'Fighting a philosophy': The figure of Nietzsche in British propaganda of the First World War

Modern Language Review

Volumn 98, Issue 2, 2003, Pages

  Martin, Nicholas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 63849305172     PISSN: 00267937     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3737817     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. In Nietzsche: Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe [AGW], ed. by Giorgio Colli and others (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1967- )
2. VI/1: Also sprach Zarathustra (1968), p. 54
3. The first, and very successful, attempt to manipulate Nietzsche's texts in a conscious and systematic fashion was undertaken by his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and her philological henchmen at the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar from the mid-1890s onwards. It was largely thanks to her tireless campaigning and publishing in 1914 that Nietzsche was enlisted in the service of German war propaganda and hence came to the attention of a wider audience in Britain. For further comment and discussion, see Richard Frank Krummel, Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist, 3 vols (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1974-98), 11 (1983), 571-84
4. Ben Macintyre, Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 149-75
5. and Klaus Goch, 'Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche: Ein biographisches Portrait', in Schwestern berühmter Männer, ed. by Luise F. Pusch (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1995), pp. 363-413 (pp. 387-401)
6. Michael Howard, for example, dismisses 'the much-touted influence of Nietzsche and of Bergson among intellectuals [before and during the war] - the creed of liberation from old social norms, of heroic egotism, of action as a value transcending all others. How widespread was their influence? Did it make the idea of war more generally acceptable than it otherwise would have been? Intellectuals, I am afraid, tend to overrate the importance of other intellectuals, or at least attribute to them an influence which becomes important only among later generations' (Michael Howard, 'Europe on the Eve of the First World War', in the Coming of the First World War, ed. by R. J. W Evans and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann (Oxford: Oxford Universitv Press 1988), pp. 1-17 (p. 16))
7. See Vladimir Dedijer, The Road to Sarajevo (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967), p. 288
8. and James Joll, 1914: The Unspoken Assumptions. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered 25 April 1968 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968), pp. 17-18
9. The poem itself is the penultimate in a series of sixty-three short, self-contained stanzas which Nietzsche included as a prelude to the second edition of Die fröhliche Wissenschaft in 1887, with the title '"Scherz, List und Rache": Vorspiel in deutschen Reimen' (V/2, 25-39)
10. For further details of the Schlieffen Plan, and of its botched execution in 1914 under Schlieffen's successor, Helmuth von Moltke, see Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht: Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/18, 2nd edn (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1962), pp. 48-49
11. and Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 (London and New York: Arnold, 1997), pp. 96-106
12. William Archer, Fighting a Philosophy, Oxford Pamphlets 1914-1915, 65 (Oxford: Oxford University Press; London: Milford, 1915)
13. Ernest Barker, Nietzsche and Treitschke: The Worship of Power in Modern Germany, Oxford Pamphlets 1914, 20 (Oxford: Oxford University Press; London: Milford, 1914)
14. Herbert Leslie Stewart, Nietzsche and the Ideals of Modern Germany (London: Edward Arnold, 1915)
15. See also J. H. Muirhead, German Philosophy and the War, Oxford Pamphlets 1914-1915, 62 (Oxford: Oxford University Press; London: Milford, 1915), pp. 19-26
16. Friedrich Adam Julius von Bernhardi, Deutschland und der nächste Krieg (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1911)
17. Bernhardi's impact in Britain is addressed in James Joll, 'The English, Friedrich Nietzsche and the First World War', in Deutschland in der Weltpolitik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Imanuel Geiss and Bernd Jürgen Wendt (Düsseldorf: Bertelsmann, 1974), pp. 287-305 (pp. 302-03)
18. The nature of imperialist discourse in Germany before 1914 is analysed in Sönke Neitzel, Weltmacht oder Untergang: Die Weltreichslehre im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000)
19. The Times, 20 August 1914, p. 9
20. The edition referred to is Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, popular edn, trans. by Allen H. Powles (London: Arnold, 1914)
21. Oscar Levy, 'Nietzsche im Krieg: Eine Erinnerung und eine Warnung', Die weissen Blätter, 6 (1919), 277-84 (p. 278)
22. Levy had edited The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 18 vols (Edinburgh and London: Foulis, 1909-13)
23. Canon E. MacClure, Germany's War-Inspirers, Nietzsche and Treitschke (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1914)
24. Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History, Why are are at War: Great Britain's Case (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914)
25. Paul More, 'Lust of Empire - The Responsibility for the Present War - Nietzsche and Bernhardi', Nation (New York), 99 (1914), 493-95
26. Dora M. Jones, 'Nietzsche, Germany, and the War', London Quarterly Review, 245 (January 1915), 80-94
27. and John Vance, 'Nietzsche: A Study in Paganism', British Review, 9 (January 1915), 13-28
28. Letter to Ernst Bertram, 4 May 1915, in Thomas Mann an Ernst Bertram: Briefe aus den Jahren 1910-1955, ed. by Inge Jens (Pfullingen: Neske, 1960), p. 25
29. Thomas Mann, 'German Letter', Dial, 74 (January-June 1923), 609-14 (pp. 610-11)
30. Thomas Mann, 'Gedanken im Kriege', Die neue Rundschau, 25 (1914), 1471-84
31. repr. in Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke, 13 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1974), XIII, 527-45
32. For further discussion of 'Gedanken im Kriege', see Barbara Besslich, Wege in den 'Kulturkrieg': Zivilisationskritik in Deutschland 1890-1914 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), pp. 176-90
33. and Hermann Kurzke, 'Die politische Essayistik', in Thomas-Mann-Handbuch, ed. by Helmut Koopmann (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1990), pp. 696-706 (pp. 697-98)
34. The significance of Mann's 'unpolitical' First World War writings as a whole is assessed in T. J. Reed, Thomas Mann: The Uses of Tradition, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 179-225
35. For fuller accounts of this process, see Harold D. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (London: Kegan Paul; New York: Knopf, 1927), pp. 77-101
36. Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World War (London: Allen Lane, 1977), pp. 79-108
37. and M. L. Sanders and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, 1914-18 (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 137-63
38. Anon., 'Musings without Method', Blackwood's Magazine, 196 (July-December 1914), 694-705 (p. 700)
39. A. 'Blond Beast', 'Nietzsche', English Review, 18 (August-November 1914), 392-96
40. The intense debate in Britain surrounding her obligations and interests during July and early August 1914 is discussed further in Michael Brock, 'Britain Enters the War', in The Coming of the First World War, ed. by Evans and Strandmann, pp. 145-78
41. See John Home and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 9-42, 435-43
42. for a more balanced account of events at Louvain, see Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914, pp. 38-42
43. Barbara W. Tuchman, August 1914 (London: Constable, 1962), p. 33
44. Nietzsche-Worte: Weggenossen in grosser Zeit, ed. by Hermann Itschner (Leipzig: Kröner, 1915)
45. See also 'Friedrich Nietzsche: Vom Kriege (Aus den "Werken")', in Kriegs-Almanach: Insel-Almanach auf das Jahr 1915 (Leipzig: Insel, 1914), pp. 147-52
46. Other Yuletide moraleboosters in this almanac include Klopstock's 'Wir und sie' (pp. 77-79)
47. Hölderlin's 'Der Tod fürs Vaterland' (p. 85)
48. Hebbel's 'Requiem' (pp. 221-22)
49. and Hofmannsthal's 'Die Bejahung Österreichs' (pp. 208-12)
50. See also Ernst Rolffs, 'Treitschke, Nietzsche, Bernhardi', Die christliche Welt, 30 (1916), 857-65, 882-88 (p. 859)
51. As late as 1917, over 140,000 copies of the Kröner 'Taschenausgabe' of Also sprach Zarathustra were sold. For further discussion, see Joll, 1914: The Unspoken Assumptions, p. 20
52. Karl Joël, Neue Weltkultur (Leipzig: Wolff, 1915), p. 88
53. see also Richard Groeper, 'Nietzsche und der Krieg', Die Tat, 8 (April 1916), 25-38
54. See Herbert Read, The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies (London: Faber, 1963), pp. 61-70
55. Steven E. Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany 1890-1990 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1992), p. 134
56. Wyndham Lewis, 'The God of Sport and Blood', Blast, 2 (July 1915), 9-10 (p. 10)
57. Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography (London: Cape, 1929), pp. 272-73. William le Queux (1864-1927) was the popular author of some 220 books, mostly spy novels. His publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, billed him as 'The Master of Mystery'
58. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. by Oscar Levy, 18 vols (Edinburgh and London: Foulis, 1909-13)
59. Between 1900 and 1950 only two doctoral theses on Nietzsche were completed at British universities; see Gernot U. Gabel, Friedrich Nietzsche: Ein Verzeichnis westeuropäischer und nordamerikanischer Hochschulschriften 1900-1980 (Cologne: Gemini, 1985), p. 23
60. Crane Brinton, for example, claimed that Nietzsche had provided the essential points of Nazi ideology ('The National Socialists' Use of Nietzsche', Journal of the History of Ideas, 1 (1940), 131-50)
61. see also the same author's full-length, but no less abrasive, study, Nietzsche (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941)
62. For further discussion of Nietzsche in Second World War propaganda, see Eric Bentley, The Cult of the Superman: A Study of the Idea of Heroism in Carlyle and Nietzsche, with Notes on other Hero-Worshippers of Modern Times (London: Hale, 1947). pp. 248-55
63. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 8-9
64. For further discussion and clarification of Nietzsche's ambiguous 'blonde Bestie' metaphor, see Detlef Brennecke, '"Die blonde Bestie"', Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, 20 (1970), 467-69
65. and T. J. Reed, 'Nietzsche's Animals: Idea, Image, and Influence', in Nietzsche: Imagery and Thought. A Collection of Essays, ed. by Malcolm Pasley (London: Methuen, 1978), pp. 159-219 (pp. 163-67)
66. Letter to the editor, Manchester Guardian, 7 October 1914
67. quoted in Patrick Bridgwater, Nietzsche in Anglosaxony: A Study of Nietzsche's Impact on English and American Literature (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1972), p. 144
68. Hardy's letter provoked a number of other critical responses (e.g. C. M. S. McClellan, letter to the editor, Daily Chronicle, 8 October 1914
69. and Beatrice Marshall, letter to the editor, Daily News, 12 October 1914)
70. See also Anon., 'Not up on Nietzsche', Literary Digest (New York), 49 (1914), 889-90
71. and Oscar Levy, 'Thomas Hardy and Friedrich Nietzsche', New Outlook, 61 (1928), 217-18
72. Common was a wealthy Scot, a lapsed Presbyterian who devoted his considerable energy and resources to promoting Nietzsche's works in Britain. He is perhaps best remembered as the translator of two volumes of the abortive first English edition of Nietzsche's works (The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. by Alexander Tille, 4 vols (London: Fisher Unwin, 1899-1903))
73. Valuable introductions to the nature and extent of Nietzsche's impact on British and Irish life and letters before 1914 are Oscar Levy, 'The Nietzsche Movement in England (A Retrospect - A Confession - A Prospect)', in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. by Levy, XVIII, ix-xxxvi
74. and M. E. Humble, 'Early British Interest in Nietzsche', GLL, 24 (1970/71), 327-35
75. For a more detailed survey of this terrain, see David S. Thatcher, Nietzsche in England 1890-1914: The Growth of a Reputation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970)
76. Nietzsche's importance to the British literary scene in the years 1896-1914 is discussed in Patrick Bridgwater, 'English Writers and Nietzsche', in Nietzsche: Imagery and Thought, ed. by Pasley, pp. 220-38
77. See also the illuminating introductory essay in Nancy Snider, 'An Annotated Bibliography of English Works on Friedrich Nietzsche'(unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1962), pp. iv-xix
78. Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebücher 1918-1937, ed. by Wolfgang Pfeiffer-Belli (Frankfurt a.M: Insel, 1961), p. 682 (7 August 1932)
79. Nietzsche: Briefwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. by Giorgio Colli and others (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1975- ), 11/1 (1977), p. 155
80. Nietzsche's most sustained criticism of (German) nationalism occurs in the chapter entitled 'Völker und Vaterländer' in Jenseits von Gut und Böse (JGB 240-56: VI/2, 187-212)
81. Other key passages in this context are 'Was den Deutschen abgeht' (GD: VI/3, 97-104)
82. and 'Die Unzeitgemässen' (EH: VI/3, 314-19)
83. John Cowper Powys, The Menace of German Culture (London: Rider & Son, 1915)
84. for an account of Levy's publishing activities, see Diane Milburn, The 'Deutschlandbild' of A. R. Orage and the 'New Age' Circle (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1996), pp. 139-42
85. Levy, 'Nietzsche im Krieg', p. 279
86. For further discussion, see Humble, 'Early British Interest in Nietzsche', 333-35
87. M.A., 'The Nietzschean War', Times Literary Supplement, 1 October 1914, p. 442