This paper analyzes how the main newspaper of the Nazi party presented the life and work of Friedrich W. Nietzsche according to the National Socialist world view. It is a study of every major article Der Völkische Beobachter (The Folkish Observer) published about the philosopher. My extensive archival research demonstrates how Nazi Germany attempted to appropriate not only the Germany of “Poets and Thinkers,” but History of Western Humanities from Ancient Greece through the Second World War. To insert into our coverage of National Socialist cultural history more of the materials by which party propagandists tried to appropriate Nietzsche as a “spiritual comrade,” I have examined every page of the Völkischer Beobachter from January 1920 through April 1945 in search of the major pieces it published on the philosopher and his ideas. Drawing from a collection of 32 articles, this essay traces how the paper attempted to transform Nietzsche and his works into propaganda tools, often by smoothing over elements in his biography and works that rendered this nazification process problematic.
Keywords: Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History, German History, Reception Theory, Nazi Culture, Propaganda, Nietzsche, Nietzsche Reception.

Nietzsche Reception “Philosopher of Führermenschen” in the Main Nazi Newspaper

Mark as favourite