Strange Encounters: Social Democracy and Radical Nationalism in Weimar Germany

Abstract

This article analyzes a current within Weimar Social Democracy that aimed at the transformation of socialism into a nationalist socialism. This current originated in the Hofgeismarkreis of the Jungsozialisten in the postwar years, whose members joined forces during the 1920s with notable intellectuals who advocated ethical and religious concepts of socialism and founded the journal Neue Blätter für den Sozialismus in 1930. These socialists were active in the Social Democratic Party and in its affiliate organizations, but at the same time they shared significant elements of the nationalist ideology of the radical right. This shared ideology was responsible for the group generating political ideas which deviated considerably from the official line of the Social Democratic Party, developing a highly problematic attitude toward National Socialism and attempting to create alliances with certain parts of the radical right. The members of the circle were more sensitive to the crisis that undermined the ideas of enlightenment and liberalism than many other Social Democrats. Yet, in considering political irrationalism not as a danger but as an opportunity to revive socialism, these socialists themselves became a factor of this crisis. In such a way, the circle's nationalist socialism contributed to the decline of the Weimar Republic.