189-590: Defunct Defunct The Conservative Revolution ( German : Konservative Revolution ), also known as the German neoconservative movement , or new nationalism , was a German national-conservative and ultraconservative movement prominent during the Weimar Republic and Austria, in the years 1918–1933 (between World War I and the Nazi seizure of power ). Conservative revolutionaries were involved in
378-653: A Free Socialist Republic was proclaimed at the Berlin Palace . The proclamation was issued by Karl Liebknecht , co-leader with Rosa Luxemburg of the communist Spartakusbund ( Spartacus League ), a group of a few hundred supporters of the Russian Revolution that had allied itself with the USPD in 1917. On the same day, in a move that was contrary to the constitution because only the Kaiser could appoint
567-548: A Konservative Revolution ("Conservative Revolution"), the name saw a revival after the 1949 doctoral thesis of Neue Rechte philosopher Armin Mohler on the movement. Molher's post-war ideological reconstruction of the "Conservative Revolution" has been widely criticized by scholars, but the validity of a redefined concept of "neo-conservative" or "new nationalist" movement active during the Weimar period (1918–1933), whose lifetime
756-465: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it
945-402: A second language , and 75–100 million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90 million people, or 16% of
1134-594: A " Working Committee of German Associations " was founded with representatives of many groups considered "fit for good society". In 1919 the Weimar National Assembly established a parliamentary committee to inquire into the events that had led to the "outbreak, prolongation and loss of the First World War". Its results were of questionable value due to a lack of cooperation from the civil service and military and to increasing interference from
1323-612: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become
1512-471: A "war guilt lie". In line with national conservative and bourgeois right-wing parties, they accused the governing parties of having contributed to Germany's humiliation by signing the treaty and of denying it the right to self-determination. The young republic was exposed from the beginning to attacks from both the extreme right and extreme left. The Left accused the Social Democrats of betraying
1701-631: A chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, at Ebert's request, transferred his powers as chancellor to him. In view of the mass support for more radical reforms among the workers' councils, a coalition government called the Council of the People's Deputies ( Rat der Volksbeauftragten ) was established, consisting of three MSPD and three USPD members. Led by Ebert for the MSPD and Hugo Haase for the USPD, it governed Germany from November 1918 to January 1919. Although
1890-579: A coalition government; Hitler's far-right Nazi Party held two out of ten cabinet seats. Von Papen, as Vice-Chancellor and Hindenburg's confidant, was to serve as the éminence grise who would keep Hitler under control; these intentions severely underestimated Hitler's political abilities. By the end of March 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 were used in the perceived state of emergency to effectively grant
2079-485: A cultural counter-revolution and showed a wide range of diverging positions concerning the nature of the institutions Germany had to instate, labelled by historian Roger Woods the "conservative dilemma". Nonetheless, they were generally opposed to traditional Wilhelmine Christian conservatism , egalitarianism , liberalism and parliamentarian democracy as well as the cultural spirit of the bourgeoisie and modernity . Plunged into what historian Fritz Stern has named
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#17327798206842268-665: A decisive influence on Nazism , and the movement was brought to heel like the rest of the society when Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933, culminating in the assassination of prominent thinker Edgar Jung by the Nazis during the Night of the Long Knives in the following year. Many of them eventually rejected the antisemitic or the totalitarian nature of the Nazi regime, with the notable exception of Carl Schmitt and some others. From
2457-537: A deep "cultural despair", uprooted as they felt within the rationalism and scientism of the modern world, theorists of the Conservative Revolution drew inspiration from various elements of the 19th century, including Friedrich Nietzsche 's contempt for Christian ethics , democracy and egalitarianism; the anti-modern and anti-rationalist tendencies of German Romanticism ; the vision of an organic and naturally-organized folk community cultivated by
2646-477: A general strike. The putsch quickly failed due in large part to the refusal of the ministerial bureaucracy to obey Kapp's orders. The Reichswehr, however, proved itself to be unreliable. It adopted a wait-and-see attitude under General von Seeckt, the head of the Troop Office , who said that "Reichswehr do not fire on Reichswehr". Some among the working class did not limit themselves to passive resistance to
2835-559: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from
3024-545: A later date (Article 233). In the short term it was required to pay the equivalent of 20 billion gold marks in installments through April 1921 (Article 235). The most contentious article of the treaty, the so-called War Guilt Clause , did not use the word "guilt". It stated that Germany accepted full responsibility for all the loss and damage from a war that was imposed on the Allies by the aggression of Germany and its allies ( Article 231 ). The implications of Article 231 and
3213-561: A mirror-image of the historical materialism developed by Karl Marx . Spengler also wrote about the decline of the West as an ineluctable phenomenon, but his intention was to provide modern readers with a "new socialism" that would enable them to realize the meaninglessness of life, contrasting with Marx's idea of the coming of paradise on earth. Above all, the Conservative Revolution drew influences from vitalism (Lebensphilosophie) and irrationalism , not from materialism . Spengler argued that
3402-605: A modern decadent spirit. Jung perceived this return as a gradual and lengthy transformation, similar to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, rather than a sudden revolutionary eruption like the French Revolution . Other Conservative Revolutionaries rather drew influence from their life at the front line ( Kriegserlebnis , "war experience") during the First World War . Far from
3591-458: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained
3780-437: A parliamentary system. The rebellion caused great fear among supporters of the monarchy and in the middle classes because of the soviet-style aspirations of the councils. To centrist and conservative citizens, the country looked to be on the verge of a communist revolution. By 7 November, the revolution had reached Munich , resulting in the flight of King Ludwig III of Bavaria . The MSPD decided to make use of their support at
3969-645: A peacetime army. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles , the new army, the Reichswehr , was limited to 100,000 men and the Reichsmarine (navy), to 15,000. The treaty prohibited an air force, submarines, large warships and armoured vehicles. The official formation of the Reichswehr took place on 1 January 1921, after the limitations had been met. The soldiers of the Reichswehr took their oath to
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#17327798206844158-696: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In
4347-470: A remedy to the political situation: a "Third Reich" that would unite all classes under an authoritarian rule based on a combination of the nationalism of the right and the socialism of the left. Rejecting both the nation-state narrowed to one unified people and the imperialistic structure based on different ethnic groups, the goal of Jungkonservativen was to fulfil the Volksmission ("mission of
4536-682: A result it was the leadership of the Reichswehr with its largely anti-democratic civil service personnel that, along with the Foreign Office, determined the portrayal of the war in the Weimar Republic. All in all, there was little objective and critical questioning of the causes of the war or of Germany's responsibility for it in academia, politics or the media during the Weimar period. The official view of history continued to follow
4725-483: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it
4914-485: A return to the spirit of the Middle Ages with a new Holy Roman Empire federating central Europe. The theme of a return to medieval values and aesthetics among "young conservatives" was inherited from a Romantic fascination for that period, which they believed to be simpler and more integrated than the modern world. Oswald Spengler praised medieval chivalry as the philosophical and moral attitude to adopt against
5103-409: A serious attempt to draw a political analysis of that period, young Mann's writings have been influential on many Conservative Revolutionaries. Mann was accused by the right of watering down his undemocratic views in 1922 after he removed some paragraphs from the republication of Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen ("Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man"), originally released in 1918. In a speech delivered
5292-404: A sovereign authority. He defined sovereignty as the possibility , or the power, to decide on the triggering of a "state of emergency", in other words a state of exception regarding the law: "There is some person or institution, in a given polity, capable of bringing about a total suspension of the law and then to use extra-legal force to normalize the situation, then that person or institution
5481-545: A speech delivered by Adolf Hitler at a Nazi Party rally in Munich on 24 February 1929. A few weeks later, the term Weimarer Republik was first used again by Hitler in a newspaper article. Only during the 1930s did the term become mainstream, both within and outside Germany. According to historian Richard J. Evans : The continued use of the term 'German Empire', Deutsches Reich , by the Weimar Republic ... conjured up an image among educated Germans that resonated far beyond
5670-744: A temporary alliance with German communists and the Soviet Union in order to annihilate the capitalist West. In his PhD thesis supervised by Karl Jaspers , Armin Mohler distinguished five currents inside the nebula of the Conservative Revolution: the Jungkonservativen ("young conservatives"), the Nationalrevolutionäre ("national revolutionaries"), the Völkischen (from the "folkish movement"),
5859-717: Is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and
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6048-598: Is a form of rule that rises above the Volkstum and can leave it untouched. But it shall not want to be total, and shall recognize autonomies ( Autonomien ) and sovereignties ( Eigenständigkeiten ). Although Moeller van der Bruck killed himself in despair in May 1925, his ideas continued to influence his contemporaries. Among them was Edgar Jung, who advocated the creation of a corporatist organic state , free from class struggle and parliamentary democracy, which would make way for
6237-601: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as
6426-558: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German
6615-558: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic
6804-478: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German
6993-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25 million speak it as
7182-535: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in
7371-611: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as
7560-565: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are
7749-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and
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7938-597: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as
8127-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German
8316-624: Is so called because the Weimar National Assembly that adopted its constitution met in Weimar from 6 February to 11 August 1919, but the name only became mainstream after 1933. Even though the National Assembly chose to retain the old name Deutsches Reich (Art. 1 of the Constitution), hardly anyone used it during the Weimar period, and no single name for the new state gained widespread acceptance. To
8505-466: Is sometimes extended to the years 1890s–1910s, and which differed in particular from the "old nationalism" of the 19th century, is now generally accepted in scholarship. The name "Conservative Revolution" has appeared as a paradox, sometimes as a "semantic absurdity", for many modern historians, and some of them have suggested "neo-conservative" as a more easily justifiable label for the movement. Sociologist Stefan Breuer wrote that he would have preferred
8694-525: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c. 1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period
8883-446: Is the major figure of that branch of the Conservative Revolution which wanted to uphold military structures and values in peacetime society, and saw in the community of front line comradeship ( Frontgemeinschaft ) the true nature of German socialism. According to Armin Mohler and other sources, prominent members of the Conservative Revolution included: Despite a broad range of political positions that historian Roger Woods has labelled
9072-578: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish
9261-452: Is the sovereign in that polity." According to him, every government should include within its constitution that dictatorial possibility to allow, when necessary, for faster and more effective decisions than going through parliamentary discussion and compromise. Referring to Adolf Hitler , he later used in 1934 the following formulation to justify the legitimacy of the Night of the Long Knives : Der Führer schützt das Recht ("The leader defends
9450-480: Is to say the "political reality of that Conservative Revolution". In 1921, Carl Schmitt published his essay Die Diktatur ("The Dictatorship"), in which he studied the foundations of the recently established Weimar Republic . Comparing what he saw as the effective and ineffective elements of the new constitution, he highlighted the office of the Reichspräsident as a valuable position, essentially due to
9639-433: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers
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#17327798206849828-689: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to
10017-469: The Kulturpessimismus concern of the "young conservatives", Ernst Jünger and the other "national revolutionaries" advocated total acceptance of modern technique and endorsed the use of any modern phenomena that could help them overcome modernity—such as propaganda or mass organizations —and eventually achieve a new political order. The latter would have been based on life itself rather than
10206-594: The Völkisch movement ; the Prussian tradition of militaristic and authoritarian nationalism; and their own experience of comradeship and irrational violence on the front lines of World War I . The Conservative Revolution held an ambiguous relationship with Nazism from the 1920s to the early 1930s, which has led scholars to describe it as a form of "German pre-fascism" or "non-Nazi fascism". Although they share common roots in 19th-century anti-Enlightenment ideologies,
10395-599: The 1848 German revolutions was named as the national flag in the Weimar Constitution . It was abolished after the entry into force of the Enabling Act of 1933, when the Nazi Party gained total power, in favour of two co-official national flags: the old black-white-red imperial tricolour and the flag of the Nazi Party . From 1935, the Nazi flag with the symbol offset became the sole national flag of
10584-639: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as
10773-694: The Black Reichswehr , a secret reserve networked within the Reichswehr and organised as labour battalions ( Arbeitskommandos ) to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles' 100,000 man limit on the German army. The Black Reichswehr was never involved in direct military action and was dissolved in 1923 after a group of its members attempted to overthrow the government in the Küstrin Putsch . The Reichswehr also developed far-reaching cooperation with
10962-435: The Bündischen ("leaguists") and the Landvolksbewegung ("rural people's movement"). According to Mohler, the last two groups were less theory- and more action-oriented, the Landvolks movement offering concrete resistance in the form of demonstrations and tax boycotts. French historian Louis Dupeux saw five lines of divisions that can be drawn inside the Conservative Revolutionaries: the small farmers were different from
11151-407: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share
11340-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language
11529-455: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout
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#173277982068411718-554: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in
11907-405: The Kiel mutiny on 3 November. Sailors, soldiers and workers began electing workers' and soldiers' councils ( Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte ) modelled after the soviets of the 1917 Russian Revolution . The revolution spread throughout Germany, and participants seized military and civil power in individual cities. The power takeovers were achieved everywhere without loss of life. At the time,
12096-405: The League of Nations , which marked its reintegration into the international community. Nevertheless, especially on the political right, there remained strong and widespread resentment against the treaty and those who had signed and supported it. The Great Depression of October 1929 severely impacted Germany's tenuous progress; high unemployment and subsequent social and political unrest led to
12285-439: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in
12474-415: The Reichswehr from the control of the Reichstag . Under Seeckt the Reichswehr developed into what many historians consider a "state within the state". During the 1920 Kapp Putsch , Seeckt refused to deploy the Reichswehr against the Freikorps involved in the putsch but immediately afterwards had the Ruhr Red Army brutally suppressed during the Ruhr uprising . In 1921 the Reichswehr organized
12663-429: The Silesian Uprisings and the Greater Poland uprising in the German Province of Posen , which became part of the Second Polish Republic under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In the four years following the First World War, the situation of most German civilians remained dire. The post-war economic crisis was a result of lost pre-war industrial exports, the loss of imported raw materials and foodstuffs due to
12852-462: The Spartacus League and the left wing of the USPD. In January, the Spartacus League, in what was known as the Spartacist uprising , took advantage of a large strike in Berlin and attempted to establish a communist government. The uprising was put down by paramilitary Freikorps units consisting of volunteer soldiers. Following bloody street fights, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were summarily killed after their arrests on 15 January. With
13041-427: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung
13230-422: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit. ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this
13419-400: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German
13608-532: The Volk ") through the edification of a new Reich, i.e. "the organization of all the peoples in a supra-state, dominated by a superior principle, under the supreme responsibility of only one people" in the words of Armin Mohler. As summarized by Edgar Jung in 1933: The concept of the nation-state is the transfer of individualistic doctrines from the individuals to the individual state. [...] The super-state (the Reich)
13797-790: The Weimar Constitution . The commander-in-chief was the Reich president , while the Reich minister of the armed forces exercised command authority. Military right of command ( Kommandogewalt ) was in the hands of the OHL. The resulting dualism between civilian power and military command was to become a heavy burden on the Republic. Whereas Reichswehr Minister Otto Gessler was content with limited political and administrative duties during his tenure (1920–1928), Colonel General Hans von Seeckt , Chief of Army Command from 1920 to 1926, succeeded in largely removing
13986-546: The Weimar Republic (1918–1933) through the writings of essayists like Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Hermann Rauschning , Edgar Jung and Oswald Spengler . The creation of the Alldeutscher Verband ("Pan-German League") by Alfred Hugenberg in 1891 and the Jugendbewegung ("youth movement") in 1896 are cited as conducive to the emergence of the Conservative Revolution in
14175-406: The middle class , in which they felt crushed at the centre of an economic struggle between the ruling capitalists and the potentially dangerous masses. Although they dismissed communism as mere idealism, many of them showed their dependence on some Marxist terminology in their writings. For instance, Jung emphasized the "historical inevitability" of conservatism taking over from the liberal era, in
14364-469: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from
14553-484: The "conservative dilemma", the German Conservative Revolution can be defined by its disapproval of: Conservative Revolutionaries argued that their nationalism was fundamentally different from the precedent forms of German nationalism or conservatism. They condemned the reactionary outlook of traditional Wilhelmine conservatives and their failure to fully understand the emerging concepts of
14742-448: The "left-wing-people of the right" ( Linke Leute von rechts ). They defended an ultra-nationalist form of socialism that took its roots in both Völkisch extremism and nihilistic Kulturpessimismus , rejecting any Western influence on German society: liberalism and democracy , capitalism and Marxism , the bourgeoisie and the proletariat , Christianity and humanism . Niekisch and National Bolsheviks were even ready to build
14931-476: The 1930s. The Weimar Republic had a semi-presidential system . At the end of the First World War (1914–1918), Germany was exhausted and sued for peace in desperate circumstances. Awareness of imminent defeat sparked a revolution , the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II , formal surrender to the Allies , and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic on 9 November 1918. In its initial years, grave problems beset
15120-636: The 1960–1970s onwards, the Conservative Revolution has largely influenced the European New Right , in particular the French Nouvelle Droite and the German Neue Rechte , and through them the contemporary European Identitarian movement . Although conservative essayists of the Weimar Republic like Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , Hugo von Hofmannsthal or Edgar Jung had already described their political project as
15309-443: The Conservative Revolution, they retained his contempt for Christian ethics, democracy, modernity and egalitarianism as the cornerstone of their ideology. Historian Roger Woods writes that Conservative Revolutionaries "constructed", in response to the war and the unstable Weimar period , a Nietzsche "who advocated a self-justifying activism, unbridled self-assertion, war over peace, and the elevation of instinct over reason." Many of
15498-437: The Conservative Revolution: the "völkischen", the "national socialists", the "revolutionary nationalists" as such, the "vital-activists" ( aktivistisch-vitalen ), and, a minority in the movement, the "biological naturalists". Building on the previous studies conducted by Mohler and Dupeux, French political scientist Stéphane François summarized the three main currents within the Conservative Revolution, this broad division being
15687-723: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In
15876-748: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of
16065-483: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of
16254-697: The German officer class. A rift developed between the MSPD and USPD after Ebert called upon the OHL for troops to put down a mutiny by a leftist military unit on 23/24 December 1918 in which members of the Volksmarinedivision (People's Navy Division) captured the city's garrison commander Otto Wels of the MSPD and occupied the Reich Chancellery where the Council of the People's Deputies had its offices. The ensuing street fighting left 11 Volksmarinedivision members and 56 members of
16443-451: The German states; the invention of the printing press c. 1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of
16632-681: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by
16821-655: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are
17010-865: The Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German
17199-526: The Kaiser that Germany needed to pursue an armistice and that the majority parties in the Reichstag, not the OHL, had to take responsibility for it. Although in retreat, the German armies were still on French and Belgian territory when the war ended on 11 November. Ludendorf and Paul von Hindenburg then began proclaiming that it was the defeatism of the civilian population – especially the socialists – that had made defeat inevitable. The stab-in-the-back myth
17388-638: The Kapp Putsch. Especially in the Ruhr , where dissatisfaction with the lack of nationalisation of key industries was particularly high, councils were formed that sought to seize local power. In the Ruhr uprising , civil war-like fighting broke when the Ruhr Red Army , made up of some 50,000 armed workers, mostly adherents of the KPD and USPD, used the disruption caused by the general strike to take control of
17577-567: The Kiel barracks. The sailors and soldiers welcomed him, and he was able to defuse the situation. On 9 November 1918, the German Republic was proclaimed by MSPD member Philipp Scheidemann at the Reichstag building in Berlin, angering Friedrich Ebert , the leader of the MSPD, who thought that the question of monarchy or republic should be answered by a national assembly. Two hours later,
17766-848: The Left and supporters of the former empire led to political violence and extremism . The young republic found itself in a nearly constant economic and political crisis until 1924. The Treaty of Versailles ended the state of war between Germany and most of the Allied powers and set the conditions for peace. It was signed 28 June 1919 and can be divided into four main categories: territorial issues, disarmament, reparations and assignment of guilt. Territorially, Germany had to renounce sovereignty over its colonies and in Europe lost 65,000 sq km (25,000 sq mi) or about 13% of its former territory – including 48% of its iron and 10% of its coal resources – along with 7 million people, or 12% of its population. The Saarland
17955-518: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c. thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c. 1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy
18144-455: The March 1920 Kapp Putsch , Freikorps units under General von Lüttwitz occupied the government quarter in Berlin. In an attempt to reverse the revolution and install an autocratic government, the former Prussian civil servant Wolfgang Kapp appointed himself Reich chancellor and Lüttwitz Reichswehr minister and commander-in-chief of the Reichswehr. The legal government fled Berlin and called for
18333-502: The National Assembly convened in the city of Weimar , giving the future Republic its unofficial name. The Weimar Constitution created a parliamentary republic with the Reichstag elected by proportional representation . During the debates in Weimar, fighting continued sporadically across Germany. On 7 April 1919 the Bavarian Soviet Republic was declared in Munich but quickly put down by Freikorps and remnants of
18522-604: The National Assembly voted to approve the treaty on 23 June. It was signed in Paris five days later. Explaining the rise of extreme nationalist movements in Germany shortly after the war, British historian Ian Kershaw pointed to the "national disgrace" that was "felt throughout Germany at the humiliating terms imposed by the victorious Allies and reflected in the Versailles Treaty...with its confiscation of territory on
18711-578: The National-Bolshevik publication of Ernst Niekisch . However, as Dupeux pointed out, Jünger wanted to use nationalism as an "explosive" and not as an "absolute", to eventually let the new order arise by itself. The association of Jünger to the Conservative Revolutionaries is still a matter of debate among scholars. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )
18900-405: The Republic, such as hyperinflation and political extremism , including political murders and two attempted seizures of power by contending paramilitaries ; internationally, it suffered isolation, reduced diplomatic standing and contentious relationships with the great powers. By 1924, a great deal of monetary and political stability was restored, and the republic enjoyed relative prosperity for
19089-530: The Rhineland and 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of the river demolished. Germany was prohibited from having an air force, tanks, poison gas, heavy artillery, submarines or dreadnoughts . A large number of its ships and all of its air-related armaments were to be surrendered. Germany had to compensate the Allied Powers for the losses and damages of the war, with the exact amount left to be determined at
19278-636: The Soviet Red Army , leading among other things to the secret training of German military pilots in clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles. With Seeckt's fall in 1926, the Reichswehr made a change in course for which Colonel (later General) Kurt von Schleicher was primarily responsible. The goal was to arouse broad social support for rearmament and to militarize society itself for the purpose of future warfare. Under Paul von Hindenburg's Reich presidency, Reichswehr leadership gained increasing political influence and eventually helped determine
19467-799: The Third Reich, and after World War II, both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic readopted the black-red-gold flag. The coat of arms was initially based on the Reichsadler ("imperial eagle") introduced by the Paulskirche Constitution of 1849, and announced in November 1919. In 1928, a new design by Karl-Tobias Schwab was adopted as national coat of arms, which
19656-480: The West during World War I was stronger than its spiritual resistance, it was primarily because the ethos ("character") of the German Volksgemeinschaft ("national community") cannot quickly express itself in words, and as a result is not able to counter effectively the solid rhetoric of the West. Since German culture was "of the soul, something which could not be grasped by the intellect",
19845-549: The Workers' and Soldiers' Council of Greater Berlin called for a National Congress of Councils ( Reichsrätekongress ) which took place from 16 to 21 December 1918. Against the opposition of the more radical members who demanded a socialist republic, Ebert, backed by the large MSPD majority at the Congress, was able to schedule the election for a provisional National Assembly that would act as an interim parliament and be given
20034-477: The abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II was announced, marking the end of Imperial Germany and the beginning of the Weimar Republic. The armistice that ended the fighting was signed on 11 November. Germany lost the war because its allies were facing defeat and its economic resources were running out, while by late summer 1918 fresh American troops were arriving in France at the rate of 10,000 per day. Support among
20223-411: The affirmation of Ebert, those responsible were not tried before a court-martial, leading to lenient sentences, which made Ebert unpopular among radical leftists. The National Assembly election , in which women were allowed to vote for the first time, took place on 19 January 1919. The MSPD won the largest share of the votes at 37.9%, with the USPD fifth at 7.6%. To avoid the ongoing fights in Berlin,
20412-601: The argument issued by the OHL in 1914 that Germany had been threatened by invasion and encirclement. Revising the conditions of the Versailles Treaty became the main goal of German foreign policy. The consensus opposing the "war guilt clause" did much to promote agitation against foreign countries and the Weimar Constitution. Both the DNVP and, in particular, the NSDAP questioned the entire post-war order and propagated
20601-452: The authoritarian state was the natural order desired by the German people. Politics, Mann argued, was inevitably a commitment to democracy and therefore alien to the German spirit: There is no such thing as a democratic or a conservative politician. Either you are a politician or you are not , and if you are, you are a democrat. While scholars have debated whether these formulations should be considered artistic and idealistic, or rather
20790-470: The collapse of Chancellor Hermann Müller's grand coalition and the beginning of the presidential cabinets . From March 1930 onwards, President Paul von Hindenburg used emergency powers to back Chancellors Heinrich Brüning , Franz von Papen and General Kurt von Schleicher . The Great Depression, exacerbated by Brüning's policy of deflation , led to a surge in unemployment . On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor to head
20979-489: The community, the nation, the people—while "espousing their times" in the very same movement. Moeller van den Bruck tried to overcome the Kulturpessimismus dilemma by fighting decadency to build a new political order over it. In 1923, he published the influential book Das Dritte Reich ("The Third Reich") , in which he went further from theoretical analysis to introduce a practical revolutionary programme as
21168-424: The composition of the Reich governments. As a result, the Reichswehr contributed significantly to the development of an authoritarian presidential system during the final phase of the Weimar Republic. After Adolf Hitler announced the "regaining of military sovereignty" (reintroduction of conscription etc.) in 1935, two years after his rise to power , the Reichswehr was absorbed into the new Wehrmacht . It
21357-472: The concept of revolution from November 1918 in order to attach it to August 1914. Conservative Revolutionaries indeed painted the November Revolution , which led to the foundation of the Weimar Republic , as a betrayal of the true revolution and, at best, hunger protests by the mob. The common agreement with socialists was the abolition of the excesses of capitalism. Jung claimed that, while
21546-461: The context of a German, especially Prussian , "tradition of militaristic, authoritarian nationalism which rejected liberalism, socialism, democracy and internationalism." Historian Fritz Stern described the movement as disoriented intellectuals plunged into a profound "cultural despair": they felt alienated and uprooted within a world dominated by what they saw as "bourgeois rationalism and science". Their hatred of modernity, Stern follows, led them to
21735-498: The continental blockade, the loss of Germany's overseas colonies and the worsening debt balances that had been exacerbated by Germany's heavy reliance on bonds to pay for the war. The economic losses can be attributed in part to the extension of the Allied blockade of Germany until the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 250,000 German civilians died of disease or starvation between
21924-441: The cultural pessimists and the "pseudo-moderns", who belonged for the most part to the middle class; while the proponent of an "organic" society diverged from those of an "organized" society. A third division split the supporters of deep and lengthy political and cultural transformations from those who endorsed a quick and erupting social revolution, as far as challenging economic freedom and private property. The fourth rift resided in
22113-430: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with
22302-456: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in
22491-482: The disparate movement cannot be easily confused with Nazism. Conservative Revolutionaries were not necessarily racialist as the movement cannot be reduced to its Völkisch component. Although they participated in preparing the German society to the rule of the Nazi Party with their antidemocratic and organicist theories, and did not really oppose their rise to power, Conservative Revolutionary writings did not have
22680-472: The disquiet and longing of the German being! Völkischen were involved in a racialist and occultist movement dating back to the middle of the 19th century and had an influence on the Conservative Revolution. Their priority was the fight against Christianity and the return to a (reconstructed) Germanic pagan faith, or the "Germanization" of Christianity to purge it from foreign (Semitic) influence. Thomas Mann believed that if German military resistance to
22869-642: The east bank near Cologne , Mainz and Koblenz . In addition, the Rhineland and an area stretching 50 kilometers east of the Rhine was to be demilitarized. France had demanded the occupation both to protect itself from a renewed German attack and as collateral for German reparations. The occupation was to last 5 years in the British zone, 10 in the American and 15 years in the French and Belgian zones, until 1934, but
23058-433: The eastern border and even more so its 'guilt clause'." Adolf Hitler repeatedly blamed the Republic and its democracy for accepting the oppressive terms of the treaty. Article 231 of the Versailles Treaty was widely perceived not only as a legal legitimisation of reparations but also as a moral condemnation of Germany, and it triggered a storm of indignation among the German public. The hostility towards it came from across
23247-519: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of
23436-399: The economy should remain in private hands, the "greed of capital" should at the same time be controlled, and that a community based on shared interests had to be set up between workers and employers. Another source of aversion for capitalism was rooted in the profits made from the war and inflation, and a last concern can be found in the fact that most of Conservative Revolutionaries belonged to
23625-417: The end of the war and the signing of the treaty. Many German civilians expected life to return to pre-war normality after it was lifted, but the severe food shortages continued. In 1922, for example, meat consumption had not increased since the war years. At 22 kilograms per person per year, it was less than half of the 52 kilograms consumed in 1913. German citizens felt the food shortages more deeply than during
23814-480: The enormous fall in the Papiermark 's value. After four years of war and famine, many German workers were disenchanted with the capitalist system and hoped for a new era under socialism or communism. Socialists dominated the new revolutionary government in Berlin, and numerous short-lived council republics were set up in cities across Germany. Even after they were suppressed, ideological conflicts between
24003-587: The face of modernity as an era of insecurity, opposing the securities of the past is no longer enough; instead it is necessary to redesign new safety by adopting and taking on the same risky conditions with which it is defined. Edgar Jung indeed dismissed the idea that true conservatives wanted to "stop the wheel of history". The chivalric way of life they were seeking to achieve was, according to Oswald Spengler , not governed by any moral code, but rather by "a noble, self-evident morality, based on that natural sense of tact which comes from good breeding". This morality
24192-412: The first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic . The period's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar , which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the republic was usually simply called "Germany", with "Weimar Republic" (a term introduced by Adolf Hitler in 1929) not commonly used until
24381-580: The following decades. Moeller van den Bruck was the dominant figure of the movement until his suicide on 30 May 1925. His ideas were initially spread through the Juniklub he had founded on 28 June 1919, on the day of the signing of Treaty of Versailles . Conservative Revolutionaries frequently referred to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as their mentor and as the main intellectual influence on their movement. Despite Nietzsche's philosophy being often misinterpreted, or wrongly appropriated by thinkers of
24570-544: The government, which wanted to prevent a German admission of guilt before the world public. The committee met until 1932. During the course of World War I, war reporting was the responsibility of the German General Staff and after 1918 of the Potsdam Reich Archives founded by General Hans von Seeckt , which dedicated itself to the task of "disproving" German war guilt and war crimes. As
24759-421: The grassroots level and put themselves at the front of the movement. They joined the calls for Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicate, and when he refused, Chancellor Maximilian of Baden made a public announcement that the Kaiser and Crown Prince Wilhelm had already done so. Gustav Noske (MSPD) was sent to Kiel to prevent any further unrest and took on the task of controlling the mutinous sailors and their supporters in
24948-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,
25137-465: The ideals of the labour movement because of their alliance with the old elites; the Right held the supporters of the Republic responsible for Germany's defeat in the First World War, denigrating them as "November criminals" and insinuating that the German army, which was still fighting on enemy soil when the war ended, had been stabbed in the back by them and the revolution (the stab-in-the-back myth ). In
25326-481: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of
25515-558: The institutional structures Bismarck created: the successor to the Roman Empire ; the vision of God's Empire here on earth; the universality of its claim to suzerainty ; and a more prosaic but no less powerful sense, the concept of a German state that would include all German speakers in Central Europe ;– 'one People, one Reich, one Leader', as the Nazi slogan was to put it. The black-red-gold tricolour of
25704-549: The intellect, founded on organic, naturally structured and hierarchical communities, and led by a new aristocracy of merit and action. Historian Jeffrey Herf used the term " reactionary modernism " to describe that "great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy ". That time is only worth destroying. But to destroy it, you have to know it first. [...] You had to completely submit yourself to
25893-409: The intellectuals involved in the movement were born in the last decades of the nineteenth century and experienced WWI as a formative event ( Kriegserlebnis , "war experience") for the foundation of their political beliefs. The life on the front line, with its violence and irrationality, caused most of them to search a posteriori for a meaning to what they had to endure during the conflict. Ernst Jünger
26082-461: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Weimar period The Weimar Republic , officially known as the German Reich , was a historical period of Germany from 9 November 1918 to 23 March 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for
26271-407: The last foreign troops evacuated the Rhineland on 30 June 1930. The treaty's disarmament provisions were intended to make the future German army incapable of offensive action. It was limited to no more than 100,000 men with only 4,000 officers and no general staff; the navy could have at most 15,000 men and 1,500 officers. The Rhineland was to be demilitarized and occupied and all fortifications in
26460-449: The law"). Conservative Revolutionaries asserted that they were not guided by the "sterile resentment of the class struggle". Many of them invoked the community of front line comradeship ( Frontgemeinschaft ) of World War I as the model for the national community ( Volksgemeinschaft ) to follow in peaceful times, hoping in that project to transcend the established political categories of right and left. For that purpose, they tried to remove
26649-430: The materialist vision of Marx was based on nineteenth-century science, while the twentieth century would be the age of psychology . We no longer believe in the power of reason over life. We feel that it is life which dominates reason. Along with Karl Otto Paetel and Heinrich Laufenberg , Ernst Niekisch was one of the main advocates of National Bolshevism , a minor branch of the Conservative Revolution described as
26838-525: The mid-1920s, most Germans referred to their government informally as the Deutsche Republik , but for many, especially on the right, the word " Republik " was a painful reminder of a government structure that they believed had been imposed by foreign statesmen and of the expulsion of Emperor Wilhelm II in the wake of a massive national humiliation. The first recorded mention of the term Republik von Weimar (Republic of Weimar) came during
27027-528: The modern world, such as technology, the city and the proletariat . Moeller van den Bruck defined the Conservative Revolution as the will to conserve a set of values seen as inseparable from a Volk ("people, ethnic group"). These eternal values were able to survive through the fluctuations of the ages because of innovations in their institutional and ideal forms. Distant from the pure reactionary who, in Moeller van den Bruck's eyes, does not create (and from
27216-413: The modern world. They do not really fear the masses , nor the technique anymore. Yet this change of Haltung ("attitude") had significant consequences — the backward-looking regret is replaced by a juvenile energy — and led to a wide-ranging political and cultural initiative. Political scientist Tamir Bar-On has defined the Conservative Revolution as a combination of "German ultra-nationalism, defence of
27405-406: The most widely shared among analysts of the movement: "Young conservatives" were deeply influenced by 19th-century intellectual and aesthetic movements such as German romanticism and Kulturpessimismus ("cultural pessimism"). Contrary to traditional Wilhelmine conservatives, Jungkonservativen aimed at assisting the re-emergence of "persistent and fundamental structures"—authority, the state,
27594-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted
27783-423: The movement as a will to preserve eternal values while favouring at the same time the redesign of ideal and institutional forms in response to the "insecurities of the modern world". Historian Louis Dupeux , a specialist of the Conservative Revolution, saw the movement as an intellectual project with its own consistent logic, namely the striving for an Intellektueller Macht ("intellectual power"), if necessary via
27972-477: The naive confidence that all these modern evils could be fought and resolved by a "Conservative Revolution". Although terms such as Konservative Kraft ("conservative power") and schöpferische Restauration ("creative restoration") began to spread across German-speaking Europe from the 1900s to the 1920s, the Konservative Revolution ("Conservative Revolution") became an established concept in
28161-406: The new Chancellor broad power to act outside parliamentary control. Hitler promptly used these powers to thwart constitutional governance and suspend civil liberties, which brought about the swift collapse of democracy at the federal and state level, and the creation of a one-party dictatorship under his leadership. Until the end of World War II in Europe in 1945, the Nazis governed Germany under
28350-596: The new government was confirmed by the Berlin Workers' and Soldiers' Council, it was opposed by the Spartacus League. On 11 November 1918, an armistice was signed at Compiègne by German representatives. It effectively ended military operations between the Allies and Germany. It amounted to a German capitulation, without any concessions by the Allies; the naval blockade was to continue until complete peace terms were agreed on. The Executive Council of
28539-565: The next five years; this period, sometimes known as the Golden Twenties , was characterised by significant cultural flourishing, social progress, and gradual improvement in foreign relations. Under the Locarno Treaties of 1925, Germany moved toward normalising relations with its neighbours, recognising most territorial changes under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and committing never to go to war. The following year, it joined
28728-653: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from
28917-399: The officer corps, while Groener pledged that the military would be loyal to the government and that it would help it in its fight against left-wing revolutionaries. The agreement marked the acceptance of the new government by the military, but the new Reichswehr armed forces, limited by the Treaty of Versailles to 100,000 army soldiers and 15,000 sailors, remained fully under the control of
29106-480: The organic folk community, technological modernity, and socialist revisionism, which perceived the worker and soldier as models for a reborn authoritarian state superseding the egalitarian "decadence" of liberalism, socialism, and traditional conservatism." The Conservative Revolution is encompassed in a larger and older counter-movement to the French Revolution of 1789, influenced by the anti- modernity and anti- rationalism of early 19th-century romanticism , in
29295-423: The political spectrum, from the far right to the moderate governing parties to the KPD. After the treaty came into force, the Foreign Office continued the state's control of the debate over war guilt. The War Guilt Department financed and directed the Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War , which was to provide "scientific" support for the "campaign of innocence" abroad. For war-innocence propaganda at home,
29484-403: The population had begun to crumble in 1916, and by mid-1918 many Germans wanted an end to the war. Increasing numbers of them began to associate with the political left, such as the Social Democratic Party and the more radical Independent Social Democratic Party , which demanded an end to the war. When it became obvious to the generals that defeat was at hand, General Erich Ludendorff convinced
29673-486: The power granted to the president by the Article 48 to declare an Ausnahmezustand (" state of emergency "), which Schmitt implicitly praised as dictatorial. If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship. Schmitt further advanced in Politische Theologie (1922) that there cannot be any functioning legal order without
29862-443: The pretense that all the extraordinary measures and laws they implemented were constitutional; notably, there was never an attempt to replace or substantially amend the Weimar constitution . Nevertheless, Hitler's seizure of power ( Machtergreifung ) had effectively ended the republic, replacing its constitutional framework with Führerprinzip , the principle that "the Führer's word is above all written law". The Weimar Republic
30051-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation
30240-445: The pure revolutionary who does nothing but destroys everything), the Conservative Revolutionary sought to give a form to phenomena in an eternal space, a shape that could guarantee their survival among the few things that cannot be lost: Conserving is not receiving to hand down, but rather innovating the forms, institutional or ideal, which agree to remain rooted in a solid world of values in the face of continuous historical setbacks. In
30429-419: The question of the Drang nach Osten ("drive to the East") and the attitude to adopt towards Bolshevik Russia , escorted by a debate on the place of Germany between a so-called "senile" West and "young and barbaric" Orient ; the last division being a deep opposition between the Völkischen and the pre-fascist thinkers. In 1995, historian Rolf Peter Sieferle described what he labelled five "complexes" in
30618-427: The regular army dead. The USPD leaders were angered by what they believed was treachery by the MSPD, which in their view had joined with the anti-communist military to suppress the revolution. As a result, the USPD left the Council of the People's Deputies after only seven weeks. On 30 December, the split deepened when the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was formed out of a number of radical left-wing groups, including
30807-431: The regular army. The fall of the Munich Soviet Republic to these units, many of which were on the extreme right, resulted in the growth of far-right, antisemitic movements and organisations in Bavaria , including Organisation Consul , the Nazi Party , and societies of exiled Russian monarchists. Revolutionary sentiment also arose in the eastern states where interethnic discontent between Germans and minority Poles led to
30996-423: The right of the spectrum, the politically engaged rejected the new democratic model and were appalled to see the honour of the traditional word Reich associated with it. The Catholic Centre Party favoured the term Deutscher Volksstaat (German People's State), while on the moderate left, Chancellor Friedrich Ebert 's Social Democratic Party of Germany preferred Deutsche Republik (German Republic). By
31185-423: The same year (" On the German Republic " [ Von deutscher Republik ]), Mann publicly became a staunch defender of the Weimar Republic and attacked many of the figures associated with the Conservative Revolution such as Oswald Spengler, whom he depicted as intellectually dishonest and irresponsibly immoral. In 1933, he described National Socialism as the politische Wirklichkeit jener konservativen Revolution , that
31374-419: The socialist movement, which represented mostly labourers, was split among two major left-wing parties: the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), which called for immediate peace negotiations and favoured a soviet-style command economy, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), also known as the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD), which had supported the war and favoured
31563-492: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,
31752-421: The strong into mandatory, rather than optional, service to the weak. On a geopolitical scale, theorists of the movement adopted a vision of the world ( Weltanschauung ) where nations would abandon moral standards in their relationship to each others, only guided by their natural self-interest. Let thousands, nay millions, die; what meaning have these rivers of blood in comparison with a state, into which flow all
31941-443: The substitute "new nationalism" to name a charismatic and holistic cultural movement that differed from the "old nationalism" of the previous century, whose essential role was limited to the preservation of the German institutions and their influence in the world. Despite the apparent contradiction, however, the association of the terms "Conservative" and "Revolution" is justified in Moeller van den Bruck's writings by his definition of
32130-417: The task of writing a democratic constitution for a parliamentary government. To ensure that the fledgling government maintained control over the country, Ebert and General Wilhelm Groener , Ludendorff's successor as leader of the Supreme Army Command (OHL), concluded the secret Ebert–Groener pact on 10 November. Over the telephone, Ebert promised that he would allow sole command of the troops to remain with
32319-503: The technique, by shaping it at last. [...] The apparatus itself deserved no admiration — that was the dangerous thing to do — it just had to be used. Jünger supported the emergence of a young intellectual elite that would spring out from the trenches of WWI, ready to oppose bourgeois capitalism and to embody a new nationalist revolutionary spirit. In the 1920s, he wrote more than 130 articles in various nationalist magazines, mostly in Die Standarte or, less frequently, in Widerstand ,
32508-406: The territorial losses especially angered the Germans. The treaty was reviled as a dictated rather than a negotiated peace. Philipp Scheidemann , then minister president of Germany, said to the Weimar National Assembly on 12 May 1919, "What hand should not wither that puts this fetter on itself and on us?" He resigned rather than accept the terms, but after the Allies threatened to resume hostilities,
32697-449: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in
32886-414: The use of modern technique and concepts, which would allow them to promote and gain wider support to conservative and revolutionary ideas directed against liberalism, egalitarianism, and traditional conservatism. This change of attitude, compared to 19th-century conservatism, is described as a Bejahung ("affirmation") by Dupeux: Conservative Revolutionaries said "yes" to their time as long as they could find
33075-852: The war because the reality contrasted so starkly with their expectations. Immediate post-war industrial production fell to the levels of the 1880s, or 57 percent of its value in 1913. The 1919 per capita GDP was only 73 percent of the comparable 1913 figure. Controlled demobilisation kept unemployment initially at around one million. By January 1922, the unemployment rate had sunk to just 0.9%, but inflation caused most workers' real wages to be significantly lower than they were in 1913. The hyperinflation that peaked in late 1923 had its worst effects on government workers, whose wages did not keep pace with private sector workers, and on middle class Germans who had invested in war bonds or who relied on savings, investments or pensions for their living. What had once been substantial savings became essentially worthless due to
33264-704: The ways to facilitate the resurgence of anti-liberal and what they saw as "eternal values" within modern societies. Dupeux conceded at the same time that the Conservative Revolution was rather a counter-cultural movement than an actual philosophical proposition, relying more on non-rationalistic "feeling, images and myths" than on scientific analysis and concepts. He also admitted the necessity to distinguish several leanings, sometimes with contradictory views, within its diverse ideological spectrum. [Conservative Revolutionaries] are, admittedly, as reactionary in politics as their pre-war predecessors, but they stand out by their optimism — or at least by their voluntarism — in front of
33453-438: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during
33642-417: The world, the final Allied offensive began in August 1918, and the position of Germany and the Central Powers deteriorated, leading them to sue for peace. After initial offers were rejected by the Allied Powers, the hunger and privation of the war years came together with the awareness of an impending military defeat to help spark the German Revolution . On 9 November 1918, a republic was proclaimed , and
33831-415: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching
34020-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of
34209-407: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially
34398-434: Was ceded to the Allied powers, and Danzig went to the League of Nations as the Free City of Danzig . The Polish Corridor left East Prussia physically separated from the rest of Germany. Under the terms of both the Armistice of 1918 and of the Treaty of Versailles, French, British, Belgian and American troops occupied the Rhineland , the area of Germany on the west bank of the Rhine river , together with bridgeheads on
34587-427: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which
34776-541: Was not the product of a conscious reflection, but rather "something innate which one senses and which has its own organic logic." Conservative revolutionaries saw the values of morality as instinctive and eternal, and as such embodied in rural life. The latter became challenged, Spengler believed, by the rise of the artificial world of the city, where theories and observations were needed to understand life itself, either coming from liberal democrats or scientific socialists . What Conservative Revolutionaries were aiming to achieve
34965-430: Was put under the control of the League of Nations for 15 years, and the output of the area's coal mines went to France. Alsace–Lorraine , which Prussia had annexed following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, once again became French. The northern part of Schleswig-Holstein went to Denmark following a plebiscite. In the east, a significant amount of territory was lost to a restored Poland . The Memel Territory
35154-437: Was spread by the Right throughout the 1920s and ensured that many monarchists and conservatives would refuse to support the government of what they called the "November criminals". The destabilising effect of the stab-in-the-back myth on the Weimar democracy was an important factor in the rise of National Socialism . On 29 October 1918, a rebellion broke out among sailors at Wilhelmshaven ; similar unrest then spread to become
35343-545: Was the restoration, within the modern world, of what they saw as natural laws and values: We call Conservative Revolution the restoration of all those elementary laws and values, without which man loses his connection with Nature and with God and cannot establish a true order. Influenced by Nietzsche, most of them were opposed to the Christian ethics of solidarity and equality. Although many Conservative Revolutionaries described themselves as Protestant or Catholics , they saw Christian ethical premise as structurally indenturing
35532-449: Was the unified armed forces of the Nazi regime. Germany and the Central Powers fought the Allies of WWI between 28 July 1914 and 11 November 1918. The war ended with 20 million military and civilian deaths, including 2,037,000 German soldiers and from 424,000 to 763,000 civilians, many of them from disease and starvation as a result of the Allied blockade of Germany . After four years of war on multiple fronts in Europe and around
35721-407: Was used until being replaced by the Nazi Reichsadler in 1935, and readopted by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1950. Following Germany's defeat in World War I, several million soldiers of the Imperial German Army either simply dispersed on their own or were formally demobilized. The provisional civilian government and the Supreme Army Command (OHL) planned to transfer the remaining units to
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