Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE UNHAPPIEST OF ALL MEN 365from Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who had violently insisted that hewas a Christian; though Rosenberg still approved a 'positive'Christianity — that is, a Christianity removed from all tradi-tion — hebrought the party a reputation for godlessness. The National Socialistswere violently attacked, Catholic bishops forbade holy rites over thegraves of party members, and all this might have been avoided if in thecourse of a year Hitler had taken a look into Rosenberg's manuscript.But he took the consequences on himself. Rosenberg wrote him a letterin which he offered to give up his position as editor-in-chief of theVolkischer Beobachter, even to resign from the party; Hitler wrotediagonally across the letter: 'Doesn't enter my head. You stay!' His ownmanuscript on the interrelations between art and race, however, did notsee the light; he thought it better not to make enemies in this field too.Hence we possess no written and developed definition of the beautifulby Hitler — since definition has never been his strong point, it isperhaps no great loss. In his speeches he occasionally attempted aclarification of beauty as 'functionalism fulfilled with crystal clarity.'The phrase has an empty sound; it is intended to convey, for example,that the form of the Greek roof, which he felt to be perfect, is explainedby the vital needs of all Aryan or Nordic peoples, who in the rainy,snowy regions of the cold and temperate zones needed the slanting roof.This accounts for Hitler's furious fight against cube-shaped houses, ortowers with flat roofs; the fight against the flat sun roof was conductedwith almost religious ardor, for this roof was 'Oriental, Semitic,' andabsolutely 'un-German.' Hitler declared everything which ran counter tohis penchant for simplification and massiveness to be a product offoreign, hence hostile, race will; particularly the whole 'artistic andcultural stammering of the Cubists, Futurists, and Dadaists.' For him, allsearching after new, unaccustomed forms is only a sign of the decay ofthe Aryan forces among modern peoples, who were no longer strongenough to feel the value of traditional classical forms.'What we experience today,' he said in January, 1928, 'is thecapitulation of the intellectual bourgeoisie to insolent Jewish composers,poetasters, painters, who set miserable trash in front of ourpeople and have brought things to such a pass that for sheer cow-