Oswald Spengler

Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox philosopher Template:Conservatism in Germany Oswald Arnold Gottfried SpenglerTemplate:Efn (29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German polymath whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates that human cultures and civilizations are akin to biological entities, each with a limited, predictable, and deterministic lifespan.

Spengler predicted that about the year 2000, Western civilization would enter the period of pre‑death emergency which would lead to 200 years of Caesarism (extra-constitutional omnipotence of the executive branch of government) before Western civilization's final collapse.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Spengler is regarded as a German nationalist and a critic of republicanism, and he was a prominent member of the Weimar-era Conservative Revolution.<ref name="Herf_1986"/>Template:Rp<ref name="Wolin2016"/><ref name="Seri2014"/> While the Nazis had viewed his writings as a means to provide a "respectable pedigree" to their ideology,<ref name="VQR"/> Spengler later criticized Nazism for what he considered to be excessive racialist elements. He saw Benito Mussolini, and entrepreneurial types, like the mining magnate Cecil Rhodes,<ref>The Decline of the West, Alfred A. Knopf. Volume 1, page 37, Atkinson's Translation.</ref> as examples of the impending Caesars of Western culture Template:Emdashlater showcasing his disappointment in Mussolini's colonialist adventures.<ref>Letters of Oswald Spengler page 305, Alfred A. Knopf, 1966, Translation Arthur Helps. Here Spengler is quite critical of Mussolini's involvement in Abyssinia, saying: "Mussolini has lost the calm statesmanlike superiority of his first years...".</ref>

Biography

Early life and family

Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was born on 29 May 1880 in Blankenburg, Duchy of Brunswick, German Empire, the oldest surviving child of Bernhard Spengler (1844–1901) and Pauline Spengler (1840–1910), née Grantzow, the descendant of an artistic family.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Oswald's elder brother was born prematurely in 1879, when his mother tried to move a heavy laundry basket, and died at the age of three weeks. Oswald was born ten months after his brother's death.<ref>Koktanek, Anton Mirko, Oswald Spengler in seiner Zeit, Beck, 1968, p. 10</ref> His younger sisters were Adele (1881–1917), Gertrud (1882–1957), and Hildegard (1885–1942).Template:Sfn Oswald's paternal grandfather, Theodor Spengler (1806–1876), was a metallurgical inspector (Hütteninspektor) in Altenbrak.<ref>Koktanek, Anton Mirko, Oswald Spengler in seiner Zeit. Beck, 1968, p. 3, 517</ref>

Spengler's maternal great-grandfather, Friedrich Wilhelm Grantzow, a tailor's apprentice in Berlin, had three children out of wedlock with a Jewish woman named Bräunchen Moses (Template:Circa 1769–1849) whom he later married, on 26 May 1799.<ref name="selfimage">Template:Cite book</ref> Shortly before the wedding, Moses was baptized as Johanna Elisabeth Anspachin; the surname was chosen after her birthplace—Anspach.<ref name="beck1968">Koktanek, Anton Mirko, Oswald Spengler in seiner Zeit. Beck, 1968, p. 5</ref> Her parents, Abraham and Reile Moses, were both deceased by then. The couple had another five children,<ref name="selfimage" /> one of whom was Spengler's maternal grandfather, Gustav Adolf Grantzow (1811–1883)—a solo dancer and ballet master in Berlin, who in 1837 married Katharina Kirchner (1813–1873), a solo dancer from a Munich Catholic family;<ref name="beck1968" /> the second of their four daughters was Oswald Spengler's mother Pauline Grantzow.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Like the Grantzows in general, Pauline was of a Bohemian disposition, and, before marrying Bernhard Spengler, accompanied her dancer sisters on tours. In appearance, she was plump. Her temperament, which Oswald inherited, was moody, irritable, and morose.<ref>Fischer, Klaus P., History and Prophecy: Oswald Spengler and The Decline of the West. P. Lang, 1989, p. 27</ref>

Education

When Oswald was ten years of age, his family moved to the university city of Halle. Here he received a classical education at the local Gymnasium (academically oriented secondary school), studying Greek, Latin, mathematics and sciences. Here, too, he developed his propensity for the arts—especially poetry, drama, and music—and came under the influence of the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Nietzsche.Template:Sfn At 17, he wrote a drama titled Montezuma.Template:Sfn

After his father's death in 1901, Spengler attended several universities (Munich, Berlin, and Halle) as a private scholar, taking courses in a wide range of subjects. His studies were undirected. In 1903, he failed his doctoral thesis on Heraclitus—titled Der metaphysische Grundgedanke der heraklitischen Philosophie (The Fundamental Metaphysical Thought of the Heraclitean Philosophy) and conducted under the direction of Alois Riehl—because of insufficient references. He took the doctoral oral exam again and received his PhD from Halle on 6 April 1904. In December 1904, he began to write the secondary dissertation (Staatsexamensarbeit) necessary to qualify as a high school teacher. This became The Development of the Organ of Sight in the Higher Realms of the Animal Kingdom (Die Entwicklung des Sehorgans bei den Hauptstufen des Tierreiches), a text now lost.<ref>Mark Sedgwick (ed.), Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 17.</ref> It was approved and he received his teaching certificate. In 1905, Spengler suffered a nervous breakdown.

Career

Spengler briefly served as a teacher in Saarbrücken then in Düsseldorf. From 1908 to 1911 he worked at a grammar school (Realgymnasium) in Hamburg, where he taught science, German history, and mathematics. Biographers report that his life as a teacher was uneventful.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1911, following his mother's death, he moved to Munich, where he lived for the rest of his life. While there, he was a cloistered scholar, supported by his modest inheritance. Spengler survived on very limited means and was marked by loneliness. He owned no books, and took work as a tutor and wrote for magazines to earn additional income. Due to a severe heart problem, Spengler was exempted from military service.Template:Sfn During the war, his inheritance was useless because it was invested overseas; thus, he lived in genuine poverty for this period.Template:Citation needed

He began work on the first volume of The Decline of the West intending to focus on Germany within Europe. However, the Agadir Crisis of 1911 affected him deeply, so he widened the scope of his study. According to Spengler the book was completed in 1914, but the first edition was published in the summer of 1918, shortly before the end of World War I.Template:Sfn Spengler wrote about the years immediately prior to World War I in Decline:

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When the first volume of The Decline of the West was published, it was a wild success.Template:Efn Spengler became an instant celebrity.Template:Sfn The national humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), followed by economic depression in 1923 and hyperinflation, seemed to prove Spengler right. Decline comforted Germans because it could be used as a rationale for their diminished pre-eminence, i.e. due to larger world-historical processes. The book met with wide success outside of Germany as well, and by 1919 had been translated into several other languages.Template:Citation needed

The second volume of Decline was published in 1922. In it, Spengler argued that German socialism differed from Marxism; instead, he said it was more compatible with traditional German conservatism. Spengler declined an appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Göttingen, saying he needed time to focus on writing.Template:Citation needed

The book was widely discussed, even by those who had not read it. Historians took umbrage at his unapologetically non-scientific approach. Novelist Thomas Mann compared reading Spengler's book to reading Arthur Schopenhauer's works for the first time. Academics gave it a mixed reception. Sociologist Max Weber described Spengler as a "very ingenious and learned dilettante", while philosopher Karl Popper called the thesis "pointless". The first volume of Decline was published in English by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926, the second in 1928.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Aftermath

In 1924, following the social-economic upheaval and hyperinflation, Spengler entered politics in an effort to bring Reichswehr General Hans von Seeckt to power as the country's leader. The attempt failed and Spengler proved ineffective in practical politics.Template:Citation needed

A 1928 Time review of the second volume of Decline described the immense influence and controversy Spengler's ideas enjoyed during the 1920s: "When the first volume of The Decline of the West appeared in Germany a few years ago, thousands of copies were sold. Cultivated European discourse quickly became Spengler-saturated. Spenglerism spurted from the pens of countless disciples. It was imperative to read Spengler, to sympathize or revolt. It still remains so".<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

In 1931, he published Man and Technics, which warned against the dangers of technology and industrialism to culture. He especially pointed to the tendency of Western technology to spread to hostile "Colored races" which would then use the weapons against the West.Template:Sfn It was poorly received because of its anti-industrialism.Template:Citation needed This book contains the well-known Spengler quote "Optimism is cowardice".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Despite voting for Hitler over Hindenburg in 1932, Spengler found the Führer vulgar. He met Hitler in 1933 and after a lengthy discussion remained unimpressed, saying that Germany did not need a heroic tenor but a real hero ". He quarreled publicly with Alfred Rosenberg, and his pessimism and remarks about the Führer resulted in isolation and public silence. He further rejected offers from Joseph Goebbels to give public speeches. However, Spengler did become a member of the German Academy that year.Template:Citation needed

The Hour of Decision, published in 1934, was a bestseller, but was later banned for its critique of National Socialism. Spengler's criticisms of liberalism<ref>Tate, Allen (1934). "Spengler's Tract Against Liberalism," The American Review April 1934.</ref> were welcomed by the Nazis, but Spengler disagreed with their biological ideology and anti-Semitism.Template:Sfn While racial mysticism played a key role in his own worldview, Spengler had always been an outspoken critic of the racial theories professed by the Nazis and many others in his time, and was not inclined to change his views during and after Hitler's rise to power.Template:Sfn Although a German nationalist, Spengler viewed the Nazis as too narrowly German, and not occidental enough to lead the fight against other peoples. The book also warned of a coming world war in which Western Civilization risked being destroyed, and was widely distributed abroad before eventually being banned by the National Socialist German Workers Party in Germany. A Time review of The Hour of Decision noted Spengler's international popularity as a polemicist, observing that "When Oswald Spengler speaks, many a Western Worldling stops to listen". The review recommended the book for "readers who enjoy vigorous writing", who "will be glad to be rubbed the wrong way by Spengler's harsh aphorisms" and his pessimistic predictions.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Later life and death

Oswald Spengler's grave on a snowy day.

Spengler's grave

On 13 October 1933, Spengler became one of the hundred senators of the German Academy.<ref>Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig. V. 17, 1968, p. 71</ref><ref>Mitteilungen Template:Webarchive. Deutsche Akademie, 1936, p. 571. "Dr. Oswald Spengler, München, Senator der Deutschen Akademie"</ref>

Spengler spent his final years in Munich, listening to Beethoven, reading Molière and Shakespeare, buying several thousand books, and collecting ancient Turkish, Persian and Indian weapons. He made occasional trips to the Harz mountains and to Italy.

Spengler died of a heart attack on 8 May 1936, in Munich, at age 55.Template:Sfn He was buried in the Nordfriedhof in Munich.

Views

Influences

In the introduction to The Decline of the West, Spengler cites Johann W. von Goethe and Friedrich Nietzsche as his major influences. Goethe's vitalism and Nietzsche's cultural criticism, in particular, are highlighted in his works.Template:Sfn

Template:Blockquote Spengler was also influenced by the universal and cyclical vision of world history proposed by the German historian Eduard Meyer.Template:Sfn The belief in the progression of civilizations through an evolutionary process comparable with living beings can be traced back to classical antiquity, although it is difficult to assess the extent of the influence those thinkers had on Spengler: Cato the Elder, Cicero, Seneca, Florus, Ammianus Marcellinus, and later, Francis Bacon, who compared different empires with each other with the help of biological analogies.Template:Sfn

The Decline of the West (1918)

Template:Main The concept of historical philosophy developed by Spengler is founded upon two assumptions:

the existence of social entities called 'Cultures' (Kulturen) and regarded as the largest possible actors in human history, which itself had no metaphysical sense,
the parallelism between the evolution of those Cultures and the evolution of living beings.

Spengler enumerates nine Cultures: Ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Greco-Roman or 'Apollonian', 'Magian' or 'Arabic' (including early and Byzantine Christianity and Islam), Mexican, Western or 'Faustian', and Russian. They interacted with each other in time and space but were distinctive due to 'internal' attributes. According to Spengler, "Cultures are organisms, and world-history is their collective biography."Template:Sfn

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Spengler also compares the evolution of Cultures to the different ages of human life, "Every Culture passes through the age-phases of the individual man. Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age." When a Culture enters its late stage, Spengler argues, it becomes a 'Civilization' (Zivilisation), a petrified body characterized in the modern age by technology, imperialism, and mass society, which he expected to fossilize and decline from the 2000s onward.Template:Sfn The first-millennium Near East was, in his view, not a transition between Classical Antiquity, Western Christianity, and Islam, but rather an emerging new Culture he named 'Arabian' or 'Magian', explaining messianic Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism, Mandaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam as different expressions of a single Culture sharing a unique worldview.Template:Sfn

The great historian of antiquity Eduard Meyer thought highly of Spengler, although he also had some criticisms of him. Spengler's obscurity, intuitiveness, and mysticism were easy targets, especially for the positivists and neo-Kantians who rejected the possibility that there was meaning in world history. The critic and aesthete Count Harry Kessler thought him unoriginal and rather inane, especially in regard to his opinion on Nietzsche. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, however, shared Spengler's cultural pessimism. Spengler's work became an important foundation for social cycle theory.<ref name="wittgen">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Prussianism and Socialism (1919)

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Nazism and Fascism

Spengler was an important influence on Nazi ideology. He "provided skeletal Nazi ideas" to the early Nazi movement "and gave them a respectable pedigree".<ref name="VQR">Template:Cite web</ref> Key parts of his writings were incorporated into Nazi Party ideology.<ref name="VQR"/>

Spengler's criticism of the Nazi Party was taken seriously by Hitler, and Carl Deher credited him for inspiring Hitler to carry out the Night of the Long Knives in which Ernst Röhm and other leaders of the Sturmabteilung (SA) were executed.<ref name="VQR"/> In 1934, Spengler pronounced the funeral oration for one of the victims of the Night of the Long Knives and retired in 1935 from the board of the highly influential Nietzsche Archive which was viewed as opposition to the regime.Template:Sfn

Spengler considered Judaism to be a "disintegrating element" (zersetzendes Element) that acts destructively "wherever it intervenes" (wo es auch eingreift). In his view, Jews are characterized by a "cynical intelligence" (zynische Intelligenz) and their "money thinking" (Gelddenken).<ref>Ulrich Wyrwa: Spengler, Oswald. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Bd. 2: Personen. De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, Template:ISBN</ref> Therefore, they were incapable of adapting to Western culture and represented a foreign body in Europe. He also clarifies in The Decline of the West that this is a pattern shared in all civilizations: He mentions how the ancient Jew would have seen the cynical, atheistic Romans of the late Roman empire the same way Westerners today see Jews. Alexander Bein argues that with these characterizations Spengler contributed significantly to the enforcement of Jewish stereotypes in pre-WW2 German circles.<ref>Alexander Bein: „Der jüdische Parasit“ Template:Webarchive. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 13 (1965), Heft 2, p. 150.</ref>

Spengler viewed Nazi anti-Semitism as self-defeating, and personally took an ethnological view of race and culture.<ref name="VQR"/> In his private papers, he remarked upon "how much envy of the capability of other people in view of one's lack of it lies hidden in anti-Semitism!", and arguing that "when one would rather destroy business and scholarship than see Jews in them, one is an ideologue, i.e., a danger for the nation. Idiotic."Template:Sfn

Spengler, however, regarded the transformation of ultra-capitalist mass democracies into dictatorial regimes as inevitable, and he had expressed acknowledgement for Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascist movement as a first symptom of this development.Template:Sfn

Legacy

Spengler influenced other academics, including historians Arnold J. Toynbee,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Carroll Quigley, and Samuel P. Huntington.Template:Citation needed Others include fascist ideologues Francis Parker Yockey and Oswald Mosley.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> John Calvert notes that Oswald Spengler's criticism of Western civilisation remains popular among Islamists.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Works

Template:Citation
Template:Citation, 2 vols. – The Decline of the West; an Abridged Edition by Helmut Werner (tr. by C.F. Atkinson).<ref>Falke, Konrad. "A Historian's Forecast," The Living Age, Vol. 314, September 1922.</ref><ref>Stewart, W. K. (1924). "The Decline of Western Culture," The Century Magazine, Vol. CVIII, No. 5.</ref>
- "On the Style-Patterns of Culture." In Talcott Parsons, ed., Theories of Society, Vol. II, The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961.
Preussentum und Sozialismus, 1920, Translated 1922 as Prussianism And Socialism by C.F. Atkinson (Prussianism and Socialism).
Pessimismus?, G. Stilke, 1921.
Neubau des deutschen Reiches, 1924.
Die Revolution ist nicht zu Ende, 1924.
Politische Pflichten der deutschen Jugend; Rede gehalten am 26. Februar 1924 vor dem Hochschulring deutscher Art in Würzburg, 1925.
Der Mensch und die Technik, 1931 (Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life, tr. C.F. Atkinson, Knopf, 1932).<ref>Mumford, Lewis (1932). "The Decline of Spengler," The New Republic, 9 March.</ref><ref>Dewey, John (1932). "Instrument or Frankenstein?," The Saturday Review, 12 March.</ref><ref>Vasilkovsky, G. "Oswald Spengler's 'Philosophy of Life'," The Communist, April 1932.</ref>
Politische Schriften, 1932.
Jahre der Entscheidung, 1934 (The Hour of Decision tr. C.F. Atkinson)(The Hour of Decision).<ref>Reis, Lincoln (1934). "Spengler Declines the West," The Nation, 28 February.</ref>
Reden und Aufsätze, 1937 (ed. by Hildegard Kornhardt) – Selected Essays (tr. Donald O. White).
Gedanken, c. 1941 (ed. by Hildegard Kornhardt) – Aphorisms (translated by Gisela Koch-Weser O'Brien).
Briefe, 1913–1936, 1963 [The Letters of Oswald Spengler, 1913–1936] (ed. and tr. by A. Helps).
Urfragen; Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, 1965 (ed. by Anton Mirko Koktanek and Manfred Schröter).
Frühzeit der Weltgeschichte: Fragmente aus dem Nachlass, 1966 (ed. by A. M. Koktanek and Manfred Schröter).
Der Briefwechsel zwischen Oswald Spengler und Wolfgang E. Groeger. Über russische Literatur, Zeitgeschichte und soziale Fragen, 1987 (ed. by Xenia Werner).

Notes

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References

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Sources

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