![Arthur Trebitsch](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Arthur_Trebitsch.jpg)
Arthur Trebitsch (1880–1927) was an Austrian writer and racial theorist, known for being an antisemite of Jewish origin. He offered his services to help the fledgling Nazis to write their antisemitic literature, and was an influence on the early development of the Austrian branch of the Nazi party.
Life
Arthur Trebitsch was born on 17 April 1880 in Vienna, the son of wealthy Jewish silk industrialist Leopold Trebitsch. His older half-brother was the writer
Siegfried Trebitsch
Siegfried Trebitsch (1868–1956) was an Austrian playwright, translator, novelist and poet. Though prolific as a writer in various genres, he was best known for his German translations, especially of the works of the Irish playwright George Berna ...
. As a young man he came under the influence of fellow student
Otto Weininger
Otto Weininger (; 3 April 1880 – 4 October 1903) was an Austrian philosopher who lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1903, he published the book ''Geschlecht und Charakter'' (''Sex and Character''), which gained popularity after his suici ...
and the racial theorist
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, and scientific ra ...
, whose Viennese circles he frequented. From these writers, Trebitsch developed a radical German nationalist and antisemitic ideology.
[Brigitte Hamann, ''Hitler's Vienna: A Portrait of the Tyrant as a Young Man'', Tauris Parke, 2010, pp.230-33]
Following the lead of his brother Siegfried, he tried to become a creative writer but was unsuccessful. He completed a novel in 1909 and a collection of essays in 1910, but they remained unpublished. Trebitsch had them published at his own expense by his own specially founded press: Antaios Verlag, named after the mythological giant
Antaeus
Antaeus (; Ancient Greek: Ἀνταῖος ''Antaîos'', "opponent", derived from , ''antao'' – 'I face, I oppose'), known to the Berbers as Anti, was a figure in Berber and Greek mythology. He was famed for his defeat by Heracles as part o ...
in reference to a passage in
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
's 1850 essay ''The Art Work of the Future''.
[
Trebitsch was acutely sensitive to the fear that he was not taken seriously as an intellectual, but was only tolerated because of his wealth and generosity to other writers.][ He became embittered by the greater success of his half-brother. His increasing rejection of Judaism was accompanied by a distrust the academic establishment, and evidence of a more general paranoia began to show. In 1909 he officially left the Jewish religious community.][ He subsequently denied that he ever was Jewish, saying "I am not a Jew, I never was one, and I never will be one". He insisted that he had only partial Jewish ancestry, and was "free born, high born and to the manner born" as a true German.][ He repeatedly tried to sue people for slander if they referred to him as Jewish.][ In 1912, he unsuccessfully tried to sue his half-brother Siegfried and the critic Ferdinand Gregori, who had written a bad review of his short stories. His brother had agreed with Gregori, describing Arthur's work as "amateurish" and suggesting that he suffered from "megolamania and paranoia".][ The trial resulted in Trebitsch's public humiliation as the press ridiculed him.
Trebitsch became convinced of an international "Jewish world conspiracy against the German people", which was behind the outbreak of ]World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. From this point on he devoted his energies to the moral strengthening of Germany. After the war he gave a series of anti-Jewish lectures in German cities. He apparently came to believe that Providence had set him the task of becoming the saviour of the Nordic race
The Nordic race was a racial concept which originated in 19th century anthropology. It was considered a race or one of the putative sub-races into which some late-19th to mid-20th century anthropologists divided the Caucasian race, claiming th ...
. Jews, he believed, were trying to kill him with "poisoned electric rays".[ He detailed these plots against him in his 1923 book ''Die Geschichte meines "Verfolgungswahns"'' ("The Story of my 'Paranoia'").
In the early 1920s, Trebitsch helped to set up and fund the Austrian branch of the Nazi party, allegedly being considered its leader for a brief period.][
Trebitsch died on 26 September 1927 in ]Eggersdorf bei Graz
Eggersdorf bei Graz is a municipality in the district of Graz-Umgebung in the Austrian state of Styria
Styria (german: Steiermark ; Serbo-Croatian and sl, ; hu, Stájerország) is a state (''Bundesland'') in the southeast of Austria. Wi ...
at the age of 47.
Theories
Trebitsch's theories were first articulated in his 1919 book ''Geist und Judentum''. According to Trebitsch Jewish presence in Europe was fundamentally destructive to the spirit ("geist") of the Aryan peoples. The Jews were an "Ungeist" within Europe which must be excised. However, he believed that an antitoxin works best when it is derived from the toxin itself. People of Jewish ancestry who reject Judaism, such as himself, will be the spiritual force to destroy the corrupting influence of the Jewish presence in Europe.[Steven E. Aschheim, ''Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923'', Univ of Wisconsin Press, 15 Oct 1982, p.226-7] Jesus Christ
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...
was the archetype of a Judaised Aryan who had overcome and rejected the Jewishness within himself. The Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe were the antithesis of this, representing the "toxin" itself in its most virulent form. They had to be forcibly expelled from Europe, though a few might be absorbed into the Aryan population after a long period of forced labour eradicated the Jewishness from their souls.[
While Aryans possessed a "primary" creative intellect, Jews were only capable of "secondary" thinking, taking original ideas and adapting them. In doing so, they introduced a degenerating element which corrupted thought. ]Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
's psychoanalysis epitomised this, as it demonstrated an "erotomania" typical of the Jewish mind.[
]
Trebitsch and Hitler
Despite apparently believing himself to be the providentially ordained leader of the German people, he gave generous financial support to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Trebitsch knew both Hitler and Dietrich Eckart
Dietrich Eckart (; 23 March 1868 – 26 December 1923) was a German '' völkisch'' poet, playwright, journalist, publicist, and political activist who was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party. Eckart ...
personally. Eckart refers to Trebitsch in his book ''Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin: Zwiegespräch zwischen Hitler und mir'' ("Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: Dialogues Between Hitler and Me"). This records a conversation he is supposed to have had about Trebitsch, in which he refers to him as "a Jewish writer against Jews - at least he thinks he does. His every other word is "We Aryans"".[ In 1935, after Trebitsch's death, Hitler recommended an acquaintance, "Read every sentence he has written. He has unmasked the Jews as no one else did".][ Hitler also noted that Trebitsch had warned him against the "smart-alecky Zionist snakes" in the party who would undermine it from within. Hitler had at one time toyed with giving Trebitsch ]Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head of ...
's role as head of ideological education (Rosenberg was one of the "snakes" Trebitsch disliked).[
]
In culture
In 1923 a barely fictionalised representation of Arthur Trebitsch (called "Dr. Trebitsch") appeared in Joseph Roth
Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga ''Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life ''Job'' ( ...
's novel ''Das Spinnennetz'' (the Spider's Web). Dr. Trebitsch is the head of a secret ultra-right-wing antisemitic organisation. Theodor Lessing
Karl Theodor Richard Lessing (8 February 1872, Hanover – 31 August 1933, Marienbad) was a German Jewish philosopher.
He is known for opposing the rise of Hindenburg as president of the Weimar Republic and for his classic on Jewish self-hatre ...
uses Trebitsch as one of his principal sources for the concept of the self-hating Jew
Self-hating Jew or self-loathing Jew, transliterated in Hebrew as auto-antisemitism, is a term which is used to describe Jews whose views are perceived as antisemitic. The concept gained widespread currency after Theodor Lessing's 1930 book ('' ...
in his pioneering study of the phenomenon.[Michael Brenner, ''The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany'', Yale University Press, 1998, p.133.]
Works
* ''Galileo Galilei. Ein Trauerspiel in fünf Akten''. Wien 1901; 2. Auflage Antaios-Verlag, Berlin 1920.
* ''Aus Max Dorns Werdegang. Ein Lebensabschnitt''. 1909; 2. Auflage Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig, 1920.
* ''Der Fall Ferdinand Gregori und Siegfried Trebitsch. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte unserer Zeit''. Bachmair, München 1914.
* ''Erkenntnis und Logik''. Braumüller, Wien 1917.
* ''Friedrich der Große. Ein offener Brief an Thomas Mann''. Wilhelm Borngräber Verlag, Berlin 1916; Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1916.
* ''Gespräche und Gedankengänge''. Wilhelm Borngräber Verlag, Berlin 1916; 2. Auflage Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1920.
* ''Seitenpfade. Ein Buch Verse''. Wilhelm Borngräber Verlag, Berlin 1917; 2. Auflage Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1920.
* ''Geist und Leben''. Wilhelm Borngräber Verlag, Berlin 1917; Antaios-Verlag, Berlin/Wien 1921.
* ''Aus des Ratsherrn Johannes Teufferius Lebensbeschreybung''. Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1920.
* ''Nikolaus Lenaus geistiges Vermächtnis''. Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1920.
* ''Wir Deutsche aus Österreich. Ein Weckruf''. Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1921.
* ''Zur Förderung der Persönlichkeiten''. Wilhelm Borngräber Verlag, Berlin 1917; Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1920.
* ''Drei Vorträge mit Zwischenstücken. Die erste Darstellung der erkenntniskritischen Grundgedanken des Verfassers''. Wilhelm Borngräber Verlag, Berlin 1917; Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1920.
* ''Deutscher Geist – oder Judentum. Der Weg der Befreiung''. Verlag Ed. Strache, Berlin/Wien/Leipzig 1919; Antaios-Verlag, Berlin 1921.
* ''Geist und Judentum''. Verlag Ed. Strache, Wien/Leipzig 1919.
* ''Deutscher Geist aus Österreich. Ausgewählte dichterische Deutschtumsbekenntnisse''. Antaios-Verlag, Berlin/Leipzig 1920.
* ''Wort und Leben. Eine grundlegende Untersuchung''. Antaios-Verlag, Berlin 1920.
* ''Die böse Liebe. Novellen''. Verlag Ed. Strache, Wien 1920.
* ''Die Geschichte meines „Verfolgungswahnes“''. Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1923.
* ''Arische Wirtschaftsordnung. Eine grundlegende Untersuchung''. Antaios-Verlag, Wien/Leipzig 1925.
* ''Der Dichter, der Denker, der Redner, der Arier''. Antaios-Verlag, Leipzig 1926.
* ''Der brennende Mensch''. Antaios-Verlag, Leipzig 1930 (aus seinem Nachlass).
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Trebitsch, Arthur
1880 births
1927 deaths
20th-century Austrian writers
Austrian essayists
Austrian male novelists
Male essayists
20th-century Austrian novelists
Antisemitism in Austria
Austrian Jews
20th-century essayists
20th-century Austrian male writers