Willibald Hentschel was a German writer and political agitator of the agrarian and volkisch movement.
15 Facts About Willibald Hentschel
1.
2.
Willibald Hentschel sought to renew the Aryan race through a variety of schemes, including selective breeding and polygamy, all within a firmly rural setting.
3.
Willibald Hentschel's father was a textile factory owner from Burgenstein.
4.
Willibald Hentschel used his knowledge to patent an indigo dye, earning a fortune which enabled him to buy two knightly estates in Silesia and concentrate his efforts on political ventures.
5.
Willibald Hentschel was a co-founder of the German Social Party in 1889, an anti-Semitic group led by Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg.
6.
In 1903, Willibald Hentschel founded the anti-Semitic journal Hammer together with Theodor Fritsch.
7.
In 1904 Willibald Hentschel published the book Mittgart in which he outlined a scheme to send 1000 ethnically pure women and 100 men picked for their military and athletic prowess to large country estates to procreate.
8.
Willibald Hentschel argued that in time the countryside would be the only place were pure Germans would be found, with the cities housing the biologically unfit who would die away quickly.
9.
Willibald Hentschel's scheme attracted criticism not only from religious leaders but from fellow racial nationalists who were outraged by what they saw as an attack on the institution of the family.
10.
Willibald Hentschel for his part was an atheist and belonged to the tendency within German nationalism that was strongly opposed to Christianity.
11.
Willibald Hentschel called for these Germans to be Artamanen, a portmanteau word he created from art and manen, Middle High German words meaning 'agriculture man' and indicating his desire for a retreat from urban life to an idyllic rural past.
12.
Willibald Hentschel's vision inspired the creation of the Artaman League youth movement in which the likes of Heinrich Himmler and Richard Walther Darre were active.
13.
On 1 August 1929, Willibald Hentschel joined the Nazi Party as member number 144,649 although, whilst his ideas about eugenics were influential on Nazism as an ideology, he had no real influence in the party personally.
14.
Willibald Hentschel was married with Hellen Zimmermann and had five daughters.
15.
Willibald Hentschel had many followers, including his teacher Ernst Haeckel, who shared his views on racial hygiene.