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by the consequences of this collision and its horizon of expectations, the wagon of

catastrophes as Benjamin calls it in an article dedicated to toys as psycho-cultural

archetypes.1

1. We know only we are no more

In August 1923 Ludwig Klages sent a letter to Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, the Baseler

philologist and exponent of Nietzsche, proposing that his correspondent compare

psychoanalysis to late Romantic psychology.2 This was part of a project, heavily

influenced by Johann Jakob Bachofens Romantic theory of symbols, designed to destroySigmund Freuds theories.3 Many of these concepts psychological, metaphysical,

aesthetic turned up again and again in the formal fascist discourse and the radical

aesthetic critique of the 1920s-1930s alike. Klages, a philosophical luminary, the pope

1Walter Benjamin, Spielzeug und Spielen, Randbemerkungen zu einem Monumentalwerk, inGesammelte Schriften,ed. Hella Tiedemann-Bartels, vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972),pp.129. Benjamin explored in this article a clear opposition between the Freudian therapeutic model andthe Klagesian-Bachofenic-Nietzschean typology of living temporality. He rejected the first in favor of thesecond. The psychological dimension of the article supports an analogy between folklorist art and toys as adirect path to collective images [kollektive Gebilde].2Carl Albrecht Bernoulli was the principal disciple of Friedrich Nietzsches close friend Franz Overbeck(1837-1905). Of the interpretation of Nietzsche Bernoulli wrote at Overbecks behest Lionel Gossmanwrote: Overbeck strove for the rest of his life and beyond it, through the work of his student Carl AlbrechtBernoulli, to preserve a different picture of Nietzsche from that propagated, unfortunately withconsiderable success, by die Dame Frster, as he insisted on calling [Elisabeth Fster Nietzsche]. Lionel

Gossman,Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas(Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 2000), p. 418.3Herbert Schndelbach sees Klages as the heir to NietzschesLebensphilosophie. See HerbertSchndelbach, Philosophy in Germany 18311933,trans. Eric Matthews (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1984), p. 145. Klagess own followers and admirers often identified him as the daysleading thinker in theLebensphilosophietradition: Within Germanys borders, as well as without, LudwigKlages is known as the most important Lebensphilosopher. Ernst Hoferichter, Ein Frischer und Knderdes Lebens, in Herbert Hnel, ed.,Ludwig Klages, Erforcher und Knder des Lebens: Festschrift zum 75.Geburtstage des Philosophen am 10. Dezember 1947(Salzburg: sterreichscher Verlag fr Bellestristikund Wissenschaft, 1947), p. 11.

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of German graphology,4 an outspoken anti-Semite, and a principle Lebensphilosopher

whom Georg Lukcs recognized also as a pre-Fascist irrationalist, 5urged Bernoulli to

radicalize the contrast to the Freudian humanistic Geist(spirit, intellect) to make it more

polemical. 6 If Bernoulli turned to the late Romantic philosophy of Bachofen, said

Klages, he would find the antidote to all mechanistic depictions of the soul. Klagess

beginning point was rather that there is no body without a shape [Gestalt]. Every

appearance has a shape.7One wonders what image our age would have had of the body

and its soul if Klagess cause had triumphed in World War II. As Ulfried Geuter showed

in The Professionalization of Psychology in Nazi Germany, Klagess Charakterologiewas counted among the leading influences on Nazi psychology.8 Benjamin himself

pointed out, in a review of Ernst Jngers collection War and Warriors (1930), about

those habitus of the chthonic forces of terror, who carry their volumes of [Ludwig]

Klages in their packs.9Letters found in the Klages archive in Marbach prove that plans

were afoot to create a whole Nazi leadership school based on Klagess

Lebensphilosophie,graphology and characterology. Hence, the danger was imminent.10A

4Eva Horn, Der Mensch im Spiegel der Schrift. Graphologie zwischen popular Selbsterforschung undmoderner Humanwissenschaft, inLiteratur und Anthropologie, ed. A. Assmann, U. Gaier, and G.Trommsdorf (Tbingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2003).5Georg Lukcs, The Destruction of Reason,trans. Peter Palmer (London: Merlin, 1980), p. 191.6Ludwig Klages to Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, 14 August 1923, Deutsche Literaturarchiv am Marbach(henceforth DLM), Nachlass Ludwig Klages, Sig. 61.4141, letter no. 33.7Ibid., p. 956.8Ulfried Geuter, The Professionalization of Psychology in Nazi Germany, tr. Richard J. Holems (N.Y:Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 94.9

Walter Benjamin, Theories of German Fascism, in TheWeimar Republic Sourcebook, eds. Anton Kaes,Martin Jay, Edward Dimendberg (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Clifornia Press, 1994), 159-164. Here, p. 164. Originally published as Theorien des deutschen Faschismus. Zu der SammelschriftKrieg und Krieger,Die Gesselschaft7:2 (1930), pp. 32-41.10The correspondence between Ludwig Klages and the economist Kurt Seesemann proves such plans in theprocess of realization, during the late 1930s. However, the plan was blocked once the old institution of theparty, Rust and Schacht, lost its power during 1936-1937, and finally when Alfred Rosenberg and AlfredBaeumler turned against the Klages Circle publicly, in 1938. Rosenbergs attack on Klages in theMartin-Luther University and above the major newspapers of the time--first and foremost the Vlkischer

Beobachter--was undoubtedly the result of a competition between the two principal forces of



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thinker of a different sort, Walter Benjamin participated in the Bachofen debate of the

mid 1920s, crossing paths with the radical aesthetic ur-models of Bachofen and Klages,

investigating closely the same anti-Freudian graphology and Characterology that Klages

promoted. Benjamins texts, after this debate, are filled with hidden and explicit

references to this debate, a fact largely unrecognized in the fertile Benjaminian scene.

Klagess attack on psychoanalysis and the mastering of types and characters,

would not have interested current research as much, if not the impact it had on key

progressive theoreticians, or the radical reactionaries on the right wing. Reconsidering the

power of Lebensphilosophie, so it seems, forces one also to reassess the power of adiscourse that refused to commit to a clear political and ethical position, but engaged with

different--often opposite--radical forms, instead. Revived at present from the perspective

of biopolitics, one wonders whether these political ambivalences and inherent radicalism

are incorporated into the theoretical system and to what extent the theory is aware of its

own historical burden.

Klages, one of the principle inspirations for typological psychology,11was calling

for a new understanding of reality, which he located on the threshold between life and

death, existence and nothingness, the individual and the collective: The great urgency

felt today is a result of the mechanization process itself. It is the tragic destiny of

authentic knowledge . . . . We know only that we are no more. Somnium narrare

Lebensphilosophiein Nazi Germany during the 1930s. See Alfred Rosenberg: Gestalt und Leben(Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1938): A Lecture given on 27April 1938 at the Martin-Luther-Universitt inHalle- Wittenberg. Klages and Seesemanns correspondence refers explicitly to this confrontation withRosenberg and Baeumler. For the correspondence, see Kurt Seesemann to Ludwig Klages, 11 February1935, Deutsche Literaturarchiv am Marbach (henceforth, DLM), Nachlass Ludwig Klages, sig.: 61.12413.11Mitchell G. Ash, Gestlat Psychology in German culture, 1890- 1967(N.Y: Cambridge University Press,1995), pp. 12, 300.



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vigilantis est (Seneca).12Klagess words bespoke an awareness of an existential threat

not to be confused with existential philosophy, which prizes individual choice above

all else and could hardly be further from Klagess ideas. Life, according to Klages, arose

out of a fundamental division of body and soul, a rupture and a lost unity of cosmological

principles, an erotic nearness (Nhe) to nothingness that cannot be surpassed.13Freuds

attempt to recall an individual state of harmony und cognitive unity was destined to fail,

according to Klages, who saw the Freudian enterprise as another sign of the modern

obsession with narratives of progression and automatization, part of the Jewish faith and

inclusive worldview.14

2.Lebensphilosophie

TheHistorisches Wrterbuch der PhilosophiedefinesLebensphilosophieas a

cluster of concepts of uniquely German provenance, unknown to Anglophone or

Francophone cultures.15Its principal advocates, according to the editors of the dictionary,

make up the school of life-hermeneutics that sprang from Wilhelm Dilthey during the late

nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The movement, they argue, developed in

a few directions, united by an emphasis on resistance. As an alternative to normative

12Ludwig Klages, Smmtliche Schriften(Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1964), 4: 409.13

Eros als Schpfer der Weltblieb trotz seiner kosmischen Beschafenheit einEros der Nhe. LudwigKlages, Vom kosmogenischen Eros(Jena: Eugen Diedrichs Verlag, 1930 [1922])., p. 131. Emphasis in theOriginal.14In 1929 Klages argued that the fundamental basis of the Jewish faith or its myth of creation is thedeterminist and necessary progress towards an aim. Ludwig Klages,Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele,in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. II (Bonn: H. Bouvier Verlag, 1969), p. 537. For the vampire will to power[dass vampytische Wille zur Macht ] of the Jewish god see the second volume, p. 1266.15Historisches Wrterbuch der Philosophie,eds. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Grnder (Hrsg.) (Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980), s.v. Lebensbezug, Lebenserfahrung, Lebensreformen,Lebensgefhl, Lebenskategorien, Lebenskraft, Lebenskries, Lebensphilosophie.



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and Lorenz Oken can all be considered contributors to a philosophy devoted to critical

self-cultivation, often contrasted with the ordained perception ofBildung .After the

Romantics it was the contributions of Bachofen, Nietzsche and Dilthey that placed the

meta-concept of Ganzheit[wholeness] above all, identifying an organic process in time

with an aesthetic vocabulary and a descriptive psychology. Hans-GeorgGadamer,

looking back at the process that led from the nineteenth centurys organic and empirical

language to Diltheys hermeneutics of life, concluded that from then on life and history

became the letters of the world.19

Post-Nietzscheanism and the revival of Bachofen madeLebensphilosophieinto ahugely popular philosophy during the 1920s; in the words of the neo-Kantian Heinrich

Rickert (18631936), Lebensphilosophers formulated a comprehensive aesthetic

discourse of naked life (blossen Leben) during the early and mid 1920s, turning it into

thefashionable philosophical trend of our time.20

The Lebensphilosophie of the early Weimar Republic slowly gained popularity

among the educated. Identified from the early 1910s with protests against the elitist

Prussian bureaucracy launched by both the green movement and the youth movement, it

inspired the Lebensreformbewegung (life reform movement), which advocated nudism

and natural therapy as a means to liberating the soul and casting away all formal

conventions and false pretensions.21 During the late 1910s and the early 1920s

19Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften,vol. 7, ed. Bernhard Groethuysen (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht, 1992), p. 291.20Heinrich Rickert,Die Philosophie des Lebens: Darstellung und Kritik der philosophischen

Modestrmung unserer Zeit(Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr Verlag, 1920).21See, for example, August Messer,Die freideutsche Jugendbewegung (Ihr Verlauf von 1913 bis 1922)(Langensalza: Beyer & Shne, 1922), p. 17. For a detailed history of the LebensreformbewegungseeMichael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, A Social History 1890- 1930(Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2003) and Raymond H. Dominick III, The Environmental Movement inGermany, Prophets & Pioneers, 1871-1971(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).



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Lebensphilosophieconfronted a severe political and ideological crisis: military defeat had

prompted a series of mutinies and gross political disaffection. Philosophers called for a

poetic return to the total aestheticism of the nineteenth century and pledged their support

for a sweeping counterattack against the conventions of scientific and historical thinking,

against industrialization and positivism. At a lecture he gave in 1918, Klages set forth his

new calculus: Images and not objects are the source of inspiration for the soul this is

the key for the whole teaching of life.22The new philosophy of life permitted all kinds

of resistance to institutionalized discourses. Avant-garde thinkers and artists like Klages,

the Romantic guru and poet Stefan George and his circle, Alfred Kubin, a foundingmember of the Expressionist group Blaue Reiter, shared the dream of reviving, in

Foucaults words, a great circle of nature based on the divine All-in-One.23

Georg Lukcs paid tribute to Klages as the one responsible for the fascization of

Lebensphilosophie, who actually transformed vitalism into an open combat against

reason and culture.24Klagess whole philosophy, Lukcs argued, is only a variation

on this one primitive idea. His significance lies in the fact that never before had reason

been challenged so openly and radically.25 Together with Bergson and Heidegger,

Lukcs named Klages a founder of modern vitalism. But in contrast to the two and their

22Nicht Dinge, sondern Bilder sind beseelt: das ist der Schlssel zur ganzen Lebenslehre. DLM,Nachlass Ludwig Klages, Manuskripte, Prosa: Zur Lebenslehre. Aus einer Vorlesung (summer semester,1918), Sig.: 61. 3798.23

See Michel Foucaults essay about Hlderlin and the George circle, in Foucault,Aesthetics, Method, andEpistemology, ed. James D. Fabion, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: The New Press, 1998), p. 13. OnStefan Georges close relationship with the cosmic principle and Klages and Schulers Cosmic Circle,see Robert E. Norton, Secret Germany: Stefan George and His Circle(Ithaca: Cornell University Press,2002), pp. 292310. For Klagess close correspondence with the expressionist Alfred Kubin, see PaulBishop, Mir war der Geist immer mehr eine Explodierte Elephatiasis, Der Briefwechsel zwischenAlfred Kubin und Ludwig Klages, in: Jahrbuch der deutschen SchillergesellschaftXLIII (1999), pp.49-95.24Georg Lukcs, The Destruction of Reason, trans. Peter Palmer (London: The Merlin Press, 1980), p. 523.25Ibid., p. 524.



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vitalist time theory, Klagess polemics were directed against the future,26which Lukcs

identifies with time itself.

Klages himself, following the legacy of late Romanticism, identified the Jewish

perception of the divine as arriving from out-of-time [Ausserzeitlich] and opposing the

organic wholeness [Ganzheit] of form [Gestalt]. If Klages is indeed a faithful

representative of Lebensphilosophie, he stands at an alternative crossroad between the

disciplines and different discourses that occupied the minds of so many thinkers in the

German 1920s. The biological metaphor ruled above all.

3. An acute sense of subversion

Born in Hannover in 1878, Ludwig Klages lived most of his youth with a younger sister,

an authoritative father, and a sentimental aunt.27His mother died giving birth to his sister.

Pressured by his father, Klages obtained a doctoral degree in industrial chemistry, but

soon after meeting the poet Stefan George in Munich, turned to philosophy and the arts.

In Munich Klages established the Cosmic Circle with George, Karl Wolfskehl, Albert

Verwey, and Alfred Schuler. The circle was dissolved in 1905, after Wolfskehl began to

play a part in Zionist initiatives. Turning a deaf ear to Klages and Schulers anti-Semitic

conspiracy theories, George took Wolfskehls side. Things got so bad that Wolfskehl

decided to buy a gun to protect himself against his old friends and mistakenly shot his

own leg.

26Ibid., p. 525.27Hans Eggert Schrder,Ludwig Klages; die Geschichte seines Lebens(Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1972). Forthe following sketch of Klages childhood I have relied heavily on the information in Hans EggertSchrder,Ludwig Klages, Vol I: Das Jgend, pp.3- 47.



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During the first decade of the twentieth century, Klages started to study and teach

graphology, physiognomy, and neo-Romantic philosophy of life. Ironically, it was none

other than Wolfskehl who introduced Klages to Bachofens philosophy and ideas, later so

influential on his thinking about life and his reactionary politics.

After gaining fame in Germany as the founder of German graphology and

characterology, Klages shifted to more philosophical works. During World War I he

constructed a new philosophy of dreams that fused Goethes primal image, or Urbild,

with modern phenomenology. When the war ended, he produced Vom kosmogenischen

Eros (On the cosmogonic Eros, 1922). His resolutely apolitical hermeneutics of organicimages found support in widely varying ideological camps. Beginning in the 1910s the

editors of the reactionary journal Die Tat had snatched up every article Klages offered

them. Soon their moderate rivals, the editors of Mnchner neuesten Nachrichten and

Vssischen Zeitung,followed suit. In June 1922 Siegfried Kracauer published sections of

Vom kosmogenischen Eros in the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung feuilleton, adding a short

introduction in which he focused on Klagess innovative notion of Urbilder, or primal

images.28In October 1924 Kracauer introduced and published a talk Klages had given on

the Frankfurter Zeitungradio hour.29

Walter Benjamin was among the first to claim that Klages had endowed

the soul with mythical powers, which had led him to speak of the souls

collective unconscious and image-fantasy (kollektiven Unbewusstsen and

Bildphantasie).30Benjamins admiration of Klages, which has never been

28Frankfurter Zeitung,14 June 1922, feuilleton section, pp. 12.29Frankfurter Zeitung,25 October 1924, feuilleton section, p. 2.30Walter Benjamin to Max Horkheimer, 28 March 1937, in Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe,ed. ChristophGdde and Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1996), 5:490.



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properly explored in intellectual history, lasted for over two decades, and is far

better documented than his relationship with Carl Schmitt, which the philosopher

Giorgio Agamben stresses.31

Though the correspondence between Benjamin and Klages, which has not been

fully published, is scanty it gives a clear picture of the contradictory interest the former

took in the latter. The many references to Klages begin in the early 1920s and continue to

hisArcades Project, proving that for Benjamin KlagessLebensphilosophiewas utterly

essential. When he was twenty-two, Benjamin had traveled to Munich in order to invite

Klages to give a lecture to his fellow Free German Students, the liberal branch ofWandervogel.32After that first meeting in 1914, a short exchange followed in 1920, when

Benjamin praised Klages for his theory of dreams and asked for further references.

Klagess response, still unpublished, mentioned other pieces he had written and included

an invitation to meet in Berlin the following spring.33Furthermore, the two men were

next drawn together by the publication of Kosmogenischen Eros, which opened with a

dedication to the theory and history of myths revived by Bachofen. Benjamin read the

book with great excitement and wrote to Klages in February 1923 to communicate his

enthusiasm.34

31There are only few studies that emphasize the relationship between Klages and Benjamin. The earliest isa short and partial article by Werner Fuld, Walter Benjamin Beiehung zu Ludwig Klages,Akzente,

Zeitschrift fr Lieteratur 28 (1981): 27485. A few others have discussed the importance of therelationship, notably John McCole, Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition(Ithaca, N. Y.:Cornell University Press, 1993). Most recently appeared a fascinating theorization by Irving Wohlfarth,Walter Benjamin and the Idea of a Technological Eros, A Tentative Reading of Zum Planetarium, in

Benjamin Studien1, no. 1 (May 2002).32 Momme Brodersen, Walter Benjamin: A Biography, trans. Malcolm R. Green and Ingrida Ligers(London: Verso, 1996), p. 64.33Ludwig Klages to Walter Benjamin, 20 December 1920, Nachlass Lduwig Klages, DeutscheLiteraturarchiv in Marbach [DLM], sig.: 61.4074.34Walter Benjamin to Ludwig Klages, 28 February 1923, in Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe,2:319



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Benjamindedicatedtwo essays and a few reviews to Bachofen and his Klagesian

epigones. In 1926 he reviewed Klages and Bernoullis interpretation for the widely read

Literarische Welt. Eight years later he published a far more ambitious essay in Nouvelle

revue franaise,setting Bachofens contribution and Klagess reaction in a more general

perspective by elaborating the context for both thinkers and their reception. At the center

of Bachofens project was the cult of the magical death, the rites of the earth . . .

explored by the primitive mentality. Yet, Benjamin added, his foregrounding of

irrational forces in terms of their metaphysical and civic signification, would one day

pique the interest of fascist theorists though it would interest Marxist theorists nearlyas much thanks to its evocation of a communist society at the dawn of history.35This

more critical spirit also affected Benjamins treatment of Klages in the essay: while most

of his comments were strikingly laudatory, he linked his sometime correspondent to

Alfred Baeumler, whom he called one of Germanys official professors of fascism.36

As Yoseph Mali pointed out in an article dedicated to Benjamins theorization of

Bachofen, during Benjamins career the allusions to Bachofen are very consistent. From

1922 to 1934, references to Bachofen always contain the concept of myth, and its

contribution to a theory of history, language, and time, mostly seen from the perspective

35Ce tableau [de la prhistoire], mettant au premire plan les forces irrationnelles dans leur significationmtaphysique et civique, devait un jour presenter un intrt suprieur pour les thoriciens fascists; mais ildevait solliciter presque autant les penseurs marxistes par lvocation dune socit communiste laube delhistoire.Walter Benjamin, Johann Jacob Bachofen, in Gesammelte Schriften, book 2, 1:220.

36The article was originally written for theNouvelle revue franaise.In a commentary they affixed to thepiece, the editors of Benjamins Gesammelte Schriften argued that his ideas on Bachofen were recycled byBenjamin in his writings about Kafka. See Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften,book 2, 3:962.



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of an absence, or a destructive character, characterizing Bachofen in terms akin to

those which he usually applied to himself.37

A silent homage Benjamin consistently paid his master was his scrupulous

avoidance of anything resembling Freuds psychoanalytical narratives. Even when

Benjamin identified the connections between Klagess mythical images and Fascist

aesthetics, he still insisted on the great potential of Klagesian thought.38 In 1934

Benjamin wrote his acclaimed essay Franz Kafka and made his preferences very clear:

There are two ways to miss the point of Kafkas works, one is to interpret themnaturally; the other is to interpret them from a supernatural perspective. Both the

psychoanalytical and the theological interpretations miss the essential point.39 The

alternative he proposed was an investigation of the historical consciousness of

creatures based on the culturally suppressed in contrast to individual psychological

suppression and which he related to Bachofen, the Bachofen he knew through Klages:

In his [i.e., Kafkas] works, the creature appears at the stage which Bachofen has termed

the hetaeric stage. The fact that this stage is now forgotten does not mean that it does not

extend into the present. On the contrary: it is present by virtue of its oblivion.40 Only

through this approach could one appreciate the dure that extends from prehistory to

everything excluded since then. Laws and definite norms remain unwritten in the

37Joseph Mali, The Reconciliation of Myth: Benjamins Homage to Bachofen, in:Journal of the Historyof Ideas60:1 (1999), pp. 165-187. Here, p. 178.38Walter Benjamin, Theories of German Fascism, in Weimar Sourcebook,p. 164. Diese einsichten sindnicht nur durch grssere Materialstudien sondern auch durch neue methodische berlegungen bedingt.39Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, in Selected Writings,trans. Harry Zohn, eds. Michael Jennings,Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 2:806.40Ibid., pp. 8089.



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prehistoric world, Benjamin explained, noting that Kafka was able to save and represent

that forgotten world in his stories through a series of ur-images [Urbilder].41

In June 1930 Benjamin wrote to his friend Gershom Scholem about KlagessDer

Geist als Widersacher der Seele (The spirit as the adversary of the soul, 192932): It is

without a doubt a great philosophical work, regardless of the context in which the author

may be and remain suspect. . . . I would never have imagined that . . . clumsy

metaphysical dualism . . . could ever be conjoined with really new and wide-ranging

conceptions.42

During the early 1930s Benjamin considered writing a book about the theory ofcollective unconscious, relying on the insights of Klages and Carl Jung.43 He was

particularly impressed by Klagess theory of Eros and he liked to point out that Klages

had endowed Eros with the ability to form connections between time and space that had a

political and social relevance as well as loftier metaphysical implications. Benjamins

whole notion of Rausch [ecstasy] is taken, in fact, from the work Klages did on the

concept beginning in the mid-1910s.44 So fond of seeing the world through Klagesian

spectacles did Benjamin become that in June 1932, replying to a letter in which Gershom

41Ibid., p. 797.42Walter Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin,ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W.Adorno, trans. Manfred R. Jacobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 36667. Es ist nun,in welchen Zusammenhngen zuch immer der Verfasser [Klages] einem Suspekt sein und bleiben mag,ohne Zweifel ein grosses Philosophisches Werk. Es wre vllig mssig, wenn ich Dir etwa hier andeutenwollte, worum es sich handelt. Ich have auch noch keine eigne Stellung zu dem, was darin steht, bezogen.

In keinem Fale htte ich mir vorstellen knnen, dass ein si hanebchner metaphysischer Dualismus, wie erbei Klages zugrunde liegt, je sich mit wirklichen neuen und weittragenden Konzeptionen verbindenknne. Walter Benjamin to Gershom Scholem, 15 March 1930, in Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe,vol. 4, p.537.43Walter Benjamin to Max Horkheimer, 28 March 1937, in Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe,5:490.44The term was popularized by the George circle and the Cosmic circle. It has appeared already in Klagess1914 and 1919 two parts Traumbewusstsein, which Benjamin read carefully. But it is most notablydeveloped in KlagessEroswork from 1922. In his 3 volumesDer Geist als Widersacher der SeeleKlagesstill used the notion ofRauschor ecstasy but preferred the concept ofEntzuckunginstead. Benjamincontinued to use the concept ofRauschduring the 1930s, in spite of its Nazification.



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Scholem described his experience in Palestine as Nietzschean, Benjamin suggested that

his friend reconsider his experience in Jerusalem by the light of Klagess book about

Nietzsches psychological achievement.45

As described by Benjamin, Lebensphilosophie in general and Klages in

particular suggest a much more radical both collective and individual

theoretical prospect than any other theory, including psychoanalysis and political

authoritarianism. One might say that the secret power of Lebensphilosophielay in

its ability to use and abuse history for the sake of life. Benjamins fascination with

the ideas of figures whose political fortunes deviated from those of hiscompanions tainted his interpretations: Gershom Scholem reflected somewhat

uncomfortably, Benjamin had an acute sense of subversion . . . [connected to]

the worldview of reactionary writers.46

4. Radical Life

Ludwig Klages and Alfred Baeumler were the two principal Bachofenians of the early

Weimar republic. Both wrote about Bachofen and edited selections from his writings.

Yet, while Benjamin failed in his attempts at an academic career and Klages chose the

existence of a bohemian outsider, writing dense, almost hermetic books, Baeumler was

an established academic.

Alfred Baeumler is known to historians as the father of the Nazified

Nietzsche and the Nazi image of heroism. Herbert Schndelbach wrote, It is certainly

undeniable that the heroic realism of [Alfred] Baeumler, [Ernst] Krieck and [Alfred]

45Walter Benjamin to Gershom Scholem, 1 June 1932, inBenjamin, Gesammelte Briefe,4: 100.46Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, inNeue Rundschau76, no. 1 (1965), p. 19.



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Rosenberg, which was once considered to be the official philosophy of National

Socialism, was inspired by the traditions of life-philosophy.47But Baeumler was much

more then just another simple-minded Nazi who reinvigorated heroic realism, like the

two other companions Rosenberg and Krieck.

Alfred Baeumler was born in 1887 in Neustadt, then part of the Austro-Hungarian

Sudeten. He studied in Berlin and Munich and received his doctorate in Kantian

philosophy in 1914, under the direction of Max Dessoir, a well known neo-Kantian of the

time and an expert in philosophy of aesthetics. Baeumlers dissertation was dedicated to

the problem of generality [Allgemeingtigkeit] in Kants Aesthetics, and opened with adeclaration about the need to overcome the flawed psychology of rationalism, before

any further discussion of aesthetics.48 Similarly to Klages, Baeumler agreed that the rift

between feeling (soul) and consciousness or the intellect (Geist) is a decisive one in

modern times. However, in contrast to Klages, Baeumler envisioned a radical political act

that would open up new possibilities in both philosophy and the world.

While working on his dissertation he was also on the staff of the feuilleton of the

daily Frankfurter Zeitung, the same liberal supplement that Siegfried Kracauer would

edit during the 1920s. Baeumler was drafted into the German army, where he served from

1915 to 1918 as an infantryman and later fought in the east with the Freikorps ,refusing to

put down his weapon even after the formal announcement on the German defeat.

Between 1920 and 1922 he worked for the elitist Kantian journal Kant-Studien,directed

at the time by the leading neo-Kantian and chairman of the Kant Society, Arthur Liebert.

47Herbert Schndelbach,Philosophy in Germany 1831- 1933(Cambridge University Press, 1984., p. 140.48Die unvolkommene Psychologie des Rationalismus musste berwunden sein, bevore das sthetischeseine Stelle fand. Alfred Baeumler,Das Problem der Allgemeingltigkeit in Kants sthetik, Inaugural-



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In 1926 Baeumler edited with Manfred Schrter a collection of Bachofens texts,

published asDer Mythus von Orient und Occident: Eine Metaphysik der alten Welt (The

myth of Orient and Occident: a metaphysics of the ancient world). Baeumlers lengthy

introduction to the book made him a celebrated public intellectual in Germany. In 1929

Baeumler was appointed a professor of philosophy and pedagogy at Dresden University,

where he would meet, among others, Victor Klemperer. In 1931 he began assisting

Alfred Rosenberg in shaping the new ideology of the Nazi party. Baeumler formally

became a member of the Nazi party in 1933. In 1934 he was appointed director of the

office of science in Rosenbergs office of culture and pedagogy. His analyses ofBachofen, from the mid 1920s, mark a turn of his career, changing from the neo-

Kantianism to Lebensphilosophie. It was accompanied by a growing interest in politics,

and potential political uses of both history (myth) and philosophy.

Klagess popular study of Eros, turned out to be the first in a series of publications

that stirred up a broad discussion of Bachofens ideas. Two years later, Klages helped

Bernoulli publishJohann Jakob Bachofen als Religionsforscher(Johann Jakob Bachofen

as a student of religion), a compilation of the writings by Bachofen they considered

essential to the revival of interest in his theory of mythical time. In addition to editing the

passages, the two men added rich and pointed comments to every page. In 1925 Bernoulli

and Klages edited a new edition of Bachofens Versuch ber die Grbersymbolik der

Alten(Interpretation of ancient mortuary symbols) and in 1926 they published a

collection of Bachofens writings under the titleJohann Jakob Bachofen: Urreligion und

antike symbole(Johann Jakob Bachofen: primal religion and ancient symbols).

Dissertation submitted to the Ludwig-Maximillians-Universitt in Munich, defended 9 June 1914 (Munich:Delphin-Verlag, 1915), p.1.



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By 1925 Klages and Bernoulli found themselves competing with the more

professional adherents of Bachofen. In one of his last letters to Bernoulli, Klages

mentioned a new collection of Bachofen texts, a work of resentment, administered by

the firm of Baeumler and Schrter, who deserve to be rapped on the hand. 49Klages

planned a large-scale critique of this work, a plan that was never realized.

In many ways, Baeumlers interpretation of Bachofen, or of the cults of death

and life, led to more radical political implications than did Klages and Bernoullis

readings but relied on a more conventional methodology. Baeumlers growing interest in

Bachofen occurred the same year he established his journal, theHandbuch derPhilosophie. His carefully contextualized and highly analytical close readings used

Bachofen to polarize Western civilization between Orient and Occident: for him,

Bachofen had described a clash of civilizations that influenced religion, race and

cultures. Baeumlers careful and scholastic interpretation often failed to strike the sparks

that fly from the pages Klages and Bernoulli devoted to Bachofen but it was much more

coherent and organized. His chronology advanced and analyzed Bachofens

anthropological research of the death cult, as a metaphysical system of presence and

preservation that consecrated myths as the power of the mood of death [Macht der

Todesstimmung].50Bachofen, he wrote, did not historicize the myth. Quite the

contrary: he mythicized history.51True depiction of history, according to this view,

could not erase the dead as distanced by either space or time. German Romanticism

returned to Greece and Rome, Baeumler argues, in order to save the dead from

49Ludwig Klages to Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, 9 February 1925, DLM, Nachlass Ludwig Klages, Sig.61.4141, letter no. 4650Alfred Baeumler, Introduction to J.J. Bachofen,Der Mythus von Orient und Occident, eine Metaphysikder Alten Welt, ed. Manfred Schrter (Munich: C.H. Becksche Verlag, 1956), p. CC.



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oblivion.52Any opposite attempt, would abide to a cold scientific culture. Therefore,

Bachofens myth was reflecting the law- of- life [spiegelt ein Lebensgesetz] and its

constant exchange with the cult of the dead.53This unity, in turn, illustrates the

experiences of the people [Volkserlebnisse] in light of its religious belief.54Provoked by

Klagess strong anti- Christian reading of both Bachofen and Nietzsche, Baeumlers

project can be read, to a large extent, as an anti- Klagesian project. Baeumler expresses

his resistance to Klages in different forms, mocking all erotic cosmologies as overtly

aestheticized euphemism for religious contents.

Three years after publishing his popular essays about Bachofen, Baeumler wassimultaneously appointed head of the science office at the Center of Nazi Pedagogy and

chairman of the department of education at Berlin University, which effectively made

him responsible for the Nazification of the German academic world. Hans Sluga

reported: On the night of May 10, 1933 . . . there were many students that attended

Alfred Baeumlers inaugural speech. . . . Baeumler was in no doubt about the public and

symbolic function he was meant to serve, and it was surely for this reason that had

arranged for his inaugural lecture to coincide with the day of the book burning.55As

Alfred Rosenbergs right hand his influence on the educational programs and the

propaganda system of the Nazi state were profound. He was imprisoned by the Allies

after the end of the war but continued to publish and debate politics from the pages of the

51Ibid., p. CXC.52Frher hatte man die Toten begraben und an ihre unmittelbare Gegenwart geglaubt. Ibid., p. XXXVII.53Ibid., p . CXCII.54Ibid., p. CXCIII.55Hans Sluga,Heideggers Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany(Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1993), p. 125.



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right-wing journals that now turned all their anger against the Stalinist-Bolshevic

conspiracy, evoking nary a whimper from the American occupying forces.

All along Baeumler had viewed Bachofen as a possible tool for reviving the long

forgotten mythical power of the German soul. Like Bachofen and Nietzsche before him,

Baeumler used Theodor Mommsen as the representative figure of scientific

historicization: he protested that Mommsen sees it all as the present, a prosaic nearness,

a [negative] critique. In Ranke and Mommsens critical science the state was evaluated

hastily: this was the course taken by their historical writing.56 Baeumlers antihistoricist

approach won considerable praise. Among those impressed by the essay were ThomasMann and Martin Heidegger.57That same year, Baeumler published several articles about

Bachofen; one was republished in his intellectual history of Germanness.58

Of particular interest to Baeumler was Bachofens discussion of the mythic

ontology of time, which he would put to use in his attacks on the Jewish science of

psychoanalysis. Myth, he claimed, was essentially an absent chronology, an exclusive

collective history without chronology or facts. As a heuristic device, Baeumler

contrasted the thinking of Bachofen, whom he identified quite simply as the prophet,

with that of the psychologist clearly Freud. [Bachofen] gazed into the depths of

pre-time [Vorzeit]. The psychologist, fearful, greedy, alert, surveys his own time and the

surrounding time of previous centuries. . . . Whoever is willing to risk his life, whoever

56Bei Mommsen ist alles Gegenwart, prosaische Nhe, Kritik. Man berschtzt zu leicht den Umstand,dass Ranke und Mommsen der wissenschaflich- kritischen Richtung innerhalf der neuerenGeschichtsschreibung angehren. Alfred Baeumler,Der Mythos von Orient und Occident: Eine

Metaphysik der alten Welt(Munich: Becksche Verlagshandlung, 1956 [1926]), p. clvii.57Marianne Baeumler, Hubert Brintraeger, Hermann Kurzke, eds., Thomas Mann und Alfred Baeumler:

Ein Dokumentation(Wrzburg: Knigsberf und Neumann Verlag, 1989). See also Frank Edler, AlfredBumler on Hlderlin and the Greeks: Reflections on the Heidegger-Bumler Relationship, athttp://www.janushead.org/JHspg99/edler.cfm and http://www.janushead.org/2-2/fedler.cfm .



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sparks that fly from the pages Klages and Bernoulli devoted to Bachofen, it was more

historical and committed to action than Klagess radical aestheticism. In Baeumlers view

Bachofen and Klages offered a Romantic theory of history but could not realize it:

Still, in 1926 an olive branch was offered, to which Klages and Bernoulli refused.

In a letter Baeumler sent to Bernoulli in 1926, he insisted that a shared foe implied a

convergence:

The contrast between your perception of Bachofen and ours goes

beyond Bachofens oppositions. The number of Philistines is so large,

and that of the anti-Philistines so small, that it is truly unfortunate thatfew determined foes of civic prejudice have entered this polemical

conflict. . . . The enemy confronts us both [Der Gegner steht uns wohl

beiden gegenber].61

Along with his letter, Baeumler included a copy of the essay on Klages and Bachofen that

Walter Benjamin had published inLiterarische Welt,marked with a large angryX.

To conclude, in the history ofLebensphilosophiethe difference between Klages and

Baeumler is a telling one, a gap large enough to envelop every twentieth-century theory

of totalitarianism and fascism, but it has been neglected because of the general contempt

in which postwar historians and philosophers held right-wing theories. I have tried to

show that this approach has also shaped how progressive thinkers were and are being

read. In Benjamins case, his views were framed too quickly within other progressive

Heideggers Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1993), p. 128.61Alfred Baeumler to Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, 8 May 1926, Institut fr Zeitgeschichte in Munich,Nachlass Alfred Baeumler, Mappe 23: Korrespondenz Manfred Schrter.



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contexts as the psychoanalystical school. The difference between the two reactionary

interpreters of Bachofen reflected a new belief that an aestheticview had to be politicized

in order to be realized. It was more a difference of degree than kind that led Baeumler to

turn his influence against Klages in 1934 and culminated in 1938 with an informal taboo

against the Klages circle. Interestingly, the more radical in political terms was the more

moderate in aesthetic terms; conversely, Klages produced a wacky aesthetic which

Baeumler and Nazi ideology with him rejected in favor of action, Tat. Fascinated

by the first and frightened by the second, Benjamin plunged into the vocabulary of life as

the burning issue of his time. Relating it to the state of intoxication, orRausch,andanimalistic drives which he found even in children playing with toys he turned

back to Senecas writings about drunkenness and their full perception of earthly life.62

62Walter Benjamin to Albert Salomon, 10 October 1932, in Gesammelte Briefe,vol. 4: 1931-1934(Frankfurt a.Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1998), p.137.


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