Armin Mohler

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Dr. phil. Armin Mohler

Armin Mohler (b. 12 April 1920 in Basel, Switzerland; d. 4 July 2003 in Munich, Germany) was a political writer and philosopher, known for his works on the Conservative Revolutionary movement and a germanophile member of the Neue Rechte movement.

Life

Mohler, Armin II.jpg

Born in Basel, German-speaking Switzerland, Mohler studied art history, German literature, and philosophy at the University of Basel, where he briefly supported Communism. At the age of 20, Mohler was drafted into the Swiss army. In February 1942, he deserted and, like other volunteers from Switzerland, crossed the German border illegally to join the Waffen-SS. According to his own accounts, he felt influenced by reading Oswald Spengler and his major work “The Decline of the West” and especially by the large essay “The Worker. Rule and Shape” by Ernst Jünger from 1932. Classified as “unreliable”, he did not volunteer for the war, but instead studied art history in Berlin for a year. In the same year, he went back to Switzerland. Here he was sentenced to one year in prison for “illegal border crossing, attempted weakening of military strength and failure to serve”.

In 1942, Mohler continued his studies of philosophy and art history in Basel and received his doctorate there in 1949 under Herman Schmalenbach and Karl Jaspers with the dissertation Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932 (The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932). It was published as a book edition in 1950 and is still considered a standard work today – as far as the bibliographic section has been expanded several times. Since the sixth and so far last edition, the book has been continued by the historian Karlheinz Weißmann. Mohler's controversial core thesis states that Christianity and conservatism are not compatible.

He worked as a secretary for Ernst Jünger, but increasingly felt that Jünger had become too moderate after the end of the war. Mohler went on to work as a journalist for different newspapers. In 1960, he started working for the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation and became its director. He repeatedly spoke out against a legal ban on "Holocaust denial"

In the 1950s, Mohler contributed to journals such as Nation Europa. In 1970, he became a major contributing editor to the conservative monthly magazine Criticon. In his later years, he supported the Neue Rechte weekly paper Junge Freiheit. He actively promoted the Nouvelle Droite philosopher and his long-time friend Alain de Benoist.

In a 1995 newspaper interview, he answered the question of whether he was a fascist with "Yes, in the sense of José Antonio Primo de Rivera". When asked what fascism meant to him, Mohler said: “For me, fascism is when disappointed liberals and disappointed socialists come together for something new. The result is what is called a conservative revolution."

Writings and ideas

Mohler's seminal work is his book Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932 (The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932) (initially his doctoral thesis) which tried to unearth Weimar Republic right-wing thought and tradition apart from and alternative to National-Socialism. Amongst the most crucial thinkers of the "Conservative Revolution" he counted Ernst Jünger, Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Niekisch, Hans Blüher and Thomas Mann (before his turn to liberalism).

Mohler was one of the first German publishers to write about the ideas of his long-time friend Alain de Benoist, founding father of the Nouvelle Droite. Similar as Benoist, Mohler advocated a Right that would oppose both socialism and liberalism, with a decided emphasis on the latter.

One of his favourite targets was the so-called Vergangenheitsbewältigung ("struggle of overcoming the past" or "work of coping with the past"), which he criticized in several books. This argument involved the claim that post-war Germany should 'step out of Hitler's shadow'. In this respect it has been claimed that Mohler was a forerunner of Ernst Nolte and associated thinkers involved in the Historikerstreit.

In the 1950s Mohler contributed to journals such as Nation Europa and Die Tat (not to be confused with an older paper of the same title), whilst also writing for mainstream newspapers such as Die Zeit and (in the 1960s and 1970s) Die Welt. In his later years he supported the "Neue Rechte" weekly paper Junge Freiheit. Under the alias Michael Hintermwald he also contributed two articles to Gerhard Frey's Deutschen National-Zeitung, for which he was much criticized.

Political activism

Mohler was initially a supporter of Franz Josef Strauß and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria but later worked with Franz Schönhuber in the founding of the patriotic party Die Republikaner. Internationally, he was close to Alain de Benoist.

Fascism

Mohler's notion of Conservative Revolution has been described as fascism, with Roger Griffin arguing this point. In a newspaper interview Mohler accepted that he was a fascist but only in the tradition of José Antonio Primo de Rivera and with the acceptance of the notion that fascism had its roots in the far left as argued by Zeev Sternhell.

Quotes

  • "The old structure of the West as a synthesis of classical culture, Christianity, and the impulses of peoples entering history for the Žfirst time has broken down. A new unity, however, has not yet emerged. We stand in this transitional period, this ‘interregnum’ which leaves its mark on every spiritual activity. The Conservative Revolution is conditioned by it, and at the same time sees itself as an attempt to overcome it." (Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland)
  • "...[Conservatism] is foreign to the indispensable notion of the progressive-thinker that people are continuously perfecting [themselves], are in principle good, and are only prevented from this through adverse conditions... Only the whole is entitled to perfection; the individual only has access to perfection through his return to the whole." (Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland)
  • "The young French of the New Right can freely expand their range of ideas because their national identity is self-evident to them. The [German] conservatives, after the war, considered it smart to yield their own national question to others..." (Vergangenheitsbewältigung)

Selected Works

  • Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932: Ein Handbuch (Stuttgart: Friedrich Vorwerk Verlag, 1950)
    • French translation: La Révolution conservatrice en Allemagne : 1918-1932 (Puiseaux (Loiret): Pardès, 1993)
    • Italian translation: La rivoluzione conservatrice in Germania : 1918-1932 : una guida (Napoli & Firenze: Akropolis; La roccia di Erec, 1990)
  • Die Schleife: Festschrift für Ernst Jünger (Zürich: Die Arche, 1955)
  • Die französische Rechte: Der Kampf um Frankreichs Ideologienpanzer (München: Isar Verlag, 1958)
  • Die fünfte Republik (München: Piper, 1963)
  • Was die Deutschen fürchten (Stuttgart & Degerloch: Seewald, 1965)
  • Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Von der Läuterung zur Manipulation (Stuttgart & Degerloch: Seewald, 1968)
  • Sex und Politik (Freiburg: Rombach, 1972)
  • Von rechts gesehen (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag, 1974)
  • Tendenzwende für Fortgeschrittene (München: Criticon, 1978)
  • Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Oder wie man den Krieg nochmals verliert (Krefeld: Sinus-Verlag, 1980)
  • "Die Nominalistische Wende: ein Credo", in Das unvergängliche Erbe: Alternativen zum Prinzip der Gleichheit, edited by Pierre Krebs (Tübingen: Grabert-Verlag, 1981), pp. 55-74.
  • Der Nasenring: Im Dickicht der Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Essen: Heitz & Höffkes, 1989)
  • Liberalenbeschimpfung: Drei politische Traktate (Essen: Heitz & Höffkes, 1990)
  • Im Gespräch mit Alain de Benoist (Freiburg: Junge-Freiheit, 1993)
  • Ravensburger Tagebuch. Meine Zeit bei Ernst Jünger 1949/50 (Wien: Karolinger, 1999)
  • Georges Sorel: Erzvater der Konservativen Revolution (Bad Vilbel: Edition Antaios, 2000)
  • Der Streifzug: Blicke auf Bilder, Bücher und Menschen (Dresden: Edition Antaios, 2001)
  • Das Gespräch: Über Rechte, Linke und Langweiler (Dresden: Edition Antaios, 2001)

See Also

Secondary Literature

External links

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