75 Facts About Arthur Drews

Christian Heinrich Arthur Drews was a German writer, historian, philosopher, and important representative of German monist thought.

Arthur Drews was born in Uetersen, Holstein, in present-day Germany.

Arthur Drews was a disciple of Eduard von Hartmann who claimed that reality is the "unconscious World Spirit", expressed in history through religions and the formation of consciousness in the minds of philosophers.

Arthur Drews often provoked controversy, in part because of his unorthodox ideas on religion and in part because of his attacks on Nietzsche and passionate support of Wagner.

Arthur Drews rose to international prominence with his book The Christ Myth, by amplifying and publicizing the thesis initially advanced by Bruno Bauer, which denies the historicity of Jesus.

Arthur Drews urged a renewal of faith [Glaubenserneuerung] based on Monism and German Idealism.

Arthur Drews asserted that true religion could not be reduced to a cult of personality, even if based on the worship of the "unique and great personality" of a historical Jesus, as claimed by Protestant liberal theologians, which he argued was nothing more than the adaptation of the Great Man Theory of history promoted by Romanticism of the 19th century.

Arthur Drews was a reformer, and stayed involved in religious activism all his life.

Arthur Drews was, in his last few years, to witness and participate in an attempt by the Free Religion Movement to inspire a more liberal form of worship.

Arthur Drews reproached Wagner for his conversion to anti-semitic Christianity and his glorification of medieval sagas and spiritual chastity as the sign of a decadent, dying culture.

Arthur Drews posited that Wagner's "unending melody" only dramatizes theatrical posing and is hostile to the affirmation of vital Dionysian life forces.

Arthur Drews was a staunch supporter of Wagner and wrote many books and articles on Wagner's religious and nationalistic ideas, which are still considered by some scholars to be important works on the subject.

Arthur Drews embarked on a critique of Nietzsche, who was a lifelong critic of Christianity and Christian morality.

Arthur Drews's criticisms were never well received by academics nor by German society as a whole, since Nietzsche had become a national figure.

In 1904, Arthur Drews gave a critical lecture in Munich on the philosophy of Nietzsche, Nietzsches Philosophie.

Arthur Drews found his anchor in the monism of Eduard von Hartmann, professor of philosophy in Berlin.

Arthur Drews expanded his views in Die Religion als Selbst-bewusstsein Gottes: eine philosophische Untersuchung uber das Wesen der Religion,.

The absolute Spirit was not another separate entity, and Hartmann and Arthur Drews rejected the idea of any personal God and mind-matter dualism.

Arthur Drews accepted Kalthoff's ideas, but insisted that the original Christian socialism was religious, not economic.

Arthur Drews did become an acerbic critic of what he called the "faulty historical method" of academic liberal theologians.

Arthur Drews opposed the Romanticist cult of personality applied to Jesus in what he referred to as the Christ myth.

Arthur Drews rejected the attempt of liberal theologians like Albert Schweitzer to idolize a historical Jesus as a unique personality, which he asserted was the result of The Great Man Theory subjected to modern manipulations by scholars of the Historical Theology school.

Arthur Drews had been outspoken in presenting his views on religion with extreme clarity in Idea and Personality: Settlement of the Religious Crisis, Ch.

Arthur Drews asserted that mankind cannot let the present be still shackled by what he called "past superstitions of ancient times".

Arthur Drews outlined what he called the religion of the future, which he said must acknowledge the World-Spirit proclaimed by Hegel as God-mankind, which is God manifesting himself through history with human actors and oracles who are merely major agents.

Arthur Drews believed that religion was intimately linked to the prevalent beliefs of the social group and not just the expression of individual beliefs and faith.

Arthur Drews reflected on the history of the great faiths of the world, the European history of the 19th century, and nationalism.

Arthur Drews was especially drawn to Plotinus, who founded Neoplatonism 600 years after the time of Plato.

Arthur Drews thus managed to produce a modern system of philosophy joining the ancient idealism and monism of Plotinus's Neoplatonism and the modern historical idealism of Hegel, for whom the World-Spirit manifests itself in History.

Towards the end of his life, Arthur Drews started writing more explicitly on what the idea of a monist God means in the context of modern Germany in the 1930s.

Arthur Drews was intrigued by the alleged influence of ancient astronomy on the origins of religion, developed by the French Volney and Dupuis and promoted throughout the 19th century.

Arthur Drews included modern considerations on astromythical topics in some pages of his major books.

In 1923 Arthur Drews published a general introduction into astral mythology, Der sternhimmel in der Dichtung und Religion der Alten Volker und des Christentums, eine Einfuhrung in die Astralmythologie, and its special influence on early Christianity.

Arthur Drews's interest remained a professional expression of curiosity and admitted speculations on relations detected by intuition and finesse, and never replaced rigorous text and historical criticism.

Arthur Drews wrote a few more books on various aspects of Christianity where he systematically analyzes what he regarded as the mythical nature of the personages involved with Jesus Christ.

Arthur Drews was involved too deep into the subject to stop there, and went boldly further, exploring how Christianity could become a world religion without a historical founder or core group described in scripture.

Arthur Drews had published an introduction to astral mythology in the cultures of the Mediterranean and Iranian region up to imperial times, in order to decrease the above ignorance.

Arthur Drews himself was a product of this emerging opposition to Christianity, expressed in his lifelong concern about the state of the Christian churches.

One of Arthur Drews's concerns was about restoring the authenticity of religion in mankind.

Arthur Drews felt an urgent need to reform the structure of established religion, free it from its attachment to the primitive features of the early mythical Christianity.

Repeatedly, Arthur Drews came back to the same theme of reform and started thinking about the nature of religion in the future.

Arthur Drews was one of those scholars and intellectuals who were not averse to bringing their ideas to the public, especially, in his case, if it was for the cause of countering the influence of Christian churches.

Arthur Drews was a religious activist, willing to descend into the public forum, stand up for his views, and harangue the crowds.

Arthur Drews threw in his lot with both the Free Religion Association and the Monist Association, which were part of the Free Religion Movement.

In 1924 Arthur Drews, who was the leader of the Free Religion Society of Karlsruhe, joined a few other Societies of the Southwest to form a new Association of Free Religion for the Southwest, with a more religious and less political orientation than the other movements.

Arthur Drews had been a philosopher and an historian of philosophy, with a proselytizing drive for promoting his brand of idealistic monism.

Arthur Drews had seen in early Christianity a religion of promise of rebirth and transfiguration for a defeated and oppressed country, and the creation of a national myth giving hope to ancient occupied Palestinian Jews.

Arthur Drews thus seemed convinced that the unconscious World Spirit had moved from the Mediterranean to Germany, and the philosopher had to go along.

Arthur Drews concluded that free religion was "the very expression of the being of our German people".

Arthur Drews is prepared to admit the existence of Christ, as the Logos.

Arthur Drews was opposed to the theology of ancient Hebraism as much as he is opposed to Christianity, and even more opposed to liberal Protestantism.

Arthur Drews shared the intense belief with the German elite of the sublimity of German consciousness, again re-iterated in his book Das Wort Gottes.

Arthur Drews was an influential Nazi party member, but one who never gained the trust of Hitler and never received a position from the Nazi government.

Arthur Drews contends that Poewe, sharing "Hauer's sense of grandiosity", portrays Hauer as more significant than he was, making of "Hauer a 'truer' exemplar of Nazism than its own institutional incarnation".

Arthur Drews remained hostile to any religion based on a historic personality cult and, late in life, was confronted with the practical difficulty of translating his lofty ambitions to the simpler drives and requirements of a mass movement.

Arthur Drews objected to the racist assumption in antisemitism in an article, Jesus the Aryan where he paid homage to the courage and moral fiber of the Jews through history and to the ancient Hebrew prophets who transformed the primitive god of wrath into a god of mercy in the Psalms, Proverbs, and Wisdom books:.

Contrary to other Free Religion devotees who parroted the slogans of the NSDAP propaganda, Arthur Drews engaged in a real discussion with Jewish intellectuals and scholars.

Arthur Drews was able to deliver a tribute to the Jewish faith, which, on one hand, brought to light its differences with Free Religion, but showed respect to people who had other thoughts.

Late in his life, with the rise of the Nazi Party and Nazi propaganda, Arthur Drews appears to have taken up more nationalistic and racist theological positions, which centered "true" theological experience in German pride.

Arthur Drews likewise served as the primary advisor for Eugen Diederichs Verlag, which was a focal point for the rise of extreme conservatism, nationalism, and antisemitism.

Arthur Drews died on 19 July 1935 in Illenau, Achern, Baden at the age of 70.

Arthur Drews stressed the following facts: Arthur Drews highlighted that Drews, during his life, had been an irritant, continually encroaching on the turf of many specialists in German universities: in theology, philology, astronomy, mythology, music criticism, and psychology.

Arthur Drews had been regarded as a maverick; his philosophy stood outside of academia, which didn't accept his dilettantism.

Arthur Drews created no school and had no followers in Germany.

Arthur Drews had to remain a teacher in his Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe for the rest of his life.

Arthur Drews met with the studied indifference [das Ignorieren] and the silence [das Totschweigen] of the academic pundits, while his international public popularity and press coverage were increasing.

Arthur Drews was mentioned in the German media mostly for having advocated the need for a religion renewal, and in the literature about Wagner and Nietzsche.

Arthur Drews's work was omitted or grossly misrepresented and discredited in major German reference books.

Arthur Drews had been fighting all his life for acceptance and recognition in Germany and for tenure at a university.

One has to understand why, at the end of his life, Arthur Drews was expressing a hope for a renewal of Germany.

Hoffers, for the sake of fairness, remarked that Arthur Drews never was a member of the Nazi party, and spoke out early against growing antisemitism in the 1920s.

Arthur Drews never was involved in any action against Jewish intellectuals, artists, and academics.

Arthur Drews was a polyglot and collected Japanese art prints.

Arthur Drews was a gifted, energetic man, with a tremendous capacity for work.

Arthur Drews gained the esteem of van den Bergh van Eysinga, the leader of the Dutch Radical school, who viewed him as a" good guy".