Ludwig Schemann

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Karl Ludwig Hendrik Lorenz Thomas Schemann (16 October 1852 – 13 February 1938) was a German scholar and translator. A disciple of Richard Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer and Paul de Lagarde,[1] Schemann is better known today as the translator, commentator and first biographer of Arthur de Gobineau.

Biography

Born in Cologne, Ludwig Schemann was the son of a small Rhineland industrialist. After studying at the progymnasium in Königswinter and then at the gymnasium in Coburg, where he learned French, Latin and a little Hebrew, he went successively to the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin and Bonn, where he defended his doctoral thesis on Roman history, devoted to the legions, in 1875.[2]

Schemann was librarian at the University of Göttingen from 1875 to 1891, then Professor of Physical Anthropology at the University of Freiburg, where he became a private researcher (Privatgelehrter) in 1897.[3]

He was a member of the circle of friends of Richard and Cosima Wagner, who lived in Bayreuth. In 1882, the composer introduced him to Gobineau, of whom Wagner was a great friend.[4] It was also Wagner who advised him to devote himself to Gobineau's work, which he discovered in December 1889 by reading The Renaissance.[5] He devoted himself to the translation of his works and published them in German between 1898 and 1914 (The Renaissance between 1891 and 1894). In February 1894, he founded the Gobineau-Vereinigung (Gobineau Society), which was very successful[lower-alpha 1] and of which he was president until 1920. In 1898, Countess Mathilde de La Tour decided to bequeath her rights to Gobineau's manuscripts and correspondence, the remains of his library, his works of art and his furniture to this organization. Professor Schemann then proposed to the National and University Library of Strasbourg to buy this collection. An extraordinary grant and a loan from the Saint-Thomas Fund made it possible to acquire the whole estate in 1908.[7] In 1911, after the death of the Countess, Gobineau's books, his correspondence with Alexander von Humboldt, Prosper Mérimée, Ernest Renan, etc., his objects and his furniture were transferred to the library.

In 1907, alongside the painter Hermann Hendrich, the literary historian Adolf Bartels, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Henry Thode, he signed the call for the founding of the Werdandi Bund,[lower-alpha 2] a völkisch-inspired association with about 500 members.

Schemann was a correspondent and influential figure in the intellectual development of Erich Ludendorff. He was also a member of the Freiburg branch of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, which was affiliated with the Gobineau-Vereinigung, and in 1928 became the public supporter of the National Socialist-inspired Militant League for German Culture. In 1933, he was made an honorary citizen of the city of Freiburg. In addition, he became involved with Otto Ammon and Theodor Fritsch in the Pan-German League.

In 1937, he was enrolled as an honorary member of the Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des Neuen Deutschlands (National Institute for the History of the New Germany). In the same year, the Goethe Institute awarded him the Goethe Medal for Art and Science.[8]

Shortly after Schemann's death, a newly created street in Cologne-Neuehrenfeld was named after him. In 1946, however, it was renamed after Carl Rehorst, an alderman of the city of Cologne who died in 1919. In the Soviet occupation zone, Schemann's writings Die Rasse in den Geisteswissenschaften (1928), Hauptepochen und Hauptvölker der Geschichte in ihrer Stellung zur Rasse (1930), Deutsche Klassiker über die Rassenfrage (1934), Die Rassenfragen im Schrifttum der Neuzeit (1943) and Paul de Lagarde (1944) were censored, and placed on the list of literature to be eliminated. In the German Democratic Republic, this list was enlarged with Gobineau und die deutsche Kultur (1934) and Wolfgang Kapp und das Märzunternehmen vom Jahre 1920 (1937).

His personal archive is kept in the library of the University of Freiburg im Breisgau.

Works

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  • De legionum per alterum bellum Punicum historia quae investigari posse videantur (1875; dissertation)
  • Meine Erinnerungen an Richard Wagner (1902)
  • Graf Arthur Gobineau. Ein Erinnerungsbild aus Wahnfried (1907)
  • Die Gobineau-Sammlung der Kaiserlichen Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek zu Straßburg (1907)
  • Gobineau und die deutsche Kultur (1910; 1934)
  • Gobineaus Rassenwerk. Aktenstücke und Betrachtungen zur Geschichte und Kritik des "Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines" (1910)
  • Alexis de Tocqueville (1911)
  • Gobineau. Eine Biographie (1913–1916; 2 volumes)
  • Quellen und Untersuchungen zum Leben Gobineaus (1914; 2 volumes)
  • Fünfundzwanzig Jahre Gobineau-Vereinigung (1919)
  • Paul de Lagarde. Ein Lebens- u. Erinnerungsbild (1919; 1944)
  • Von deutscher Zukunft. Gedanken Eines, der auszog, das Hoffen zu lernen (1920)
  • Cherubini (1925)
  • Monarchie oder Republik?: kulturgeschichtliche Streifzüge (1925)
  • Lebensfahrten eines Deutschen (1925)
  • Die Rasse in den Geisteswissenschaften. Studien zur Geschichte des Rassengedankens (1928-1931; 3 volumes)[9])
  • Hauptepochen und Hauptvölker der Geschichte in ihrer Stellung zur Rasse (1930)
  • Martin Plüddemann und die deutsche Ballade (1930)
  • Deutsche Klassiker über die Rassenfrage (1934)
  • Hans von Bülow im Lichte der Wahrheit (1935)
  • Wolfgang Kapp und das Märzunternehmen vom Jahre 1920. Ein Wort der Sühne (1937)
  • Die Rassenfragen im Schrifttum der Neuzeit (1943)

Translations

  • Arthur de Gobineau, Asiatische Novellen (1893)
  • Arthur de Gobineau, Die Renaissance. Historische Scenen (1899)
  • Arthur de Gobineau, Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen (1900; 4 volumes)

Notes

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The Gobineau Society welcomed foreigner intellectuals, in particular the Frenchmen Florimond de Basterot, Paul Bourget, Édouard Schuré and Georges Vacher de Lapouge.[6]
  2. ↑ Verdandi League, named after Verðandi, one of the three Nordic goddess of fate.

Citations

  1. ↑ Le Rider, Jacques (2005). Malwida von Meysenbug (1816-1903): Une Européenne du XIXe Siècle. Paris: Bartillat, p. 434.
  2. ↑ Chapoutot, Johann (2008). Le National-socialisme et l'Antiquité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, p. 74.
  3. ↑ Mohler, Armin (2018). The Conservative Revolution in Germany, 1918-1932: A Handbook. Whitefish, Montana: Washington Summit Publishers.
  4. ↑ Weindling, Paul (1993). Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 52.
  5. ↑ Crouzet, Michel (1990). Arthur de Gobineau: Cent Ans Après, 1882-1982. Paris: Minard, p. 15.
  6. ↑ Benoist, Alain de (2001). Vu de droite, anthologie critique des idées contemporaines. Paris: Éditions du Labyrinthe, p. 262.
  7. ↑ Littler, Gérard (2002). "La Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg: Constitution de la Collection dans la Période Allemande (1871-1918)," Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France, No. 4, pp. 36–46.
  8. ↑ Klee, Ernst (2005). Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag: Francfort-sur-le-Main, p. 530.
  9. ↑ Schemann considered Die Rasse in den Geisteswissenschaften as his life's work. See, Werner, Karl Ferdinand (1967). Das NS-Geschichtsbild und die deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, p. 82.

References

  • Andre, Pamela Jeannette (1984). Gobineau's Disciple: The Life and Work of Ludwig Schemann. Ph. D. James Cook University of North Queensland.
  • Becker, Peter Emil (1990). Wege ins Dritte Reich. Tl. 2: Sozialdarwinismus, Rassismus, Antisemitismus und Völkischer Gedanke. Stuttgart, pp. 101–23.
  • Benoist, Alain de (1979). "Un Sceptique Wagnérien: Ludwig Schemann, 1852-1938," Nouvelle Ecole, No. 31/32, pp. 158–70.
  • Boissel, Jean (1981). "Autour du Gobinisme: Correspondance Inédite entre L. Schemann et G. Vacher de Lapouge," Annales du C.E.S.E.R.E., No 4.
  • Ludendorff, Erich (1940). Vom Feldherrn zum Weltrevolutionär und Wegbereiter Deutscher Volksschöpfung: Meine Lebenserinnerungen von 1919 bis 1925. München: Ludendorffs Verlag.
  • Nemitz, Kurt (1983). "Antisemitismus in der Wissenschaftspolitik der Weimarer Republik. Der 'Fall Ludwig Schemann'." In: Jahrbuch des Instituts für deutsche Geschichte 12, pp. 377–407.
  • Köck, Julian (2011). "Ludwig Schemann und die Gobineau-Vereinigung." In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Vol. LIX, No. 9, pp. 723–40.
  • Schemann, Bertha, ed. (1937). Briefe an Ludwig Schemann/Cosima Wagner. Regensburg: Bosse.

External links

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