Editing Ernst Moritz Arndt (section)

==Ethnocentrism and attitude towards different ethnicities==
[[File:EMAHS1.jpg|thumb|Arndt's home in [[Bonn]] following 1819]]
Like Fichte and [[Friedrich Ludwig Jahn|Jahn]], Arndt began to envision the German nation as a society of ethnic homogeneity, drawing on the history of the German people, especially in the [[Middle Ages]]. His writings lack a specific political program, but instead cite external enemies. While "freedom" is often mentioned, the freedom Arndt envisioned was not that of a [[Cultural pluralism|pluralistic]] society, but rather of a romanticized national community. The French are denigrated as weakened, womanish and morally depraved, while supposed German virtues are extolled.<ref name=Staas/>

{{quote|"The Germans have not been bastardized by foreign peoples, have not become half-breeds, they more than many other peoples have remained in their native state of purity."<ref>{{Cite book|first=Werner |last=Ripper |title=Weltgeschichte im Aufriss|volume= 2| publisher=Verlag Diesterweg|location= Frankfurt |year=1978 | page=191 |isbn=3-425-07379-6 |language=de |quote=Die Deutschen sind nicht durch fremde Völker verbastardet, sie sind keine Mischlinge geworden, sie sind mehr als viele andere Völker in ihrer angeborenen Reinheit geblieben...}}</ref>}}

[[File:Arndts Schreibtisch.JPG|thumb|180px|Arndt's desk, [[Stralsund]]]]
These ideas led Arndt to generate anti-French propaganda during the Napoleonic conquest of the German states:
{{quote|"When I say I hate the French carelessness, I despise the French daintiness, I disapprove of the French loquacity and flightiness, I may pronounce a flaw, but it is a flaw that I share with all my people. I could likewise say I hate the English presumption, the English prudery, the English seclusiveness. These hated, despised, dispraised characteristics are not yet vices as such, from the peoples that they represent they may come with great virtues which I and my people are lacking. Therefore ... let us hate our Frenchmen, the infamizers and destroyers of our power and virginity, even more, now that we feel how they weaken and enervate our virtue and strength."<ref>{{Cite book|url=http://www.ernst-moritz-arndt.de/zitate.htm|first=E.M. |last=Arndt|title=Geist der Zeit|volume=4 |location=Leipzig |page= 148|language=de|quote=Wenn ich sage, ich hasse den französischen Leichtsinn, ich verschmähe die französische Zierlichkeit, mir missfällt die französische Geschwätzigkeit und Flatterhaftigkeit, so spreche ich vielleicht einen Mangel aus, aber einen Mangel, der mir mit meinem ganzen Volke gemein ist. Ebenso kann ich sagen: Ich hasse den englischen Übermut, die englische Sprödigkeit, die englische Abgeschlossenheit. Diese gehassten und verachteten und getadelten Eigenschaften sind an sich noch keine Laster, sie hängen bei den Völkern, die sie tragen, vielleicht mit großen Tugenden zusammen, die mir und meinem Volke fehlen. Darum lasst uns die Franzosen nur recht frisch hassen, lasst uns unsre Franzosen, die Entehrer und Verwüster unserer Kraft und Unschuld, nur noch frischer hassen, wo wir fühlen, dass sie unsere Tugend und Stärke verweichlichen und entnerven.}}</ref>}}

Arndt also was prejudiced against Poles and other Slavs, and published an anti-Polish pamphlet in 1831 in which he castigated Polish "barbarity and wildness".<ref>Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identity and Cultural Differences
Keith Bullivant, Geoffrey Giles, Walter Pape, page 144 Jurgen Lieskounig "Branntweintrinkende Wilde" Beyond Civilization and Outside History: The Depiction of the Poles in Gustav Freytag's "Soll und Haben"</ref> During the liberal [[Revolutions of 1848|Revolution of 1848]], when the issue of reviving the Polish state was raised in [[Frankfurt Parliament|Frankfurt]], Arndt declared that "tribes" of Slavs and Wends "have never done or been able to do anything lasting with respect to state, science, or art," and concluded: "At the outset I assert with world history that pronounces judgment [that] the Poles and the whole Slavonic tribe are inferior to Germans."<ref>The apocalypse in Germany [[Klaus Vondung]] and Stephen D. Ricks page 112, University of Missouri Press 2001</ref>

He also warned of close contact with [[Judaism]]. He warned of the "thousands [of Jews] which by the Russian tyranny will now come upon us even more abounding from Poland" – "the impure flood from the East".<ref name=Zeit>{{Cite news|url=http://www.zeit.de/zeitlaeufte/fataler_patron?page=4 |title=Fataler Patron|language=de |first=Jörg |last=Schmidt |date=7 September 2009 |work=[[Die Zeit]] |quote=Tausende, welche die russische Tyrannei uns nun noch wimmelnder jährlich aus Polen auf den Hals jagen wird,... die unreine Flut von Osten her.}}</ref> Moreover, he warned of a Jewish intellectual conspiracy, claiming that Jews had "usurped" half of literature.<ref name=Zeit/>

Arndt paired his antisemitism with his anti-French views, calling the French "the Jewish people" ("''das Judenvolk''"), or "refined bad Jews" ("''verfeinerte schlechte Juden''").<ref>{{Cite book|first=E.M. |last=Arndt|title=Noch ein Wort über die Franzosen und über uns |year=1814|page=13 ff}}</ref> In 1815 he wrote of the French: "Jews... I call them again, not only for their Jewish lists and their penny-pinching avarice, but even more because of their Jew-like sticking together."<ref>{{Cite book|first=E.M. |last=Arndt |title=Das Wort von 1814 und das Wort von 1815 über die Franzosen|year= 1815 |page=71 |quote=Juden... nenne ich sie wieder, nicht bloß wegen ihrer Judenlisten und ihres knickerigen Geitzes, sondern mehr noch wegen ihres judenartigen Zusammenklebens.}}</ref>