no
august 1943 one by one
30 000 people in beds in poland were
hustled from their homes in the jewish
ghetto by nazi soldiers
manhattan in the streets forced into
trucks
and taken to their deaths at the nearby
auschwitz-birkenau concentration camp
high school and college students staged
this reenactment
as a reminder of that nightmare the
awful screams
the bloodbath
eric voglin a german-american political
scientist
spent a career decoding the pathology of
such homicidal madness
and how any society could descend into
mass cruelty
advice
almost everyone who knew vogtland
thought he was
uncommonly brilliant and an academic
provocateur
who in the summer of 1964 created a buzz
that echoed through the marble hallways
at the university of
if the munich was spread in the
university around the university
something interesting is going on by the
time fogland who barely escaped the
gestapo
26 years earlier stepped to the lectern
in this classroom
to begin a course built only as
introduction to political science
more than 200 students professors and
members of munich's upper crust
many of them nazi sympathizers were
waiting
within these years all the doctors or
all these soldiers are all the
lawyers who were in the regime they were
interested to
to to not speak about it and to cover
it voglin gave them no
quarter launching a scathing critique
entitled hitler and the germans
in which he called national socialists
including some of his fellow professors
brown scum former vogueland assistant
tilo
schaubert was there so he had he had no
fear about the consequences he thought
it's very important
to tell the truth
the verbal assault came after a group of
vogelen students went to the professor's
vacation hut in remote southern bavaria
there they told him they wanted him to
do something
to publicly counter what they saw as an
attempt by germany's prominent news
magazine der spiegel
to gloss over the carnage left behind by
hitler's dictatorship
and to challenge the popular belief that
hitler was a wicked mastermind
who somehow hypnotized an innocent
german people
with sly propaganda in lecture after
lecture
volkland methodically laid out his case
that german elites particularly
intellectuals were in his words
extraordinarily stupid
and ethically rotten for indirectly
supporting
the third reich with their silence while
millions of jews were forced to emigrate
or were systematically put to death as
the world was plunged into war
in their name
vogtland repeatedly stressed it wasn't
merely the person of hitler
but the germans themselves who made the
catastrophe possible
hitler
hitler's deputy rudolf hess infamously
told a rally in nuremberg in 1934
that hitler is germany just as germany
is hitler
for germans that was voglin's
uncomfortable point too
or as the british historian ian kershaw
once observed
the road to auschwitz was built by hate
but paved with indifference
how was it possible voglin asked that a
nation of 70 billion people
was so taken in by an idiot like adolf
hitler
what he aimed at was immunizing
students against
intellectual forces of
destruction that once had
made possible hitler's rise to power
accepting one's past professing truth
and resisting corruption vogueland
argued or prerequisites for germany to
become a truly democratic society
reaction to the lectures was hostile
voglin was attacked by the german press
one newspaper called him an arrogant
sectarian
whose lectures reflected a systematic
hatred of germans
voglin however had ignited a public
debate
not over the collective guilt of a
nation but the responsibility
of individual germans who knew what was
going on
and did nothing years later in recording
thoughts for his autobiography
vogueland talked about his deep-seated
hatred of bloodthirsty ideologies like
national socialism
i have an aversion against killing
people for the fun of it
the fund consists in gaining
a pseudo identity through asserting
one's power
optimally by killing somebody a pseudo
identity as a substitute
for the human self that has been lost
spent most of his life warning about the
dangers of isms
nazism marxism fascism positivism
the idea that the only authentic
knowledge is based on scientific
evidence
he was especially concerned with the
kind of ideological mass
movements that nurture fanatics into
believing violence can be justified
in the name of creating utopia and
that he now has a different type with
his viennese
accent vogelen could be magnetic and
intimidating
funny puzzling and combative yet
sociable all at the same time
to former nazis his demeanor was a mask
he said whenever i encounter one of the
germans who could have been
in power during the third reich i walk
up to them i walk up to them with a big
smile on my face
i shake hands with them and i think and
what kind of son of a bitch
are you now
voglin remains an inspiration to modern
day conservatives in the united states
and europe
his works have been translated into
multiple languages
and his thoughts have turned up on
dozens of web pages and social media
such as youtube the late william f
buckley even adopted one of vogueland's
favorite sayings about the foolishness
of eminentizing the eschaton of trying
to create heaven on earth with
revolutionary action
vogelen taught that building utopias is
the promise of
all ideological movements such as
communism
it's the idea of get it here and get it
now
on earth as a substitute for the concept
of christian salvation
in eternity grasp paradise
even if it means shedding someone else's
blood to do it
in 15 books more than 100 journal
articles
as well as hundreds of lectures
vogueland plumbed
the primal relationship between religion
and man
and how that connection affects politics
former student klaus barish was struck
by voglin's teaching
that laws and institutions are rooted in
what human beings do
what they think and how they feel
professor and university
over a 60-year career vogueland urged
audiences to be self-critical
and oppose evil at all cost his knack
for speaking truth to power
alienated colleagues and politicians but
made him a hero to students
and as a youngster i thought for a
scientist who would exclaim
explain to me this catastrophe and
florian sattler who was only four years
old when hitler killed himself
was a student who found answers in
vogueland's observations
that someone like hitler can only arise
from a spiritually derelict society
that he said political catastrophe
of the of the communists or the national
social
type cannot occur
unless there is something in the spirit
of the ancestors in the in the centuries
before
vogueland's conclusions troubled
generations
his vexing academic work almost cost him
his life
but he lived to be regarded as one of
the world's great thinkers
a philosopher of consciousness whose
research is helping modern day political
scientists
better understand cheryl
over the years while many of his
university colleagues prefer teaching
graduate students
eric voglin was most alive standing
before a class of
undergraduates tilo schaubert
remembers vogelen's ability to turn
dense philosophical subjects
into classroom theater he struck us by
by his youthful mind his useful behavior
in the lecture room he he really was a
great performer
it was a theoretical event to
watch him giving a lecture
timothy fuller discovered vogland as a
college freshman
he was one of the people who introduced
me to the fact that
almost all important political thinkers
in the history of western political
thought
had connected politics and religion
and what happens when powerful political
movements
turn into virtual religions nurturing
the notion among true believers
that non-believers are worthy of
sacrifice in the name of the greater
glory of the cause
voguen is one of those great 20th
century
prophets or voices in the wilderness in
a sense
warning us and calling our attention to
the abyss which is opened up by that
sense of
unlimited human power
for vogueland when a society becomes
self-appointed
as representatives of humanity and
empowered to destroy the rest of
humanity in order to purify it
that's no longer a state of order but a
profound state of disorder
it was the philosopher hegel who
referred to the majority of people as
victims on the slaughter bench of
history
scholars in fact calculate that during
the 20th century alone
governments killed nearly 120 million
of their own citizens marxist
governments
95.2 million by comparison
war inflicted deaths totaled another
35.7
million people he was someone who gave
cognizance to the fact that
the 20th century is probably the
bloodiest century in human history
human existence voglin believed depends
on man being able to survive what he
called climates of opinion
that build iron curtains of the soul
that in turn keep society from asking
questions
about the misdeeds of its leaders
getting to those root ideas required
exhaustive research
like plato vogelen referred to himself
as a philosopher
and scientist trying to make sense of
reality by using empirical evidence
voglin was not opposed to science in
fact he called himself a scientist
and at one point considered making a
career of mathematics
his best known book was the new science
of politics
vogueland's big achievement was that his
new science of politics was more
than an elemental analysis of power or
group processes
it was a new way to look at man an
analysis that rested on the greek and
christian visions of philosophy
as well as a careful study of the
origins of christianity
and its influences on thinkers and
political leaders down through the ages
while he was a non-practicing christian
voglen was nonetheless a man of faith
who also authored detailed explorations
of the bible
those studies led him during a 1963
interchange
with famed historian arnold hoinby to
question the very use
of the word religion
i'm very uh doubtful about the value of
using the term religion at
all you see for the larger part of the
history of mankind nobody knew that they
had religion
and in the uh bible for instance the
term does not occur at all
no matter how it was defined vogueland
knew
more about religion than most believers
eric hermann wilhelm voglin was born in
cologne on january 3rd
1901 and grew up in vienna
as a child he lost himself in the fairy
tales of hans christian anderson
an embarrassing incident in a high
school science class however
may have seared his intellect with a
lifelong obsession
for knowing all he could about
everything he studied
when a teacher asked him to identify a
source of citric acid
young eric drew a blank on the answer
squeezing lemons
and i thought there was some complicated
chemical process involved which had
something to do with the chemical
composition
and then i was thundered down as an
egregious jackass
because i didn't know that cytos acid is
obtained
by squeezing lemons i got a bad grade in
that semester
voglin went on to study political
science at the university of vienna
where he was awarded a doctorate in
1922.
for three years during the late twenties
he was a rockefeller scholar
at columbia harvard yale and the
university of wisconsin
followed by a year in france before
returning to vienna where he served on
the law faculty at the university of
vienna
in march 1938 the nazis forced
administrators to fire him
because he told classes nazi race
theories were propaganda
aimed at demonizing jews only hours
after voglin finished one lecture
a gestapo agent showed up at his front
door
there came a gestapo man to the door and
said
he wanted to talk to my husband and i
said he's not home
and he said tell him to come home and
because we want to have your
passports and my
and i said yes i will do what we can
and i went to my brother's office and he
said you are lucky
your passports came in this morning with
the swiss
visa in it already
so eric packed his two bags
and left the house immediately
and um
i told him that there was a train going
to zurich only the next morning
and i told him not ever
to to to not to try to come back home
during the night rather to sit it out in
a coffee house
because these people were after him eric
first
then lissy fled to switzerland
eventually emigrating to the united
states
where he joined the harvard faculty as a
part-time lecturer
at harvard boglin began what would
become the project of a lifetime
he said i'm writing a history of
political ideas and i said
where do you start or he said from the
beginning everything
everything that idea grew into a 4
000 page manuscript the history of
political ideas
he moved from the notion of
political ideas being a series of
abstract thoughts which then have
applications in this society or another
to trying to get to the experiences
behind the dominant
symbolisms of societies
to do that voglin traced symbolism
through antiquity
trajan's column in rome for instance is
a good example of his theories
about how consciousness is formed the
columns bar relief panels
depict victories by the first century
roman emperor trajan
telling the glorified stories of real
events that
in turn formed the only version
available
of what happened on the battlefield
vogueland went further back to the
prehistoric cave drawings in plato's
parable of the cave
the story of prisoners chained to the
floor their backs to a fire
facing a wall where shadowy stick
figured depictions of life on the
outside
were projected on the wall in front of
them
according to plato's story when a
prisoner escapes and is drawn to the
light of the outside world
he discovers a different version of
reality
a vision of the divine good drawing on
plato's story
voglin reasoned that since governments
rest on symbols of shared experience
if their interpretations of reality go
to pieces
their institutions fall apart too
