Arthur Drews - Radikalkritik

- 20 -▪ Blood and Soil [Blut und Boden], values of racism (blood descent) and nationalism(ancestral land occupation), the fundamental ideology of Nazism▪ Völkish populism (fusion with the racist/antisemitic Völkish movement),▪ German Neopaganism, etc...The SouthWest Association for Free Religion, with Drews's Karksruhe Society, hadjoined, and Drews was invited to sit on the Working Committee of this new movement.But the collaboration was short-lived. The new group's political objectives (dreams ofbecoming a state religion) clashed with the basic program of the Free Religionsocieties, which were pursuing more limited interests of freer religion. In addition,racism and antisemitism, which had become more overt in the NSDP's national policyafter it had reached political power, became also quickly apparent as a major goal ofHauer and Reventlow.As a result, the Southwest Association of Free Religion, in which Drews's KarlsruheFree Religion Society was a member, soon withdrew from the German FaithMovement.[72]The two leaders of the new group proved that they didn't have enough political pull.Hauer could not implement the planned fusion with the Völkish movement. Reventlow'sconnections did not bring any benefits from the Nazi Government. Contrary to hopes,the German Faith movement never became endorsed as a Nazi party organization,never obtained the privileges Hauer was seeking, and never achieved its latent goal ofbecoming legitimized as the state religion by the NSPD, in a vain hope to duplicatethe endorsement of the Catholic Church by the Roman Emperor Theodosius in 380AD.Disillusioned, Hauer left in 1936, and joined the Party in 1937; and Reventlow also leftthe movement early, resuming the practice of Christianity, still unable to gain Hitler'sfavor.The movement never achieved more than the status of a small esoteric fringegroup. It never managed to dent, let alone replace, Christianity in the land of MartinLuther. It turned out to be merely a cultural flash-in-the-pan, a curiosity in the complexlandscape of Germany's religious life in the mid '30s. The NSPD governmentdissolved it in 1937.So, in spite of Drews's hope to promote a new religion based on an Idealistic Monismand Pantheism of a distinct German character, the participation of the Karlsruhe FreeReligion Society in Hauer's effort to unify the provincial Free Religion associations withthe Völkish movement was short-lived and produced no results.Drews, an elitist thinker in the Hegel and Hartmann's tradition, had been an advocateof the Unconscious World Spirit as being the fundamental engine of religionacting in history through agents and oracles. He remained hostile to any religionbased on a historic personality cult and, late in life, was confronted with the practicaldifficulty of translating his lofty ambitions to the simpler drives and requirements of amass movement.7.5 Drews's Last Book, "German Religion"Drews had been all his life opposed to any cult of a historical personality. That wasone of his major criticisms of Christianity. The Unconscious World-Spirit was largerthan any individual — Great personalities were not godly, but simply its agents andexpressions. Similarly, no modern form of religion could be based on the cult of acontemporary leader, even though it was the tendency of the NSPD ideology. But theNSPD never went all the way, and didn't try to impose a new "religion" to displaceChristianity, which was still a strong force in Germany, and which had partly acceptedthe new Nazi leadership. The NSPD quickly got rid of the "German Faith Movement",which proved an unnecessary nuisance.All his life, in most of his books, Drews had been concerned by the obsolete survivalof Christianity, foreseeing its eventual disappearance, and insisting on the urgent