The German Right in the Weimar Republic

Studies in the History of German Conservatism, Nationalism, and Antisemitism

Larry Eugene Jones, Larry Eugene Jones

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781782383536
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Significant recent research on the German Right between 1918 and 1933 calls into question received narratives of Weimar political history. The German Right in the Weimar Republic examines the role that the German Right played in the destabilization and overthrow of the Weimar Republic, with particular emphasis on the political and organizational history of Rightist groups as well as on the many permutations of right-wing ideology during the period. In particular, antisemitism and the so-called "Jewish Question" played a prominent role in the self-definition and politics of the right-wing groups and ideologies explored by the contributors to this volume.

1
HINDENBURG AND THE GERMAN RIGHT

Wolfram Pyta

How does one situate Hindenburg in the German Right? The answer to this question offers important insights into the processes of political change that ran through the German Right in the first third of the twentieth century. For in the case of Hindenburg one can easily trace the deformation of Prussian-German conservatism in its classical form as it gravitated into the orbit of an increasingly powerful and emergent nationalism. Hindenburg’s political views and the political position he represented render an impressive account of the changes that took place in the structure and form of the German Right: the retreat from traditional values and the turn toward ideas that belonged to the political arsenal of German nationalism. Hindenburg’s political career thus offers important new perspectives on the transition from the “old” to the “new” Right, a transition that has already been the subject of extensive historical research.¹

It is by no means a disservice to Hindenburg when one places him in the genealogy of the German Right. Hindenburg had always situated himself on the Right and left no doubt that his basic values and way of thinking belonged to the Right. To be sure, Hindenburg avoided statements to this effect during his tenure as Reich president for fear of compromising the spirit of bipartisan neutrality that was part and parcel of his office. But in private statements he made no secret of his political convictions. As he wrote to his eldest daughter on 16 February 1932: “First, let me state for the record that inwardly I stand on the Right.”² And to his second adjutant Wedige von der Schulenburg he expressed himself with equal clarity: “You know that inwardly by all means I stand on the Right.”³ The self-description “on the Right,” or rechts, however, offers only a vague sense of Hindenburg’s political self-understanding because since the late nineteenth century the German Right had undergone a political metamorphosis during the course of which it had become more and more differentiated. To which variant of the German Right, therefore, is Hindenburg to be assigned?

Hindenburg’s Conservatism and Its Limits

As a general rule, Hindenburg has been characterized as a prototypical German conservative without, however, systematically dissecting his political views and penetrating to their essential core. Hindenburg has thus been assigned the classical attributes of the conservative worldview: devotion to the monarchy and the monarchal form of government, commitment to the welfare of the state as a whole as the guiding principle of his political activity, respect for God, and an unwavering sense of duty.⁴ One will also find testimonials from Hindenburg himself in which he expressed his sympathy for that party that regarded itself as the political trustee of Prussian-German conservatism. Until the end of 1918 this function was exercised by the German Conservative Party (Deutsch-Konservative Partei or DKP). Speaking to the DKP parliamentary leader Count Kuno von Westarp on 11 November 1916, Hindenburg characterized himself as “conservative even though he abstained from all forms of party politics. In the interest of the Fatherland,” Westarp reported, “he believed that it was necessary that the Conservative Party not be pushed to the side by the course of future events but that it retain its influence.”⁵ After the German Conservative Party was absorbed into the newly founded German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei or DNVP) at the end of 1918, Hindenburg transferred his political sympathies to the new party, which he saw as a continuation of the old conservative party and “to [whose supporters] I have counted myself fully and without qualification [voll und ganz].”⁶ To be sure, Hindenburg declined Westarp’s invitation to head the DNVP’s ticket in East Prussia for the January 1919 elections to the constitutional national assembly because in his capacity as chief of the supreme military command he did not want to be seen as the exponent of any particular political party.⁷ Still his ties to the new party went so far that he recommended to Westarp that he choose as his replacement his close personal friend and old military comrade cavalry general Friedrich von Bernhardi.⁸

Still, what do Hindenburg’s expressions of support for the DKP and DNVP within his own circle of trusted confidantes actually mean? For although they certainly help describe Hindenburg’s political habitat in fairly general terms, they do not provide an answer to the more specific and ultimately more important question of where Hindenburg is to be situated within the broad spectrum of political tendencies represented first by the German Conservatives and then by the German Nationalists. For both the German Conservative Party and to an even greater extent the German National People’s Party brought together diverse political forces that pursued political goals with different nuances and emphases. Political conservatism embraced both archconservatives who regarded the expansion of state power with a certain reserve and viewed the monarchy as the fixed point of departure for their political activity and governmental conservatives for whom the state and not the monarchy served as their ultimate point of reference. At the same time, the last years of the Second Empire witnessed the emergence of new political formations on the German Right that had less and less in common with the classical conservatism of the nineteenth century and for which the concept of the nation tended to displace the traditional conservative dependence on the monarchy and state. Not only had the skepticism that classical conservatism originally manifested toward the basic ideas of nationalism all but disappeared among the exponents of the new Right, but they regarded the nation and a nationally homogeneous Volk as the axis around which their entire system of political beliefs revolved.⁹

Without a doubt Hindenburg’s Duz-Freund Friedrich von Bernhardi belonged to this new species of politician who could no longer be described as “conservative” in the traditional sense of the word. If the term “conservative” is not to lose all of its conceptual specifcity, then it is important to draw a clear line of distinction between those conservatives who subscribed to a worldview that was rooted in monarchism and an authoritarian conception of the state and the representatives of a new Right for whom the monarchy and the state were subordinate to the nation. Bernhardi was every bit as critical of Wilhelm II as he was of the government the monarch had placed in office, for in his mind both were equally guilty of having lost contact with “the sense of the German nation.”¹⁰ The appeal to a nationally aroused Volk as a court of ultimate political legitimation bore indisputable testimony to the ways in which the boundaries of a traditional conservative perspective had been overstepped in the move toward the new Right.

From a preliminary survey of Hindenburg’s political and intellectual horizon one can safely assume that Hindenburg and Bernhardi were political soul mates and that it is therefore no longer possible to look at Hindenburg as someone who subscribed to the classical conservatism of the old Right. In this respect we will be taking a closer look at Hindenburg’s political position in an attempt to differentiate it even further from the more traditional forms of German conservatism. No one better serves our purpose in this respect than Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau, the prototype of the archconservative East-Elbian conservatives. Oldenburg-Januschau enjoyed close personal and political contact to Hindenburg from 1914 to 1934,¹¹ and after Hindenburg’s death he made no secret of the fact that Hindenburg had deserted the conservative cause and that at heart he had never belonged to the conservative camp.¹²

This is not to suggest, however, that Hindenburg’s general demeanor and lifestyle made him at first glance the perfect example of a conservative. Without a doubt Hindenburg possessed genuine conservative secondary virtues. He led an ordered family life and possessed a marked sense of family. Also his appreciation of religion and church suggested a strong affinity to basic conservative values. In his personal and political behavior Hindenburg was led by a genuine, not affected religiosity.¹³ As a humble Christian he asked for God’s help in prayer and felt secure in the belief that God as the all-powerful master of human destiny stood at his side.¹⁴ That God protected not only the individual but the German Reich as well was also a view that was widely held in conservative circles. By the same token, God’s protective majesty extended also to the German nation. As Hindenburg wrote to his daughter in January 1931: “God will not abandon our Fatherland—nor us as individuals.”¹⁵ And with this faith came the fact that Hindenburg searched for God’s counsel in the exercise of his office as Reich president. For the deeply religious Hindenburg there could be no doubt that those who were responsible for the welfare of the state “bring their concerns and resolutions before God’s throne in order to seek from Him the strength and wisdom to bear the burden of their high office.”¹⁶ Similarly, Hindenburg’s attitude to the church was that of a conservative who attended church regularly and regarded himself as a faithful member of his Protestant church.¹⁷

Closely tied to Hindenburg’s religiosity was his outspoken sense of duty. Hindenburg embodied the conservative ideal of duty and responsibility. To subordinate one’s own interests to the welfare of the whole lay at the heart of Hindenburg’s sense of who he was as a person and as a servant of the German nation. Hindenburg would evoke this ethos of duty whenever he would need to legitimize his intervention into the political realm, beginning with his political activity in World War I.¹⁸ By the same token, Hindenburg justified his candidacy for the Reich presidency in the spring of 1925 with words that were characteristic for him and his need to find a synthesis between one’s sense of duty and one’s faith in God. As he wrote to his daughter Irmengard after accepting the nomination of the Reichsblock: “Did it reluctantly, but out of a sense of duty. May God see to it that everything from here on out is good for the Fatherland!”¹⁹ Nor can Hindenburg’s willingness to stand again as a presidential candidate in 1932 be understood without reference to the preeminent place the concept of duty held in his catalog of political values.²⁰

It would, however, be a serious mistake to reduce Hindenburg and his sense of mission to those values and attitudes that correspond to the fundamental ideas of a conservative worldview. Of even more significance are those ideas and values—but also the political actions resulting from them—that extended beyond the terrain of classical conservatism.

The Paradoxes of Hindenburg’s Monarchism

First let us take a look at Hindenburg’s attitude toward the monarch. It does not require a detailed explanation that Hindenburg, born in 1847 into the family of an army officer, supported the Prussian monarchy and the German Empire from the depths of his soul as the best conceivable system of government for the German people. Even then Hindenburg was not an ultramonarchist who clung to the monarchy with every heartbeat and who saw himself bound to his monarch by an insoluble relationship of faith and duty. Hindenburg was not a typical Prussian conservative who, as in the case of the DKP parliamentary leader Count Westarp, had closed his eyes to the personal deficits of Wilhelm II, but he remained dedicated to the monarchy as a form of government and therefore protected it against infringements upon the prerogatives of the monarch.²¹ On the contrary, Hindenburg did not hesitate during the course of World War I to arrogate to himself rights, powers, and privileges to which, from the perspective of a traditional conservative viewpoint, only Wilhelm II could lay legitimate claim.

From the summer of 1917 on Hindenburg would claim for himself sovereign powers in the most important personnel decisions related to the governance of the Reich. This meant that it was no longer Wilhelm II but the chief of the German general staff who would determine the composition of the government. Hindenburg’s intervention would be the decisive factor in the Kaiser’s decision to break with his most important advisors: first in July 1917 from Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, then in November 1917 from Vice Chancellor Karl Helfferich, and finally in June 1918 from the Secretary of State in the Foreign Office Richard von Kühlmann.²² To be sure, these politicians were a thorn in the side of the conservatives in the Reich and Prussia because they stood for a program of moderate reform in both domestic and foreign policy. But to pressure the Kaiser in this way and to force him into acquiescence, as Hindenburg did particularly in the case of Bethmann Hollweg’s dismissal from office, was irreconcilable with the way in which conservatives traditionally understood their role in German political life. And absolutely irreconcilable with a conservative view of politics was the fact that Hindenburg failed to respect the extra-constitutional prerogatives of the Kaiser in forcing the dis...