Posts
1
Nietzsche knew that his work
would always be misinterpreted – he even welcomed that at times. Some of the
biggest misinterpreters of Nietzsche are those who tried to interpret him in the
correct way.
While Walter Kaufmann’s star has waned somewhat in recent years, he
is still generally agreed to be the one who “rehabilitated Nietzsche” after
World War II.
While Nietzsche had died in 1900, his sister lived on, and being
in charge of the Nietzsche Archive [which she set up], she had met Hitler in
1934, and Hitler had attended her funeral – at the Archive - in 1935.
Nietzsche’s sister, centre, meets Hitler outside the Archive
However, in the English speaking world, Nietzsche’s reputation was really
blackened after the 1914-18 war [he being seen as the philosopher of German
aggression – another misinterpretation], and yet no real attempt was made then
to ‘rehabilitate’ him for the reactionary English-reading public.
Indeed, even
before the majority of Nietzsche’s books were first translated into English, Max
Nordau’s ‘Degeneration’ featured a long diatribe against Nietzsche and his
philosophy. This book was very popular in late 19th century, early 20th century
Britain.
2
Nietzsche’s work was claimed by left, right and centre – by good, bad,
and indifferent. Both Fascists and Anarchists claimed that Nietzsche was one of
theirs.
Immediately after the 1945 war, the USA embarked on what it called a
“De-Nazification” programme: “only an inflexible long-term occupation authority
will be able to lead the Germans to a fundamental revision of their recent
political philosophy.” [1945 ‘Institute of the Re-Education of the Axis
Countries’]
In 1946 the Allied Control Council in Germany made a list of 30,000
book titles, ranging from school text books to poetry, which were then banned.
This somewhat communistic sounding plan was meant to rid Europe of ‘Nazi’ ideas.
To that end, Nietzsche’s work needed to be de-nazified too, with an all out
attack on Nietzsche’s sister.
Because Nietzsche’s published works [I.e., those
written prior to his sister’s involvement in the Archive] influenced Mussolini,
Fascism and Hitlerism and therefore Nazism, they too had to be de-nazified. Strangely, the rationale for this was the claim that the Nazis themselves had
Nazified them, despite Nietzsche losing his mind in 1889 – the very year that
Hitler was born, and the books being published long before Nazism emerged.
While
it is true that National Socialist writers made use of Nietzsche, with cleverly
excerpted passages from his books to advance their world-outlook [which still
goes on today from other perspectives], the original books remained in print in
Germany, so that readers could check them in full [and so easily find passages
which did *not* jibe with the National Socialist perspective, should they wish
to].
For the denazifiers, somehow, Nietzsche’s philosophy had to be made to
embrace liberal democracy, socialism, feminism and pacifism. Anyone who has read
Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil [published in 1885] from cover to cover would
find this to be a big stretch.
In other words, the de-nazifying rehabilitation of
Nietzsche would attempt to do the same thing the Nazifying habilitation had done
two decades before!
3
The man chosen with this task of de-nazifying Nietzsche
post-war, was Walter Kaufmann, who then published a polemical ‘biography’ of
Nietzsche in 1950 which set out this reorientation of Nietzsche, coming down
heavily on Nietzsche’s sister and the activities of the Archive before 1945.
For
Kaufmann, Nietzsche was instead to be allied with the Existentialists [who
mostly tended to be left leaning], and the Freudian psychoanalysts, as being
their precursor. Any political aspects of his thought were to be played down.
Another important adjustment needed for the English speaking world was the
matter of the English translations of Nietzsche’s works, made at the turn of the
20th century, ‘The Complete Works of FW Nietzsche’, edited by Oscar Levy
[1867-1946]. Seen as quite an achievement at the time, and read by figures such
as Yeats, Lawrence et al., this edition presented some problems for the
denazifiers.
Firstly, Nietzsche’s sister had authorised these translations.
While that was seen as a stamp of approval at the time, it was now a black mark.
Not only that, the sister had provided some introductions, prefaces and notes to
this edition. These show that the sister knew her brother’s philosophy well –
hardly convenient when Kaufmann would need to peddle the line [corroborated by
Anthroposophist Rudolph Steiner, who had dealings with her] that the sister knew
nothing about philosophy per se, let alone her brother’s. Worse, some of the
translators used by Levy were right-wingers [as was Levy]; particularly Ludovici
and Kennedy – even Thomas Common. As well as the translations, they had written
books of their own on Nietzschean themes, often emphasising the Aristocratic
aspect of Nietzsche’s thought. This aspect must be downplayed by Kaufmann too.
Oscar Levy in 1918
A stumbling block was the fact that Levy was Jewish, and had much to say about
being Jewish. This was awkward – why would the sister [who is to be painted as a
raving anti-Semite] personally authorise and contribute to this edition by the
obvious Jew, Oscar Levy?
Kaufmann, whose task was to replace the Levy
translations with those of his ‘own’ – translations done from the
existentialist/humanist perspective he was to thrust on Nietzsche – must
therefore be Jewish himself, so he is able to pour scorn on the late Dr Levy,
without a whiff of anti-Semitism.
So the project was set: time for Kaufmann to
start translating. A mammoth task for one man – Levy had used a team of
different translators, as already indicated. He had also given the whole
collection a master index, making it useful to scholars.
4
And this is where we
start to be suspicious – we suspect that ‘Kaufmann’ might in fact be some kind
of translation committee coming out of the USA government’s denazification
programme.
Personally, as an innocent reader of those Kaufmann translations of
Nietzsche in the early 1990s, the impression I had was that Kaufmann was the son
of German Jews who had fled Germany in the 30s after ‘Hitler came’, and set up
in the USA, continuing University studies there, and later translating
Nietzsche. But how is it that Kaufmann’s first book on Nietzsche is a
‘biography’, and the translations followed? Usually translations come first, and
biographies follow: had much of the translation work already been done – by
others? Was it necessary to get the biography out first in order to orientate
the ‘rehabilitated’ Nietzsche, before his works were to be reread in new garb?
Kaufmann called his book, ‘Nietzsche, Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist’,
perhaps as a side swipe at the first major English translator of Nietzsche’s
work, Thomas Common. Common had published a book in 1901 called, “Nietzsche as
Critic, Philosopher, Poet and Prophet”. This book by Common influenced W.B.
Yeats interest in Nietzsche. Kaufmann therefore, was intent on usurping and then
rubbishing the reputation of Common [who had died in 1919].
The preface to the
4th edition of Kaufmann’s Nietzsche biography struts in typically
self-referential fashion – the year is 1974: “When I began to work on Nietzsche,
he was in eclipse both in his native Germany and in the English-speaking world,
and it seemed needful to dissociate him from the Nazis and to show that he had
been a great philosopher. The book has succeeded on both counts, and now
Nietzsche is studied more widely than ever before.” [‘Nietzsche, Philosopher,
Psychologist, Antichrist’, by W Kaufmann]
Note that Kaufmann is not keen to
address Nietzsche’s misappropriation by others, such as Anarchists, socialists,
feminists, liberals, democrats etc. His brief is only on the ‘Nazis’. He also
ignores, for example, the massive study of Nietzsche done by Martin Heidegger in
the 1930s.
At closer inspection, there was some confusion as to the credentials
of Kaufmann – he started to resemble a cover story. His first name, the Germanic
Walter wasn’t Jewish. And while some Jews have the surname Kaufmann, it isn’t
necessarily Jewish, being merely the German for shopkeeper, like the English
name, Chapman.
Looking at pictures of the elusive Kaufmann [there aren’t many]
he doesn’t look particularly Jewish. It then turns out that he wasn’t Jewish!
Born a Christian in Germany in 1921 [in Freiburg, the place where Oscar Levy
took his doctoral thesis exactly 30 years before, in 1891], in 1933 he decided
[aged 12!] to convert to Judaism!
Is that plausible? The very year that the Jew
baiter Hitler came to power, a young German boy decides to convert to Judaism?
That must have been very rare! So in 1939, now 17, he flees to the USA. This is
some headstrong boy! And, while doing some studies, he joins in the war effort.
And of course, as is always the case with such spooks, he joins military
intelligence [he was one of the so-called “Ritchie Boys”]! Clearly, this is
where ‘Kaufmann’ gets his brief to denazify Nietzsche, and the rest is history.
Towards the end of his career, Kaufmann attended and chaired part of a
conference of the ICUS in 1979, an organisation put together by the Reverend
Moon. The conferences, which ran from 1972 to 2000, often concentrated on
‘Absolute Values’ throughout society and the humanities. Many Jewish names are
amongst the participants. The Moonies, of course, became infamous for using
brainwashing and ‘deprograming’ techniques – or shall we say, ‘rehabilitation’
techniques.
The picture is from the ICUS conference that Kaufmann chaired – note how much
more Jewish he looks in the picture [he would ‘die’ the following year]. Also
note Moon’s presence on the same day as Kaufmann.
The title page of the program for the 8th ICUS – “the search for absolute
vales” doesn’t sound very Nietzschean!
Kaufmann twisted his cover story a few times in his latter years. He said he
found out that his grandfather and mother were actually Jews, for example. This
sounds implausible as even converted Jews know their true heritage and are proud
of it. Would they have hidden that from a son who converted to Judaism at age
12? And despite converting to Judaism in such dangerous circumstances in 1933,
he was now an agnostic and a ‘heretic’. Even more strange, in 1980, at the age
of 59, Kaufmann died of a mystery illness.
Picture: Walter Kaufmann. There are few pictures of him.
5
While I suspect that Kaufmann’s Nietzsche translations were done with the help
of a committee [drawing on the Levy edition], it is noticeable that Kaufmann was
latterly joined by his British equivalent, the even more shadowy R. J.
Hollingdale. Following a similar pattern, the younger Hollingdale had made a
‘translation’ of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in 1961 [seemingly cadged from
Kaufmann’s version which appeared in his ‘Portable Nietzsche’ of 1954], and then
had written a ‘rehabilitating’ biography of Nietzsche in 1965, going on in the
‘60s to make more translations of Nietzsche in a more ‘correct’, but rather more
boring style, than Kaufmann’s translations of the 50s. His cover story was just
as unbelievable as Kaufmann’s, though. Born in 1930, he left school at 16 and
became a journalist [so after 1945]. He then, ‘in the late 40s’ was in the RAF
for two years. This in itself is a red flag, as immediately upon leaving the
army he immerses himself in German literature and takes private lessons in the
German language, being ready to translate the very difficult to render ‘Thus
Spoke Zarathustra’ at age 30. This doesn’t quite add up.
Presented as a working
class left-winger, known as ‘Reg’ to his comrades, his byline is always the
thoroughly Victorian convention of two initials, followed by the surname: R.J.
Hollingdale. Completely impersonal and upper middle class: a convention long
gone by the 1960s when working class ‘Reg’ was publishing. The surname
‘Hollingdale’ is unusual too – it is obviously a place name, and yet there is no
record of a place called ‘Hollingdale’ ever existing. What a perfectly anomalous
name for him to adopt! Without a degree – leaving school at 16, we are told that
Hollingdale was elected as president of a “scholarly society”, was a sub-editor
at the Left-wing Guardian newspaper, and president of the Nietzsche Society. He
joined with Kaufmann to make a translation of Nietzsche’s ‘The Will to Power’ in
1967/8, a version intended to ‘replace’ the one in the Levy edition - on which
it nevertheless, heavily relies, to the point of plagiarism.
At any rate,
Hollingdale’s dull translations of Nietzsche certainly read like they were done
by a committee. It’s as if Kaufmann was the American wing, and Hollingdale the
British wing, of this denazification of the English-speaking Nietzsche
enterprise.
This is the only picture I can find of R. J. Hollingdale – why so camera
shy?
Ultimately, Kaufmann [1921-1980] and Holllingdale’s [1930 – 2001] (note the
strange 3 symmetry in their dates) “rehabilitation” of Nietzsche failed.
Inevitably their translations began to be surpassed in the 1990s, and
Nietzsche’s association with what was now called the anti-democratic movements
continued unabashed.
Also, Kaufmann and Hollingdale weren’t able to put together
a coherent and indexed ‘Complete Works’ of Nietzsche in English, as Levy had
done. And their scrappy translations with pretty paperback covers [Hollingdale],
and their selective compilations [Kaufmann], never really replaced the Levy
edition, which is sought after by collectors, and many of its old translations
have appeared variously in cheap and clean paperback versions, easily nudging
the Kaufmann ones [with their self-referential footnotes] off of the shelves.
Essentially Nietzsche continues to be misinterpreted as he no doubt intended
himself to be. Unfortunately, ‘rehabilitation’ would eventually be replaced by
‘cancellation’ when a new wave of establishment ‘translators’ were engaged – but
that’s another story.
[Bill Boethius Osborn, London 2022]
