Spengler, Oswald

(1880-1936)

   cultural philosopher; famous for the portentous metaphysical essay Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West), he was deemed "the philosopher of pessimism (he rejected the label). Born to a middle-class home (his father was a postal clerk) in the town of Blankenburg am Harz, he pursued broad studies in mathematics, philosophy, science, and history. After taking a doctorate at Halle in 1904 with a thesis on the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, he taught consecutively in Saarbrücken, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg until, forsaking teaching (to the regret of faculty and students), he became a private scholar in 1911. Living in Munich, he supple-mented a small inheritance with income from articles and reviews. A heart condition and nearsightedness precluded his induction into the army, and he spent most of the next decade on Untergang des Abendlandes; its first volume appeared a month before the Armistice.*

   Spengler claimed later that the Moroccan Crisis of 1911 inspired Untergang. He was distressed by Germany s prewar foreign policy, and his anxiety matured into a broad historical vision. Reminiscent of Hegel, he traced the morphology of eight historical cultures through six organic phases and then, arguing that western civilization had entered a state of decline, presumed to foretell the fu-ture. Using Vico, Herder, Burckhardt, and, especially, Nietzsche as guides, he aimed to show how such modern qualities as rationalism, democracy, technol-ogy, and pacifism were undermining the West. Distinguishing between "cul-ture and "civilization, or "soul and "intellect, he stressed that the key to survival was a synthesis between socialism and the "Prussian spirit.

   Untergang s publication amidst defeat and revolution could not have been better timed. Although the scholarly community maligned it for errors and shal-lowness, it soon gained public attention (the fiftieth edition was released in 1924) and recast Spengler as Germany s premier living philosopher. Labeling the No-vember Revolution* as a "revolution of stupidity," his 1920 pamphlet Preus-sentum und Sozialismus launched his participation in the Republic's caustic political debates. Thereafter linked with Arthur Moeller* van den Bruck, he was active on the right-wing lecture circuit. From 1926, however, debilitating head-aches interrupted his work; he suffered a mild stroke in 1927.

   Spengler once alleged that Germany would not produce another Goethe but, rather, a Caesar. Despite authoritarian leanings, he was an opponent of the NSDAP. Ignoring this fact, the Nazis embraced him as a solid rightist thinker. In September 1933, eight months into Hitler s* rule, he published an anti-Nazi polemic, Jahre der Entscheidung (translated as Hour of Decision). Referring to the Nazis as "everlasting Youths... fired by uniforms and badges," the book outraged Joseph Goebbels,* who lamented that it had been missed by the censor. Thereafter, until his death, Spengler was portrayed by the Nazis as a plagiarist and charlatan.

   REFERENCES:Klaus Fischer, History and Prophecy; H. Stuart Hughes, Oswald Spengler; Lebovics, Social Conservatism; Von Klemperer, Germany's New Conservatism.