Dietrich Eckart (German: [ˈɛkaʁt]; 23 March 1868 – 26 December 1923) was a German völkisch poet, playwright, journalist, publicist, and political activist who was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party or NSDAP). Eckart was a key influence on Adolf Hitler in the early years of the Party, the original publisher of the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter ("Folkist Observer"), and the lyricist of the first party anthem, "Sturmlied" ("Storming Song"). He was a participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and died on 26 December of that year, shortly after his release from Landsberg Prison, of a heart attack.
Eckart was elevated to the status of a major thinker upon the establishment of Nazi Germany in 1933. He was acknowledged by Hitler to be the spiritual co-founder of Nazism and "a guiding light of the early National Socialist movement."
Eckart was born on 23 March 1868 in Neumarkt, about 32 kilometres (20 mi) southeast of Nuremberg in the Kingdom of Bavaria, the son of Christian Eckart, a royal notary and lawyer, and his wife Anna, a devout Catholic. Eckart's mother died when he was ten years old and he was expelled from several schools. In 1895, his father died, leaving him a considerable amount of money that Eckart soon spent.
Eckart initially studied law at Erlangen, later medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and was an eager member of the fencing and drinking Student Korps. He decided in 1891 to become a poet, playwright, and journalist. Diagnosed with morphine addiction and nearly stranded, he moved to Berlin in 1899. There he wrote a number of plays, often autobiographical, and became the protégé of Count Georg von Hülsen-Haeseler (1858–1922), the artistic director of the Prussian Royal Theatre. After a duel, Eckart was incarcerated at the Passau Oberhaus.
As a playwright Eckart had success with his 1912 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, which played for more than 600 performances in Berlin alone. Although Eckart never had another theatrical success like Peer Gynt, and blamed his numerous failures on the influence of Jews in German culture, that one play not only made him wealthy, it gave him the social contacts that he later used to introduce Hitler to dozens of important German citizens. These introductions proved to be pivotal in Hitler's rise to power. Later on, Eckart developed an ideology of a "genius superman", based on writings by the Völkisch author Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels and by philosopher Otto Weininger. Eckart saw himself following the tradition of Heinrich Heine, Arthur Schopenhauer and Angelus Silesius. He also became fascinated by the Buddhist doctrine of Maya, or illusion.
From 1907, Eckart lived with his brother Wilhelm in the Döberitz mansion colony west of the Berlin city limits. In 1913 he married Rose Marx, an affluent widow from Bad Blankenburg, and returned to Munich.
Eckart's adaptation of Peer Gynt
In Eckart's five-act version of Ibsen's piece, the play became "a powerful dramatisation of nationalist and antisemitic ideas", in which Gynt represents the superior Germanic hero, struggling against implicitly Jewish "trolls". In Ibsen's original play, Peer Gynt leaves Norway to become the "king of the world", but through his selfish and deceptive actions his body and soul are ruined, and he returns to his native village in shame. Eckart, however, sees Gynt as a hero who challenges the trollish, i.e. Jewish, world. His transgressions are therefore noble, and Gynt returns to reclaim the innocence of his youth. This conception of the character was influenced by Eckart's hero, Otto Weininger, who led him to see Gynt as an antisemitic genius. In this racial allegory, the trolls and Dovregubben ("Dovre Giant") represent Weininger's concept of "Jewishness".
Eckart later wrote to Hitler—in a copy of the play he presented to him shortly after Hitler became the Nazi Party Fuhrer—that "[Gynt's] idea of becoming the king of the world should not be taken literally as the 'Will to Power'. Hidden behind this is a spiritual belief that he will ultimately be pardoned for all his sins." He counseled Hitler that in his quest to be the "German Messiah" his ends justified the means he used, so he need not be concerned about employing violence or other transgressions of societal norms because, like Gynt, he would be forgiven for his sins. In his introduction to the play, Eckart wrote "[It is by] German nature, which means, in the broader sense, the capability of self-sacrifice itself, that the world will heal, and find its way back to the pure divine, but only after a bloody war of annihilation against the united army of the 'trolls'; in other words, against the Midgard Serpent encircling the earth, the reptilian incarnation of the lie."
Antisemitism and foundation of the German Workers' Party (DAP)
Eckart was not always an antisemite. In 1898, for instance, Eckart wrote and had published a poem extolling the virtues and beauty of a Jewish girl. Before his conversion to antisemitism, the two people he admired most were the poet Heinrich Heine and Otto Weininger, who were both Jews. Weininger, however, had converted to Protestantism, and has been described as a "self-hating Jew" eventually espousing antisemitic views. Eckart's admiration for Weininger may have played a part in his conversion.
In December 1918, Eckart founded, published and edited the antisemitic weekly Auf gut Deutsch (English: In plain German) – with financial support from the Thule Society – working with Alfred Rosenberg, whom he called his "co-warrior against Jerusalem", and Gottfried Feder. A fierce critic of the German Revolution and the Weimar Republic, he vehemently opposed the Treaty of Versailles, which he viewed as treason, and was a proponent of the so-called stab-in-the-back legend (Dolchstoßlegende), according to which the Social Democrats and Jews were to blame for Germany's defeat in the war.
In 1919, Eckart became a member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the largest and most active antisemitic organization in Germany. Eckart's antisemitism was influenced by the publication The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which had been brought to Germany by "white Russian" emigrés fleeing the October Revolution. The book purported to outline the international Jewish conspiracy for control of the world, and many right-wing and völkisch political figures believed it to be a true account.
After living in Berlin for many years, Eckart moved to Munich in 1913, the same year that Hitler moved there from Vienna. In January 1919, he, Feder, Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer founded the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party, or DAP). In order to increase its appeal to larger segments of the population, in February 1920 it changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party, or NSDAP); more commonly known as the Nazi Party. Eckart was largely responsible for the party buying the Münchener Beobachter in December 1920, when he arranged for the loan which paid for it. The 60,000 Marks came from German Army funds available to General Franz Ritter von Epp, and the loan was secured with Eckart's house and possessions as collateral, with Dr. Gottfried Grandel, an Augsburg chemist and factory owner who was Eckart's friend and a funder of the Party, as guarantor. The newspaper was renamed the Völkischer Beobachter and became the party's official organ, with Eckart as its first editor and publisher. He also created the Nazi slogan Deutschland erwache ("Germany awake"), and wrote the lyrics for the anthem based on it, the "Sturm-Lied".
In 1921 Eckart promised 1,000 Marks to everyone who could cite one Jewish family whose sons had served longer than three weeks at the front during the First World War. The Hannover rabbi Samuel Freund named 20 Jewish families who met this condition and sued Eckart when he refused to pay the reward. During the trial, Freund named 50 more Jewish families with up to seven veterans, among whom were several which lost up to three sons in the war. Eckart lost the case and had to pay.