The Stefan George Circle

Recent discussions of the concept of the Deep State have evoked curiosity about forerunners. One such precursor, or so its would seem, was the Stefan George Circle, an elite secret society that formed around the German poet. Their aim was a conservative reshaping of the country based on the concept of Geheimes Deutschland or Secret Germany. It has been regarded as either a forerunner of Nazism or a conservative bulwark against it. (George himself resettled in Switzerland so as to avoid any contact with Hitler's emergent regime.). 

The members of the seemingly homophile fellowship were attracted by the aesthetic experience of discovering George's poetry, together with their veneration of his life and work. The ritual meetings were held by a conclave of the elect: in the first reunion after World War I, at Pentecost 1919, George assembled twelve disciples in Heidelberg, where the future historian Ernst Kantorowicz was solemnly inducted as a member of the community.

Stefan George aimed at creating a mystical, anti-modernist society, distinguished by its aesthetic superiority and within the framework of clear hierarchies. He fostered the cult of an idealistic Secret Germany (Geheimes Deutschland), a vision of an inner entity or mystical core as outlined by the cultural philosophers Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn. Geheimes Deutschland was also the title of a poem published in George's late work Das Neue Reich ("The New Empire") in 1928, in which he proclaimed a new form of an intellectual and spiritual aristocracy, to some extent indebted to Friedrich Schiller's essay "On the Aesthetic Education of Man."

The transfiguration of a "German mind" below the surface of the actually-existing, profane German nation state has later been described as a model for the conservative German resistance to Nazism, culminating in the July 20 plot against Hitler's life. Indeed Alexander and Berthold von Stauffenberg had become acquainted with the Circle in 1923, shortly afterwards also their brother Claus who became a great admirer of George's work. According to some sources, at his execution the leader spoke his last words, "Es lebe das Geheime Deutschland!" ("Long live Secret Germany!").

Show more reactions