Aristocracy and the Radical Right in Germany

ECKART CONZE 'Only a dictator can help us now': Aristocracy and the Radical Right in Germany in KARINA URBACH (ed.), European Aristocracies and the Radical Right 1918-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 129–147 ISBN: 978 0 199 23173 7 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 8 'Only a dictator can help us now': Aristocracy and the Radical Right in Germany ECKART CONZE I The public image of the German aristocracy during the Nazi period was long shaped by the events of 20 July and the high proportion of aristocrats involved in the conspiracy culminating in 1944. This has begun to change in recent years. It has frequently been pointed out, especially in the context of the sixti- eth anniversary of the assassination attempt, how strongly aristocrats themselves were committed, after 1945, to stressing the aristocratic resistance to National Socialism. This has produced a view in which the history of the aristocracy under Nazism was practically identified with that of the resistance. 1 Additionally, a number of books have appeared-especially important among these is the work of Stephan Malinowski-in which the relationship between the aristocracy and National Socialism has, for the first time, been thoroughly examined. What has emerged is that large sections of the German aristocracy became more radically right wing after 1918. Furthermore, the ideas, expectations, and orientations that made possible the broad affinities between the aristocracy and National Socialism have been identified. These affinities must be counted among the major preconditions for the Translated by Angela Davies, GHIL. 1 Esp. important in this context is the critical debate about the role of Marion Grafin Donhoff in the commemoration and publicizing of resistance after 1945. On this see Eckart Conze, 'Aufstand des preuBischen Adels: Marion Grafin Donhoffund das Bild des Widerstands gegen den Nationalsozialismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland', V,me!jahrshe.fteftir ,<ei.tgeschichf.e, 51 (2003), 483-508. 130 ECKART CONZE destruction of the Weimar Republic, the nse of National Socialism, and the stabilization of its power.2 Those aristocrats who early declared their support for National Socialism by joining the Nazi Party (NSDAP), the SS, SA, or other Nazi organizations, however, at first glance held a very different opinion of the majority of German aristocrats. Wolf Heinrich Graf von Helldorff, head of the SA in Berlin and later Berlin's police chief, had only contempt for most of his fellow aristocrats. As he wrote at the beginning of 1934: The majority of the aristocracy has come to accept the existing situa- tion. Most of them came to terms with the Weimar Republic. For most of the aristocracy, and particularly the older generation, there was only the lesser evil that had to be accepted in order not to lose everything. Occasionally, on solemn national festivals, the uniforms of the old regi- ments would be taken out in order to keep up tradition, and tempered speeches were given to veterans' associations, expressing the hope that God would let better times return. It was easier to believe that the Weimar Republic would create peace and order, and to change one's opinion a little for that sake .... It must be said clearly, once and for all, that the aristocracy, and especially the post-war generation, succumbed to the influences of liberalism and democracy with shocking speed. 3 Helldorff's judgement cannot be read as a vindication of the aristocracy's honour. Helldorff himself, despite his later connec- tions with the resistance, was one of the most evil aristocratic N azis,4 and is certainly not worth quoting as a vindicator. Yet his judgement indicates that the relationship between the aristocracy and the extreme right, and National Socialism in particular, cannot be reduced to a common denominator during the inter- war period. This refers not only to the opposition between aristocratic opponents of the Weimar Republic and its few aristocratic supporters, or to that between aristocratic National Socialists and 2 Stephan Malinowski, Vom Konig zum Fuhrer: Sozialer Niedergang und politische Radikalisierung im deutschen Adel zwischen Kaiserreich und NS-Staat (Berlin, 2003). But cf. also various essays in Heinz Reif (ed.), Adel und Biirgertum in Deutschfund: Entwicklungslinien und Wendepunkte im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2001), and in Eckart Conze and Monika Wienfort (eds.), Adel und Moderne: Deutschland im europiiischen Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2004). 3 'Wolf Heinrich Grafv. Helldorf', in Friedrich Christian Prinz zu Schaumburg-Lippe (ed.), Wo war tier Adel? (Berlin, 1934), 4~, at 45. 4 On Helldorffsee the biographical sketch by Ted Harrison, '"Alter Kampfer" im Widerstand: Graf Helldorff, die NS-Bewegung und die Opposition gegen Hitler', Vierteijahrshe.fteftir ,?,eitgeschichte, 45 (1997), 385-423. The Germ.an Aristocracy members of the resistance. It also refers to the very different forms of aristocratic right-wing radicalization; to the motives behind them; the forms and paths they took; and the preconditions and shape of aristocratic contacts with the radical right, namely, the affinity between the aristocracy and the radical right. It would be too simple to explain this wide spectrum, the many facets of the relationship between the aristocracy and the radical right, merely in terms of individual biographies. Yet the methods of individual or group biography certainly offer a good approach to the analysis of the political behaviour of members of the aristocracy after 1918. A combination of biographical and history-of- experience approaches holds the key to the explanation of political orientations and patterns of political behaviour among the aristocracy as well as others, 5 and certainly not only for the period after 1918. The history of the aristocracy need not neces- sarily be written as the history of its attempt, over hundreds of years, to stay 'on top', to use Werner Sombart's much quoted phrase. 6 But the political, social, and economic pressure to which the aristocracy was subjected, especially from the nineteenth century (to justify itself, to assert itself, and to conform) increased from 1918 to a previously unprecedented level. To this extent the story of the relationship between the aristocracy and the radical right is also a story of dealing with the experience of growing pressure. It is the story of the aristocracy's chances of keeping solid ground under its feet by means of cultural stability at times of fundamental political and social change-but also of the limits of this process. After the First World War, for the aristocratic individual and the aristocracy as a collective, what Reinhart Koselleck has called horizon of expectation (Erwartungshorizon~ and experiential space (Eifahrungsraum) were less related to each other than ever 5 Cf. e.g. Wende Meteling, 'Der deutsche Zusammenbruch 1918 in den Selbstzeug- nissen adeliger preuBischer Offiziere', in Conze and Wienfort (eds.), Adel und Moderne, 289-321; Rainer Pomp, 'Brandenburgischer Landadel und die Weimarer Republik: Konflikte um Oppositionsstrategien und Elitenkonzepte', in Kurt Adamy and Kristina Hiibener (eds.), Adel und Staatsverwaltung in Brandenburg im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Ein historischer Vergleich (Berlin, 1996), 185-218; or Eckart Conze, Von deutschem Adel· Die Grqfen von Bernstorff im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2000), esp. 149-88; and, of course, Malinowski, Vom Konig zum Fiihrer, passim. 6 Rudolf Braun, 'Konzeptionelle Bemerkungen zum "Obenbleiben": Adel im 19. Jahrhundert', in Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Europiiischer Adel 1750-1950 (Gottingen, 1990), 87-g5; Eckart Conze, 'Niedergang und "Obenbleiben"', in id. (ed.), Kleines Lexikon des Adels: Tit,e~ Throne, Traditi.onen (Munich, 2005), 187-8. ECKART CONZE before. Not only the traditional experiences of crisis, which the aristocracy had faced for centuries, but new types of experiences of loss and of what Peter Sloterdijk has called experiences of disturbance (Stiireifahrungen) unbalanced the relationship between horizon of expectation and experiential space which, for the aristocracy, had been relatively stable, or at least, relatively easy to restabilize. 7 In this essay I shall attempt to combine approaches from the history of experience with an examination of the German aristocracy's habitual and mental dispositions in order to help us to define the relationship between the German aristocracy and the radical right more precisely. The history-of-experience approach will emphasize the German perspective; the aristocratic experiential space is regarded as primarily a national experiential space, without, of course, excluding from the analysis the possi- bility of regional, or even local, experiences. In addition, the issue of aristocratic mental and habitual dispositions

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