When considering the life cycle of Karl Jasper can be a deceptive impression (which he spread himself incidentally) the simplicity of its biography. The destiny of authors of the monumental philosophy determines the rhythm of his academic career could almost seem banal. He himself described his life as "ordinary and withdrawn, total no interesting events”.
Presenting the Mystical Roots of Nazism in Polish Historical and Philosophical Literature This article presents the mystical roots of Nazism in the Polish scholarly literature on the subject. The philosophical-religious movement, known as volkism, is presented as core of the article along with the intellectual origins of the Third Reich.
After World War Two, German historiography focused its attention on a few aspects: 1) the resistance movement in Nazi Germany; 2) losses that Germans suffered from the Allies in the years 1943-45 (air raids, contributions, plunder, rapes and robbing); 3) the occupation and 45-year long division of Germany. Only if the events were shown in this way, could Germans play the role of the victims instead of initiators of the war. The end of every decade after the fall of the Third Reich brought a discussion on the year 1945. A question was asked: Was it the end of German statehood or was it rather the beginning of a new stage on the way to a democratic state of free German countries? At the same time, East German historians argued with West German ones on the continuity of the German Reich after 1945. From 1951, it was the German Federal Republic that identified itself with the German Reich. Since the reunion of both German countries, the historiography of the new, joint German state has tried to show that the Third Reich was not rooted in German tra ditions, but was – as Ernst Nolte claimed – a „false link in the history of Germany”, and that the feeling of defeatism prevailed among Germans in 1945. It was social democrats and communists that were first to shake off that feeling. The contemporary German Federal Republic, does not feel responsible for the Third Reich, even though it is its legal heir. Summing up the positions of German historiography (in the years 1949-1990 of two German states – the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic), I believe that the escape from the Eastern Front, expelling Germans, unconditional surrender, and hardships of the post-war period were the direct result of the war started in 1939 by the German nation led by Adolf Hitler. The sooner Germans universally accept it, the more respected European nation they will become. They must also recognise the fact that after 700 years, history came full circle – both Polish and German peoples have returned to their roots – the times when their predecessors came as settlers and conquerors…
The paper focuses on ancient ideas, myths and texts, which has been adapted by Third Reich in order to build Nazi ideology. Hitler’s followers passionately read works of Plato, Plutarch and Tacitus, however, their intention was not to learn about antiquity, but to fit ancient thoughts to National Socialism. The same thing NSDAP tried to do with ancient art, architecture, gestures (Roman salute) and symbols (swastika). Führer’s attitude towards Greek and Roman antiquity was very complex. Psychological term to name this ambiguous relationship is “double-bind”.
The objective of this article is to present a critical analysis of selected elements of Nazi legacy in the Federal Republic of Germany (Deutsche Bundesrepublik, BRD). The remnants of the Nazi system have been tolerated, and even sheltered by the authorities of West Germany in almost all aspects of life. A question arises, then, about the effectiveness of the denazification after the Second World War and about a change in mentality in German society, as it should be noted that some elements of Nazi legacy were abandoned only in the 21st century, and therefore the Federal Republic of Germany has not managed to fully make reparations to the victims of Nazism. This article also discusses the fact that in a post-totalitarian state it is extremely difficult to find ‘pristine’ biographies, considering the number of former members of NSDAP who filled important offices in the BRD.
The paper discusses with the crime of rehabilitation of Nazism contained in the 1996 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. It presents the rationale for its introduction into the legislation, the scope of the legal regulation, and its evaluation in terms of its content and edition. For the purpose of the publication, research questions were posed, the answers to which demonstrated the political and populist nature of the regulation and its imprecise casuistic approach, which brings few benefits to Russia’s criminal policy.
The text analyses the Harry Potter series by Joanne Rowling from the perspective of eugenics and the ideology of National Socialism. What is indicated and examined are the statements or attitudes of heroes that may be considered part of the Nazi discourse, implemented in the novel by the author. The aim of the paper is to show that this cycle may be a pretext for teachers to initiate the discussion on eugenics, Nazism, as well as broadly understood ideology.
Nazistowska przeszłość rodziców jest jednym z tematów często podejmowanych we współczesnej literaturze niemieckiej. Nie da się od niej uciec, gdyż pewnego dnia i tak objawi się ona w życiu kolejnych pokoleń – takie jest przesłanie wydanej w 2001 roku noweli Thomasa Lehra Frühling (Wiosna). Głównym bohaterem tekstu jest syn, który odkrywa, że ojciec był kiedyś lekarzem obozowym w Dachau. Nie może poradzić sobie z tą wiedzą i popełnia samobójstwo. Książka Lehra jest refleksją nad życiem w cieniu przeszłości rodziców-sprawców, której ofiarami stają się ich własne dzieci, a zarazem wskazaniem, jak można się od tej przeszłości uwolnić.
EN
The Nazi past of family members is a recurrent theme in contemporary German literature. It cannot be easily forgotten, as it keeps resurfacing and influences the next generations. This is the central idea of Thomas Lehr’s novella Frühling (Spring), published in 2001. Its protagonist discovers that during World War II his father was a physician in the Dachau concentration camp. Devastated by this revelation, the son cannot cope with it and as a result commits suicide. Lehr’s book reflects upon the Nazi’s children and their life in the shadow of history. The story also points out how it is possible to cope with this haunting past.
Science is a field in which everybody has a right to present his or her opinion on a chosen subject. However, in order for it to have a scholarly dimension, an honest and comprehensive approach to the subject is necessary. Nietzsche’s philosophy in particular — so rich and so differently interpreted and used in the course of history — is an excellent material for scholarly disputes. Hicks claims that in some respects the Nazis were right in invoking Nietzsche’s philosophy — this is the contention around which Hicks constructs his book. He justifies his approach by pointing to elements that, in his view, Nazism and Nietzsche’s philosophy have in common. This is a very perfunctory summary, full of substantive and logical errors, of the contents of the Nazi programme and Nietzschean philosophy as well as an attempt to compare the two. Hicks does not provide any broader explanation of his reasoning or any in-depth analysis of Nietzsche’s thought as well as the literature on the subject. This lack of scholarly credibility and formulation of theses on the basis of a selection of Nietzsche’s aphorisms are the main arguments showing that Hicks’ book is not an acabroader explanation of his reasoning or any in-depth analysis of Nietzsche’s thought as well as the demic monograph. The aim of the present article is to demonstrate that a lack of scholarly credibility leads to wrong and absurd assertions.
Homo patiens is a human being who suffers continuously even because of the fact of his/her existence. In his work The Concept of God after Auschwitz, Hans Jonas posed a difficult question which he directed to everybody: politicians, philosophers, priests, theologians and ordinary people: Here we have gone through the most traumatic experience in human history – the Holocaust. This has a collective character because it has been experienced by all of humankind but also separately by every person of Jewish nationality; what kind of knowledge about evil and human suffering has been evoked by this experience? This question was really justified because soon after the end of the war ideas were articulated that "the problem of Auschwitz has been solved once and for all, valid sentences have been passed, and the evidence has finally been established”. Already in 1939 Hans Jonas was fully conscious of the objectives of Hitler’s nationalistic policy, which aimed at the complete extermination of the Jewish nation. Therefore, immediately after the outbreak of the war he published a fiery appeal "Our Part in This War: A Word to Jewish Men” directed to young Jewish people all over the world, where he wrote: "This is our hour, this is our war. [...] This [ is] a bellum judaicum [Jewish war] in the profoundest sense of the word”. This text was published in Jerusalem in September 1939 and includes an extremely accurate characterisation of Nazism and its aims. For Jonas however, the matter was not so obvious. Auschwitz was for him a personal experience because he lost his mother there. According to biographers and analysts of his writings, he never recovered from the trauma related to this. Therefore, in his treaty Jonas - as if - struggles with himself. He analyzes two classical theodicies, one of which is a prompting of the witnesses of Job’s lot – you suffer because you have sinned. Yet, this is a proper explanation for an individual but not for a whole nation, and especially not for innocent children and babies. The other form of theodicy considered by Jonas is a prompting of theologians – you suffer together with God for what you believe in. Thus we give a certificate of faith – all the worst is becoming the share of the innocent and righteous: “the innocent and the just suffer the worst". And this explanation collapses upon deeper analysis because the Holocaust concerned not those who believe (believers of Judaism) but those who are Jews by their birth, even if they had not believed for generations. Jonas therefore diverted relations between God and the human being. God, creating the world and his works, lost his omnipotence voluntarily because he retreated to leave a place for the world. The final conclusion of Jonas is as follows: God resigned from his power so that we could exist.
PL
Homo patiens to człowiek, który nieustannie cierpi. H. Jonas w pracy Idea Boga po Auschwitz postawił trudne pytanie, które skierował do wszystkich, polityków, filozofów, kapłanów, teologów oraz zwykłych ludzi: Oto doświadczyliśmy najbardziej traumatycznego doświadczenia w dziejach ludzkości – Holocaustu. Miało ono charakter zbiorowy, bo doświadczyła go cała ludzkość, ale także z osobna każda osoba narodowości żydowskiej. Jakiej zatem wiedzy o złu i ludzkim cierpieniu dostarczyło nam to doświadczenie? Pytanie to było jak najbardziej na miejscu, gdyż wkrótce po zakończeniu wojny pojawiły się poglądy uznające, że: „problem Auschwitz został rozwiązany raz na zawsze, prawomocne wyroki zapadły, a dowody winy zostały ostatecznie ustalone”. Jonas już w 1939 r. miał pełną świadomość celów hitlerowskiej polityki narodowościowej zmierzającej do całkowitej eksterminacji narodu żydowskiego. Dlatego natychmiast po wybuchu wojny opublikował apel Our Part in This War: A Word to Jewish Men, w którym pisał: „To jest nasz czas, to jest także nasza wojna, to bellum judaicum [wojna żydowska] w najgłębszym tego słowa znaczeniu”. Tekst ten został opublikowany w Jerozolimie we wrześniu 1939 r. i zawierał niezwykle trafną charakterystykę nazizmu i jego celów. Auschwitz był dla Jonasa osobistym doznaniem, bo tam stracił matkę. Zdaniem biografów i analityków jego twórczości nigdy potem nie otrząsnął się z traumy z tym związanej. W swej rozprawie Jonas toczy spór jakby sam z sobą. Analizuje dwie klasyczne teodycee, z który pierwsza jest podpowiedzią świadków losu Hioba – cierpisz, bo zgrzeszyłeś. Jest to jednak wytłumaczenie dobre dla jednostki, ale nie dla całego narodu, a tym bardziej takim nie jest dla niewinnych dzieci i niemowląt. Druga rozważana przez Jonasa postać teodycei jest podpowiedzią teologów – cierpi się razem z Bogiem za to w co się wierzy. Daje się w ten sposób świadectwo wiary – „wszystko, co najgorsze, staje się udziałem właśnie niewinnych i sprawiedliwych”. I to wytłumaczenie przy głębszej analizie upada, bo Zagłada dotyczyła nie tych, którzy wierzą (są wyznawcami judaizmu), ale tych, co są Żydami z racji urodzenia, choćby nawet nie wierzyli od pokoleń. Odwrócił zatem relacje pomiędzy Bogiem a człowiekiem. Był bowiem przekonany, że Bóg stwarzając świat i swoje dzieła z własnej woli stracił swą wszechmoc, gdyż wycofał się, aby zostawić im miejsce. Ostateczna konkluzja Jonasa jest następująca: „Bóg zrezygnował ze swej mocy, abyśmy mogli istnieć”.
The article deals with the still tangible consequences of the Second World War for the current situation of national minorities in Austria. After the war this country was granted a special status as it was recognized to be Hitler’s first victim and for this reason Austria never answered for its involvement on the side of the perpetrators. The author analyzes the impact of this state of affairs on the so called nationality issue and majority-minority relations. She also addresses a vital question on how the absence of settling accounts with history is the cause of recurring radicalism and to what extent the latter is aimed against national minorities inhabiting the territory of Austria.
The article aims at presenting Wiesław Kozub-Ciembroniewicz’s interest in Carl Schmitt’s ideas. First, the possibilities of getting acquainted with Schmitt’s political philosophy by Kozub-Ciembroniewicz were described. Then, the academic activity of Kozub-Ciembro niewicz is presented in which Schmitt’s inspirations were visible. The next part discusses the works in which Kozub-Ciembroniewicz wrote about the German philosopher of law.
The aim of this paper is to present Polish pre-war literature on Nazi economic policy and to compare Leopold Caro’s views with analyses of a well-known postwar economist, Paweł Sulmicki, presented in his doctoral thesis of 1946. The comparison of these two interpretations enables the authors to show not only the change of views on the totalitarian economy of Germany, but also the transformations that took place in the Polish theory of economics at that time. In terms of methodology, the work of Leopold Caro (published in 1938) did not go beyond what the German historical school offered. Paweł Sulmicki, on the other hand, explained the processes taking place in the German economy from the point of view of the theory of multiplier which was relatively new at that time. Sulmicki did not explicitly state that the phenomena analyzed by him were paradoxes in the light of Keynesian theory, but he described the factors that led to the success of the economic policy at a low level of the multiplier.
Jerzy W. Borejsza regarded the term ‘totalitarianism’ as a helpful tool in describing the political systems in Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and the Bolshevik/communist Soviet Union, but opted for restricted use of the term. Apart from the classical determinants of a totalitarian system, he believed that the mobilisation of hatred against the predefined ethnic/national, racial, or class enemy was essential to any totalitarianism. Rather than adding a new distinguishing feature of the totalitarian system, the Polish historian carried out a series of multi-aspect comparative analyses of its earlier-defined traits and characteristics. He has drawn a precise distinction between a totalitarian and authoritarian system. Not satisfied with apparent similarities, he tried to explore the issue more deeply, identifying different intensities of the phenomena specific to totalitarian systems. He stressed a gradation of totalitarianism in the different totalitarian systems, at the different stages of their functioning. To his credit goes the introduction in the historiography of the concept of ‘anti-Slavism’ and, as part of it, anti-Polonism, as essential traits of the National Socialist ideology. He opposed the simplifications tending to appear in broadly used terms, the attempts to ‘ideologise’ and ‘politicise’ the history, particularly in describing the communist totalitarianism. According to Borejsza, fascism, Nazism, and communism had once frequented the same school of totalitarian hatred and took there the same classes – but they were differently evaluated when it came to the finals.
The article is devoted to the issues of qualifying actions related to the rehabilitation of Nazism under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation as manifestations of extremism. The issues of the formation of the practice of application of art. 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation are being analyzed, as well as the delimitation of the rehabilitation of Nazism from related crimes and administrative offenses.
The emigration of Jews from the Czechoslovak Republic and from other countries facing immediate danger on the part of Nazi Germany was increasingly difficult as most of the European countries restricted their immigration. The situation aggravated even more after the Munich Agreement signed in 1938 due to the quantitative increase of potential émigrés. With the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia and the creation of the Protectorate in March 1939 the internal and external conditions of emigration for Jews worsened dramatically.
This study analyses the form of the two most important divisions of the Prague Gestapo; the executive and counterintelligence divisions. These were able to be reconstructed through the discovery of previously unpublished original documents. These are used to look at organisational developments and changes, which were extremely frequent due to the Prague Gestapo’s six years of operation. The reorganisation of the Prague office was an outcome of endeavours to adapt its form of internal structure to that of the RSHA, and an outcome of endeavours to combat local resistance as effectively as possible while saving as much manpower as possible.
In the form of an essay, the author comments here on the 2010 critical edition of Hitler´s mein Kampf (1925-26), edited by a team of historians from the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, with additional asistance from others. He contemplates the nature and importance of this book and discusses its author and his meaning in the history of twentieth-century central Europe. He then discusses some of the ideas of Mein Kampf, and clarifies the historical context of the work, returning to the circumstances that led to its being written and published. He also discusses some of Hitler´s fellow travellers in the Nazi movement, who were of importance for this key work. The author brings up episodes in Hitler´s life, and pays particular attention to his still unclear transformation from an apolitical soldier into a zealous antisemite and political agitator of exceptional rhetorical skill, who was able to bewitch the German people and become their Führer. The author also discusses the difficulties that the editors of this critical edition had to struggle with, and he praises their work as utterly solid and astonishingly thorough, particularly the commentaries in the huge critical apparatus. The author concludes by discussing reactions both to the first edition of Mein Kampf and to this critical edition, and he discusses various attempts to publish a Czech edition.
CS
Autor esejistickou formou komentuje kritické vydání Hitlerova spisu Mein Kampf (poprvé vyšel ve dvou dílech v letech 1925 a 1926) týmem historiků z mnichovského Ústavu pro soudobé dějiny a jejich spolupracovníků a uvažuje nad charakterem a významem tohoto textu i nad tím, kdo byl jeho pisatel a co znamenal v dějinách střední Evropy dvacátého století. Připomíná některé teze Hitlerova spisu a objasňuje jejich historický kontext, vrací se k okolnostem vzniku a vydání díla a představuje postavy některých Hitlerových souputníků v nacistickém hnutí, kteří byli pro jeho klíčový spis nějak důležití. Zmiňuje určité epizody v Hitlerově biografii a podrobněji se zastavuje u jeho stále dost neobjasněného přerodu z apolitického vojáka v zapáleného antisemitu a politického agitátora s mimořádným řečnickým talentem, který dokázal strhnout německý národ a stal se jeho "Vůdcem". Dále autor seznamuje s problémy, s nimiž se museli potýkat editoři kritického vydání, a oceňuje jejich práci jako maximálně seriózní a úžasně minuciózní, což se zračí především v komentářích obrovitého poznámkového aparátu. Nakonec autor přibližuje reakce na první vydání i na kritické vydání spisu Mein Kampf a rekapituluje pokusy o jeho české vydání.
This article presents the views of Leon Halban referring to the problems of German religiosity. In the first part of the article, the family and the character and the academic achievements of this scholar were characterized. In the next part of the article, his views on the role of the Catholic Church in European culture were analyzed and his position in which he made a critical assessment of German religiosity was presented. Halban assumed that the Christianity practiced by Germans since the Middle Ages did not result from their authentic conversion. The Germans were often religiously indifferent and tended to fall into various heresies and deviations from faith. They also sought to achieve supremacy of the state over the Church in public life and law. Halban argued that a renewal of morality can only be achieved in the Catholic Church, whose ethical principles and doctrine should be propagated and applied in everyday life.
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