Nicolaus Sombart (1923–2008)
Author of Jugend in Berlin 1933 - 1943. Ein Bericht.
About the Author
Works by Nicolaus Sombart
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1923-05-10
- Date of death
- 2008-07-04
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Heidelberg
University of Paris
University of Naples - Awards and honors
- Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur (C. LH), 2003
- Short biography
- Nicolaus Sombart (May 10, 1923 – July 4, 2008) was a German cultural sociologist, historian and writer.
The son of Werner Sombart and his Romanian wife Corina Leon, Sombart was known, in particular, as an analyst of Wilhelmine Germany and a critique of Carl Schmitt. For nearly 30 years, Sombart benefited from an appointment as senior cultural civil servant attached to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, while also continuing his career as a writer and academic, principally in Berlin at the Freie Universität. - Birthplace
- Berlin-Grunewald, Deutschland
- Place of death
- Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, Grand-Est, France
- Associated Place (for map)
- Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, Grand-Est, France
Members
Reviews
Nicolaus was the son of the once famous social historian Werner Sombart, one of those Prussian professor-kings, academic patriarchs, begetters of disciplines. One of Sombart's less glorious claims to fame is his study of Jews and capitalism, which reinforced (some say, invented) the connection between the two in general opinion. The important thing is that this is today seen for a barrel of bollocks--but at the time was quite influential.
Sombart himself was considered a man of the left, show more although probably deeply misjudged as more radical than he ever was. Nicolaus, who was born in a second marriage when Sombart was sixty, hasn't shed more light on his father's convictions, which seem to have been a strange but perhaps not that uncommon mix of conservatism and some sort of socialism. He died in 1941, opposed to the Nazis (who banned his books), but with connections to some people on the right.
Of which no one could be more notorious than the political theorist and card-holding Nazi Carl Schmitt. In truth, Nicolaus' narrative is confusing on the issue of how his father felt about Schmitt after he came out in defense of Hitler in 1934--in one part Nicolaus writes that Sombart cut him (Schmitt) off, but he still shows up at their house, mentors Nicolaus etc. There was also the connection between Nicolaus' mother, a Romanian woman, and Schmitt's wife, an orthodox Yugoslav (presumably Serbian).
In any case, young Nicolaus would meet Schmitt on many occasions and receive his advice on education, books, his thesis. This last one was to be on Jewish theatre criticism--a choice that raises eyebrows today as then. Nicolaus seems to want us to think he was being courageous, but that would depend on what exactly he meant to say, and we never hear that. His milieu at this time, emptied of Jewish intellectuals he briefly had had contact with as a child, while not necessarily actively Nazi, also couldn't have avoided appeasing the latter. No matter how eager he and his mates may have been for the forbidden (they also indulged in a mania for fin-de-siècle Vienna), such things hardly amounted to real opposition, let alone resistance.
In all this, Schmitt is someone who clearly meant to influence Nicolaus antisemitically, not just to make sure that the boy embraces antisemitism, but that the antisemitic credo is of the "correct", Schmitt's kind. Wherein lies the bizarre--as with Heidegger, it's in the content of their antisemitism, and in the clash between what is supposedly a great analytical intelligence, and the total lunacy of the antisemitic content.
Schmitt tells Nicolaus, oracularly (with a theatrical stance, whispering, as if inducing into a cult secret) that the key to understanding Jews (and concomitantly, to adopting the antisemitic stance such an understanding inexorably entails) lies in -- Disraeli. ("When you have read him you'll know about the Jews!") Specifically, he gives Nicolaus to read Tancred; or, The New Crusade, and to look for the "key phrase". Nicolaus obeys but fails to find "the key". Schmitt enlightens him: "Christianity is the Judaism of the people!"
Nicolaus describes Schmitt as "outraged" in this scene, furious at the Jewish impudence and "arrogance" that would "turn upside down two thousand years of Western history". He also says Schmitt had a portrait of Disraeli hanging over his desk, the better to keep "the enemy" in sight. He believed the British domination of the seas was serving the Jewish conspiracy to destroy nations. And to top the insanity, he had had to question whether Christianity itself hadn't been a Jewish trick, a ploy to "stultify" others and deprive them of power.
This, from a freaking viewpoint in 1941, in which the dominion of Christian Western countries lay practically over the entirety of the globe! THIS is what a supposedly "genius" mind had come up with.
Will people ever stop excusing the antisemitism of intellectuals like Heidegger and Schmitt as something worth addressing? It's shit in exactly the same way that the antisemitism of some illiterate butcher is. It's stupid shit, stupid beliefs held for stupid, shameful reasons: ignorance, envy, stupidity. And because they were philosophers and not widget-makers, it's shit that adheres to every single word and opinion they had. Heidegger's philosophy and Schmitt's vision of the state depend directly on the shit they believed about the Jews. show less
Sombart himself was considered a man of the left, show more although probably deeply misjudged as more radical than he ever was. Nicolaus, who was born in a second marriage when Sombart was sixty, hasn't shed more light on his father's convictions, which seem to have been a strange but perhaps not that uncommon mix of conservatism and some sort of socialism. He died in 1941, opposed to the Nazis (who banned his books), but with connections to some people on the right.
Of which no one could be more notorious than the political theorist and card-holding Nazi Carl Schmitt. In truth, Nicolaus' narrative is confusing on the issue of how his father felt about Schmitt after he came out in defense of Hitler in 1934--in one part Nicolaus writes that Sombart cut him (Schmitt) off, but he still shows up at their house, mentors Nicolaus etc. There was also the connection between Nicolaus' mother, a Romanian woman, and Schmitt's wife, an orthodox Yugoslav (presumably Serbian).
In any case, young Nicolaus would meet Schmitt on many occasions and receive his advice on education, books, his thesis. This last one was to be on Jewish theatre criticism--a choice that raises eyebrows today as then. Nicolaus seems to want us to think he was being courageous, but that would depend on what exactly he meant to say, and we never hear that. His milieu at this time, emptied of Jewish intellectuals he briefly had had contact with as a child, while not necessarily actively Nazi, also couldn't have avoided appeasing the latter. No matter how eager he and his mates may have been for the forbidden (they also indulged in a mania for fin-de-siècle Vienna), such things hardly amounted to real opposition, let alone resistance.
In all this, Schmitt is someone who clearly meant to influence Nicolaus antisemitically, not just to make sure that the boy embraces antisemitism, but that the antisemitic credo is of the "correct", Schmitt's kind. Wherein lies the bizarre--as with Heidegger, it's in the content of their antisemitism, and in the clash between what is supposedly a great analytical intelligence, and the total lunacy of the antisemitic content.
Schmitt tells Nicolaus, oracularly (with a theatrical stance, whispering, as if inducing into a cult secret) that the key to understanding Jews (and concomitantly, to adopting the antisemitic stance such an understanding inexorably entails) lies in -- Disraeli. ("When you have read him you'll know about the Jews!") Specifically, he gives Nicolaus to read Tancred; or, The New Crusade, and to look for the "key phrase". Nicolaus obeys but fails to find "the key". Schmitt enlightens him: "Christianity is the Judaism of the people!"
Nicolaus describes Schmitt as "outraged" in this scene, furious at the Jewish impudence and "arrogance" that would "turn upside down two thousand years of Western history". He also says Schmitt had a portrait of Disraeli hanging over his desk, the better to keep "the enemy" in sight. He believed the British domination of the seas was serving the Jewish conspiracy to destroy nations. And to top the insanity, he had had to question whether Christianity itself hadn't been a Jewish trick, a ploy to "stultify" others and deprive them of power.
This, from a freaking viewpoint in 1941, in which the dominion of Christian Western countries lay practically over the entirety of the globe! THIS is what a supposedly "genius" mind had come up with.
Will people ever stop excusing the antisemitism of intellectuals like Heidegger and Schmitt as something worth addressing? It's shit in exactly the same way that the antisemitism of some illiterate butcher is. It's stupid shit, stupid beliefs held for stupid, shameful reasons: ignorance, envy, stupidity. And because they were philosophers and not widget-makers, it's shit that adheres to every single word and opinion they had. Heidegger's philosophy and Schmitt's vision of the state depend directly on the shit they believed about the Jews. show less
Statistics
- Works
- 10
- Members
- 58
- Popularity
- #284,345
- Rating
- 4.5
- Reviews
- 1
- ISBNs
- 15
- Languages
- 2