Dietrich Eckart - Biography

Biography

Eckart was born Johann Dietrich Eckart in 1868 in Neumarkt, Upper Palatinate (about twenty miles southeast of Nuremberg) in the Kingdom of Bavaria, the son of royal notary and lawyer Christian Eckart and his wife Anna, a devout Catholic. His mother died when he was ten years old. Young Dietrich was expelled from several schools; in 1895, his father died also, leaving him a considerable amount of money that Eckart soon spent.

Eckart initially studied law at Erlangen, later medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and was an eager member of the fencing and drinking Korps. But he finally decided in 1891 to work as a poet, playwright, and journalist. Diagnosed with morphine addiction and nearly stranded, he moved to Berlin in 1899. There he wrote a number of plays, often autobiographical, and became the protégé of Count Georg von Hülsen-Haeseler (1858–1922), the artistic director of the Prussian Royal Theatre. Eckart was a successful playwright, especially with his 1912 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, one of the best attended productions of the age with more than 600 performances in Berlin alone. This success not only made Eckart wealthy, it gave him the social contacts needed to introduce Hitler to dozens of important German citizens. These introductions proved to be pivotal in Hitler's ultimate rise to power.

Later on, Eckart developed an ideology of a "genius superman", based on writings by the Völkisch author Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels; he saw himself following the tradition of Heinrich Heine, Arthur Schopenhauer and Angelus Silesius. He also became fascinated by the Buddhist doctrine of Maya (illusion). Eckart loved and strongly identified with Peer Gynt, but never had much sympathy for the scientific method. From 1907 he lived with his brother Wilhelm in the Döberitz mansion colony west of the Berlin city limits. In 1913 he married Rosa Marx, an affluent widow from Bad Blankenburg, and returned to Munich.

After World War I, Eckart edited the antisemitic periodical Auf gut Deutsch ("In good German"), working with Alfred Rosenberg and Gottfried Feder. A fierce critic of the German Revolution and the Weimar Republic, he vehemently opposed the Treaty of Versailles, which he viewed as treason, and was a proponent of the so-called stab-in-the-back legend (Dolchstoßlegende), according to which the Social Democrats and Jews were to blame for Germany's defeat in the war.

In 1919, Eckart, Gottfried Feder, and Anton Drexler founded the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party), which became the Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP - "National Socialist German Workers' Party"); that is, the Nazi Party. He was the original publisher of the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, and also wrote the lyrics of Deutschland erwache ("Germany awake"), which became an anthem of the Nazi Party.

Eckart met Adolf Hitler when Hitler gave a speech before party members in 1919. Eckart was involved with the Thule Society, although not a member. The Society was a secretive group of occultists who believed in the coming of a “German Messiah” who would redeem Germany after its defeat in World War I. Eckart expressed his anticipation in a poem he wrote months before he first met Hitler. In the poem, Eckart refers to ‘the Great One’, ‘the Nameless One’, ‘Whom all can sense but no one saw’. When Eckart met Hitler, Eckart was convinced that he had encountered the prophesied redeemer. Eckart exerted considerable influence on Hitler in the following years and is strongly believed to have helped establish the theories and beliefs of the Nazi party. Few other people had as much influence on Hitler in his lifetime.

It was Eckart who introduced Alfred Rosenberg to Adolf Hitler. Between 1920 and 1923, Eckart and Rosenberg labored tirelessly in the service of Hitler and the party. Through Rosenberg, Hitler was introduced to the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Rosenberg's inspiration. Rosenberg edited the Münchener Beobachter, a party newspaper, originally owned by the Thule Society. Rosenberg published the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Beobachter.

To raise funds for the Party, Eckart introduced Hitler into influential circles. While staying in the house of a wealthy manufacturer in Berlin, Hitler was given instruction in public speaking by a teacher of drama, Erik Jan Hanussen.

On 9 November 1923, Eckart participated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch. He was arrested and placed in Landsberg Prison along with Hitler and other party officials, but was released shortly thereafter due to illness. He died of a heart attack in Berchtesgaden on 26 December 1923. He was buried in Berchtesgaden's old cemetery, not far from the eventual graves of Nazi party official Hans Lammers and his wife and daughter.

Hitler dedicated the second volume of Mein Kampf to Eckart, and also named the Waldbühne arena near the Olympic Stadium in Berlin as the "Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne" when it was opened for the 1936 Summer Olympics. The 5th Standarte (regiment) of the SS-Totenkopfverbände was given the honour-title Dietrich Eckart.

In 1925, Eckart's unfinished essay Der Bolschewismus von Moses bis Lenin: Zwiegespräch zwischen Hitler und mir ("Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin: Dialogues Between Hitler and Me") was published posthumously, although it has been shown (Plewnia 1970) that the dialogues were an invention; the essay was written by Eckart alone. "However, this book still remains a reliable indicator of own views." The historian Richard Steigmann-Gall quotes from Eckart's book:

"In Christ, the embodiment of all manliness, we find all that we need. And if we occasionally speak of Baldur, our words always contain some joy, some satisfaction, that our pagan ancestors were already so Christian as to have an indication of Christ in this ideal figure." – Dietrich Eckart

Steigmann-Gall concludes that, "far from advocating a paganism or anti-Christian religion, Eckart held that, in Germany's postwar tailspin, Christ was a leader to be emulated."