Gobinism

Gobinism, also known as Gobineauism, was an academic, political and social movement formed in 19th-century Germany based on the works of French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau.[1] An ethnically pro-Germanic while anti-national ideology, particularly against the French nation;[2] the movement had influenced German nationalists and intellectuals such as Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche.[3] Historians have described Gobinism as becoming cult-like by the end of the nineteenth century, with powerful and influential followers, specifically in the Pan-Germanism movement.[4][5] The Gobineau Association (Gobineau-Vereinigung) was founded in 1894 by Ludwig Schemann, who also made the first German translation of Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races.

Becoming popular in German intellectual cliques,[6] particularly the Bayreuth Circle, in the phenomena that Walter Charles Langer described as "Gobineau Societies",[7] Gobinism was later adapted by the likes of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Alfred Rosenberg to forge elements of Nazi philosophy.[8] Gobineau's antisemitism was emphasized within Gobinism to ideologically bridge to the later Nazi movement.[9]

Historians have made much of the significant philosophical gap between the pessimism of Gobineau himself, particularly his insistence that his vision was of mythical Aryans as a fallen and lost people, versus the optimism and themes of rejuvenation of the disciples and members of the Gobinism movement.[10] It has been suggested that the spawning of Gobinism went on to majorly influence all future racial theories of the period.[11] Nietzsche's Übermensch was largely inspired by the movement.[12] Some historians believe the influence of Gobinism was still affecting racial discourse into the mid-20th-century.[13]

References
  1. Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn (2018). Race and Racism: An Introduction. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 109. ISBN 978-1442274587. Chamberlain's writings and the political movement of Gobineauism had a direct bearing on Nazi ideology.
  2. Arendt, Hannah (1968). Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 54. ISBN 978-0156442008. The consistent antinational trend of Gobinism served to equip the enemies of French democracy and, later, of the Third Republic, with real or fictitious allies beyond the frontiers of their country
  3. Gould, Stephen Jay (1996). The Mismeasure of Man. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 359. ISBN 978-0393314250. Gobineau was undoubtedly the most influential academic racist of the nineteenth century. His writings strongly affected such intellectuals as Wanger and Nietzsche and inspired a social movement known as Gobinism.
  4. Trattner, Ernest R. (1942). Architects of Ideas: The Story of the World's Great Thinkers. New Home Library. p. 359. By the close of the nineteenth century, Gobinism had become a powerful cult with important adherents. A supreme Germany peopled by blond geniuses was a tempting ideal to which few compatriots resisted homage.
  5. Crossland, Margaret (1992). Simone De Beauvoir: The Woman and Her Work. Arrow. p. 15. ISBN 978-0434149018. His philosophy of racial aristocracy led to the doctrine of Gobinism popular with propagandists of the pan-Germanic movement.
  6. Yarshater, Ehsan (2004). Encyclopaedia Iranica, Volume 11: Gioni - Harem I. Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation. p. 23. ISBN 978-0933273719. Soon to become fashionable in German intellectual circles, his theories gave birth to Gobinism, a racist extrapolation of his views about the superiority of the white race
  7. Cerf, Jay H. (1951). The Intellectual Basis of Nazism. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 106. German nationalists ... found "Gobinism" made to order. Accounts of this period show that "Gobinism" became the rage of Germany. Langer speaks of "Gobineau Societies".
  8. Pieterse, Jan P. Nedervene (1989). Empire and Emancipation: Power and Liberation on a World Scale. Praeger Publishing. p. 250. ISBN 978-0275925291. Gobinism became one of the central veins of European reaction; adapted by Houston Stewart Chamberlain ('the spiritual founder of the Third Reich') and Alfred Rosenberg, it became part of Nazi philosophy.
  9. Blumenthal, W. Michael (1998). The Invisible Wall: Germans and Jews - A Personal Exploration. Counterpoint. ISBN 978-1887178730. No one, for example, espoused the glorification of a superior Germanic race more fervently than Richard Wagner, and no one was a more enthusiastic proponent of "Gobineauism's" view of Jewish inferiority.
  10. Harris, Laurie Lanzen (1988). Nineteenth-century Literature Criticism, Volume 17. Gale. p. 98. Between the pessimism of Gobineau and the regenerative optimism of those who, in preaching 'Gobinism', came to make use of his doctrines there is of course a vast gulf. But it is not altogether unbridgeable.
  11. Pyzik, Teresa; Sikora, Tomasz (2000). New Shape of Ethics?: Reflections on Ethical Values in Post-modern American Cultures and Societies. University of Silesia Press. p. 65. Although Gobineau himself was concerned with a scholarly examination of the mechanics of human social life rather than with racist political programs, his theory of racial determinism, which in time developed into a movement called gobinism, had an enormous influence upon the subsequent development of racial theories.
  12. Macgillivray, J. A. (2000). Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth. Hill & Wang. pp. 39. ISBN 978-0809030354. His thesis, that the Germanic Aryans would retain social superiority only if they retained racial purity and didn't dilute their genetic inheritance through mixing with inferior black and yellow strains, became the basis for the political movement called Gobinism at the end of the century; the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche used it to create his ideal of the Übermensch
  13. Samiei, Sasan (2014). Ancient Persia in Western History: Hellenism and the Representation of the Achaemenid Empire. I.B. Tauris. p. 75. ISBN 978-1780764801. Some, however, may argue that even though, superficially, the race debates of the 1930s seemed to have moved on from the Gobineauism of the nineteenth century, they had not done so decisively enough to be considered as an altogether new phenomenon.
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