Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

INTERLUDE 233generations of German intellectuals. He was the intellectual adviser,indeed the mentor of Wilhelm II.Chamberlain was born in Portsmouth in 1855, the son of a Britishnaval captain, later admiral. His uncle, Sir Neville Chamberlain, thefield marshal, died a lonely, embittered man after carrying on a vainfight against the Boer War. Houston Stewart Chamberlain was broughtup by relatives in France, and French was the language of his youth andeducation. At the age of twenty-seven, he accomplished the astonishingfeat of acquiring a new nationality as a relatively mature man. Forseveral decades he remained a British subject — but he became aGerman in language, mind, and soul. He lived first in Dresden, later inVienna, finally in Bay-reuth. Wagner's music and philosophy had drawnhim to Germany; he married one of Wagner's daughters. The threegreatest poets of humanity, he declared, were Homer, Shakespeare, andWagner, but Wagner was the greatest.Chamberlain was one of the most astonishing talents in the history ofthe German mind, a mine of knowledge and profound ideas. Hecombined sensitivity, gentleness, and elegance with a great intellectualstubbornness. A conflict between intellectual toughness and an almostpathological human softness was the weak side of his nature. Excessivepoliteness, an almost mincing caution in his personal relations, point toa profound uncertainty, for which his strange career accounts only toowell. He addressed every run-of-the-mill German officer in tones ofgushing obsequiousness. He treated Wilhelm II's generals and courtflunkies with a respect which he thought he owed to living history. Thecorrespondence which he carried on with Wilhelm II for over a quarterof a century abounds in well-nigh unequaled expressions of flattery.In 1897, Chamberlain published his chief work, Die Grundlagen des19. Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century), whichquickly made him world famous. Wilhelm II wrote inviting him to thecourt, and thus began a friendship which was to endure untilChamberlain's death in 1926. 'It was God who sent your book to theGerman people and you personally to me,' wrote the Kaiser, andChamberlain replied that he had hung Wilhelm's picture in his studyopposite a Christ by Leonardo, and that during his work