Armin Mohler

Armin Mohler
Born	(1920-04-12)12 April 1920 Basel, Switzerland
Died	4 July 2003(2003-07-04) (aged 83) Munich, Germany
Alma mater	University of Basel
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy German philosophy
School	Neue Rechte (European New Right)
Notable ideas	Conservative Revolution

Armin Mohler (12 April 1920 – 4 July 2003) was a Swiss far-right political philosopher and journalist, known for his works on the Conservative Revolution. He is widely seen as the father of the Neue Rechte (New Right), the German branch of the European New Right.^[1]

Life

Armin Mohler was born in Basel, Switzerland, on 12 April 1920, the second child of a Swiss railway official. After passing his Abitur in 1938, he studied art history, German studies and philosophy at the University of Basel. As a student, he wrote articles on art history and film criticism for the Baseler Nationalzeitung.^[2] At that time, he espoused left radical and pacifist views,^[3] but the reading of authors like Oswald Spengler, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and Ernst Jünger, as well as his military service in the Swiss army, increasingly eroded his ideological certainties. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941–42 led to a political "awakening experience".^[4] Enlisted during World War II, he deserted in February 1942 and crossed the border with Germany in order to join the Waffen-SS and fight against communism. He underwent training, but his application was later turned down.^[4][5]

At the end of 1942 he returned to Basel and was sentenced to a year in prison for illegal border crossing and dereliction of duty.^[6] After his release and recovery from tuberculosis, Mohler devoted himself to his dissertation.^[7] In 1950, he published Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932 (The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932), the product of his doctoral thesis under the supervision of German-Swiss philosopher Karl Jaspers. The work helped spread the popularity of the concept of "Conservative Revolution" to a wider audience.^[8]

From 1949 to 1953, Mohler served as Ernst Jünger's private secretary. Between 1953 and 1961, he worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris, mainly for the newspapers Die Tat, Die Zeit, Die Furche and Christ und Welt. There, he became enamored of Gaullism.^[9] Under the pseudonym "Michael Hintermwald", he also published in Gerhard Frey's far-right newspaper Deutschen National-Zeitung.^[8][9] Mohler moved to Munich in 1961 to work for the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation. He then served as its managing director from 1964 until its retirement in 1985.^[10] In 1967, Mohler received the Konrad Adenauer Prize for his work in journalism.^[3][11]

In the 1980s Mohler actively promoted French Nouvelle Droite philosopher Alain de Benoist.^[8] He wrote the introduction to de Benoist's Kulturrevolution von rechts (Cultural Revolution from the Right) when it appeared in West Germany in 1985.^[12] Mohler had been introduced to French far-right ideas during his time in France.^[13]

Mohler died on 4 July 2003 in Munich. His eulogy was given by the then 32-year-old Götz Kubitschek, who soon became one of the most important German New Right figures.^[14] Mohler remained an unrepentant fascist until the end of his life, acknowledging shortly before his death that he was an admirer of Italian and Spanish fascism.^[8][3]

Writings and ideas

Conservative Revolution

Mohler's seminal work is his book Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932 ("The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932"), which initially was his doctoral thesis. There, he tried to unearth Weimar Republic right-wing thought and tradition apart from and alternative to National Socialism. The most crucial thinkers of the Conservative Revolution to him were Ernst Jünger, Oswald Spengler, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Niekisch, Hans Blüher, and Thomas Mann (before his turn to liberalism).

In the words of historian Roger Woods, "Armin Mohler’s long-term project after 1945 was to portray the Conservative Revolution as a distinctive intellectual movement which was distorted by the Nazis and which, in its pure form, had a role to play as a model for Germany’s future. Mohler presents the Conservative Revolution as theory, and National Socialism as practice, and he asks to what extent a theory can be made responsible for a practice which varied from it."^[15]

Neue Rechte

According to Michael Minkenberg, Mohler's ideas owed more to the Nouvelle Droite associated with GRECE than the Ostpolitik-derived ideas of a strong German state associated with contemporaries like Robert Spaemann and Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner.^[16]

One of his favourite targets was the so-called "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", which he criticized in several books. That argument involved the claim that postwar Germany should 'step out of Hitler's shadow'. It was thus claimed that Mohler was a forerunner of Ernst Nolte and associated thinkers, who were involved in the Historikerstreit.^[17]

A neopagan, Mohler viewed conservatism and Christianity as mutually exclusive and argued that Christians by necessity must embrace left-wing politics. This position met considerable opposition.^[18]

Fascism

Mohler's notion of Conservative Revolution has been described by some scholars like Roger Griffin as a form of fascism.^[19] According to Woods, Mohler "illustrates the New Right tendency to separate what it regards as a pure version of fascism from the various attempts to put it into practice. He uncouples what he calls 'fascist style' from historical fascism, and on the basis of this distinction declares: 'I am a fascist'".^[20]

Political activism

Mohler supported conservative politician Franz Josef Strauß and the Christian Social Union of Bavaria after his stint with the Siemens Foundation. He also backed The Republicans for a brief time, serving as an adviser to its leader Franz Schönhuber,^[21] but saw no future for them. In 1983, he founded the Deutschlandrat (Council for Germany) with the support of a number of conservative university professors, but it never became a viable institution.^[3]

References

1. Woods 2007, p. 145.
2. Ploenus 2022, p. 201.
3. Braunthal 2009, pp. 142–143.
4. Ploenus 2022, p. 202.
5. Woods 2007, p. 158.
6. Julien Hervier (2014). Ernst Jünger. Dans les tempêtes du siècle. Paris: Fayard. pp. 351, 363–366, 379. ISBN 978-2-213-64363-2. BNF: 43741944.
7. Ploenus 2022, p. 203.
8. Blamires 2006, p. 431.
9. Ploenus 2022, p. 205.
10. Ploenus 2022, p. 206.
11. Ploenus 2022, p. 208.
12. Woods 2007, p. 25.
13. Klaus Schönekäs (17 March 1988). "La " Neue Rechte " en République Fédérale d'Allemagne". Lignes (in French). 4 (3): 126–127. doi:10.3917/lignes0.004.0126. ISSN 0988-5226.
14. Ploenus 2022, p. 210.
15. Woods 2007, p. 84.
16. M. Minkenberg, 'The New Right in France and Germany: Nouvelle Droite, Neue Rechte, and the New Right Radical Parties', P. H. Merkl & L Weinberg (eds.), The Revival of Right Wing Extremism in the Nineties, London: Frank Cass, 1997, pp. 73-4
17. "Prelude, Interlude, Afterlude. Spotlights on German Debates". Archived from the original on 7 February 2012. Retrieved 19 April 2007.
18. Weiß, Volker (21 July 2016). "Er forderte die Revolution von rechts". Die Zeit (in German). Retrieved 2 May 2022. Vor allem die These des Autors, der einem völkischen Neuheidentum anhängt, dass Christentum und Konservatismus sich ausschlössen, weil ein Christ notwendig zu einem Linken werden müsse, stößt auf Widerstand.
19. R. Griffin, The Nature of Fascism, London : Routledge, 1993, pp. 166-9
20. Woods 2007, p. 67.
21. Woods 2007, p. 19.

Bibliography

• Blamires, Cyprian (2006). "Mohler, Armin". In Blamires, Cyprian (ed.). World Fascism. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-940-9.
• Braunthal, Gerard (2009). "The New Right". Right-Wing Extremism in Contemporary Germany. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 137–168. doi:10.1057/9780230251168_7. ISBN 978-1-349-31446-1.
• Ploenus, Von Michael (2022). Backes, Uwe; Gallus, Alexander; Jesse, Eckhard; Thieme, Tom (eds.). "Biographisches Porträt: Armin Mohler". Jahrbuch Extremismus & Demokratie (E & D). Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft: 201–218. doi:10.5771/9783748936930. ISBN 978-3-7560-0304-4.
• Woods, Roger (2007). Germany's New Right as Culture and Politics. Springer. ISBN 978-0-230-80133-2.

Further reading

• Willms, Thomas (2004). Armin Mohler. Papyrossa.

External links

• (in German) Literature by and about Armin Mohler