41 Facts About Dietrich Eckart

Dietrich Eckart was a participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and died on 26 December of that year, shortly after his release from Landsberg Prison, of a heart attack.

Dietrich Eckart was elevated to the status of a major thinker upon the establishment of Nazi Germany in 1933.

Dietrich Eckart was born on 23 March 1868 in Neumarkt, about 32 kilometres southeast of Nuremberg in the Kingdom of Bavaria, the son of Christian Dietrich Eckart, a royal notary and lawyer, and his wife Anna, a devout Catholic.

Dietrich Eckart's mother died when he was ten years old and he was expelled from several schools.

Dietrich Eckart initially studied law at Erlangen, later medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and was an eager member of the fencing and drinking Student Korps.

Dietrich Eckart decided in 1891 to become a poet, playwright, and journalist.

Later on, Dietrich Eckart developed an ideology of a "genius superman", based on writings by the Volkisch author Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and by philosopher Otto Weininger.

Dietrich Eckart saw himself following the tradition of Heinrich Heine, Arthur Schopenhauer and Angelus Silesius.

From 1907 Dietrich Eckart lived with his brother Wilhelm in the Doberitz mansion colony west of the Berlin city limits.

Dietrich Eckart's transgressions are therefore noble, and Gynt returns to reclaim the innocence of his youth.

In 1898, for instance, Dietrich Eckart wrote and had published a poem extolling the virtues and beauty of a Jewish girl.

Dietrich Eckart was largely responsible for the party buying the Munchener Beobachter in December 1920, when he arranged for the loan which paid for it.

Dietrich Eckart created the Nazi slogan Deutschland erwache, and wrote the lyrics for the anthem based on it, the "Sturm-Lied".

In 1921 Dietrich Eckart promised 1,000 Marks to everyone who could cite one Jewish family whose sons had served longer than three weeks at the front during the First World War.

Dietrich Eckart was instrumental in creating the persona of Adolf Hitler as one of the future dictator's most important early mentors, and was one of the first propagators of the "Hitler Myth".

Dietrich Eckart, who was 21 years older than Hitler, became the father-figure to a group of younger volkisch men, including Hitler and Hermann Esser, and acted as mediator between the two when they clashed, telling Esser that Hitler, whom he esteemed as the DAP's best speaker, was the far superior man.

Dietrich Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and helping to establish theories and beliefs of the Party.

Dietrich Eckart lent Hitler books to read, gave him a trench coat to wear, and made corrections to Hitler's style of speaking and writing.

Hitler and Dietrich Eckart had many things in common, including their interest in art and politics, that both thought of themselves primarily as artists, and both were prone to depression.

Although, unlike Hitler, Dietrich Eckart did not believe that Jews were a race apart, by the time the two met, Hitler's goal was "the total removal of the Jews", and Dietrich Eckart had expressed the opinion that all Jews should be put on a train and driven into the Red Sea.

Dietrich Eckart espoused that any Jew who married a German woman should be jailed for three years, and executed if he repeated the crime.

Paradoxically, Dietrich Eckart believed that the existence of humanity depended on the antithesis between Aryans and Jews, that one could not exist without the other.

Dietrich Eckart provided Hitler with entre into the Munich arts scene.

Dietrich Eckart introduced Hitler to the painter Max Zaeper and his salon of like-minded antisemitic artists, and to the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann.

Kapp and Dietrich Eckart knew each other - Kapp had donated 1,000 Marks in support of Dietrich Eckart's weekly magazine.

Dietrich Eckart introduced Hitler to wealthy potential donors connected to the volkisch movement.

In Berlin where Dietrich Eckart was better connected with the rich and powerful, they raised considerable funds, including from senior officials of the Pan-German League.

In June 1921, while Hitler and Dietrich Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin, a mutiny broke out within the Nazi Party in Munich.

Dietrich Eckart would advise Hitler about the people who had gathered around him and the Party, such as the virulently antisemitic Julius Streicher, the publisher of the quasi-pornographic Der Sturmer.

Dietrich Eckart always added that one could not hope for a triumph of National Socialism without giving one's support to a man like Streicher.

Not only were there personal disagreements about the behavior of each towards a woman, but Hitler was annoyed that Dietrich Eckart didn't believe that a putsch launched in Munich could turn into a successful national revolution.

Dietrich Eckart stayed close to Eckart intellectually and emotionally, and continued to visit him in the mountains.

On 9 November 1923, Dietrich Eckart participated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch.

Dietrich Eckart was arrested and placed in Landsberg Prison along with Hitler and other party officials, but was released shortly thereafter due to illness.

Dietrich Eckart then went to Berchtesgaden to recuperate but died a month later.

Dietrich Eckart took upon himself this philosophy, and considered that the role of genius was to rid the world of the baleful influence of Jews.

Dietrich Eckart died in Berchtesgaden on 26 December 1923, shortly after his release from Landsberg Prison from a heart attack compounded by alcoholism and morphine addiction.

Dietrich Eckart was buried in Berchtesgaden's old cemetery, not far from the eventual graves of Nazi Party official Hans Lammers and his wife and daughter.

In March 1938, when Passau commemorated Eckart's 70th birthday at Oberhaus Castle, the Lord Mayor announced not only the creation of a Dietrich-Eckart-Foundation but the restoration of the room where Eckart had been imprisoned.

Dietrich Eckart has been called the spiritual father of Nazism, and indeed Hitler acknowledged him as being its spiritual co-founder.

Dietrich Eckart viewed World War I not as a holy war between Germans and non-Germans, as it was sometime interpreted toward the end of the conflict, but as a holy war between Aryans and Jews, who, according to him, plotted the fall of the Russian and German empires.