His “Waidmannsheil” – the hunting lodge of Heinrich XIII. Prince Reuss in Thuringia
Image: NYT/Laif/EDITING FAS
The bourgeois invocation of dead traditions serves a widespread need for nobles, leaders, and bygone empires. It ranges from Henry XIII. to Meghan of Sussex. A guest post.
EAbout ten years before he went into the scientific underground, Ernst Nolte had dissected the relationship between conservatism and National Socialism. This text contains a grandiose formulation of the soup of ideas that was stirred up in the late empire by right-wing extremist and völkisch cooks to undermine the existing state and social order. According to Nolte, this dish could only be made edible by a fire, which it was not possible to ignite before 1914.
“It was to prove that a world war was necessary to get the firewood; the Russian and German revolutions to layer it; an undeducible personal element to set on fire.” About a hundred years after the kindling of this fire, history is no more repeated than in any other case.
