`In This Time without Emperors`: The Politics of Ernst

Transcription

'In This Time without Emperors': The Politics of Ernst Kantorowicz's Kaiser Friedrich der
Zweite Reconsidered
Author(s): Martin A. Ruehl
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 63 (2000), pp. 187-242
Published by: The Warburg Institute
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'IN THIS TIME WITHOUT EMPERORS':
THE POLITICS OF ERNST KANTOROWICZ'S
KAISER FRIEDRICH DER ZWEITE RECONSIDERED*
Martin A. Ruehl
n
July 1943, as forces of the Seventh U.S. army were closing in on the Sicilian
capital Palermo, Admiral Friedrich Ruge, German Naval Commander in the
Mediterranean, received a curious wire from the Seekriegsleitungin Berlin. It contained
orders from Reichsmarschall Hermann G6ring to remove the sarcophagi of two medieval
German emperors and their families from the city's cathedral. G6ring seemed especially
20o
anxious that the bones of the Hohenstaufen
emperor
Frederick II (1194-1250)
should
not be left behind in Italy and demanded their immediate transportation to Germany.
Ruge, who was busy supervising the last-minute evacuation of German war equipment
across the Messina Strait, quietly ignored G6ring's order, 'in the conviction that the dead
should rest undisturbed and that Frederick II, perhaps the greatest of all the emperors of
the Middle Ages, should under no circumstances be separated from Palermo, his famous
capital and historic background'.' Two days later, General Patton's troops took the city.2
The remains of the emperor stayed in Palermo Cathedral-undisturbed and on Italian
soil. Nineteen years earlier, in April 1924, a group of friends and admirers of the German
poet Stefan George had visited the same cathedral and placed a wreath in front of Frederick II's sarcophagus.3 One of them, Ernst Kantorowicz (1895-1963), later recalled this
incident in the prefatory note to his 1927 biography KaiserFriedrichder Zweite,where he
interpreted it as a 'sign that enthusiasm is astir, not only in scholarly circles, for the great
German rulers of the past-especially in this time without emperors'.4
* I would like to thank Lionel Gossman,
Christopher
Clark, Robert Lerner, Jill Kraye, Anson Rabinbach,
Suzanne Marchand, William Jordan, Stefan Siegel and,
most of all, Anthony Grafton for their comments on
earlier versions of this article. I also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Franz-Marie-ChristinenStiftung, the Hans-Krfuger-Stiftung and the Deutscher
Akademischer Austauschdienst.
List of abbreviations
used in the footnotes:
Benson and Fried =Ernst Kantorowicz: Ertriige der
Doppeltagung Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Johann
Wolfgang Goethe-Universitiit, Frankfurt, 1993/4, ed. R.
Benson andJ. Fried, Stuttgart 1997;
KFZ = E. Kantorowicz, Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite,
Berlin 1927;
LandesbiblioSGA= Stuttgart, Wiirttembergische
thek, Stefan George-Archiv, Akte Ernst Kantorowicz;
LBI = New York, Leo Baeck Institute, Ernst Kantorowicz Collection, no. AR 7216;
JOURNAL
OF THE WARBURG
UAF = Frankfurt am Main, Archiv der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitdit, Akten des Rektors, Abt. 1, Nr.
2o: Ernst Kantorowicz.
i. F. Ruge, 'The Evacuation of Sicily', p. 45. Washington, D.C., Naval Historical Center, Operational Archives
Branch, Morison Papers, Box 50, Folder 32.
2. C. D'Este, Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily, JulyAugust 1943, London 1988, pp. 419-22.
3. In fact, there were two groups of 'Georgeans' in
Palermo at the time: one including Berthold Schenk
Graf von Stauffenberg and Albrecht von Blumenthal,
the other Ernst Kantorowicz and Erika Wolters. It is
not clear who laid the wreath; but it was not Friedrich
Wolters, as assumed by E. Grfinewald, Ernst Kantorowicz
und Stefan George:Beitraigezur Biographie des Historikers bis
zumJahre 1938 und zu seinemJugendwerk 'Kaiser Friedrich
der Zweite', Wiesbaden 1982, p. 75. P. Hoffmann, Claus
Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine Briider, Stuttgart
1992, pp. 62-3 and p. 488 n. 21, argues that it was either
Erika Wolters or Berthold Vallentin.
AND COURTAULD
INSTITUTES,
LXIII,
2000
188
MARTINA. RUEHL
G6ring was an admirer of Kantorowicz's book and it is perfectly possible that his
order to Ruge was motivated notjust by his notorious lust for cultural booty, but also by a
certain enthusiasm for this German ruler of the past-an enthusiasm that was shared by
many officials of the Nazi party and the Wehrmacht. The popularity of KaiserFriedrichin
these circles" has prompted one commentator to call it a 'fascist classic'6 and another to
speculate as to whether Kantorowicz's glowing account of Frederick II's Sicilian tyranny
provided Hitler and Himmler with a model of the 'total' state.7 For the large majority of
critics today, however, there are no affinities between the politics of KaiserFriedrichand
Nazism. Kantorowicz's Nazi readers, they claim, 'perverted' his 'elitistic [sic] ideals's and
his paean to the 'heroic leader';9 the nationalistic strain of his book was 'far removed' from
the Nazis' racist jingoism and ultimately compatible with a 'benevolent universalism';"'
Kantorowicz was not a progenitor of fascism, but rather a modern humanist,1' who emphasised the 'enlightened' features of Frederick's rulel2 and stood up, immediately after
Hitler's seizure of power, as a defender of the 'Weimarian principles of toleration and
safeguarding human dignity'.13
4. KFZ, 'Vorbemerkung': 'als Zeichen, daB auch in
andern als gelehrten Kreisen eine Teilnahme fiur die
groBen deutschen Herrschergestalten sich zu regen bein unkaiserlicher Zeit'. All translations
ginnt-gerade
from the book are my own, though I have often consulted E. O. Lorimer's 'authorised English version',
Frederick the Second, I 194-1250, New York 1931.
5. G6ring's high estimation of Kaiser Friedrich is
evidenced by the fact that he gave a copy of it as a gift
to Mussolini-'mit
Widmung', as Kantorowicz himself
remarked in a letter of 1963. According to the same
letter, another copy 'lag bei Himmler auf dem Nachttisch': E. Kantorowicz to U. Kiipper, 24 May 1963, SGA
(Akte Kiipper). As for the book's popularity among
the higher echelons of the German army, Hans Speidel,
General Staff Chief of Heeresgruppe B under Rommel,
found it 'tief bewegend': ibid. Wilhelm Canaris, the head
of military intelligence and like Speidel a participant in
the resistance against Hitler, chose Kaiser Friedrich as his
final reading at the concentration camp Flossenbfirg,
where he was executed by the SS in April 1945; see G.
Seibt, 'Der Staat als Kunstwerk: Das Geheime Deutschland und der Widerstand', FrankfurterAllgemeine Zeitung,
8 April 1995, p. 27. The chief of the 'Kriegsgeschichtliche Abteilung' of the Supreme Command, General
Scherff, even continued to read it in the Fiihrer's headquarters during the war. Hitler himself apparently read
it twice; see H. Picker, Hitlers Tischgespriiche im Fiihrered. P. E. Schramm et al., 2nd
hauptquartier I94i-42,
edn, Stuttgart 1965, p. 69.
6. S. Rowan, 'Comment: Otto Brunner', Paths of
Continuity: Central European Historiographykfromthe I930os
to the 1950s, ed. H. Lehmann andJ. Van Horn Melton,
Cambridge 1994, pp. 293-97 (296).
7. O. G. Oexle, 'Das Mittelalter als Waffe. Ernst
H. Kantorowicz' Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite in den
der Weimarer Republik',
Kontroversen
politischen
in idem, Geschichtswissenschafi im Zeichen des Historismus:
Studien zu Problemgeschichten der Moderne, G6ttingen
1996, pp. 163-215 (212). See also G. Seibt, 'R6misches
Deutschland: Ein politisches Motiv bei Rudolf Borchardt
und Ernst Kantorowicz', Sinn undFormn,1, 1994, pp. 6171 (63-4), and idem, 'Der Staat' (as in n. 5).
8.J. Fried, 'Ernst Kantorowicz and Postwar Historiography. German and European Perspectives', in
Benson and Fried, pp. 180-201
(200).
9. R. Giesey, 'Ernst H. Kantorowicz: Scholarly Triumphs and Academic Travails in Weimar Germany and
the United States', Yearbookof the Leo Baeck Institute, xxx,
(191). See also R. Delle Donne,
1985, pp. 191-202
'Nachwort', in A. Boureau, Kantorowicz: Geschichten eines
Historikers, Stuttgart 1992, pp. 151-73 (167).
Frederick II and
io. D. Abulafia, 'Kantorowicz,
England', in Benson and Fried, pp. 124-43 (125, 132).
See also M. Valensise, 'Ernst Kantorowicz', Rivista storica
italiana, CI, 1989, pp. 195-221
(203); and C. Landauer,
'Ernst Kantorowicz and the Sacralization of the Past',
Central European History, xxvII, 1994, PP. 1-25 (7).
1 1.. See M. Petrow, Der Dichter als Fiihrer? Zur Wirkung
Stefan Georges im 'Dritten Reich , Marburg 1995, pp. 1238, who identifies Kantorowicz as a representative of
Werner Jaeger's philhellenist movement of the
992os
and '30s, the Third Humanism. In his recent biograKantorowicz
K.
Schiller, similarly, places
phical study,
(alongside Hans Baron) in the liberal-humanist tradition
of German Bildung; see his Gelehrte Gegenwelten: OLber
humanistische Leitbilder im 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am
Main 200oo0, pp. 9-98.
12. Landauer (as in n. io), pp. 8-io.
13. Giesey (as in n. 9), p. 198.
KANTOROWICZ'S KAISERFRIEDRICH
189
This seems to be the new critical consensus, as the Kantorowicz renaissance continues14 and increasingly obscures the more problematic aspects of his early work. The
more KaiserFriedrichis acclaimed as a seminal work of historiography,15it appears, the more
its political dimension sinks into oblivion. The papers presented at two recent conferences
in Princeton and Frankfurt16 demonstrate the extent to which Kantorowicz's 'sacralisation of the past'7"is becoming, in its turn, canonised: there is praise for Kantorowicz the
innovative historian, the dedicated teacher, the courageous critic of the Third Reich, even
for Kantorowicz the gifted cook-but hardly any serious examination of the relationship
between the messianism of his biography of the Hohenstaufen emperor and the developing creed of National Socialism at the time the book was written.18 Norman Cantor's
exaggerated claims about Kantorowicz's 'impeccable Nazi credentials'19 clearly have not
done justice to the complexity of this relationship; but neither have the approving remarks
of 'Eka's' hagiographers,20 celebrating his allegedly resolute anti-fascist stance in
1933.
Kantorowicz's reaction to the Nazi seizure of power was ambivalent-as ambivalent as his
portrait of Frederick II as a 'groBe deutsche Herrschergestalt' ('great German ruler of the
past'). The two are, indeed, related. There are resonances between the notions of Deutschtum (Germanness) and Herrschaft (rulership, sovereignty) in Kaiser Friedrich and in Nazi
ideology. These resonances, which will be explored below, help to explain why Kantorowicz wavered for a brief but significant moment in the summer of 1933 in his rejection of
a regime that had already begun to persecute him.
Unlike some of his modern exegetes, Kantorowicz himself in later years was keenly
aware of the problematic content of his Kaiser Friedrich.21He hesitated for a long time
before he permitted its re-publication in 1963, fearing that it might revive 'antiquated
14. See Delle Donne, 'Nachwort' (as in n. 9), pp.
159-66; P. Sch6ttler, 'Ernst Kantorowicz in Frankreich',
in Benson and Fried, pp. 144-61; and D. Kuhlgatz,
'Verehrung und Isolation: Zur Rezeptionsgeschichte
der Biographie Friedrichs II. von Ernst Kantorowicz',
Zeitschrift fir Geschichtswissenschaft, xIiii,
1995, pp.
736-46 (741-6). Since 1980, the 'Textband' of Kaiser
Friedrich has gone through no less than ten editions. (I
thank V. Dietrich of the Verlagsarchiv Klett-Cotta for
this information.)
15. See H. D. Kittsteiner, 'Von der Macht der Bilder:
zu Ernst H. Kantorowicz' Werk Kaiser
Uberlegungen
Friedrich der Zweite', in Geschichtskorper:Zur Aktualitdt von
Ernst H. Kantorowicz, ed. W. Ernst and C. Vismann,
Munich 1998, pp. 13-29 (16-17, 25); Delle Donne (as
in n. 9), pp. 169-71; A. Boureau, Kantorowicz: Histoires
d'un historien, Paris 199o, pp. 9-10. The most disconcerting illustration of this development is perhaps J.
Mali, 'Ernst H. Kantorowicz: History as Mythenschau,
History of Political Thought, xvil, 1997, PP. 579-60316. Published in Benson and Fried. On the Frankfurt
conference see G. Seibt, 'Deutschland, geheim', FrankfurterAllgemeine Zeitung, 22 December 1993, p. N5.
17. Landauer (as in n. io).
18. This nexus is briefly considered in H. Scheuer,
Biographie: Studien zur Funktion und zum Wandel einer
literarischen Gattung vom i8. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart,
Stuttgart 1979, pp. 130-2.
19. N. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives,
Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth
Century, New York 1991, p. 95. Some of Cantor's claims
are repudiated by R. Lerner, '"Meritorious Academic
Service": Kantorowicz and Frankfurt', in Benson and
Fried, pp. 14-32 (27, 28, 32). See also R. Benson et al.,
'Defending Kantorowicz', The New York Review of Books,
13 August 1992, p. 65.
2o. This nickname is used by, for example, R. Giesey
in M. Valensise, 'Deux modeles du pouvoir selon Ernst
Kantorowicz: entretien avec Ralph Giesey', Prefaces, x,
1988, pp. 113-20.
21. Kantorowicz's increasing distance from his early
work after World War II is evident in his remark to
Madeleine Engel-Janosi in the 1950s: 'Das [i.e. Kaiser
Friedrich], mein liebes Kind, ist ein Buch, das ich selbst
nicht verstehe': F. Engel-Janosi, -aber ein stolzer Bettler:
t'innerungen aus einer verlorenen Generation, Graz 1974,
p. i 16. (Lionel Gossman kindly called my attention to
this book.)
MARTIN A. RUEHL
19g
nationalistic ideas' ('antiquierte Nationalismen').22 His more analytical approach to
medieval political theology in The King's Two Bodies (1957) has been read as an implicit
recantation of the myth-making tendency of the earlier work, where Kantorowicz had
acclaimed Frederick as a new type of ruler, who would end 'this time without emperors
and restore the lost glory of the Reich.23 In LaudesRegiae (1946), Kantorowicz had, in fact,
already pointed to the Fascist potential of ruler acclamations-as well as to the dangers
inherent in their excavation at the hand of the historian.24 Before we applaud Kaiser
Friedrichas a model for modern historiography, we would do well to take a more careful
look at the kind of Reich the book projected and the kind of ruler it acclaimed.
I. 'DEUTSCHTUM'
IN A NEW KEY: THE
GEORGE
CIRCLE
IN THE
1920S
The notion of Deutschtumas employed in KaiserFriedrichhas frequently been traced back
to the George Circle, that group of scholars, artists and literati around the poet-prophet
Stefan George (1868-1933), which formed at the turn of the century and which Kantorowicz entered in 1920. Most commentators agree that the cosmopolitan outlook of the
Circle, its fascination with other, non-German cultures and its veneration of Italy inspired
his representation of Frederick II not as a Teutonic hero, but instead as a Roman emperor,
in Dantesque rather than Wagnerian terms.25 Of course, Kantorowicz's studies at Heidelberg (1919-21) under Eberhard Gothein and Alfred von Domaszewski had already
directed his attention to universal and 'Southern' themes.26 But the decisive influence
came from George. It was George, Ernst Morwitz reports, who requested that Frederick's
history be written as the 'myth of the people's yearning for the unification of North and
South' ('als Mythos vom Sehnen des ganzen Volkes nach Einung von Nord und Sfid').27
comment is reported by E. Salin,
22. Kantorowicz's
Ernst Kantorowicz 1895-I963
(Privatdruck), n.p. 1963,
p. 9. His fears were not entirely unjustified, as the 1994
reprint of a chapter from his biography of Frederick II
in Hans-Dietrich Sander's right-wing organ Staatsbriefe
demonstrated; see G. Seibt, 'Echo des Bocksgesangs.
Was die Rechten lasen oder Woran ist Botho StrauB
schuld', FrankfurterAllgemeine Zeitung, 6 April 1994, p. 27.
23. See Landauer (as in n. io), p. 3; and Oexle, 'Das
Mittelalter' (as in n. 7), p. 212.
24. E. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship, Berkeley
1958, pp. 184-6. Boureau, Histoires (as in n. 15), p. 12,
suggests that his remark about the historian meditating
on the 'dangers implicit in his profession of excavator
of the past' was an allusion to Karl von Amira and/or
Percy Ernst Schramm, two students of 'Herrschaftszeichen' who had embraced National Socialism. But
Kantorowicz might just as well have been thinking of
his own earlier 'excavations' here: in the final chapter
of Kaiser Friedrich he had invoked the same acclamation
-'Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!'-which the Fascist ideologues used in their laudes of
Mussolini: KFZ, p. 622.
25. Y. Malkiel, 'Ernst Kantorowicz', On Four Modern
Humanists: Hofmannsthal, Gundolf, Curtius, Kantorowicz,
ed. A. R. Evans,Jr., Princeton 1970, pp. 146-219
(177);
Giesey (as in n. 9), p. 193. See also A. Yarrow, 'Humanism and Deutschtum: The Origins, Development, and
Consequences of the Politics of Poetry in the GeorgeKreis', The Germanic Review, iviii, 1983, pp. 1-1 1 (3, 4);
Landauer (as in n. 1o), pp. 7, 8; and H. Belting, 'Images
in History and Images of History', in Benson and Fried,
PP. 94-103
(95).
26. See Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n.
3), PP. 46-56.
27. E. Morwitz, Kommentar zu dem Werk Stefan Georges,
Munich and Dfisseldorf 1960, p. 23o. George played a
crucial role in the conception, production and publication of Kaiser Friedrich; see Salin, Privatdruck (as in n.
22), p. 5: 'Wer Ohren hat zu h6ren, wird in mancher
Wendung, in manchem Satz Georges eigene Stimme
vernehmen ...'. See also L. Thormaehlen, Erinnerungen
an Stefan George,Hamburg 1962, pp. 227-8; and Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n. 3), PP. 57-80,
149-57-
191
And more than anyone else, it was 'the Master' ('der Meister'), as George was called in the
Circle, who brought about Kantorowicz's transformation from the ultrapatriotic Freikorps
soldier of 1919 to the herald of a 'universal' ('welthaltig') Germany which was part of and
found its completion in the Holy Roman Empire.28 George's influence on Kantorowicz's
notion of Deutschtum,however, was rather more ambiguous than most contemporary critics
allow. The politics of the Circle changed dramatically in the course of the Great War. To
say that Kantorowicz and the other disciples 'easily transferred' George's critique of the
Wilhelmine Empire to the Weimar Republic,29 or to speak of their 'cosmopolitan humanism' ('kosmopolitischer Humanismus')3- and 'Francophilia',31 as if these attitudes had
remained unchanged since the beginning of the century, obscures the fact that many
members of the Circle, including the Master himself, took strongly nationalist positions
after 1918. Kaiser Friedrich, in many ways, marks the Circle's transition from a more cosmo-
politan pre-war to a more patriotic post-war outlook-or, to invoke the title of Meinecke's
famous book, from 'Weltbiirgertum' to 'Nationalstaat'.32 In order to evaluate Kantorowicz's conception of Deutschtum,this transition needs to be examined in more detail.
In the 189os and 19oos, George's ideal of a 'Roman Germany' ('r6misches Deutschland') stood in sharp contrast to the nationalist orthodoxy of the Second Reich. His
celebration
of the South in his collections
Der Teppich des Lebens (1899)
and Der Siebente
Ring (1907)33 represented an implicit critique of the Prussophile patriotism inaugurated
by Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-96). In the aftermath of Bismarck's bitter struggle with
Catholicism in the 187os, the so-called KulturkampfTreitschke had denounced Rome as
the ultramontane enemy of the Reich and demanded the elimination of all Latin influences for the sake of German cultural autonomy.34 While Treitschke's followers glorified
the Hohenzollern and their colonisation of the Slavonic and Baltic lands, the George
Circle exalted the Holy Roman Empire of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. For the former, the
symbol of Deutschtum was the furor teutonicus of Hermann
the Cheruscan
( 16 BC-2 1 AD);35
for the latter, it was the restrained, classical beauty of the 'Bamberger Reiter', a thirteenthcentury equestrian statue in Bamberg Cathedral.-6
28. KFZ, pp. 75, 353-529. Yarrow
(as in n. 25),
p. 5.
30. Petrow (as in n. 11), p. 144.
31. Landauer (as in n. io), p. 7. See also J. Fried,
'Einleitung', in E. Kantorowicz, G6tter in Uniform: Studien
zur Entwicklung des abendliindischen K6nigtums, ed. E.
Grfinewald and U. Raulff, Stuttgart 1998, pp. 7-45
(7-8).
32. F. Meinecke,
Weltbiirgertum und Nationalstaat:
Studien zur Genesis des deutschen Nationalstaates, Munich
and Berlin 1908.
33. For George's praise of Italy in these early collections see E. Gundolf, 'Stefan George und der Nationalsozialismus', in idem, Stefan George:Zwei Vortrdge,Amsterdam 1965, PP- 52-76 (60-3); B. B6schenstein, 'Stefan
George und Italien', Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts, 1986, pp. 317-33; and E. Rosenfeld, L'Italia nella
poesia di Stefan George,Milan 1948.
Treitschke: sein Welt- und
34. See W. Bussmann,
Geschichtsbild, 2nd edn, G6ttingen 1981.
35. In the eyes of 19th-century German nationalists,
Hermann's victory over the Roman military commander
Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (() AD) prevented the 'Latinisation' of Central Europe and marked
the beginning of German history.
later identified
the 'Bamberger
36. Kantorowicz
Reiter' as a 'Mediterranean Germanic type' ('mittelmeerischer Germanentyp'): KFZ, p. 77. In his radio
lecture 'Deutsches Papsttum' (written 1933, broadcast
1935), he again invoked Bamberg as a symbol of a
classically restrained, 'apollonisch' Germany: E. Kantorowicz, 'Deutsches Papsttum', Castrum Peregrini, xII,
1953, PP. 7-24 (9). Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who entered the Circle in May 1923, apparently
bore a close physical resemblance to the statue in Bamberg and the members of the Circle would jokingly
192
MARTIN A. RUEHL
After 1918, however, this cosmopolitan spirit gradually evaporated and gave way to
more narrowly patriotic sentiments. On the one hand, the change was determined by the
self-consciously guarded liminal position of the Circle with regard to German society and
culture. In the Wilhelmine era, George and his disciples had been anxious to distinguish
the 'deutsch-r6misch' ideals of 'the Secret Germany' ('das geheime Deutschland')37 from
the 'deutschnational' jingoism of the official Germany. But when the imperial government of the Second Reich was replaced by the more moderate, cosmopolitan politicians
of the Weimar Coalition, the Circle preserved its oppositional stance and became, in its
turn, more 'deutschnational'. On the other hand, the experience of the Great War38and
its aftermath-Versailles, the war guilt debate, reparations, the occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr-had truly aroused the Georgeans' national sentiment. The 'outlawing'
('Verfemung') of the German people during the War and even more after Versailles,
Edgar Salin remarked in his memoirs, was depressing and unbearable for the members
of the Circle: 'In the years 19 19-32 more clearly than ever before', therefore, 'the path of
honour pointed in a very similar direction for the German friends of the Poet [i.e. George]
and the German people.'39 In particular, Friedrich Wolters, after Friedrich Gundolf's
departure arguably the central figure among the disciples, began to strike a much more
politicised and assertively Germanic note in his publications during the 1920s, celebrating
Goethe as a patriotic ('vaterlindischer') poet and glorifying Germany's struggle against
her Latin ('welsch') enemies over the centuries, from the Investiture Controversy to the
Franco-Prussian War.40
Although George could be critical of Wolters's political activism,41 both his poetic
and his private utterances reveal the extent to which he shared this new, stridently
patriotic vision of Germanness.42 If his earlier works had been indebted to the spirit of
refer to him as 'der Bamberger Reiter'; see M. Baigent
and R. Leigh, Secret Germany: Claus von Stauffenberg and
the Mystical Crusade against Hitler, London 1994, P. 119.
The Circle also associated the Stauffenberg brothers
with the Hohenstaufen dynasty of the Middle Ages; see
Hoffmann (as in n. 3), pp. 52, 61.
was an in-house
Deutschland'
37. 'Das geheime
term of the Circle which referred both to the members
themselves and to the 'Dichter und Helden' of the past
whom they venerated, e.g. H61olderlin and Frederick II.
See Grinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n. 3), PP.
74-80.
World War I
38. George himself had condemned
from the start and saw nothing regenerative or redemptive in it. See S. Breuer, Asthetischer Fundamentalismus:
Stefan Georgeund der deutsche Antimodernismus, Darmstadt
1995, PP- 73-7; and E. Salin, Um Stefan George, 2nd edn,
Munich and Diusseldorf 1954, p. 260. Cf. F. Wolters,
Stefan George und die Bldtterfiir die Kunst: Deutsche Geistesgeschichte seit 189o, Berlin 1930, pp. 439-40.
39. Salin, Um Stefan George (as in n. 38), pp. 143-4:
'die Verfemung des deutschen Volkes schon wihrend
des Krieges und verstirkt im Gefolge von Versailles
[musste] besonders niederdrfickend und unertriglich
im Freundeskreis empfunden
werden ... starker als
irgendwann vorher... wies daher der Weg der Ehre in
den Jahren von 1919-1932
fiur die Dichter-Freunde
und filr das deutsche Volk in naheverwandte Richtung'.
40. See F. Wolters, VierReden iiberdas Vaterland, Breslau
1927; F. Wolters and W. Elze, Stimmen des Rheins, Breslau 1923; and F. Wolters, Die Bedingungen des Versailler
Vertragsund ihreBegriindung, Kiel 1929. Wolters's politics
and his increasingly dominant position in the Circle
are discussed by C. Groppe, Die Macht der Bildung:
das deutsche Biirgertum und der George-Kreis1890-1933,
Cologne 1997, pp. 213-89. See also C. David, Stefan
George: son oeuvre poetique, Lyons and Paris 1952, PP361-3, and M. Siemoneit, Politische Interpretationen von
Stefan Georges Dichtung, Frankfurt am Main 1978, pp.
23-40. On Gundolf's break with George see Breuer (as
in n. 38), pp. 86-8.
41. See B. Vallentin, Gesprdche mit Stefan George 1902Amsterdam 1967, p. 72, reporting George's
1931,
at a
critical remarks about Wolters's participation
Schlageter celebration.
42. Both Petrow (as in n. 11), p. 1, and Salin (Um
Stefan George, as in n. 38), pp. 145-6, contend that
But
did not reflect George's.
Wolters's opinions
193
H6lderlin, the models for George's new collection of poems, Das Neue Reich (1928), seem
to have been Ernst Moritz Arndt and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Seeing his own vocation as
'poet of the Germans' ('Dichter der Deutschen'),43 George prophesied Germany's purification from shame, her coming rebirth and her universal mission: 'that one day the heart
of the continent shall redeem the world'.44 Perhaps because, as a native of the region,
he was offended by the occupation of the Rhineland,45 the Master began to show strong
signs of Francophobia, and at one point he even demanded that 'these French be exterminated'.46 After the War, George also re-evaluated another component of his earlier
cosmopolitan conception of Deutschtum,the German 'Drang nach Sfiden' ('drive Southward', 'yearning for the South'): he spoke out strongly, for instance, against a Bildungsreise
to Italy, which Percy Gothein wanted to undertake in 1919.47 Even more notable are his
frequent diatribes against the Curia and the 'Pfaffen' (clerics) in the 1920os,which stand in
sharp contrast to the predominantly pro-Catholic sentiment of the Circle around the turn
of the century. Edith Landmann tells of him lashing out bitterly against the egalitarianism
of the Catholic religion and its 'lack of interest' ('Desinteressement') in Germany and
European culture in general.48 Bismarck, Wilhelm II and 'Prussianness' ('das PreuBentum'), on the other hand, George now saw in a more positive light and observed, with
reference to the last of the Hohenzollern, that 'a bad emperor is better than no emperor
at all'.49
(as in n. 41), p. 136, reports that in April
1931, George expressed his admiration for Wolters's
recent 'Entwicklung'; and K. Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen
an Stefan George und seinen Kreis, Bonn 1965, p. i 19 n.
15, recalls that George and Wolters were united in their
nationalist attitude after the breakdown of 1918. See
also David (as in n. 40), p. 362. George's amendments
to Wolters's history of the Circle, the so-called 'Blittergeschichte', reveal that the Master often took an even
more extreme position than Wolters; see F. Wolters,
nach Gesprichen
mit Stefan
'Frfihe Aufzeichnungen
George zur "Bliittergeschichte"', ed. M. Philipp, Castrum
Vallentin
Peregrini, ccxxv, 1996, pp. 5-62 (12). Philipp's juxtaposition of Wolters's early 1913 manuscript with the
provides
193o final version of the 'Blittergeschichte'
evidence of the increasing nationalism of the Circle
after World War I: ibid., pp. 15-16.
43. Salin, Um Stefan George (as in n. 38), p. 264.
For George's political aspirations during and after
World War I see V. Dfirr, 'Stefan George und Gottfried
Benn im europaischen Kontext: Politische Aspekte der
asthetizistischen
Tradition', Das Stefan-George-Seminar
1978 in Bingen am Rhein, ed. P. Lehmann and R. Wolf,
Bingen 1979, pp. 48-59 (56-7).
44. S. George, Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke (Endgfiltige
Fassung), 15 vols, Berlin 1927-34, Ix, p. 114: '...dass
einst /Des erdteils herz die welt erretten soll'; see also
PP. 33, 38, 39. Cf. Wolters, Stefan George (as in n. 38),
PP- 440-3.
45. See David (as in n. 40), p. 362. George was born
in Biidesheim near Mainz, spent much of his childhood
and youth in Bingen and later frequently stayed in
Heidelberg.
46. Salin, UmStefanGeorge(as in n. 38), p. 262: 'Diese
Franzosen mfissen ausgerottet werden.' To Edith Landmann he remarked in 1926: 'Wenn einer einmal die
Franzosen so slihe,wie ich sie sehe, dann ging's ihnen
schlecht.' When Landmann reminded him of his earlier
Francophilia, George replied: 'Das war damals. Heut,
nachdem sie [i.e. the French] sich so betragen haben,
mitssen sie's zurfickkriegen': E. Landmann, Gesprliche
mit Stefan George,Dfisseldorf and Munich 1963, p. 150.
See also ibid., pp. 89, 92, 95, 193; Hildebrandt (as in n.
42), pp. 166-7; and Vallentin (as in n. 41), p. 138. In
an unpublished poem of 1927/8, George bewailed the
predicament of the German Volk,surrounded by envious
neighbours eager 'uns ein weitres stiick / Auszuhaun
aus unsrem fleisch': quoted in K. Landfried, Stefan
Politikdes Unpolitischen,
George:
Heidelberg 1975, p. 241.
47. P. Gothein, 'Letzte Universitatsjahre / Der Tod
des Vaters: Aus einem Erinnerungsbuch', CastrumPeregrini, xxvi, 1956, pp. 7-32 (18). On George's changed
view of Italy see Vallentin (as in n. 41), p. 87; and E.
Landmann (as in n. 46), pp. 98, 107.
48. E. Landmann (as in n. 46), pp. 178, 182. For
George's anti-Catholicism see also ibid., pp. 1oo, o18,
196. George seems to have particularly relished the
anti-papal passages of KaiserFriedrich:see ibid., p. 166.
49. Hildebrandt (as in n. 42), p. 228, citing George:
'Ein schlechter Kaiser ist besser als gar kein Kaiser!' For
George's changed view of Prussianness see ibid.: 'Von
einem HaB gegen PreuBentum und Bismarck ist seit
194
MARTIN A. RUEHL
The most ominous transformation of the concept of Deutschtumin the Circle was
its increasing preoccupation with the issue of race. In 192o, Kurt Hildebrandt, one of
Wolters's followers, published a treatise on racial hygiene, entitled Normund Entartung des
Menschen ('Norm and Degeneracy of Man').5o The book appeared without the signet of
the Circle, but with the explicit approval of Wolters and George.51 Wolters spoke of the
'inferior races' of the French in his 1923 pamphlet 'Der Rhein unser Schicksal' and extolled the 'holiest herd of our race' in his 'Blittergeschichte'.9" The Master seems to have
conceived this 'holiest herd' in European rather than strictly Germanic terms. The 'white
kin' ('weiBe Art'):3 of Western Europe had to be saved from the 'yellow apes' of Asia,4" as
well as from miscegenation with the African races. According to George, the decline of
the French was due to interracial marriages,55or what he called 'blood shame' ('Blutschmach') in his 1917 poem 'Der Krieg'.56 The racial divide, for him, thus lay between
Europe, on the one hand, and Africa as well as Asia (to which he apportioned Russia), on
the other, not between Germanic and 'welsch', or Aryan and Semitic peoples.57
Anti-Semitism, none the less, ran deep in the Circle, in spite of the large number of
Jews among George's immediate entourage (they included the Wolfskehls, the Gundolfs,
Vallentin, Morwitz, the Landmanns, von Kahler, Salin, Stein and Kantorowicz).58 The
Master himself, though he declared that all loyal disciples, whether Catholic, Protestant
or Jew, were 'of his race',5" still believed that Jews were 'different people', who lacked a
proper language and did not 'experience things as deeply as we do'. He would never allow
them, he told Ernst Robert Curtius in April 191 1, to be in the majority in the Circle.1"3
dem ersten Weltkriege nichts zu spfiren: wesentlich
ist der Wille zum nationalen Halt ... Ablehnung der
Erfillungspolitik, ja selbst Bereitschaft zum Kriege.'
50o. K. Hildebrandt, Norm und Entartung des Menschen,
Dresden 1920. See also idem, Norm und Verfalldes Staates,
Dresden 1920.
51. Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen (as in n. 42), pp. 11315, 124 n. 20. George defended the book against the
criticism of Salin; see Salin, Um Stefan George (as in n.
38), p. 248. That Hildebrandt was not the only proponent of eugenic ideas in the Circle is evidenced by
the programmatic 'Einleitung' to the Jahrbuch fiir die
geistige Bewegung, III, 1912, pp. III-VIII (V), where
Wolters and Gundolf condemn the state's protection of
'die Schwachen, die Krfippel' and call for measures
against 'Artverschlechterung'.
George evidently felt
ambiguous about the idea of a state-directed eugenic
policy, but none the less assented to the reprinting of
these passages in Wolters, Stefan George (as in n. 38), p.
437.
52. F. Wolters, 'Der Rhein unser Schicksal', in his Vier
Reden (as in n. 40), p. 139, 'minderwertige Rassen';
idem, Stefan George (as in n. 38) p. 44o, 'heiligster Herd
unserer Rasse'.
53. George, Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke(as in n. 44), IX,
p. 33- See Landfried (as in n. 46), pp. 219-2 I.
54. 'Nur wenn die gelben Affen kommen', George
remarked to Karl Wolfskehl during World War I, 'dann
nehme ich selbst die Flinte.' See Salin, UmnStefan George
(as in n. 38), p. 260.
55. See Morwitz (as in n. 27), p. 419.
56. George, Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke(as in n. 44), Ix,
p. 3o. This, at least, is Morwitz's interpretation of the
word: Morwitz (as in n. 27), pp. 419-2o, but cf. K. and
M. Mommsen, '"Ihr kennt Eure Bibel nicht!" Bibelund Horaz-Anklfnge in Stefan Georges Gedicht "Der
Krieg"', Castrum Peregrini, xxxiv, 1985, pp. 42-69.
57. By 1922, however, we find him disappointed by
Austria's failure to 'Germanise' Bohemia; and complaining that: 'Heute wfirde nun an allen Enden verVon uberall
abzubrockeln.
sucht, vom Deutschtum
kr6chen die fremden Volker hinein.' Vallentin (as in n.
41), p. 64, citing George (8 February 1922).
58. E. Gundolf (as in n. 33), p. 69, calculated that
almost half of the 35 German contributors to the Bliatter
fiir die Kunst were Jewish or of Jewish background. Cf.
Malkiel (as in n. 25), p. 178.
59. Salin, Um Stefan George (as in n. 38), pp. 244, 249,
citing George: 'der wirklich von meiner Rasse ist'.
6o. Quoted in Hoffmann (as in n. 3), p. 5o1 n. 53: 'so
elementar wie wir erleben sie [i.e. the Jews] nicht. Sie
sind fiberhaupt andere Menschen. Ich erlaube nie, daB
sie in meiner Gesellschaft... in der Uberzahl sind.' For
George's reference to language, 'die Seele eines Volkes',
see E. Landmann (as in n. 46), p. 87. In a similar vein,
he claimed that the Jews had been chosen by God as
KANTOROWICZ'S
KAISERFRIEDRICH
195
Hildebrandt reports that already during World War I, George taught that the Jews were
'agents of decomposition in the political and the intellectual state' and that he was 'increasingly dissatisfied with their attitude'.61 As for the disciples, there were not infrequent
anti-Semitic remarks intra muros,sometimes with regard to other members of the Circle.62
They came especially from the 'third generation' (Max Kommerell,Johann Anton, Woldemar Uxkull-Gyllenband). Kommerell, George's favourite from the mid-i192os,15noted with
some satisfaction that his own anti-Semitism was proverbial in the Circle.64 Hildebrandt
recalls the anti-Jewish tendencies of the 'nationally oriented' ('National-Gesonnenen')
disciples, perhaps alluding to the sub-groups which had formed around Wolters in Marburg and Kiel.65 Wolters's 'Blittergeschichte', compiled over a decade and a half and
published in i930, with the Master's explicit approbation, as the official history of the
Circle, downplayed the contributions of Jewish disciples (most notably Gundolf's) and
was regarded as anti-Semitic by some.66
We may conclude, then, in view of the growing prominence of Wolters and his adherents, as well as George's implicit endorsement of their attitude, that in the post-war era
the Circle began to embrace an increasingly vlkiisch nationalism. The experience of war,
the birth of the new republic in the shadow of defeat and the humiliating terms of the
Treaty of Versailles all contributed to a transformation of the earlier cosmopolitan ideal
of a 'Roman Germany'. The anti-Catholic polemics, the exaltation of the German Volk
over the 'Welschen', the positive reassessment of Prussia, the heightened concern with
racial issues-this was Deutschtumin a new key. The new nationalism of the Georgeans, no
doubt, could still accommodate non-German cultures. Next to the shining armour of the
German emperors, George invoked the cedar trees of the Levant; next to Baldur he saw
'Sfindenb6cke' and referred to Vallentin as 'der Fremdstammige': ibid., pp. o06, lo9. These comments give
some clues as to what George might have told Kantorowicz in their 'grossen Auseinandersetzung fiber den
Zionismus' on 6 November 192o, at the end of which
Kantorowicz came to adopt the Master's standpoint: E.
Kantorowicz toJ. von Kahler, 6 November 1920, SGA.
61. K. Hildebrandt to A. Brodersen, 7 January 1935;
quoted in Hoffmann (as in n. 3), p. 502 n. 53: 'DaB die
Juden im politischen Staat und im geistigen zersetzend
sind, war St. G.'s Lehre schon in der Kriegszeit... Mit
der Haltung derJuden war er in zunehmendem Maasse
[sic] unzufrieden'.
62. See Hoffmann (as in n. 3), pp. 501-2. These
instances of in-house anti-Semitism more than call into
question Hans Liebeschfitz's claim that the George
Circle was a 'haven of retreat for Jewish intellectuals',
which Giesey approvingly cites (as in n. 9), p. 193; see
H. Liebeschftz, 'Ernst Kantorowicz and the George
Kreis', Yearbookof the Leo BaeckInstitute,IX, 1964, pp.
345-7 (346).
63. These younger members played a more and more
central role in the Circle in the mid-192os. According
to Hoffmann (as in n. 3), pp. 76-7, between 1925 and
1930 the volkisch-oriented disciples Kommerell and
Anton were closest to George, who lost interest during
this time in his older Jewish friends. See also Groppe
(as in n. 40), pp. 654-7.
64. M. Kommerell to J. Anton, 24 December 1930;
quoted in Hoffmann (as in n. 3), p. 493.
65. Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen (as in n. 42), p. 120.
These groups included Max Kommerell, Johann and
Wolfgang Anton, Walter Elze and Rudolf Fahrner; see
Groppe (as in n. 40), pp. 273-6. Wolters's anti-Semitism
is evident in his ironic reference to the 'Idealtypus des
Ullstein-Deutschen':
see Wolters, Stefan George (as in n.
38), p. 521. The Jewish Ullstein family owned one of
the biggest publishing houses of Europe and ran some
of the leading liberal newspapers in Germany before
1933. Kantorowicz made a similarly acerbic remark
about the cosmopolitanism of 'Ullstein-Deutschland'
in
his 1930 speech at Halle: see his 'Grenzen, Moglichkeiten und Aufgaben der Darstellung mittelalterlicher
ed. E. Grfinewald, Deutsches Archiv fiir
Geschichte',
Erforschung des Mittelalters, I., 1994, pp. 104-25 (121).
66. E. Landmann (as in n. 46), p. 204, recalls George's
response when she objected to the anti-Semitic contents
of the 'Bldittergeschichte': 'Nein, aber alles, was recht
ist: alles kann man von Euch [i.e. the Jews] doch auch
nicht loben.'
MARTIN A. RUEHL
196
Apollo.67 The tirades of Wolters and Elze against France and Rome were offset by the
paeans to Napoleon and Caesar of Vallentin and Gundolf.68 And despite the more narrowly political attacks on Versailles and Weimar, there remained the larger concerns with
the aesthetic regeneration of Europe.69 The notion of Deutschtumin the Circle clearly was
not identical with the Deutschtiimelei(nationalist exaltation of all things German) of the
New Right. But in the course of the 1920os, the boundaries between the two became gradually blurred. As Walter Benjamin remarked in his 1930 review of Max Kommerell's book
DerDichter als Fiihrerin der deutschenKlassik,the 'Secret Germany' had become part of the
official Germany's ideological arsenal, in which the Tarnkappe(magic cap) of the George
Circle hung next to the Stahlhelm(steel helmet) of the neo-conservatives and the Nazis.70
II. ROME, RACE AND
KANTOROWICZ'S
'RENOVATIO
GERMANISATION
'.
OF FREDERICK
II
Introduced to George by Uxkull-Gyllenband, who quickly became his intimate friend,71
and a close associate of Kommerell,72 Kantorowicz belonged to the generation of disciples
which was predominantly shaped by Wolters.73 His Kaiser Friedrich,although it echoed
some of the Circle's earlier, cosmopolitan ideas, was composed to a great extent in the
new, nationalist key of Wolters and his followers.74 Kantorowicz's decision to write about
PP. 57, 34.
68. B. Vallentin, Napoleon, Berlin 1923; F. Gundolf,
Caesar: Geschichte seines Ruhms, Berlin 1924.
69. After the War, George remarked to Hildebrandt
that his only hope was 'die europaische Wiedergeburt
aus deutschem Geiste': Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen (as in
n. 42), p. 105. Cf. ibid., pp. 125, 164, 165. See Landfried (as in n. 46), pp. 219-21.
Gesammelte Schriften, ed. H.
7o. See W. Benjamin,
Tiedeman-Bartels, 7 vols, Frankfurt am Main 1972-89,
III, p. 259. Richard Faber believes that the 'Stahlhelm'
in Benjamin's pilean metaphor was an allusion to the
'Freikorpskampfer Kantorowicz': R. Faber, 'Walter Benjamins Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels und Ernst H.
Kantorowicz' Die zwei K6rper des K6nigs. Ein Vergleich',
in G;eschichtsk6rper(asin n. 15), pp. 171-86
(173).
71. See E. Kantorowicz to S. George, 31 October
1924, SGA, in which Kantorowicz describes his relationship with 'Woldi' as a 'marriage' ('Ehe'). Whatever the nature of this domestic arrangement, in the
early 192os Kantorowicz had a passionate love-affair
with Erich von Kahler's first wife Josefine ('Fine'). The
latter is amply documented in his extensive correspondence with Fine, now in the possession of the GeorgeArchiv. I am indebted to Dr Ute Oelmann for making
so many other documents-available
these letters-and
to me.
72. See E. Kantorowicz to S. George, 7 September
1925 and 27July 1930, SGA.
73. See Groppe (as in n. 40), pp. 284, 655. Kantorowicz himself was probably never very friendly with
Wolters (see below, n. 384), yet Uxkull, Kommerell,
Gothein and Stein, who all more or less shared Wolters's
nationalist ideas, represented his peer group in the
Circle. Fried, 'Einleitung' (as in n. 31), PP- 15, 20-4,
places Kantorowicz and his biography of Frederick
II within Gundolf's sphere of influence, ignoring the
growing distance between both men caused first by the
Fine affair (for which see above, n. 71) and then by
Gundolf's alienation from George, which began in
192o and became irreversible in 1926. As early as 1920,
we see Kantorowicz comparing Gundolf's formulaic
approach unfavourably with George's ability to convince
without being dogmatic ('ohne Apodiktizitit')
(letter
toJ. von Kahler, 6 November 1920, SGA). Eleven years
later, he gave a chilly retrospective comment on his
with Gundolf in the 1920s: '...denn
correspondence
ausser einigen groben Briefen hat der Gdf [=Gundolf]
keine von mir...' (Kantorowicz to S. George, 2 December 1931, SGA).
74. See W. von den Steinen, Das KaisertumnFriedichs
des Zweiten nach den Anschauungen seiner Staatsbriefe,
Berlin and Leipzig 1922; and idem, Staatsbriefe Kaiser
Friedrichs des Zweiten, Breslau 1923. Kantorowicz's indebtedness to the former work is evidenced by numerous citations in the Ergdnzungsband. Von den Steinen
was one of Wolters's followers. His Doktorvater at Marburg University was Albert Brackmann, Kantorowicz's
later antagonist in the Mythenschau controversy.
197
Frederick II75was in itself a 'national' choice of sorts.76 His Heidelberg teacher Domaszewski had advised him to tackle universal themes such as the history of Judaism or
Byzantium;77but the young recruit to the Circle, under the influence of the Master, chose
a thirteenth-century German emperor.
Like so many other aspects of his Weltanschauung,George's conception of the Middle
Ages changed after World War I. His poem 'Die Griber in Speier', first published in 1903,
had invoked the glory of the Holy Roman Empire in order to denounce the Second Reich
with its undignified ruler Wilhelm II.78It emphasised Frederick's foreignness and his universal personality, which combined elements of Greek, Roman, Jewish and Arab culture.79
By 1924, however, we find George telling Vallentin: 'There is nothing comparable to the
glory of the Hohenstaufen in the history of any other people.'80 In his 1928 poem 'Burg
Falkenstein', he presented the medieval emperors as the warlike harbingers of a oncemore heroic Germany, mythical figures announcing the violent rebirth of their country.
He now spoke of 'our emperors' ('unsere Kaiser'), and of the Hohenstaufen in particular
as part of a specifically German historical legacy.81
Kantorowicz's Frederick, to be sure, was still in many respects a foreign figure. His
relations with the Orient take a prominent place in KaiserFriedrichand so does his programme to renew the former Roman Empire, the renovatio imperiiRomanorum.82There
are frequent references to his 'Mediterranean' attributes-his 'Roman spirit',83 his exotic
entourage, his strong affinities with Sicily-and to the civilising influence his romanitashad
on Germany. Kantorowicz's Hohenstaufen hero often seems to emerge less as one of
'our emperors' than as an embodiment of that unification of German and Roman blood
which George had celebrated
in Der Stern des Bundes (1914)."4
Indeed,
he at one point
calls Frederick a 'Roman of Swabian blood'.s8
75. Thormaehlen (as in n. 27), p. 253, claims that he
embarked on the biography of Frederick II in 1924,
but Kantorowicz's curriculum vitae of February 1939
states that he began his research around 1921 , after the
completion of his Ph.D.: 'For the following six years...
I worked on a book on the Swabian emperor Frederick
the Second': LBI, Box 1, Folder 2. Cf. Fried, 'Kantorowicz and Postwar Historiography' (as in n. 8), p. 185 n.
19.
76. In 1927, just as Kantorowicz's book went into
print at Bondi, the right-wing Eugen Diederichs Verlag published a biography of Frederick II in its series
'Deutsche Volksheit': J. Pla8mann, Das Leben des Kaisers
1FriedrichII. von Hohenstaufen, Jena 1927. Four years
earlier, a biographical sketch of Frederick had appeared
in a nationalist collection, between contributions on
Hermann the Cheruscan and Luther: see Deutsche Kiimpfer, ed. H. von Arnim, 2nd edn, Berlin 1927, pp. 24-59.
Liebeschfitz (as in n. 62), p. 346, appears to be unaware
of these contemporary publications.
77. See Salin, Privatdruck (as in n. 22), pp. 2-3.
78. George, Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke (as in n. 44),
vI/VII, pp. 22-3. See also Landfried (as in n. 46), pp.
69-75.
79. George, ibid., p. 23: 'Der Gr6sste Friedrich,
wahren volkes sehnen / Zum Karlen- und Ottonen-plan
im blick / Des Morgenlandes
traum, /
ungeheuren
Weisheit der Kabbala und R6merwfirde / Feste von
Agrigent und Selinunt.'
8o. Vallentin, Gespra'chemit Stefan George (as in n. 41),
p. 77, citing George: 'Was ffir eine Pracht bildeten die
Staufer! So etwas biete die Geschichte keines anderen
Volkes' (October 1924). See also E. Landmann (as in
n. 46), p. 130.
pp. 57.. This interpretation of 'Burg Falkenstein' relies
on the comnmentary in Morwitz (as in n. 27), pp. 436-9,
which rested on private conversations with the Master
and, like most of Morwitz's readings, had been given
the latter's placet.
82. George's 'Karlen- und Ottonen-plan' (see n. 79)
alluded to this program of renewal.
83. KFZ, p. 377: 'r6mischer Geist'.
84. See George, Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke(as in n. 44),
VIII, p. 43: 'Eur kostbar tierhaft kindhaft blut verdirbt /
Wenn ihrs nicht mischt im reich von korn und wein.'
85. KFZ, p. 355: 'R6mer schwibischen Blutes'.
198
MARTIN A. RUEHL
At the same time, though, a number of passages in KaiserFriedrichindicate the extent
to which Kantorowicz viewed romanitasand classical antiquity from an essentially Germanocentric angle. His comments on Frederick's Proclamation of Mainz (1235), for instance,
demonstrate that Rome for him was not the glorious yet quasi-unattainable ideal of the
'Northerners' which it had been in, say, George's Der Teppichdes Lebens(1899); rather, it
was a cultural catalyst for the 'awakening young Germany' of the early thirteenth century."8
Kantorowicz labels the Proclamation of Mainz the earliest law in the German language
and regards it as evidence that German was now considered to be on an equal level with
Latin. It announced the emergence of a specifically German form of polity and 'the first
casting off of the Roman frame, which had become, at least in linguistic terms, superfluous' 87
His re-evaluation of the relationship between Germany and the civilisation of ancient
Rome was in accordance with the highly patriotic Antikenrezeptionof the group around
Wolters. Kommerell, for instance, considered Friedrich Klopstock's encounter with classical Greek poetry as a step towards the renewal of German culture and its liberation from
Western falsification.8" Vallentin, in a similar vein, observed that for Winckelmann, 'Antiquity, Rome, were not the final objective ... but a way to lead the German back to himself, to get him to incarnate his spirit, to make it visible'.8 For Kantorowicz too, Rome was
the means, rather than the measure, of German culture. Frederick's Romanisation of
Germany, he emphasised, did not imply that the Germans had to surrender 'their most
essentially Germanic traits'. Rather, his Roman Empire 'integrated what was most characteristic and best in German culture'.9("At one point, Kantorowicz even inverted the commonplace Italia docetand pointed to Italy's cultural indebtedness to Germany. Through
its mercenary soldiers, whom Frederick employed in his wars against the city-states of
Lombardy, Germany played 'no negligible part in the Italian Renaissance', Kantorowicz
maintained: for the Italians of the late thirteenth century, and still more of later days,
would have had no conception of a knight if it had not been for the thousands of young
German nobles whom Frederick first attracted to Italy. When this southbound stream of
German knights dried up towards the end of the Renaissance, it was, he concluded, 'Italy's
loss'."9
86. KFZ, p. 75: 'das erwachendejunge
Deutschland'.
Schaffen der
87. KFZ, p. 377: 'ein beginnendes
deutschen Eigenform auch im Staate ... ein erstes Festhalten des Deutschen im Deutschen selbst und das erste
Niederlegen des zumindest ffir die Sprache schon uiberflfissig gewordenen r6mischen Gerfists'. The translation
of this passage by Lorimer (as in n. 4), P- 411, is misleading.
88. M. Kommerell, Der Dichter als Fiihrer in der deutschen
Klassik: Klopstock,Herder, Goethe, Schiller,Jean Paul, H61derlin, 2nd edn, Frankfurt am Main [19421, pp. 11-13.
kein Endziel...,
89. 'Das Antike, Rom bedeutete
sondern einen Weg, um den Deutschen zu sich selbst,
zur Sichtbarmachung, zur Verk6rperung seines Geistes
zu bringen': B. Vallentin, Winckelmann, Berlin 1931 , p.
214; quoted in Der George-Kreis:Eine Auswahl aus seinen
Schrifien, ed. G. P. Landmann, 2nd edn, Stuttgart 198o,
p. 369. Similarly, Ernst Bertram, a former member of
the Circle, considered the cultural inheritance of Greek
antiquity primarily as a vehicle for the self-rejuvenation
of the German Volk: see his Deutsche Gestalten, Leipzig
1934, p. 254; quoted in Petrow (as in n. 11), p. 56.
go. KFZ, p. 75: 'Nicht daB um ihretwillen die Germanen ihr Eigenstes hergeben oder einbfiBen sollten:
ihr eigenstes Bestes schlossen jene Machte eher ein als
aus...' Kantorowicz mentioned the Nibelungenlied, the
Middle High German poem of the Hohenstaufen period
which, ever since Herder, had been regarded as one of
the first examples of a truly 'Germanic' literature, in
the same context: ibid.
91. KFZ, pp. 605-6.
199
Kantorowicz repeated his claim about Germany's contribution to the Renaissance, if
somewhat more obliquely, when presenting Frederick as the 'father' of the fourteenthcentury Italian tyrants.92This seems to be an allusion to a passage fromJacob Burckhardt's
Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1 86o), which describes Frederick and his son-in-law
Ezzelino as political models for the later Renaissance despots. While Burckhardt, however,
had conceived this model as ultimately Eastern,'• Kantorowicz, in a highly evocative
allegory, depicted the Trecento tyrants as bastard offspring from the rape of the 'maid
Italy' by the 'German Kaiser' Frederick.'4 According to Burckhardt, the Renaissance was
closely related to the 'Italian genius';95 Kantorowicz, by contrast, represented Italy less as
the cradle than as the womb of modernity-the effeminate victim of the virile ruler of the
North, who turned out to be the true father of the Renaissance.96
For his conception of the Renaissance Kantorowicz was indebted to the German
philologist and cultural historian Konrad Burdach.97 Burdach's thesis provided an attractive alternative for many medieval and early modern scholars in the 191 os and 1920oswho
were dissatisfied with Burckhardt's secular and 'Italian' interpretation of the birth of
modernity.98 Its central tenet was that the Renaissance had been an era inspired by ideals
of spiritual as well as national renewal, or what Burdach called the notion of 'renovatio'.
Unlike Burckhardt, Burdach did not identify Renaissance civilisation exclusively with
Quattrocento Italy, but traced its development north of the Alps, for instance to the mystic
writings of the Ackermann aus B6hmen.99 Emphasising the importance of early Church
reformers, Burdach represented the Renaissance in many ways as a prelude to Luther
92. KFZ, p. 450. See also ibid., pp. 61 1-13 and 316.
93. J. Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien,
Stuttgart 1988, p. 5. Kantorowicz had a copy of this
book in the library he had to leave behind in Germany
when he emigrated in 1938; an inventory of its contents
was drawn up soon after his departure by his friend
Helmut Kfipper and can now be consulted in LBI, Box
1, Folder 6.
94. KFZ, p. 450: 'nachdem von diesem deutschen
Kaiser die "Magd Italia, Herrin von Bordellen!" (Dante)
einmal gepackt, vergewaltigt und beschlafen war.' Cf.
ibid., pp. 316, 611-13.
95. Burckhardt, Kultur der Renaissance (as in n. 93),
pp. 99-100oo,
127.
96. For a similar anti-Italian image see the description
of Rome as 'die Hure, die sich geiljedem ihr nahenden
Mann anbietet' (a quote from Saba Malaspina): KFZ, p.
470.
to Burdach see
97. For Kantorowicz's indebtedness
esp. KFZ, pp. 205, 462, and Kantorowicz, Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite: Ergiinzungsband, Berlin 1931, p. 176.
Burdach's book on Cola di Rienzo, Rienzo und die geistige
Wandlung seiner Zeit, 2 vols, Berlin 1913-28, is one of
the most frequently cited secondary works in the Ergainzungsband. Fried, 'Einleitung' (as in n. 31), pp. 24-5,
places Burdach wholly on the side of Albert Brackmann, ignoring the important affinities between the
former and Kantorowicz with regard not only to their
conception of the Renaissance, but also their approach
to the 13th-century
himself acknowlmentali. Burdach
edged these affinities to some extent, despite his fundamental reservations vis-A1-vis
Georgean myth-making:
'In einem Punkt', he wrote to Brackmann in 193o,
'm6chte ich gegen Ihre Formulierungen [in the Mythenschau controversy] Bedenken fiuBern. Man kann doch
kaum ... leugnen, daB die Wirkungpolitischer Manifeste
des Kaisers auf die Zeitgenossen ein h6chst wichtiger
Gegenstand geschichtlicher Forschung ist.' Letter of 17
March 193o, Brackmann papers, Geheimes Staatsarchiv,
Preu8ischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin), Rep. 92, Mappe Nr.
2, p. 207. I am indebted to Robert Lerner for this
quotation.
98. The nationalist concerns underlying Burdach's
conception of the Renaissance are evident in his essay
Deutsche Renaissance:Betrachtungeniiber unserekiinftige
Bildung, Berlin 1916. See W. K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought,Cambridge, Mass. 1948, p.
306.
99. See K. Burdach, 'Sinn und Ursprung der Worte
Renaissance und Reformation', Sitzungsberichte
derpreussischenAkademiederWissenschaften
(Phil.-hist. K1.), xxxII,
1910, pp. 594-646; and idem, Rienzo (as in n. 97).
Kantorowicz owned both of these as well as four other
works by Burdach: see Kfipper's inventory (as in n. 93).
200
MARTIN
A. RUEHL
and the emergence of Protestantism. Like Ernst Troeltsch, he believed that the actual
and enduring breakthrough towards individualism was not the Renaissance but the
Reformation.100
Drawing on Burdach, Kantorowicz depicted the first half of the thirteenth century as
a period of religious and national renewal, stressing the parts played by St Francis of Assisi
and Frederick II as reformers of the Church.'o' In so far as he centred his own analysis on
the role of the emperor, however, Kantorowicz went beyond Burdach's interpretation in
some crucial respects. Whereas Burdach did not regard Frederick as a Renaissance figure,
Kantorowicz frequently referred to the emperor and members of his entourage as precursors of the Renaissance or as 'Renaissance-like' ('renaissancehaft') themselves.1'02He thus
did not 'medievalise' Frederick, as Oexle has claimed,1'3 but interpreted him as a crucial
representative of the idea of 'renovatio'. In Kantorowicz's interpretation, Frederick's
Holy Roman Empire was not just a 'universal' ('welthaltig') structure, but also furthered
the growth of individual national cultures, most notably in Sicily and Germany.114 For
Kantorowicz, as for Burdach, the movements of spiritual and national renewal initiated in
Frederick's time were a prelude to the German Reformation.105 Frederick's struggle with
Gregory IX and Innocent IV anticipated that between Luther and Leo X.106
Contemporary Catholic reviewers of KaiserFriedrichnoted and criticised its anti-Roman
thrust.'07 The latter is evident throughout the work but particularly in the concluding
chapters, which recount the final stages of Frederick's conflict with the pope.1'8 Yet
Ioo. K. Burdach, Deutsche Renaissance, 2nd edn, Berlin
1917, p. 92.
lot. See KFZ, pp. 561-5; and Burdach, Rienzo (as in
n. 97), PP. 396-7.
102. See esp. KFZ, pp. 205, 233, 278, 281, 297, 316,
318, 328, 40ol, 41o, 415,444, 448, 462, 479, 611. These
references far outweigh those on pp. 217-18,
232, and
563, where Kantorowicz briefly considers Frederick's
medieval' aspects. Cf. Burdach, Rienzo (as in n. 97), pp.
317-2o; and idem, 'Dante und das Problem der Renaissance', Deutsche Rundschau, February 1924, pp. i31-4.
Io3. Oexle, 'German Malaise of Modernity: Ernst H.
Kantorowicz and his "Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite"', in
Benson and Fried, pp. 33-56 (51). The anti-modernism of Kaiser Friedrich cannot easily be located on the
'Middle Ages-Renaissance'
spectrum. The same applies
to Burckhardt's Kuilturder Renaissance, which, although it
depicted the Renaissance as the 'mother of modernity',
hardly reflected an 'optimistic belief in progress', as
Oexle contends (ibid., p. 36); see L. Gossman, Basel
in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas,
(401, 40o7-8), overlooks these dialectics when he
argues that for Kantorowicz, 'the laudable medieval
universal monarchy' was incompatible with 'the despicable modern nation state'.
105. See KFZ, pp. 561-5, where Kantorowicz dwells
on the 'Anklinge' between Frederick's Church reforms
and the Reformation. These passages qualify Roberto
Delle Donne's claim that Kantorowicz 'condivide ... con
Nietzsche l'avversione per Lutero': see his 'Kantorowicz
e la sua opera su Federico II', Friedrich II.: Tag-ung des
Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom irn Gedenkjahri994,
Chicago 2000, pp. 282-95.
104. KFZ, pp. 133-4 and 266: 'Daneben [i.e. next to
his imperial duties] rief [Frederick] wie kein andrer
die "nationalen" Gegenkrffte wach ...Jene schon frfiher
erwdihnte Spannung: Kaisertum und dennoch Nationen! wird hier wieder sichtbar'. K. Schiller, 'Dante
and Kantorowicz: Medieval History as Art and Auto-
ed. A. Esch and N. Kamp, Tfibingen 1996, pp. 67-86
(-9 n. 40).
o16. KFZ, pp. 631-2. K. Hampe, Kaiser Friedrich in der
Auffassung der Nachwelt, Berlin and Stuttgart 1925, pp.
23-4, had already called Frederick a 'Vorlaufer der
Reformation'. Previously, F. von Raumer, Geschichte der
Hohenstaufen und ihrerZeit, III, Leipzig 1824, p. 569, had
even labelled him a 'Protestant'; quoted in R. Stadelmann, 'Jacob Burckhardt und das Mittelalter', Historische Zeitschrift, (:XIII, 1930, p. 469. Kantorowicz owned
the complete first edition of Raumer's Geschichte; see
Kfipper's inventory (as in n. 93). For Hampe's influence
on the Circle's Friedrichbild see Vallentin, Gespriiche Iit
Stefan George (as in n. 41), p. 131.
107. See E. Grilnewald, "'Not only in Learned Circles":
The Reception of Frederickthe Second in Germany before
the Second World War', in Benson and Fried, pp. 162-
biography', Annali d'Italianistica, VIII, 199o, pp. 396-411
79 (172-7).
201
Kantorowicz denounced Rome not only as a symbol of Catholicism, but also as a synonym
for what he regarded as essentially Southern or 'welsch' characteristics.109There are various
passages in his biography of Frederick II where Deutschtum is exalted over romanitassometimes in a rather v61kischvein. In the first chapter, for instance, Kantorowicz reiterated
nationalist commonplaces, such as the furor teutonicus,commenting that 'the Germans'
physical strength and ... ferocity terrified the Southerners'; and the 'German mission'
('deutsche Sendung'), which he described in terms of a divine visitation on the lazy,
effeminate and 'dissolute' ('zuchtlos') South by a Northern storm.'1 He reinforced this
national dichotomy in his description of the German mercenary knights, whose trustworthiness, bravery and beauty ('das sch6nste Kriegsvolk der Welt') he juxtaposed with the
wily, dissipated and corrupt nature of the Italians ('das fiberraffinierte maBlos verderbte
Italien')."11 Similarly, he glorified 'the virile strength of the Germans';112and Hermann
von Salza's loyalty, an attribute that 'since the dawn of time could only be found in
Germany'."1 In Frederick's physical appearance Kantorowicz also detected a specifically
German quality which elevated him over even the two favourite Latin figures among the
historical heroes of the George Circle: in an almost diametrical inversion of the RomanGerman opposition of the Georgeans before the War, he remarked that Frederick's broadnecked firmness and steel-like strength was offset by 'something vibrant and lyrical' ('ein
Schwingendes und Liedhaftes'), a 'German inheritance' to which 'neither a Caesar nor a
Napoleon could lay claim'.114The 'fateful' ('schicksalsgleich', 'schicksalstrichtig') aura
of the emperor was 'something wholly German-Germanic that a Napoleon completely
lacked, something of the immeasurably dangerous of Mephistopheles'."15 And in his description of the emperor's final struggle with the papacy, Kantorowicz again highlighted
Frederick's 'Northern' attributes: 'Something of that Nordic defiance and that Nordic
terror that [Frederick] possessed ...now became apparent.'116
1o8. This aspect is discussed further below, pp. 21 if.
Log. According to E. Pontieri, FedericoII d'Hohenstaufen
e i suoi tempi, Naples n.d. [c. 196o], pp. 84-5, Kantorowicz presented Frederick II as a 'hero of the German
nation' and a 'fighter against Latinity' (quoted by H. M.
Schaller in his review of the book in Deutsches Archivfiir
Erforschung des Mittelalters, xvi, 196o, p. 274).
1io. KFZ, p. 18.
1 11. KFZ, pp. 0o4-6. A further trace of this national
stereotyping can be found in the margins of Kantorowicz's copy of G. Guibal, Arnaud de Brescia et les Hohenstaufen, ou la question du pouvoir temporel de la Papautd au
moyen age, Paris 1868, which is preserved in the Firestone
Library, Princeton. An annotation on p. 158, in Kantorowicz's hand, comments on Frederick's 'deception' by
the fickle population of Rome in 1 240: 'Der D [eu] tsche
Fehler! Dem Feinde zu glauben.'
112. KFZ, p. 9g: 'Die Manneskraft der Deutschen, die
noch immer eine Welt darstellte'.
1 13. KFZ, p. 85: 'wie seit Urzeiten fiberhaupt nur bei
Deutschen m6glich'. On p. 375, Kantorowicz again emphasised that 'Mannestreue' was a traditionally German
ideal, which 'im Sfiden weniger wog'.
1 14. KFZ, p. 339: 'ein deutsches Erbe wohl, das einem
Caesar so wenig eignete wie einem Napoleon'.
115. KFZ, pp. 95-6: 'Hier umgeistert den Staufer etwas Nur-Deutsches Germanisches, das einem Napoleon
ganz fehlte, etwas von dem maBlos GefiThrlichen einer
Vorform des Mephisto'. Cf. ibid., p. 553, where we read
that Frederick possessed 'alles maBlos gefdihrlich Kiihne
des deutschen Mephistopheles,
der', as Kantorowicz
continues with an imperialist twist on the German
'Drang nach Silden', 'fiber die Alpen steigt "und glaubt,
daB ihm dort alles geh6re"'. He is here quoting Nietzsche, who referred to Frederick as the true German
Mephistopheles and described him as dangerous, bold
and evil: see his Gesammelte Werke (Musarionausgabe),
23 vols, Munich 1922-9, XVI, p. 354. According to Ernst
Bertram (Nietzsche: Versuch einer Mythologie, 6th edn,
Berlin 1922, p. 52), Nietzsche regarded Frederick's
demonic qualities as typically German. Abulafia's claim
that Kantorowicz's portrait of Frederick as a universal
figure was indebted to Nietzsche's conception of him as
'the first European', therefore, needs to be qualified:
Abulafia (as in n. lo), p. 132.
16. KFZ, p. 549: 'Etwas von jenem nordischen Trotz
202
MARTIN
A. RUEHL
If Kantorowicz defined Deutschtumfrequently in contradistinction to romanitas, he
also exalted it over 'Frenchness' and 'Englishness'. He juxtaposed what he identified as
the particularly English traits of the Welf Otto IV-'frugality bordering on parsimony', as
well as a 'conspicuous lack of education and intellect'117-with the Waibling Frederick's
generosity and mental agility. While he idealised Frederick II as the glorious German
'Weltherrscher' ('universal ruler') who brought 'pax etjustitia' to the West, he denounced
the English monarchy of Henry III as a second-rate and disruptive force in European
politics.118 These instances of Anglophobia in KaiserFriedrichare signs, according to David
Abulafia, that the defeat of 1918 'continued to rankle with Kantorowicz'.119 A certain postwar bitterness is also detectable in Kantorowicz's statement that Alsace (which Germany
had annexed from France in 1871 and lost to her again in 1919) was 'the favourite of
[Frederick's] German patrimonial lands'.120 The most militantly chauvinistic passage
comes in the final chapter of the book where Kantorowicz describes the defeat, humiliation and execution of the last Hohenstaufen, Frederick's grandson Konradin, at the
hands of the pope and his French allies. Konradin had been captured by Charles of Anjou
in the Battle of Tagliacozzo (1268) and was subsequently beheaded in Naples. Insofar as
Charles had been enfeoffed with Sicily by Innocent IV and supported the pope in his
conflict with the Hohenstaufen emperors, Konradin was the victim of France as well as
Rome.121His death was still unredeemed, because the Germans had failed to take revenge
on the French-and Kantorowicz left no doubt that he thought of this revenge as a present
duty, imagining it in the form of a 'German Vespers', that is, a repetition of the Sicilians'
brutal revolt against their French occupiers in 1282.122 The parallels to post-war Germany
could hardly have escaped his contemporary readers who had witnessed the occupation
of the Rhineland and the Ruhr territory by predominantly French troops.123
undjenem nordischen Grauen ... kamjetzt zum Durchbruch'. Cf. p. 551: 'Aber die nordischen Schicksalsg6ttinnen, denen das Leben auch dieses Staufers [i.e.
Frederick II] noch unterstand'.
117. KFZ, p. 64: 'seine an Geiz grenzende Kargheit...
seine auffallend geringe Bildung und geistige Armseligkeit'.
1 18. See Abulafia (as in n. 1 o), pp. 126-30.
and Frederick II',
i19. D. Abulafia, 'Kantorowicz
History, LXII, 1977, PP. 193-210
(197)KFZ, p. 58. The phrasing in the German original
120.
is even more presentist, because Kantorowicz quotes
Frederick's statement in the pluralis maiestatis so that
Alsace becomes 'unserer deutschen Erbliinder geliebtestes'. Kantorowicz's Francophobia resurfaced in his
1935 lecture on the 'Deutsches Papsttum', which concluded (as in n. 36, p. 21) with a number of evocative
prophecies
centring on the coming of a German
emperor who would dominate both the pope and the
other European rulers: '... es werde ein Kaiser kommen,
Frankreich zu zerst6ren, und der werde ... ein deutsches
Patriarchat... errichten, auf dass dann die deutschen
allen V61lkern geehrt wfirden'. For the
Linder...von
nationalist concerns underlying this lecture see H.
Fuhrmann, 'Ernst H. Kantorowicz: der gedeutete Geschichtsdeuter', in idem, Uberall ist Mittelalter, Munich
(256).
i996, pp. 252-70
121.
KFZ, pp. 619-21.
122. KFZ, p. 620: 'Weder haben sie [i.e. the Germans]
jemals den blutgetrinkten Adler gereinigt noch jemals
der sizilischen die deutsche Vesper folgen lassen.'
Kantorowicz's repeated use of jemals' highlights the
presentist implications of these lines.
123. Stefan George had already heralded a Vespers
in retaliation against the French: see his 'Der Dichter in
Zeiten der Wirren' (1921), in Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke
(as in n. 44), Ix, p. 38; but cf. Morwitz (as in n. 27),
p. 429, who interprets this passage differently. For
Konradin's execution as a topos of German Francophobia see Kittsteiner in Geschichtsk6rper(as in n. 15),
pp. 22-3. Wolters had invoked his death in his francophobic speech 'Der Rhein unser Schicksal' of 1923
(republished during the Ruhr occupation in the volume
Stimmen des Rheins), as a 'scheuBliche, immer noch ungestihnte Mordtat' and as a decisive caesura in German
Untergangs in
history: '...noch lebt der Schauerjenes
unserem Volke als die kaiserlose, die schreckliche Zeit:
es war die Wende unseres Schicksals, und der Abstieg
203
Perhaps most chilling of all, in light of subsequent events, is the fact that Kantorowicz
evoked the issue of race in this context.124 He explained that it was precisely the new racial
homogeneity of the Sicilians, the 'respect for the dignity of their own blood' they had
recently acquired under Frederick, that enabled them to rise against the French in 1282.125
While the later Kantorowicz focused increasingly on the metaphysical aspects of power,
the biographer of Frederick was still very much absorbed in the irrational forces of the
Volk.26 We read that the emperor needed the 'unconditional dedication, obedience and
concerted power of a people in order to infuse the Reich with new blood'.127 Kantorowicz
speaks of the 'blood community' ('Blutsgemeinschaft') of the ruler and his people, the
exhausted and diluted 'blood forces' ('Blutkrafte') of the northern Italians and foreign
and domestic parasites sucking the 'marrow and blood' ('Mark und Blut') of the Sicilian
people.12" Next to a shared language and history, blood, for him, defined a nation; hence
his concept of a 'community of the tribal blood' ('Gemeinschaft des Stammesblutes').129
The only thing 'German' the people in Central Europe had in common in the thirteenth
century, he declared, was their blood.'30 The Sicilians, by contrast, lacked such a 'community of blood' and were an 'unreliable mixed people' ('unzuverlfssiges Mischvolk').131
What transformed them into a true Volkwas Frederick's coercive homogenisation of their
blood through a programme of 'breeding' ('Zfichtung')-for Kantorowicz a sign of his
profound wisdom as a statesman.132 He prohibited marriages between Sicilians and
foreigners; and decreed that 'gamblers, blasphemers, Jews, whores and minstrels' were to
be segregated: 'The emperor ... eliminated all of these groups ... from his people, which
he set about to crystallise and purify'.133
begann.' See Wolters, Vier Reden (as in n. 40), p. 121.
(Kantorowicz had a copy of Vier Reden in his library in
Germany; see Kfipper's inventory, as in n. 93.)
124. Cf. R. Lerner, 'Ernst H. Kantorowicz (18951963)', in Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on
the Formation of a Discipline, 2 vols, New York 1995 and
1998, I, ed. H. Damico and J. B. Zavadil, pp. 263-76
(266), asserting that Kantorowicz's notion of a 'German
Vespers' was 'nationalist but not racist'.
125. KFZ, p. 268: 'Achtung vor der Wilrde des eignen
Bluts'. In the paragraphs preceding his description
of the Sicilian Vespers, Kantorowicz gives a glowing
account of Frederick's eugenic policy, the goal of which
was 'auch dem Blute nach aus den Siziliern ein einheitliches Volk zu schaffen'.
126. KFZ, p. 196: The Saxon emperor Otto III's attempt at a renovatio imperii Romanorum was bound to fail
because it lacked 'eines Volkes Widerhall und nahrende
Kraft'. Frederick II, by contrast, found 'ein empfingliches und williges Volk'; ibid., pp. 75, 97.
und willige Hin127. KFZ, p. 197-8: 'Unbedingte
gabe, Gehorsam und versammelte Kraft eines Volkes...
ben6tigte Kaiser Friedrich, um das Reich mit neuem
Blut zu durchsetzen.'
128. KFZ, pp. 267, 288-9, 201. Cf. Wolters on Prussia
in the 19th century, in Stefan George (as in n. 38), p. 435.
129. KFZ, pp. 265-6.
130. KFZ., p. 75: '...nur das Blut hatten die Stfmme
an Deutschem gemein'. These quotations illustrate that
'blood' may have been a racial concept in the Circle
after all, pace Landfried (as in n. 46), p. 217, who
interprets its significance in George's poetry exclusively
as a symbol of the irrational and unconscious.
131. KFZ, p. 253. Cf. ibid., p. 268 ('das ... verra8te
Volk von Palermo') and the reference to the North
Americans
as 'stammlos verrasste feilscher fiberm
weltmeer' in M. Kommerell, Gespriiche aus der Zeit der
deutschen Wiedergeburt,Berlin 1929,
p. 33.
132. KFZ, pp. 267-8. These passages contrast markedly with the anti-eugenic statements in Kantorowicz's
1933 lecture, where he speaks of 'ein Adel, welcher
sich nicht aus Zeugungsregeln, sondern durch die Zeugung geheimster Michte erneuert': E. Kantorowicz,
'Das Geheime Deutschland' (as presented at Frankfurt
University, 14 November 1933), in Benson and Fried,
PP. 77-93 (81). But cf. LBI, Box 2, Folder 9, which
contains a note in Kantorowicz's hand attached to the
mid-193os manuscript 'Was ist Adel?': 'Adel ist eine
Rassenfrage, aber nicht im demokrat. Sinne sondern
h6hergezuichtet. Aristot. gibt die Waffen hierffir.'
133. KFZ, pp. 113-14: 'Sie alle schied so der Kaiser...
von seinem Volk, das er rein herauszuschilen
sich
anschickte.' This casts doubt on the claim of Abulafia,
'Kantorowicz and England' (as in n. to), p. 132, that
204
MARTIN
A. RUEHL
Kantorowicz again drew on this racist discourse when he suggested that the fresh
'blood forces' of the Langobards had had a regenerative impact on the society and culture
of northern Italy.'34This, too, was a commonplace of the vAlkischphilosophy. In his enormously popular Foundationsof theNineteenthCentury( 1899), Houston Stewart Chamberlain
had argued that the great Italians of the Renaissance were all born either in the north of
the peninsula, 'saturated with Lombardic, Gothic and Frankish blood', or in the extreme
'Germano-Hellenic South'.'13 Over the next decades, these dubious cultural historical
tenets were reiterated by established scholars such as Carl Neumann, who depicted the
Italian Renaissance as the product not of the revival of antiquity, but of the 'Barbarenkraft'
and 'Barbarenrealismus' of the Germanic tribes.'36 Kantorowicz himself seems to have
followed Fedor Schneider's Langobardentheorie,'37
which posited that the blood of a Langobardic 'master race' ('Herrenrasse') had 'refreshed' the 'melancholic remainders' of the
Romance peoples in Tuscany; and that the 'free communes' ('freie Landgemeinden')
established by these Germanic tribes had been responsible for the essential political,
economic and cultural contributions to the civilisation of northern Italy in the period
preceding the Renaissance.38s Although he conceded that Frederick was careful not to
provoke conflict between the Latin and the Germanic families in his Italian lands, Kantorowicz stressed that the emperor's much lauded bureaucracy was predominantly filled
with the scions of the latter, the 'Beneventan and Campanian stocks' who traced their
descent back to the Goths and Langobards.139 He returned to the theme of the Germanic
according to Kantorowicz 'races must coexist in a single
great mosaic'. The passage Abulafia quotes to illustrate
Kantorowicz's alleged racial pluralism is actually rather
ambiguous: the many 'diverse' races listed here (see
KFZ, p. 353) are in fact all Germanic.
134. See KFZ, pp. 288-9. Wolters, Vier Reden (as in
n. 40), pp. 103-4, similarly claimed that during the
migration of the peoples, the Germanic tribes had renewed the diluted blood of the 'old world' in Italy. What
would Italy be, he mused, 'ohne die Langobarden und
Goten... ?'
135. See H. S. Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, tr.J. Lees, 2 vols, London 1i911, I, p. LXVI.
136. C. Neumann, 'Byzantinische Kultur und Renaissancekultur', Historische Zeitschrift,xcI, 1 903, pp. 2 15-32
(232). See also Ludwig Woltmann's racist, anti-Italian
polemic, Die Germanen und die Renaissance in Italien,
Eisenach 1915, which Kantorowicz cites in the Ergiinzungsband (as in n. 97), p. 31.
137. See Kantorowicz, Ergiinzungsband (as in n. 97), p.
138. Lerner, "'"Meritorious Academic Service"' (as in n.
differp. 20 n. 21, perhaps overstates Schneider's
19),
ences with Kantorowicz. These were largely methodological and should not obscure the important agreement of both scholars with regard to the racial and
cultural superiority of the German people as well as
Frederick's Germanness: see F. Schneider, 'Kaiser Friedrich und seine Bedeutung ffir das ElsaB', Elsa/3-lothringisches Jahrbuch, Ix, 193o, pp. 128-55, repr. in his
Ausgewiihlte Aufsitze zur Geschichte und Diplomatik des
Mittelalters vornehmlich in Italien, ed. G. Tellenbach,
Aalen 1974, PP- 431-58 (450-2); and idem, 'Kaiser
Friedrich und der Staat', Frankfurter Universitiitsreden,
xxxIII, 1930, repr. in A usgewiihlte Aufsiitze, pp. 417-3()
Schneider evidently presented Kantorowicz
(424-6).
with offprints of both articles: see Kilpper's inventory
(as in n. 93). At least as far as his nationalist politics
were concerned, Kantorowicz was a suitable successor
to Schneider at Frankfurt University.
138. F. Schneider, 'Zur sozialen Genesis der Renaissance', Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Festschrift fiir Franz
Oppenheimer, Frankfurt am Main 1924, repr. in Ausgewiihlte Aufsiitze (as in n. 137), pp. 319-45 (344-5).
For Kantorowicz, this long tradition of 'Germanic' interventions in Italy was continued and completed by
Frederick, 'der letzte germanische Staatsgrfinder auf
italischem Boden': KFZ, p. 197.
sub139. KFZ, p. 289. Kantorowicz acknowledges
sequently that Frederick did not choose his officials
because of their Germanic descent; but he clearly
identifies the Germanic tribes with 'less exhausted'
des germanischen Adels').
blood ('Unverbrauchtheit
Similarly, the ideologist of Nazism Alfred Rosenberg
stressed the role of 'Nordic' blood in Frederick's south
Italian kingdom in his Mythus des XX. Jahrhunderts,
Munich 193o (English edn The Myth of the T7ventieth
Century, Torrance 1982, p. 39)-
205
component in the racial make-up of the Mediterranean in his 1933 'reinaugural lecture',
where he eulogised the universal dimension of the Secret Germany, which carried 'the
essence of the entire European continent and those Mediterranean countries that were
once occupied by Germanic tribes'.140Altogether, this was a disturbingly chauvinistic and
racist re-interpretation of the fusion of German and Roman blood invoked in George's
Der Stern des Bundes, in which the poet had exhorted
the Nordgermanen to mix and regen-
erate their blood in the South.141
Finally, Kantorowiczemphasised that for Frederick, 'racial unity' ('Rasseneinheit')
was intimately linked with 'religious unity' ('Glaubenseinheit'). 42 To distinguish them, as
'aliens' ('Landfremde'), from the Christians, Jews in his Sicilian kingdom had to grow
their beards and wear a yellow spot on their clothes.'14 Although he pointed to the positive
role of Jewish scholars at the imperial court,144 Kantorowicz emphasised that Frederick
was ready to resort to the most extreme measures against his Jewish subjects, at one point
even threatening to have 'all the Jews of the Empire killed at once' if certain charges of
ritual murder turned out to be true.145While he treated the Jews and Saracens in Sicily as
'Andersgeartete' (as being almost biologically 'different'), the emperor persecuted heretics
as 'Entartete' ('degenerates').146 Kantorowicz's choice of words is disconcerting. Even
before they attained a terrible new significance in the Third Reich, such terms already
belonged to the discursive stock-in-trade of the racist ideologists of the German Right.'"4
III.
RE-INVENTING
THE
REICH:
THE
POLITICS
OF GHIBELLINISM
The various passages cited above are no doubt qualified, to some extent, by Kantorowicz's frequent emphasis on Frederick's Mediterranean qualities and what he calls the
'civilisation' of Germany through Rome. They none the less demonstrate that vl6kischnationalist ideas permeated his biography of Frederick II much more deeply than critics
140. Kantorowicz, 'Das Geheime Deutschland' (as in
n. 132), p. 88: 'die Wesenheiten des gesamten Europa
und der Mittelineerlander, soweit sie einstmals Germanenstfimme besetzten'. George, similarly, qualified a
remark about the cultural superiority of the Italian race
in 1926: 'LTbrigensgilt das nur ffir Ober- und Mittelitalien, da wo die Germanen hingekommen sind, umn
einmal Woltersch zu reden.' Quoted by E. Landmann
(as in n. 46), p. 146.
141. See above, n. 84; Morwitz (as in n. 27), p. 362.
142. KFZ,p. 124.
143. KFZ,p. 113; cf. p. 245.
144. KFZ,pp. 317-19.
145. KFZ, p. 245: 'alle Juden im r6mischen Reiche
auf der Stelle umbringen zu lassen'. Cf. ibid., p. 379.
Although this threat remained hypothetical since the
allegations were unfounded, Kantorowicz related the
ritual murder episode (twice) to illustrate not only
Frederick's legal prudence, but also his absolute 'intolerance' and potential for cruelty. Significantly, he
added that Frederick condemned the accused Jews,
even though they had been acquitted of all charges, to
pay a large sum of money, because they had, whether
intentionally or not, disturbed the peace of the Reich
(ibid.).
146. KFZ, p. 247. The thesis of Landauer (as in n. l o,
pp. 7-8) and Malkiel (as in n. 25, p. 183), that Kantorowicz applauded Frederick because of his enlightened
attitude towardsJews and Saracens in Sicily, is not borne
out by Kantorowicz's approving comments about the
emperor's segregation of these minorities.
and 'Rassen147. 'Entartung',
'Blutgemeinschaft'
hygiene' were key words in the vocabulary of v6lkisch thinkers like H. S. Chamberlain and L. Schemann,
as well as eugenic theorists like A. Ploetz and W. Schallmayer; see W. Conze, in Geschichtliche Grundbeg-iffe: historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland,
ed. O. Brunner et al., 8 vols, Stuttgart 1972-97,
V, pp.
161-78, s.v. 'Rasse'; Rasse, Blut und Gene: Geschichte der
Eugenik in Deutschland, ed. P. Weingart, Frankfurt am
Main 1988, pp. 27-138; and G. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, New York 1964, pp. 88-107. Kantorowicz
possessed Hildebrandt's two eugenic treatises (for these
see above, n. 50o): see Kfipper's inventory (as in n. 93).
MARTIN A. RUEHL
206
have hitherto allowed.148The extent to which Kantorowicz 'Germanised' Frederick and
his empire becomes clearer when his work is set in the context of the larger historiographical debates about the Hohenstaufen emperors, which began in the middle of the
nineteenth century and continued into the 192os. KaiserFriedrich,as we shall see, was a
contribution not only to the increasingly patriotic rhetoric of the George Circle, but also
to one of the great Historikerstreite
in German medieval scholarship.
Influenced by the vogue of Romantic medievalism and the heightened patriotic sentiment of the Wars of Liberation (1812-14), poets and historians of the post-Napoleonic
era projected their hopes for a unified and powerful Germany on the Holy Roman
emperors of the Middle Ages. Thus, Friedrich Ruickert (1788-1866) and Friedrich von
Raumer (1781-1873)
juxtaposed
the glorious Hohenstaufen
Empire with the sad reality
of Germany in the Vormdrzperiod.149 Friedrich Schiller's expression 'die kaiserlose, die
schreckliche Zeit' ('the time without emperors, the terrible time') became proverbial in
the first half of the nineteenth century,'15 which also saw the resurgence of the so-called
Kyffhiuser myth. According to this popular legend, Frederick I (c. 1123-90) was asleep
inside Kyffhauser Mountain in Thuringia and would one day awaken to unite the German
people and lead them to victory against their enemies. The Kyffhliuser myth had originally
centred on Frederick II; but in the course of the nineteenth century, Frederick I 'Barbarossa' ('Redbeard') gradually replaced his grandson as the object of Germany's national
dreams.151 In part this usurpation may be put down to the earlier emperor's greater
political involvement north of the Alps, especially in Eastern Europe; and to his physical
appearance, deemed more 'Germanic' than that of his beardless grandson.'152Yet what
perhaps weighed even more heavily in the eyes of the German patriots was the charge
that Frederick II's almost total absorption in his RegnumItalicum had impeded the growth
of a centralised German nation state.
This was the main argument of Heinrich von Sybel's 1859 speech 'Ujberdie neueren
Darstellungen der deutschen Kaiserzeit' ('On the more recent representations of the
German imperial age'), which triggered off the famous controversy with the Catholic
historian Julius Ficker.'53 Sybel himself was taking issue with the historian Wilhelm von
148. Cf. Belting (as in n. 25), p. 96, who claims that
Kantorowicz 'discarded the national issue in the book'.
149. See F. Rfickert, Kranz der Zeit, Stuttgart 1817; and
F. von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit,
6 vols, Leipzig 1823-5, which was an immediate bestseller; see H. Schulze, Der Weg zum Nationalstaat: Die
deutsche Nationalbewegung vom i8. Jahrhundert bis zur
Reichsgriindung, Munich 1985, p. 74; and A. Borst, 'Die
in Die Zeit der
Staufer in der Geschichtsschreibung',
Staufer: Geschichte-Kunst-Kultur, III, Stuttgart 1977, pp.
263-74 (270-2).
150. F. Schiller, 'Der Graf von Habsburg', Schillers
ed. N. Oellers et al., Weimar
Werke (Nationalausgabe),
1943ff.,
(1983), p. 277, referring to the period of
IX.1
the Great
(1254-73).
Interregnum
(Hagen Schulze
kindly helped me to locate this quote.) It may well be
that Kantorowicz, who seems to have been quite fond
of quoting Schiller, was alluding to this expression with
his reference to the 'time without emperors' in the
'Vorbermerkung'.
151. See F. Kampers, Die deutsche Kaiseridee in Prophetie
und Sage, Munich 1896; G. SchultheiB, Die deutsche Volkssage vom Fortleben und der WiederkehrFriedrichs II., Berlin
19 1 1; A. Timm, Der Kyffhduser im deutschen Geschichtsbild,
G6ttingen n.d. [1961?]. Kantorowicz referred to this
myth at the very end of his Hohenstaufen
biography
(KFZ, p. 632) and, again, in his lecture on the 'Secret
Germany' (as in n. 132, p. 93).
152. For the 'classicising' aspect of the beardless
Frederick see Kantorowicz, Ergdnzungsband (as in n.
97), pp. 258-9.
153. The major contributions to this controversy are
published in Universalstaat oder Nationalstaat: Macht und
Ende des ersten deutschen Reiches: Die Streitschriften von
207
Giesebrecht, who had recently expressed the hope that his history of the medieval
emperors would have a positive effect on Germany's national development.154 For Sybel,
by contrast, the Hohenstaufen's universalist 'Reichsidee' ('imperial idea') had been detrimental to the unity and power of the German fatherland: the excessive privileges that the
emperor had to grant the German princes in order to win their support for his fight
against the north Italian city-states predetermined Germany's status as a de-centralised
and weak nation in the heart of Europe. The true German heroes of the Middle Ages,
according to Sybel, were Henry the Lion and Albrecht the Bear, who had contributed to
the colonisation of Northern and Eastern Europe. Ficker met Sybel's charges against the
Hohenstaufen in his pamphlet 'Das deutsche Kaiserreich in seinen universalen und nationalen Beziehungen'
(1861),
which defended
the R6merzug (the enforcement
of German
imperial sovereignty in Italy) as the natural corollary of the universalist conception of the
Reich prevalent in the Middle Ages.
In terms of the debate over the geopolitical contours of a unified German nation
in the 185os and 186os, Ficker supported the Hohenstaufen's groJfdeutschagainst the
Prussocentric, kleindeutschempire advocated by Sybel, the later panegyrist of the Hohenzoller Wilhelm I.155In religious terms, though, the front line of this controversy often ran
somewhat differently. Here Protestant historians like Friedrich Schirrmacher glorified
Frederick II's fight against the pope, whereas Catholic historians like Johannes Janssen
condemned his caesaropapist ambitions. 56While 1871 brought a political victory for the
Kleindeutsche,in the historiographical field, Ficker's positive assessment of the medieval
German empire gradually gained ascendancy, supported most notably by the Heidelberg
historians Eduard Winkelmann and Dietrich Schffer. The 192os, however, saw a revival
of the Sybel-Ficker controversy, when Georg von Below and Fritz Kern forcefully repeated
Sybel's critique of the Hohenstaufen's Italian policy and its devastating effects on Germany's later development as a nation state.157
Kantorowicz, who began to collect the standard works by Ficker and Winkelmann as
early as 1921, must have soon become acquainted with the larger historiographical debates
about Frederick and his ancestors. These were conveniently summarised in Karl Hampe's
Heinrich von Sybel und Julius von Ficker zur deutschen
Kaiserpolitik des iMittelalters, ed. F. Schneider, Innsbruck
1941.
154. See the 1855 'Vorrede' to the first edition in W.
von Giesebrecht, Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 5th
edn, Leipzig 1881, p. XIII. Kantorowicz possessed the
complete 1863 edition of Giesebrecht's Geschichte: see
Kiipper's inventory (as in n. 93).
155. H. von Sybel, Die Begriindung des deutschen Reiches
durch Wilhelm L, 7 vols, Munich and Leipzig 1889-94.
For the larger political background of the Sybel-Ficker
debate see J. Jung, Julius Ficker, repr. Aalen 1981, pp.
307-54; and G. Koch, 'Der Streit zwischen Sybel und
Ficker und die Einschditzung der mittelalterlichen
Kaiserpolitik in der modernen Historiographie', Studien
iiber die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. J. Streisand, 2
vols, Berlin 1963-5, I, Die Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft
vom Begin*ndes 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Reichseinig-ung von
oben, pp. 311-36.
156. See J. Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, 15th
edn, I, Freiburg im Breisgau 1889, p. 460: 'caesaropapistische Bestrebungen'.
157. See G. von Below, Deutsche Reichspolitik einst und
jetzt, Tiibingen 1922; idem, Die italienische Kaiserpolitik
des deutschen Mittelalters, Munich 1927 (=Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft X), pp. 1-57; and F. Kern, 'Der deutsche
Staat und die Politik des R6merzuges', Aus Politik und
Geschichte: Gediichtnisschrift
Georg von Below, Berlin
fitr
1928, pp. 32-74. For a survey of the debates in the
1920s see H. Hostenkamp, Die mittelalterlicheKaiserpolitik
in der deutschen Historiographie seit von Sybel und Ficker,
Berlin 1934; and F. Schneider, Neuere Anschauungen der
deutschen Historiker zur Beurteilung der deutschen Kaiserpolitik des Mittelalters, 2nd edn, Weimar 1936.
208
MARTIN A. RUEHL
1924 'Rektoratsrede' at Heidelberg University,158which Kantorowicz may have attended.159
The bibliographical references in the Ergdinzungsband,in any case, demonstrate that by
1931, he was thoroughly familiar with the major protagonists of the controversy. Yet his
position in this historiographical discourse seems at first sight rather contradictory. On
the one hand, Kantorowicz depicted Frederick as the tragic hero in an all-consuming,
apocalyptic struggle with the papacy, thus apparently siding with the Protestant, prussophile camp. On the other hand, he championed the emperor's universal 'Reichsidee' in
the tradition of the grofideutsch,Catholic historians.'60 Frederick was, for him, both a fundamentally anti-Catholic figure and an exemplary 'Weltherrscher'. In contradistinction
to the narrowly Prussocentric standpoint of Sybel and the group of kleindeutschhistorians
associated with the Gotha Party (Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Ludwig Hdiusser),'al as well as
to the ultramontanism of Ficker, H6fler and Janssen, Kantorowicz's position might be
defined as 'Ghibelline'.'62
In nineteenth-century Germany, Ghibellinism meant a strongly anti-papal attitude
German mission, howcoupled with fundamental support for the Hohenzollern-whose
ever, was conceived as a continuation of the imperial tradition of the medieval emperors.
In the introduction to his GeschichtederpreuJiischen
Politik (1855) ,Johann Gustav Droysen,
next to Giesebrecht perhaps the most prominent representative of the Ghibelline idea
among German historians, held up the universal monarchy of the Hohenstaufen as a
model for the new German Reich. In the Middle Ages, according to Droysen, the Hohenstaufen Empire had been the expression of Germany's world dominating position; now
Prussia, 'the last manifestation' ('das letzte Aufleuchten') of the Ghibelline principle,
was to realise the Germans' nostalgia for the medieval Reich and restore the superior
significance of their nation.1"3While the Gotha Party enunciated rather limited nationalstaatlich goals, the Ghibellines espoused a more expansive conception of the Reich that
subsequently served to legitimise Germany's imperialist turn to 'world policy'"4 and its
annexationist claims in World War I.
158. See Hampe (as in n. io6), pp. 34-80.
159. Kilpper's inventory (as in n. 93) shows that he at
least possessed a printed version of Hampe's speech.
16o. The claim of Seibt, 'R6misches Deutschland' (as
in n. 7), p. 66, that in the kleindeutsch-grofideutschdebate
over the medieval emperors' Italian policy Kantorowicz
came up on the 'universale, r6rnische Seite', is misleading insofar as Kantorowicz was a fervent critic of
the 'Roman', i.e. Catholic, underpinnings of the 'groBdeutsch' ideal.
161. See G. Kertesz, 'Die "Gothaer" 1849-50: Zu den
Anfaingen der politischen Parteien in Deutschland',
Darstellungen und Quellen zur Geschichte der deutschen
Einheitsbewegung im i9. und 20. Jahrhundert, xv, 1995,
pp. 214-45.
162. For the notion of 'Ghibellinism' in 19th-century
German historiography and literature see H. Gollwitzer,
'Zur Auffassung der mittelalterlichen
Kaiserpolitik im
19. Jahrhundert: Eine ideologie- und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Nachlese', Dauer und Wandel in der Geschichte:
Festgabefiir K v. Raumei, ed. R. Vierhaus and M. Botzenhart, Mfinster 1966, pp. 483-512.
163. J. G. Droysen, Geschichte der preuj3ischen Politik,
Leipzig 1855-86, 1.1, pp. 4, 5, 14; quoted in W. Hardtwig, 'Von PreuBens Aufgabe in Deutschland zu Deutschlands Aufgabe in der Welt. Liberalismus und borussianisches Geschichtsbild zwischen Revolution und Imperialismus', Historische Zeitschrift, ccxxxI,
198o, pp. 265324 (297-8). It was this Ghibelline interpretation of
the medieval empire, and not Ficker's Catholic 'groBdeutsch' vision, that became most generally accepted
in German historiography after 1871; see K. Jordan,
'Aspekte der Mittelalterforschung in den letzten ftinfzig
Jahren', in his Ausgewiihlte Aufsditze (as in n. 138), pp.
Fleckenstein, 'Das Bild der Staufer
329-44 (329-3o).J.
in der Geschichte', in idem, Ordnungeni und formiende
G6ttingen 1989, pp. 455-68 (466),
Krafte des MAittelalters,
overlooks the Ghibelline position when he argues that
the Hohenstaufen emperors eluded the 'nationale Geschichtsbetrachtung'.
209
In his speech before the select group of scholars gathered at the seventeenth German
Historikertagin Halle in 1930, Kantorowicz held up Droysen and Giesebrecht as models
for his own brand of 'historical writing' ('Geschichtsschreibung'). He did not invoke
Nietzsche, whose critique of historicist objectivity had inspired so many of the heroworshipping biographies from the George Circle;165nor Burckhardt, whose portrait of
Frederick and Ezzelino in the Kultur der Renaissance had relied on the Cento novelle antiche,
anticipating Kantorowicz's use of sagas and anecdotes in KaiserFriedrich.At Halle, Kantorowicz placed himself self-consciously in the Ghibelline tradition, applauding Giesebrecht's
GeschichtederdeutschenKaiserzeitas the last truly nationalist history of the Middle Ages and
citing one of Sybel's mordant anti-Catholic pamphlets as an example of politically engage
historical writing. 66But even though he extolled the strongly patriotic sentiment of Sybel's
historiographical works, Kantorowicz stressed that his kleindeutschstandpoint in the controversy with Ficker was not 'to his taste'.167
Insofar as he presented himself and his fellow Georgeans as the sole heirs to the
nationalist historiography of Giesebrecht, Droysen and Sybel, Kantorowicz played down
the extent to which the 'holy love of the fatherland' continued to inform the work of contemporary scholars, not least their representations of the Middle Ages. In fact, Ghibelline
aspirations had intensified after the defeat of 1918-inspired, perhaps, by the brief groJ3deutscheuphoria in the immediate aftermath of the War, when Germany's unification with
a substantially reduced Austria seemed possible. As these hopes were shattered and the
Second Empire was dissolved by the Entente, many German intellectuals looked back, full
of patriotic nostalgia, to the First Empire.168The breakdown of Wilhelminian imperialism
nourished revisionist utopias on the German Right, whose geopolitical dimensions dramatically exceeded Bismarck's empire. Such utopias almost invariably centred on the idea
of the Reich.169Right-wing Catholics ('Rechtskatholiken') like Martin Spahn, 17 as well as
'conservative revolutionaries' like Arthur Moeller van den Bruck,'71 glorified Germany's
164. See Gollwitzer (as in n. 162), p. 506; Hardtwig
(as in n. 163), pp. 297-304; E. Fehrenbach, Wandlungen des deutschen Kaisergedankens 1871-1918, Munich
1969, pp. 160-2; and G. Koch, 'Die mittelalterliche
Kaiserpolitik im Spiegel der bi'rgerlichen deutschen
des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts',
ZeitHistoriographie
schrift fiir Geschichtswissenschaft, x, 1962, pp. 1837-7o
For a recent revival of Ghibelline nostalgia
(1858-62).
see H. Fink, Ich bin der Herr der Welt: Friedrich II., der
Staufe,; Munich 1986, pp. 7-8, bewailing the bygone
glory of the greater Germany of the Middle Ages.
165. See H. Raschel, Das Nietzsche-Bild im George-Kreis:
ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Mythologeme, Berlin
1984, esp. pp. 84-91.
166. Kantorowicz, 'Grenzen' (as in n. 65), p. 122.
167. Ibid., p. 108: 'Und [Svybel's] kleindeutscher
Standpunkt in der berfihmten Kontroverse mit Ficker
...ist auch nicht nach meinem Geschmack'.
168. See H. Schleier, Die biirgerliche deutsche Geschichtsschreibung der WeimnarerRepublik, Berlin-Ost 1975, pp.
8 1-8.
For the renaissance of the 'Reichsidee' in the
see B. Faulenbach, Ideologie des ddeutscheinWeges:
Die deutsche Geschichtein der Historiographie zwischen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus, Munich 1980, pp. 76-87;
K. Sontheimer, 'Die Idee des Reiches im politischen
Denken der Weimarer Republik', G(eschichtein Wissenschaft und Unterricht, xIII, 1962, pp. 205-21; and F.
Eckrich, Die Idee des Reiches in der nationalpolitischen
Literatur seit Beendigung des Weltkrieges', Saarbrficken
169.
1I920s
1937.
170o.On Spahn and the Reich see G. Clemens, Alartin
Spahn und der Rechtskatholizismus in der WeimarerRepublik,
Mainz 1983, esp. pp. 98-144. For Catholic conceptions
of the Reich in this period see K. Breuning, Die Vision
des Reiches: Deutscher Katholizismus zwischen JDemokratie
und Diktatur (z929-z934),
Munich 1g69.
171. See A. Moeller van den Bruck, Das ewige Reich, ed.
H. Schwarz, Breslau 1933. For the appropriation of the
Middle Ages by the authors of the Conservative Revolution see J. Knoll, 'Der autoritdire Staat. Konservative
Ideologie und Staatstheorie am Ende der Weimarer
210
MARTIN
A. RUEHL
imperial legacy and her superior status as a trans-European, universal power during the
Middle Ages vis-a-vis the Western nation states. In a similar vein, the Munich historian
Hermann Oncken invoked the Hohenstaufen Empire as a reminder of Germany's sovereignty over Italy and Rome and her 'universal leadership among the nations of the
West'. This was the 'world historical vocation of the Germans'.172 Among the most vociferous proponents of the 'Reichsidee' were the medievalists, in particular Karl Hampe
and Johannes
Haller, whose popular Epochen der deutschen Geschichte (1922)
hailed the
foundation of the Holy Roman Empire and the subjection of northern Italy as 'the most
brilliant political achievement of the German nation to this day'."17
Kantorowicz, who listed Hampe among his teachers at Heidelberg174 and contemplated a 'Habilitation' under Haller in 1922,175 knew these Ghibelline topoi well and
reiterated a number of them, as we shall see, in his biography of Frederick II. Methodological issues apart, his representation of Frederick as a 'gro8e deutsche Herrschergestalt'
was not as far removed from the mainstream of German medieval scholarship as some
critics today maintain, or as he himself contended at Halle. If KaiserFriedrichgrew out of
the spirit of one of the most esoteric circles in the Weimar Republic, it also represented
an intervention in a highly topical-and highly politicised-historiographical
debate.'17
This intervention was twofold. On the one hand, Kantorowicz defended the imperial
policy of the Hohenstaufen, along with Albert Brackmann, 77Adolf Hofmeister, Robert
Holtzmann"78 and other Ghibelline historians, against the neo-Sybelites von Below and
Republik', LebeindigerG(eist:Hans-Joachim Schoeps zum 50o.
Geburtstag von Schiilern dargebracht,ed. H. Diwald, Leiden
1959, pp. 200-24.
172. H. Oncken, 'Der Sinn der deutschen Geschichte',
Deutsche Rundschau, February 1924, pp.-113-29
(117):
'Ffihrung in den universalen Tendenzen des AbendBeruf der Deutschen'.
landes'; 'der weltgeschichtliche
173. See J. Haller, Die Epochetn der deutschen Geschichte,
Stuttgart 1936, p. 53. Hampe's Ghibellinism is perhaps
most obvious in his Deutsche Kaisergeschichte in der Zeit der
Salier und Staufer (1gog), which concludes with a lament
for the vanished glory of the Holy Roman Empire and
an anti-papal quote from Luther (7th edn, Leipzig 1937,
p. go8).
174. See his various curricula vitae from 1938-9: LBI,
Box i, Folder 2. On Kantorowicz and Hampe see H.
Jakobs, 'Die Medifvistik his zum Ende der Weimarer
Republik', Geschichte in Heidelberg: ioo Jahre Historisches
Seminar, 5oJahre Institutfiir Friinkisch-Pfdlzische Geschichte
und Landeskunde, ed.J. Miethke, Berlin 199i , pp. 39-66
(52-65); and Lerner, '"Meritorious Academic Service"'
(as in n. 19), pp. 17-18.
175. E. Kantorowicz to W. Stein, 26 August 1922, SGA
(Akte Wilhelm Stein): 'Mit Haller habe ich mich in
Tiibingen ausserordentlich
gut verstanden. Trotzdem
ist es noch nicht sicher, ob ich zu ihm gehen werde, da
mein Gebiet ihm leider ganz fern liegt.' The famous
prophetic ending of Kaiser Friedrich may have been
modelled on the Ghibelline conclusion of Haller's 1914
mini-biography of Henry VI, which Kantorowicz cites
as a 'gedrangtes Gesamtbild' in the Ergiinzuigsbacind
(as in n. 97), P. 11. See J. Haller, 'Kaiser Heinrich VI.',
Historische Zeitschrift, (lxIII, 1914, pp. 473-509 (496-7).
176. As the reviewer of the book for the TLS astutely
observed: 'Readers of the original version [of Kai.ser
Friedrich] will not mistake the sources of [Kantorowicz's]
inspiration: on the literary side, the circle of Stephan
[sic] George, on the historical, that group of writers
upon early Imperial history of whom Dr. Karl Hampe
is the leading representative as well as the teacher': E.
Times Literary SupJacob, 'The Giant Hohenstaufen',
plement, 21January 1932, P. 37177. See A. Brackmann, 'Der Streit um die deutsche
Kaiserpolitik des Mittelalters', Velhagen & Klasings Monat1929,
repr. in idem, Gesammelte Aujsaitze,
shefte, xliII,
Weimar 1941, pp. 25-38.
178. It was Holtzmann who had invited Kantorowicz
to the 193o Historikertag. In 1936, the year that Kaiser
Friedrich went into its fourth printing, Bondi Verlag
published Holtzmann's biography of Otto the Great.
Conceived as a Ghibelline apologia for Otto at a time
when Nazi ideologists celebrated the 'German model
king' Henry I, Holtzmann's book, like Kantorowicz's,
none the less touched on so many v6lkisch commonplaces that it seemed to echo the new 'Germanic' image
of the Middle Ages projected by Himmler and Rosenberg: see R. Holtzmann, Kaiser Otto der Grof3e,Berlin
mit deutschem Blut'),
1936, pp. 67 ('Durchdringung
211
Kern.179On the other hand, he took issue with the Ghibellines, insofar as the overwhelming majority of them, while praising Frederick Barbarossa and Henry VI, condemned
Frederick II as an 'un-German' emperor who had brought about the decline of the Reich
and of Germany's former European hegemony.is0 For Kantorowicz, by contrast, Frederick's
reign marked the cultural and political culmination ('Erffillung') of the Holy Roman
Empire as well as the Regnum Teutonicum.The 'boy from Apulia', in his eyes, was at the
same time 'the most German emperor' ('der deutscheste Kaiser')181and as such deserved
a place in the Ghibelline pantheon. In the context of the heated contemporary debates
about the Reich in general and the Hohenstaufen emperors in particular, this recuperation of Frederick as a Ghibelline hero was a political statement. In order to define the
politics of Kantorowicz's Friedrichbildmore clearly, we need to take a closer look at the ways
in which his book participated in-and deviated from-the Ghibelline discourse.
The Ghibelline bias of KaiserFriedrichis perhaps most noticeable in the last two chapters, in which Frederick II emerges both as the tragic victim of the intrigues and 'ardent
hatred' of Innocent IV and Rainer of Viterbo and as the demonic persecutor of 'corrupt
clerics' ('verderbter Klerus').182 The fervently anti-Catholic sentiment that pervades these
passages-epitomised in the quotation from Nietzsche that opens chapter IX1S3-seems
to transport us back to the days of the Kulturkampf~"4
Bismarck, in a famous speech before
the Prussian Upper House in March 1873, had described his confrontation with Roman
Catholicism as a continuation of the conflict between the Hohenstaufen emperors and the
medieval popes.'85 Kantorowicz, writing of Frederick's adversaries Pope Gregory IX and
Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden, chose to label them 'Reichsfeinde' ('enemies of the
Reich') 18"-the term Bismarck had coined to decry the Catholic Centre Party.
13o-1 ('germanische Fiihrerschaft', 'v6lkische Verbin135 ('germanische
dung'),
Grundlagen seines [i.e.
Otto's] Staates'). See also G. Althoff and H. Keller,
Heinrich L und Otto der GrofJe,G6ttingen 1985, pp. 1 113.
179. Kantorowicz's derisive reference to the 'dfinne
politische Pragmatik' of those historians who dissected
'das volle lebendige Bild' of Frederick (KFZ, p. 71) may
have been directed against von Below; see H. Grundmann's review, 'Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite', Frankfurter
Zeitung (Literaturblatt), 30 April 1933, repr. in Stupor
Mundi: Zur GeschichteFriedrichs II. von Hohenstaufen, ed.
G. Wolf, Darmstadt 1966, pp. 103-8 (105). Von Below's
own review of the book was quite positive, but he criticised Kantorowicz for playing down the harmful effects
of Frederick's imperial policy on Germany (Vierteljahrschrift fir Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte,xxi, 1928, pp.
182-3).
18o. See Haller, Die Epochen (as in n. 173), p. 89. One
notable exception was Fedor Schneider (see above,
n. 137). K. Hampe, 'Kaiser Friedrich II.', Historische
K.
Zeitschrift, ILxxxiII, 1899, pp. 1-42 (11), merely stated
the medievalists' opinio communis when he declared that
Frederick had 'so gar nichts von dem deutschen Wesen
angenommen'. J. Haller, Das altdeutsche Kaisertum, 6th
edn, Stuttgart 1934, PP. 24o, 244, censured Frederick
much more emphatically in this respect, labelling him
'verwelscht', a 'landfremder Herrscher', who would have
reduced Germany to a satellite of Italy. Fleckenstein,
'Das Bild der Staufer' (as in n. 163), p. 466, suggests
that Kaiser Friedrich was conceived as a reply to Haller's
charges in particular. The various attacks on Frederick
as a 'foreigner' and 'Italian' by German medievalists
are listed in E. Klingelh6fer, Die Reichsgesetze votn 1220,
1231/32 und I235, Weimar 1955, pp. 223-4.
181. KFZ, p. 377.
182. KFZ, pp. 541-3, 477183. Nietzsche conceived of Frederick as a paradigmatically anti-Catholic figure; see his GesamnmelteWerke(as
in n. 115),
and xxi, pp. 252-3.
xvii, p. 258,
184. See J. Fleckenstein, 'Ernst Kantorowicz zum Geddichtnis', Frankfurter Universitiitsreden,
Xxxiv, 1964, pp.
1 1-27, repr. in idem, Ordnungen (as in n. 163), pp. 5o821 (512),
who detects the influence of Stefan George
and Heinrich von Treitschke in Kaiser Friedrich.
185. 0. von Bismarck, Die gesammelten Werke, 15 vols,
Berlin 1924-35 XI, pp. 289-90o; quoted in G. Craig,
866-1945, Oxford 1978, pp. 71-2.
Germany•
186. KFZ, pp. 496 (Gregory IX), 566 (Konrad von
Hochstaden).
212
MARTIN
A. RUEHL
Filled with such anti-ultramontane zeal, Kantorowicz sometimes emphasises the opposition between imperiumand ecclesiain a way that is hardly warranted by the sources.
For instance, he describes Frederick's self-coronation in Jerusalem in 1229 as a conscious
step towards the establishment of a wholly secular 'Weltherrschaft'-largely obscuring
the fact that the emperor's room for manoeuvre in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was
seriously constrained by his desire for reconciliation with the pope, as Brackmann rightly
pointed out in 1929.187 At another point, Kantorowicz seems to envisage a sort of Caesaropapism, contemplating, with apparent relish but little historical plausibility, Frederick's
annexation and secularisation of the Papal States.188His 1935 radio lecture on the 'German Papacy' ('Deutsches Papsttum') projected a similar scenario: the establishment of a
'non-Roman German National Church' ('Romfreie Deutsche Nationalkirche'), in which
the Apostolic See, transferred to a German diocese (Mainz or Trier) and occupied by a
German bishop, would be strictly subordinate to the emperor.'9 With its vehement attacks
on 'sodomising monks', 'lewd clergymen' and the 'Latin-humanist ideology' ('welschhumanistisches Gedankenarsenal') of the papacy,190this lecture often sounds more like
an echo of Wolters's tirades against the Catholic Church1"' than a defence of George's
'Mediterranean' notion of Deutschtum.192
The scion of a wealthy, liberal Jewish family living in the capital of the Prussian
province of Posen, Kantorowicz had grown up in a decidedly anti-Catholic milieu.193The
Jewish population of Posen traditionally identified itself with Lutheran Germany against
the Catholic Poles, who represented the ethnic majority. 94A symbol of this allegiance was
the Jewish synagogue in the TeichstraBe, built in 1907, which strongly resembled the new
187. A. Brackmann, 'Kaiser Friedrich II. in "mythischer Schau"', Historische Zeitschrift, cxI., 1929, pp. 53449, repr. in Stupor Mundi (as in n. 179), PP- 5-22 (7-1 1).
Most accounts of the Mythenschau controversy reduce
Brackmann to a papier-mache mandarin or positivist
whipping-boy and dismiss his critique of Kaiser Friedrich
as the hopeless attempt of an ossified profession to preserve the legacy of 'kritische Quellenforschung'.
Hardly
any commentator, as Kuhlgatz remarks in his Rezeptionsgeschichte of Kantorowicz's book, has seriously engaged
with Brackmann's charges, which were severe, but 'in
ihren Grundzfigen ... durchaus stichhaltig': Kuhlgatz
(as in n. 14), p. 738.
188. KFZ, pp. 469-70. Kantorowicz here again alluded
to Nietzsche, who had identified the meaning of the
Renaissance with the opportunity provided by Cesare
Borgia to secularise the Church from within: see his
Gesammelte Werke (as in n. 115), xvil, pp. 259-6o0. The
quotation in KFZ, p. 47( ('von fiberirdischern Reiz...')
is taken directly from the Antichrist. In his lecture
'Deutsches Papsttum' (as in n. 36), p. 12, Kantorowicz
Vision eines "Cesare
reiterated this 'Nietzschesche
Borgia als Papst"'.
189. Kantorowicz, 'Deutsches Papsttum' (as in n. 36),
pp. 2 1-4.
9go. Ibid., pp. 12, 23.
191. Cf. e.g. Wolters, Stefan George(as in n. 38), p. 549
'Die Deutschen
(193o, from his 'Blattergeschichte'):
waren nach den R6mern die Triger der staatlichen
Okumene gewesen, des heiligen Reiches, aber dieses
umfa8lte die geistige Okumene nur in der Form des
Gegenpols, der geistlichen Gewalt mit volksfremder
Spitze und volksfremder Sprache [i.e. the Catholic
Church] ... Unser Sehnen aber blieb ein Menschtum,
das beide Gewalten umfal3te und als unsere Kaiser sich
an solcher Einheit ... schon mfide gerungen hatten,
suchten wir Rom, die fremde Mitte der geistlichen Okumene ... aus unseren Grenzen zu dringen...
192. For the latter view cf. Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und
George (as in n. 3), pp. 13o-5; and Petrow (as in n. 1i),
pp. 123-7.
193. On Kantorowicz's Posen background see Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und GeoTge (as in n. 3), pp. 4-18;
A. Labuda, 'Ein Posener Itinerar zu Kantorowicz', in
Geschichtsk6iper (as in n. 15), pp. 73-91i; and Ernst Kanu
torowicz (1 895-1963): Soziales Milieu n1d
wissenschaftliche
Relevanz (Vortrage des Symposiums am Institut fir
Geschichte der Adanm-Mickiewicz-Universitit,
Poznafi
1995), ed.J. Strzelczyk, Poznafi 1996, esp. pp. 65-9o.
194. See W. Breslauer, 'Jews of the City of Posen One
Hundred Years Ago', Yearbookof the Leo Baeck Institute,
viII,
1963,
pp. 229-37.
213
whose construction had begun several years earlier under
Hohenzollern Residenzschlof3,
the auspices of Wilhelm II. With the ResidenzschlofJ,
Wilhelm, who cherished a few Ghibelline dreams of his own,'95 had placed a piece of Hohenstaufen architecture in the middle
of the new Posen to commemorate the 'German civilising mission' ('deutscher Kulturauftrag') in Poland, initiated by the medieval emperors and continued by the Maison de
Brandenbourg.'96 The chapel within the tower of the castle-conceived, apparently, as a
direct counter-point to the neo-Byzantine chapel in the (Polish) Cathedral-replicated
the Capella Palatina in Palermo.'97 The imperial castle in Posen, like the relief of the
Bismarck Tower at Lake Starnberg, which was decorated with images of Charlemagne and
Frederick I, expressed the continuity between the Hohenstaufen and the Hohenzollern.
the new synaBy copying the monumental Romanesque architecture of the Residenzschlof3,
with
the
German
cause.
announced
its
partisanship
gogue proudly
Kantorowicz's fatherJoseph, as a member of the 'Synagogenbaukommission',198 had
been involved in the construction of the Posen synagogue. In 19o6, he and his family
moved into a spacious apartment on the HohenzollernstraBe. Young Kantorowicz, thus,
was surrounded by a symbolically charged cityscape that associated Prussia with the German Middle Ages and both with the spirit of anti-ultramontanism. In the aftermath of the
Great War, he defended this Ghibelline trinity in the Posen-based 'Deutsche Volkswehr'1"99
against the Polish independence movement which was headed by the workers' and soldiers' councils and supported by the Catholic Church. The latter eventually won the day
when, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, the German provinces Posen and West
Prussia were ceded to Pilsudski's Poland.
The loss of these territories ushered in a period of intensified interest in 'Ostforschung' (research on Eastern Europe) among German medievalists in the 1920os. Pointing
to the successive colonisation of the East Elbian lands since the time of Otto the Great,
several historians endeavoured to demonstrate that the Versailles settlement ignored their
nation's great cultural legacy ('Kulturtaten') in Eastern Europe and needed to be revised
accordingly.201 While most agreed, however, that their 'drive Eastwards' in the Middle
195. Hampe, Nachwelt (as in n. o06), pp. 74-5, reports
that Wilhelm II was intrigued by Frederick II, with
whom he felt an elective affinity. See also R. ZedlitzTrfitzschler, ZwiilfJahre am deutschen Kaiserhof 5th edn,
Berlin 1924, p. 13o; and R. Schneider, Verhiillter Tag:
Bekenntnis eines Lebens, 6th edn, Cologne 1962, p. io8.
It was the Kaiser who initiated the collection and reedition of Friderican documents by the newly founded
Prussian Historical Institute in Rome.
Archi196. See J. Skuratowicz, 'Die wilhelminische
tektur in Posen', PreuIJen in der Provinz: Beitriige zum I.
Deutsch-Polnischen Historikerkolloquium, ed. P. Nitsche,
Frankfurt am Main 199l1, pp. 94-104
(1oo-i).
197. Hitler, who entertained similar Ghibelline visions,
as we shall see, turned the tower chapel into his private
office after the Polish campaign in September 1939;
see Skuratowicz (as in n. 196), p. 104.
198. Labuda, 'Posener Itinerar' (as in n. 193), p. 89.
199. In a letter of 15 April 1933 to the Board of
Trustees of Frankfurt University (LBI, Box 5, Folder 5),
Kantorowicz mentions his membership of the 'Deutsche
Volkswehr' to ward off 'polnische Ubergriffe in Posen'.
See also Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und (George(as in n. 3),
pp. 27-8. An anti-Slavic bias is perhaps discernible in
Kantorowicz's notes for a lecture series on German
history held at Berkeley, most likely in 1943/4, as part
of an Army Special Training Program. See LBI, Kantorowicz lectures, German History (originals), ch. 'Papal
Revolution & Imperial Counter-Revolution', p. 13, where
he remarks that German sculptures from the period
following the dissolution of the Hohenstaufen empire
adopted the 'tormented features of a Gothic which was
neither Roman nor Mediterranean,
but had strong
contributions from Slavic side [sic]'.
See Koch, 'Die mittelalterliche Kaiserpolitik' (as
200.
in n. 164), pp. 1860-2;
Schleier (as in n. 168), pp.
214
MARTIN A. RUEHL
Ages had been 'the great colonising feat of the German people', to quote the title of
Hampe's popular 1921 booklet,201 there were crucial differences between Ghibellines and
neo-Sybelites with regard to the relation between the Italian and the 'Eastern' policy of
the German emperors. Von Below and Kern claimed that the Reich's Eastern expansion,
which should have been the emperors' absolute priority, had been tragically undermined
by their involvement in the Mediterranean;202but for Ghibellines such as Holtzmann and
Brackmann, the R6merzug,in that it implied the guardianship and, potentially, domination
of the papacy, was the necessary precondition for a successful missionary and colonising
policy in the East.203
Like Brackmann, Kantorowicz conceived Frederick's Eastern policy in the context of
his Italian plans. He emphasised that the Christianisation of heathen Prussia by the Order
of the Teutonic Knights since 1233 had proceeded under the secular aegis of Frederick,
not the pope. Frederick had, in fact, anticipated the papal plans to convert Prussia with
the help of the Cistercians.204Though the relevant documents suggested that, compared
to Charlemagne, Henry I or Otto the Great, Frederick had played a somewhat minor role
in Germany's drive Eastwards,205Kantorowicz none the less turned him into the patron of
what he, in accordance with the large majority of contemporary German medievalists,
called the Reich's 'Eastern European mission'. Indirectly, through Hermann von Salza,
Master of the Teutonic Knights, he argued, Frederick had gained the heathen lands
between the Vistula and the Neman Rivers for the Hohenstaufen Empire and thus participated in the 'foundation of the Prussian state'.206Hermann's Order, according to Kantorowicz, was modelled on Sicily, and so carried over a 'spiritual essence' ('ein Geistiges')
from Frederick's kingdom in the South to the plains of Eastern Europe-the same essence
that would later be incorporated in the Hohenzollern monarchy.207Thus, Kantorowicz,
in classic Ghibelline fashion, established a trajectory from the First to the Second Reich.
It is notable, in this context, that he asked for a copy of KaiserFriedrichto be sent to the
88-go; and G. Althoff, 'Die Beurteilung der mittelalterlichen Ostpolitik als Paradigma ffir zeitgebundene
Die Deutschen und ihr Mittelalter,
Geschichtsbewertung',
ed. idem, Darmstadt 1992, pp. 147-64 (149-52).
201. K. Hampe, Der Zug nach dem Osten: Die kolonisatorische GroJ3tatdes deutschen Volkes imnMittelalter, Leipzig
This booklet went through four editions between
1921.
1934 and 1939. Kantorowicz alluded to it in his lectures
at Berkeley in 1943/4: 'The Eastern colonization has
often been called the greatest performance of the Germans during the Middle Ages, and not without some
good reason': LBI, Kantorowicz lectures (as in n. 199),
ch. 'Eastern Colonization', [p. 1i].
202. See Below, 'Die italienische Kaiserpolitik' (as in
n. 157), pp. 64-5, 101-3; and Kern, 'Der deutsche
Staat' (as in n. 157), p. 68.
203. See A. Brackmann, 'Der Streit' (as in n. 177),
p. 29, and idem, 'Die Ostpolitik Ottos des Gro8en',
Historische Zeitschrift,
CxxxLv; 1926, pp. 242-56.
204. See KFZ, p. 87: '... es bestand die Gefahr, da83
PreuBen ein Lehensland der r6mischen Kurie wiirde'.
205. See Grundmann (as in n. 179), in Stupor Mundi,
p. 133206. KFZ, pp. 87-8. An even stronger case for
Frederick's active involvement in the East is presented
by A. Brackmann, 'Kaiser Friedrich II.', Gestalterder
derdeutschen Vergangenheit, ed. P. Rohden, Potsdam 1937, PP141-56, repr. in Stupor Mundi (as in n. 179), pp. 178-93
(186).
207. KFZ, p. 250. Cf. LBI, Kantorowicz lectures (as
in n. 199), ch. 'Teutonic Knights', p. 2, where he again
depicted the Teutonic Knights as a spiritual basic unit
of the later Prussian state. That Prussia lacked 'ein
Geistiges' had been the traditional charge of the Circle
before 19 18. Kantorowicz's association of Frederick with
Prussia in this passage reflects the Circle's positive reevaluation of Prussianness after the War. In his 1933
lecture 'Das Geheime Deutschland' (as in n. 132), pp.
85, 87, he counted the Hohenzollern Frederick II, along
with the Hohenstaufen emperors, among the heroes of
the Secret Germany.
215
last great political representative of the Hohenzollern tradition in the Weimar Republic,
Paul von Hindenburg.208
At the centre of Kantorowicz's Ghibellinism was his defence of Frederick's imperial
policy. The traditional charge of the Gotha School in this respect, originally levelled by
von Sybel and repeated in the i 92os by von Below, was, as we have seen, that the Hohenstaufen's involvement in Lombardy had decisively impeded the subsequent political and
economic development of a Central European nation state. Although there was broad
agreement now that Sybel's condemnation of the Hohenstaufen had not done justice to
the necessarily universal conception of the Reich in the High Middle Ages, almost all
medievalists took the view that Frederick II's policy in particular had fatefully decentralised Germany. More than anybody else, according to Haller, Frederick II, who 'abducted'
('entfihrte') the German imperial crown to Italy thereby severing the 'vital roots' ('Lebenswurzeln') of the German monarchy, was responsible for the failure of a strong and
unified German state to emerge during the following five hundred years.219Even Hampe,
who otherwise hailed Frederick as a brilliant ruler and harbinger of the Renaissance,
soberly conceded that the emperor always viewed Germany from the vantage point of his
universal policy, whose centre of gravity he moved to Italy. There could be no question
for him that this had significantly contributed to the 'decline of central power in Germany'
.210
of the historical
Against the weight of such academic authorities and-again-most
Kantorowicz
not
defended
Frederick
but
evidence,
only
reinterpreted
II's imperial policy,
it as 'the most profound realisation ... of the [German] national question then possible'.211
Even though he subordinated, at least primafacie, Germany to his Italian lands, Frederick,
Kantorowicz contended, had very definite plans for the establishment of a more centralised German nation. Far from abandoning his German lands to the particularist tendencies
of the princes and prince bishops, the emperor aimed at an 'intensification of state power
[in Germany] according to the Sicilian model'.212 As in his intervention in Prussia,
Frederick achieved this goal 'by an indirect path' ('auf mittelbarem Wege'),213 through a
temporary strengthening of the German sovereigns. Eventually, however-that is, after
a successful completion of his Italian campaigns-he was going to re-assert his 'superior
imperial central power' ('iibergeordnete kaiserliche Zentralgewalt') north of the Alps.
Some of the constitutional changes he initiated in Germany already pointed in this direction; and even his engagement in Lombardy and Sicily, Kantorowicz speculated, may
have ultimately served this purpose.214With a few bold strokes of his mythographic brush,
208. Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n. 3),
p. 81.
20o.
Haller, Das altdeutsche Kaisertum (as in n. 18o),
p. 240.
210. Hampe, 'Kaiser Friedrich II.' (as in n. 18o), pp.
33-4: 'Zerfall der Centralgewalt in Deutschland'.
21 1. KFZ, p. 75: 'die tiefste damals m6gliche Erfiillung des Nationalen'. Cf. p. 353: 'die letzte Vollendung
des alten Reiches der Deutschen'.
212.
KFZ, p. 350: 'staatliche Intensivierung nach sizilischem Vorbild'. Cf. pp. 376-7, 381, where Kantorowicz
suggests that the highly centralised Sicilian kingdom
served as a blueprint for Frederick's plans regarding
Germany. Brackmann argued along very similar lines
in 1937: see his 'Kaiser Friedrich II.' (as in n. 206), in
Stupor Mundi, p. 189.
213. KFZ, p. 74.
214. KFZ, p. 351. Some post-World War II medievalists have reiterated this line of argument: see R. Kloos,
'Kaiser Friedrich II.: Literaturbericht 1950-56', Traditio,
xI1, 1956, p. 435. But compare Herbert Grundmann's
more critical assessment, in B. Gebhardt, Haindbuch
216
MARTIN A. RUEHL
Kantorowicz radically re-drew the image of Frederick II's German policy and presented
him as nothing less than the emperor who had realised the German dreams ('der Endund Erfiillungskaiser der deutschen Traume'), and, in a higher sense, unified the German
empire ('in einem h6heren Sinne das deutsche Einreich vollendet').215
As father of the German Reich, godfather of Prussia and cunning antagonist of the
pope, the Hohenstaufen emperor emerged like a medieval Bismarck from the pages of
KaiserFriedrich.There is a strong sense, indeed, that the spirit of 1871, no less than that
of 1914, informed his biography of Frederick II. The empire Kantorowicz envisioned in
1927, however, was not the one founded
by Bismarck in 1871 nor the one for which
he himself had taken up arms in 1914. Like Spahn, Moeller van den Bruck and Haller, he
conceived the new Reich in much grander dimensions. His reference to Bismarck in the
evocative final paragraph of the book suggests that the Hohenzollern Empire, for him,
was not the final fulfillment of Germany's Ghibelline aspirations and that Frederick's
Reich had yet to emerge.216 The 'greybeard' Wilhelm I,27 Kantorowicz writes, and the
'Reich's greatest vassal', Bismarck, had realised only the kleindeutschdreams of the 'grizzled
sleeper'-a reference to the mythic figure of Barbarossa in the Kyffhfiuser legend. The
'Lord of the Beginning', that is, Frederick II, and his 'Volk'-the German people in its
'welthaltig' (universal) totality-remained unredeemed.218
In chapter VI, Kantorowicz had already intimated that Prussia's later preponderance
in Germany signified a 'falsification of the true German identity'."'1The lament in his prefatory note that this was a 'time without emperors' hence did not imply-as the ex-Kaiser
in Doorn apparently thought220-a call for the return of the Hohenzollern. It would none
the less be rash to read Kantorowicz's (in any case rather qualified) critique of Prussian
hegemony in Germany as an expression of anti-nationalist views. If he voiced some doubts
here about the Hohenzollern's mission in Germany, he still clung to the Ghibelline ideal
of Germany'simperial mission in Europe. As one contemporaryobserverremarkedwith
regard to the passage in question, Kantorowicz's concern for the formation of a 'supratribal' ('fiberstammhaft'), universal German identity reflected current national hopes for
der deutschen Geschichte, 8th edn, Stuttgart 1954, I, p.
365.
215. KFZ, pp. 197, 354. Both Hampe and Baethgen
pressed Kantorowicz hard on this point, questioning
his 'Harmonisierung'
(Baethgen) of Frederick's problematic interventions in the RegnitumTeutonicumn:see F.
Baethgen, 'Besprechung von Ernst LKantorowicz' Kaiser
Friedrich der Zweite', Deutsche Literaturzeitung,
II, 1930,
cols 75-85, repr. in Stupor Mundi (as in n. 179), pp.
49-61 (56); and K. Hampe, 'Das neueste Lebensbild
Kaiser Friedrichs II.', Historische Zeitschrift, CXIuII,1932,
pp. 441-75, repr. in StuporMundi, pp. 62-102
(89-91).
216. Kantorowicz had previously included Bismarck
among the Guelf heroes, positing a genealogical line
from Henry the Lion to 'dem ungekr6nten Grfinder
des Nordreiches ... dem erhabensten dieser Riesen, der
als Schicksal den Welfen so nahesteht' (KFZ, p. 65).
217. This is most likely an allusion to Wilhelm I's
Ghibelline sobriquet 'Barbablanca'.
218. KFZ, p. 632. Grfinewald, Kantorowziczuntd George
(as in n. 3), p. 8o, identifies 'des Kaisers Volk' with the
George Circle. Similarly, he interprets Kantorowicz's
amor patriae in the Halle speech as love for the Secret
Germany: see his 'Sanctus amor patriae dat animutiein Wahlspruch des George-Kreises?', Deutsches Archiv
fiir Erforschung des Mittelalters, I., 1994, pp. 89- 1o3 (1() 1-
however,was not just an esoteric
3). KaiserFriedrich,
'Geistbuch',but also a patrioticappealto the German
people.
It was, as Kantorowicz later told Salin, full of
hopes both for the victoryof the SecretGermanyand
for the 'Erneuerungdes deutschenVolkesdurch den
Blickauf seinen gr6sstenKaiser':Salin,Privatdruck
(as
in n. 22), p. 9. Cf.ibid.,p. 11.
219.
KFZ, p. 353: 'Verffilschung
des wahren
Deut-
schen'.
22o. ForWilhelmII'senthusiasticresponseto KantoundGeorge
Kantorowicz
rowicz'sbooksee Grfinewald,
(as
in n. 3), p. 84.
KAISERFRIEDRICH
KANTOROWICZ'S
217
the renewal of a greater German empire: 'today's expectations of a new Reich no doubt
resound in this description'.221
The Reich invoked at the end of KaiserFriedrichcannot, of course, easily be identified with any particular political programme. There is some evidence, however, that the
'Reichsidee' underlying the book had a more concrete revisionist dimension than most of
today's critics allow. Kantorowicz, for one thing, viewed his own historiographical work as a
concretely political, patriotic affair. In the period of despair following the national breakdown of 1918, he declared in his Halle speech, it was the duty of the German historian to
demonstrate his 'fanatical belief' ('fanatischer Glaube') in the endangered fatherland
As he told
and to preach the 'dogma of the nation's dignified future and
honour'.-22
the
his
of
had
been
for
Frederick II
renewal of the
Salin,
biography
inspired by hopes
German people.223 His next major project, a book on the Great Interregnum (1254-73),
which he began to write in the summer of 1932,224 was imbued with no less topical concerns. The Interregnum was the period of political chaos in Germany between the collapse
of the Hohenstaufen Empire and the accession of the first Habsburg emperor, Rudolf I.
While Frederick II embodied Germany's positive potential for universal rule, the Interregnum, in Kantorowicz's eyes, represented the other 'eternally German' ('ewigdeutsche')
possibility. A letter to George from this time shows that he considered the new book as a
mirror held up to contemporary Germany, and that he viewed the Weimar Republic as
a latter-day Interregnum-the second 'total breakdown of a German world'.225
The idealised image of the Hohenstaufen 'world empire' projected in KaiserFriedrich
represented an ideological counterbalance to the present Interregnum-'this time without emperors'-and the promise of a once more dignified national future.226Its symbol
was the Roman eagle emblazoned on the yellow imperial banners at Frederick's triumphal
procession through Cremona after the Battle of Cortenuova (1237), which Kantorowicz
chose to portray as a victory of German arms.227Weimar, on the other hand, stood for
Germany's defeat and humiliation, territorial loss and financial bondage at the hands of
the enemy, most notably France. Kantorowicz's lament that the Germans 'have not yet
cleaned the bloodstained eagle'228 had unmistakably political implications: to undo
221. Grundmann, 'Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite' (as in
n. 179), in Stupor Mundi, p. 1o5: 'heutige Reichshoffnungen klingen wohl in der Schilderung mit'. When
Grundmann's
review appeared in April 1933, these
of course, had just been given a
'Reichshoffnungen',
new boost.
222. 'das Dogma von der wuirdigen Zukunft der
Nation und ihrer Ehre'. See Kantorowicz, 'Grenzen'
(as in n. 65), pp. 124-5.
223. See Salin, Privatdruck (as in n. 22), p. 9; and also
above, n. 218. A. Mohler, Die konservative Revolution in
Deutschland 1918-1932, Stuttgart 1950, p. 74, regarded
Kaiser Friedrich as a political text, propagating the Weltanschauung of the Conservative Revolution.
224. On the (never completed) Interregnum book see
R. Lerner, 'Kantorowicz and Continuity', in Benson and
Fried, pp. 104-23.
225. E. Kantorowicz to S. George, 22 May 1932, SGA:
'totale Zusammenbruch
einer deutschen Welt'. That
the book was conceived as a comment on the Weimar
Republic is suggested by the following remark: 'Man
muss halt den Stoff nehmen, den die Zeit einem darbietet.'
226. For the anti-republican
of the
implications
'Reichsidee' see K. Sontheimer, AntidemokratischesDenken
in der WeimarerRepublik: Die politischen Ideen des deutschen
Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933, Munich 1962,
pp. 280-306.
227. See KFZ, p. 400.
228. KFZ, p. 620. According to a folk legend, an eagle
had trailed his wing in the blood of the dead Konradin
and thus stained soared again to heaven. Kantorowicz
combined this image of the unavenged Hohenstaufen
with the notion of a German Vespers. In a similarly
218
MARTIN A. RUEHL
Weimar and Versailles and to realise the first 'eternally German' possibility, the Reich. In
this respect, the eagle resembled the phoenix,229 the potent symbol of rebirth and renewal
that Kantorowicz would go on to study in TheKing's TwoBodies.
In referring back to Rome-as opposed to Prussia-the eagle also carried imperialist, expansionist connotations. Just as Frederick II had revived the universal imperium
Romanum, the new Reich would revive the trans-European legacy of the Holy Roman
Empire, transcending the kleindeutschboundaries of Bismarck's nation state. In Frederick's
plans for renovatio, the German lands had played a secondary role, as a reservoir of
mercenaries for his campaigns in northern Italy. For the author of KaiserFriedrich,however,
Frederick's renewal of the old 'universal role' ('Weltstellung') of imperial Rome had
equally renewed Germany's universal role.230 Only in the larger geopolitical arena of
Frederick's Reich could the 'German universal capacities' ('deutsche Weltkrfifte') manifest
themselves.23' Through Frederick, he asserted, 'the entire Imperium, not just the lands
north of the Alps, could be German'.232Although he made much of its Southern orientation, Kantorowicz left no doubt that the Holy Roman Empire was also the empire of the
German nation, a vehicle for the realisation of the German European mission. In accordance with the large majority of Ghibellines in the g92os,he embraced a 'Reichsidee' that
was supra-national, but at the same time deeply Germanocentric.233
David Abulafia and Carl Landauer contend that Kantorowicz's references to Germany's 'Welthaltigkeit' reflect a truly European, universal conception of Frederick and
his Reich.234There are a number of passages in KaiserFriedrichthat seem, at first sight, to
support this claim. For example, Kantorowicz once remarks that in Frederick's empire,
there was no 'subjection' ('Unterjochung') of other nations by one nation,just an alliance
of all the monarchs and all the people of Christendom under the Roman emperor.235
At another point, he even describes medieval Europe as an 'egalitarian community of
peoples' ('gleichberechtigte V61lkergemeinschaft'), which Frederick, no less than Dante,
had envisioned.236 The universalism that appears to reverberate in these two quotations,
however, is deceptive.237 'Welthaltigkeit', for Kantorowicz, did not mean 'Weltbiirgertum'
militant spirit, Kommerell said of Germany: 'Das Land
auf das der Adler Gottes sich herablief, kennt kein
Recht neben dem seinen, und wer seine Weihe leugnet,
ist nicht nur sein, sondern des Gottes Widersacher':
Kommerell, DerDichterals Fiihrer (as in n. 88), p. 477.
parallels
229. Kantorowicz discussed the iconological
between the two birds in his article 'Zu den Rechtsgrundlagen der Kaisersage', Deutsches Archiv fiir Erforschung des Mittelalters, xIII, 1957, pp. 115-5o, repr. in E.
Selected Studies, Locust Valley 1965, pp.
284-307 (306).
230. KFZ, pp. 389-90o.
231. KFZ, p. 74.
232. KFZ, p. 89: 'Deutschland sei iiberall da, wo der
r6mische Kaiser mit einigen Ffirsten zusammenkomme,
hie3 der ... Grundsatz Friedrichs II., mit dem er andererseits auch gerade dartat, daB das ganze Imperium,
nicht nur die Lande n6rdlich der Alpen auch deutsch
sein k6nnte'. Note also, in this context, that Kantorowicz
Kantorowicz,
refers to Henry VI's trans-European empire as 'das
eine, universale r6mische Erdrund der Deutschen':
ibid., p. 14.
233. For the ultimately imperialist concerns underof the
lying most historiographical
representations
'Reichsidee' see Faulenbach (as in n. 169), p. 83. A rare
exception is Ricarda Huch's history of the Middle Ages,
which highlighted the Reich's de-centralised character,
the diversity of its peoples, their self-government and
legal protection: see her Deutsche Geschichte, i, Rtimisches
Reich Deutscher Nation, Berlin 1934234. See Abulafia, 'Kantorowicz and England' (as in
n. io), p. 132; Landauer (as in n. io), pp. 7-8.
235. KFZ, p. 353236. KFZ., p. 522.
237. That Kantorowicz's notion of a community of
European peoples was not modelled on the League
of Nations becomes evident in his 'Deutsches Papstturn' (as in n. 36), p. 8: 'Vor einem ... blieb das Papsttum
219
('cosmopolitanism'); and his vision of a European Reich ultimately accommodated the
notion of German supremacy.
The ambiguities of Kantorowicz's allegedly egalitarian 'Reichsidee' come to the fore
in his reliance on Dante. In his De monarchia,Dante conceived a universal ruler who was
more than just 'primus inter pares': an ideal monarch who would reign over the other
European nations as subjects, not as sovereign equals. Frederick II, by contrast, considered
himself as placed by God before the other European kings: 'prae regibus orbis terrae
sublime constituit'-prae regibus, not super reges.2"8Kantorowicz, though, saw Frederick
through the lens of De monarchia and portrayed him-in Dantesque terms indeed-as
'dominus mundi',239 the absolute universal ruler above the other kings. At the beginning
of his book, he had already applauded Henry VI's 'German world rule', which reduced
all other European nations, most notably France and England, to the status of vassal
states, 'thrown in the dust before the imperial throne'.240 Throughout Kaiser Friedrich,
Kantorowicz frequently exalted Frederick's empire, like Henry VI's, over the individual
monarchies of thirteenth-century Europe.241 The anachronistic comparisons between
Frederick and Napoleon, between the Hohenstaufen Empire and the 'Napoleonic world
kingdom',242 are revealing in this context-as is the reference to Frederick's Reich as a
'great Central European Imperium' ('groBes mitteleuropiisches Imperium').24- Ever
since Paul de Lagarde's DeutscheSchriften,'Mitteleuropa' had been a synonym for German
supremacy on the continent,244 whether in Friedrich Naumann's more federalist, economic plans,245 the aggressively annexationist claims of the pan-Germans during World
War I or the irredentist rhetoric of the Weimar historian Wilhelm SchfiBler, who called
for a drastic revision of the boundaries imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles
and the recuperation of 'deutscher Volksraum' in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.246
zu einer Art V61immer bewahrt: herabzusinken
die den Volkern nach dem
kerbundsprisidentschaft,
ehernen Gesetz alphabetischer Reihenfolge zufillt.'
238. See R. Holtzmann, 'Der Weltherrschaftsgedanke
des mittelalterlichen
Kaisertums und die Souveranitfit
der europiischen
Staaten', Historische Zeitschrift, cuIx,
Kantorowicz himself fol1939, pp. 251-64 (263-4).
lowed W. Rfisen, 'Der Weltherrschaftsgedanke
und das
deutsche Kaisertum im Mittelalter', Ph.D. thesis, Halle
University 1913, and H. Finke, Weltimperialismus und
nationale Regungen im spdten Mittelalter, Freiburg 1916,
who minimised the sovereignty of the European monarchs and stressed Frederick II's paramount position as
'caput orbis' or 'world ruler'. See Ergiinzungsband (as inl
n. 97), pp. 12, 178.
239. This was the heading of his book's penultimate
chapter. In contrast to Kantorowicz, recent scholars
have stressed that Frederick II considered
himself
less as a world ruler than as the 'sindicus' of a corpus
saecularium principum, in which the other monarchs
independently
pursued their own policies: see e.g. N.
Zeithorizont', in
Kamp, 'Friedrich II. im europiischen
Friedrich II., ed. Esch and Kamp (as in n. 105), p. 2.
240. KFZ, pp. 17, 12: 'die deutsche Weltherrschaft';
'die Welt vor seinem Kaiserthron in den Staub zu
driicken'. Kantorowicz took Henry VI's imperial propaganda at face value. Cf. the more sceptical assessment
of R. Schlierer, Weltherrschaftsgedanke und altdeutsches
Kaisertum, Tfibingen 1934, P. 107241. See e.g. KFZ, pp. 523-4, where he emphasises
the superiority of Frederick's 'Reichsgeblfit' over the
lineage of other European rulers.
242. KFZ, p. 444. Haller had compared Frederick's
father Henry VI to Napoleon in his 'Kaiser Heinrich
VI.' (as in 175), P- 477.
243. KFZ, p. 349.
244. See P. de Lagarde, 'Die nachsten Pflichten
deutscher Politik' (1886), Deutsche Schriften, 5th edn,
G6ttingen 1920, pp. 440-2. George greatly admired
Lagarde: see E. Landmann (as in n. 46), p. 50. On the
genealogy of the 'Mitteleuropaidee' see H. Meier, 'Zur
im 19. Jahrhundert
(de Lagarde,
Europa-Ideologie
Frantz)', Studien iiber die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft,
ed.J. Streisand, II, Berlin-Ost 1965, pp. 25-40.
245. See F. Naumann, Mitteleuropa, Berlin 1915, PP.
40-2,
invoking the Holy Roman Empire as a model for
'Mitteleuropa'.
246. See Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken (as in
n. 226), pp. 292-7; and Faulenbach (as in n. 169), pp.
82-5.
220
MARTIN A. RUEHL
Like SchfiBler, Spahn, and other contemporary theoreticians of 'Mitteleuropa', Kantorowicz legitimised these German claims to European leadership with reference to the Middle
Ages, when Germany was the 'land of the emperors' and France only 'the land of the
kings'.247
In the light of these contemporary discourses on 'Mitteleuropa' and the Reich, the
political contours of Kantorowicz's 'universalism' become more readily apparent. His insistence on the 'Roman' or 'welthaltig' dimension of Germany under Frederick II's rule
reflected less a benevolent cosmopolitanism than a deeply felt belief in Germany's mission
to lead the West.248The French medievalist Marc Bloch, writing in the 1920S, traced this
Germanocentric interpretation of the Holy Roman Empire back to the imperialist legacy
of Wilhelmine Germany. Weltpolitik,he observed in 1928, had aroused a fellow feeling for
the medieval Weltherrschaft-an allusion, no doubt, to the neo-Ghibelline visions of a once
again powerful German Reich dominating the European continent. He noted that the
effects of the 'imperial concept' could be detected in certain undercurrents of the German
patriotism of his day: those 'that reveal a fundamental will to power'.249 For Bloch, Kantorowicz's 'nationalisme historique' clearly participated in these undercurrents.250
IV. 'MESSIASKAISER': SACRALISATION OF THE POLITICAL
Kantorowicz's brand of Ghibellinism was a far cry from that of Droysen, for whom Germany's superior significance rested, ultimately, in its role as a 'nation of peace' ('Friedensstaat') in the heart of Europe, with a pacifying influence on the rest of the continent.251
Kantorowicz, by contrast, understood Germany's 'universal task' ('Weltaufgabe') in more
militantly expansionist terms, as his resonant allusions to the 'mission in the East', Alsace,
the 'German Vespers' and 'Mitteleuropa' betray. For Droysen, the liberal nineteenthcentury scholar, Germany had universal significance also as an exemplary 'constitutional
state' ('Verfassungsstaat').252Kantorowicz, although he made much of Frederick's role as
a 'prince of peace' ('Friedeffirst') and the embodiment of 'Justitia', shared none of these
liberal ideals. The popular view of Frederick as a liberal and tolerant prince, he emphasised, was misconceived: Frederick was 'the most intolerant emperor ever to emerge in
the West'.253
While his assessment of Frederick was probably historically more accurate than the
traditional image of the 'enlightened' ruler,254 Kantorowicz often seems excessively
247. KFZ, p. 520: 'Frankreich, das Land der K6nige
neben Deutschland, dem Land der Kaiser'.
248. See Eric Laurent's comment on the imperialist
of Kantorowicz's 'universalism' in the
implications
'Paris Discussion', Tumult: Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft, xvi, 1992, pp. 94-10o8 (103). According to B.
Kriegel, La politique de la raison, Paris 1994, pp. XIVXVIII, remnants of Kantorowicz's 'imperial obsession'
are still detectable in The King's Two Bodies.
249. M. Bloch, 'The Empire and the Idea of the
(Lectures delivered
Empire under the Hohenstaufen'
at Strasbourg in the academic year 1927-8), in idem,
Land and Workin Medieval Europe, London 1967, p. 41.
250. He mocked Kantorowicz's Anglophobic description of Otto the Welf in this context: M. Bloch, 'Bulletin
Historique: Histoire d'Allemagne (Moyen Age)', Revue
historique, ci viII,
1928,
pp. 108-58
(157).
251.J. G. Droysen, Politische Schriften, ed. F. Gilbert,
Munich 1933, pp. 62-3; quoted in Hardtwig (as in n.
163), P- 300.
252. See Hardtwig (as in n. 163), pp. 299, 312.
253. KFZ, p. 247: 'der intoleranteste Kaiser, den das
Abendland fiberhaupt hervorgebracht hat'.
254. See Abulafia, 'Kantorowicz and Frederick II' (as
in n. 1 19), p. 199. Burckhardt had already remarked in
the WeltgeschichtlicheBetrachtungen: 'Man m6ge nur keine
221
fascinated by the manifestations of the emperor's authoritarianism, not least his cruel
treatment of the Jews and Saracens. He describes in glowing terms Frederick's 'pure
dictatorship' ('nackte Gewaltherrschaft') over Sicily and the 'Greater Italian Signoria',
justifying even his most ruthless political acts, such as the execution of Marcellin of Arezzo
in 1247, with reference to the Machiavellian notion of 'necessity of state' ('Staatsnotwendigkeit').255 Like an oriental despot, Frederick reigned over his Sicilian subjects, whom
Kantorowicz represents as mere 'human substance' ('Menschenstoff').256 The emperor's
brilliant political craftsmanship transformed this human substance into a 'work of art'
('Kunstwerk'):257the highly efficient, bureaucratised system of control and exploitation
that was the Sicilian state. The centralisation of this state was absolute: no form of individual life and mobility was possible without the permission of the emperor, and all
expressions of pluralism and opposition were regarded as 'poisons' which had to be
'paralysed' in the interest of the whole.258Frederick's Sicily had nothing in common with
the enlightened monarchies projected by Montesquieu and Kant. Instead it resembled, as
Kantorowicz intimated, Fichte's strictly centralised, autarchic 'Handelsstaat'.259 According
to Burckhardt, this was a 'Gewaltstaat' and as such 'opposed to culture' ('kulturwidrig').26O
For Kantorowicz, however, the 'iron clamps of the state' were a necessary precondition for
the burgeoning proto-Renaissance culture of the thirteenth century.'"'
While researching his book in southern Italy in the spring of 1924, Kantorowicz
observed how the Fascists proclaimed Frederick as the father of their 'Italia imperiale'
and a precursor of Mussolini.262The latter was greatly admired in the Circle.263There is
liberalen Sympathien mit diesem groBen Hohenstaufen
haben!'; see his Uber das Studium der Geschichte, ed. P.
Ganz, Munich 1982, pp. 5o8-9. Ganz interprets this as
an allusion to Friedrich von Raumer.
255. KFZ, pp. 445, 442, 596-7; and cf. pp. io6, 1 ig,
124, 224, 245, 453, 553. Another member of the Circle,
the Ottoman historian Paul Wittek, provided a similar
justification of cruelty in the service of the state ('Grausamkeit aus Staatsrfison') in his biographical essay on
Muhammed II: see his 'Muhammed II.', Menschen, die
Geschichte machten: I'iertausendjahre Weltgeschichte in Zeitund Lebensbildern,ed. P. Rohden, 2nd edn, Vienna 1933,
1, pp. 557-61
(561); and C. Heyvvood, '"Boundless
Dreams of the IJevant": Paul Wittek, the George-Kreis,
and the Writing of Ottoman History',Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society oJ Great Britain and Ireland, 1989, pp.
(35--16).
KFZ, p. 123. Cf. Kommerell, Gespriiche (as in n.
131), p. 33: 'Volk ist nur stoff'.
257. KFZ, pp. 232, 233, 444. Kantorowicz here is
again alluding to Burckhardt's Kultur der Renaissance (as
in n. 93), the first section of which is entitled 'Der Staat
als Kunstwerk'.
32-50
256.
2r8. KFZ, pp. 111 ('paralysiert'),
liche Gifte').
245
('staatsfeind-
KFZ, pp. 258-9 ('einen "geschlossenen Handels2-59. This is a clear reference to
staat"').
J. G. Fichte, Der
geschlofJne Handelsstaat: Ein philosophischer Entwutf als
Anhang zur Rechtslehre,Tiibingen 18o0, in which he calls
for a strong, paternalistic state and tightly controlled
collective action.
260. See Burckhardt, Uber das Studiumn der Geschichte
(as in n. 254), p. 299 n. 36. For Burckhardt's changing
assessment of Frederick II see E. Janssen, Jacob Burckhardt und die Renaissance, Assen 197o, pp. 1o4-9.
261. KFZ, p. 308. Kantorowicz's 'eiserne Klammern
des Staates' echo the 'eiserne Klammer des Staates' in
Nietzsche's 1871 essay 'Der griechische Staat': NietzWerke (as in n. 115), 1II, p. 283. Writsche, Gesainmmelte
ten under the impact of the Paris Commune, this essay
recommended
a hierarchically organised and cruelly
state
as the necessary political fiamework
exploitative
for great cultural production.
262. E. Kantorowicz to S. George, jo April 1924,
SGA: '... am 3.V. [1924]
ist 7oo-Jahr-Feier
der von
Friedrich II. gegrfindeten Universitft Neapel und alle
Zeitungen sind voll von Hymnen atuf den grofen Kaiser,
der-wie
Mussolini (!)-eine
Italia imperiale habe
errichten wollen-kurz
Fr[iedrich] II. wird zurn Tr-iger
des Faschistentraumes und man schwelgt "nell' ombre
del Svevo gloriosissimo"'.
263. George regarded Mussolini as a 'grofe Triterperson' with the potential to translate the ideals of the
Circle into political reality: Vallentin, Gespriichemit Stefan
George (as in n. 41), p. 0o2. Kantorowicz himself seems
to have been no less impressed by the political 'Tat' of
222
MARTIN
A. RUEHL
some evidence that Kantorowicz viewed Frederick's rule through the lens of the Fascist
ideologists, who glorified the emperor as the first theoretician of a "'ragion di stato"
tirannica';264 and that his model of the 'total' state was in its turn modelled, at least to
some extent, on the Fascist ideal of the totalitarian state.265Kantorowicz's description of
Frederick's strike against the papacy in 1240 as a 'march on Rome' ('Marsch auf Rom'),
for instance, was an evident allusion to the blackshirts' coup d'tat of 1922.266 Similarly, his
enthusiastic account of the complete 'nationalisation' ('Verstaatlichung') of all aspects of
life in his Sicilian kingdom267brings to mind Mussolini's famous formula coined in 1925:
'everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State'.268Like
Italian scholars such as Giulio Giglioli and Carlo Paluzzi, whose 'culto della Romanitai'
in the 192os and 1930s posited a trajectory between the imperiumRomanum and Mussolini's Italy,269Kantorowicz focused almost exclusively on the 'imperial tradition' in Italian
politics, comparing Frederick to Augustus and glorifying his RegnumItalicum as a 'Caesarenstaat'.270As Hans Baron, historian of the Renaissance, noted in a critical review, by
emphasising Frederick's renovatioimperiiRomanorumin KaiserFriedrich,Kantorowicz played
down, in effect, the role of the republican ideologies emerging at about the same time in
the city-states of Lombardy and Tuscany. For Baron, the revival of the ancient republican
notion of 'civic virtue' ('Biirger-virtus') in these communes marked the true beginning of
the Renaissance.271According to Kantorowicz, however, the citizens of northern Italy were
'boundlessly fed up', as he put it in a disdainful aside, with the quest for 'uncertain liberty'
and actually inclined to the 'dictatorship' that Frederick was about to establish.272
the Fascists: see his 'Grenzen' (as in n. 65), p. 118. His
lectures at Berkeley still betray this earlier
1943/4
fascination: LBI, Kantorowicz lectures (as in n. 199),
ch. 'Nazism and Rebarbarization', p. 6. For the German
Right's interest in Mussolini during the 1920S see J.
Petersen, 'Der italienische Faschismus aus Sicht der
Weimarer Republik', Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, iv/ivi,
1976, pp. 3156o.
264. See G. Pepe, Lo stato ghibellino di Federico II, Bari
1938, repr. 1951, p. 7; and C. D. Fonseca, 'Federico II
nella storiografia italiana', Potere, societa e popolo nell' eta
For
sveva (i2Io-i266),
Bari 1985, pp. 9-24 (13-15).
the heightened interest in Frederick II under Mussolini
see C. A. Willemsen, Bibliographie zur Geschichte Kaiser
Friedrichs II. und der letzten Staufer, Munich 1986, who
lists more than 120 relevant publications in the period
between 1922 and 1943. Kantorowicz himself, in the
Ergainzungsband (as in n. 97), p. 96, cites A. de Stefano,
L'idea imperiale di FedericoII, Florence 1927, as very close
to his own interpretation of Frederick's conception of
the state. See his positive review of de Stefano's book in
Historische Zeitschrift, cxI., 1929, pp.
449-50o.
265. According to A. Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power:.
Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929,
2nd edn, Princeton 1987,
p. 269, by 1925, the word 'totalitarian' had already been
elevated to a 'central place in the political vocabulary'
of Fascist Italy.
266. KFZ, p. 469; see also Kantorowicz, Ergdnzungsband (as in n. 97), P. 201.
267. See KFZ, p. 308: '... alles in den Staat einzubeziehen, nichts in den leeren Raum verflattern zu lassen';
and pp. 246, 224.
268. Mussolini first used this phrase in a speech of
28 October 1925: see J. Petersen, 'Die Entstehung des
in Italien', Totalitarisinus: Ein
Totalitarismusbegriffs
Studien-Reader zur Herrschaftsanalyse moderner Diktatur,
ed. M. Funke, Duisseldorf 1978, pp. 105-7.
269. See F. Scriba, Augustus im Schwarzhemd? Die
FrankMostra Augustea della Romanitai in Rom
n937/38,
furt am Main 1995; M. Cagnetta, 'I1 mito de Augusto e la
"rivoluzione" fascista', Quaderni di Storia, II, 3, 1976, pp.
139-82; H. A. Cavallera, 'L'idea di Roma nel pensiero
di Giovanni Gentile e di Ugo Spirito', Annali della Fondazione Ugo Spirito, III, 1991, pp. 1-25; and L. Curtius,
Mussolini und das antike Rom, Cologne 1934.
KFZ, p. 444.
271. See H. Baron, 'Renaissance in Italien I', Archiv
fiir Kulturgeschichte, xxI, 1931, pp. 95-128 (122-4).
272. KFZ, pp. 450-1: 'Denn die "unbestimmte Freiheit" ... hatte man vielfach grenzenlos satt und sehnte
sich nach bestimmter Ordnung, wie sie der Kaiser zu
bringen verhieB [...] Die Stadtverfassungen ... zeigten
deutlich die Neigung zur Diktatur'.
270.
223
The fusion of political and theological categories in Kantorowicz's portrait of
Frederick as Messiaskaiser,similarly, seems to be indebted to the 'sacralisation of politics'
which played such a central role in the symbolic universe of Fascism.273According to
Arnaldo Momigliano, it was sometimes difficult, at the height of Mussolini's popularity,
to separate 'adulation from political emotion, and political emotion from religious or
superstitious excitement'.274 Kantorowicz similarly failed to distinguish these aspects. His
identification of Frederick's 'enemies of the state' as 'heretics'275may be compared with
the words of an article published in Criticafascista in 1923, which drew a parallel between
the Church's right to cast heretics out of the communion of true believers and the right
of the Fascists to 'excommunicate' those with heretical views towards the fatherland.27"
His glorification of Frederick as the 'salvator' and 'imperator' envisaged by Dante, likewise, recalls Giovanni Giurati's idealisation of Mussolini in 1923 as 'the Hound whose
advent Dante prophesied', and as 'the man destined to give life to Dante's idea: that the
two great symbols, the Eagle and the Cross, would be brought together again in Rome'.277
The secularisation of Christian symbols and the establishment of a 'sacrum imperium' with
its own proper 'State religion' and 'sacraments'278was part and parcel of Fascist propaganda in the 192os. As Kantorowicz himself noted in Laudes Regiae,il Duce, like Frederick
seven hundred years earlier, was frequently acclaimed as a new Christ.279
At the same time, the political theology of KaiserFriedrichbelonged to a specifically
German tradition of 'sacralised politics' that dated back to the early nineteenth century28s
and was revived in the 1920os, most notably by Carl Schmitt and Emanuel Hirsch.28"The
poet Rudolf Borchardt, initially an ardent admirer of George and close to the Circle,
hoped for the replacement of the Weimar Republic through a 'return of the monarchy'
273. On this phenomenon see E. Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy, Cambridge, Mass. 1996.
274. A. Momigliano, 'How Roman Emperors became
Gods', The American Scholar, Spring 1986, pp. 181-93
(181). He also reports (citing Gertud Bing) that Aby
Warburg, witnessing the popular celebrations on the
occasion of Mussolini's concordat with the Catholic
Church in February 1929, felt that he was 'present at
the re-paganization of Rome'; on this see also M. P.
Steinberg's 'interpretive essay' in A. Warburg, Images
from the Region of the Pueblo Indians of North America,
Ithaca 1995, pp. 108-9. I thank Anthony Grafton for
these references. According to C. Dionisotti, Ricordo di
Arnaldo Momigliano, Bologna 1989, p. 45, Momigliano
himself contributed to the Fascist 'culto della Roinanita'
with his long article on imperial Rome for the Enciclopedia Italiana (1936).
275. KFZ, p. 247.
276. Quoted in Gentile (as in n. 273), pp. 55-6.
277. Quoted ibid., p. 140. See Dante, Inferno, I.ioi
and XIV.94-120; and Paradiso, VI. 1-111
i. On the significance of these symbols see W. Anderson, Dante the
Maker, London 1980, pp. 286-94; and C. Davis, 'Dante's
Vision of History', Dante Studies, xcIII, 1975, pp. 143-60
Kantorowicz himself cites L. Valli, II segreto
(155-6).
della croce e dell' aquila nella Divina Commedia, Bologna
1922, in the Ergdnzungsband (as in n. 97), P. 231. See
also KFZ, p. 505, where Kantorowicz refers to the eagle
and the cross as the emblems of Frederick's Reich, and
p. 558, where he relates them to Dante. Ezra Pound's
Dantesque perception of Mussolini's sacral empire, in
its turn, may have been conditioned by Kaiser Friedrich,
an English copy of which was in Pound's library: see R.
Dasenbrook, 'Ezra Pound, the last Ghibelline', Journal
of Modern Literature, xvi, 1990, pp. 511-33 (517 n. 9).
278. KFZ, pp. 471, 241, 234. See also p. 220: 'in ihn
[i.e. the State] warja der Gott eingegangen'.
279. Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae (as in n. 24), pp. 1846; see also Gentile (as in n. 273), pp. 149-50.
280. See R. Wittram, Nationalismus und Siikularisation,
Lfneburg 1949281. See U. Tal, 'On Structures of Political Theology
and Myth in Germany Prior to the Holocaust', The
Holocaust as Historical Experience, ed. Y. Bauer and N.
Rotenstreich, New York 1981, pp. 43-74; J. Stroup,
'Political Theology and Secularization Theory in Germany, 1918-1939: Emanuel Hirsch as a Phenomenon
of his Time', Harvard Theological Review, Ixxx, 1987,
and J. W. Bendersky, Carl Schmitt: Theorist
pp. 321-68;
for the Reich, Princeton 1983.
MARTIN A. RUEHL
224
(under the Wittelsbach dynasty!), along with a 'sacral conception of the Reich' ('mit einem
sakramentalen Reichsbegriff').282 The Circle itself, of course, provided a further model.
Here George presided, as prophet and god of his own faith, over a group of devoted disciples who referred to themselves as his 'Staat'. This secularised ecclesiaproudly regarded
itself as a microcosm of the future Germany, heralded by the Master as the 'New Reich'.
There can be little doubt that the lived experience of this 'Staat', with its hierarchicalhieratic structures and pseudo-religious language,283 inspired Kantorowicz's representation of Frederick II's 'sacrum imperium'284-and perhaps even some of his later studies
on medieval political theology, the ultra-scholarly style of which almost obscures their
Georgean origins. The famous 1949 article 'Pro Patria Mori', for instance, picked up a
subject first broached in Wolters's 1925 speech 'Vom Sinn des Opfertodes ffir das Vaterland': the transformation of the Christian notion of martyrdom into the patriotic ideal of
the soldier's self-sacrifice for the fatherland.285
Whatever its inspiration, Kantorowicz's sacral conception of Frederick II and his
state was intimately connected with his notion of Herrschaftas total rulership. Not only
the minds, but also the souls of the subjects belonged, as he repeatedly pointed out, to
Frederick. There was no salvation outside of his empire: 'For the men of this world were
still unredeemed and could only be delivered to a state of Grace, as it were, by the ruler
and the State.'286But Kantorowicz's representation of Frederick as Saviour and Christ
was ambiguous. In the apocalyptic crescendiof the final chapters, the emperor appears,
alternatively, as the Messiah and the Antichrist, the redeemer of his people and their
'demonic judge-god' ('ddimonischer Richtergott').287The demonisation of Frederick at the
end of KaiserFriedrichrecalls the beginning of Burckhardt's Kultur der Renaissance,which
depicted the Italian tyrants as satanic figures, fascinating incarnations of evil who proudly
rejected Christian dogma and morality and lived an essentially heathen life. Kantorowicz
gives, in fact, a clear reference to Burckhardt with his description of Frederick's political
genius as an example of Machiavellian virtit, a 'synthesis of force and talent which was
compatible with evil'.'""Like Burckhardt, Kantorowicz seems to have been fascinated by
282. See Seibt, 'R6nisches
Deutschland'
(as in n. 7),
p. 65.
character of
283. For the hieratic, authoritarian
George's 'Staat' see M. Rychner, Stej~ft George, Zurich
195 1, p. 118; and David (as in n. 4o), p. 362. For its
pseudo-religious aspects see Salin, UmrSefJn Geoige (as
in n. 38), p. 278 ('George war ... der erste katholische
Nicht-Christ'), p. 3og9 n. 5o; and W. Braungart, As/lhetischer Katholizismnus. Stefan Georges Rituale der Literatur;
Tfibingen 197g-.
284. This dimension of the work needs to be reemphasised in view of Roberto Delle Donne's recent
attempt to present Kantorowicz as a disciple of Max
Weber rather than Stefan George: see Delle Donne,
'Nachwort' (as in n.
pp. 167-7 i; and idem, 'Kantor9),
owicz e la sua opera' (as in n. l o5), pp. 82-3.
285. See Wolters, Vier Reden (as in 4o), pp. 5-29; and
Kantorowicz, 'Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political
Thought',
The Americran Historical Review, Ixi,
April
repr. in Selected Studies (as in n.
195 1, pp. 472-92,
well
Kantorowicz seems to have been 22•)),
pp. 3o8-24.
acquainted with Wolters's oeuvre on the whole: he
owned more than half a dozen of his books, including
more scholarly works, like the 1908 study 'CUber (lie
theoretische Begrfindung des Absolutismus im XVII.
Jahrihundert', which he cites in the Eliginzungsband (as
in n. 97), p. 99; see Kfipper's inventory (as in n. 93).
286. KFZ, p. 222: 'Denn der diesseitige Mensch warja
noch unerl6st und war nur durch Herrscher und Staat
gewissermaBen zum Stande der Unschuld ... zuriickzufifhren.'
287. KFZ, pp. 613, 552. Cf. pp. 553-7288. KFZ, p. 613: '[Frederick's] virtil, wie Machiavelli
diese Einung von Kraft und Talent, die autch das B6se
vertr'igt, genannt hat.' Cf. Burckhardt, Kulturder
der Renaissance (as in n. 93), P- 4o9 n. 3: 'Dieser Verein von Kraft
und Talent ist es, was bei Machiavelli
heiBtt und
virtiu
aulch mit .sceleratezzavertrniglich gedacht wird.'
225
what Wolters called 'demonic dynamism' ('damonischer Tatstoff').289 Next to many positive qualities, his Hohenstaufen hero also possessed malice, violence, cunning and the
'capacity' as well as the 'inclination' to do evil ('Fahigkeit zum B6sen ... Lust am B6sen').2?1o
He was-to employ Droysen's terminology-a fundamentally 'unethical' ('unsittlich')
ruler; and Kantorowicz eagerlyjustified, indeed glorified him as such.291He described the
emperor's final conflict with the pope, accordingly,as an apocalypticstruggle between
Good and Evil, Christ and Antichrist; and indicated that his hero embodied both: 'the
heavens of God' and the 'deepest hells'.292 In the end, Frederick was overcome not by
the people, but 'by divine power alone'.93 This was the meaning of the epigram from
Goethe which he placed at the beginning of the last chapter: 'Nemo contra deum, nisi
deus ipse.'"29
V.
'RENOVATIO
GERMANIAE'?
KANTOROWICZ
AND
THE THIRD
REICH
In a biographical sketch of 1962, Kantorowicz's Heidelberg friend and fellow medievalist
Percy Ernst Schramm portrayed Hitler in terms remarkably similar to this final image of
Frederick as a half-satanic, half-divine ruler. According to Schramm, Hitler was a demon
who had taken control of the German people and who could not be resisted, because
demonic men 'can be overcome only by the universe itself, against which they have taken
up arms'. And he added, quoting Goethe: 'Nemo contra deum, nisi deus ipse.'29) The
initiated could read these reflections as an allusion to KaiserFriedrich-and, perhaps, as an
oblique justification of Schramm's own role in the Third Reich. The renowned historian
had welcomed Hitler's seizure of power in 1933, 296joined the NSDAP six years later and
289. Wolters, Stefan George(as in n. 38), p. 493.
For Kantorowicz's 'Diamonisierung' of Frederick see
Fleckenstein, 'Ernst Kantorowicz' (as in n. 184), p. 512.
Von den Steinen had already emphasised Frederick's
demonic nature in his edition of the Staatsbriefe(as in
n. 74), P. I 1. On the 'demonic' as a Georgean ideal see
E. Landmann (as in n. 46), p. 13 1. Kantorowicz himself
extolled the demonic as an essential characteristic of
the heroes of the Secret Germany in his 1933 lecture at
'Das Geheime Deutschland' (as in
Frankfurt LUniversity,
n. I32), P. 89.
29o. KFZ, p. 552. Cf. Belting (as in n. 25), p.-7:
his reading misses the point by interpreting Kantorowicz's comments
on the changing
justification
of evil'
in Frederick's state as a 'prophetic remark' in 1927
about the 'misuse of rulership' after 1933.
291. His friend Gerhart Ladner described Kantorowicz himself as 'heidnisch und durchaus unmoralistisch': see his Erinnerungen= Sitzungsberichte
der Osterreichischei Akademieder ITissenschaften(Phil.-hist. K1.),
D:xvII, Vienna 1994, p. 34.
292. KFZ, p. 613: 'die Himmel Gottes ... (lie tiefsten
H6llen'.
293. KFZ, p. 628: 'den die V6lker nicht zu fiberwinden vermochten ... fiberwunden allein von der g6ttlichen Macht'.
294. KFZ, p. 550; see J. Wv. on Goethe, Aus meiinem
Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit = SiinmtlicheWerke (Minchner Ausgabe), ed. K. Richter et al., Munich 1962 ff.,
xvi
(1985),
p. 822.
P. E. Schrarnm,
7The Man (and the MiliHitler.
tary Leader; tr. D. Detwiler, London 1972, p. 133. Kurt
Hildebrandt, similarly, regarded Hitler as a demonic
force whose productive capacity was to be channelled
by George: see his Erinnerungen (as in n. 42), p. 227. He
too referred to Goethe in this context: '(Goethe sah im
Daimonischen das Sch6pferische.'
296. SeeJ. Bak, 'Percy Ernst Schramm (1894-i97o)',
in Medieval Scholarship (as in n. 1 24), I pp. 247-62
(249); and R. Ericksen, 'Kontinuitfiten konservativer
am Seminar ffir Mittlere und
Geschichtsschreibung
Neuere Geschichte', Die Ulniversitii G(ttingen unter demt
Nationalsozialismus, ed. H. Becker et al., Munich i 987,
295.
But cf. N. Kamp,
pp. 2 19-47 (220).
Schramm und die Mittelalterforschung',
'Percy Ernst
(;eschichtswi,s-
seiischaftin Gottingen,ed. H. Boockmann and H. Wellenreuther, G6ttingen 1987, pp. 344-63 (358). The most
thorough and balanced account of Schramm's relation
to National Socialism to date isJ. Grolle, I)er Hamburger
Percy Ernst Schrammn:Eii Historiker auf der Suche Inarh der
lVirklichkeit,Hamburg
1989.
226
MARTIN A. RUEHL
eventually became, despite a growing detachment from National Socialism, the official
keeper of the Wehrmacht's
war diary in
1943.297
In 1939, he had hailed Germany's occu-
pation of Czechoslovakia as a step towards the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire.29~
Unlike Schramm, Kantorowicz never regarded Hitler as a latter-day Frederick II;
nor did he applaud the Nazis. The lecture entitled 'The Secret Germany', with which he
opened the Wintersemester
1933 at the University of Frankfurt,299together with his letters
to George, reveal that for him, the Nazi revolution was not a renewal of Frederick's empire.
Nevertheless, for a brief period in 1933, his rejection of National Socialism faltered, and
he felt compelled to re-assess its significance in the eschatological scheme of the Circle. A
critical re-examination of Kantorowicz's position in and changing attitude towards the
Third Reich suggests that this moment of doubt reflects more general ambiguities, and
that recent attempts to portray him as an early, resolute opponent of Nazism need to be
qualified.
Kantorowicz's curious academic career in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1938
indicates that his reaction to the new regime may have been a little less outspokenly critical
than some commentators would have us think.300He had been teaching medieval history
at Frankfurt for two years when, in response to anti-Semitic activities organised by the
Nazi-controlled Studentenbund,he lodged a petition for sabbatical leave on 20oApril 1933.3-1
In November 1933, he resumed his classes at Frankfurt University with the lecture mentioned above-despite an invitation from New College, Oxford.302A month later, in view
of continuing boycotts of his lectures,-03 he gave up teaching for good and took another
297. In view of Schramm's involvement with the Nazi
state, it seems remarkable that Kantorowicz, whose
resumed
mother and cousin died in Theresienstadt,
friendly relations with him soon after World War II
at G6ttingen with an
and helped his reinstatement
unreservedly eulogistic four-page affidavit in 1947, despite misgivings about Schramm's party membership:
see H. Rothfels to E. Kantorowicz, 28 April 1947, LBI,
Box 7, Folder 3. See F. Baethgen, 'Ernst Kantorowicz'
(Necrology), Deutsches Archiv fiir Erforschung des Mittelalters, xxi, 1965, pp. 1-17 (14).
ihre
298. P. E. Schramm, 'Die Sudetendeutschen:
Geschichte und Leistung' (Paper presented on 7 May
1939), PP- 49-50; quoted in K. Sch6nwalder, Historiker
und Politik: Geschichtswissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus,
Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 131-2.
299. 'Das Geheime Deutschland' (as in n. 132).
See Benson et al., 'Defending Kantorowicz' (as in
3oo.
n. 19): 'as early as November, 1933, Kantorowicz spoke
out publicly against the Nazi regime, and he did so in
terms unmatched by any other German professor.' C.
M. Bowra, Memories r898-I939,
London 1966, p. 289,
mentions an 'outspoken and courageous attack' on the
Nazis, presumably the same 1933 lecture on 'The Secret
Germany'. See also Malkiel (as in n. 25), p. 195 n. 3o,
referring to Kantorowicz's 1935 talk on 'Das Deutsche
Papsttum' as an 'erudite radio lecture bursting with
which a daredevil Kantorowicz
timely innuendoes
delivered under dramatic circumstances,
outwitting
the Third Reich's monitoring officers.' Kantorowicz's
critique of the Nazis in both cases was actually very
subtle, not to say cautious. In terms of 'outspokenness',
as well as 'earliness', it was more than matched by the
respective statements of Friedrich Meinecke, Arthur
Rosenberg, Veit Valentin and Karl Heldmann, to name
but a few Regimekritikerfrom among the German historical profession: see Sch6nwilder (as in n. 298), pp. 278, 68-72, and Schleier (as in n. 168), pp. 101-2, 393.
30o. This petition is discussed in more detail below,
pp. 229-30.
302. See E. Kantorowicz, 'Bericht fiber eine Verhandlung mit dem Dekan der Philosophischen Fakultat', II
January 1934, UAF. Kantorowicz returned to the classroom at the faculty's request, but it seems that both
the rector, Ernst Krieck, and the dean of the faculty,
Erhard Lommatzsch, had asked him to teach only until
his sabbatical had been officially granted by the Ministry
of Education. It was Kantorowicz's decision to continue
teaching for the entire duration of the Wintersemester:
see Krieck's and Lommatzsch's respective comments
on Kantorowicz's 'Bericht', 2 February 1934 and 3o
January 1934, UAF. I am indebted to Michael Maaser
for making the Kantorowicz papers at Frankfurt available to me.
303. Krieck's account of the boycotts, recorded in two
official statements of 22 December
933 and 2 February
227
leave of absence. He spent the next half year as a visiting fellow at Oxford, but returned
to Germany in July 1934. Having refused to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler as was
requested then of all civil servants,304on 14 October 1934 Kantorowicz applied to the
Prussian Minister of Science, Art and Education for emeritus status, which in due course
was granted.305 In the following four years, he quietly did research at the Monumenta
GermaniaeHistorica in Berlin, as well as other European archives; and he published an
article on Petrus de Vinea in an Austrian historical journal.306 Despite increasing constraints on his academic work and unpleasant personal experiences,307 he seems to have
remained relatively unmolested by the Nazis30suntil he emigrated to England-apparently
with the help of one of G6ring's adjutants-in December 1938.30o9In 1939, he asked the
Nazi Ministry of Education for approval of his new domicile in the United States, so that
his emeritus's payments would continue to be transferred to his German bank account.310
The fact that Kantorowicz continued to receive these payments regularly until the
outbreak of war between Germany and the United States in December 1941311 is not sufficiently explained by the comment of Robert Lerner that this was 'simply the way the
German bureaucracy customarily functioned'.312 The bureaucracy of the Third Reich
clearly did not function this way in the case of a number of historians who were retired
in 1933-4 because of their Jewish descent, their political orientation or both. Wilhelm
Levison and Richard Laqueur, for instance, were not given emeritus status, although they
were both exempt-like Kantorowicz-from paragraph 3 of the Berufsbeamtengesetz
by way
of the so-called 'veterans' clause' ('Frontkimpferklausel').313 Friedrich Miinzer was retroactively deprived of his emeritus status and divested of the venia legendi when his Jewish
1934, UAF, contrasts with the one given 30 years later
byJilrgen Petersen, a student of Kantorowicz, on which
Lerner, "'Meritorious Academic Service"' (as in n. 19),
p. 30, largely relies.
304. See Baethgen, 'Ernst Kantorowicz' (as in n. 297),
p. 7.
305. See E. Kantorowicz to the Prussian Minister of
Science, Art and Education, 14 October 1934, and the
reply by the Minister of to November 1934, UAF. Pace
Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n. 3), p. 139,
neither of these documents allows us to posit a causal
nexus between Kantorowicz's refusal to swear the oath
on Hitler and his application for 'Emeritierung'.
30o6. E. Kantorowicz, 'Petrus de Vinea in England',
Mitteilungen des Osterreichischen Instituts fiir Geschichtsforschung, Iui, 1937, PP. 43-88. An essay on learned
anchoritism, 'Die Wiederkehr gelehrter Anachorese im
Mittelalter', was published only as a 'Sonderdruck' in
1937, since the second volume of a Festschrift for Ludwig
Curtius, where it was scheduled to appear, was cancelled for anti-Semitic reasons: see Baethgen, 'Ernst
Kantorowicz' (as in n. 297), p. 15.
307. See Bowra, Memories (as in n. 300), p. 294;
Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n. 3), P- 141;
and E. Kantorowicz to F. Demuth, 29 July 1938, LBI,
Box 5, Folder 3, where he laments 'wie schwierig in
wissenschaftlichen
Dingen das Leben ffir mich hier
Archiv-Reisen zu
geworden ist. Die Unm6glichkeit,
die Sperrung der hiesigen Archive fir
unternehmen,
mich und schliesslich
die Aussichtslosigkeit,
seine
Sachen zu Druck zu bringen...--und
all dies gepaart
mit fast tiglich neuen Sorgen ffir das Ergehen nicht
meiner [!], aber der einem Nahestehenden.'
30o8. See Malkiel (as in n. 25), Pp. 193-4.
309. See Bowra, Memories (as in n. 300oo), p. 304
Abulafia, 'Kantorowicz and England' (as in n. io), p.
142, refers to 'persistent rumours' at Oxford to the
effect that 'Kantorowicz had been sent out of Germany
by his exalted admirers in the Nazi hierarchy'. Grfinewald and Benson partly corroborate these reports in
Gotterin Uniform (as in n. 31), pp. 36o-1.
310. The Board of Trustees of Frankfurt University
to E. Kantorowicz, 7 November 1939 (in response to
Kantorowicz's letter from 22 June 1939), LBI, Box
5, Folder 5: 'Vom 1. Marz 1939 ab werden die Emeritenbezfige in voller H6he auf ein "Sonderkonto Versorgungsbezfige" bei dem Bankhaus A. und E. Wassermann
... Berlin fiberwiesen.'
31 1. See the Board of Trustees of Frankfurt University
to E. Kantorowicz, 23 December 1935, UAF; and E.
Kantorowicz to H. Kfipper, 1o September 1949, SGA.
312. Lerner, "'Meritorious Academic Service"' (as in
n. 19), p. 32 n. 76.
313. See Sch6nwdilder (as in n. 298), pp. 68-9.
228
background
MARTIN A. RUEHL
was discovered
in 1935'314 Walter Goetz temporarily lost his rights and pay-
ments as professor emeritus.315Finally, Veit Valentin and Hedwig Hintze, who had stood
up for their democratic convictions during the Weimar Republic, initially were paid only
a small amount and soon enough nothing at all of their former salaries after they emigrated in 1933 and 1939 respectively. 16In comparison to these academics, Kantorowicz
did indeed receive special treatment by the Nazi government,17 even if it hardly equalled
the kind of patronage that was granted-for the time being-to Hans Rothfels and Hans
Herzfeld, who had, in their turn, sought to come to terms with the new rulers.318Under
the protection of Albert Brackmann, the latter two conducted research at the PreuBisches
Geheimes Staatsarchiv in Berlin until 1938:19-next door to Kantorowicz and Ernst Perels,
who were using the archives of the Monumenta,with the special permission of its president,
the medievalist Paul
Kehr.-321
Kantorowicz, to be sure, never tried to ingratiate himself with the Brownshirts. But he
stayed in Germany for a long time321-longer, at any rate, than many Jewish historians of
lesser international fame (Ernst Stein, Gustav Mayer and Hans Rosenberg come to mind)
who emigrated shortly after the Nazi takeover.3-2He was not a Rothfels, who in 1938 still
considered the anti-Nazi enunciations of emigre historians as 'high treason';323nor was he
a more fortunate Albrecht Haushofer, as Hermann Heimpel suggested some time ago.:1'24
Yet he was not a Siegmund Hellmann either.35 Kantorowicz, with his wait-and-see attitude
314. Ibid., pp. 3o4-5 n. 22.
315. Ibid., pp. 70o, 306 n. 34.
316. See Schleier (as in n. 168), pp. g9g n. 1g8, 3o 1.
317. The official correspondence
preserved at the
Universitfitsarchiv Frankfurt confirms the impression
that the 'Case Kantorowicz' (Krieck) was handled, if'
not with kid gloves, at least with an unusual degree of
restraint and respect. See N. Hammerstein, Die Johann
WolJfgag Goethe-Universitiil t)'rankjll am Main, I, Frankfutrt am Main 189q, p. 224: 'Der ... amtliche Schriftwechsel 1iBt ... nicht im geringsten erkennen, daB
Kantorowicz als Jude aus dem Hochschuldienst
auszuscheiden hatte'.
318. See Schleier (as in n. 168), pp. io8-9; Sch6lnwilder (as in n. 298), p. 58; and W. BuBmann, 'Siegfried
A. Kaehler: Pers6nlichkeit und Werk. Ein Essay', Sieged. W. BuBmann and
fried A. Kaehler: Briefe I9oo-i963,
G. Grfinthal, Boppard 1993, p. 75. For a more detailed
(if apologetic) account of Herzfeld's career in the Third
Reich see Gerhard Ritter's biographical sketch in Hans
Hetzfeld: Persilirhkeit und Werk, ed. O. Bfisch, Berlin
1983, esp. pp. 34-45.
See I. Haar, "'Revisionistische" Historiker und
319.
Das Kiinigsberger Beispiel', Geschichtsjugendbewegung:
sch reibung als Iegitimationswissenschaft 191 8-1945, ed. P.
Sch6ttler, Frankfurt am Main 1997, pp. 88-o n. 7.
in Berlin',
L2o. See K. Elm, 'Mittelalterforschuing
Geschichtswissensclhaftiin Berlinn m 19. lund 20.Jahrhundert,
ed. R. Hansen and W. Ribbe, Berlin
i1)92, p. 245.
See Schlittler, 'Kantorowicz in Frankreich' (as in
321.
n. 14), P. 154: 'so lange wie m6glich'.
322. Lerner, "'Meritorious Academic Service"' (as in
n. 19), p. 32 n. 75, concludes from a letter at the Leo
Baeck Institute that as early as the spring of 1934
Kantorowicz was sending out his c.v. 'with the aim of
emigrating'. Yet no less than three contemporary observers, all more or less closely associated with Kantorowicz,
report that he was not ready to leave Germany before
1938: see M. D6nhoff, 'Mit fragwfirdiger Methode',
Die Zeit, 6 September 1996, p. 7; Salin, Privatdruck (as
in nI. 22), p. 7; and Baethgen, 'Ernst Kantorowicz' (as in
n. 297), p. 7. As Malkiel (as in Il. 25), p. 193, observes:
'The reluctance of so ... eminently successful a scholar
as Kantorowicz ... to leave his native Germany spontaneously... certainly calls for comment'.
323. See W. Conze, 'Hans Rothfels', Hislorisrhe Zeil18,
schrift, c(xxxvII,
pp. I i1-6o (34o).
'Worte des Gedenkens an
324. See H. Heimpel,
Albrecht Haushofer', Neue Sammlung v, 1965, pp. 336,
42, repr. in idem, Aspekle: alle und nuee 7Iexte,G7ittingen
p1) , p. 138. Professor of geography and 'geopolitics
at the University of Berlin since 1933, Haushofer, a
protege of Rudolf HeB and 'quarter-Jew' according to
the current Nazi terminology, worked as an advisor for
the Bfiro Ribbentrop before joining the German resistance in the late 193os. He was executed in April 1945 as
one of the many suspects associated with the bomb plot
ofJuly 11944. U Laack-Michel, AlbrechtHaushofer u d der
Nationalsozialisnmus, Stuttgart 1974, p. 277, comments
on his literary indebtedness to George.
Ordinariu.s for medieval history at
325. Hellmann,
the University of Leipzig, had explicitly disassociated
229
towards the Nazi regime and his ultra-patriotic views, instead resembled the Freiburg historian Arnold Berney (1897-1943), whose 1934 biography of Frederick the Great was
deeply indebted to the spirit of Stefan George and probably modelled on KaiserFriedrich.326
Kantorowicz's break with Germany, like Berney's, was a complex, drawn-out process, a
gradual abandonment of the 'dogma of the nation's dignified future and honour', at the
end of which Berney embraced Judaism and Kantorowicz became what he had once so
fervently denounced in Halle: an 'international' scholar.327His role in the Loyalty Oath
controversy at Berkeley in 1949-50 impressively illustrates his liberal re-orientation in this
period.328 But his conversion in the 1940s, however admirable, should not obscure the
fact that in the 193os, his opposition to National Socialism was qualified.
Even Kantorowicz's petition for sabbatical leave from April 1933 betrays, on closer
examination, a rather ambiguous response to the Nazi seizure of power. Recent commentators have simply interpreted the letter as evidence of Kantorowicz's 'moral' rejection of
Nazism (Grfinewald) and his 'liberal' determination to defend the 'Weimarian principles
of tolerance and ... human dignity' (Giesey).329 In fact, Kantorowicz successively deleted
from earlier drafts of his petition most of the passages which condemned the infringement
of his 'civil rights': 'violations of honour, dignity, legality' and 'privation of basic civic
rights', for example, were replaced by a mere 'encroachment of honour' in the final version of the letter.330He also removed all direct references to National Socialism: 'the most
recent anti-Semitic actions of the NSDAP' and 'the most recent actions of the NSDAP'
were replaced by the vague expression 'the most recent events'.331 The version of the
himself from the imperialist rhetoric of the German
Right in 1918. An outspoken proponent of humanist
and democratic ideals, he was pensioned off a few
months after the Nazi seizure of power, ostensibly for
'racial' reasons. He died in Theresienstadt in 1942. See
S. Hoyer, 'Siegmund Hellmann', Bedeutende Gelehrte in
Leipzig, I, Leipzig 1965, pp. 219-27.
326. See H. Duchhardt, Arnold Berney (1897-1943):
das Schicksal eines jiidischen Historikers, Cologne 1993,
pp. 24-7, 50, 67, 8o-1, 95. Duchhardt also identifies
Kantorowicz's namesake, the pedagogue Ernst Kantorowicz, who worked at the Juidische Hochschule in Berlin
from 1935 (pp. 84,
87-9).
327. See Kantorowicz, 'Grenzen' (as in n. 65), pp.
Tendenzen' of
122-3, attacking the 'kosmopolitische
German historians who ignored their
contemporary
national duties by addressing a 'Gelehrtenforum
der
ganzen Welt' and the 'internationalen Halbbildungspobel', respectively.
328. See Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n.
and
3), pp. 116-18, Malkiel (as in n. 25), pp. 209-11;
Tumult (as in n. 248), pp. 34-75, where Kantorowicz's
major contributions to the controversy are reprinted.
According to his former student and associate Robert
Benson, however, Kantorowicz's political attitude remained 'genuinely conservative': see G6tter in Uniform
(as in n. 31), p. 361.
329. Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n. 3),
p. 114, and Giesey (as in n. 9), P. 198. See also Petrow
(as in n. 11), pp. 123, 127, who refers to Kantorowicz's
'demokratische Gesinnung' and labels his letter 'regimekritisch'.
'Pri330. 'Angriffe auf Ehre, Wfirde, Rechtlichkeit';
vation der simplen bfirgerlichen Ehre und Rechte';
replaced eventually by 'Antastung der Ehre'. E. Kantorowicz to the Prussian Minister of Science, Art and
Education, LBI, Box 5, Folder 5. This folder contains
the various drafts of Kantorowicz's letter, the first one
dated 3 April 1933.
331. Ibid.: 'durch die jiingsten juden-boykottierenden Massnahmen der NSDAP'; 'durch die jiingsten
Massnahmen der NSDAP'; both replaced by 'durch
die jiingsten Geschehnisse'. A comparative reading of
what was (most likely) the manuscript of Kantorowicz's
Frankfurt lecture on the 'Secret Germany' as it was
delivered on 14 November 1933 and a revised version
which was sent to Salin on 23 November 1933, shows
that one of the potentially most outspoken anti-Nazi
remarks was, similarly, toned down in the actual speech.
Cf. 'Das Geheime Deutschland' (as in n. 132), P. 92
('aus aufgepeitschter Gasse'), and LBI, Box 2, Folder 7,
'Das Geheime Deutschland', p. 21, where the adjective
'aufgepeitschter' is omitted.
230
MARTIN A. RUEHL
letter that he eventually sent to the Minister of Education on 20oApril 1933, thus, was not
only stripped of its most liberal elements, but also failed to call the enemy by his name.
Even in its more cautious phrasing, Kantorowicz's protest against Nazi anti-Semitism
was a courageous gesture-not least because, as a World War I veteran, he himself was
not actually affected by the anti-Semitic paragraph 3 of the new Berufsbeamtengesetz.
At the
same time, though, Kantorowicz seemed anxious to stress that he, the fighter against
Poles, Spartacists and Rite, of course had a 'fundamentally positive attitude towards a
nationally governed Reich', which had not wavered even in the light of 'the most recent
events'. As the biographer of Frederick II, he needed no further proof of his support for
a 'once again nationally oriented Germany'.332 Rather than illustrating his 'democratic' or
'liberal' rejection of Nazism, Kantorowicz's petition seems to reflect a deeply felt irritation
over the fact that a convinced German patriot like himself should be excluded from the
'nationally governed
Reich'.3,Kantorowicz's letter to George of 4June 1933 also deserves a closer look.334In many
ways, this letter represents his most substantial comment on the 'national revolution'. It
Kantorowicz
was, overall, a critical-in certain passages a sharply critical-comment.
dreaded the ascendancy of the Nazi ministers (the 'Montagnards', as he labelled them)
within the new government and called attention to dangerous developments in the foreign
political sphere (Austria, the Saar region), as well as the educational sector, where, he
feared, vl1kisch mysticism would soon replace sound empirical scholarship. So far, he
summarised his impressions, he could see very little that was 'truly productive' ('wirklich
aufbauend'). Yet his observations often suggest disappointment rather than disagreement
with the changes in Germany. Kantorowicz seemed to object not so much to the political
violence of Gleichschaltung,or the liquidation of the constitutional state, as to the failure
of the new rulers to abolish the federal structures of the Weimar Republic completely, or
to direct the 'devoted enthusiasm' ('hingebungsvolle Begeisterung') of the German youth
to more worthwhile pursuits. And even these expressions of disappointment he softened
at the end of his letter in a crucial qualification, which Grfinewald passes over without
comment: 'But all that', Kantorowicz wrote, with reference to the defective reforms of the
new government, 'of course means little in the grander scheme of things: these are bizarre
side effects in face of which one must not forget the great
trends'.-5
The ambiguities detectable in these enunciations reflect Kantorowicz's general state of
confusion during the so-called 'German Spring'. On the one hand, he felt 'disgust, shock
... pain ... and hatred'
vis-a-vis the Nazis.336 On the other hand, he remained
332. E. Kantorowicz to the Prussian Minister of
Science, Art and Education, 20 April 1933, LBI, Box
5, Folder 5: 'grundsdtzlich positive Einstellung gegenfiber einem national regierten Reich'; 'wieder national gerichteten Deutschland'. For similar reactions of
nationalist German-Jewish intellectuals to the seizure
of power see S. Friedlinder, Nazi Germany and the Jews:
The Y'earsof Persecution: 1933-1939, New York 1997,
PP14-16.
333. See Boureau, Histoires (as in n. 15), p. 25. Note
that Boureau's account of Kantorowicz's life and
hesitant,
thought is not always reliable, as Sch6ttler, 'Kantorowicz in Frankreich' (as in n. 14), pp. 152-8, has shown.
334. E. Kantorowicz to S. George, 4June 1933, SGA.
335. Ibid.: 'Aber alles das hat natfirlich im Gesarnt
wenig zu besagen; es sind skurrile Nebenerscheinungen,
fiber denen man die grossen Linien nicht vergessen
darf'.
336. E. Kantorowicz to S. George, 26 November
und Schmerzen
1933, SGA: 'Ekel, Erschfitterungen
... Hass'.
231
unsure whether their 'New Germany' was not at least a harbinger of the 'New Reich' that
the Circle had anticipated for so long. Kantorowicz's ambivalent reaction to the Nazi
revolution is perhaps most impressively illustrated by his letter to George of io July 1933,
which, for a variety of reasons, deserves to be quoted at greater length:
'May Germany become as the Master envisioned it!' And if today's events are notjust a travestyof that
vision, but actually the true path to its realisation, then everything may turn out well. And then it
won't matter if the individual can walk along this path-or rather, may walk along it-or if he must,
instead of applauding, stand aside. 'Imperium transcendat hominem', declared Frederick II;"3.7and I
would be the last one to contradict him here. If the Fates do not allow one access to the 'Reich'-and
as a 'Jewish or coloured person', as the new twin expression has it, one is necessarily excluded from a
state founded on purely racial criteria-then one has to summon up the amorfati and make decisions
accordingly.33=
These reflections are remarkable, first of all, because they substantially qualify the
oft-repeated claim that Kantorowicz firmly rejected the Nazi takeover from an early point
on.339 They also call into question Yakov Malkiel's contention that Kantorowicz cherished
his 'studied restraint
a 'subliminal', yet essential, 'ancestral Judaism' that conditioned
from extremist positions'.340 What the passage demonstrates is that Kantorowicz was quite
ready-at least at this particularjuncture-to
resign himself to the political extremism of
the Nazis, as well as to his own marginalised role in their state.341 The new distribution
of 'Herrschaft und Dienst' had to be borne with amorfati, provided it was in accordance
with the will of the Master. Clearly, Kantorowicz was still reluctant to identify Nazi Germany
with George's 'New Reich': significantly, he put the word 'Reich' in inverted commas. But,
unlike Edgar Salin, who unreservedly condemned the Third Reich as a 'ghostly caricature
of everything we had worked for',342 he was at least willing to consider the possibility that
'today's events' could be the 'true path to the realisation' of the Germany envisaged by
George.343
337. See KFZ,p. 368.
338. E. Kantorowicz to S. George, loJuly 1933, SGA:
"'Es m6ge Deutschland so werden, wie es sich der
Meister ertraumt hat!" Und wenn das heutige Geschehen nicht bloB die Grimasse jenes Wunschbildes ist,
sondern tatsfichlich der wahre Weg zu dessen Erffillung, so moge das alles zum Guten ausschlagen-und
dann ist es gleichgfiltig, ob der einzelne auf diesem
Weg mitschreiten kann-vielmehr: darf-oder statt zu
jubeln beiseite tritt. "Imperium transcendat hominem",
erklirte Friedrich II. und ich wire der letzte, der hier
widersprache. Verstellen einem die Faten den Zugang
zum "Reich"-und als das "Judeoder Farbiger",wie die
neue Wortkoppel lautet, ist man von dem allein rassisch
fundierten Staat notwendig ausgeschlossen-so wird
man den amor fati aufbringen mfissen und ihm gemdii
die Entschlfisse fassen'. Grfinewald, Kantorowiczund
George(as in n. 3), p. 122, again overlooks the important
implications of this passage for Kantorowicz's attitude
towards Nazi Germany, commenting merely that it
demonstrates his unswerving loyalty to George and his
composure 'in einer verwirrenden und gefihrlichen
Zeit'.
339. See Benson et al., 'Defending Kantorowicz' (as in
n. 19); as well as Abulafia, 'Kantorowicz and Frederick
II' (as in n. 119), p. 203; and Petrow (as in n. 11), pp.
123,
128.
340. Malkiel (as in n. 25), pp. 199, 211. Benson
questions the credibility of Malkiel's comments on this
subject in Gotter in Uniform (as in n. 3 1), p. 363.
341. See U. Raulff, 'Der letzte Abend des Ernst Kantorowicz', RechtshistorischesJournal, xvili,
1999, pp. 167-91
(175).
1933;
342. E. Salin to S. George, Io September
quoted in Groppe (as in n. 40), p. 664: 'die gespenstische Verfratzung all dessen woran wir [i.e. the George
Circle] gearbeitet hatten'. But cf. K. L6with, Mein Lebeii
in Deutschland vor und nach 1933: Ein Bericht, Stuttgart
1986, p. 21, for a very different assessment of Salin's
relation to the Nazis.
343. Like Kantorowicz, Edith Landmann was not sure
how to view the Third Reich in relation to (George's
232
MARTIN A. RUEHL
What was the will of the Master in 1933? Although he refrained, until his death in
December of that year, from a public statement on the new rulers, George seems not
entirely to have disapproved of the Nazi takeover. On the one hand, he called the Nazis
henchmen ('Henkersknechte', literally: 'hangman's assistants')44 and declined the honorary position they offered him in the section for poetry of the Prussian Academy of the
Arts, the so-called 'Dichterakademie'. At the same time, though, he let them know through
Ernst Morwitz that he welcomed the fact that the Academy was 'now nationally oriented'
('jetzt unter nationalem Zeichen steht') and that he considered himself as the spiritual
ancestor of the new national movement.345 The large majority of George's remarks intra
murosduring this period suggest that he did indeed see many positive things in National
Socialism.146 In March 1933, he told Edith Landmann that now for the first time he was
hearing his views 'echoed from outside'.347 Hildebrandt recalls that George wanted to
avoid everything that would have brought him into conflict with National Socialism,
'except for his loyalty to the best [of his] Jewish followers'.348And even this loyalty was
limited. Although he regretted the predicament of individual friends, such as Kantorowicz's troubles at Frankfurt,349 the Master was prepared to put up with anti-Semitism in
pursuit of higher political goals.-350When his oldest and most prominent Jewish disciple,
Karl Wolfskehl, came to see him in his residence at Lago Maggiore, in October 1933, apparently with the intention of getting him to publicly speak out against Hitler's Germany,
George refused to receive him.351
For many members and associates of the Circle-including Ludwig Thormaehlen,
Frank Mehnert and Walter Elze-National Socialism was not just an echo, but the actual
realisation of George's ideas.352InJuly 1933, Kantorowicz's friend Woldemar Graf Uxkull
hailed the Nazi takeover as the manifestation of George's 'revolutionary ethos'. George,
'New Reich'. 'Schaudern wir vor dieser Parodie auf das
Neue Reich, die vom Dritten Reich gemimt wird', she
wrote in a circular letter to the Jewish members of the
Circle in 1933, 'oder sollen wir... in diesen Bastarden
des Neuen Reiches die lang Ersehnten begrfissen, die
die Erde sauber fegen vom alten Unrat und das Land
umpflfigen, das spater dann seine echten Sohne bebauen?': E. Landmann, 'An die deutschen Juden, die
zum geheimen Deutschland hielten', p. 1, LBI (Stefan
George Collection, no. AR 1038).
344. See Hoffmann (as in n. 3), p. 118. For George's
ambivalent attitude towards National Socialism see
Thormaehlen (as in n. 27), pp. 282-3.
345. S. George to E. Morwitz, io May 1933; quoted in
Hoffmann (as in n. 3), p. I 17: 'die Ahnherrschaft der
neuen nationalen Bewegung leugne ich durchaus nicht
ab und schiebe auch meine geistige Mitwirkung nicht
beiseite'. Kantorowicz and George refer to the new
government under Hitler in very similar terms, emphasising its 'national' dimension.
346. See Hoffmann (as in n. 3), pp. 111, 116-20.
347. E. Landmann, Gesprdchemit Stefan George (as in n.
das Politisch-Aktuelle sagte [George]
46), p. 209:
mir in Berlin'Ulber
... es sei doch immerhin das erste Mal,
dass Auffassungen,
die er vertreten habe, ihm von
aussen wiederklingen'.
348. 'mit Ausnahme des Festhaltens an den besten
jiidischen Anhingern': K. Hildebrandt to A. Brodersen,
7 January 1935; quoted in Hoffmann (as in n. 3), p.
119.
349. See Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen (as in n. 42), p.
232.
350. See E. Landmann, Gespriiche mit Stefan George (as
in n. 46), p. 209: 'Bei der letzten Unterredung [on 19
September 1933] erklirte [George], was die Juden
betrifft: nach allem, was er gelebt, muisse er hierfiber
kein Wort ausdrficklich noch sagen... [George said:]
"wenn ich an das denke, was Deutschland in den nachsten ffinfzigJahren bevorsteht, so ist mir die Judensach
im Besonderen nicht so wichtig"'. See also M. Landmann, Erinnerungen an Stefan George: Seine Freundschaft
mitJulius und Edith Landmann, Amsterdam 1980, p. 50.
351. See M. Landmann, Erinnerungen an Stefan George
(as in n. 350), p. 50.
352. For comprehensive and thoughtful discussions of
the Circle's reaction to the Nazi takeover see Hoffmann
(as in n. 3), pp. 107-28; and Groppe (as in n. 40), pp.
651-76. See also David (as in n. 40), pp. 363-9; and W.
233
Uxkull declared, had heralded the new Germany through which the 'heart of the continent' ('des Erdteils Herz') would once again redeem the world, as it had previously done
through the Holy Roman Empire and the Reformation.353Berthold Graf von Stauffenberg,
surely not the most radical of the George disciples, confessed in 1944 that, initially at least,
he had for the most part supported the basic ideas of National Socialism: the notion of
'leadership' ('Fiihrertum') coupled with that of a 'healthy hierarchy' ('gesunde Rangordnung'), as well as the 'principle of race' ('Rassegedanke').354 Until the summer of 1942,
he and his brother Claus were willing to regard the Nazi regime as a catalyst for the Reich
prophesied by George.355 Petersen, Hildebrandt and von Blumenthal joined the Nazi
party.
These developments, understandably enough, disturbed George'sJewish disciples.356
Kantorowicz spoke of an 'almost unbearable host of conflicts' in June 1933.357 He would
not deny hisJewish blood 'when it was attacked', he told George-but added, ambiguously,
that he understood that the Master could not let the fate of a few friends stop him from
doing 'his duty'.358Many of the other Jews in the Circle experienced similar conflicts. In
contrast to Wolfskehl, a convinced Zionist who fled Germany soon after the Reichstag fire
and eventually emigrated to New Zealand,359most of them were highly assimilated and
felt, in Gundolf's words, 'related only to the German essence' ('nur deutschem Wesen
It was this identification with the 'German essence' that had induced many
verwandt').-36
to ignore the anti-Semitism in the Circle-and some to condone it.361 Wilhelm Stein, for
instance, rejected Judaism because it lacked volkischvalues; and he became a close associate of Thormaehlen,362 who repeatedly expressed his resentment ofJews, calling them 'die
Itzige' and 'Ferment der Dekomposition'.363 Salin, despite some reservations, ultimately
GrafWitzthum, 'Stefan George und der Staat', Festschrift
fiir Martin Heckel zum 70o. Geburtstag, ed. K.-H. Kistner et
al., Tiibingen 19!9, PP- 915-39353. W. Uxkull-Gyllenband, Das revolutioniire Ethos bei
Stefan George,Tfibingen 1933, p. 8.
354. Quoted in 'Spiegelbildeiner Verschw6rung':Die Opposition gegen Hitler untd der Staatsstreich vom 20. Juli 1944
in der SD-Berichterstattung: Geheime Dokumente aus dern
ehemaligen Reichssicherheitshauptamt, ed. H.-A. Jacobsen,
Stuttgart 1984, 1, pp. 447-8. Berthold Stauffenberg
then went on to say that the regime had turned almost
all of these ideas into their opposite: ibid., p. 448.
355. See Hoffmann (as in n. 3), p. 449. For the
of the resistance
'konservatives GroBmachtdenken'
groups around Wilhelm Canaris and Ludwig Beck and
their ideal of a Europe under German leadership see
H. Graml, 'Die auBenpolitischen
des
Vorstellungen
deutschen Widerstandes', Der deutsche Widerstand gegein
Hitler: Vier historisch-kritische Studien, ed. W. Schmitthenner and H. Buchheim, Cologne 1966, pp. 15-72
358. Ibid.: 'mein Blut, wenn dieses angegriffen'; 'was
seines Amtes ist'.
359. Grfinewald's observation that Kantorowicz, like
Stolz auf seine
Wolfskehl, showed 'demonstrativen
jfidische Abstammung und Tradition' (Kantorowirz und
George, as in n. 3, p. 120), is not borne out by the
evidence. According to Benson, who knew him quite
well, Jewish rites meant nothing to [Kantorowicz]':
Gotter in Unijbrmn(as in n. 31 , p. 363.
360. E. Landmann, Gespriiche mit Stefan (;eoge (as in n.
46), p. 96, citing Gundolf.
361. 'Ihr wisst', Edith Landmann addressed the gentile members of the Circle in her 1933 circular, 'dass
ich angesichts der Art von Juden, die sich nach ... dem
Antisernit war
Kriege in Deutschland
breitgemacht,
genau wvie ihr, aus Liebe zurn deutschen Volke': E.
Landmann, 'An die deutschen Juden' (as in n. 343),
p. 2. On Gundolf see W. Lewin, 'Die Bedeutung des
Stefan George-Kreises ffir die deutsch-jfidische Geistesgeschichte', Yearbookof the Leo Baeck Institute, viII, 1963,
(37-9).
356. For the various reactions of the Jewish disciples
see Groppe (as in n. 40o), pp. 663-72.
357. E. Kantorowicz to S. George, 4 June 1933, SGA:
'Diese ffir mrich kaum tragbare Ffille der Konflikte'.
pp. 184-213 (207).
362. See E. Landmann, Gespriiche mit Stefan (George(as
in n. 46), p. 158.
363. Quoted in Groppe (as in n. 40), pp. 655-6.
234
MARTIN A. RUEHL
approved of Wolters's anti-Semitic 'Blittergeschichte'.364 As for Kantorowicz, he remained
friendly with the 'proverbial' anti-Semite Kommerell until George finally broke with his
former favourite in 1931. 65 He also overlooked Woldemar von Uxkull's anti-Semitism and
probably kept in touch with him even after his compromising speech ofJuly 1933.366
The strong identification with Deutschtum,it appears, also led some of the Jewish
members of the Circle to underestimate Nazi anti-Semitism. In a letter of October 1932,
Wolfskehl reproached the otherJewish disciples for their readiness to ignore this dimension of Nazism and their willingness to welcome it as the ideology of national renewal.
They would wholeheartedlyjoin the 'great national movement', he lamented, if a 'disgusting accident did not hold them back'.167Thomas Mann made a similar remark in 1934,
but, ironically, singled out Wolfskehl himself as one of the Jewish disciples of George who
had 'paved the way' for the 'anti-liberal turn', saying that he could 'easily adapt himself'
to Hitler's Germany, if the Nazis let him.368According to Hildebrandt, Jewish as well as
gentile members of the Circle supported Nazism as a bulwark against communism.3"9 In
1932, Berthold Vallentin gave aJewish friend the following explanation for his support of
the Nazis: 'We have to think of Germany, not ourselves.'370 The Reich-for Vallentin, no
less than for Kantorowicz, it seems-'transcended' the individual.
If the traditional image of the George Circle as a group of apolitical, elitist and
cosmopolitan aesthetes were accurate, their reaction to the seizure of power would represent a conundrum. Why, one would have to ask, did so many of them support a largely
364. Salin, Um Stefan George (as in n. 38), pp. 155-7365. In February 1931, Kantorowicz still looked
forward to spending a lot of time with Kommerell in
Frankfurt: E. Kantorowicz to S. George, 15 February
1931, SGA. At this point, Kommerell already enunciated a pro-Nazi attitude, as his letter of 26 July 1930
toJohann Anton reveals; see Hoffmann (as in n. 3), pp.
at least, Kanto489-9o. In his private correspondence
rowicz's Heidelberg friend Percy Ernst Schramm also
voiced blatantly anti-Semitic views; see Grolle (as in n.
296), pp. 23-4, 26-7. But cf. ibid., pp. 33 and 51-4.
366. For Uxkull's anti-Semitism see Grfinewald, Kantorowicz und George (as in n. 3),
Salin, Privatdruck
P-. 42.
(as in n. 22), p. 7, claims that Uxkull's speech marked a
decisive break in the relationship of the two men, but
Thormaehlen
(as in n. 27), p. 182, believes that there
Cf. Grfinewald, Kantowas a rapprochement after
1933rowicz und George,p. 124 n. 283. According to Countess
Donhoff, Kantorowicz spoke frequently and fondly of
Uxkull after his emigration to the United States: telephone communication with Marion D6nhoff, 13 March
Note also, in this context, that in the 1963 re2000.
edition of KaiserFriedrich the dedication to Uxkull ('dem
Freunde gewidmet in erwiderndem Dank') was kept.
367. K. Wolfskehl to A. Verwey, 26 October 1932:
'Auch von den fibrigen Juden aus Georges Umgebung
ist keiner in der Seelenlage zu spiiren, worum es geht;
sie fiihlen das Unbequeme, sie kehren den Blick ab, sie
suchen sich die Dinge zurecht zu stahlen, beseufzen
aufs hochste, daB ein abscheulicher Zufall sie zurfiickhalt mitzuthun, der "groBen nationalen Bewegung sich
voll und ganz anzuschlieBen"! Auch sie, die gescheiten
und wohlmeinenden
unter ihnen finden den auf sie
gerichteten Blick gar nicht so gorgonisch ...': quoted in
Groppe (as in n. 40), p. 664.
ed. P. de Men368. T. Mann, Tagebiicher 1933-1934,
delssohn, Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 473 (15 July
1934): 'Dachte an den Widersinn, daB ja die Juden
... zum guten Teil als Wegbereiter der antiliberalen
Wendung zu betrachten [sind]: nicht nur Angeh6rige
des George-Kreises wie Wolfskehl, der, wenn man ihn
lieBe, sich sehr wohl in das heutige Deutschland einfiugen k6nnte.' Cf. L6with (as in n. 342), P. 21: 'Manche
von ihnen [i.e. of the Jews in the Circle] hitten sich
ohne ihr rassisches Hindernis gewiB der Bewegung [i.e.
L6with's subsequent remark
Nazism] verschrieben.'
reads like a dig at Kantorowicz: 'Andere meinten nach
wie vor, das "geheime Deutschland" zu sein, dem keine
offenbare
etwas
und Ausschaltung
Zurfickweisung
anhaben k6nne. Es wurde ihnen selber nie klar, wie
weit sie das geheime Reich dem offensichtlichen unterstellten, um sich in ihrer Lebenslfige behaupten zu
k6nnen.'
369. Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen (as in n. 42), p. 231.
See also Thormaehlen (as in n. 27), p. 283.
37o. Quoted in Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen (as in n.
42), p. 231: 'Es kommt nicht auf uns, sondern auf
Deutschland an.'
235
anti-intellectual, plebeian and racist movement? Similarly, if Kantorowicz really enunciated
a benevolent universalism and the ideal of enlightened, humane rulership, why did he not
reject the Nazi revolution more firmly? The reading of KaiserFriedrichoffered here suggests
that Kantorowicz embraced none of these ideals. Like Berthold Stauffenberg, who proofread the book together with George,37"Kantorowicz believed in charismatic leadership
('Ffihrertum'), a 'healthy hierarchy' ('gesunde Rangordnung') and Germany's European
mission. And like Stauffenberg, he was willing to consider, if only for a short period, the
Nazi takeover as a means of bringing about the 'New Reich' proclaimed by George.
To understand Kantorowicz's dilemma in the summer of 1933, we need to take into
account that the Master, to whom he felt absolutely committed until the end, welcomed
the 'German Spring' in many respects and encouraged some of his disciples 'not to overlook the positive aspects of National Socialism'.372But we should also consider the affinities
between his own vision of Deutschtum and Herrschaftand that of the Nazis. The hopes
for the renewal of Germany's former European hegemony, the ideal of a racially homogeneous and 'sacralised' state, the anticipation of a messianic ruler who would bring
about a national rebirth-all that was bound to affect his assessment of a regime that
explicitly placed itself in the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire and promised Germany's
'awakening', the revision of Versailles,373as well as a healthy Volksgemeinschaft
('people's
The
author
of
Kaiser
who
had
the
violence
and
community').
glorified
cruelty of
Friedrich,
his hero's 'sacral' rule in Sicily, was-like George-not ready to condemn categorically the
measures enacted by the new regime: 'Brutality based on metaphysics', he told Maurice
Bowra in 1934, was 'better than brutality for its own sake.'374
What may have influenced Kantorowicz's attitude to the new regime most decisively
was its promise of a reborn Reich. Unlike Johannes Haller and many other medievalists,375
Kantorowicz, as we have seen, was wary of associating the Third Reich with the First. In a
letter to George of 26 November 1933, he implicitly denounced the Nazi state by referring
to it as a new Interregnum.37 Yet doubts remained. In the unpublished German version
of Laudes Regiae,a study probably begun in 1934 and completed in 1938,377 Kantorowicz
371. See Thormaehlen (as in n. 27), pp. 227-8.
372. Hildebrandt, Erinnerungen (as in n. 42), p. 228,
quoting George's hint ('Wink') in 1932: 'im Nationalsozialismus das Positive nicht zu fbersehen'.
This is
confirmed by E. Landmann, Gesprdche mit Stefan George
(as in n. 46), p. 209, and Thormaehlen (as in n. 27), p.
282.
373. This revisionist promise seems to have been a
central reason for George's positive assessment of the
Nazis: see M. Landmann, Erinnerungen an Stefan George
(as in n. 350), p. 48.
374. Bowra, Memories (as in n. 300), p. 294. Cf. E.
Landmann, Gesprdche mit Stefan George (as in n. 46), p.
'Und als ich auf die Brutalitfit der Formen hinwies
209:
[George replied]: Im Politischen gingen halt die Dinge
anders'. Ladner, who visited Kantorowicz in Frankfurt
in 1934, recalled his 'kfihl betrachtende'
attitude towards the recent political events in Germany, that is,
Hitler's violent purge of the SA, the so-called R6hm
Putsch: Ladner (as in n. 291), p. 35375. See K. Schreiner, 'Flihrertum, Rasse, Reich:
Wissenschaft von der Geschichte nach der nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung', Wissenschaftim Dritten
Reich,ed. P. Lundgreen, Frankfurt am Main 1985, PPand Sch6nwilder (as in n. 298),
163-252 (190-204);
pp. 53-65, 130-2, 216-29. For Haller's Ghibelline
justification of Hitler's Germany (which is documented
in the changing forewords to the later editions of his
in 1934, 1936 and 1943)
EpochenderdeutschenGeschichte
see K. F. Werner, 'Die deutsche Historiographie unter
in Deutschland,ed. B. FauHitler', Geschichtswissenschaft
lenbach, Munich 1974, pp. 86-96 (90-1).
376. See E. Kantorowicz to S. George, 26 November
1933, SGA.
377. According to Kantorowicz's list of publications
of 1939, this study was 'planned as a private print, but
236
MARTIN A. RUEHL
suggested that the fascist regimes had realised the old hopes for a renewal of the medieval
empire (hopes, we recall, that pervaded his own Hohenstaufen biography):
Today, the historian is quite frequently aware that the rites, chants and customs of the Middle Ages
he unearthed, along with medieval ideologies, are becoming a reality again and reaching over into
the actual life of the states.378And if today--to give but one example-the idea of a renovatioimperii
Romanorum,which was discovered only a few decades ago thanks to the industrious work of scholars,
could become a political reality in such a peculiar form and with such surprising speed,"79then he
[i.e. the historian] can be calmer in future, when the old coronation ordineswill come into force again
(on the basis of a critical edition that one hopes will be available by then)3•8(and the laudes regiae
resound once more.381First signs of this may already be detected in the national song book of the
Italian ministry of education,
which contains very modern laudes ...382
Kantorowicz here seems to acknowledge much more candidly than in the conclusion to
the English version of Laudes Regiae the problematic points of contact between Fascist
propaganda and his own work as a medievalist.
Alongside these points of contact, however, there remain important points of difference, which need to be emphasised again in response to Norman Cantor's recent portrait
of Kantorowicz as a Nazi 'twin brother' of Schramm. Kantorowicz's 1927 biography was
not, as Cantor contends, a 'piece of propaganda' for the Third Reich or a 'glorification'
of Hitler.383 At the time of its composition, Kantorowicz actually appears to have rejected
the Nazi movement: in a letter to Morwitz written in 1925 or 1926, he condemned
Wolters's signing of nationalist and volkisch appeals, whereby 'things that clearly stand
above all parties are being pulled ... into the dirt of one party'.384 And apart from a brief
withdrawn by the publisher quite recently': LBI, Box 5,
Folder 5.
378. The use of the plural here suggests strongly that
Kantorowiczwas referring to the Third Reich as well as
to Mussolini's 'Italia imperiale'.
37g. Note the crucial differences between the following passage in the German version (cited below, n.
382) and in the later English version, LaudesRegiae(as
in n. 24), p. 186: 'Full scope to meditations was given to
the listener-and if he happened to be a historian, to
meditations on the dangers implicit in his profession of
excavator of the past-when he heard the Italian Balillas
sing [their acclamation of Mussolini].'
38o. A reference to Schramm, who was then publishing his ordines studies in the Archivfiir Urk'undenfbrschunig.
381. For some Nazi equivalents to the Fascist laudes
see J. Ackermann, HeinrichHirnler als Ideologe,G6ttingen 197o, p. 79 n. 233. In the context of Kantorowicz's
critical reflections on the political implications of ordines
scholarship in the 192os and 193os, Ackermann's 'unearthing' of these Nazi chants is not without a certain
was Percy Ernst Schramm.
irony: his Doktorvater
382. E. Kantorowicz, 'Laudes Regiae: Studien zu den
liturgischen Herrscherakklamationen des Mittelalters',
p. 59, LBI, Box 3, Folder 25: 'Der Historiker wird heute
oft genug gewahr, wie die von ihm ausgegrabenen
Riten und Singe, Sitten und Brauche des Mittelalters
zusammen mit mittelalterlichen Ideologien in das tatsichliche Leben der Staaten fibergreifen und wieder
Wirklichkeit werden. Und wenn, umnnur ein Beispiel
zu geben, die Idee einer Renovatio Imperii Romanorum, dank fleissiger Gelehrtenarbeit erst vor wenigen Jahrzehnten entdeckt und ins wache Bewusstsein
zurfickgerufen, heute in so eigenartiger Form und so
fiberraschend schnell zu politischer Aktualitit gelangen
konnte, so wird er kiinftig gefasster sein k6nnen, sollten eines Tages die alten Kr6nungsordines (auf G(rund
einer bis dahin hoffentlich vorliegenden kritischen
Ausgabe) wieder in Kraft treten und dann auch die
Laudes regiae wieder erklingen. Einen Ansatz hierzu
mag man bereits in dem nationalen Liederbuch des
italienischen Unterrichtsministeriums finden, das tatsaichlichmodernste laudes enthilt.'
383. Cantor (as in n. 19), pp. 96, 97. These are two
characteristic instances of Cantor's polemical, at times
sensationalist, account of Kantorowicz's 'work and
ideas', subjecting them, in Roberto Delle Donne's
words, to a reductioad unumn:see Delle Donne, 'Kantorowicz e la sua opera' (as in n. 1o5), p. 68.
237
period of disorientation in the summer of 1933, almost all of Kantorowicz's remarks after
the seizure of power betray a critical distance from, if not outspoken opposition to, the
new rulers. Marion Countess D6nhoff, who became acquainted with him through Kurt
Riezler in 1932, recalls that in conversations with her around this time Kantorowicz
frequently mocked the Nazis ('fiber die Nazis hergezogen ist').385 He denounced UxkullGyllenband's 1933 speech on George's 'revolutionary ethos' as 'totally irresponsible'
('total verantwortungslos'); and conceived his own 'Secret Germany' lecture as a reply to
the pro-Nazi pronouncements by Uxkull and Bertram.386
Still, one should be wary of reading this critical distance back into KaiserFriedrich.
Theodor Mommsen's remark that the Third Humanism could be easily used as an 'ideological superstructure' of Nazism387 to some extent also applies to Kantorowicz's work,
which could be read-and was read-in a similar way. With its paean to the messianic,
autocratic ruler and its glorification of violence in the service of the State, KaiserFriedrich,
a bestseller at the time,388can hardly be said to have immunised its many readers against
in any case,
Nazi ideology.389 Goebbels and his censors at the Reichsschrifttumskammer,
deemed it appropriate reading for the 'awakened Germany', allowing a comparatively
large edition in 1936390-an indulgence rarely bestowed upon opponents of the regime
and defenders of 'Weimarian principles', especially if they were Jewish.391
384. E. Kantorowicz to E. Morwitz, September 1926,
SGA (this is Hoffmann's
dating of the letter; the
George-Archiv dates it 'summer 1925'): '...es heisst,
u. volkidass Wolters alle m6glichen nationalistischen
habe ... [M]einem
schen Aufrufe mitunterzeichnet
Geffihl nach ist ein derartiges politisches Heraustreten
vollkommen unm6glich, wenn man sich gleichzeitig
mit anderm identifiziert. Die private Anschauung in
unbenommen-aber
aktiv kann
politicis bleibtjajedem
man nicht zwei Staaten dienen u. vor allem: es werden
damit die gewiss fiber allen Parteien stehenden Dinge
von offizieller Seite in den Dreck einer Partei gezogen,
um mit dieser zu fraternisieren.
Bitte, lieber Ernst
Morwitz ... kann das nicht inhibiert werden?'
communication
with Marion D6n385. Telephone
hoff, 13 March 2ooo.
386. See E. Grfinewald, "'Ubt an uns mord und reicher bliiht was blfiht!"', in Benson and Fried, pp. 57-76
(63-4). It seems remarkable, none the less, that Uxkull
sent Kantorowicz a copy of the speech in question with
the inscription 'in steter und herzlichster Freundschaft'.
387. T. Mommsen to E. Kantorowicz, 13 June 1937,
LBI, Box 5, Folder 3: 'Und der sog. dritte Humanismus
kann mit Leichtigkeit als "ideologischer Uberbau" von
ganz anderen als humanen oder humanistischen Gewalten und Tendenzen in Beschlag genommen werden'.
Mommsen's subsequent remark, 'Ich kann schriftlich
mich nicht so ausdrficken, wie ich wollte und mfisste',
strongly suggests that this was a reference to the Nazis.
388. It went through four editions between 1927 and
1936, selling more than 12,000
copies, which was a
remarkable success for a scholarly work, especially during the Great Depression: see Grfinewald, Kantorowicz
und George (as in n. 3), P- 156. According to H. Fuhrdes Ernst Kantorowicz', Die
mann, 'Die Heimholung
Zeit, 22 March 1991, p. 49, these numbers do not fully
reflect 'die grole prfgende Wirkung des Werkes' on the
German Bildungsbiirgertum in those years. In his curriculum vitae of February 1939, Kantorowicz mentioned a
fifth edition of the Kaiser Friedrich 'Textband' (LBI, Box
1, Folder i); but the records of Helmut Kfipper Verlag
(formerly Bondi) show only four editions before World
War II. (I am grateful for this information to V. Dietrich
of the Verlagsarchiv Klett-Cotta.)
389. See Malkiel (as in n. 25), p. 19539o. The previous editions were: 1927 (2,600 copies);
2nd edn 1928 (4,400 copies); and 3rd edn 1931 (2,200
copies).
391. For the intensification of Nazi censorship after
October 1935, especially with regard to writings that
deviated from the 'v6lkisch-nationale
Geschichtsbetrachtung' see D. Aigner, 'Die Indizierung "schidlichen
und unerwiinschten
Schrifttums" im Dritten Reich',
Archiv fir Geschichte des Buchwesens,
xI, 1970, pp. 9341034 (995-7). Kaiser Friedrich appears to have been the
only book by a Jewish author that Bondi re-issued after
1933: see P. Pawlowsky, Helmut Kiipper vormals Georg
Dfisseldorf 1970, pp. 57-69. GunBondi i895-1970,
dolf's works, by contrast, had been put on the index
for the bookburnings of to May 1933: see 'Das war ein
Vorspiel nur...' Biicherverbrennung Deutschland 1933: Voraussetzungen und Folgen, Berlin 1983, p.
235.
238
MARTIN A. RUEHL
A brief bibliographical survey and a few textual samples suggest that Kantorowicz's
reinterpretation of Frederick as a Germanic, 'total' ruler facilitated the emperor's integration within the new Nationalsocialist Geschichtsbild.Unlike his grandfather Barbarossa
or his Prussian namesake, Frederick II, to be sure, never belonged to the core of German
heroes in the Nazi pantheon. Alfred Rosenberg, for one, continued to attack the Southern orientation of his imperial policy,392at least until 1939; and racial historians such
as Oswald Torsten condemned him as an essentially 'unv6lkisch' emperor."93Yet he was
by no means as 'discredited' in the historical literature of the Third Reich as Johannes
Fried has recently claimed-and neither was his biographer.394 Altogether, more than
fifty monographs, articles and doctoral theses on Frederick appeared in Germany between
1933 and 1945,395 including a complete
edition and translation of his book on falconry,396
which Kantorowicz had called for in 1931 as a national duty for too long neglected by
German publishers.397
Almost all of these publications presented Frederick in a way that corresponded
closely to Kantorowicz's biography: as a supra-national, yet ultimately Germanic ruler,398a
relentless antagonist of the pope and fighter for the Reich,399a leader who had consolidated royal power in Germany as well as German hegemony in Europe.400Even certified
Nazi historians like Erich Maschke and Karl Ipser explicitly defended the emperor against
the traditional charges that he was Latin rather than German and that he had neglected
to conquer 'living space' ('Lebensraum') in Eastern Europe.401 The fact that Maschke's
apologia for Frederick, together with a mini-biography by Hampe, appeared in Rosenberg's NationalsozialistischeMonatshefte(May 1941), the official theoretical organ of the
NSDAP, reflected the positive re-assessment of Hohenstaufen imperial policy by the party
ideologists after the beginning of World War II, when Frederick II's and Barbarossa's transEuropean 'deutscher Herrschaftsraum' ('sphere of German hegemony') came to serve
as a historical model for Hitler's 'europiische GroBraumordnung' ('European Greater
Space').402 Two years later, the same journal published an article on 'Kaiser Frederick II
and the Jews'. Its author, H. F. Anders, vehemently rebutted recent attempts to portray
392. See A. Rosenberg, 'Raumpolitik', Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, III, 1932, pp. 193-200 (197, 198).
393. 0. Torsten, Riche: Eine geschichtliche Studie iiber die
Entwicklung der Reichsidee, Munich 1943, p. 98.
394. Fried, 'Kantorowicz and Postwar Historiography'
(as in n. 8), p. 187. For the ambivalent appropriation
of the Hohenstaufen
mythology by the Nazis see T.
Brune and B. Baumunk, 'Wege der Popularisierung',
in Die Zeit der Staufer (as in n. 149), PP. 327-35 (330-1).
395. See Willemsen (as in n. 264).
396. Frederick II, De arte venandi cum avibus, ed. C. A.
2 vols, Leipzig 1942.
397. Ergdnzungsband (as in n. 97), P. 156.
398. H. Grundmann, 'Kaiser Friedrich II. 1194-1250',
Die GrofjenDeutschen, ed. W. Andreas and W. von Scholz,
I, Berlin 1935, pp. 124-42, repr. in Stupor Mundi (as in
Willemsen,
179), pp. 109-33 (112).
n.
399 H. B6hhmer, 'Kaiser Friedrich im Kampf um das
Reich', Ph.D. thesis, Cologne University 1938.
400. P. Kirn, 'Die Verdienste der staufischen Kaiser
um das Deutsche Reich', Historische Zeitschrift,
C:•xiv,
1941, pp. 261-84, repr. in Stupor Mundi (as in n. 179),
pp. 194-22 1 (195, 204-12).
401. E. Maschke, Das Geschlecht der Staufer, Munich
1943 (repr. Aalen 1970), pp. 86-7. For Maschke's
enthusiastic reception of Kaiser Friedrich in 1931 see
Grfinewald, "'Not only in Learned Circles"' (as in n.
107), p. 171. On Maschke see W. Wippermann, Der
Ordensstaat als Ideologie, Berlin 1979, p. 276 n. 313.
Ipser was an associate of Rosenberg, to whom he dedicated his 1942 book on Frederick: 'Dem Ghibellinen [!]
Alfred Rosenberg gewidmet': K. Ipser, Kaiser Friedrich II.
In an evident
Leben und Werk in Italien, Leipzig 1942.
allusion to KFZ, p. 88, he called Frederick 'der Pate
PreuBens' (p. 17)402. See E. Maschke, 'Die Ostpolitik der staufischen
K6nige', Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, xII, 1941, pp.
442-54 (451-3); and K. Hampe, 'Kaiser Friedrich II.,
239
Frederick as a philosemite, arguing, in terms strongly reminiscent of KaiserFriedrich,that
far from granting them special treatment, Frederick had ruthlessly 'utilised' ('verwertet')
the Jews of Sicily for his state.403
Kantorowicz remained notably present in the literature on Frederick published after
1933. His name appeared not only in the works of Hampe, Baethgen and Schramm,404
but also in those of Maschke and Ipser. Maschke cited him extensively in the footnotes
to his 1943 Geschlecht der Staufer (with an asterisk, to denote the 'non-Aryan' character of
his source).405 Ipser, in his own biography of Frederick II (1942), paraphrased entire
paragraphs from Kaiser Friedrich,406 including the famous concluding evocation of the
'greatest Frederick', who is 'not yet redeemed' and whom 'his people neither comprehended nor satisfied' ('den sein Volk weder faBte noch ffillte'). Considering the popularity of
der Hohenstaufe', ibid., pp. 401-21. For this important
caesura in the Nazis' reception and representation of
the Middle Ages see Sch6nwalder (as in n. 298), pp.
76-8, 246-7, 310; L. Stern, 'Die klerikal-imperialistische Abendland-Ideologie',
in Studien iiber die deutsche
Geschichtswissenschaft (as in n. 155), II, Die biirgerliche
deutsche Geschichtsschreibung von der Reichseinigung von
oben bis zur Bejreiung Deutschlands vom Faschismus, pp.
413-14; and Jordan, 'Aspekte der Mittelalterforschug'
(as in n. 163), pp- 338-9. In 1942,Jordan himself had
celebrated Hitler's Reich as a renewal of Germany's
medieval role as 'europfiische Ordnungsmacht':
see
Sch6nwilder, p. 224.
'Kaiser Friedrich II. und die
40o3. H. F. Anders,
Juden', Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, xiv, 1943, pp.
Cf. KFZ, pp. 245-6. Anders's reading of
(311).
31o-13
the Fulda 'ritual murder' trial of 1231, similarly, followed Kantorowicz: cf. KFZ, p. 379.
404. See K. Hampe, Kaiser Friedrich I. der Hohenstaufe,
Lflbeck 1935. The fact that the bibliography of this
booklet (which was re-published in 1943) refers to
Kaiser Friedrich as 'die neueste und hervorragendste
Gesamtdarstellung' casts doubt on Fried's assessment of
Hampe as a 'timid Geheimrat' who did not dare to cite
a book by a Jewish scholar after 1933: Fried, 'Kantorowicz and Postwar Historiography' (as in n. 8), p. 188.
Baethgen's re-editions of Hampe's Deutsche Kaisergeschichte in 1937, 1943 and 1945, mention Kantorowicz's
'bedeutende, wenn auch teilweise anfechtbare' biography of Frederick II, and the latter two refer to his 1937
article on Petrus de Vinea: K. Hampe, Deutsche Kaisergeschichte in der Zeit der Salier und Staufer, 7th edn, Leipzig
1937, PP. 247-8, and pp. 255-6 in the 8th and 9th editions. Schramm cites Kantorowicz's unpublished Laudes
study in the Archivfiir Urkundenforschung, xv, 1938, pp.
315-16,
326-7. Burdach quotes Kantorowicz three
times in his 'Die Wahl Friedrichs II. zum r6mischen
Kaiser', Historische Zeitschrift, ci,Iv, 1936, pp. 513-27
See also Walter Holtzmann's positive
(515,
517, 521).
review of Kantorowicz's essay on Petrus de Vinea, Historische Zeitschrift, cLVII, 1937, p. 628, and H. Mitteis,
Der Staat des Mittelalters, 2nd edn, Weimar 1944, pp. 392,
413, 414405. Maschke, Das Geschlecht der Staufer (as in n. 401),
pp. 143, 163, 166-8. Maschke also refers to the works
of other Jewish scholars. His use of an asterisk to indicate non-Aryan sources seems to have gradually become
the custom among historians in the Third Reich; see
Schreiner (as in n. 375), P. 214. But H. Schramm,
'Kaiser Friedrich II. und die Juden: Neue Erkenntnisse
zur Judenpolitik des Hohenstaufen',
Die Judenfrage in
Politik, Recht, Kultur und Wirtschaft, vii, 1943, PP- 39-41,
approvingly cites Kantorowicz's book without making
reference to his Jewishness-which
he does repeatedly
in the case of other historians ('derjildische Historiker
Alfred Stern', 'derJude Caro', etc.).
406. To list only a few examples, cf. KFZ, p. 549,
'Etwas von jenem nordischen Trotz... kam jetzt zum
Durchbruch', and Ipser (as in n. 401), pp. 15-16, 'der
nordische Trotz kam jetzt fiber den Staufer'; KFZ, p.
126, 'der erste Kaiser, der willentlich und wissentlich
eine Herrschaft auch fiber die Geister der Untertanen
anstrebte', and Ipser, p. 2o, 'der erste Herrscher, der
wissentlich und willentlich auch die Herrschaft fiber
die Geister der Untertanen anstrebte'; KFZ, p. i 13, 'Die
Juden muBten den gelben Fleck auf die Kleidung heften
und den Bart wachsen lassen', and Ipser, p. 2o, 'Die
den gelben Stern
Juden muBten zur Unterscheidung
tragen und den Bart wachsen lassen'; KFZ, p. 268 (on
Frederick's eugenic laws), 'Deutlicher als in diesem Gesetz laBt sich der Willen des Kaisers, auch dem Blute
nach aus den Siziliern ein einheitliches Volk zu schaffen, schwerlich aussprechen', and Ipser, p. 2o, 'Deutlicher laBt sich der Wille des Herrschers, auch dem
Blute nach aus den Siziliern ein einheitliches Volk zu
schaffen, schwerlich aussprechen. Was Kaiser Friedrich
damals zum strengen Gesetz erhoben, das hat im Rassegedanken des Ffihrers seine klassische Erffillung gefunden.' F. Hearnshaw, 'A Thirteenth-Century Hitler', The
National Review, cxIx, 1942, pp. 157-63, which depicts
Frederick's racial policy (p. 158) as an anticipation of
Hitlerism, also relies heavily on Kaiser Friedrich.
MARTIN A. RUEHL
240
Kantorowicz's
book, most of Ipser's readers were probably able to identify
the inter-
textual reference of the following passage:
From now on the greatest Frederick is redeemed ... For a long time, he had been a stranger, but
today his people have comprehended him and he has entirely become one of us. His work has been
secured and has found its complete, glorious fulfilment at the hands of Adolf Hitler.4f7
There is some evidence that the latter regarded himself as the inheritor of Frederick's
Reich and its European mission. 'One thing is certain', Hitler declared in February 1942:
'if we have any claim at all to world domination, we have to refer to the history of the First
German Empire ... Alongside ancient Rome, the history of the Empire408 is the most
tremendous epic the world has ever witnessed. Imagine the bravery of these chaps! How
often they rode across the Alps! These were men of calibre! They even reigned from
Sicily!'409 Hitler also admired Frederick as a great antagonist of the Catholic Church.410
His Ghibelline fascination with the Hohenstaufen41l appears to have been well known
among his subordinates. On New Year's Day 1941, Joachim von Ribbentrop presented
him with a detailed model construction (in 1:50 scale) of Frederick's most famous fortress,
the Castel del Monte.412 Martin Bormann cited a 1235 charter drawn up by Frederick to
demonstrate to his Fiihrer the venerable medieval roots of the Nazis' 'German greeting'.413
On reading Kaiser Friedrich in his Spandau prison cell, Albert Speer recalled a visit to Hitler
in the summer of 1939:
407. KFZ, p. 632. Ipser (as in n. 401), p. 21: 'Der
gr6Bte Friedrich ist nunmehr erl6st... Lange Zeit war
er ein Fremder gewesen, aber heute hat ihn sein Volk
verstanden und er ist ganz einer der Unseren geworden.
Sein Werk ist gesichert und hat in allem strahlende
Erffillung gefunden durch Adolf Hitler.' Passages like
this, unsurprisingly, were deleted from the post-war
re-edition of Ipser's book, but most of the paraphrases
of Kaiser Friedrich remained intact. The new, 'de-Nazified' version concluded with a quotation from George
and appeared under a suitably Georgean title: see K.
Ipser, Der Staufer Friedrich II. Heimlicher Kaiser der Deutschen, Berg 1978.
408. Note in this context that Hitler, like Kantorowicz, viewed the Weimar Republic as an Interregnum
or 'Zwischenreich': Picker (as in n. 5), p. 232.
4o9. 'Eines istjedenfalls sicher: Wenn wir fiberhaupt
einen Weltanspruch erheben wollen, mufissen wir uns
auf die deutsche Kaisergeschichte berufen ... Die Kaiserdemr
geschichte ist das gewaltigste Epos, das-neben
Welt je gesehen hat. Diese Kluhnheit,
alten Rom-die
wenn man sich vorstellt, wie oft die Kerle fiber die Alpen
geritten sind! Die Manner haben ein Format gehabt!
Von Sizilien aus sogar haben sie regiert!' Ibid., p. 140.
On Hitler and Frederick II see J. Kirchoff, Nietzsche,
Hitler und die Deutschen: Die Perversion des Neuen Zeitalters,
Berlin 1990o, pp. 150-8. The Frederick portrait in the
'Ffihrerbunker', however, was of Frederick the Great of
Prussia, and not the Hohenstaufen Frederick II, as E.
Michaud, 'Nazisme et Representation',
Critique, xi.iIi,
seems to believe.
December 1987, pp. 1019-34
(1o30)
410. Picker (as in n. 5), P- 334411. For Hitler's Ghibellinism see ibid., pp. 78, 13841, 230-3, 334-5. Hitler vehemently defended the
Italian policy of the Hohenstaufen against Rosenberg
(ibid., p. 231). These passages contrast sharply with
the oft-quoted remark from Mein Kampf: 'Wir [i.e. the
National Socialists] setzen dort an, wo man vor sechs
Jahrhunderten endete. Wir stoppen den ewigen Germanenzug nach dem Siiden ... Europas und weisen den
Blick nach dem Land im Osten': A. Hitler, Mein Kampf,
i9th edn, Munich 1933, p. 742. According to Schramm,
Hitler was 'completely rooted within the cultural boundaries of the old Roman Empire' and 'took no part in
his followers' grotesque glorification of the Teutons':
Schramm, Hitler (as in n. 295), p. 22. This was perhaps
what Kantorowicz meant when he remarked that 'Hitler
was the only Nazi who did not believe in National Socialism': Bowra, Memories (as in n. 3oo), p. 294
412. See Ipser, Der StauferFriedrich II. (as in n. 407), p.
230. Hermann Giesler, his personal architect, reports
that Hitler wanted to spend his retirement in a residence
built in the same style as 'das kostbare Castel del Monte
Friedrichs II.': H. Giesler, Ein anderer Hitler, Leoni
p. 4o6.
413. Picker (as in n. 5), p. 18o. Cf. KFZ, p. 381.
1977,
241
In the evening, I finished Ernst Kantorowicz's KaiserFriedrich.I remembered the tour I undertook a
few months before the outbreak of the war, attempting to follow the traces of Frederick through Sicily
and Apulia. My wife and I visited the castles, fortresses, and chapels built during the age of the great
Staufen emperor. There seemed to be a certain deliberate intention behind the way the Fascist government was allowing these monuments of so important a German to crumble from neglect. Even the
famous tomb of Frederick II in Palermo cathedral looked untended; scraps of paper and cigarettes
lay all around it. After my return I proposed to Hitler that the bones of Frederick II in their beautiful,
classical marble sarcophagus be moved and placed under the grand tabernacle in our Berlin Soldiers
Hall. I said the Duce might not be unhappy to have this reminder of a period of weakness in Italian
rule outside the country.Besides, after all, he had presented Goringwith the much more valuable
Sterzingaltar.Hitlerlistened, smilingbenevolently.414
EPILOGUE
InJuly 1943, Hitler's unholy empire had already begun to crumble. When Goring's orders
reached Admiral Ruge in Palermo, the Wehrmacht was hastily pulling out of Sicily, the
'dream paradise of the Teutons', as Kantorowicz had called it.415As the German army,
under heavy pressure from the Allies, embarked on its retreat up the Italian peninsula in
a new 'Drang nach Norden',416 a forty-seven-page biography of Frederick II by Karl Hampe
was distributed, in the form of a Feldpostausgabe,47among the German soldiers-perhaps
to remind them of their nation's great imperial legacy and its former 'universal capacities'
('Weltkrafte'), which now seemed to be so fatefully waning. It was the sad task of Hampe's
protege Schramm, as the official historiographer of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, to record the gradual collapse of Hitler's 'europiische GroBraumordnung'.
While Schramm was going about his work at the Fiihrer's headquarters in East Prussia,
his Heidelberg friend Kantorowicz was involved in a different kind of historical enterprise
on the other side of the Atlantic. In a series of lectures for the Army Special Training
Program at Berkeley during the winter semester of 1943/4, Kantorowicz gave American
officers a crash course in German history from Charlemagne to Hitler.48"His military
audience was probably unaware that these lectures, more than any of his subsequent
historiographical works, were a retrospective self-critique, a re-assessment of the nationalist and anti-liberal ideals underlying his book on Frederick II.419 The deification of
414. A. Speer, Spandau: The SecretDiaries, tr. R. and I.
Winston, London 1976, pp. 403-4.
415. KFZ, p. 199: 'das Traumparadies der Germanen'.
Kantorowicz mentioned Goethe in this context; but the
latter, a true cosmopolitan, significantly had called Sicily
'das Paradies der Welt': J. W. von Goethe, Italienische
Reise, ed. E. Trunz and H. von Einem, Munich 1981, p.
171.
416. Ipser reports that the Supreme Command of
the Wehrmacht gave explicit orders to the retreating
German units not to use Frederick's ideally located
hunting castle Lagopesole, near Avigliano, as an observation post for the artillery, in order to save the Hohenstaufen building from bombardment
by the Allies:
Ipser, Der StauferrFriedrichII. (as in n. 407), p. 184.
417. Kaiser Friedrich II. der Hohenstaufe, Lfibeck 1935,
repr. 1943 'als Feldpostausgabe von Colemans Kleiner
6: Selbstdarstellung,
Biographie'; see K. Hampe 1869-93
ed. H. Diener, = Sitzungsberichte der HeidelbergerAkadermie
der Wissenschaften (Phil.-hist. K1.), 1969 (Abhandlung 3),
P. 53418. See Ralph Giesey's introductory commentary to
the lecture notes: LBI, Kantorowicz lectures (as in n.
199)419. In this respect, they resemble Thomas Mann's
1945 lecture 'Deutschland und die Deutschen', a critical examination of the anti-Enlightenment,
Romantic
strands in German culture that had informed so much
of Mann's own earlier work. Note, however, that Kaiser
Friedrich was still assigned reading for Kantorowicz's
242
MARTIN
A. RUEHL
the state, the notion of a national Redeemer, the dream of Germany as a supernation,
a universal Reich 'far more august and all-comprising than all the national states of
Europe'420-these ideals Kantorowicz now condemned, sub specie 1933, as proto-Fascist.
Joachim of Fiore's apocalyptic visions of a renewal of the world, which had played such a
central role in his KaiserFriedrich,he related to Mussolini and Hitler;421the Nazis would
be the ones, he quoted Hitler as saying, to 'rejuvenate the world. For this world is about
to end.'422 Towards the close of his lecture series,42"Kantorowicz discussed a number of
'political prophets' who had, directly or indirectly, prepared the intellectual ground on
which the ideas of the Nazis would later grow. One of them was Stefan George.
Princeton University and Queens' College, Cambridge
undergraduate classes at Berkeley in 194o and 1942:
LBI, Kantorowicz lectures, Box 1, Folders i and 3.
See LBI, Kantorowicz lectures (as in n. 199), ch.
42o.
'Dualism', p. 8.
421. Ibid., ch. 'The Peasants', pp. 7-8.
422. Ibid., ch. 'Nazism and Rebarbarization', p. 7. This
was a quote from Rauschning's 'conversations' with
Hitler, first published in 1939. See H. Rauschning,
Gesprdiice mit Hitler, Zurich and Vienna 1973, p. 78:
'Wir [i.e. the Nazis] sind es, die die Welt verjingen
werden. Diese Welt ist am Ende!' Cf. KFZ, p. 462, where
Kantorowicz discusses the manifold messianic expectations of a 'Verjingung der Welt' that were prompted
by Joachim of Fiore's predictions and that eventually
came to centre on Frederick II.
423. See LBI, Kantorowicz lectures (as in n. 199), ch.
'Reaction and 1848', p. 14, and ibid., ch. 'Nazism and
Rebarbarization',
pp. 11-12.

`In This Time without Emperors`: The Politics of Ernst

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