G. JUNG
Essays
ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS
Translated by
ELIZABETH WELSH, BARBARA HANNAH, and MARY BRINER
Published by Kegan Paul, London, 1947
These essays were first collected in Aufsatze zur Zeitgeschichte (Zurich: Rascher 8c Cie., 1946); they were translated by Mary Briner, Barbara Hannah, and Elizabeth Welsh, and published as Essays on Contemporary Events (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1947).
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Beezone Note:
Reflections on Carl Jung’s Essays on Contemporary Events
Beezone Note: Carl Jung’s Preface and Introduction to Essays on Contemporary Events (1947) contain some of his clearest warnings about the dangers of ignoring unconscious forces in the shaping of history and society.
Jung’s Warning: The Psychologist in the Arena of History
In the Preface to Essays on Contemporary Events, Jung makes a stark claim: the psychologist must enter the arena of world events because psychological wounds are not isolated to the individual – they are cultural, political, and civilizational. In other words, psychic events are historical events; they do not merely reflect or react to history, but actually generate it. This stands in contrast to how most modern thinkers treat the psyche as private and sealed off from collective life. Jung insists that “the psychologist cannot avoid coming to grips with contemporary history, even if [their] very soul shrinks from the political uproar”. In making this point, Jung emphasizes that psychological forces and conflicts within us are deeply entangled with the fate of societies and nations.
Jung’s Essays Amid 20th-Century Upheaval
The essays presented here were written by Carl Gustav Jung between 1936 and 1946 – a period of profound psychic upheaval in the world. In these writings, Jung does not analyze politics from the outside, but from the inside – from the shadowed interior of modern consciousness where myth, madness, and mass movements converge. Jung was one of the few Western voices of his time to interpret Nazism not merely as a political or economic phenomenon, but as an archetypal eruption – a storm of unconscious forces breaking through the brittle crust of Western rationality. These essays show Jung at his most daring, crossing the threshold from private psychology into public crisis and insisting that history itself is a psychic event.
A 21st-Century Summons
However, Jung’s mid-20th-century insights should not be mistaken for a timeless system. We no longer live in Jung’s time. Instead, we live in a moment of even greater magnitude, greater consequence, and greater planetary convergence. The spiritual winds Jung described have not stopped blowing – they have only intensified. But now these forces confront a humanity that can no longer cling to 19th-century worldviews or even 20th-century identities. The mythic archetypes of Europe still echo, but they are now joined by forces from beyond the Western frame – unconscious movements not yet named, breaking through from the East, from the Earth, from the unconditioned ground of Being itself. This is not just a crisis; it is a summons.
Confronting the Unfinished Business of History
We present Jung’s essays not as relics, but as living artifacts – fragments of a psyche still in labor. To move meaningfully into the 21st century, we must first come to terms with the unfinished business of the 19th and 20th centuries – their ideas, illusions, traumas, and technologies. These two centuries laid the psychic architecture we still inhabit, even as that structure begins to crack under new pressures. Jung’s insights help illuminate how the past continues to shape our collective psyche, but the task now is to critically engage those old patterns and transcend them.
Beyond Jung: From Collapse to Renewal
The task now is not only to read Jung, but to go beyond him – to understand the foundations he stood upon, to listen to the wind he named, and to hear the deeper silence that follows it. Jung’s view amounts to a psychological metacritique of civilization. He diagnosed 20th-century upheavals not as failures of politics or economics alone, but as failures of consciousness – a refusal to integrate the contents of the unconscious. The result, he warned, is collective neurosis, projection, and the elevation of the State as a false god. Only through an inner confrontation with the shadow – within each individual – can our culture move from collapse toward renewal. The soul is not a private refuge but the ground of history itself.
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PREFACE
MEDICAL psychotherapy has to deal with the whole of the psyche for practical reasons. Therefore it is bound to come to terms with all those factors which have a vital influence on psychic life. These factors are biological as well as social and mental. We are living in times of great disruption : political passions are aflame, internal upheavals have brought nations to the brink of chaos, and the very foundations of our Weltanschauung are shattered. This critical state of things has such a tremendous influence on the psychic life of the individual that the doctor is bound to follow its effect on the individual psyche with more than usual attention. The storm of actual events does not only sweep down upon him from the great world outside; he feels the violence of its impact even in the quiet of his consulting room and in the privacy of the medical consultation. As he has a responsibility towards his patients, he cannot afford to withdraw to the peaceful island of undisturbed scientific work, but must constantly descend into the arena of world events, in order to join in the battle of conflicting passions and opinions. Were he to remain aloof from the tumult, the calamity of his time would only reach him vaguely from afar, and his patient’s suffering would find neither ear nor understanding. How could he help a patient who came to him completely isolated as a result of his own lack of understanding, for he would be at a loss to know how to talk to him. For this reason the psychologist cannot avoid coming to grips with actual events, even if his very soul shrinks from the political noise, the lies of propaganda and the jarring speeches of the demagogues. We need not mention his duties as a citizen, which confront him with a similar task. As a physician, he has a higher obligation to humanity in this respect.
From time to time, therefore, I have felt obliged to step beyond the usual bounds of my profession. The psychologist has a specific experience of mankind, and it seemed to me that the general public might find it useful to hear his point of view. This was hardly a farfetched conclusion, for surely the most naive of laymen could not fail to see that many of our contemporary figures and events were positively asking for a psychological explanation. Were psychopathic symptoms ever more conspicuous than in contemporary political events ?
It has never been my wish to meddle in the political questions of the day. But in the course of the years I have written a few papers, which give my reactions to actual events. The present book contains a collection of these occasional papers, which were written between 1936 and 1946. It is natural enough that my thoughts should have been especially concerned with Germany. Germany has been a problem to me ever since the first World War—a problem which has given rise to the following papers. My statements have evidently led to all manner of misunderstandings, which are chiefly due, no doubt, to the fact that my psychological point of view strikes many people as new and therefore strange. Instead of embarking upon lengthy arguments, in an attempt to clear up these misunderstandings, I have found it simpler to collect all the passages in my other writings which deal with the same theme in an epilogue. The reader will thus be in a position to get a clear picture of the facts for himself.
INTRODUCTION
INDIVIDUAL AND MASS PSYCHOLOGY1
1 First published in The Listener, 7th November, 1946, Vol. XXXVI, No. 930.
A broadcast talk in the Third Programme of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Delivered on Sunday, 3rd November, 1946
THE indescribable events of the last decade lead I one to suspect that a peculiar psychological disturbance is a possible cause. Now if you ask the alienist what he thinks about these things, you must expect to get an answer from his particular point of view. Still, as a scientist, the alienist makes no claim to omniscience, for he regards his opinion as merely one contribution to the enormously complicated task of finding a comprehensive explanation.
When one speaks from the standpoint of psychopathology, it is not easy to address an audience which may include people who know nothing of this specialized and difficult field. But there is a simple point that you should keep in mind, and it is this : psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual. Psychic phenomena of this order are investigated in the individual. Only if one can succeed in establishing certain phenomena or symptoms, common to a number of separate individuals, can one begin to examine analogous mass phenomena. As you perhaps already know, I take into consideration both the psychology of the conscious and of the unconscious, and this includes the examination of dreams ; for dreams are the natural products of unconscious activity. We have known for a long time that there is a biological relationship between the unconscious processes and conscious mental activity. This relationship can best be characterized as a compensation, which means that any deficiency in consciousness—such as exaggeration, one-sidedness, or lack of a function—is suitably supplemented by an unconscious process.
As early as 1918,1 noticed peculiar disturbances in the unconscious of my German patients which could not be ascribed to their personal psychology. Such non-personal phenomena always manifest themselves in dreams as mythological motifs which are also to be found in legends and fairy tales throughout the world. I have called these mythological motifs the archetypes : that is, typical modi in which these collective phenomena are experienced. There was a disturbance of the collective unconscious in every single German case. One can explain these disorders causally, but such an explanation is apt to be inadequate, for it is easier to understand archetypes by their aim than by their causality. The archetypes I had observed expressed primitivity, violence, and cruelty. When I had seen enough of such cases, I turned my attention to the peculiar mental state which was then prevailing in Germany. I could only see a certain depression and a great restlessness, but these did not contradict my suspicion. In a paper which I published at that time, I suggested that the “ blond beast ” was stirring in an uneasy slumber and that an outburst was not impossible. This condition was not by any means a purely Teutonic phenomenon, as became evident in the following years. The onslaught of the primitive forces was more or less universal. The only difference lay in the German mentality which proved to be more susceptible because of its marked tendency to mass psychology. Moreover, defeat and social disaster had increased the herd instinct in Germany, and so it became more and more probable that Germany would be the first victim among the western nations—a victim of a mass movement that was brought about by an upheaval of forces, forces which were lying in the unconscious, ready to break down all moral control. According to the rule mentioned before, these forces were meant to be a compensation. If such a compensatory move of the unconscious is not integrated into consciousness in the case of an individual, it leads to a neurosis or even to a psychosis, and the same would apply to a collectivity. Now there must be something wrong with the conscious attitude for a compensatory move of this kind to be possible; something must be amiss or exaggerated, because only a faulty consciousness can call forth a counter-move on the part of the unconscious. Well, innumerable things have been wrong, as you know, and opinions are thoroughly divided about them. Which is the correct opinion will only be learnt ex effectu; that is, we can only discover what the defects in the consciousness of our epoch are by observing the kind of reaction they call forth from the unconscious.
As I have already told you, the tide which rose in the unconscious after the first World War was reflected in individual dreams as collective, that is mythological symbols which expressed primitivity, violence, cruelty : in short, all the powers of darkness. When such symbols occur in a large number of individuals and are not understood, they begin to draw these individuals together as if by magnetic force, and thus a mob is formed ; and its leader will soon be found in the individual who has the least resistance, the least sense of responsibility and, because of his inferiority, the greatest will to power. He will thus let loose everything which is ready to break forth, and the mob will follow with the irresistible force of an avalanche.
I observed the German revolution, as it were in the test-tube of the individual case, and I was fully aware of the immense danger involved when such people crowd together. But I did not know at that time whether there were enough of such individuals in Germany to make a general explosion inevitable. However, I was able to follow up quite a number of cases and to observe how the upheaval of the dark forces deployed itself in the individual test-tube. I could watch these forces as they broke through the individual’s moral and intellectual self-control, and as they flooded his conscious world. There was often terrific suffering and destruction; but when the individual was able to cling to a shred of reason, or to maintain the bonds of human relationships, a new compensation was brought about in the unconscious by the very chaos in the conscious mind, and this compensation could be integrated into consciousness. New symbols then appeared, of a collective nature, this time symbols reflecting the forces of order. There is measure, proportion, and symmetrical arrangement in these symbols, expressed in their peculiar arithmetical and geometrical character. They represent a kind of axial system and are known as mandala-structures. I am afraid I cannot go into an explanation of these highly technical matters here, but I must just mention these difficult and almost incomprehensible things because they represent a gleam of hope, and we need hope very badly in this time of dissolution and chaotic disorder. The world-wide confusion and disorder in consciousness correspond to a similar condition in the mind of the individual; but this lack of orientation is actually compensated in the unconscious by the archetypes of order. Here again I must insist that if these symbols of order are not integrated into consciousness, the forces which they express will accumulate to a dangerous degree, just as the forces of disorder and destruction did twenty-five years ago. Now the integration of unconscious contents is an individual act of realization, of understanding, and moral evaluation. It is a most difficult task, demanding a high degree of ethical responsibility. Only relatively few individuals can be expected to be capable of such an accomplishment, and they are not the political but the moral leaders of mankind. The maintenance and further development of civilization depend upon such individuals. It is quite obvious that the consciousness of the masses has not advanced since the first World War. Only certain reflective minds have been enriched, and their moral and intellectual horizon considerably enlarged by the realization of the immense and overwhelming power of evil, and of the fact that mankind is capable of being its mere tool. But average man is still where he was at the end of the first World War. Therefore it is only too obvious that the vast majority is quite incapable of integrating the forces of order. On the contrary, it is even probable that these factors of order will encroach upon consciousness and take it by surprise and violence, against our will.
We can see the first symptoms everywhere: totalitarianism and State slavery. The value and importance of the individual are rapidly decreasing and the chances of his being heard will vanish more and more. This process of deterioration will be long and painful, but I am afraid it is inevitable. Yet in the long run it will prove to be the only way by which man’s lamentable unconsciousness, his childishness and individual weakness can be replaced by a future man, who knows that he himself is the maker of his fate and that the State is his tool and not his master. But man can only reach this level when he becomes aware of the fact that, by his unconsciousness, he has gambled away the fundamental droits de I’homme. Germany has given us a most illuminating demonstration of the psychological development in question. There the first World War released the hidden power of evil, as the war itself was released by the accumulation of unconscious masses and by their blind desires. The so-called Friedenskaiser was one of their first victims and, not unlike Hitler, he voiced these lawless, chaotic desires and was thus led into war and into the inevitable catastrophe. The second World War was a repetition of the same psychic process but on an infinitely greater scale.
As I said before, the upheaval of mass instincts corresponds to a compensatory move of the unconscious. Such a move became possible because the conscious state of the people had become estranged from the natural laws of human existence. Because of industrialization, large parts of the population became uprooted, and they were herded together in large centres. And because of this new form of existence—with its mass psychology and its social dependence upon the fluctuation of markets and wages—an individual was created who was unstable, insecure, and suggestible. This individual was aware that his life depended upon boards of directors and captains of industry, and he supposed, rightly or wrongly, that they were chiefly motivated by financial interests. He knew that, no matter how conscientiously he worked, he could be victimized at any time by commercial changes which were far beyond his own control. And there was nothing else for him to rely upon. Moreover, the system of moral and political education prevailing in Germany had already done its utmost to permeate everybody with a spirit of dull obedience, and with the conviction that every desirable thing must come from above, from those who by divine decree sat on top of the law-abiding citizen, whose individual feeling of responsibility had been overruled by a peculiar sense of duty. No wonder, therefore, that it was precisely Germany which fell a prey to mass psychology, though it is by no means the only nation threatened by this dangerous germ. The influence of mass psychology has spread far and wide.
It was the individual’s feeling of weakness, and indeed of non-existence, which was compensated by the upheaval of hitherto unknown desires for power. It was the revolt of the powerless and the greed of the “ have-nots ”. By such ways the unconscious forces man to become conscious of himself. Unfortunately, no categories of value existed in the conscious mind of the individual, which would have enabled him to understand and to integrate the reaction when it reached consciousness. Nothing but materialism was preached by the highest intellectual authority. Our religious organizations were evidently simply unable to cope with this new situation, or the effect would have been visible. The churches could do nothing but protest and that did not help very much. Thus the avalanche kept on rolling in Germany and created its leader, who was chosen as a tool to complete the ruin of the nation. But what was his original intention ? He dreamed of a “ new order ”. We should be badly mistaken were we to assume that he did not really intend to create an international order of some kind. On the contrary, deep down in his being he was moved by the factors of order, which began to become operative in the moment when desirousness and greed had taken complete possession of his conscious mind. Hitler was the exponent of a “ new order ”, and that is the real reason why practically every German fell for him. The Germans intended order, but they made the fatal mistake of electing the foremost victim of disorder and unchecked greed for their leader. They did not understand that not one of them had changed his individual attitude : just as they were greedy for power, they were also greedy for order. But they remained greedy all the same. With the rest of the world, they did not understand what Hitler’s significance was, namely that he was a symbol for every individual: he was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was a highly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic individual, full of empty, childish phantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this is another reason why they fell for him.
But what could they have done ? In Hitler, every German should have seen his own personal shadow, his own worst danger. It is everybody’s allotted fate to become conscious of and learn to deal with this shadow. But how could the Germans be expected to understand this, when nobody else in the whole world can understand such a simple truth ? The world cannot reach a state of order unless this truth can be generally recognized. Yet in the meantime, we amuse ourselves by seeking all sorts of external and secondary reasons, though we know very well that conditions largely depend upon the way in which we take them. If, for instance, the French-speaking Swiss should assume that the Alemanic Swiss were all devils, we in Switzerland could have the nicest civil war in no time, and we could also discover the most convincing economic reasons why such a war was inevitable. Well—we just don’t, for we learned our lesson more than four hundred years ago. We came to the conclusion that it is better to avoid external wars, so we went home and took the strife with us. In Switzerland we have built up a so-called “ perfect democracy ” in which our warlike instincts spend themselves in the form of domestic quarrels called “ political life ”. We fight each other within the limits of law and constitution, and we are inclined to think of democracy as a chronic state of mitigated civil war. We are far from being at peace with ourselves: on the contrary, we hate and fight each other, because we have succeeded in introverting war. Our peaceful outward manners merely serve to protect our internal dispute from foreign intruders who might disturb us. Thus far we have succeeded, but we are yet far from the ultimate goal. We still have enemies in the flesh, and we have not yet managed to introvert our oolitical disharmonies into our personal selves. We still abour under the unwholesome conviction that we should je at peace within ourselves. Yet even our national mitigated state of war would come to an end if everybody could see his own shadow and begin the only struggle which is really worth while, the fight against the overwhelming power-drive of our own shadow. We have a tolerable social order in Switzerland because we fight among ourselves. Our order would be perfect if people could only take their lust of combat home into themselves. Unfortunately even our religious education prevents us from doing this, with its false promises of an immediate peace within. Peace may come in the end, but only when victory and defeat have lost their meaning. What did our Lord mean when He said : “I came not to send peace, but a sword ” ?
Inasmuch as we are able to found a true democracy— namely a conditional fight among ourselves, either in a collective form or an individual one—we realize, we make real, the factors of order, because then it becomes absolutely necessary to live in orderly circumstances. We simply cannot afford in a democracy the disturbances of external interference and complications. How can you run a civil war properly, when you are attacked from without ? On the contrary, when you are seriously at variance with yourself, you welcome your fellow beings as possible sympathizers with your cause and on this account you are inclined to be friendly and hospitable. But you politely avoid people who want to be helpful and relieve you of your troubles. We psychologists have learnt, through long and painful experience, that you deprive a man of his best when you help him to get rid of his complexes. You can only help him to become sufficiently aware of them and to start a conscious conflict with himself. In this way the complex becomes a focus of life. Anything which disappears from your psychological inventory is apt to turn up in the disguise of a hostile neighbour, where it will inevitably arouse your anger and make you aggressive. It is certainly better to know that your worst adversary is right in your own heart. Man’s warlike instincts are ineradicable—and therefore a state of com- jlete peace is unthinkable. Moreover, peace is uncanny jecause it breeds war. True democracy is a highly psycho- ogical organization which takes human nature into account as it is, and therefore makes allowance for the need of conflict within its own national frame.
When you now compare the actual German mentality with my argument, you can appreciate the simply enormous task with which the world is confronted. We can hardly expect the demoralized German masses to realize the import of such psychological truth, no matter how simple it is. But the great Western democracies have a better chance, as long as they can keep out of those external wars that always tempt them to believe in external enemies and in the desirability of internal peace. The marked tendency of the Western democracies to internal trouble is the very thing that can lead them on to the path of great hope. But I am afraid that this hope will be delayed by powers that still believe in the inverted process, namely in the destruction of the individual and in the increase of the fiction which one calls the State. The psychologist firmly believes in the individual as the sole carrier of mind and life. Society or the State derive their quality from the individual’s mental condition, for they are constituted by individuals and their organizations. No matter how obvious this fact is, it has not yet permeated collective opinion sufficiently for people to refrain from using the term “ State ” as if it referred to a sort of super-individual endowed with inexhaustible power and resourcefulness. The State is expected nowadays to accomplish easily what nobody would expect from an individual. The dangerous incline leading down to mass psychology begins with this plausible thinking in big numbers and powerful organizations, where the individual dwindles away to mere nothingness. Yet everything that exceeds a certain human size evokes equally inhuman powers in man’s unconscious, totalitarian demons are called forth, instead of the realization that all that can really be accomplished is an infinitesimal step forward in the individual’s moral nature. The destructive power of our weapons has increased gigantically and forces this psychological problem on mankind : Is the mental and moral condition of the men who decide on the use of these weapons equal to the enormity of the possible consequences ?
WHEN we look back on the time before 1914, we seem to be living in a different age. Things are happening to-day of which we hardly dreamed before the war. We were even beginning to regard war between civilized nations as a fable, for surely such an absurdity would become less and less possible in our rational, internationally organized world. The war itself has been followed by what can only be described as a regular witches’ sabbath. There are phantastic revolutions and drastic alterations of the map ; medieval and even antique prototypes reappear in the political sphere ; States swallow their neighbours and out-trump every Previous theocratic attempt with their totalitarian claims ; oth Christians and Jews are persecuted, and political murders take place on a wholesale scale ; finally we have just witnessed a light-hearted pirate-raid, on a peaceful, half-civilized people.2
When such events are taking place in the political sphere, we cannot be surprised if other and smaller spheres produce equally peculiar phenomena. In the realm of philosophy we must be patient, for the philosopher must have time for meditation before he can discover what kind of an age we live in. But the realm of religion has already produced some very significant events.
1 First published in the Neue Schweizer Rundschau (Neue Folge, iii. Jahrgang. Heft n), March, 1936.
* Abyssinia.
The movement of the Godless in Russia is not really surprising, for the Greek Orthodox Church had apparently become identical with its lamps and ikons and had heaped up a superfluity of rites and religious paraphernalia. One breathed a sigh of relief oneself in the Near East, when one left the incense-laden atmosphere of an Orthodox Church and entered an honest mosque where the sublime and invisible omnipresence of God was not crowded out by superfluous substitutes. However deplorable the low spiritual level of the “ scientific ” reaction may be, it was inevitable that the nineteenth century and its “scientific ” enlightenment should dawn sooner or later on Russia.
But it is curious, to say the least of it, in fact piquant, that an old god of storm and frenzy, the long quiescent Wotan, should awake, like an extinct volcano, to a new activity, in a civilized country that had long been supposed to have outgrown the Middle Ages. We have seen Wotan come to life in the Jugendbewegung (youth movement), and the blood of several sheep was shed in the sacrifices which celebrated the very dawn of his rebirth. Armed with Rucksack and lute, blond youths, and sometimes also girls, were to be seen as restless wanderers on every road from the North Cape to Sicily, true servants of the roving god. Later, towards the end of the Weimar Republic, the wandering role was taken over by thousands and thousands of unemployed who were to be met everywhere on their aimless journeys. By 1933 the people no longer wandered, they marched in their hundreds of thousands. The Hitler movement brought the whole of Germany to its feet, from the five-year-olds to the veterans, and produced the spectacle of a great migration of people marking time. Wotan the wanderer was awake. He is to be seen, looking rather shamefaced, in the meeting-house of a sect of simple people in North Germany, disguised as Christ sitting on a white horse. I do not know if these people were aware of Wotan’s ancient relationship to the figures of Christ and Dionysus, but it is not very probable.
Wotan is a restless wanderer who creates restlessness and stirs up strife, now here now there, or works magic. He was soon changed into the devil by Christianity and only lived on in fast flickering out, local tradition as a ghostly hunter who was seen with his retinue on stormy nights. But the role of the restless wanderer was taken over in the Middle Ages by Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, which is not a Jewish but a Christian legend. In other words, the motif of the wanderer, who has not accepted Christ, was projected on to the Jews, just as we always rediscover our own psychic contents, which have become unconscious, in other people. At any rate there is a psychological finesse here which may perhaps be mentioned : the anti-Semitic movement has coincided with the reawakening of Wotan.
The German youths who celebrated the solstice were not the first to hear a rustle in the primeval forest of the unconscious. They were anticipated by Nietzsche, Schuler, Stefan George, and Klages.[1] The literary tradition of the Rhine and the country south of the Main has a classical form that cannot easily be shaken off. Every interpretation that comes from that region, therefore, is inclined to return to a classical model, to antique intoxication and exuberance, i.e. to Dionysus, the puer aeternus and the cosmogonic Eros.[2] From the point of view of cultured people no doubt this has a more educated sound, but perhaps Wotan is a more correct interpretation. Heis a god of storm and frenzy, he releases passions and the lust of war, moreover he is a paramount magician and a conjuror who is versed in every occult secret.
[1] Ever since Nietzsche (1844-1900) there has been consistent emphasis on the “ Dionysian ” aspect of life in contrast to its “ Apollonian ” opposite. Since “ The Birth of Tragedy ” (1872) the dark, earthy, feminine side, with its mantic and orgiastic characteristics has possessed the imagination of philosophers and poets. Irrationality gradually came to be regarded as the ideal ; this is found, for example, all through Alfred Schuler’s (d. 1923) research into the mystery religions, and particularly in the writings of Klages (b. 1872), who expounded the philosophy of “ irrationalism ”. To Klages logos and consciousness are the destroyers of creative pre-conscious life. In these writers we witness the origin of a gradual rejection of reality and a negation of life as it is. This leads in the end to a cult of ecstasy, culminating in the self-dissolution of consciousness in death, which meant, to them, the conquest of material limitations.
The poetry of Stefan George (1868-1933) combines elements of classic civilization, of medieval Christianity and oriental mysticism. George deliberately attacked nineteenth and twentieth century rationalism. His aristocratic message of mystical beauty and of an esoteric conception of history had a deep influence on German youth. His work has been exploited by unscrupulous politicians for propaganda purposes.
[2] On the Cosmogonic Eros is the title of one of Klages’ main works (first published in 1922).
There are many individual factors to be considered in Nietzsche’s case. He was blissfully unconscious as regards knowledge of his German background; he discovered the Philistines in the academic world. He also came to the conclusion that God was dead, and this led to Zarathustra meeting with an unknown god in an unexpected form, sometimes as an enemy and sometimes disguised in Zarathustra’s own figure. Therefore the latter is himself soothsayer, sorcerer, and storm :
“ Like a wind will I one day blow amongst them, and with my spirit, take the breath from their spirit: thus willeth my future.
“ Verily, a strong wind is Zarathustra to all low places ; and this counsel counselleth he to his enemies, and to whatever spitteth and speweth : ‘ Take care not to spit against the wind 1 ’ 1,1
This theme recurs in Zarathustra’s dream (II, 51). He dreamed that he had become a guardian of graves in the “ lone mountain fortress of death ”. As he made great efforts to open the gate, he said :
“ Then did a roaring wind tear the folds apart: whistling, whizzing, and piercing, it threw unto me a black coffin.
“ And in the roaring and whistling and whizzing the coffin burst up, and spouted out a thousand peals of laughter. …”
The disciple, who interprets the dream, says to Zarathustra:
” Art thou not thyself the wind with shrill whistling, which bursteth open the gates of the fortress of Death ?
” Art thou not thyself the coffin of many-hued malices and angel-caricatures of life?”2
Nietzsche’s secret throws off all disguise and appears clearly, even violently, in this image. Many years before, in 1863 or 1864, Nietzsche wrote in his poem To the Unknown God:
1 Thus Spake Zarathustra, part ii, chapter a8 (Modern Library Edition, p. in).
* Idem, p. 146.
“ I must know thee, Unknown One,
Thou who searchest out the depths of my soul, And biowest like a storm through my life.
Thou art inconceivable and yet my kinsman ! I must know thee and even serve thee.”
And twenty years later, in his beautiful Mistral song, he says :
“ Mistral wind, thou hunter of the clouds,
Thou killer of misery, thou sweeper of the heavens, Thou raging storm, how I love thee !
Are we not both the first born
Of the same womb, for ever predestined To the same fate ? ”
In the dithyramb known as Ariadne’s Lament (IV, 65) Nietzsche is completely the victim of the hunter-god, and can no longer be freed even by the subsequent violent self-deliverance of Zarathustra :
” Prone, outstretched, trembling,
Like him, half dead and cold, whose feet one warm’th— And shaken, ah ! by unfamiliar fevers,
Shivering with sharpened, icy-cold frost-arrows, By thee pursued, my fancy !
Ineffable ! Recondite ! Sore-frightening !
Thou huntsman ’hind the cloud-banks !
Now lightning-struck by thee,
Thou mocking eye that me in darkness watcheth :
—Thus do I lie,
Bend myself, twist myself, convulsed
With all eternal torture,
And smitten
By thee, cruellest huntsman, Thou unfamiliar—GOD . . . “1
This vivid picture of the amazing figure of the huntergod is evidently based on experience and cannot be explained as mere dithyrambic language. We can trace its origin in a book on Nietzsche’s youth, by his sister Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche,2 which describes an experience with this god when he was a schoolboy of 15 at Pforta. He was wandering about in a gloomy wood at night and after being terrified by “ a piercing shriek from a neighbouring lunatic asylum ”, he met with a hunter whose “ features were wild and uncanny ”.
1 Idem, p. 253.
* Der werdende Nietzsche, Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen (Munich, 1924, PP. 84 ff.).
In a valley “ surrounded by dense undergrowth ”, the hunter raised his whistle to his lips and blew such “ a shrill note ” that Nietzsche lost consciousness and woke up at Pforta. It was a nightmare. It is enlightening that the encounter with the hunter brought up the question of going to Teutschental,1 for the dreamer had really intended to go to Eisleben, Luther’s town. It is hardly possible to misunderstand the shrill whistling of the god of storm in the nocturnal wood.
Was it really only the classical philologist in Nietzsche that led to the god being called Dionysus instead of Wotan, or was it not perhaps the result of the fatal encounter with Wagner ?
In his Reich ohne Rautn,2 which was first published in 1919, Bruno Goetz saw the secret of the coming German events in the form of a very peculiar vision. I have never forgotten this little book, for it struck me at the time as a forecast of the German weather. It anticipates the conflict between the realm of ideas and that of life ; it depicts the dual nature of the god of storm and of secret meditation. Wotan disappeared when his oaks fell and reappeared when the Christian God proved too weak to save his Christians from fraticidal carnage. When the Holy Father at Rome could only lament before God, and was powerless to help the^r&v segregatns in any other way, the one-eyed old hunter, on the edge of the German woods, laughed and saddled Sleipnir.
We are always convinced that the modern world is a reasonable world, basing our opinion on economic, political, and psychological factors. But if we may forget for a moment that we are living in the year of Our Lord 1936, and may also lay aside its well-meaning, human- all-too-human reasonable attitude, and may burden God —or the gods—instead of man, with the responsibility for present-day events, we should find Wotan quite suitable as a causal hypothesis.
1 Translator’s Note. The word “ Teutsch ” is an old-fashioned form of Deutsch. Teutschental means German valley.
2 First edition, Kiepenheuer, Potsdam, 1919. Second enlarged edition, Seeverlag, Konstanz, 1925.
In fact I venture the heretical suggestion that the abysmal depth and unfathomable character of old Wotan explain more of National Socialism than all the three reasonable factors put together. There is no doubt that each of these economic, political, and psychological factors explains an important aspect of the things that are happening in Germany, but Wotan explains yet more. He is particularly enlightening as to the general phenomenon which is so strange and incomprehensible to the foreigner that he cannot really understand it however deeply he may consider it.
We might perhaps sum up the general phenomenon as Ergriffenheit (a condition of being moved or almost possessed). This expression explicitly states the existence of an Er griffener (someone who is moved), but it also implies the existence of an Ergreifer (someone or something that moves or “ possesses ”). Wotan is an Ergreifer of men and he is really the only explanation, unless we wish to deify Hitler, a thing which has actually happened to him before now ! It is true that Wotan shares this quality with his cousin Dionysus, but apparently the latter mainly exercised his influence on women. The Maenads were a kind of feminine S.A., and, according to the myths, were dangerous enough. Wotan confined himself to the Berserkers who found their vocation as the bodyguard of mythical kings.
A mind that is still childish either thinks of the gods as so-called metaphysical entia, existing in themselves, or it regards them as playful or superstitious inventions. From either point of view, the above parallel between Wotan redivivus and the social, political, and psychic storm might at least have the value of a parable, an “ as if ”. But the mind is exceeding its limits when it asserts the metaphysical existence of the gods. Such a statement is just as presumptuous as the opinion that they could be invented, for undoubtedly they are personifications of psychic forces. Not that “ psychic forces ” have anything to do with the conscious mind, though we are very fond of playing with the idea that the conscious mind and the psyche are identical. This is mere intellectual presumption, but we are afraid of the “ metaphysical ” and therefore have developed a mania for rational explanation. The two were always hostile brothers and it is only natural that we should fear this conflict. “ Psychic forces ” really belong to the unconscious. Everything that approaches us from this dark realm either comes from outside, and then we are sure that it is real, or it is considered a hallucination and therefore not true. The idea that anything can be true which does not come from outside has hardly yet dawned on mankind.
In order to promote understanding and to avoid prejudice, we could speak of the furor teutonicus instead of Wotan. But we should only be saying the same thing and not as well; for the furor in this case is a mere psychologizing of Wotan, and only tells us that the people are in a state of “ fury ”. We should thus lose a valuable peculiarity of the whole phenomenon, i.e. the dramatic aspect of the Ergreifer and the Ergriffener, which is the most impressive part of the German phenomenon. One man, who is evidently “ possessed ”, has infected the whole people to such an extent that everything has been set in motion and has started rolling, and is thus inevitably embarked on a dangerous course.
It seems to me that Wotan “ hits the mark ” as a hypothesis. Apparently he was really only asleep in the Kyffhauser mountain until the ravens called him and announced the break of day. Wotan is a fundamental characteristic of the German soul, an irrational, psychic factor, which acts like a cyclone on the high pressure of civilization and blows it away. The worshippers of Wotan, in spite of their eccentricity and crankiness, seem to have judged the empirical facts more correctly than the worshippers of reason. Apparently every one had forgotten that Wotan represents a primeval Germanic factor, and that he is the most accurate expression and inimitable personification of a basic human quality which is particularly characteristic of the German. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, however, is a symptom which arouses the suspicion that veiled gods may also be sleeping elsewhere. But the symptoms are evident in Germany : the emphasis on the Germanic, i.e. Aryan, race and on blood and soil, the folk customs that have been revived, the Wagalawei songs, the ride of the Valkyries, the Lord Jesus as a blond and blue-eyed hero, the Greek mother of St. Paul, the devil as an international Alberich of a Jewish or Masonic brand, the Nordic Aurora Borealis as the light of civilization, and the contempt for “ inferior ” Mediterranean races. All these are indispensable parts of the scenery in the drama that is taking place and at bottom they all mean the same : a god has taken “ possession ” of the Germans and their house is filled with “ a mighty wind ”. It was soon after Hitler seized power, if I am not mistaken, that a cartoon appeared in Punch of a raving Berserker tearing himself free from his bonds. A wild, irrational storm has broken out in Germany while we still believe that the weather is following its normal course.
Things are comparatively quiet in Switzerland, though there is occasionally a puff of wind from the North or from the South. Sometimes this wind has a slightly ominous sound, sometimes it seems to whisper quite harmlessly or even idealistically, so that no one is alarmed. We are wise enough “ to let sleeping dogs lie ” and can live our lives reasonably well in this way. It is sometimes said that the Swiss has a particular resistance to the problem of himself. I must protest against this accusation. The Swiss is introspective but he would not admit it for anything in the world, even when he notices the wind in his own land. We thus pay our silent tribute to the Germanic time of storm and stress, but we never mention it, which enables us to feel vastly superior. Yet it is the German who has the best chance to learn, in fact he has an opportunity which is perhaps unique in history. He is experiencing the perils of the soul from which Christianity tried to rescue mankind, and he can learn to realize the nature of these perils in his own innermost heart.
Germany is a land of spiritual catastrophes where certain facts of nature never make more than a pretence of peace with the world-ruler reason. The disturber is a wind that blows into Europe from limitless and primeval Asia, sweeping in on a wide front, from Thrace to the Baltic. Sometimes it blows from without and scatters the nations before it like dry leaves, and sometimes it works from within and inspires ideas that shake the foundations of the world. It is an elemental Dionysus that breaks into the Apollonian order. We call the creator of this storm Wotan, and we can learn a great deal about his character by studying history and realizing the revolution and confusion that he has brought about in the spiritual and political world. But, in order to understand his character more exactly, we must go back to the time when mankind still used mythological language, and did not try to explain everything by man and his limited opportunities. The language of the myths reaches down to the deeper cause, to the psyche and its autonomous powers. The very earliest intuition of mankind personified these powers as gods, and described them fully and carefully according to their various characters, in the myths. This was all the more possible because it is a question of basic and permanent types or images which are inherent in the unconscious of many nations. The behaviour of the nation takes on its specific character from its underlying images,1 and therefore we may speak of an archetype “ Wotan ”. As an autonomous psychic factor, Wotan produces effects in the collective life of the people and thus also reveals his own character. For Wotan has a peculiar biology of his own, quite apart from the nature of man. It is only from time to time that individuals fall under the irresistible influence of this unconscious factor. When it is quiescent, one is no more aware of the archetype Wotan than of a latent epilepsy. Could the German who was already adult in 1914 have foreseen what he would be in 1935 ? Such amazing changes are the effect of the god of wind that “ bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth ”. It seizes everything which is in its way and uproots anything that is not firmly rooted. When the wind blows, all insecurity, outward or inward, is revealed.
1 One should read what Bruno Goetz has to say concerning Odin as the German wanderer-god (Deutsche Dichtung. Vita Nova Verlag, Lucerne, I935> PP- 36 ff. and 72 ff.). Unfortunately I only read this book after I had finished my article.
Martin Ninck has just published a monograph devoted to Wotan [3] which is a most welcome addition to our knowledge of this god’s character. The reader need not be afraid that this book is a mere scientific study written from the academic point of view. It is, indeed, very objective and does full justice to the rights of science, for the unusually complete material has been very carefully collected and clearly arranged. But, over and above all this, one feels that the author is vitally interested in his material, and that the chord of Wotan is also vibrating in him. This is no criticism; on the contrary, it is the highest merit of the book which, without this vibration, might easily have degenerated into an uninteresting catalogue. The author’s Ergriffenheit has added life to programme, as is particularly evident in the last chapter (Ausblicke).
Ninck really produces a magnificent portrait of the German archetype Wotan. He describes him in ten chapters, using all the available material, as the Berserker, the god of storm, the wanderer, the warrior, the Wunsch and Minne god,[4] the lord of the dead and of the Einherjer, the master of secret knowledge, the magician, and the god of poets. Neither the valkyries nor the fylgia are forgotten, for they belong to the mythical surroundings and fateful significance of Wotan. Ninck’s inquiry into the name and its origin is particularly enlightening. It shows that Wotan is not only the god of rage and frenzy, incorporating the instinctive and emotional side of the unconscious. Its intuitive and inspiring side also manifests itself in him, for he understands the runes and can interpret fate.
The Romans identified Wotan with Mercury, but his individual character does not really correspond to any Roman or Greek God, although there are certain resemblances. He wanders like Mercury, for instance, rules over the dead like Pluto and Kronos, and he is connected with Dionysus by his emotional frenzy, particularly in its mantic aspect. It is surprising that Ninck does not mention Hermes, the Greek god of revelation. As Pneuma and Nous, Hermes is also connected with the wind, he would be the bridge to the Christian Pneuma and to the phenomena which took place at Pentecost. As Poimandres, Hermes is also an Ergreifer of men. Ninck rightly points out that Dionysus and the other Greek gods always remained under the supreme authority of Zeus, which indicates a fundamental difference between the Greek and Germanic temperaments. Ninck assumes an inner relationship between Wotan and Kronos, and the latter’s defeat may perhaps be a sign that the archetype of Wotan was once overcome and split up in remote antiquity. At all events, the Germanic god represents a totality which corresponds to a primitive level, a psychological condition in which man’s will was almost identical with the god’s and consequently entirely in the hands of fate. But there were Greek gods who helped man against other gods, and Father Zeus approaches the ideal of a beneficent, enlightened despot.
It was not Wotan’s way to stay and show signs of age. He simply disappeared, when the times turned against him, and remained invisible for more than a thousand years, i.e. he only worked anonymously and indirectly. Archetypes resemble the beds of rivers which have dried up because the water has deserted them; but it may return at any time. An archetype is something like an old watercourse along which the water of life flowed for a time, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it flowed the deeper the channel, and the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return. Individuals in society, and above all in the State, may control this water to a certain extent and regulate it like a canal. But when it comes to the life of the nations, the water is like a great rushing river which lies far beyond the control of man, in the hands of one who has always been stronger than man. The League of Nations was given international authority, but some people now regard it as a child in need of care and protection, and others as a miscarriage. Therefore there is no bridle on the life of the nations and it rolls on unconsciously, with no idea of where it is going, like a rock crashing down the side of a hill, until it is stopped by an obstacle which is stronger than itself. Political events thus move from one impasse to the next, like the water in a stream that finds itself caught in gullies, whirlpools, and marshes. All human control comes to an end when the individual is caught in a mass movement and when the archetypes begin to function. We can observe the same phenomenon in the life of the individual when he is confronted with situations that cannot be dealt with in any way with which he is familiar. And we need only turn to the South or the North of Switzerland in order to have every opportunity of seeing how a so-called Fuhrer behaves when he is confronted with the masses in movement.
The ruling archetype does not remain the same for ever, a fact which expresses itself, for instance, in the temporal limitation of the hoped-for reign of peace, the millennium. The father archetype of the Mediterranean, that creates order and rules justly or even benevolently, has been shaken to its foundations in the whole of the North of Europe. The present fate of the Christian Churches bears eloquent witness to this fact. Fascism in Italy and the state of Spain make it clear that the shock has been greater even in the South than one would have thought. The Catholic Church itself will not be able to afford any more tests of its strength.
[1] A National Socialist movement inside the Protestant Church which tried to eliminate all vestiges of the Old Testament from Christianity.
1 Wilhelm Hauer (born 1881) first a missionary and later professor of Sanscrit at the University of Tuebingen, was the founder and leader of the “ German Faith Movement ”. This movement tried to establish a “ German Faith ” founded on German and Nordic racial writings and traditions, e.g. those of Meister Eckhart or Goethe. This movement tried to combine a number of different and often incompatible trends : some of its members still accepted an expurgated form of Christianity whereas others were not only completely
This movement tried to establish a “German Faith” founded on Geran and Nordic racial writings and traditions e.g. those of Meister Eckart or Goethe. This movement tried to combine a number of different and often incompatible trends: some of its members still accepted an expurgated form of Christianity whereas others were not only completely opposed to any form of Christianity, but to every kind of religion or god. One of the common articles of faith, which they gave themselves in 1934, was : “ The German Faith Movement aims at the religious renaissance of the nation out of the hereditary foundations of the German race ” (“. . . aus dem Erbgrunde der deutschen Art ”). One should compare this movement with a sermon preached by Dr. Langmann, an evangelical clergyman and dignitary of the Church, at the funeral of the late Gustloff. Dr. Langmann gave the address “in S.A. uniform and top boots He sped the deceased on his journey to Hades, and directed him to Valhalla, to the home of Siegfried and Baldur, the heroes who “ are feeding the life of the German people by the sacrifice of their blood ’’, like Christ among others. “ May this God send the peoples of the earth clanking their way through history.” “ God bless our fight. Amen.” The reverend gentleman ended his address in this way, according to the Neue Zurcher Zeitung (1936, No. 249). As a service held to Wotan, it is undoubtedly exceedingly edifying, and remarkably tolerant for believers in Christ! Is the Bekenntniskirche inclined to be equally tolerant, and to preach about Christ shedding His blood for the salvation of mankind, like Siegfried, Baldur, and Odin among others ? One can ask astonishingly grotesque questions in these days.
1 Deutsche Gottschau (Grundziige eines deutschen Glaubens (Karl Gutbrod Stuttgart, 1934)
These people are decent and well-meaning, they honestly admit their Er griffenheit^ and they try to come to terms with this new and undeniable fact. They take an enormous amount of trouble to make it look less alarming by finding historical parallels to serve as a sort of mediating garment. This reveals consoling glimpses of great men of the past. There were the great German mystics, for instance, such as Meister Eckhart, a German, who was also ergriffen. The most awkward question is thus avoided, namely who is the Ergreifer ? Of course, he was always “ God ”. But—as Hauer, in his world-wide IndoGermanic sphere, draws nearer to the Nordic side, especially to the Edda, and as the Ergriffenheit manifests itself in an increasingly “ German ” creed—it becomes more and more evident that the “ German ” god is the god of the Germans.
One cannot help being touched when reading Hauer’s book 1 if one regards it as the tragic and really heroic attempt of a conscientious scholar. Hauer was not aware of what was happening to him, but, as a German, he was called and moved by the inaudible voice of the Ergreifer. And now he is trying with all his might, with all his knowledge and ability, to build a bridge in order to establish a connection between the dark life-force and the light world of historical ideas and figures. But can all these beautiful things—belonging to the past when the mentality of man was different—help the man of to-day when he is confronted with a living and abysmal tribal god that he has never experienced before ? He is drawn, like a dry leaf, into the roaring whirlwind, and the rhythmic alliterations of the Edda are inextricably mixed with Christian mystical texts, German poetry, and the wisdom of the Upanishads. And Hauer himself is ergrijfen by the rich and meaningful words lying at the root of the German language, to an extent that he certainly never knew before. This is not due to Hauer, the Sanscrit scholar, nor to the Edda, for both were there before. It is a matter of the Kairos 1 whose present name is Wotan, as we find on closer investigation. Therefore, I would advise the “ German Faith Movement ” to throw their prudery aside. Intelligent people will not confuse them with those vulgar worshippers of Wotan whose faith is a mere pretence. There are people in the “ German Faith Movement ” who are intelligent and human enough to believe and moreover to know that the god of the Germans is Wotan and not the universal Christian God. This is a tragic experience and no disgrace. It has always been terrible to fall into the hands of a living god. It is well known that Jahwe was no exception to this rule. The Philistines, Edomites, Amorites, and others, who were outside the Jahwe experience, must certainly have found it exceedingly disagreeable, and the whole of Christianity suffered for a long time under the Semitic experience of the god Allah. We, who stand outside, judge the Germans as if they were responsible, active agents, but perhaps we should be nearer the truth if we were also to regard them as victims.
1 The present moment in time.
We must draw a further conclusion in order to be consistent in regarding the German events from our— admittedly peculiar—point of view : Wotan has shown himself as restless, violent, and stormy, but this is only one side of his character. He has very different ecstatic and prophetic qualities on the other side which must also become manifest in time. If this conclusion were correct, National Socialism would not be the last word. Things must be concealed in the background which we cannot imagine as yet, but we can expect them to appear in the course of the next years or decades. Wotan’s awakening is a sort of stepping back or reaching back. The river has been dammed up and has broken into its original channel. But the dam will not last for ever, it is rather a reculer pour mieux sauter, and the water will overflow the obstacle. Then, at last, we shall know what Wotan is saying when he “ speaks with Mimir’s head ’’J
1 From the Vdluspd. The passage runs in Olive Bray’s translation (The Elder or Poetic Edda, commonly known as Saemund’s Edda, part i, edited and translated by Olive Bray, London, 1908. Viking Club Translation Series, vol. ii) :
Mim’s sons arise ; the Fate-Tree kindles at the roaring sound of Gjalla-horn. Loud blows Heimdal, the horn is aloft, and Odin speaks with Mimir’s head.
Groans the Ancient Tree, Fenrir is freed,— shivers, yet standing, Yggdrasil’s ash.
How do the gods fare, how do the elves fare ?
All Jotunheim rumbles, the gods are in council ; before the stonedoors the dwarfs are groaning, a rock-wall finding— Would ye know further, and what ?
Loud bays Garm before Gaping-hel:
the bond shall be broken, the Wolf run free. Hidden things I know ; still onward I see the great Doom of the Powers, the gods of war.
Drives Hrym from the East holding shield on high ;
the World-serpent writhes in Jotun-rage ; he lashes the waves ; screams a pale-beaked eagle, rending corpses, the Death boat is launched.
Sails the bark from the North the hosts of Hei o’er sea are coming, and Loki steering, brother of Byleist, he fares on the way— with Fenrir and all the monster kinsmen.
II
[3] Wodan und germanischer Schicksalsglaube. Eugen Diederichs, Jena, 1935.
[4] Translator’s Note. Medieval German : Wunsch = magical wish ; Minne — remembrance, love.
