Background
Adolf Bartels was born in Wesselburen on 15 November 1862.
Adolf Bartels was born in Wesselburen on 15 November 1862.
Bartels edited the literary journal Deutsches Schriftum (German Writings) until 1933, which specialized in anti-semitic research and articles.
(It was a eulogy of the nascent Nazi movement.)
1924Lessing und die Juden
1918Die Berechtigung des Antisemitismus
1921Jüdische Herkunft und Literaturwissenschaft
1925Bartels was the founder of a new pseudo-science which flourished under the Third Reich, namely the racial evaluation of literature. In his ferreting out of Jewish and crypto-Jewish authors - according to Bartels, writers like Thomas and Heinrich Mann or Hermann Hesse belonged in the latter category - the veteran literary historian relied on tracing family trees, photographs of ancestors as well as authors, on place of birth and of work, language, style, family and social milieu. A Jewish-sounding name, the use of symbols reminiscent of freemasonry, the mere fact of having written for papers and journals like the Berliner Tageblatt or Simplicissimns or having advocated liberal views might be adduced as proof of the ‘Semitic’ character of an author's work.