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  1. Home
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  3. Reactionary Modernism
  • Cited by 85
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2009
Print publication year:
1985
Online ISBN:
9780511583988
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511583988
Subjects:
Area Studies, Twentieth Century European History, History, European Studies, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Information

Book description

In a unique application of critical theory to the study of the role of ideology in politics, Jeffrey Herf explores the paradox inherent in the German fascists' rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment while fully embracing modern technology. He documents evidence of a cultural tradition he calls 'reactionary modernism' found in the writings of German engineers and of the major intellectuals of the. Weimar right: Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger. The book shows how German nationalism and later National Socialism created what Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, called the 'steel-like romanticism of the twentieth century'. By associating technology with the Germans, rather than the Jews, with beautiful form rather than the formlessness of the market, and with a strong state rather than a predominance of economic values and institutions, these right-wing intellectuals reconciled Germany's strength with its romantic soul and national identity.

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