of Labor and New Middle Classes' [enthält unter anderem den Titel 'The German Masses and the Philosophy of National Socialism'] verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 36 Blatt; Notizem, 2 Blatt;
Na 1 Nachlass Max Horkheimer, 698 - Cultural Aspects of National Socialism. A Research Project, Band 3 (p. IX 170.11 - 170. 14)
'Literature, Art, and Music' verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, zwei davon auf deutsch; ein Teilstück, gesamt circa 100 Blatt;
'Labor Movement' verschiedene Typoskripte, zum Teil mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, circa 49 Blatt; zwei Teilstückem davon eins mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 4 Blatt; Typoskript und Manuskript, 7 Blatt;
The drafts for the methodological introduction entitled “Scope and Method” that would be repurposed into the SPSS text “Notes on Institute Activities”—which I’ve reconstructed in a previous post, “The Method of Concept-formation in Critical Theory”—are also located in container [698], or Band No. 3. Container 699, or Band No. 4, contains the memoranda written by Franz Neumann about his conversations with potential sponsors and representatives of the various committees (all of whom would turn down the project), Eugene Anderson’s notes for revision on the drafts of CANS, and letters by Adorno, Pollock, and Horkheimer to or about potential sponsors.
Quoted in: Stackelberg (1987): “The section on “Literature, Music, and Art,” also singled out by Rockefeller as objectionable, retained the critical tenor of the original and the esoteric method of Critical Theory to a greater degree than other parts of the proposal. Almost certainly the work of Adorno, this section proceeded on the hypothesis that “aesthetic production is the expression of cardinal tendencies of the time, constituting, as it were, its internal and unconscious historiography.” Readers from the Rockefeller Foundation may well have been skeptical of the presumption that social problems could be revealed by an analysis, for instance, of the formal characteristics of Expressionist poetry or atonal music. In addressing formal inconsistencies in works of art as symptoms of underlying social antagonisms, this section promised to bring Critical Theory to bear on Weimar culture in a more incisive fashion than the more descriptive approach underpinning other sections of the proposal. […] The final version of this section still contained a good deal of the ambivalence expressed in the insight of Critical Theory that anti-systemic movements are themselves inevitably caught in the contradictions of the system. Expressionism showed that critical and authoritarian motifs could co-exist in the same movement. The Expressionist protest against the process of rationalization and the loss of individuation in the modern world contained at the same time many of the tendencies, such as the adulation of strength and the yearning for a powerful leader, that are also to be found in Nazism. “We shall probe the hypothesis,” Adorno wrote in the original draft, “that the anti-collectivist, self-expressive subject of Expressionism ... by his feelings of impotence and isolation, yearns to be taken into the collectivity and ‘coordinated’ therein.” Resistance is incorporated into the process it is supposed to change. […] The primary emphasis, however, in both the original and to a lesser extent in the final version, is on the resistance that autonomous high art posed to the process of rationalization and uniformization in society. Running through this section is a distrust of popular culture as a major source of the loss of individual autonomy in modern society. Adorno proposed to examine in detail the ideological function of what he called “musical collectivism”—the effort to breach the gap between true art and mass entertainment—in preparing the ground for Nazism. The proposal speaks eloquently to Adorno's distrust of Gemeinschaftsmusik, music that was intended to be of high aesthetic quality and at the same time readily understandable to a mass public as a way of building a cohesive community. Adorno saw the cultural policies of the Social Democrats, who actively promoted Gemeinschaftsmusik in the 1920s, as another example of how the reformist labor movements unwittingly played into the hands of National Socialism, in this case by undercutting the autonomous critical function of serious art. Nazism represented, of course, the enshrinement of popular tastes and the ultimate repudiation of modern art.” In: “‘CULTURAL ASPECTS OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM’: An Unfinished Project of the Frankfurt School.” (1987), 256.
Stackelberg (1987), who mistakenly attributes “Mass Culture” to Horkheimer instead of Löwenthal: “The original version of the section on “Mass Culture,” then entitled “Public Opinion,” was based on the hypothesis that “some of the decisive characteristics of man which come to light in the authoritarian state are already ripe in pre-fascist society.” (The formulation in the original German was even more explicit in arguing that “the most important characteristics of man appearing in the authoritarian state are already generated in pre-fascist society.” For this reason the study of Weimar mass culture was deemed of urgent importance for all democratic countries. “Vast strata of the population,” the draft proposal read, “were transformed into obedient masses even before they were politically ‘coordinated.’” Although in the final proposal such pointed formulations were deleted, the primary concern remains the extent to which Weimar culture provided a foundation for national Socialism. […] Horkheimer proposed to focus his study of “Mass Culture” on the instrumental role of the press, singling out the quasi-liberal Frankfurter Zeitung and the mass-circulation Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung for particular attention. In his most overt reference to political economy in the entire proposal, Horkheimer hypothesized that “the decline of the Frankfurter Zeitung during the years of the Weimar republic was a direct concomitant of the triumph of definite industrial capitalist groups over finance and commercial capital.” Even the final, considerably more innocuous version of the proposal still spoke of “the impact of big industry upon newspaper policy” as a legitimate object of inquiry.” In: Ibid., 255.
Stackelberg (1987): “What remained of the original draft was a proposal that stressed the subversive role of the Nazis to a much greater extent without, however, entirely eliminating the earlier emphasis on the growth of cultural forms that led democracy, as it were, to self-destruct. This change of emphasis is evident, for instance, in the section on the “Ideological Permeation of Labor and the New Middle Classes,” the original version of which, succinctly entitled “Labor Movement,” stressed the policies of collaboration and bureaucratization within the reformist labor movement as primary factors in the failure of the working to resist Nazism.” In: Ibid., 247.
Quoted in Stackelberg (1987): “[T]he dialectical awareness of the contradictions in liberal institutions and consciousness is far more pronounced in the draft version than in the final proposal. The final version of the section on “The War and Post-War Generation,” for instance, omits all earlier references to the ambivalence of post-war youth, “clinging, as it did, unconsciously and quasi-neurotically, to the very things it attacked.”” In: Ibid., 258.
Max Horkheimer, “The Psychology of Nazidom.” In: MHA Na [639], S. [1]-[38].
Previously published in German translation (by Hans Günter Holl) in: MHGS, Bd. 5 (1987), 354-359.
I did not transcribe the concluding “BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES” section—of note, however, is the fact it includes Henryk Grossmann.
crossed out: “became protagonists of.”
crossed out: “and the humanities.”
Alternate end to ¶ in draft “dd)”: “It has cooperated in this way for over a decade and it would like in the present emergency to place its experience at the service of American scholarship. It knows of no other group and of few, if any, individuals who are interested in or equipped for doing the kind of studies proposed. The results may be of value not merely because of the insight into modern Germany but also because of the method employed.”
handwritten comment—illegible.
crossed out: “evaluate.”
English in original.
English in original.
English in original.
English in original.
English variant “kk)”: “The studies proposed in this memorandum are intended to elucidate the character and strength of certain fundamental changes in German life during the past generation. They will treat certain processes which have led to Nazism and others which have been defeated and crushed by it. They aim to provide cultural perspective upon the analyses of ideas, practices and institutions of Nazism which specialists in the Social Sciences and Humanities dealing with the contemporary scene will make.”
Crossed out in “l).”
“printed documents are available in this country.” — English in original.
“to give a cultural analysis” — English in original; “who are typical for National Socialist anti-Christianity or who have opposed it.” — English in original.
Parenthetical insert in original.
See: “Supplementary Statement to the Research Project” [(“2a)”)] –
Provisional List of Refugee Experts:
Political Movement
Trade Unions
Bureaucracy
Press
Culture
Education
Religious Movement
Youth Movement
Experiences in Concentration Camps
From an earlier draft, dated: 4/11/41.
[Fn.] “1): not yet finally selected.”
[Fn.] “1): not yet finally selected.”
Insert attached to page 6 of the draft from 4/11/41.
Crossed out in draft 4/11/41. Order of points in this draft: 1) “inferring back”; 2) use of older material; 3) textual analysis; 3) analysis of marginal/extreme cases.
[(see: “Literature, Art, and Music”)]
Crossed out in draft dated 4/11/41.
[(see: “Anti-Christianity” and “The War and Post-War Generation”)]
Crossed out in draft dated 4/11/41.
[(see: Youthful delinquents in “The War and Post-War Generation:; corruption in “The Ideological Permeation…”)]
Crossed out in draft dated 4/11/41.
[(see: “The Ideological Permeation…”)]
Crossed out in draft dated 4/11/41.
Crossed out in draft dated 4/11/41.
[In-text reference:] See: “The War and Post-War Generation” and “Mass Culture.”
Studien über Autorität und Familie (Felix Alcan, Paris; 1936)
in-text parenthetical: “(project No. 165-97-6999-6027, conducted under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration)”
Crossed out in draft dated 4/11/41.
Followed by: “Remarks on our Bibliography of National Socialism”; “I. Writings of the Protagonists”; “II. General Interpretations of National Socialism”; “III. The Politics of National Socialism”; “IV. The Economics of National Socialism”; “V. The Structure of National Socialist Society”; “IV. National Socialist Culture”; “VII. The National Socialist Legal and Constitutional System” […]
Horkheimer would later come to regret the review after discovering the publication “The New Leader” was not only an explicitly political magazine and not a scientific journal, but also the organ of a social-democratic organization: “Today I saw my Brickner review published in the NEW LEADER. When Pollock first sent the book in order to have Teddie review it and I did that myself I had no idea what the NEW LEADER was. I thought it was a sociological magazine. Only now I became aware that it is the official organ of the “Social Democratic Federation.” Naturally I am afraid that it will stir up all kinds of antagonisms. If I had known it, I would never have agreed to the publication. What do you think?” Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 4/19/19. In: MHA Na [542], S. 329.