Anthropologists From Germany

"Well, the Germans, too, are surrounded by a “great wall.” This wall is not built of masonry, but is spiritual. Anything outside the wall is regarded with contempt. But when such a superior person goes abroad, and finds how much he has been misinformed, he is apt, unless he is a person of very stable temperament, to rush to the opposite extreme, and thence to look down upon all that he has previously venerated. That is why so many Germans who go abroad are lost to Germany. But one who, having gone abroad, remains a good German and wants to enlighten his fellow-countrymen is not understood at home and is despitefully used."

"Indo-European: a term borrowed from comparative linguistics and most usually used to designate the blond North-European race (Homo europaeus), but which may provoke confusion since in most of these regions, originally settled by the North-Europeans, race and language have not overlapped for some time due to the bastardization (Bastardierung) of the Northern European speakers of Indo-European languages."

"Liberalism broke the ground enabling the emergence of radicalism. (p. 21)"

"It was precisely Hauer’s and other Nazis’ radical liberalism that led them to National Socialism. (p. 20)"

"The Third Reich represented yearning for salvation from despair through the fount of power that had its source in the German people (Volkskraft), not in an otherworldly God. Krieck ended his midsummer night’s talk with a hail to the German Youth, German Volk and Third Reich. (p. 151)"

"The whole thrust of core Nazi radicals was to overcome what they regarded as an already secularized Christianity and replace it with a faith in the ‘Third Reich’. (p. 149)"

"While the constitutions of Western liberal democracies preserve the freedom of new religions, I am not sure whether new religions, including New Age and neo-Paganism, preserve western liberal democracies. In Weimar they did not."

"Those Germans (from Hitler, to Rosenberg, to Himmler, to Heydrich, to Klagges, to Hauer, to Grimm and innumerable others) who became prominent National Socialist ideologues, even though Grimm and other nationalists like him did not become members of the party, were uniformly obsessed with overcoming Christianity and persuading other Germans to do likewise."

"The new religions founded in the pre-Nazi and Nazi years, especially Jakob Hauer’s German Faith Movement, would be a model for how German fascism distilled aspects of religious doctrine into political extremism."

"The source of anti-Semitism lies elsewhere than with religion. It lies in a fundamental human divide between those people who love culture, by which I mean the poetics and politics that grew out of a very specific local condition and history, and those who love civilization, by which I mean the poetic and politics that are rooted in non-specific, universal laws meant to protect civilian, local or foreign. Hauer’s fight against Jewish-Christianity is on this divide. (p. 14)"

"European neo-paganism sees itself as the restorer of all that it claims Christianity removed from European life and thought, that is, human godliness, the seamless unity of religion and science, and the harmony of human beings with the environment. (p. 173)"

"Goebbels followed the stations of political ideologization from Catholicism toward freer forms of a Christian view of the world and self (as in liberal theology) and then National-Socialism. (p. 7)"

"[T]he variant core elements of Goebbels’ religiosity consisted of Christological symbols and Vitalism. (p. 24),"

"There is no dogma, word or scripture. German morality is not rigidly chained to words but changes as reality changes and as the original nature adapts to new conditions. It is a convenient moral relativism that Hauer and his cohorts developed. In the final analysis, it is […] a fighter ethic that negates all moral ties except those with respect to the interests of one’s own Volk. (p. 15)"

"Not irreligion, not unbelief in the dogmas of the religious communities into which people happen to be born, no! lack of love and ignorance are the two main sources of all earthly calamities."

"Love of humanity … belongs undeniably to the conditions of human welfare; but if it consists in mutual assistance in the striving for happiness and wellbeing, and if this happiness and wellbeing consist above all – as is likewise undeniable – in the satisfaction of our inborn natural drives and the development of our natural powers … [then] the most fertile soil for love of humanity will evidently not be the belief that human nature is thoroughly degenerate and worthless, but rather in the view according to which we regard it [viz., human nature] as the essentially and generally acceptable foundation and condition of all our being, feeling, thinking and striving…"

"No salvation outside of humanity! These words contain the whole of the religion of the future."

"Die Feste der frühen Epochen waren stark sexuell betont. Ihr Höhepunkt war oft das, was man heute Gruppensex nennt und als sozial rein negativ einstuft. Allerdings vermag Sexualität tatsächlich soziale Spannungen abzubauen, und sie 'befriedigt' nicht nur, sie befriedet auch. Der Mensch ist anthropologisch auf viel mehr Sexualkontakte angelegt, als unsere rigide Kultur uns erlaubt, ja, nur als 'menschenwürdig' hinstellt. Die als sogenannte unnennbare Unsittlichkeit abqualifizierten Sexualbräuche vieler Naturvölker wurden von den weißen Kolonialherren oft als willkommene Vorwände instrumentalisiert, um die betreffenden Stämme guten Gewissens zu drangsalieren und zu dezimieren. Künder des Islam im Orient und Vertreter des Konfuzianismus in China bemühten sich ihrerseits ebenso wie Weiße zwecks christlicher Mission, sexuelle Riten möglichst total auszurotten, wo immer sie noch auf sie trafen: Was vordem Kult war, wurde zur Unzucht umdefiniert. Die Praxis hat bei den meisten Naturvölkern dazu geführt, daß die betreffenden Rituale erloschen. Vergleichbare Sitten sind in der Frühzeit auf dieselbe Art verschwunden, zwar nicht aus denselben, aber aus ähnlich strukturierten Gründen, denn in allen patriarchalischen Ethnien gelten orgiastische Riten als sozialschädlich."

"Wo die "Beleidigung sittlichen Gefühls", wo "moralische Begriffe" höher gestellt werden als die eigene, auf rationaler Basis erarbeitete Strafrechtstheorie, dort darf man mit voller Berechtigung von einem totalen Sieg des Vorurteils über die Vernunft sprechen."

"Als Ursachen für die so oder so vorgefundene Bewertung [einer bestimmten] Sexualität [...] lassen sich generell folgende ausmachen: Die jeweilige Stammestradition mit ihren Mythen, Ursprungs- und Fruchtbarkeitssagen und ferner die kulturellen Charakteristika der fraglichen Gruppe, nun aber geographisch großräumiger betrachtet und im Zusammenhang mit Rasse, Sprache (Sprachfamilie), Erbschaftsverhältnissen (Vater- oder Mutterrecht) sowie ihren ökonomischen und ökologischen Besonderheiten gesehen. Religion, wirtschaftliche Verhältnisse, natürliche Ressourcen sowie das ökologische Umfeld insgesamt (auch dessen Veränderungen im Zeitablauf!) erweisen sich überall als direkt aufeinander bezogen."

"Alle Menschen gehören als Gattung zu den gruppenhaft lebenden Geschöpfen, was lebensgefährdende innerartliche Aggression von vornherein ausschließt. Mit anderen Worten: Hätten schon in der Vergangenheit unserer Spezies solch schwere Konflikte [...] geherrscht wie während der letzten rund viereinhalb Jahrtausende und noch gegenwärtig, dann wären wir niemals zu Menschen geworden, sondern längst vorher ausgestorben. Denn Wesen, die als einzelne Individuen im Vergleich zu den vielen Raubtieren, die ihnen nachstellen, derart schwach und hilflos sind wie wir, brauchen Deckung und Rückhalt von anderen der gleichen Art, um überleben zu können. Wir haben weder Klauen noch Reißzähne, noch genug Muskelkraft, um allein unseren großen Freßfeinden erfolgreich Widerstand zu leisten, doch in der Gruppe gelingt es, wenn auch nie ohne selbstlose Opfer und Mut. In jener fernen Frühzeit, als unsere vormenschlichen Ahnen anfingen, in Trupps zu leben, um sich bei Gefahr zusammenzuschließen und einander beizustehen, haben sie ein Verhalten entwickelt, das man 'soziale Intelligenz' nennt: Die Fähigkeit, mit Angehörigen der eigenen Gattung zusammenzuwirken, um das Gedeihen aller zu gewährleisten. Dies Potential haben wir auch jetzt noch, aber es erweist sich als nachhaltig gestört. [...] Es muß sich um eine friedliche Welt gehandelt haben, weil die frühen Siedlungen zumeist nicht gegen menschliche Feinde gesichert sind. Für ein, zwei Jahrtausende [nach der letzten Eiszeit] haben Menschen in solchen Lebensverhältnissen offenbar ein glückliches Dasein verbracht."

"Um es vorwegzunehmen: Jene dargelegte 'kultische Dominanz' der Frau ist kein Matriarchat oder Feminat gewesen; zu der Sozialstruktur, die wir heute 'Patriarchat' nennen, hat es niemals ein weibliches Pendant gegeben. [...] Nichtsdestoweniger sind einige der Befunde, worauf die alten Ethnologen und Soziologen (und Sozialisten) ihre falschen weltumspannenden Theoreme aufbauten, tatsächlich wahr und in der Realität bei einigen Naturvölkern heute noch vorfindbar, nur müssen sie besser gedeutet werden als vordem, nämlich objektiver. Und insofern sollte eher von maternalen denn von matriachalen Kulturelementen gesprochen werden, wenn man solch kulturell-soziale Zusammenhänge unter globalem Aspekt anspricht. [...] Jedenfalls zählen zu den kulturellen Zügen, um die es hier geht, zusammengefaßt etwa folgende, die heute nurmehr selten irgendwo alle gleichzeitig auftreten: In der Erbfolgereglung wird die mütterliche Linie gewählt, Kinder gehören stets zur Mutterseite. Eigentum, gelegentlich auch Rechte werden in der mütterlichen Linie vererbt (entweder von der Mutter auf die Tochter oder vom Mutterbruder auf den Schwestersohn). Es herrscht sog. matrilokale Wohnfolge, d. h. der Ehemann tritt in die Sippe der Frau ein und wohnt dort. Bei beiden Geschlechtern herrscht voreheliche sexuelle Ungebundenheit, bei den Mädchen weitgehende Freiheit in der Gattenwahl und große Selbständigkeit in der Ehe mit leichter Scheidungsmöglichkeit für die Frau. Die weibliche Stellung in Kult und Religion ist relevanter als die der Männer. Der biologische Vater gilt als mit seinen Kindern nicht verwandt; seine Stelle nimmt, was Erziehung und Fürsorge betrifft, der Mutterbruder ein: Er ist der soziale Vater für alle Kinder seiner Schwester, auch wenn diese von verschiedenen Vätern stammen. [...] Das ganze Denkmuster, das hier nur extrem knapp umrissen wird, gibt im Grunde keinen Hinweis darauf, daß die betreffenden Menschen die Zusammenhänge zwischen Zeugung und Geburt gekannt hätten."

"I have never accepted that Mengele believed he was doing serious medical work … He was exercising power. Major surgery was performed without anaesthetic. Once I witnessed a stomach operation — Mengele was removing pieces from the stomach, but without any anaesthesia. It was horrifying."

"I was given five injections. That evening I developed extremely high fever. I was trembling. My arms and my legs were swollen, huge size. Mengele and Dr. Konig and three other doctors came in the next morning. They looked at my fever chart, and Dr. Mengele said, laughingly, "Too bad, she is so young. She has only two weeks to live...""

"The Jewish people, no matter where they are, they become the best in the world."

"The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it."

"Away with this shit!"

"Mengele was known as a manic collector of things human, including dwarf corpses, gallstones, and eyes. His fascination with eyes led to the infamous experiments in which he injected various substances into the eyes of brown-eyed Jewish children in an attempt to make them Nordic (blue)."

"There can't be two smart peoples in the world. We're going to win the war, so only the Aryan race will stand."

"Even the Russians are fighting us. They've brought in Jewish pilots, nurses, and doctors. Everybody's ganging up on us. We didn't think it would happen this way."

"The future is with the vegetarians."

"Pathology is the study of structural and functional abnormalities that are expressed as diseases of organs and systems. Classic theories attributed disease to imbalances or noxious effects of humors on specific organs. In the 19th century, Rudolf Virchow, often referred to as the father of modern pathology, proposed that injury to the smallest living unit of the body, the cell, is the basis of all disease. To this day, clinical and experimental pathology remain rooted in this concept."

"For if medicine is really to accomplish its great task, it must intervene in political and social life. It must point out the hindrances that impede the normal social functioning of vital processes, and effect their removal."

"Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged."

"Omnis cellula e cellula"

"Liebt man sich wirklich, so ist es ja nicht schwer, die Toleranz zu üben, denn die Toleranz ist die Tochter der Liebe -- es ist die eigentlich christliche Eigenschaft, die freilich von der heutigen Christenwelt nicht geübt wird."

"Between animal and human medicine, there is no dividing line—nor should there be."

"Cellular pathology is not an end if one cannot see any alteration in the cell. Chemistry brings the clarification of living processes nearer than does anatomy. Each anatomical change must have been preceded by a chemical one."

"The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them."

"Mass disease means society is out of joint."

"Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires."

"Der Mensch ist, was er ißt."

""Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always something different from what is expected. Everything new is received with contempt, for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved."

"Hegel determines and presents only the most striking differences of various religions, philosophies, time and peoples, and in a progressive series of stages, but he ignores all that is common and identical in all of them. … His system knows only subordination and succession; coordination and coexistence are unknown to it."

"Demonstrating is therefore only the means through which I strip my thought of the form of “mine-ness” so that the other person may recognize it as his own."

"Every presentation of philosophy, whether oral or written, is to be taken and can only be taken in the sense of a means. Every system is only an expression or image of reason, and hence only an object of reason, an object which reason—a living power that procreates itself in new thinking beings—distinguishes from itself and posits as an object of criticism. Every system that is not recognized and appropriated as just a means, limits and warps the mind for it sets up the indirect and formal thought in the place of the direct, original and material thought."

"All presentation, all demonstration—and the presentation of thought is demonstration—has, according to its original determination—and this is all that matters to us—the cognitive activity of the other person as its ultimate aim."

"The history of philosophical system is the picture gallery of reason."

"Hegel … proceeds abstractly from the pre-existence of the intellect. … He does not appeal to the intellect within us."

"To prove cannot mean anything other than to bring the other person to my own conviction. The truth lies only in the unification of “I” and “You.” The Other of pure thought, however, is the sensuous intellect in general. In the field of philosophy, proof therefore consists only in the fact that the contradiction between sensuous intellect and pure thought is disposed, so that thought is true not only for itself but also for its opposite."