Herrigel, Streicher and Genocide, part 1 of 2: Nuremberg Zen +^

[Disbasing Zen Stories]

Toxic Zen Story #20, part 1 of 2: Nuremberg Zen: Eugen Herrigel, Rector of Erlangen-Nuremberg University, and alter-ego Julius Streicher of "Der Stürmer": Zen in the Art of Genocide.

| "Inge was already waiting for an hour. Again
| she takes the journals in an endeavor to read.
| Then the door opens. Inge looks up. The Jew
| appears. She screams. In terror she drops the
| paper. Horrified she jumps up. Her eyes stare into
| the face of the Jewish doctor. And this face is
| the face of the devil. In the middle of this
| devil's face is a huge crooked nose. Behind the
| spectacles two criminal eyes. And the thick lips
| are grinning, a grinning that expresses: 'Now I
| got you at last, you little German girl! ' "

From the "Der Stürmer" children's book, "The Poisonous Fungus"

. 'A report of Streicher's address to 2,000
. children at Nuremberg at Christmastime, 1936,
. states:

| " 'Do you know who the Devil is, ' he
| asked his breathlessly listening audience.'
| The Jew, the Jew, ' resounded from a thousand
| children's voices."

. (M-44). ' - S. D. Stein, from the Nuremberg War Crime Trials Evidence

part 1 of 2.

____ Background for Toxic Zen Stories _____________________

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.zen/msg/b4ad0ce368728934?hl=en

____ Introduction ________________________________________

A frequent visitor to Landsberg Prison where Hitler was writing Mein Kampf with the help of Rudolf Hess, was General Karl Haushofer, a university professor and director of the Munich Institute of Geopolitics.

Haushofer, Hitler, and Hess had long conversations together. Hess also kept records of these conversations. Hitler's demands for German "Living Space" in the east at the expense of the Slavic nations were based on the geopolitical theories of the learned professor.

Haushofer was also inclined toward the esoteric. as military attache in Japan, he had studied Zen-Buddhism. He had also gone through initiations at the hands of Tibetan Lamas. He became Hitler's second "esoteric mentor", replacing Dietrich Eckart.

Eckart was an occultist and magician leader of the Thule Society who was certainly the earliest corrupting influence on Hitler's psyche. But after Eckart's death and meeting Haushofer, Adolph took a hard right turn to become the first Nazi.

In "The Morning of the Magicians" (1960; 279) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier they write:

. 'Occultism teaches that, after concluding a
. pact with hidden forces, the members of the group
. cannot evoke these forces save through the
. intermediary of a magician who, in turn, can do
. nothing without a medium. It would seem therefore
. that Hitler must have been the medium, and
. Haushofer the magician. Rudolf Hess had been
. Haushofer's assistant when the latter was a
. professor at the University of Munich.'
.
. 'It was he who had brought Haushofer and
. Hitler together. His flight to England during the
. war was the result of Haushofer having told him
. that he had seen him in a dream flying to England
. in an airplane. In one of the rare moments of
. lucidity which his inexplicable malady allowed him
. the prisoner Hess, the last survivor of the Thule
. Group, is said to have stated formally that
. Haushofer was the magician, the secret Master.
. (see Jack Fishman: The Seven Men of Spandau.)'

Thusly, Nazism is an offshoot of Zen, mixed with occultism and Tibetan Buddhism and some other things. Clearly, however, the influence of the Void is predominant: the thought that life is just there for whatever possibility you want to pursue, no-holds-barred, and without concern for the results in the lives of others. Nazism is basically Zen.
___________________________________________________

In an article about the evolution of Zen in Europe:
(http://www.bushido.net/context/zen_history.htm)

| 'Prof. Eugen Herrigel, who had been in close
| contact with Ohasama in Heidelberg, approached Zen
| via kyudo during his stay in Japan (1924 - 1929)
| and wrote "Die ritterliche Kunst des
| Bogenschiessens", (The gallant Art of Archery) in
| 1936. His famous book "Zen in the Art of Archery"
| was edited in 1953. Herrigel tended towards Nazism
| (cf. his inaugural lecture at Erlangen University,
| 1935) and wasn't overly interested in setting up a
| religious practice group. '

In the article "Varieties of Moral Aestheticism" on the Friesian website:
(http://www.friesian.com/poly-2.htm)

. 'Note the coincidence of German and Japanese
. moral aestheticism in Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the
. Art of Archery, a classic of Zen and martial arts
. by a philosophy professor who would shortly return
. to Germany and become a supporter of Hitler. Thus,
. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky points out: '
.
. "And the man who wrote one of the best-
. sellers on Zen (Zen in the Art of Archery)
. which was eagerly gobbled up all Zen-
. enthusiasts, Eugen Herrigel, was a convinced
. Nazi and follower of Hitler. Can you be a
. genuine Zen disciple, or claim to have
. experienced enlightenment, and at the same
. time follow a 'leader' who murdered millions
. of human beings in gas chambers? [The Center
. Magazine, March/April 1975]"
.
. 'The answer to Werblowsky's question is
. definitely "yes," as D.T. Suzuki himself wrote in
. 1938: '

| "Zen has no special doctrine or
| philosophy, no set of concepts or intellectual
| formulas, except that it tries to release one
| from the bondage of birth and death, by means
| of certain intuitive modes of understanding
| peculiar to itself. It is, therefore,
| extremely flexible in adapting itself to
| almost any philosophy and moral doctrine as
| long as its intuitive teaching is not
| interfered with. It may be found wedded to
| anarchism or fascism, communism or democracy,
| atheism or idealism, or any political or
| economic dogmatism. It is, however, generally
| animated with a certain revolutionary spirit,
| and when things come to a deadlock -- as they
| do when we are overloaded with
| conventionalism, formalism, or other cognate
| isms -- Zen asserts itself and proves to be a
| destructive force. [Zen and Japanese Culture,
| Princeton, 1973, p. 63]"

. 'In this description, Heidegger's moral
. aestheticism meets that of bushido, and there is
. absolutely nothing to suggest that Eugen Herrigel
. should not find an appropriate "destructive force"
. in the "revolutionary spirit" of Hitler's National
. Socialism.. '

____ Toxic Zen Story ______________________________

In 1929, fresh with the glow of self-discovery and grasping his essence and being firmly, Eugen Herrigel returned from Japan to Germany to teach at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen, which is 10 miles from Nuremberg. In 1935 he became the rector of Erlangen University and gave an inaugural speech which is famous for his espousing both Zen and Nazism.

[I am actively searching for the text of the 1935 inaugural speech of Herrigel at Erlangen University, that text will appear here with commentary, at some point.]

In 1936 he writes his essay "Die ritterliche Kunst des Bogenschiessens", (The Gallant Art of Archery), which is to morph itself into the postwar book "Zen in the Art of Archery", which was very lucrative. This single book was probably more responsible for the corruption of Western culture by Zen than any other, after the war.

The three bodies of the Buddha are:

1. The Dharma Body (Law) - which is, because of faith, the source of the other two.

2. The Bliss Body (Enlightened Wisdom)

3. The Rewards Body (Buddha's Actions)

Herrigel and Streicher functioned together in Nuremberg, as a grave slander of the three bodies of the Buddha:

1. The Grave Slander of the Dharma Body (Law) -
Eugen Herrigel's popularization of "Zen and the Art of ..." into the postwar era and beyond, which is an utter distortion of the Buddha's highest teachings for which he made his advent: the Lotus Sutra. (See Toxic Zen Story #19 for details.) The war itself is the Zen catastrophic break which propels Herrigel into publishing his incredibly erroneous work, which created the modern phenomena of Pop Zen in the 1950s, which has (along with other Zen variants) corrupted global society and undermined every religion and institution, and brought humanity to the point of crisis.

2. The Grave Slander of the Bliss Body (Enlightened Wisdom) -
Eugen Herrigel's distorted views, which acted to pervert humanity's mind, and to remove Bavarian society's compassion for one's self and others, and which resulted in the University's 1933 "Erlangen Report" giving the support of Nuremberg Academia for treating the Jews as a different race. This report was produced, highlighting but one connection, with the help of his former Philosophy Department graduate student Wolfgang Trillhaus, working the following year for famed Lutheran Scholars Werner Elert and Paul Althaus of the Theology Department.

3. The Grave Slander of the Rewards Body (Buddha's Actions) -
Julius Streicher's distorted actions on the streets of Nuremberg, which transformed Bavarian daily life, into a permanently hellish set of circumstances. This was done by using "Der Stürmer" (The Attacker) to spread and illustrate a constant stream of lies and distorted myths to overwhelm and hypnotize the public over a fifteen year period, and which created a Nazi hurricane in Bavarian public life.

Mohandas Gandhi: "Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is."

Patterns to look for:
----------------------

1. Slander of the Law begins with Herrigel and Awa in Japan and other forces that gather widely from afar, then focus down on Erlangen and the publication of that first article at the University in 1936. From there the effects fan out, back onto the world. (See the footnote below regarding the simultaneity of cause and effect in the Lotus Sutra.)

2. The continuous progress, of Eugen Herrigel and his alter ego in catastrophe, Julius Streicher.

3. The war itself and the Holocaust is the Zen catastrophic break which propels Herrigel into publishing his incredibly erroneous work, which creates the modern phenomena of Pop Zen in the 1950s, which is why the world is the way it is today.

Exchange of circumstances:
--------------------------

1. The Germans give their freedom from guilt to the Jewish people by surgically excising their compassion through Holocaust activities, which allows the Israelis to go ahead and form Israel in the middle of Palestine, with largely moral impunity.

I was in and out of Israel for a year in 1983, when the invasion of Lebanon was going on. When I visited Jerusalem, I remember seeing husky Jewish youths, running through the Arab section trashing the stalls. It made me think of an echo of Kristallnacht. Just an echo, but there, nevertheless.

2. The German people receive the Jewish guilt, which becomes the German national guilt over the Holocaust. The Germans become the pariah people of Europe, ever-watched by the Allies, even to this day having to operate in a manner where every word is watched for a renewed fascistic tendency. Why don't people trust the Germans? It's that corruption of Nuremberg Zen, which cannot be disposed of by anything but the Lotus Sutra.

How do we present this case?
----------------------------

We will prove our case by the preponderance of circumstantial evidence, and by the presentation of links, which are both necessary and sufficient to prove that randomness is not a factor in the flow of these events: and that there was a reason for all of this misery.

We will present this case in the form of a timeline.
_______________________________________________________

Footnote: Simultaneity of Cause and Effect.

In the Lotus Sutra, cause and effect are simultaneous. There is no settling time. The perception by a deluded mortal of time-sequenced causality completely misses the big picture, and is one of the sources of that delusion.

This simultaneity of causality has been supported by scientific experiment in quantum physics. The direction of linear causality cannot be determined by a reproducible experiment to point forwards or backwards. Indeed, no experiment can show any observable difference between the "special qualities" of any one time and any other, and that includes the current moment.

A nice visual for this can be found in Paul Davie's article in the September 2002 Scientific American on time ... see the plot of the earth's orbit over time and his description of "block time". That block time is the "place" where all causes occur and all effects are felt. The two factors of "latent effect" and "inherent cause" of the ten factors, hold the entire past, present and future in their True Aspect.

As an example of what I mean, when I walk outside at night, and my cheek is warmed by a radio-frequency photon emitted just as the universe became clear after the big bang (3 degree black body radiation) at the beginning of the current large kalpa, a molecule of my cheek and a free nucleus of the superheated plasma fifteen (or so) billion years ago synchronize together to have that interaction. My cheek observes that plasma, across fifteen billion years, and both the observer cell (heated) and the observed plasma (cooled) are fundamentally changed by that synchronization. Otherwise the interaction would never occur: my cheek and the early plasma are effectively exchanging information, and are aligned in such a way as to have that exchange occur, without the world being deterministic.

This can be no other way, according to the experiments which have been run over and over in Quantum Physics, looking for any conceivable hole in Uncertainty Theory.

Buddhism explains this as the Three Existences: the Past, Present and Future are one and inseparable.
===================================================

Eugen Herrigel and Julius Streicher: a Nuremberg Zen Timeline.

Only ten miles lie between the University at Erlangen and the streets of "Der Stürmer" 's Nuremberg (Nürnberg), and the two points describe the center of the rise of the Holocaust in Bavaria.

A Julius Streicher Photo Album
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/albums/palbum/p06/a0305p1.html

===================================================
Timeline for Nuremberg (Nürnberg) Zen: First Bavaria, then the World.
===================================================

___________________________________________________
1869

Karl Haushofer is born in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.

His story is laid out in Toxic Zen Story #2, and this timeline is the result. He was a General, a Professor and the Green Dragon Zen Master that mentored Adolf Hitler, after the death of Dietrich Eckart, most importantly while he was imprisoned and writing Mein Kampf.
___________________________________________________
1880

Awa Kenzõ was born in 1880 in the village of Kawakitamachi (Miyagi Prefecture of Japan).

He was to become Eugen Herrigel's mentor in misunderstanding Japanese Archery, and completely distorting the Buddha's teachings (see Toxic Zen Story #19).
___________________________________________________
1884

Eugen Herrigel is born near Heidelberg, Bavaria, Germany.

In summary, Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955), philosophy professor in Tohoku University, Japan (1924-1929) and Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen (1929-1945; 1948-1952), was first installed as Rector at Erlangen in 1935, and became after the Second World War the most important populariser of Zen. Zen is the enemy of the Lotus Sutra.
___________________________________________________
1885

Julius Streicher was born in Fleinhausen, Bavaria, Germany.

. 'Through his words and his deeds Julius
. Streicher assumed for himself the unofficial title
. of "Jew-baiter Number One" of Nazi Germany. For
. the course of some twenty-five years, Streicher
. educated the German people in hatred and incited
. them to the persecution and to the extermination
. of the Jewish race. He was an accessory to murder,
. on a scale perhaps never attained before. '
. [Stein]

___________________________________________________
1889

Adolph Schicklgruber (later to adopt his unmarried father's name, Hitler) was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria.

His story is laid out in Toxic Zen Story #2, and this timeline is the result.
___________________________________________________
1919

< the Streets : die Straßen >

Julius Streicher was one of the major founders of the German Socialist party, on this date. [Wiesenthal]

. 'He [Julius Streicher] became a school teacher
. in Nuremberg and formed a party of his own, which
. he called the German Socialist Party. The chief
. policy of that party was anti-Semitism.' [Stein]
___________________________________________________
1920

< Academia : Akademie >

. 'In 1920, during Awa's forty-first year, he
. had an "eccentric" experience that proved to be
. decisive. To borrow Sakurai's words, Awa
. experienced a "great explosion" (daibakuhatsu). '
.
. 'This kind of mystical experience very often
. forms the starting point for the founding of a new
. religion. For example, the story of the morning
. star flying into the mouth of Kðkai (774–835)
. during his religious austerities in Murotomisaki
. resembles Awa's experience. '
.
. 'After his "great explosion," Awa began to
. preach that one must "put an entire lifetime of
. exertion into each shot" (issha zetsumei) and that
. one can "see true nature in the shot" (shari
. kenshõ), the two ideas that later came to form the
. core of his teachings. ' [Yamada p. 10]
___________________________________________________
1921

< Academia : Akademie >

. 'Student fraternities played an immeasurable
. role in German universities and in Erlangen they
. "dominated" student life as "nowhere else".
. Nationalism and conservatism were the mainstay of
. these fraternities. By 1921, Germany's duelling
. fraternities had even outlawed Jewish membership.
. At a University seemingly "dominated" by these
. societies, the fraternities further stoked the
. culture of antisemitism.' [Grady]

< the Streets : die Straßen >

. 'From 1921 until 1945, he [Julius Streicher]
. was a member of the Nazi Party.' [Stein]
___________________________________________________
1922

< the Streets : die Straßen >

. 'In 1922 he [Julius Streicher] handed over his
. party [German Socialist Party] to Hitler, who
. wrote a glowing account of Streicher's generosity
. in Mein Kampf. ' [Stein]
.
. 'In a speech which Streicher made in 1922 in
. Nuremberg, after abusing the Jews in the first
. paragraph, he went on to say: "We know that
. Germany will be free when the Jew has been
. excluded from the life of the German people." '
. [Stein]


___________________________________________________
1923

< Academia : Akademie >

. 'In the early 1920s, increased student numbers
. pushed Germany's university system towards
. breaking point; students lived and studied in
. abysmal conditions, and graduates competed for the
. few available jobs. Right-wing students, who
. already believed that the Jews had not contributed
. sufficiently to the war effort, concluded that
. they were also monopolising university places.
. They argued that the Jews who constituted only one
. per cent of the population took four to five per
. cent of student places.' [Grady]

< the Streets : die Straßen >

Julius Streicher founded the newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker) in Nuremberg, becoming its editor. [Wiesenthal]

. 'It was he who gave the newspaper its special
. antisemitic - pornographic character. The Nazi
. authorities had to dissociate themselves at times
. from the articles it published and even closed it
. down in Nuremberg, Streicher's stronghold.'
. [Wiesenthal]
.
. 'The course of Streicher's incitement and
. propaganda may be traced more or less in
. chronological order by referring to short extracts
. from "Der Stürmer." The extracts which follow were
. selected at random. They were selected with a view
. to showing the various methods which Streicher
. employed to incite the German people against the
. Jewish race, but his newspapers are crowded with
. them, week after week, day after' day. It is
. impossible to pick up any copy without finding the
. same kind of invective and incitement in the
. headlines and in the articles. ' [Stein]
___________________________________________________
1924

< Academia : Akademie >

. 'In 1924 Herrigel obtained a position as a
. lecturer at Tõhoku Imperial University in Sendai,
. where he taught philosophy until 1929.' ...
.
. 'The statement in the 1953 English-language
. translation of Zen in the Art of Archery, p. 3,
. that Herrigel taught at the University of Tokyo is
. incorrect.' [Yamada p. 12]

They are quite distinct institutions and Herrigel was clearly aware of the difference. It is a serious lie about an issue of central importance to furthering his career and enhancing his image. Would it be his last lie of critical importance? Hardly.

The University of Tokyo has 3 major campuses in Tokyo, and currently 43 facilities outside of Tokyo, none of which are at Tohoku University. It's a huge and world-renowned institution. See map at: (http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/eng/gaiyou/55outside.html)

Tohoku University at Sendai is 300 km North of Tokyo, which is one-sixth of the length of Japan in distance away from Tokyo, not a negligible distance error. It's neither huge nor world-renowned. See map at: (http://web.bureau.tohoku.ac.jp/international/Map/Map.html)
__________

. 'In 1924 both Herrigel and Komachiya became
. instructors in the Faculty of Law and Literature
. [at Tohoku] that had been established only the
. previous year. Sakurai states that "Komachiya
. simply met Awa again for the first time in twelve
. years. At that moment there was no way that he
. could have been aware of the development and
. changes in Awa's state of mind [great explosion,
. above] since their last meeting". Simply as a
. favor to his new colleague Komachiya acted as the
. go-between for Herrigel to become Awa's student.'
. [Yamada p15.]

< the Streets : die Straßen >

Julius Streicher becomes a member of the Bavarian provincial legislature. [Wiesenthal]

. 'Streicher used his influence to bar Jews from
. restaurants and cafes, and he tried to persuade
. all the municipalities in Franconia to establish
. ghettos.' [Wiesenthal]
__________

. 'In a speech in 1924 he [Julius Streicher]
. stated:

| "I beg you and particularly those of you
| who carry the cross throughout the land to
| become somewhat more serious when I speak of
| the enemy of the German people, namely, the
| Jew. Not out of irresponsibility or for fun do
| I fight against the Jewish enemy, but because
| I bear within me the knowledge that the whole
| misfortune was brought to Germany by the Jews
| alone. "
|.
| "I ask you once more, what is at stake
| today? The Jew seeks domination not only among
| the German people but among all peoples. The
| communists pave the way for him. Do you not
| know that the God of the Old Testament orders
| the Jews to consume and enslave the peoples of
| the earth? "The government allows the Jew to
| do as he pleases. The people expect action to
| be taken. You may think about Adolf Hitler as
| you please, but one thing you must admit. He
| possessed the courage to attempt to free the
| German people from the Jew by a national
| revolution. That was action indeed." (M-12) '
| [Stein]
___________________________________________________
1925

< Academia : Akademie >

Eugen Herrigel, with the help of his Archery Master Awa, takes his shot in the dark. In spite of what he thinks, "It Misses".

. ' ... the following hypotheses can be
. suggested: '
.
. "1. Herrigel fabricated the doctrine of 'It
. shoots' when he wrote Zen in the Art of
. Archery."
.
. "2. Miscommunication occurred between Awa and
. Herrigel concerning 'It shoots.' " [Yamada p.
. 24] '

See Toxic Zen Story #19 for details.

< the Streets : die Straßen >

. 'In 1925 he [Julius Streicher] was appointed
. Gauleiter of Franconia, and he remained as such
. until about February 1940.' [Stein]
__________

. 'In a speech in April 1925 Streicher
. declared:

| "You must realize that the Jew wants our
| people to perish. That is why you must join us
| and leave those who have brought you nothing
| but war, inflation, and discord. For
| thousands of years the Jew has been destroying
| the nations. Let us make a new beginning today
| so that we can annihilate the Jews." (M-12) '

. 'This appears to be the earliest expression of
. one of the conspirators' primary objectives-the
. annihilation of the Jewish race. Fourteen years
. later it became the official policy of the Nazi
. Government.' [Stein]
__________

. '[Streicher's] Perversion of Youth. '
.
. 'Streicher paid particular attention to the
. instruction and perversion of the children and
. youth of Germany. He was not content with inciting
. the German population. He started to poison the
. minds of the children at school at the earliest
. possible date. He continually emphasized the need
. for teaching children anti-Semitism. '
.
. 'In a speech as early as June 1925 Streicher
. said:

| "I repeat, we demand the transformation of
| the school into a national German institution
| of education. If we let German children be
| taught by German teachers, then we shall have
| laid the foundations for the national German
| school. This national German school must teach
| racial doctrine." ...
|.
| "We demand, therefore, the introduction of
| racial doctrine into the school." (M-SO) '
| [Stein]

___________________________________________________
1929

< Academia : Akademie >

. 'After he returned to Germany [in 1929], he
. [Eugen Herrigel] took a professorship at
. Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen .....'
. [Yamada p. 12]

I wonder if he lied to Erlangen University when he went for his initial interview, about whether he had been at University of Tokyo or Tohoku University previously, as he did in his book "Zen in the Art ...", p. 3? Maybe we'll never know the true extent of his lying. But we know Herrigel is clearly a liar about important things, about issues that are central, to build up his story and image.

He will later go on to publish his first essay on Japanese archery, "Die ritterliche Kunst des Bogenschiessens" (The Chivalrous Art of Archery) in 1936, so it is between this year 1929, and 1936 that all the writing goes into that work.
__________

| ' "I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS University",
| proclaimed Adolf Hitler, "its youth were the first
| to declare their support for me". The Friedrich-
. Alexander University's [at Erlangen] declaration
. of support came in 1929, when it became the first
. university to elect a National Socialist student
. council. Some three-and-a-half years before the
. Nazis came to power, events in Erlangen marked the
. onset of a new era.'
.
. 'Founded in 1743, the Friedrich-Alexander
. University was one of three Bavarian universities.
. With only 2,269 students, it was among the smaller
. pre-war institutions. Then, as today, it dominated
. life in the small Middle-Franconian town of
. Erlangen. Following the National Socialist student
. victory in 1929, antisemitism became an open,
. acknowledged facet of university life in
. Erlangen.' [Grady]

... And in Nuremberg just up the road.
__________

. 'We cannot fix a date on the origins of
. academic antisemitism, which clearly increased
. after the First World War. The widely held belief
. that the Jews had betrayed the country was
. compounded in the universities, as it was the
. downtrodden and resentful soldiers who now
. returned home to continue their academic studies.
. An anonymous declaration, signed by "Several
. Erlangen Students", proclaimed that "many Jews
. during the war" had not carried out "their duty
. for Germany in a deutschvolkisch sense". The act
. of memory, as Germany's universities commemorated
. their war dead, became almost ritualistic in its
. nature. In Erlangen, the University erected a
. magnificent memorial, renamed streets and held
. remembrance ceremonies. These events helped to
. make the University a hotbed of nationalistic
. fervour, keeping to the fore the perceived root of
. Germany's defeat--the Jews.
.
. 'Defeat in the First World War and the effects
. of this, lay at the heart of university
. antisemitism. These attitudes manifested
. themselves in a student led, right-wing
. antisemitism that rapidly escalated in popularity.
. By the late 1920s, Erlangen's "General Student
. Committee" or AStA (the official student
. representative body in Germany's universities) was
. increasingly dominated by right-wing groups. The
. largest of these was the "National Socialist
. German Student League" (NSDStB). For the 1929
. election, its manifesto pronounced that "the
. struggle against the Jews is nothing other than
. self-defence" and proudly proclaimed: "We are
. antisemites". The NSDStB won a ruling majority in
. Erlangen's AStA council and with it their first
. majority in Germany. At this time, in other
. universities, the NSDStB felt themselves lucky to
. even win 10 per cent of the vote. So why did such
. an early and such an overwhelming National
. Socialist victory occur at the Friedrich-Alexander
. University? '
.
. 'Erlangen's position as a Protestant town in
. predominantly Catholic Southern Germany was one
. factor--as was its proximity to Nuremberg, where
. the Nazi Party rallies cannot have failed to
. influence Erlangen's students. Of greater
. significance was the conservative outlook of the
. University's academics. They actively avoided
. promoting Jewish professors into their academic
. body and instead employed lecturers whose
. nationalistic views had resulted in career
. troubles elsewhere. Although this did not
. necessarily mean that the academic body was
. supportive of National Socialism, it certainly
. resulted in them showing more understanding
. towards their right-wing students. Erlangen's
. academics provided the sympathetic environment for
. right-wing politics, but it was the students who
. brought about the AStA victory.'
.
. 'In contrast, politically active liberal
. student organisations that elsewhere often
. included many Jews were weakly represented at the
. Friedrich-Alexander University. Only 1.9 per cent
. of the 1930 student population was Jewish. In
. comparison to the larger universities, this was a
. relatively low percentage; Heidelberg could number
. 8.9 per cent for example. As Erlangen's students
. had themselves little contact with Jews, it was of
. course easier for antisemitic stereotypes to be
. propagated. Correspondingly, right-wing attitudes
. faced little opposition. This combination of
. student and academic conservative nationalism
. brought about the NSDStB's first victory. It was
. to have far-reaching consequences for Erlangen's
. Jewish students.' [Grady]
___________________________________________________
1932

< Academia : Akademie >

An example of one connection between Eugen Herrigel in Philosophy at Erlangen and Werner Elert & Paul Althaus in Theology is the sharing of grad students. Graduate students are a medium of communication of ideas on a deep level, between professors in different departments and even different Universities, who do not have the time or inclination to work together. An example of a grad student, who was shared between Herrigel in the Philosophy department and Elert and Althaus in the Theology Department is Wolfgang Trillhaus.

The biography of Wolfgang Trillhaus (http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/t/trillhaas_w.shtml), produces three consecutive items of interest:

- 1931 took a doctorate in Philosophy at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen with Eugen Herrigel studying Friedrich Nietzsche.

- 1932 took a doctorate in Theology at Erlangen and did much work with Paul Althaus studying F.D.E. Schleiermacher.

- 1933 Lutheran scholars Paul Althaus and Werner Elert produce the infamous Erlangen Report, which provides moral cover for the Nazi differential view between persons Jewish and non-Jewish.

To once again quote Mohandas Gandhi: "Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is."
__________

. 'Student-led antisemitism built on its initial
. success and continued to flourish. In May 1932,
. the "Erlanger Klinikerschaft" -- an organisation
. of Erlangen medical students--demanded the
. introduction of a numerous clauses to exclude
. "Jews, those of Jewish blood and non-German
. foreigners". The timing of this demand, published
. a year before Hitler came to power, reveals the
. early intensity of student antisemitism. The
. students' line of argument is also indicative of
. an acceptance of National Socialist racial
. doctrines. They argued that the next generation of
. doctors could "no longer ignore the questions of
. race" and that only the "German doctor belongs to
. the German volk". A connection was clearly being
. made with the overcrowding crisis in the
. universities and the consequent scarcity of jobs.
. Although the University rejected this call, a
. distinct bias towards the right can be observed. A
. wave of increasingly provocative behaviour by
. right-wing students was simply accepted by
. academic staff.'
.
. 'After failing to limit their admission to the
. University, right-wing students instead attempted
. to force Jews to leave of their own free will.
. When Jewish students entered a lecture theatre,
. they were jeered and threatened. One Jewish
. student wrote a letter of complaint to the Vice-
. Chancellor. The reply was indicative of the
. University's attitude; merely advising the
. complainant to avoid "doing anything that could
. excite or annoy his volkisch leaning colleagues".
. The victim had now become the antagonist.'
.
. 'As a result in November 1932, twenty-two
. Erlangen students, fifteen of whom were Jewish,
. formed a "Left-wing Student Group". Again the
. University acted against Jewish students. First,
. the Vice-Chancellor refused to grant the group
. permission to participate in AStA elections, later
. the senate forbade the group from convening at
. all. It subsequently disbanded, thus ending any
. left-wing student influence at the University. '
. [Grady]

< the Streets : die Straßen >

Julius Streicher becomes a member of the Reichstag. [Wiesenthal]
__________

. 'In April 1932 Streicher made the following
. statement:

| "For 13 years I have fought against
| Jewry."
|.
| "We know that the Jew whether he is
| baptized as a Protestant or as a Catholic,
| remains a Jew. Why cannot you realize, you
| Protestant clergymen, you Catholic priests,
| you who have scales before your eyes and serve
| the god of the Jews who is not the God of Love
| but the God of Hate. Why do you not listen to
| Christ, who said to the Jews, 'You are
| children of the devil'." (M-24) ' [Stein]
___________________________________________________
1933

< Academia : Akademie >

. 'Before 1933, Germany was renowned for its
. magnificent culture and great science, which were
. epitomised in its twenty-three universities. These
. great institutions, which included such historic
. seats of learning as Heidelberg and Gottingen, led
. the world in many scientific and humanistic
. fields. However, following the rise to power of
. the National Socialists the universities
. sacrificed, without a fight, their guiding
. principles of education, scientific research and
. academic freedom. This was all done in the name of
. racial purity. In 1933 alone, over 1,200 Jewish
. academics lost their university posts.' [Grady]
__________

. 'In March 1933, after being denounced by the
. University for alleged Communist activities, the
. group's [Left-wing Student Group] two leading
. Jewish members, Rudolf Benario and Max Kohn, were
. arrested and sent to Dachau. Here Benario became
. one of the Nazi regime's first Jewish victims,
. when he was killed on April 12th, 1933, allegedly
. while attempting to escape.'
.
. 'Erlangen's Jewish students had been rendered
. impotent by a tide of National Socialist student-
. led antisemitism. After Hitler came to power,
. these students continued, albeit for a short time,
. to direct events at the University. The nationwide
. book-burning of May 1933 proved to be the last big
. student-led campaigns. Although instigated by
. Goebbels, it was the NSDStB who assembled the
. material and arranged the event. Nonetheless, many
. of Erlangen's academics gathered on the main
. square, the Schlossplatz, which lies directly in
. front of the University's central buildings, to
. watch the results of their students' handiwork go
. up in flames. The book-burning came to mark a
. turning point for the universities, away from
. student-led autonomous antisemitic campaigns to a
. "standardised legal antisemitism".'
.
. 'In April 1933, two laws were introduced that
. targeted non-Aryan university members. The
. "National Law for the Restoration of the Career
. Civil Service" removed Jews from the civil
. service. As university staff were classified as
. civil servants, Jewish academics now faced legal
. expulsion. The second piece of legislation, the
. "National Law against the Overcrowding of German
. Schools and Universities" stipulated that no more
. than five per cent of the student population as a
. whole, could be non-Aryan.'
.
. 'Jewish academics and students now faced
. student-led antisemitism from below, as well as
. legal repression from above. At Erlangen, the
. students were the first to feel the force of these
. new measures. In the 1932-33 winter semester there
. were 3,336 Jewish students studying in Germany's
. universities, a year later only 812 remained.
. Considering that the new laws allowed 5 per cent
. of a university's students to be non-Aryan, very
. few Jews should have had to abandon their studies.
. In Erlangen, Jews made up less than 2 per cent of
. the student population, so all should have been
. exempted, but here and across Germany the
. situation was far different. Why then did the
. number of Jewish students drop so dramatically at
. all universities? '
.
. 'One reason is that fewer Jews applied to
. study after leaving school, so fewer were entering
. the system to begin with. The Nazis also
. discouraged all young people from a university
. education--a path that in any case became
. extremely difficult for Jews as legislation
. increasingly restricted them from gaining the A-
. Level (Abitur) entrance qualification. Many Jewish
. students simply stopped studying, as the
. antisemitic atmosphere in the institutions became
. unbearable. They could see no long-term future in
. Germany and freely gave up their studies in order
. to prepare for emigration.'
.
. 'The universities' enthusiasm in applying the
. "overcrowding" law accounted for the greatest drop
. in numbers. Far from attempting to restrict the
. scope of the legislation, universities embraced
. it. Erlangen's vice-chancellor welcomed the
. legislation calling it a "great all-round attack
. on unemployment" which he hoped would "exorcise
. the spectre of academic impoverishment".'
.
. 'The case of Irma Schuftan, a dentistry
. student in Erlangen, was typical of many Jews. In
. May 1933, Schuftan received a letter confirming
. her matriculation. Two weeks later the University
. reversed the decision. Its dental clinic was "too
. small": therefore, under these circumstances, "the
. admittance of Jewish students for the study of
. dentistry ... cannot be considered". In effect,
. one short unsympathetic letter ended Schuftan's
. university education. She was advised to "continue
. her studies at another university". The
. universities in Frankfurt and Leipzig, among
. others, forwarded the names of their dismissed
. students to all other German universities to stop
. these Jews from re-registering elsewhere. There is
. no evidence to suggest the situation was any
. different in Erlangen, thus the chances that
. Schuftan was able, or would even have wanted, to
. study elsewhere, are extremely slim.'
.
. 'In Erlangen, the new legislation affected the
. students far more than the academic staff.
. Nationally, hundreds of Jewish academics were
. swiftly dismissed from their university posts.
. However, in 1933 not one single Erlangen academic
. was dismissed either for racial or political
. reasons. This is a remarkable statistic, when one
. considers the levels of nationalistic antisemitism
. in the University during the Weimar period, and
. nationally how intense the antisemitic atmosphere
. had become.'
.
. 'In Erlangen, as a result of the University's
. post-war nationalism, there were no "full" Jewish
. academics. Nevertheless, universities throughout
. Germany embraced the new regime and began to carry
. out witch-hunts against Jews. In Tubingen, a
. university similar to Erlangen, in having no
. "full" Jewish professors, "whoever could be
. expelled was expelled". One Tubingen history
. professor was dismissed in April 1933, only to be
. reinstated in September after the suspicion that
. his wife was a non-Aryan proved incorrect.'
. [Grady]
__________

. 'In Erlangen, the University keenly promoted
. the science of eugenics. The 1933-34 winter
. lecture programme offered "An introduction to
. genetics as a basis for racial hygiene" and
. another course on "Race and racial hygiene".
. Interestingly, these two courses were not just
. available to medical students, but were the only
. medical science courses open "to students from all
. faculties".'

[Does anyone see a remarkable irony, here? Eugenics was also supported in the Herrigel form.]

. 'In the universities, eugenics was not just a
. lecture course but also a science applied within
. the institutions. Although evidence is scarce, we
. can be certain that Erlangen's University clinics
. played a significant role in both the
. sterilisation and later the "euthanasia"
. programmes, as they were and still are the
. region's most important medical facility. Evidence
. suggests that several hundred patients were
. transported from Erlangen to other institutions,
. where they were subsequently killed, and that a
. number of patients starved to death in the
. University's clinics.'
.
. 'It was not just the medical faculty that was
. infiltrated by Nazi principles. The allegedly
. negative influence of Judaism could be applied to
. all areas of academic research. The faculty of
. economics, for example, ran courses on Jewish
. capitalism that studied the negative "influence of
. Jews on national economic life". And an Erlangen
. Germanist published a volume on the Jewish use of
. the German language, concluding that Jews
. pronounce words differently and "misuse the
. language".'
.
. 'Academics certainly tried to win favour with
. the Nazi regime by writing along intensely racial
. lines. It seems that some agreed with National
. Socialist ideals, actually believing in the value
. of their antisemitic studies. This is especially
. true of Erlangen's Protestant theology faculty,
. which published a report that was to have far-
. reaching implications for Germany's Jewish-
. Christians.'
.
. 'In 1933, the Protestant Church deliberated
. the question of whether Christians converted from
. Judaism should still be allowed to belong to the
. Church. The respected theological faculties in
. Marburg and Erlangen were invited to publish
. judgements on the issue. Whereas Marburg rejected
. the introduction of an Aryan clause for the Church
. outright, the so-called "Erlangen Report" produced
. by the theologians Paul Althaus and Werner Elert
. took the opposing view. The report argued that
. Germany had now "recognised the threat to its
. existence posed by emancipated Jews" and was
. rightly "defending itself against this danger with
. legal regulations". It reasoned that "having those
. of a Jewish origin in its offices would be a heavy
. burden" and concluded that "the Church must demand
. the withdrawal of its Jewish Christians from
. office". Elert and Althaus clearly viewed
. Christian-Jews as being of less worth to the
. Church than its other members. In contrast,
. Althaus had previously been a critic of research
. that distinguished between "worth" and
. "inferiority" and had condemned Germany's
. programme of forced sterilisation. The Jews,
. however, appear to have been an exception to his
. beliefs. In this case and in others, Jews were the
. exception; they were considered to be a
. fundamentally different race.'
.
. 'In regarding blood rather than religion as
. the determinate between people, the "Erlangen
. Report" closely followed Nazi beliefs. In doing so
. it added a moral legitimacy to Nazi antisemitic
. legislation. A legitimacy that Erlangen's present-
. day vice-chancellor, Gotthard Jasper, concedes,
. shows the "entanglement of Erlangen's theologians
. in the prehistory of the Final Solution".'
.
. 'Unfortunately academic "entanglement" in the
. "Final Solution" was not just restricted to
. Erlangen's theologians, but involved all Germany's
. universities. The universities' willing compliance
. with antisemitic policies added a form of academic
. approval helping to justify Nazi policies to the
. populace as a whole. On a further level, the
. universities' compliance in the exclusion of the
. Jews helped the Nazi regime to segregate the
. Jewish minority from society, clearing the path
. for the introduction of ever more radical anti-
. Jewish measures. To refer to Daniel Goldhagen,
. "Germans' antisemitic beliefs were the central
. causal agent of the Holocaust" -- and these
. beliefs were spread, fostered and justified by
. Germany's universities.' [Grady]

< the Streets : die Straßen >

. 'The initiative to eliminate Jews from social
. contact with Germans was also taken by
. municipalities and heterogeneous groups of Germans
. of all classes well before the state demanded such
. action, such as when, on their own, cities and
. towns began to bar Jews as early as 1933 from
. using swimming pools or public bathing facilities.
. So many measures and assaults against Jews were
. initiated by small businessmen during this early
. period that this social stratum appears to have
. been the font of the majority of attacks
. originating from private German citizens. Yet the
. initiative to eliminate Jewish influence from
. society was also taken by the most prestigious and
. best-educated professionals. German medical
. institutions and groups, for example, giving
. expression to their hatred of Jews, on their own
. began to exclude their Jewish colleagues, even
. before the government mandated the measures.
. University administrators, faculty, and students
. across Germany similarly applauded and contributed
. to driving their Jewish colleagues out from their
. ranks.'
.
. 'Judges and members of the legal profession
. were so eager to purge their institutions and
. their country of Jewish influence that they,
. beginning already in the first few months of Nazi
. governance, often outran the legal mandates that
. the regime promulgated. In October 1933, one
. Berlin court upheld the dismissal of a Jew from
. administering an estate, ruling that the people's
. pervasive hatred of Jews "made it seem inadvisable
. to retain a Jew in office, even in the absence of
. a special law to this effect." Earlier that year,
. in July, another Berlin court provided a more
. sweeping justification for judges taking such
. initiative in the battle against Jewry. According
. to Die Juristische Wochenschrift, the most
. important German legal periodical, the court,
. writing with obvious approval, pointed out "that a
. revolutionary legislature [the Nazis had been in
. office but six months] naturally leaves loopholes
. which ought to be filled by the Court in applying
. the principles of the National Socialist
. Weltanschauung." The German judiciary-almost all
. of whom had taken the bench during Weimar and
. therefore were, at least formally, not "Nazi
. judges" -- was composed of such ardent racial
. antisemites that leading Nazis (bound to the
. belief that the eliminationist program should be
. legally governed) chastised judges for having
. violated the law in their rampant eliminationist
. ardor. Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick similarly
. tried to rein in all those under his jurisdiction,
. including many holdovers from Weimar, from
. extending the eliminationist measures beyond the
. laws that the regime had made. The judiciary's
. extensive contribution to the persecution of the
. Jews during the Nazi period reveals its members to
. have been zealous implementers and initiators of
. eliminationist measures. The judges composed a
. group that was obviously bristling with anti-
. Jewish hatred during Weimar, and then, when Hitler
. took power, was freed to act upon these beliefs.
. In this sense, the judges, all their education and
. training in law notwithstanding, were like so many
. other groups in Germany. With the judges, this
. transformation is simply that much more glaring.'
. [Goldhagen p. 96-97]
__________

. 'Anti-Jewish Boycott of 1933 '
.
. 'Shortly after the Nazi rise to power, he
. [Julius Streicher] was appointed chairman of the
. Zentralkomitee zur Abwehr der Judischen Greuel -
. und Boykotthetze (Central Defense Committee
. against Jewish Atrocity and Boycott Propaganda);
. he was also the organizer of the anti - Jewish
. boycott of April 1, 1933.' [Wiesenthal]
__________

. 'When the Nazi Party came to power, they
. officially started their campaign against the Jews
. by the boycott of 1 April 1933. The boycott was
. agreed on and approved by the whole government, as
. appears from Goebbel's diary (2409-PS). '
.
. 'Streicher was appointed the chairman of the
. central committee for the organization of that
. boycott. He started his work on Wednesday, 29
. March (2156-PS). '
.
. 'On that same day the central committee issued
. a proclamation announcing that the boycott would
. start on Saturday at 10: 00 AM sharp:

| "Jewry will realize whom it has
| challenged." (M-7). '

. 'On 30 March, two days before the boycott was
. due to start, an article was published under the
. title, "Defeat the Enemy of the World!-by Julius
. Streicher; official leader of the central
. committee to combat the Jewish atrocity and
. boycott campaign" (2153-PS.The article stated, in
. part:

| "Jewry wanted this battle. It shall have
| it until it realizes that the Germany of the
| brown battalions is not a country of cowardice
| and surrender. Jewry will have to fight until
| we have won victory. "
|.
| "National Socialists! Defeat the enemy of
| the world. Even if the world is full of
| devils, we shall succeed in the end." (2153-
| PS). '

. 'As head of the central committee for that
. boycott, Streicher outlined in detail the
. organization of the boycott in orders which the
. committee published on 31 March 1933 (2154-PS).
. The committee stressed that no violence should be
. employed against the Jews during the boycott, but
. not for humanitarian reasons. The order was issued
. because, if no violence were employed, Jewish
. employers would have no grounds for discharging
. their employees without notice, and for refusing
. to pay them any wages. The Jews were also
. reported, apparently, to be transferring
. businesses to German figureheads in order to
. alleviate the results of this persecution;
. accordingly the committee declared that any
. property so transferred was to be considered as
. Jewish for the purpose of the boycott (2154-PS). '
.
. 'It is therefore clear that early in 1933
. Streicher was taking a leading part, as appointed
. by the Government, in the persecution against the
. Jews. '
.
. 'Further extracts from Streicher's newspapers
. illustrate the form which his propaganda developed
. as the years went on. An article in the New Year's
. issue of a new paper founded and edited by
. Streicher-a semimedical paper called "The People's
. Health Through Blood and Soil"-is an example of
. the remarkable lengths to which he went in
. propagandizing against the Jews:

| "It is established for all eternity; alien
| albumen is the sperm of a man of alien race.
| The male sperm in cohabitation is partially or
| completely absorbed by the female, and thus
| enters her bloodstream. One single
| cohabitation of a Jew with an Aryan woman is
| sufficient to poison her blood forever.
| Together with the alien albumen she has
| absorbed the alien soul. Never again will she
| be able to bear purely Aryan children, even
| when married to an Aryan. They will all be
| bastards, with a dual soul and a body of a
| mixed breed. Their children will also be
| crossbreeds; that means, ugly people of
| unsteady character and with a tendency to
| illnesses. Now we know why the Jew uses every
| artifice of seduction in order to ravish
| German girls at as early an age as possible ;
| why the Jewish doctor rapes his patients while
| they were under anaesthetic. He wants the
| German girl and the German woman to absorb the
| alien sperm of the Jew. She is never again to
| bear German children. But the blood products
| of all animals right down to the bacteria like
| the serum, lymph, extracts from internal
| organs etc., are all alien albumen. They have
| a poisonous effect if directly introduced into
| the blood stream either by vaccination or by
| injection. By these products of sick animals
| the blood is ravished, the Aryan is
| impregnated with an alien species. The author
| and abettor of such action is the Jew. He has
| been aware of the secrets of the race question
| for centuries, and therefore plans
| systematically the annihilation of the nations
| which are superior to him. Science and
| authorities are his instruments for the
| enforcing of pseudo-science and the
| concealment of truth." (M-20). ' [Stein]
___________________________________________________
1934

< the Streets : die Straßen >

. 'Another form of propaganda employed by
. Streicher concerned the "Ritual Murder." Sometime
. in 1934 "Der Stürmer" began publishing accounts of
. Jewish ritual murder which horrified the whole
. world to such an extent that even the Archbishop
. of Canterbury, together with people from every
. country in the world, protested that any
. government should allow such matter to be
. published in their national newspapers. '
.
. 'Streicher based his ritual murder propaganda
. on a medieval belief that during their Eastertide
. celebrations the Jews were in the habit of
. murdering Christian children. Streicher
. misrepresented this medieval belief to make it
. appear that not only was this done in the Middle
. Ages, but that the Jews are still doing it and
. still want to do it. A few passages from "Der
. Stürmer" together with descriptions of photographs
. published therein will illustrate the type of
. propaganda that Streicher was putting out
. concerning "ritual murder":

| "This the French frontline soldier should
| take with him to France: The German people
| have taken a new lease of life. They want
| peace, but if anyone tries to attack them, if
| anyone tries to torture them again, if anyone
| tries to push them back into the past, then
| the world would see another heroic epic ; then
| heaven will decide where righteousness lies-
| here, or where the Jew has the whiphand and
| where he instigates massacres, one could
| almost say the biggest ritual murders of all
| times. If the German people are to be
| slaughtered according to the Jewish rites, the
| whole world will be thus slaughtered at the
| same time." ...
|.
| "As you have drummed morning and evening
| prayers into your children's heads, so now
| drum this into their heads, so that the German
| people may gain the spiritual power to
| convince the rest of the world which the Jews
| desire to lead against us." (M-2). ' [Stein]
__________

. 'The "Fraenkische Tageszeitung" of 19 March
. 1934 reports Streicher's address at a girls'
. school at Preisslerstrasse:

| "Then Julius Streicher spoke about his
| life and told them about a girl who at one
| time went to his school and who fell for a Jew
| and was finished for the rest of her life." (
| M-43) ' [Stein]
__________

. 'Streicher's association with the Fuehrer and
. other Nazi conspirators may also be seen from the
. newspapers. On the occasion of Streicher's 50th
. birthday, Hitler paid a visit to Nuremberg to
. congratulate him. The account of that meeting is
. published in the "Voelkischer Beobachter" of 13
. February 1934 as follows:

| "Adolf Hitler spoke to his old comrades in
| battle and to his followers in words which
| went straight to their hearts. By way of
| introduction he remarked that it was a special
| pleasure to be present for a short while in
| Nuremberg, the town of the National Socialist
| community which had been steeled in battle, at
| this day of honor of Julius Streicher, and to
| be within the circle of the standard bearers
| of the National Socialist idea during many
| years."
|.
| "Just as they, all of them, had during the
| years of oppression unshakably believed in
| the victory of the movement, so his friend and
| comrade in the battle, Streicher, had stood
| faithfully at his side at all times. It had
| been this unshakeable belief that had moved
| mountains."
|.
| "For Streicher it would surely be a solemn
| thought, that this 50th anniversary meant not
| only the halfway point of a century, but also
| of a thousand years of German history to him.
| He had in Streicher a companion of whom he
| could say that here in Nuremberg was a man who
| would never waver for a single second and who
| would unflinchingly stand behind him in every
| situation." (M-8). ' [Stein]
___________________________________________________
1935

< Academia : Akademie >

. 'Herrigel tended towards Nazism (cf. his
. inaugural lecture at Erlangen University, 1935) '
__________

. 'Previous scholars have pointed out that
. Herrigel was a Nazi sympathizer and participated
. in Nazi party activities on his return from Japan,
. but they have never discussed the Herrigel-Nazi
. relationship in detail. I recently discovered
. post-war documents concerning Herrigel's Nazi
. affiliation, the reasons for his inauguration as
. the rector of the University of Erlangen, and his
. general behavior at the end of World War II. I
. hope to publish an analysis and an English
. translation of these documents in the near
. future.' [Yamada p. 28]
__________

. 'In Heidelberg, right-wing students continued
. to drive the process. National Socialist students
. drew up lists containing the names of Jewish and
. liberal academics whom they wanted to see
. dismissed and threatened "violent demonstrations"
. if their demands were not met. In Gottingen, it
. was Aryan academics who encouraged the dismissal
. of their Jewish colleagues. Forty-two academics
. signed a declaration condemning their Jewish
. colleagues and asking whether the anti-Jewish
. measures could in any way be accelerated. There
. appears to have been no pattern to these
. dismissals: both students and academic staff
. compelled Jewish academics to quit their posts.'
.
. 'Events in Erlangen were different.
. Eventually, nine academic staff were dismissed,
. including six for racial reasons. This equates to
. 7 per cent of the academic staff. A relatively low
. figure, when compared to the dismissal of 32.3 per
. cent of Frankfurt's academics. A closer look at
. the dismissal of two of Erlangen's academics, Hans
. Kropelin and Helmut Weigel, will demonstrate the
. situation at the University.'
.
. 'Dr Hans Kropelin had been a lecturer in
. Chemistry since 1930. He was classified as a
. "Half-Jew" and as such could have been dismissed
. under the 1933 legislation, but his war record
. excused him. He continued to teach in Erlangen
. until the summer of 1935, after which he requested
. permission to take a sabbatical in Istanbul. The
. style of the letter, in which Kropelin requested
. his sabbatical, appears highly conformist. He made
. reference to his recent military service and
. closed with the greeting "Heil Hitler!" His
. request was warmly accepted. It would appear that
. the University authorities revealed no contempt
. towards this non-Aryan colleague.'
.
. 'Presumably, it was the ever-worsening
. situation for Jews in Germany that persuaded
. Kropelin to spend time in Istanbul. Unfortunately,
. when he returned to Erlangen in late 1936, the
. situation had not improved and he was finally
. dismissed directly by the Education Ministry in
. March 1938.' [Grady]

< the Streets : die Straßen >

Julius Streicher becomes the owner of the newspaper, of which he is the editor, Der Stürmer (The Attacker) in Nuremberg. [Wiesenthal]
__________

Two pages from Julius Streicher's anti-Semitic newspaper, "Der Stürmer"
(http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/derStürmer.html)

This page from Julius Streicher's newspaper, "Der Stürmer", depicts German womanhood about to be destroyed by a snake marked with Jewish stars. Naked women were much used in Streicher's paper for stirring up interest in his racist propaganda: (http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/73622.html)

Another page from Julius Streicher's anti-Semitic newspaper, "Der Stürmer," in which an illustration from a medieval book depicting ritual murder, a medieval anti-Semitic myth, is reproduced: (http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/73644.html)
__________

. 'A chronicle of German's attacks of all
. varieties upon Jews during this period
. (uncoordinated by state or Party offices) would
. fill many volumes. The instances recounted here
. were anything but atypical. Attacks of these sorts
. were a "normal," quotidian part of Germany once
. Nazism was in a position to unleash the pent-up
. antisemitic passion. The SA's rank and file, eager
. at last to give regular expression to their hatred
. of Jews, initiated much of the violence on their
. own. The state had implicitly declared the Jews to
. be "fair game" -- beings who were to be eliminated
. from German society, by whatever means necessary,
. including violence.'
.
. 'The SA has typically been characterized as an
. organization of the rabble in uniform, of brutal
. men from the fringes of society, seething with
. resentment and bursting with violent urges. To a
. great extent this characterization is apt. Yet it
. must be emphasized that the membership of the SA
. was about two million men, which was approximately
. 10 percent of the German civilian male population
. of the age cohorts on which the SA drew. As the
. numbers indicate, the SA was representative of a
. significant percentage of the German people.
. Moreover, as with any radical, martial
. organization of this sort, many Germans outside
. the organization could be counted on to sympathize
. with the brutal antisemites in the SA who were
. willing to participate in attacks on Jews. The
. example of the savagely beaten and tormented Jew
. of Bindsachen illustrates this common phenomenon.
. The SA men took the initiative and were cheered on
. and aided by people from their town, who were
. presumably not SA members.'
.
. 'The attacks upon Jews during these first
. years of Nazi governance of Germany were so
. widespread and broad-based -- that it would be
. grievously wrong to attribute them solely to the
. toughs of the SA, as if the wider German public
. had no influence over, or part in, the violence. A
. Gestapo report in August 1935 from Osnabrück
. belies the notion of an innocent German public.
. Robert Gellately writes:'
.
. "In that city and surrounding area there
. were 'massive demonstrations' against Jewish
. businesses, which were publicly branded and
. surrounded by mobs; people who frequented
. Jewish businesses were photographed and the
. pictures were displayed in public. The streets
. were alive with action -- parades and so
. on.... The 'high point of the struggle against
. the Jews,' as the report went, was a meeting
. on 20 August, which brought together 25,000
. people to hear Kreisleiter Münzer on the theme
. of 'Osnabrück and -the Jewish Problem.' The
. situation was so inflamed, however, that the
. Gestapo and other state officials had to call
. on Münzer to put a stop to the 'individual
. actions,' and he did so by publishing a
. warning in all the local newspapers; these
. actions were officially outlawed on 27
. August."
.
. 'The attacks upon Jews during this period, the
. attempts to hasten the eliminationist program,
. came by no means only from the "rabble" of German
. society, that to percent at the lower end of the
. socioeconomic scale, all too blithely dismissed by
. interpreters of this period as immoral or amoral
. people from whom one could not expect better
. conduct.' [Goldhagen p. 95-96]
__________

. 'THE UNSYSTEMATIC NATURE of the legal measures
. taken against the Jews during the first few years
. of Nazism, and particularly the uncoordinated and
. often wild attacks upon Jews which, according to
. the government's own reports, occurred in every
. administrative district and in almost every
. locality, did cause many Germans to feel
. unsettled. Some objected to the wanton violence,
. and many, in and out of government and the Party,
. were unsure what sorts of action against the Jews
. were to be taken or tolerated. The Nuremberg Laws
. of September 1935 and subsequent legislation
. brought order to the uncoordinated state of
. affairs, defining precisely who was to be
. considered a Jew, or a partial Jew, and enacting a
. broad set of prohibitions that provided a good
. measure of coherence to the eliminationist
. program. Above all else, the Nuremberg Laws made
. explicit and to a great extent codified the
. elimination of Jews from a civil or social
. existence in Germany, going a long way towards
. creating an insuperable separation between Jews
. and members of the Volk. Its two measures, the
. Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the
. Protection of German Blood and German Honor,
. stripped Jews of their citizenship and forbade new
. marriages and sexual relations outside of existing
. marriages between Jews and Germans. The laws were
. very popular among the German people. Germans
. welcomed the laws because of the coherence that
. they imposed in this most pressing of spheres, and
. more so because of the content of the measures. A
. Gestapo report from Magdeburg captured well the
. popular mood when it noted that "the population
. regards the regulation of the relationships of the
. Jews as an emancipatory act, which brings clarity
. and simultaneously greater firmness in the
. protection of the racial interests of the German
. people." The eliminationist program had received
. at once its most coherent statement and its most
. powerful push forward. The Nuremberg Laws promised
. to accomplish what had heretofore for decades been
. but discussed and urged on ad nauseam. With this
. codifying moment of the Nazi German "religion,"
. the regime held up the eliminationist writing on
. the Nazi tablets for every German to read. All
. were literate in its language. And many wanted the
. implementation of its program to be hastened, as a
. Gestapo report from Hildesheirn covering February
. 1936, a few months after the laws' promulgation,
. conveys: "It is said by many that the Jews in
. Germany are still treated much too humanely." '
. [Goldhagen p. 96-97]
__________

| 'Nürnberger Gesetze"/"Nuremberg Laws":
|.
| These were the 3 laws promulgated on September
| 15, 1935 at the national party conference of
| the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
| Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)/Nazi Party in
| Nuremberg.
|.
| These were the:
|.
| 1. Reichsbürgergesetz (Reich Citizenship Act),
| defining citizenship; Jews were excluded.
|.
| 2. Blutschutzgesetz (Blood Protection Act),
| marriage between "Jews" and "Germans", and
| other contact, was forbidden.
|.
| 3. Reichsflaggengesetz. The first two laws
| were also termed the "Nürnberger
| Rassengesetze"/"Nuremberg Racial Laws". The
| regulations of the "1. Verordnung (VO) zum
| Reichsbürgergesetz"/"1. regulation of the
| Reich Citizenship Act of 14.11.1935 had
| important consequences for Jews as it, from
| then on, determined who was a "Jew":
|.
| According to Section 5 Paragraph 1 a "Jew" was
| someone who had at least 3 of the
| "Rasse"/"race" "volljüdischen"/"completely
| Jewish" grandparents.
|.
| Section 2 Paragraph 2 Clause 2 formulated its
| application.
|.
| According to Section 2 Paragraph 2 an
| individual was classified as
| "volljüdisch"/"completely Jewish" when one
| grandparent was "ohne weiteres"/"sufficient in
| itself" a member of the Jewish religious
| community.
|.
| According to Section 5 Paragraph 2 an
| individual was classified as a "judische
| Mischling"/"Jewish half-caste" when the child
| had 2 "volljüdisch"/ "completely Jewish"
| grandparents:
|.
| (a) He/she was a member of the Jewish
| religious community at the time of the
| enactment of the "Reichsbürgergesetzes"/"Reich
| Citizenship Act" of 15.05.1935, or joined
| later.
|.
| (b) He/she was married to a "Jew" at the time
| of the enactment of the "Reichsbürgergesetz"
| /"Reich Citizenship Act" of 15.05.1935, or was
| later so married.
|.
| (c) He/she was a child of at least one Jewish
| parent at the time of the enactment of the
| "Blutschutzgesetz"/"Blood Protection Act" of
| 15.09.1935.
|.
| (d) He/she was a child of an extra-marital
| relationship with a "Jew" and born after
| 31.07.1936.
__________

. 'At the beginning of 1935, the following
. extract, entitled "The Chosen People of the
. Criminals," appeared in "Der Stürmer":

| "... and all the same, or, let us say,
| just because of this, the history book of the
| Jews, which is usually called the Holy
| Scriptures, impresses us as a horrible
| criminal romance, which makes the 150 penny-
| dreadfuls of the British Jew, Edgar Wallace,
| go green with envy. This 'holy' book abounds
| in murder, incest, fraud, theft, and
| indecency." (2697-PS). '

. 'In a speech on 4 October 1935 (the month
. following the proclamation of the Nuremberg
. Decrees) Streicher made a speech which is reported
. in the Voelkischer Beobachter and is entitled in
. that newspaper "Safeguard of German Blood and
. German Honor." The report in that article reads in
. part:

| "Gauleiter Streicher speaks at a German
| Labor Front mass demonstration for the
| Nuremberg laws." ... "We have therefore, to
| unmask the Jew, and that is what I have been
| doing for the past fifteen years." (M-34). '

. 'In a leading article in "Der Stürmer"
. Streicher again emphasized the part which he
. himself had taken in this campaign:

| " 'The 'Stürmer's' 15 years of work of
| enlightenment has already led an army of those
| who know-millions strong-to National
| Socialism. The continued work of the 'Stürmer'
| will help to ensure that every German down to
| the last man will, with heart and hand, join
| the ranks of those whose aim it is to crush
| the head of the serpent Pan-Juda beneath their
| heels. He who helps to bring this about helps
| to eliminate the devil, and this devil is the
| Jew.' (M-6). " [Stein]
__________

. 'Every summer in Nuremberg a youth celebration
. was held. At this pagan rite the youth of
. Nuremberg were rallied, organized, and incited,
. encouraged by Streicher. Streicher's speech to the
. Hitler Youth on the "Holy Mountain" near Nuremberg
. on 22 June 1935 contained the following
. statements:

| "Boys and girls, look back to a little
| more than 10 years ago. A great war-the World
| War-had whirled over the peoples of the earth
| and had left in the end a heap of ruins. Only
| one people remained victorious in this
| dreadful war, a people of whom Christ said its
| father is the devil. That people had ruined
| the German nation in body and soul. Then Adolf
| Hitler, unknown to anybody, arose from among
| the people and became the voice which called
| to a holy war and battle. He cried to the
| people for everybody to take courage again and
| to rise and get a helping hand to take the
| devil from the German people, so that the
| human race might be free again from these
| people that have wandered about the world for
| centuries and millenia, marked with the sign
| of Cain. "Boys and girls, even if they say
| that the Jews were once the chosen people, do
| not believe it, but believe us when we say
| that the Jews are not a chosen people. Because
| it cannot be that a chosen people should act
| among the peoples as the Jews do today." (M-
| 1). ' [Stein]
___________________________________________________
1936

< Academia : Akademie >

Eugen Herrigel publishes his first essay on Japanese archery, "Die ritterliche Kunst des Bogenschiessens" (The Chivalrous Art of Archery) in this year, 1936.

This is the gateway action, which allows the publishing of the expanded version that appeared as "Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens" (Zen in the Art of Archery) in the year 1948.

That 1936 work was to be the cause of widespread distortion of what the Buddha's teachings really are, especially after the war. This is now a great calamity of our current circumstances, in 2006. The effects of that future slander of the Law, however, focus back down to the original act of creation, because cause and effect are simultaneous in the Lotus Sutra.

So, the Holocaust begins to swell in 1929 as Herrigel arrives at Erlangen, and over the years as he writes it down, to the moment of publishing in 1936, when the evil deed is done.
__________

. 'The case of Dr Helmut Weigel, an Erlangen
. historian, is particularly revealing. He was the
. leading National Socialist at the University but
. was dismissed in June 1936 for being married to a
. "mixed breed" Jewess. After joining the NSDAP in
. December 1931, Weigel was soon actively involved
. at a regional level. He became the local leader of
. the National Socialist "Association of Lecturers",
. despite being married to a non-Aryan. A statement
. issued by Weigel three months before his eventual
. dismissal reveals a lot about his motivation, even
. if it was principally a means to save his career.
. Weigel saw Hitler as "the man who would rescue and
. redeem Germany" and saw it as his "duty to fight
. for his cause". Although Weigel was in agreement
. with the Nazi's antisemitic policy, the idea that
. he himself could "be placed in this category,
. never occurred".'
.
. 'If Weigel's motivation for joining the NSDAP
. was, as he claimed, purely nationalistic, he, like
. many others, exploited his status to seek
. promotion. In 1933, careerism, especially among
. those on the lowest rungs of the academic ladder,
. was rife. Weigel as a lowly Privatdozent
. (unsalaried assistant lecturer) sought the
. security that an "associate professorship" would
. offer and made a powerful case for his promotion.
. Writing in April 1933, to the Education Minister,
. he reasoned that the "national revolution" had
. made it possible for "National Socialist
. Privatdozenten" to lead "a promising career".'
.
. 'Although successful in his promotion, Weigel
. only remained at the pinnacle of his career for a
. short time, before bureaucracy noted something
. amiss. The racial questionnaire relating to
. Weigel's wife had somehow gone "missing". A
. hastily completed replacement confirmed Frau
. Weigel to be of "non-Aryan" descent. Weigel's
. rapid rise now turned into a swift fall. The
. "Bavarian Education Ministry" reported that he had
. "met with the displeasure of the Minister". He was
. formally dismissed in June 1936 and simultaneously
. stripped of his professorship. It would appear
. that in punishing Weigel twice, with a dismissal
. and a demotion, the University was actually
. pleased to see him leave.'
.
. 'Despite being the University's leading
. National Socialist, Weigel was dismissed two years
. before Kropelin, classified as a "Half-Jew". The
. "discrepancy" stems from the fact that Kropelin
. was a popular member of staff, who avoided
. confrontations and followed the rules, whereas
. Weigel was outspoken and exploited the new system.
. The University certainly appeared in no rush to
. expel Kropelin and it has even been suggested that
. two other professors, who were married to non-
. Aryans, were never dismissed.' [Grady]

< the Streets : die Straßen >

. 'Heidegger's former student and friend, Karl
. Löwith met him while at a conference in Rome in
. 1936. Löwith, a Jew by birth, had gone into exile
. after 1933. On the occasion of their meeting,
. Löwith asked Heidegger how he could sit at the
. same table "with an individual like Julius
. Streicher." Streicher, the notorious editor of Der
. Stürmer, was admitted as a member of the board of
. the Nietzsche Archive. Heidegger was a fellow
. board member. Löwith, in his memoirs, reports that
. Heidegger's response to his question about
| Streicher was to "dismiss the rantings of the
| Gauletier of Franconia as political pornography."
| He insisted, however, on dissociating the Führer,
| Adolf Hitler, from Streicher.' [Hugo Ott, Martin
. Heidegger: A Political Life, Basic Books, 1993, p.
. 268]
__________

. 'A report of Streicher's address to 2,000
. children at Nuremberg at Christmastime, 1936,
. states:

| " 'Do you know who the Devil is, ' he
| asked his breathlessly listening audience.'
| The Jew, the Jew, ' resounded from a thousand
| children's voices." (M-44). ' [Stein]
__________

. ' "Der Stürmer" also published some children's
. books. Although Streicher himself did not write
. the books, they were published from his publishing
. business, and they are on the same line of
. everything else published and issued from that
. business. Among these books was one entitled
. "Don't trust the Fox in the green meadow nor the
. Jew on his oath." It is a picture book for
. children. The pictures all depict Jews in an
. offensive light. And opposite each picture there
. is a little story. For instance, opposite one
. picture, which portrays an unpleasant-looking
. Jewish butcher cutting up meat, there appears the
. following comment:

| "The Jewish butcher: he sells half refuse
| instead of meat. A piece of meat lies on the
| floor; the cat claws another. This doesn't
| worry the Jew butcher since the meat increases
| in weight. Besides one mustn't forget he won't
| have to eat it himself ." (M-32). '

. 'The story opposite another picture reads as
. follows:

| "Jesus Christ says 'The Jew is a murderer
| through and through'. And when Christ had to
| die the Lord didn't know any other people who
| would have tortured Him to death so' he chose
| the Jews. That is why the Jews pride
| themselves on being the chosen people." (M-
| 32). '

. 'Other pictures in this book portray: a girl
. being led away by an evil-appearing Jew; Streicher
. smiling benignly at a children's party, greeting
. the little children; children looking at copies of
. "Der Stürmer" posted on a wall ; Jewish children
. being taken away from an Aryan school by an
. unpleasant-looking father, with all the Aryan
. children shouting and dancing and enjoying the fun
. very much (M-32). '
.
. 'Another book, called "The Poisonous Fungus,"
. is very similar in character and appearance, and
. likewise calculated to poison the minds of
. readers. One of the pictures in this book shows a
. girl sitting in a Jewish doctor's waiting room.
. The story that goes with this picture is not a
. very pleasant story, but it is only by adverting
. to these matters that it becomes possible to
. believe the kind of education which German
. children received from Streicher. The story reads
. as follows:

| "Inge sits in the reception room of the
| Jew doctor. She has to wait a long time. She
| looks through the journals which are on the
| table. But she is much too nervous to read
| even a few sentences. Again and again she
| remembers the talk with her mother. And again
| and again. her mind reflects on the warnings
| of her leader of the League of German Girls:
| 'A German must not consult a Jew doctor. And
| particularly not a German girl. Many a girl
| that went to a Jew doctor to be cured, found
| disease and disgrace! ' "
|.
| "When Inge had entered the waiting room,
| she experienced an extraordinary incident.
| From the doctor's consulting room she could
| hear the sound of crying. She heard the voice
| of a young girl: 'Doctor, doctor, leave me
| alone! ' "
|.
| "Then she heard the scornful laughing of a
| man. And then, all of a sudden, it became
| absolutely silent. Inge had listened
| breathlessly. ' "
|.
| " 'What may be the meaning of all this? '
| she asked herself and her heart was pounding.
| And again she thought of the warning of her
| leader in the League of German Girls. ' "
|.
| "Inge was already waiting for an hour.
| Again she takes the journals in an endeavor to
| read. Then the door opens. Inge looks up. The
| Jew appears. She screams. In terror she drops
| the paper. Horrified she jumps up. Her eyes
| stare into the face of the Jewish doctor. And
| this face is the face of the devil. In the
| middle of this devil's face is a huge crooked
| nose. Behind the spectacles two criminal eyes.
| And the thick lips are grinning, a grinning
| that expresses: 'Now I got you at last, you
| little German girl! ' "
|.
| "And then the Jew approaches her. His
| fleshy fingers stretch out after her. But now
| Inge has composed herself. Before the Jew can
| grab hold of her, she smacks the fat face of
| the Jew doctor with her hand. One jump to the
| door. Breathlessly Inge runs down the stairs.
| Breathlessly she escapes the Jew house."
| (1778-PS). '

. 'Another photograph shows youthful admirers
. standing around looking at Streicher's picture,
. with the following commentary:

| " 'Without a solution of the Jewish
| question there will be no salvation for
| mankind. ' That is what he shouted to us. All
| of us could understand him. And when, at the
| end, he shouted 'Sieg Heil' for the Fuehrer,
| we all acclaimed him with tremendous
| enthusiasm. For two hours Streicher spoke at
| that occasion. To us it appeared to have been
| but a few minutes." (l778-PS).'

. 'The effect of all this propaganda is evident
. from the columns of "Der Stürmer" itself. In April
. 1936 there was published a letter, which is
. typical of many others that appear in other copies
. from children of all ages. The third paragraph of
. this letter, signed by the boys and girls of the
. National Socialist Youth Hostel at Grossmuellen,
. reads:

| "... Today we saw a play on how the devil
| persuades the Jew to shoot a conscientious
| National Socialist. In the course of the play
| the Jew did it too. We all heard the shot. We
| would have all liked to jump up and arrest the
| Jew., But then the policeman came and after a
| short struggle took the Jew along. You can
| imagine, dear Stürmer, that we heartily
| cheered the policeman. In the whole play not
| one name was mentioned, but we all knew that
| this play represented the murder by the Jew
| Frankfurter. We were very sick when we went to
| bed that night. None felt like talking to the
| others. This play made it clear to us how the
| Jew sets to work." (M-25)' [Stein]
___________________________________________________

end of part 1, continued in part 2 of 2 ...

. The full 28 Chapters of the Lotus Sutra,
. Nichiren Daishonin's Gosho volumes I and II,
. the Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings
. (Gosho Zenshu, including the Ongi Kuden) and the
. SGI Dictionary of Buddhism are located at:
.
http://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/
.
. To find an SGI Community Center:
.
http://www.sgi-usa.org/sgilocations/

LS Chap. 16 .....

All harbor thoughts of yearning
and in their minds thirst to gaze at me.
When living beings have become truly faithful,
honest and upright, gentle in intent,
single-mindedly desiring to see the Buddha
not hesitating even if it costs them their lives,
then I and the assembly of monks
appear together on Holy Eagle Peak.
At that time I tell the living beings
that I am always here, never entering extinction,
but that because of the power of an expedient means
at times I appear to be extinct, at other times not,
and that if there are living beings in other lands
who are reverent and sincere in their wish to believe,
then among them too
I will preach the unsurpassed Law.

[Jeffrey Rubard]

"Are 'incense and peppermints', then, Zen?"
"Whose incense and peppermints are they?"

[Jeffrey Rubard]

"They're just incense and peppermints."