JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

234 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 3:225
and became closely associated with Otto Strasser and Goebbels. For a while
he lived in a ménage à trois with Goebbels and his mistress, a young actress
who also happened to be an NKVD agent. 21 Hartner-Hnizdo denounced
Bronnen as a representative of “the victory of the vanguard of the sexual
revolution over the German world of order, intellect and morality”—in
other words, of Bolshevism. This led him to the observation that “we
should not overlook the fact that there is a remarkable resemblance between
the Jewish and the Mongol-Tartar temperament as far as the libidinal is
concerned. Thus we see in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia the leadership
divided between the Jew Trotsky and the Mongol Lenin, who incidentally
has Jewish blood in his veins from his mother’s side.” 22
Hartner-Hnizdo’s final victim before turning to Hugo Bettauer was
Max Glass, author of Die entfesselte Menschheit (Humanity Unchained), a
novel about the revolution in Germany in November 1918. All the characters
in the book are described as violently aggressive, pathologically criminal,
and determined to free themselves from all moral, cultural, and social
restraints. It was a ferocious condemnation of middle-class attitudes toward
the “other”—the “November criminals” who had stabbed the fatherland in
the back, proletarians, and Jews. Glass’ novel was promptly turned into a
successful film, beginning for him a meteoric career as a screenwriter and
producer. 23 It was for Hartner-Hnizdo a prime example of the “hair-splitting
philosophy,” “Talmudic writing,” and “purely economic and libidinal attitude”
typical of his race. Such trumpeting of “lack of prejudice” was a
destructive attitude that posed a serious danger to German civilization.
Hartner-Hnizdo’s condemnation of Die entfesselte Menschheit was warmly
endorsed by the prominent racist ideologue Franz Schattenfroh in a book
that suggested that mass murder was the optimum solution to the Jewish
21. For details of Bronnen’s remarkably checkered career, see Friedbert Aspetsberger,
Arnolt Bronnen, Vienna 1995; Harald Kaas, “Der faschistische Piccolo”
A.B’, in Intellektuelle im Bann des Nationalsozialismus, Karl Corino (ed.),
Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe, 1980, pp. 136-149.
22. Erotik und Rasse, p. 106.
23. For Die entfesselte Menschheit, see Andy Hahnemann, “ ‘Der Tod jagt
durch die Strassen . . .’ Zur Psychopathologisierung der Revolution” in Max Glass,
Die enfesselter Menschheit (1919), in “Friede, Freiheit, Brot.” Romane zur deutschen
November Revolution, ed. Ulrich Kittstein and Regine Zeller, Amsterdam
2009. Glass founded the production companies Terra-Film-Gesellschaft, Max
Glass-Film GmbH, and Kristall-Film GmbH. As a Jew who converted to Catholicism,
he was forced to leave Germany in 1933. After a short but successful career
as a film producer in Paris, he managed to travel to Brazil and then to the United
States. He returned to France after the war, where he died in 1965. He was the
stepfather of the psychologist Hans Eysenck. See http://www.lips.org/
bio_GlassM.asp.