Page 25 - Romanticism: A Weapon of Satan

Romantic Nationalism

Germany, during the first two decades of the 19th century. Writers
such as Paul Lagarde and Julius Langbehn supported the idea of a
kind of hierarchical world-order which Germans were to administer.
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They claimed this could be achieved due to the natural superiority of
the "German spirit" and "German blood," and that, to this end,
Germans must turn their backs on monotheistic religions, such as
Christianity, and return to their pagan past.
The growth of mystic (occult) societies in Germany played an
important role in the spread of romantic nationalism during this
period. The world-view shared by these societies was composed of
several shallow ideas, such as these: human beings can attain truth not
with their reason but through their feelings and intuitions; every
country possesses a national "spirit;" the German national "spirit" is a
pagan spirit. These societies prepared the ground for the rise of Hitler
and Nazism. The English historian Michael Howard writes that "the
rise of a pan-German nationalist movement which drew its spiritual
strength from occultism and its ideology from the esoteric
philosophies of the secret societies... formed ...the extreme racialist
doctrines, which, in the 1920s, spawned National Socialism." 1
Indeed, romantic nationalism's only contribution to humanity has
been to have prepared the foundation for Nazism, one of history's
most brutal and bloody regimes.

The Schizophrenia of Romantic Nationalism
Because romantic nationalists believed they were to find truth
through "feeling and intuition," and not through reason, they came to
adopt a most confused view of the world, one which reflected their
poor spiritual condition. The American professor of History, Gerhard
Rempel, in his article entitled "Reform, Liberation and Romanticism in
Prussia," describes the spiritual state of the romantic nationalists in the
following words:

Romanticists sought to escape into fantasy, sentimentality and