Hamann and Hitler

Betz sharply, and rightly, dismisses Berlin’s suggestion that Hamann’s “irrationalism” is the deep source of National Socialism: “let is be stated at the outset that Hamann was a friend of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn; that he denounces the persecution of the Jews; that he called Judaism the ‘bodily mother of evangelical Christianity’; and that he passionately defended the election of Israel against what he considered to be the anti-Semitic implications of the natural religion of the Enlightenment .” He concedes that “Hamann’s emphasis upon the senses and the passions against a rationalist aesthetic canon can remotely be connected” to the Nazi movement, but suggests that the Final Solution is ultimately closer to the ” arithmetique politique ” endorsed by Berlin and the Enlightenment.

Supporting this, Betz quotes from one of Hamann’s letters: “Has Jesus ceased being the king of the Jews. Has the inscription on his cross been changed? Do we not persecute him in his people?”