Introduction by N. Wolf: The following is a collection of excerpts from The Myth of the Twentieth Century by
Alfred Rosenberg, the greatest National Socialist philosopher. There are many
important concepts and ideas presented in this masterpiece which he wrote, but
the most important is the concept of the Race Soul. This idea, that there are
two sides to race, the biological and the spiritual, is an idea that had not
been widely acknowledged until Rosenberg’s work.
It is an unfortunate fact that many people do not take
the time to read this book of wonderful insight either because they cannot
acquire it or do not want to read it off of a computer. The purpose of these
quotes gathered here is of course useful to summarize Rosenberg’s concept of
the Race Soul so that it will be known and understood by more people.
THE MYTH OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY, INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD EDITION, ALFRED ROSENBERG
We on our side do not deny
very diverse influences: landscape and climate and political tradition; but all
this is outweighed by blood and the blood linked character. Things evolve
around the reconquest of this order of rank.
To re-establish the
ingeniousness of healthy blood, is perhaps the greatest task upon which man can
set himself today. At the same time, this affirmation gives evidence of the sad
situation of the body and the spirit, that such a deed has become a vital
necessity. A contribution to this great coming act of liberation of the 20th
century is what the present book intends to be. Not only the shaking up of many
awakening men, but also of opponents, is the desired result.
THE MYTH OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY,
BOOK I THE CONFLICT OF VALUES, CHAPTER I, RACE AND RACE SOUL
Today one of those epochs is
beginning in which world history must be written anew. The old images of the
human past have faded, the outlines of leading personalities are distorted,
their inner driving forces falsely interpreted, their whole nature for the most
part totally misjudged. A youthful life force – which also knows itself to be
age old – is impelled toward form; an ideology, a world view, has been born
and, strong of will, begins to contend with old forms, ancient sacred
practices, and outworn standards. This means no longer historically but
fundamentally; not in a few special domains but everywhere; not only upon the
heights but also at the roots.
And this sign of our times is reflected
in a turning away from absolute values, that is to say, in a retreat from
values held to be beyond all organic experience, which the isolated ego once
devised to create, by peaceful or violent means, a universal spiritual
community. Once, such an ultimate aim was the Christianising of the world and
its redemption through the second coming of Christ. Another goal was
represented by the humanist dream of mankind. Both ideals have been buried in
the bloody chaos of the Great War, and in the subsequent rebirth out of this
calamity, despite the fact that now one, and now the other, still find
increasingly fanatical adherents and a venerable priesthood. These are
processes of petrifaction and no longer of living tissue: a belief which has
died in the soul cannot be raised from the dead.
Humanity, the universal
church, or the sovereign ego, divorced from the bonds of blood, are no longer
absolute values for us. They are dubious, even moribund, dogmas which lack
polarity and which represent the ousting of nature in favour of abstractions.
The emergence in the nineteenth century of Darwinism and positivism constituted
the first powerful, though still wholly materialistic, protest against the
lifeless and suffocating ideas which had come from Syria and Asia Minor and had
brought about spiritual degeneracy. Christianity, with its vacuous creed of
ecumenicalism and its ideal of HUMANITAS, disregarded the current of red
blooded vitality which flows through the veins of all peoples of true worth and
genuine culture. Blood was reduced to a mere chemical formula and explained in
that way. But today an entire generation is beginning to have a presentiment
that values are only created and preserved where the law of blood still
determines the ideas and actions of men, whether consciously or unconsciously.
At the subconscious level, whether in cult or in life, man obeys the commands
of the blood, as if in dreams or, according to natural insight, as a happy
expression describes this harmony between nature and culture. But culture, with
the growth of all subconscious activity and of expanding consciousness and
knowledge, becomes more and more intellectual, and ultimately engenders not
creative tension but, in fact, discord. In this way, reason and understanding
are divorced from race and nature and released from the bonds of blood. The
ensuing generation falls victim to the individualistic system of intellectual
absolutes, and separates itself more and more from its natural environment,
mixing itself with alien blood. It is through this desecration of the blood
that personality, people, race and culture perish. None who have disregarded
the religion of the blood have escaped this nemesis – neither the Indians nor
the Persians, neither the Greeks nor the Romans. Nor will Nordic Europe escape
if it does not call a halt, turning away from bloodless absolutes and
spiritually empty delusions, and begin to hearken trustingly once again to the
subtle welling up of the ancient sap of life and values.
Once we recognise the awesome
conflict between blood and environment and between blood and blood as the
ultimate phenomenon beyond which we are not permitted to probe, a new and, in
every respect, richly coloured picture of human history becomes manifest. This
recognition at once brings with it the knowledge that the struggle of the blood
and the intuitive awareness of life’s mystique are simply two aspects of the
same thing. Race is the image of soul. The entire racial property is an
intrinsic value without relationship to material worshippers who apprehend only
discrete events in time and space, without experiencing these events as the
greatest and most profound of all secrets.
Racial history is therefore
simultaneously natural history and soul mystique. The history of the religion
of the blood, however, is conversely the great world story of the rise and fall
of peoples, their heroes and thinkers, their inventors and artists.
THE MYTH OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY, BOOK III THE COMING REICH, CHAPTER VII THE ESSENTIAL UNITY
“This unity also holds for
German history, for its men, its values, for the very old and new Myth, and for
the supporting ideas of German folkhood. One form of Odin is dead, that is, the
Odin who was the highest of the many gods who appeared as the embodiment of a
generation still given up to natural symbolisms. But Odin as the eternal
mirrored image of the primal spiritual powers of Nordic man lives today just as
he did over 5,000 years ago. Hermann Wirth finds traces of decline also in the
ancient world of gods and influences of the Eskimo race. This may be so, but
does not influence what is actually Germanic. He embodies himself in honour and
heroism, in the creation of song and or art, in the protection of law and in
the eternal search for wisdom. Odin learned that through the guilt of the gods,
through the breaking of the bond to the builders of Valhalla, the race of the
gods must perish. Despite this decline, he nevertheless commanded Heimdall to
summon the Aesir with his horn for the final decisive battle. Dissatisfied,
eternally searching, the god wandered through the universe to try to fathom his
destiny and the nature of his being. He sacrificed an eye so that he might
participate in the deepest wisdom. As an eternal wanderer he is a symbol of the
eternally searching and becoming Nordic soul which cannot withdraw self
confidently back to Jehovah and his representatives. The headstrong activity of
the will, which, at first, drives so roughly through the Nordic lands in the
battle songs about Thor, showed directly at their first appearance the innate,
striving, wisdom seeking, metaphysical side in Odin the Wanderer. But the same
spirit is revealed once again with the great, free Ostrogoths and the devout
Ulfilas. It is also revealed, in accordance with the times, in the strengthened
Knights Order and in the great Nordic western mystics as seen in their greatest
spirit, Meister Eckehart. When, in Frederick’s Prussia, the soul which once
gave birth to Odin was revived at Hohenfriedberg and Leuthen, it was also
reborn in the soul of the Thomas church cantor, Bach, and in Goethe. From this
viewpoint our assertion will appear deeply justified, that a heroic Nordic
saga, a Prussian march, a composition by Bach, a sermon by Eckehart, and a
monologue by Faust, are only varied experiences of one and the same soul. They
are creations of the same will. They are eternal powers which were first united
under the name Odin and which later gained form in Frederick the Great and
Bismarck. As long as these powers are operative, as long as Nordic blood mixes
with a Nordic soul and will, Nordic man will be active and work in mystic
union. This is the prerequisite of every true to type creation.”
The racially linked soul is
the measure of all our ideas, our striving will and actions, the final
measuring rod of our values.
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