This has taken me forever to finish. I apologise to John Morgan (if he’s still hanging around, waiting for me to get a move on) who recommended this particular character to me.
My readers know that if somebody tells me of a proto-National Socialist from the 16th century, I’ll be along for the ride! The Oberrheinischer Revolutionär (revolutionary from the Upper Rhine) is a curious figure in literature and social politics who has been analysed, speculated on and appropriated by a wide range of researchers. The National Socialist angle is just one of the interpretations (the Führerprinzip – leader principle – is a main theme in the OR’s book). The 1967 authors of the first complete transcript of the OR’s book came from the German Democratic Republic – aka East Germany – and correspondingly saw our man from the Upper Rhine as a proto-Socialist!
I see him as neither, really, because his worldview was so utterly different from what we today would recognise as either National Socialism or Socialism/Communism. Yes, there is overlap – the curtailing of the church’s power and subordination of the church to the king/emperor/leader, for example. But the OR never advocated for abolishing the church or the adoption of the „God is dead“ philosophy; quite the contrary.
The reason why it took me so long to finish the book is not just because it’s written in an old style of German – not too difficult to decipher (I’ve read the file of Hildesheim town soldier Pfingsten, which was worse), just enough to slow me down; but also because it was frankly so boring. Sure, at the time the OR’s ideas were new and revolutionary (hence the alias that was given to him), even if not unique, and there certainly was a lot to them. I’m all against corruption and exploitation. But the OR was, as far as the analysts were able to determine, an old man by the time he wrote his book, and over long passages, he was just ranting away. Even one of the copyists lost patience at one point, which is why there was some loss of the original text even back in the day – the copyist simply cut short another repetition of what had already been said a million times before with „etc. pp.“
For a quick overview, let’s consult Wikipedia (my translation):
Since his discovery by Hermann Haupt, the author of an anonymous reform treatise from the Upper Rhine region (published in 1893) has been referred to as Oberrheinischer Revolutionär (also shortened to Oberrheiner). The treatise is described by the author himself in the introduction as buchli der hundert capiteln mit vierzig statuten [booklet of one hundred chapters with forty statutes]. It was probably written in the first decade of the 16th century and completed around 1509/10. Similar to the Reformatio Sigismundi, the partly chiliastic writing deals with the social and political issues of its time: the discrepancy between legal practice and theory, clerical fiscalism and the decline of imperial power are some of the author’s themes. The Upper Rhine revolutionary derived this critique of the present primarily from reformist biblicist assumptions. The author based his (reform) demands on Maximilian I on the historiographical construct of an original German empire that had achieved ideal statehood through the absolute application of divine law. This was to be the point of orientation.
In the research literature, the buchli, of which only one copy has survived in Colmar, is sometimes cited as evidence of the utopian nature of the Middle Ages (e.g. by Seibt).
Klaus Lauterbach, who compiled the new edition of the pamphlet for the MGH, suggests Mathias Wurm von Geudertheim, secretary to Frederick III and Maximilian I, as the author, whereas Volkhard Huth identifies Dr Jakob Merswin from Strasbourg as the author.
Speaking of National Socialism, I’ve been getting into a few forgotten stories lately.
There’s Ulla, ein Hitlermädel, a young girls‘ book that was published in 1933, right at the beginning of NS rule, which is why most of the book’s 80 pages are dedicated to an explanation of the ins and outs of the movement. What are all those party organizations, how do the various groups dress, what are their functions, and how does a party meeting proceed? It is interesting because you realize how new most Germans in 1933 actually were to all of this.
Emphasis is, of course, on the youth organizations, with Ulla joining the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM; League of German Girls) and her knowledgeable older cousin Fritz representing the Hitlerjugend (HJ; Hitler Youth).
The story begins in the summer of 1931, when 13-year-old Ulla Möller and her mother get a visit from Ulla’s cousin Fritz. In fact, Fritz’s parents have arranged the visit, so Mrs Möller – his favorite aunt – can use her influence on their 17-year-old son, because Fritz has got himself into bad company: He’s hanging out with the local Nazis!
Ulla finds this terribly exciting, and her mother reflects on the irony that she herself has sympathies for the National Socialist movement and has even begun to subscribe to the Völkischer Beobachter, even though she has not been completely won over yet.
This, of course, gives Fritz the opportunity to tell Mrs Möller, Ulla, and the reader all about National Socialism. He even takes them to an assembly of the local chapter where Ulla thwarts an assassination attempt on the speaker. Shortly after, she becomes one of the founding members of the local BDM group. More adventures follow, and at the end, Ulla even gets to see and hear Big A live at a youth rally in Potsdam.
Plot-wise, the book is rather lacking. I understand that you can’t do much with 80 pages (including illustrations), but there were so many wasted opportunities to spice the story up a bit. Ulla and her friends come upon a dastardly plot by the Jew Aronstein from Berlin to buy the local castle ruin and turn it into a café and dance hall for motorists. Good grief! Of course, our young heroines ride to the rescue. Fine – but couldn’t it have included a bit more than the girls staging a torchlight procession, reenacting medieval castle life, and getting everyone to sign a petition? Or the case of the fiancé of an older girl in Ulla’s group, an SA man, getting murdered by communists. That’s very dramatic, and a story about teenage girls partaking in a murder investigation would probably have been considered inappropriate at the time. But couldn’t Ulla and her friends have found some clues that led to the arrest of the murderer? Instead, we get lots and lots of catering work (which, strangely enough, I found really interesting).
Ulla would, many years later, get a male counterpart in the Hitler Youth film Jungens that, at least, has a plot, even though it still is a mediocre film. You find many of the same ingredients in it – the founding (or rather revival) of a youth group, rallies, fundraisers, the depiction of the National Socialist youth organizations as a force for good.
I was also reminded of a novel about the early days of the movement that I once read at the German National Library in Leipzig. To my infinite annoyance, I cannot recall its author or title, and I don’t seem to have kept my notes from that visit. But the novel was very fascinating in that it was almost religious in its themes and even wording; if I remember correctly, it never actually mentioned Hitler by name, not even as Führer. Man, I wish I’d recall the title. It would be interesting to analyse it from today’s perspective.
A minor character in Ulla is based on Horst Wessel, and this is where we get into another story. I’m not that familiar with Third Reich era film. There are, of course, a few classics – Robert Stemmle’s Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war is still being shown on TV to this day (deservedly, I might add), and the Fridericus films have a great fan following. My favorite of that series is Der Choral von Leuthen. (Quite by chance I had found out during my Marta Hillers research that Frederic the Great actor Otto Gebühr was Germany’s highest paid actor during the National Socialist era.) I also have a very soft spot for Urlaub auf Ehrenwort. But all in all, I’m rather ignorant of many of those films. One of them that I discovered only recently is Hans Westmar, also known as Einer von vielen (1933), which once was supposed to have been a biopic of Horst Wessel. However, Joseph Goebbels disagreed with the premise, and the film was released in a highly edited version, complete with a new name for its hero.
Naturally, you’d wonder why any propaganda guy would shy away from a film about one of the martyrs of the movement. But given the rather flat scripts of the time, I can’t say that I really blame ol’ Joseph.
Frankly, I expected to be a bit bored by the film, but I was pleasantly surprised. Or not so pleasantly, as we shall see. Hans Westmar, even though very much a production of its time, is eerily modern. Many characters in the film are intentionally exaggerated clichés, or so you’d think. I found myself utterly incapable of seeing the funny side of it. I laughed at the characters, not at their absurd portrayal, because they are alive and well in our time. There is Hans’ liberal, pacifist professor who talks about the situation of Germany and the German people: Due to the Treaty of Versailles, ethnic Germans are now living outside of Germany, in other European countries. The Treaty, he waffles in perfect political correctness, “drew the political borders of German-ness more narrowly”. But think of the benefits! “With narrower borders we became borderless. We became Europeans, citizens of the world.” At this, Hans closes his book in disgust, and I suppressed the urge to go “ARGH!” It hurts. It is modern liberalism in action.
In what is perhaps the key scene of the film, Hans tours Berlin with some acquaintances. Heinz Salfner is a Berliner who emigrated to the USA twenty years ago and now is keen to see his old haunts again. While his daughter Maud uncritically remarks on how international Berlin is, the old gentleman is shocked: “You’re able to find everything here, just nothing German.” His old Stammkneipe, his local pub, is now a nightclub with, um, diverse personnel who don’t even speak German. Man, that was hard to watch. I mean, sure – Hans Westmar’s Berlin was “international” by 1930s standards. They should see it now. This is, by the way, why I always laugh when some Russian loudmouth cries “To Berlin!” these days. Hey, Ivan: You’re welcome to have it. It’s not 1945 anymore. Nobody in his right mind would even want to have 2024’s Berlin, or see it as some sort of prestige. But I digress.
There was only one moment in the film where I really had to snicker: The evil KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – Communist Party of Germany) leadership discusses how Soviet Russia and a communist-ruled Germany would crush Poland between them. Sorry, but that is funny! (You could make an argument, I guess, that this shows that the Polish state itself never was a problem for Nazi Germany until the question of the Danzig corridor got out of hand…)
Clarissa Schnabel 