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Description
Björn Hofmeister's biography of Heinrich Claß is devoted to one of the most influential representatives of the "national opposition" that shaped extra-parliamentary politics of the nationalist Right between Imperial Germany and the Third Reich. Claß, who chaired the Pan-German League between 1908 and 1939, was a lawyer by profession and became active in the antisemitic and völkisch movement around the turn of the century. Claß was demanding the implementation of völkisch dictatorship long before World War I, which he understood to be the foundation of cultural, ethnic, and political renewal of German society. His demands for territorial expansion of the German Empire that would match the ethnic distribution of "Germanness" in Central Europe as well as imperial interests as a great power made him the spokesman of Germany´s radical war aims movement between 1914 and 1918.
Following the downfall of Imperial Germany as a result of revolution and democratization he remained a major player in the networks of the Weimar Republic's radical Right. In a long-running campaign, he helped to get his friend, chairman of the German National People's Party (DNVP) and founding member of the Pan-German League, Alfred Hugenberg, appointed as chairman of the DNVP in 1928. Following Hugenberg's takeover of what was Germany's largest conservative party at the time, Claß turned the Pan-German League into a propaganda agency promoting Hugenberg as a candidate for the office of Reich Chancellor and, subsequently, as the head of a future bourgeois dictatorship cabinet.
The DNVP's following cooperation with the Nazis, however, shifted the power balance within the radical Right in times of massive political change and, in January 1933, ultimately led to an alliance between the German Nationals and the Nazis in the formation of the Hitler cabinet, which enforced competition and rivalry with the notables of the radical Right, but also implemented major political, antisemitic and racist points that Claß had been demanding for decades.
For the first time, Björn Hofmeister explains Claß's role within the radical Right from Imperial to Nazi Germany in full detail, embedding his biography within the context of his social background, ideological socialization, academic training, professional practice, and legal thought, all of which shaped his political concepts of a radical bourgeois dictatorship government.
Björn Hofmeister, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut der Freien Universität Berlin."Björn Hofmeister has written what will certainly become the definitive study of Heinrich Claß and his role in the politics of the radical Right from the late Second Empire through the establishment of the Third Reich. Not only does the author explore the role that Claß played in tilling the soil in which Nazism took root and grew, but he also documents the reservations that Claß harbored about Hitler's claim to the leadership of the national movement in the last months of the Weimar Republic. But Claß's brand of Pan-Germanism no longer represented a viable alternative to the radicalism of Hitler's movement, and he soon found himself relegated to the sidelines of German political life without public acknowledgement of the role he had played in preparing the way for Hitler's march to power. All of this is described with poignant detail in Björn Hofmeister's superb study of Claß and his place in the history of the German Right." - Larry Eugene Jones, Professor Emeritus, Canisius University - Buffalo NY
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"Already the authoritative voice on the Pan German leader with his monumental critical edition of Claß' Politische Erinnerungen, Björn Hofmeister proves himself anew with this outstanding biography. Using all available primary sources and a plethora of secondary materials, this book is unsurpassed in detail and archival documentation. On more than 800 meticulously researched pages, Hofmeister traces the life of Heinrich Claß from Imperial to Nazi Germany up until his death in 1953 in what will surely become the definitive account of Claß' life and political career. Claß' political style remained moored in the Empire. He aimed at the establishment of a government run by the educated political elite and rejected the inclusion of the masses into the realms of power. As Björn Hofmeister impressively demonstrates in his superb book, this is the reason that Claß tied the fate of the Pan-German League to Alfred Hugenberg's DNVP and retreated from a formal coalition with Adolf Hitler´s NSDAP at the end of the Weimar Republic." - Hermann Beck, Professor of History, University of Miami.
