Prophet of the Holocaust

August 25, 2006 12:55 PM

Constantin Brunner (August 27, 1862-August 27, 1937) was a writer of German-Jewish background. He wrote several books warning of the danger of "Judenhass" (hatred of Jews). In 1921, he wrote:

Now, straight away, as a result of scientific knowledge, human beings can be subjected to violence and massacred.... The God who was different—there was a thing! And today it is the race, the race that is different; there's a thing that will prove fateful again for the Jews—and this is one case when we really can hear the grass of history growing.

Brunner died in exile in the Hague in 1937. His widow and stepdaughter perished at Sobibor. More inside.
posted by No Robots (10 comments total)

Brunner (né Arjeh (Leopold) Yehuda Wertheimer), was the grandson of the chief rabbi of Altona and Schleswig-Holstein. He studied under Dilthey and Zeller, but abandoned academe and became a literary editor. After undergoing a transforming experience while gazing at "The Fates" in the British Museum, he withdrew from public life, becoming "a hermit in the desert of Berlin." He produced an astonishing wealth of written material, vast in scope and pregnant with significance. He inspired great devotion in the likes of Yehudi Menuhin, who said, " Brunner revolutionized my thinking." After the war, Brunner's surviving disciples regrouped and republished his works. There is growing academic interest in his work, as seen with the recent publication in book form of Jürgen Stenzel's Ph.D. dissertation (Dr. Stenzel recently assumed the presidency of the International Constantin Brunner Institute).

There has never been, however, a full scholarly inquiry into Brunner. His explosive book on Christ is never mentioned in any of the recent "Quest for the Historical Jesus" literature, despite the fact that the portrait he drew anticipates much of today's scholarly consensus.

Much of his work remains untranslated into English, including his master work on intellectual history; his book on love, marriage, man and woman; and most of his work on hatred of Jews. In English there is a compilation called Science, spirit, and superstition; an abridgement called The tyranny of hate: The Roots of Anti-semitism; and Our Christ. There are also commentaries and journal articles in English.

Full disclosure: I run a website dedicated to Brunner. You will find there the fpp quotation in context.

posted by No Robots at 12:55 PM on August 25, 2006 [1 favorite]

thanks--i'd never heard of him at all.
posted by amberglow at 1:02 PM on August 25, 2006

Part of my post got garbled. Sorry. Here is the fix:

There is growing academic interest in his work, as seen with the recent publication in book form of Jürgen Stenzel's Ph.D. dissertation (Dr. Stenzel recently assumed the presidency of the International Constantin Brunner Institute).


There has never been, however, a full scholarly inquiry into Brunner. His explosive book on Christ is never mentioned in any of the recent "Quest for the Historical Jesus" literature, despite the fact that the portrait he drew anticipates much of today's scholarly consensus.
posted by No Robots at 1:08 PM on August 25, 2006

A wikipedia link, followed by a handful of amazon links and a self-link inside?
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:50 PM on August 25, 2006

monju_bosatsu: A wikipedia link, followed by a handful of amazon links and a self-link inside?

Yeah, I know: lame. But this guy is important. Here is the only English-speaking professional philosopher I know who has written anything about Brunner on the web, and most of that is just a link back to me! There is one German site, plus the Institute's site. There is some interesting stuff in Google books, and some online discussion, but that's about it.
posted by No Robots at 2:49 PM on August 25, 2006

Hmm. I wouldn't exactly call nazi race theories "science". They wore the trappings of science, because that's what was fashionable at the time, but that's about it.
posted by Artw at 3:24 PM on August 25, 2006

Hmm. I wouldn't exactly call nazi race theories "science". They wore the trappings of science, because that's what was fashionable at the time, but that's about it.

Of course. And that was the real core of Brunner's project: to provide a mechanism for distinguishing true science from its distorted analogs.
posted by No Robots at 3:36 PM on August 25, 2006

Sorry, No robots, this kind of a weak post, but interesting anyway.
posted by snsranch at 4:09 PM on August 25, 2006

Sorry, No robots, this kind of a weak post, but interesting anyway.

Brunner predicted his lapse into security and asked that his disciples publish something in the newspapers on his birthday. Happy Brunner Day!
posted by No Robots at 7:26 PM on August 25, 2006

oops! lapse into obscurity.
posted by No Robots at 7:27 PM on August 25, 2006