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Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann

Houston Stewart Chamberlain und Leo Spitzer – ein Linguist wehrt sich / Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Leo Spitzer – a linguist defends himself

In the year 1918, Leo Spitzer presented a lecture in the Viennese Urania, a lecture he also published during that same year, entitled: “Anti-Chamberlain”, or, more precisely: “Anti-Chamberlain: Reflections by a linguist on Houston Stewart Chamberlain's ‘War Essays’ and a general linguistic assessment by Dr. Leo Spitzer”. It is well know that Chamberlain was the prophet of racial anti-Semitism during the waning years of the 19^th century, and that his writings, published in editions running well into the hundreds of thousands, influenced not only the intellectual middle class but also, in a very particular way, Hitler and the nationalistic radical movement. For a Professor to present a lecture against this man and against his writings suggests a direct intervention of an academic discipline in the public discourse-a discourse that was shaped, to be sure, by war weariness but also by a presentable and tolerated anti-Semitism.

Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 0301-3294
Volume: 33, 06/2006
Pages: 346 - 360

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