title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: A strong imperialist, Chamberlain was naturally a fervent supporter of "Weltpolitik", under which Germany sought to become the world's dominant power, which he justified on racist grounds. In 1904, when the German government committed the Herero and Namaqua Genocide against the Herero and Namaqua peoples in German South-West Africa (modern Namibia), Chamberlain congratulated Wilhelm in a letter for his genocidal policies, praising the Kaiser for his "war of extermination", which was "a fine example" of how Aryans should deal with "niggers". In a 1906 letter to Wilhelm, Chamberlain announced that due to miscegenation caused by the Jews, Britain, France, Austria and Russia were all declining powers, and only the "pure" German "Reich" was capable of protecting the "life-giving center of Western Europe" from the "Tartarized Russians, the dreaming weakly mongrels of Oceania and South America, and the millions of blacks, impoverished in intellect and bestially inclined, who even now are arming for the war of the races in which there will be no quarter given". Thus, Chamberlain wrote to Wilhelm, German "Weltpolitik" was a "sacred mission" to protect the superior races and cultures from the inferior. Chamberlain concluded his letter that the ideas of white supremacy had "not only justified the vast aggressions of Russia and England in the 19th century, but it also sanctions beforehand all that Germany may choose to appropriate in the twentieth".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In 1908, the Harden–Eulenburg affair badly damaged Wilhelm's reputation when Wilhelm's and Chamberlain's mutual friend Eulenburg was exposed in the press as a homosexual. Since Eulenburg had been the Emperor's best friend since 1886, the scandal led to much gossip all over the "Reich" about whether Wilhelm and Eulenburg had been more than just best friends. Eulenburg was quite open about being homosexual when he was in the company of his closest friends, and he and Wilhelm had been the very best of friends for 22 years, leading the British historian John C. G. Röhl to conclude it was very unlikely that Wilhelm was ignorant of Eulenburg's sexual orientation as he claimed after Eulenburg was outed. After Eulenburg was exposed, the Kaiser wrote him a very cold letter saying that he could not stand the company of homosexuals, as such their friendship was now over and he never wanted to see or hear from Eulenburg again. Chamberlain was never as close to Eulenburg as Wilhelm was, and seemed genuinely shocked to learn of the allegations that Eulenburg was homosexual. The Eulenburg affair played a role in Germany very similar to the Dreyfus affair in France, except that the victim in this case was the prominent anti-Semite Eulenburg. During the scandal, practically the entire "völkisch" movement came out in support of Eulenburg whom they portrayed as an Aryan heterosexual framed by false allegations of homosexuality by the Jews Max Bernstein and Magnus Hirschfeld. The German journalist Theodor Wolff wrote in 1906 about Eulenburg's role as one of Germany's chief anti-Semites:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: I bet you ten to one that it was that "skald" [Eulenburg], the friend and admirer of Gobineau, who first pointed his other friend, the Kaiser towards the racial prophet's most eager disciple, Houston Stewart Chamberlain. The mystical notion of the "race that will bring order to the world" found its way from Gobineau via Eulenburg and Chamberlain to the Kaiser, and this notion in turn gave rise to the thought that "the world should be healed by the German spirit."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In a letter to Chamberlain, Wilhelm wrote that entire scandal had emerged because of "Jewish cheek, slander and lies". In the same letter, an enraged Wilhelm told Chamberlain that Maximilian Harden, the German Jewish convert to Lutheranism and the journalist who had outed Eulenburg was a "loathsome, dirty Jewish fiend" and a "poisonous toad out of the slime of hell, a disgraceful stain on our "Volk"". However, despite his strongly held anti-Semitism and his frequently expressed wish to expel the entire German Jewish community, the Kaiser held back under the grounds that if he expelled all of the Jews from Germany, it would set the German economy back by a century, and as such, he had to grudgingly tolerate his Jewish subjects.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: As a part of his role as the "Evangelist of Race", Chamberlain toned down his anti-Catholicism in the first decade of the 20th century, realizing belatedly that his attacks on the Catholic Church in "The Foundations" had alienated the German Catholic community from his message.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: As a well-known public intellectual, Chamberlain wrote on numerous subjects in a vast array of newspapers and magazines. Besides attacking the Jews, one of the chief themes of Chamberlain's essays was the unity of German culture, language, race and art, and the need for the unity of German art with a racialized "Germanic Christianity".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The other major theme of Chamberlain's work was science and philosophy. Chamberlain was always keenly interested in modern science and saw himself as a scientist, but he was deeply critical of the claim that modern science could explain everything, believing there was a spiritual side to humanity that science could not explain. As such, Chamberlain believed that modern Germany was being destroyed by people losing their spiritual aspects owing to the materialist belief that science could explain all.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In his 1905 biography of one of his heroes, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, Chamberlain argued that Kant had shown the limits of rationalism and reason for understanding the world. Instead, Chamberlain argued that Kant had shown that the instinctive approach based on intuition was a far more valid way of understanding the world. Inevitably, Chamberlain's "Kantian" way of understanding science was used to attack the Jews, with Chamberlain writing:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In the same way, Chamberlain's 1912 biography of another of his heroes, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was used to pass on the same message. Chamberlain depicted Goethe as a "Kantian" man who had correctly embraced both the rational, scientific approaches to life and the instinctive, mystical approach to achieve a synthesis that embraced the best of both worlds. Again, Chamberlain used Goethe as a way of attacking the Jews, with Chamberlain claiming that Goethe had favored banning sexual relations between Aryans and Jews and was a man who would not have "suffered among us" the Jewish artists, journalists, and professors of modern Germany.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The German Jewish journal "Im deutschen Reich" wrote in a review of "Goethe" that Chamberlain had appropriated Goethe in "a polemic about race politics, racial hygiene and racial worth from the standpoint of a monomaniacal Judeophobia".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The policies of "Weltpolitik", especially the Tirpitz Plan, brought about a period of Anglo-German tension in the first years of the 20th century. Chamberlain, who detested the land of his birth, had no trouble taking sides in the emerging Anglo-German antagonism. Chamberlain, who came to hate Britain, expressed his approval of the writings of the Anglophobic and anti-Semitic German historian Heinrich von Treitschke, whose view of Britain as a grasping, greedy nation of cheap traders dishonestly vacuuming up the world's wealth was the same as his own. In another letter to Wilhelm, Chamberlain wrote: "There are periods, when history is, as it were, woven on a loom ... in such a way that the warp and woof are established and are essentially unalterable; but then come times when the threads are introduced for a new fabric, when the time of material and the design must first be determined. ... We find ourselves in such a time today."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain declared to Wilhelm that Germany now had to become the world's greatest power, both for its own good and for the good of the rest of the world. In his letter, Chamberlain dismissed France as a second-rate nation that could only fall further; Russia was a nation of "stupid" Slavs which was only just being held together because Nicholas II had German blood; without the German blood in the House of Romanov "nothing would remain but a decaying "matière brute"" in Russia; and Britain was clearly declining into a bottomless pit of greed, ineffective democratic politics and unrestrained individualism. Chamberlain was very anti-American and called the United States a "Dollar dynasty", writing:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: From dollars only dollars can come, nothing else; spiritually America will live only so long as the stream of European spiritual power flows there, not a moment longer. That part of the world, it may be proven, creates sterility, it has as little of a future as it has a past.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain concluded his letter to Wilhelm that: "The future progress of mankind depends on a powerful Germany extending far across the earth." To this end, Chamberlain advocated German expansionism both in Europe and all over the world; building the High Seas Fleet which would break the British mastery of the seas; and restructuring German society along the lines advocated by the extreme right-wing "völkisch" Pan-German League.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In August 1914, he started suffering from a progressive paralysis of the limbs. At the end of the war, Chamberlain's paralysis had already befallen much of his body; his chronically bad health had reached its final stage. By the time World War I started in 1914, Chamberlain remained British only by virtue of his name and nationality. When the war started, Chamberlain tried to enlist in the German Army, but was turned down on the account of his age (then 58) and bad health. In August 1914, Chamberlain wrote a letter to his brother, Basil Hall Chamberlain, explaining why he had sided with his adopted country that read: "No war has ever been simpler than this; England has not for a moment reduced her efforts to do everything humanly possible to bring it about and to destroy every peaceful impulse. ... Germany's victory will not be England's ruin; quite the contrary, it is the only hope for England's rescue from the total ruin in which she now stands. England's victory will be terrible for the whole world, a catastrophe." The same month, Chamberlain published an essay celebrating Wilhelm II as an "Aryan soldier-king" and as a "Siegfried" who had embraced the "struggle against the corroding poison of Jewry". Chamberlain went on to call the war "a life-or-death struggle ... between two human ideals: the German and the un-German". Accordingly, the "Reich" must "for the next hundred years or more" strengthen all things German and carry out "the determined extermination of the un-German". Chamberlain happily welcomed the war, writing in September 1914 to his friend Prince Max of Baden: "I thank God that I have been allowed to experience these two exaltations—1870 and 1914—and that I was both times in Germany and saw the truth with my own eyes." In his 1914 essay, "Whose Fault Is the War?", Chamberlain blamed the war on France, Russia and especially Britain. Chamberlain argued though St. Petersburg and Paris were both seeking war, it was London who had masterminded the war, and the French and Russians were just British puppets. Initially Chamberlain expected the war to be over by the end of 1914, and was very disappointed when that did not occur. In 1916 he also acquired German citizenship. He had already begun propagandising on behalf of the German government and continued to do so throughout the war. His vociferous denunciations of his land of birth, it has been posited, were the culmination of his rejection of his native England's capitalism, in favour of a form of German Romanticism akin to that which he had cultivated in himself during his years at Cheltenham. The British historian John C. G. Röhl wrote the war made the "brutality in general and anti-Semitism in particular" of people like the Kaiser and Chamberlain "more intense".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: During World War I, Chamberlain published several propaganda texts against his country of birth—"Kriegsaufsätze" (Wartime Essays). In the first four tracts, he maintained that Germany is a nation of peace; England's political system is a sham, while Germany exhibits true freedom; German is the greatest and only remaining "living" language; and the world would be better off doing away with English and French-styled parliamentary governments in favour of German rule "thought out by a few and carried out with iron consequence". The final two discuss England and Germany at length. Chamberlain's basic argument was that democracy was an idiotic system as equality was a myth—humans were very different with different abilities and talents, so democratic equality where the opinions of one voter mattered much as the opinions of the next was a completely flawed idea. Quoting the French scientist Gustave Le Bon, Chamberlain wrote the vast majority of people were simply too stupid to properly understand the issues, and as such Germany with its rule by elites was a much better governed nation than France. In Germany, Chamberlain asserted, true freedom existed, as freedom came from the state alone which made it possible for society to function, not the individual as was the case in Britain and France, which Chamberlain claimed was a recipe for chaos. Field summarized Chamberlain's thesis "... the essence of German freedom was the willing submission as a matter of conscience to legitimately constituted authorities; it implied duty more than rights and was something spiritual and internal for which each moral being had to strive. Consigning 'liberty' to an inner, 'nonpolitical' moral realm, Chamberlain closed off any discussion of the specific conditions for a free society and simply asserted that freedom was perfectly compatible with an authoritarian system of government." Quoting—sometimes wildly out of context—various British, French and American authors, such as John Richard Green, William Edward Hartpole Lecky, John Robert Seeley, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Paul Bourget, Francis Delaisi, James Bryce, John Burgess, Woodrow Wilson, and H. G. Wells, Chamberlain argued that in democratic states, it was always big business that was really in charge; as such democracy was a fraud and democratic governments only served the rich; and democratic states only existed "to further the interests of money making all over the globe". Chamberlain's attacks on democracy as a sham designed to allow "Jewish plutocrats" to rule the world were not only very anti-British and anti-French, but also anti-American. Right from the start of the war, Chamberlain attacked all democratic governments in the world including the neutral United States as a fraud perpetrated by the Jews. Chamberlain wrote that America "is a hellish whirlpool, in which all the contradictions of the world, all the greed, envy and lust brew and simmer; a wild struggle of millions of ignorant egotists, men without ideas, ideals, or traditions, without shared values, without any capacity for sacrifice, an atomic chaos endowed with no true power of nature". Until the United States entered the war in 1917, the "Auswärtiges Amt" worked hard to prevent Chamberlain's essays with their strong anti-American content from appearing abroad out of the fear that they would offend opinion in America. Chamberlain's wartime writings also gained much attention – albeit of a highly negative sort – in his native Britain, with "The Times Literary Supplement" declaring: "The most ignorant of the Germans has not written greater nonsense." In 1915, an unauthorised translation of Chamberlain's wartime essays was published in London under the unflattering title of "The Ravings of a Renegade".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In his 1915 pamphlet "Deutschland und England" ("Germany and England"), Chamberlain vigorously took the side of his adopted land against the land of his birth. Chamberlain explained in "Germany and England" how the British were once noble Aryans like the Germans who lived in a perfect rigidly hierarchical, romantically rural "unmixed" society, but then starting in the 16th century capitalism had corrupted the English. Capitalism had turned the English into an urban nation dominated by a vulgar money-grubbing, philistine middle class incapable of any sort of culture. The beautiful English countryside, which Chamberlain claimed was once the home of an idyllic agrarian society, had become an ugly urban landscape full of polluting factories owned by greedy Jewish capitalists. Even worse in Chamberlain's opinion, capitalism had led the English into a process of racial degeneration, democracy and rule by the Jews. Chamberlain wrote with disgust how the sons of the English aristocracy "disappear from society to make money", leading to a warped "moral compass" on their part in contrast to Germany where the "Junkers" either tended to their estates or had careers in the Army. Chamberlain's discussion of Britain ended with the lament that his idealised "Merry Old England" no longer existed, with Chamberlain writing:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: We were merry, we are merry no longer. The complete decline of country life and the equally complete victory of God Mammon, the deity of Industry and Trade, have caused the true, harmless, refreshing merriness to betake itself out of England.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Germany by contrast in Chamberlain's view, had preserved its racial purity and by having an authoritarian government and a welfare state, had avoided both "laissez-faire" capitalism and Jewish rule. It was for this reason that Chamberlain alleged that Britain had started World War I in 1914 to destroy Germany. For all these reasons Chamberlain stated he had come to hate Britain and love Germany, as Germany had preserved everything that Chamberlain considered to be noble in humanity while Britain had long since lost its nobility of spirit. Chamberlain received the Iron Cross from the Kaiser, with whom he was in regular correspondence, in 1916. By this time, Chamberlain's obsessive anti-Semitism had reached the point that Chamberlain was suffering from nightmares in which he was kidnapped and sentenced to death by the Jews. In 1915, Chamberlain wrote proudly in a letter to a friend that: "My lawyer friend in Munich tells me there is no living being whom the Jews hate more than I." In another essay, Chamberlain wrote the "pure Germanic force" had to be saved from the "disgusting worm" (the phrase "disgusting worm" was often used by Wagner to describe the Jews). Chamberlain wrote the purpose of this "struggle" was "salvation from the claws of the un-German and anti-German", going on to quote from Wagner's 1850 anti-Semitic essay "Das Judenthum in der Musik" that "Against this devil's brood stands Germany as God's champion: Siegfried against the worm!"


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: During the war years, Chamberlain was one of the "annexationists" who wanted the war to end with Germany annexing most of Europe, Africa and Asia to give the "Reich" the "world power status" he believed it deserved. As such, Chamberlain worked closely with the Pan-German League, the Conservatives and the "völkische" groups to mobilise public support for the maximum war aims he sought. Chamberlain was a founding member of the Independent Commission for a German Peace, and in July 1915 he signed the Address of the Intellectuals, a petition signed by 1,347 teachers, writers, professors, and theologians asking the government to win the war in order to annex as much territory as possible. Much of this propaganda including Chamberlain's essays in support of the maximum war aims had a very strong anti-Semitic character, as Chamberlain claimed that it was the entire German Jewish community who were supposedly seeking a compromise peace to end the war, and were preventing the full mobilization of Germany's power that would allow the "Reich" to win the war. In a letter to his friend Prince Maximilian of Baden, Chamberlain wrote:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: I learned today from a man who is especially well-placed to observe these things—even when they go on secretly—that the Jews are completely intoxicated by their success in Germany—first from the millions they have gained through the war, then because of the praise showered on them in all official quarters, and thirdly from the protection they and their machinations enjoy from the censor. Thus, already they are beginning to lose their heads and reach a degree of insolence which may allow us to hope for a flood-tide of reaction. May God grant it!.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In October–November 1916, the so-called "Judenzählung" ("Jew count") was held by the German Army to examine the popular anti-Semitic claim that German Jews were "shirking" their duty to the Fatherland by avoiding war service. The "Jew count" revealed that in fact German Jews were disproportionately over-represented in the front-line units, as most German Jews were anxious to prove their German patriotism and love of the Fatherland by volunteering for front-line duty. Many young German Jewish men wished to rebut the anti-Semitic canard that they were not real Germans by fighting for the Fatherland, and thus showing that they loved Germany as much as their Gentile neighbors, hence the disproportionate number of German Jews on the front-line compared to their share of the German population. As the results of the "Jew count" did not please the two men in charge of High Command, namely Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff, the latter a "fanatical anti-Semite" who had been expecting the "Jew Count" to reveal that German Jews were disproportionally underrepresented on the front-line, the High Command issued a facetious statement saying that for the safety of the German Jewish community the "Jew count" could not be made public, as it would endanger the lives of German Jews. The implication that if people could see just how far German Jews were allegedly "shirking" their duty to the Fatherland, then pogroms would break out in Germany led to a major upsurge in anti-Semitism, which Chamberlain was quick to exploit.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In support of a harder line both in the war and on the home front, Chamberlain involved himself in the intrigues to oust Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg as Chancellor and replace him with the "hard man", Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. In Chamberlain's opinion, if only Germany were to wage the war more ruthlessly and brutally, then the war would be won. Chamberlain loathed Bethmann-Hollweg whom he saw as an inept leader who simply did not have the will to win. Chamberlain had an unbounded confidence in the ability of the Army and Navy to win the war, but on the home front, Chamberlain believed the "Reich" was "leaderless" as he viewed Bethmann-Hollweg as a Jewish "puppet" unwilling and unable to stop defeatism, corruption or the demand for more democracy. Besides supporting Tirpitz as Chancellor, Chamberlain was all for adopting unrestricted submarine warfare—even at the risk of provoking the United States into the war—as the best way of starving Britain into surrender. Chamberlain was also a very public supporter of Zeppelin raids to destroy British cities. After a discussion with his friend and admirer, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Chamberlain published a newspaper essay in July 1915 complaining that the government had imposed far too many restrictions on Zeppelin raids in order to save innocent British lives, and he argued that his country should bomb British cities with no concern for lives of civilians as ordinary British people deserved to die.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The campaign by the annexationists against Bethmann-Hollweg was in large part motivated by the fact that the annexationists believed that Bethmann-Hollweg was not one of them. Had Chamberlain or any of the other annexationists been aware of the secret September Programme of 1914, where Bethmann-Hollweg planned to announce his intentions for annexing much of Europe and Africa after the soon to be expected fall of Paris, they would have had a different opinion of Bethmann-Hollweg. Under the constitution of 1871, the "Reichstag" had limited powers, but one of those was the right to vote on the budget. In the 1912 "Reichstag" elections, the anti-militarist Social Democrats had won the largest number of seats in the "Reichstag". Thus Bethmann-Hollweg had to work with the SPD to get the budgets passed to finance the war. In August 1914, the government had been able to persuade the majority of the SPD to support the war on the grounds that Russia was supposedly about to attack Germany. The SPD broke into two; the Majority Social Democrats supported the war while the minority Independent Social Democrats stayed true to their pacifist beliefs and opposed the war. The Majority Social Democrats agreed to support the war to the extent it was portrayed as a defensive struggle against Russia, but the Majority SPD wanted nothing to do with the annexationists. Hence, Bethmann-Hollweg's refusal to support the annexationists in public was due to pragmatic political considerations, namely, his need for majority Social Democratic co-operation in the "Reichstag" as opposed to being against the annexationists as Chamberlain mistakenly believed. If the parties supporting annexationists, such as the Conservatives, National Liberals and Free Conservatives, had done better in the 1912 elections, Bethmann-Hollweg would almost certainly have taken a different line in public regarding the demands of the annexationists. Much of Chamberlain's strident, aggressive and embittered rhetoric reflected the fact that the annexationists were a minority in Germany, albeit a significant, vocal, well organised minority with many influential members inside and outside the government, but a minority nonetheless. The majority of the German people did not support the annexationists. Chamberlain regarded the refusal of the democratic parties like the left-wing SPD, the right-of-the-centre "Zentrum" and the liberal Progressives to join the annexationist movement as essentially high treason. In August 1916, there occurred what amounted to a military coup d'état when Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff informed Wilhelm and Bethmann-Hollweg that henceforward the Army would no longer obey either the Kaiser or the government, and that from now the Emperor and the Chancellor would now obey the Army. In July 1917 Hindenburg and Ludendorff had Bethmann-Hollweg dismissed and replaced with Georg Michaelis as Chancellor. Chamberlain's preferred candidate as Chancellor, Admiral Tirpitz, was passed over. Tirpitz was an intelligent, media-savvy, charismatic political intriguer with a desperate hunger for political power, but the duumvirate of Hindenburg and Ludendorff regarded Tirpitz as Chancellor as too much of a threat to their own power. In response to the firing of Bethmann-Hollweg, the democratic parties decided to protest by passing a peace resolution. The Reichstag Peace Resolution of July 1917—in which the SPD, "Zentrum" and the Progressives all joined forces to vote for a resolution asking the government to start peace talks at once on the basis of a return to the status quo of 1914—"inflamed the paranoia and desperation of the right. The annexationists prepared for a war to the knife against the Chancellor and domestic "traitors"." Chamberlain was disappointed that Tirpitz had not been appointed Chancellor; however, he was overjoyed with Bethmann-Hollweg's sacking and welcomed the military dictatorship of Hindenburg and Ludendorff as giving Germany the sort of government it needed. Chamberlain was always inclined to hero worship, and for him, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were the greatest of a long line of German heroes. Chamberlain wrote in 1917 that: "Had Hindenburg and Ludendorff stood on the first day in their rightful place, the peace would in all probability have been dictated in Paris before the end of 1914."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Besides being an annexationist who wanted to see the war end with Germany as the world's greatest power, Chamberlain also advocated a set of wide-ranging changes to German society intended to achieve a "rebirth" of Germany. Chamberlain wanted to see the Spirit of 1914 made permanent, to convert the wartime "Burgfrieden" ("peace within a castle under siege") into a peacetime "Volksgemeinschaft" (people's community). He also wanted a new economic and social system that would be a "third way" between capitalism and socialism to bring about the "Volksgemeinschaft" organized along corporatist lines. To achieve this, Chamberlain called for the end to any remaining democratic features the constitution of 1871 still possessed and the creation of a pure dictatorship; for the end of the capitalist system with the state to nationalize huge sections of the economy while at the same time respecting the right to private property; and for the militarization of society on a new scale. Chamberlain was somewhat vague about how this corporatist society would work in practice, but what he wanted was rule by an oligarchy of aristocrats, intellectuals, bureaucrats and military officers who would run a "planned economy" via "scientific management". The entire German people (except for the Jews, whom Chamberlain believed did not belong in Germany) were to be united by a common loyalty to the Emperor. A fanatical monarchist, Chamberlain saw the monarchy as the bedrock of German life, writing in his 1915 book "Politische Ideale": "Whoever speaks of a republic in Germany belongs on the gallows; the monarchical idea is here a holy law of life." At the same time, Chamberlain envisioned a Germany that would somehow remain the leading industrial power at the forefront of modern technology while at the same time become a romantic, agrarian society where ordinary people would work the land and retain their traditional deference to the aristocracy. Chamberlain was also vague about how this could be achieved, writing only that a "planned economy", "scientific management" and an economically interventionist state committed to social reforms would make it all possible.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: After Germany's diplomatic defeat in the Second Moroccan Crisis in 1911, Wilhelm II became the "Schattenkaiser" (the "Shadow Emperor"), an increasingly reclusive figure who was seen less and less in public. The war further reinforced Wilhelm's tendency to avoid the public spotlight as much as possible. In private, Chamberlain grew disillusioned with his friend, complaining that instead of being the "Aryan soldier king" leading the "Reich" to victory as he wanted and expected him to be, the Kaiser was a weak leader as the "Shadow Emperor" was hiding himself away in deep seclusion from the rest of Germany at his hunting lodges. Wilhelm's hiding himself away from his own people during the war did immense damage to the prestige of the monarchy, and if the Kaiser's seclusion did not make the November Revolution of 1918 inevitable, it at least made it possible. As a monarchist, Chamberlain was worried about how Wilhelm was hurting his own reputation, and often vainly urged the Kaiser to appear in public more often. Chamberlain wrote in 1916 that Wilhelm had an "absolute incapability for judging character" and was now being "forced to obey a Frankfurt pimp", the last being a disparaging reference to Bethmann-Hollweg. Chamberlain was always very careful to avoid attacking Wilhelm in public, but his violent press attacks against Bethmann-Hollweg caused something of a rift with the Kaiser who felt Chamberlain's very public criticism of the Chancellor was also an indirect attack on him. Nonetheless, despite the strains the war imposed on their friendship, Chamberlain and Wilhelm continued to write throughout the war, but pointedly did not meet in person anymore, though Chamberlain's increasing paralysis also played a part. Wilhelm wrote to Chamberlain on 15 January 1917, stating:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The war is a struggle between two "Weltanschauungen", the Teutonic-German for morality, right, loyalty and faith, genuine humanity, truth and real freedom, against ... the worship of Mammon, the power of money, pleasure, land-hunger, lies, betrayal, deceit and—last but not least—treacherous assassination! These two "Weltanschauungen" cannot be reconciled or tolerate one another, one must be "victorious", the other must "go under"!


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: England has fallen totally into the hands of the Jews and the Americans. A person does not understand this war unless he realizes that it is in the deepest sense the war of "Judentum" and its near relative Americanism for the control of the world—a war against Christianity, against "Bildung", moral strength, uncommercial art, against every idealist perspective on life, and for the benefit of a world that would include only industry, finance, and trade—in short, unrestricted plutocracy. All the other additional factors—Russian greed, French vanity, Italian bombast, the envious and cowardly spirit of the neutrals—are whipped up, made crazy; the Jew and the Yankee are the driving forces that operate consciously and in a certain sense have hitherto been victorious or at all events successful ... It is the war of modern mechanized "civilization" against the ancient, holy and continually reborn culture of chosen races. Machines will crush both spirit and soul in their clutches.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain continued to believe right up until the end of the war that Germany would win only if the people willed victory enough, and this sort of ideological war between "German idealism" vs. "Jewish materialism" could only end with one side utterly crushing the other. In the last two years of the war, Chamberlain became obsessed with defeating the "inner enemy" that he believed was holding Germany back. In this regard, Chamberlain frequently asserted that Germany was not one nation, but two; on one side, the "patriots" like Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, General Erich Ludendorff, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, Wolfgang Kapp, J. F. Lehmann and Count von Reventlow; and on the other, the "traitors" which included people like Philipp Scheidemann, Eduard David and Matthias Erzberger. No compromise between these two Germanies was possible or desirable, Chamberlain argued, and one would have to be destroyed. Chamberlain's wartime writings against the "inner enemy" anticipated the "stab-in-the-back legend" which emerged after 1918. Chamberlain was a founding member of both the extreme-right, anti-Semitic "Deutschlands Erneuerung" newspaper, and of the Fatherland Party in 1917. The character of the Fatherland Party was well illustrated by an infamous incident in January 1918 when at a Fatherland Party rally in Berlin, a group of disabled war veterans were invited to debate the Fatherland Party's speakers. The wounded veterans, including men who were paralyzed, blinded, missing limbs, etc. all declared that they were now against the war and had become pacifists. The crippled veterans deplored the Fatherland Party's militarism and demand for war to go until victory, regardless of how many more would have to die or end up living with destroyed bodies. The ultra-nationalists of the Fatherland Party were so enraged by what the crippled veterans had to say that the audience stormed the stage, and savagely beat the disabled veterans senseless. Chamberlain, who lived in Bayreuth. was not present during the Berlin rally, but expressed his approval of what had happened when he heard of it.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: During the war, most Germans saw Britain as the main enemy, and so Chamberlain's status as the Englishman who supported the "Reich" made him an even more famous celebrity in Germany than he had been before 1914. Chamberlain's wartime essays were widely read. The first set of essays sold 160,000 copies within six months of publication while the second set sold 75,000 copies within six weeks of publication. Between 1914 and 1918 about 1 million copies of Chamberlain's essays were sold, making Chamberlain one of Germany's best read writers during the war. In December 1915, it was estimated that between the direct sales of Chamberlain's essays and reprints in newspapers, at least 3 million people had read Chamberlain's war-time writings. Such was the power of Chamberlain as a public figure that in August 1916 the German Jewish industrialist Walther Rathenau—whom Chamberlain had often accused of profiteering—mailed Chamberlain a copy of his bank balance sheets, which showed that Rathenau was in fact getting poorer as a result of the war, and politely asked Chamberlain to stop accusing him of war profiteering. Rathenau's appeal made no impression, and Chamberlain continued to accuse Rathenau of war profiteering right until he was assassinated in 1922. In 1917 Chamberlain wrote about the liberal "Frankfurter Zeitung" newspaper: "No knowledgeable person, can doubt that the enemy is at work among us ... whenever England has something up her sleeve against the interests of Germany, she uses the "Frankfurter Zeitung"." Bernhard Guttmann, the editor of the "Frankfurter Zeitung" sued Chamberlain for libel about that article. In August 1918, the sensational libel trial which attracted much media attention opened. The "Frankfurter Zeitung"'s lawyers were Conrad Haussmann and Hertz while Chamberlain was defended by Heinrich Class and Adolf Jacobsen. On 16 August 1918, the trial ended with the judge ruling that Chamberlain was indeed guilty of libel and fined him 1,500 marks. The guilty verdict set off a storm in right-wing circles, who quickly held several successful fund-raisers that raised the necessary 1,500 marks to pay Chamberlain's fine.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In November 1918, Chamberlain was completely shattered and horrified by Germany's defeat in the war, a defeat he believed to be impossible, as well as by the November Revolution, which had toppled his beloved monarchy. Adding to his bitterness, Chamberlain was now so paralyzed that he could no longer leave his bed, something that he believed to be the result of poisoning by the British secret service. Chamberlain saw both the defeat and the revolution of 1918 as the work of the Jews, writing in 1919 that Germany was now under the "supremacy of the Jews". In his last years, Chamberlain's anti-Semitic writings grew ever more violent and bloodthirsty as Chamberlain became even more intensely anti-Semitic than he had been before 1918. In March 1920, Chamberlain supported the Kapp Putsch against the Weimar Republic, which he called the "Judenrepublik" ("Jewish Republic"), and was even more embittered by its failure. The Kapp putsch was defeated by a general strike called by the Social Democrats which shut down the entire German economy. A young "völkisch" activist Josef Stolzing-Cerny and a Chamberlain protégé who had participated in the Kapp putsch wrote to Chamberlain after its failure: "Unfortunately Kapp was not all 'the man with the lion heart', much rather the man with the beer heart, for he continually used all his energies befuddling his brain with alcohol. ... In the same situation a Bismarck or a Napoleon would have hunted the whole Jewish-socialist republic to the devil." Stolzing-Cerny went on to criticize Kapp for not unleashing the "Freikorps" Marinebrigade Ehrhardt which had taken Berlin against the Jews of Berlin, instead ordering the "Freikorps" to keep order. After the failure of the putsch, Chamberlain no longer considered Wolfgang Kapp to be one of his heroes, and instead damned him as a weak-willed coward all too typical of German conservatives who talked tough, but never followed up their words with action. More importantly, the failure of the Kapp putsch to a certain extent discredited traditional German conservatism in Chamberlain's eyes, and led him on the search for a more radical alternative, a type of "German socialism" that would offer a "third way" between capitalism and socialism.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In January 1921, Stolzing-Cerny, who joined the NSDAP in December 1920, wrote to Chamberlain about the new man on the political scene, "one Adolf Hitler, an Austrian worker, a man of extraordinary oratorical talents and an astonishingly rich political knowledge who knows marvelously how to thrill the masses". Initially, Chamberlain was hesitant about Hitler, believing that he might be another Kapp, but after the "battle of Coburg", in which Hitler had personally fought with his followers in a street battle against the Communists, Chamberlain started to see Hitler as someone who practiced what he preached. From that time onwards, Chamberlain started to closely follow and admire Hitler, whom he saw as "Germany's savior". Hitler in his turn had read "The Foundations", Chamberlain's biography of Wagner, and many of his wartime essays, and was much influenced by all that Chamberlain had written. British historian Sir Ian Kershaw, a biographer of Hitler, writes that


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: ... Hitler drew heavily for his ideas from well known anti-Semitic tracts such as those by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Adolf Wahrmund and especially, the arch-popularizer Theodor Fritsch (one of whose emphasis was the alleged sexual abuse of women by the Jews)...


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: The fact that Hitler was an ardent Wagnerite who adored Wagner's music gave Chamberlain and Hitler a mutual ground for friendship beyond their shared hatred of the Jews. Likewise, Joseph Goebbels had been converted to the "völkisch" ideology after reading Chamberlain's books and essays, and came to the conclusion on the basis of Chamberlain's writings that the West could only be saved by removing the Jews from German society. During this period, Chamberlain, who was practically a member of the Wagner family, started to push for the Bayreuth Festival to become openly identified with "völkisch" politics, and to turn the previously apolitical festival into a "völkisch" rally.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Despite his paralysis, Chamberlain whose mind was still sharp, remained active as a writer, maintaining a correspondence with a whole gamut of figures from Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz to the radical anti-Semitic journalist Theodor Fritsch, the leader of the "völkisch" "Hammerbund" ("Hammer League"). From his exile in the Netherlands, the former Kaiser wrote to Chamberlain in 1922 to tell him that thanks to his essays, he had become a Marcionist and now rejected the Old Testament. Wilhelm claimed that on the basis of Chamberlain's work, he now knew that what had become the Old Testament was in fact a Zoroastrian text from ancient Persia (modern Iran) and was therefore "Aryan". The former Kaiser claimed that the Jews had stolen and rewritten this sacred text from the Aryan Persians, ending his letter: "Let us free ourselves from the "Judentum" with its Jawe!" In 1923, Wilhelm wrote to tell Chamberlain of his belief that not only were the Jews "not our religious forebears", but that Jesus was "not a Jew", was instead an Aryan "of exceptional beauty, tall and slim with a noble face inspiring respect and love; his hair blond shading into chestnut brown, his arms and hands noble and exquisitely formed".


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: In 1923 Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler in Bayreuth, and in September he sat in his wheelchair next to Hitler during the "völkisch" "German Day" paramilitary parade. In September 1923 he wrote a grateful and highly admiring open letter to the NSDAP leader. Chamberlain, paralysed and despondent after Germany's losses in World War I, wrote to Hitler after his first visit in September 1923:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain joined the Nazi Party and contributed to its publications. Its primary journal, the "Völkischer Beobachter", dedicated five columns to praising him on his 70th birthday, describing "The Foundations" as the "gospel of the National Socialist movement". In January 1924, Chamberlain published an essay praising Hitler as one of the "rare beautiful beings... a man of genuine simplicity with a fascinating gaze" whose words "always come directly from the heart". Chamberlain praised Hitler for embarking upon a ""Vernichtungskrieg"" ("war of destruction") against all of Germany's enemies. Chamberlain further wrote about Hitler—whom he viewed as the greatest of all his heroes—that:


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Because he [Hitler] is no mere phrasemonger, but consistently pursues his thought to an end and draws his conclusions from it, he recognizes and proclaims that one cannot simultaneously embrace Jesus and those that crucified him. That is the splendid thing about Hitler—his courage! ... In this respect he reminds one of Luther. And whence come the courage of these two men? It derives from the holy seriousness each has for the cause! Hitler utters no word he does not mean in earnest; his speeches contain no padding or vague, provisional statements ... but the result of this is that he is decried as a visionary dreamer. People consider Hitler a dreamer whose head is full of impossible schemes and yet a renowned and original historian called him "the most creative mind since Bismarck in the area of statecraft." I believe ... we are all inclined to view those things as impractical that we do not already see accomplished before us. He, for example, finds it impossible to share our conviction about the pernicious, even murderous influence of Jewry on the German "Volk" and not to take action; if one sees the danger, then steps must be taken against it with utter dispatch. I daresay everyone recognizes this, but nobody risks speaking out; nobody ventures to extract the consequences of his thoughts for his actions; nobody except Hitler. ... This man has worked like a divine blessing, cheering hearts, opening men's eyes to clearly seen goals, enlivening their spirits, kindling their capacity for love and for indignation, hardening their courage and resoluteness. Yet we still need him badly: May God who sent him to us preserve him for many years as a "blessing for the German Fatherland!"


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: After the failure of the Munich Putsch, Hitler was convicted of high treason and imprisoned. When the 1924 Bayreuth Festival opened, Chamberlain's efforts to identify the festival with "völkisch" politics finally bore fruit. The "Festspielhügel" opera house and the way leading up to it were decorated with "völkisch" symbols like the swastika, parades by the nationalist "Verbände" were held outside the "Festspielhügel", prominent "völkisch" leaders like General Erich Ludendorff appeared on the stage to give a speech attacking the Weimar Republic before one of the operas was performed, and a petition was offered to the audiences demanding that Hitler be pardoned. The 1924 festival led to 10,000 people in one night signing the petition asking for Hitler's release. From his prison cell at Landsberg prison, Hitler wrote to Siegfried Wagner expressing his sorrow about being unable to attend his beloved Bayreuth Festival and to express his thanks to the entire Wagner family and Chamberlain for turning the Bayreuth festival into a "völkisch" rally, adding that when he got out of prison, he would come to Bayreuth as "the first witness and herald" of Germany's rebirth. Hitler stated this would be the best medicine for Chamberlain's health as "the road to Berlin" started in Bayreuth. In May 1926, one year before Chamberlain's death, Hitler and Goebbels visited him in Bayreuth. Chamberlain assured Hitler of his belief that he was the "chosen one" destined to lead Germany back to greatness after the defeat of 1918, to make the "Reich" a world power, and finally smash the Jews. Much of Hitler's genuine affection for Chamberlain was due to the fact that Chamberlain never lost his faith in Hitler's potential, even at time in the mid-1920s when the NSDAP was faring very poorly.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain continued living in Bayreuth until his death in 1927. Chamberlain died on 9 January 1927 and his ashes were buried at the Bayreuth cemetery in the presence of Adolf Hitler. His gravestone bears a verse from the Gospel of Luke, which he considered to spell out the essential difference between his ideal type of Christianity, and Judaism and Catholicism as he saw them: "The Kingdom of God is within you." ()


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: During his lifetime Chamberlain's works were read widely throughout Europe, and especially in Germany. His reception was particularly favourable among Germany's conservative elite. Kaiser Wilhelm II patronised Chamberlain, maintaining a correspondence, inviting him to stay at his court, distributing copies of "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century" among the German Army, and seeing that "The Foundations" was carried in German libraries and included in the school curricula. In 1932 in an essay entitled "Anti-Semitics" denouncing antisemitism, the "homeless left" German journalist Carl von Ossietzky wrote: "Intellectual anti-Semitism was the special prerogative of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who, in "The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century", concretized the fantasies of Count Arthur de Gobineau, which had penetrated to Bayreuth. He translated them from the language of harmless snobbery into [the language] of a modernized, seductive mysticism." Ossietzky ended his essay with the warning: "Today there is a strong smell of blood in the air. Literary anti-Semitism forges the moral weapon for murder. Sturdy and honest lads will take care of the rest."


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: "The Foundations" would prove to be a seminal work in German nationalism. Due to its success, aided by Chamberlain's association with the Wagner circle, its ideas of Aryan supremacy and a struggle against Jewish influence spread widely across the German state at the beginning of the century. If it did not form the framework of later Nazi ideology, at the very least it provided its adherents with a seeming intellectual justification. Many of Chamberlain's ideas such as his emphasis on a racial struggle between Aryans vs. Jews for world domination; his championing of "world power status" for Germany; his call for a "planned economy" (something realized in 1936 when Hitler brought in the First Four Year Plan which saw the German state take over the economy); his vision of Germany becoming the "Volksgemeinschaft" (people's community"); his demand for a "third way" between capitalism and socialism; his total opposition to democracy; and his nostalgia for an agrarian lifestyle were central to Nazism. The only Nazi idea that Chamberlain missed was "Lebensraum" (living space), the perceived need for Germany to colonize Eastern Europe while displacing the existing population to make room for Aryan colonists. However, there were differences in that Chamberlain was always a monarchist and believed that when his friend Hitler came to power, he would restore the monarchy and put his other friend Wilhelm II back on the throne. Moreover, Chamberlain was just one of the many "völkische" thinkers who influenced Hitler.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain himself lived to see his ideas begin to bear fruit. Adolf Hitler, while still growing as a political figure in Germany, visited him several times (in 1923 and in 1926, together with Joseph Goebbels) at the Wagner family's property in Bayreuth. Later, in January 1927, Hitler, along with several highly ranked members of the Nazi Party, attended Chamberlain's funeral.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Chamberlain's ideas particularly influenced Alfred Rosenberg, who became the Nazi Party's in-house philosopher. In 1909, some months before his 17th birthday, Rosenberg went with an aunt to visit his guardian where several other relatives were gathered. Bored, he went to a book shelf, picked up a copy of Chamberlain's "The Foundations" and wrote of the moment: "I felt electrified; I wrote down the title and went straight to the bookshop." In 1930 Rosenberg published "The Myth of the Twentieth Century," a homage to and continuation of Chamberlain's work. Rosenberg had accompanied Hitler when he called upon Wagner's widow, Cosima, in October 1923 when he met her son-in-law. Hitler told the ailing Chamberlain he was working on his own book which, he intended, should do for Weimar-era Germany what Chamberlain's book had done for Imperial Germany.


title: Houston Stewart Chamberlain

text: Beyond the Kaiser and the NSDAP, assessments were mixed. The French Germanic scholar Edmond Vermeil considered Chamberlain's ideas "essentially shoddy," but the anti-Nazi German author Konrad Heiden, despite objections to Chamberlain's racial ideas, described him as "one of the most astonishing talents in the history of the German mind, a mine of knowledge and profound ideas". In a 1939 work Martin Heidegger (himself a former Nazi) dismissed Chamberlain's work as presenting a subjective, individualistic ""Weltanschauung"" (fabricated worldview).


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Olympiastadion () is a stadium located in Munich, Germany. Situated at the heart of the "Olympiapark München" in northern Munich, the stadium was the main venue for the 1972 Summer Olympics.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: The original capacity was maximally and officially around 75,000 seats, during the Olympics; yet average audiences of 80.000 to 90.000 people were registered daily. Also the stadium has hosted many major football matches including the 1974 FIFA World Cup Final and the UEFA Euro 1988 Final - originally the official capacity was 73.000 for football. The stadium hosted the European Cup Finals in 1979, 1993 and 1997. Its current capacity is 69,250. The stadium could support until 11,800 standing places and 57,450 seats; or alternatively 63,000 seated spectators.The roof covers around 40,000 seats.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Until the construction of Allianz Arena for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the stadium was home to FC Bayern Munich and TSV 1860 Munich. Unlike the Olympiastadion, the new stadium was purpose-built for football alone.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Designed by the German architect Günther Behnisch and the engineer Frei Otto, with the assistance of John Argyris, the lightweight tent construction of the Olympiastadion was considered revolutionary for its time. This included large sweeping canopies of acrylic glass stabilized by steel cables that were used for the first time on a large scale. The idea was to imitate the Alps skyline and to set a counterpart to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, held during the Nazi regime. The sweeping and transparent canopy was designed to symbolize the new, democratic and optimistic West Germany. This concept was reflected in the official motto: "The cheerful Games" ("Die Heiteren Spiele").<ref name="DER SPIEGEL 35/1972"></ref>


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Shortly after World War I, there were first considerations to build a large stadium in Munich, as football gained popularity. A stadium construction on Oberwiesenfeld failed in 1919 due to an objection by the Bavarian state. 1921 the Teutoniaplatz was opened by the club FC Teutonia with a capacity of 12,000. In the month after the opening about 20,000 guests came to a game, which was almost twice the officially allowed capacity. The FC Bayern used the Teutoniaplatz for his home games from 1923 to 1925. Starting in 1911, the TSV 1860 played on the club's own field at the Grünwalder Straße in Giesing, which became the largest stadium in Munich after it was expanded to a capacity of 40,000 spectators in 1926.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Although the capacity was sufficient for championship operation, the Teutoniaplatz was filled to its limits in international matches: the game Germany against Switzerland in 1926 showed that the demand for tickets in major events was a much higher than the allowed capacity. The 1928 opened fight course on the Dantestraße did not meet the expectations of a large stadium. For this reason, the construction of a large stadium on the outskirts of Munich, for example on Oberwiesenfeld, was discussed during the Weimar Republic, but did not yield any particular results.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: In the early Nazi Germany, local politicians of the NSDAP planned the construction of a stadium west of Munich-Riem Airport with a capacity of 60,000 to 80,000, mirroring the Reichssportfeld in Berlin. However, the airport administration resisted and the Generalbaurat of Munich did not set it as a target. With the outbreak of World War II, the plans were finally rejected.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: After the end of the war, the crowds flocked back to the football stadiums at weekends, including in Munich. In 1948, 58,200 spectators visited a game of TSV 1860 against the 1st FC Nuremberg in the stadium on the Grünwalder road, intended for only 45,000 visitors. A year later, 57,000 spectators came to Munich for the semi-final match of the German Championship between 1. FC Kaiserslautern and Borussia Dortmund. The postwar period is today considered the "golden age" of football in Germany; only since the 1990s have so many visitors come to the German stadiums.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: The Grünwalder Stadion, which was destroyed in the war, offered space for 50,000 spectators after the renovation, making it the largest stadium in Munich. However, the Municipal Sports Committee considered the capacity to be too low and sought to expand it to a capacity of 75,000 spectators. The Sports Committee received backlash from local media. For example, the Münchner Merkur asked for the construction of a new stadium on the Oberwiesenfeld in early 1951, after the extended grandstand of the Grünwalder Stadium would have made the construction of the planned Mittlerer Ring as the main access road to the Federal Highway 8 difficult. The major stadium project came to an end with the adoption of the so-called ten-year program on 10 March 1955 which promoted the construction of district sports facilities.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Another reason for this decision was the decreased popularity of football in Munich, after the formerly successful city clubs such as TSV 1860, FC Wacker and FC Bayern underperformed. Because of the small capacity of the Grünwalder Stadium, games of the Germany national team had not been held in Munich since 1940. For the big city clubs, the capacity of the Grünwalder stadium was adequate.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: In 1958, the Bavarian party revived the talks of a large stadium. Both FC Bayern and the TSV 1860 resisted the project, fearing that the capacity would not be exhausted anyway. In 1963, in the last season before the introduction of the Bundesliga, the TSV 1860 won the league championship and therefore secured the starting place in the first league for the following season. In the first Bundesliga season, the TSV 1860 had an average of just under 32,000 spectators per game, which far exceeded the average of the previous years of about 20,000. In 1964, the TSV 1860 qualified for the European Cup Winners' Cup 1964/65 by winning the DFB Cup in the preseason, and had constantly more than 30,000 spectators during the course of the competition. In the same year, the FC Bayern became champion of the Regionalliga Süd and qualified for the promotion round to the Bundesliga. The capacity of the Grünwalder Stadium once again proved to be too low. In the following season the TSV 1860 won the championship and FC Bayern the national cup competition. Although the average number of spectators was far lower than the maximum capacity of the Grünwalder Stadium, there were already numerous games in the mid-1960s at which the ticket demand was higher than the capacity of the stadium.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Munich was the only German city with two Bundesliga clubs, which at this time always played in the top table positions and were temporarily represented in international competitions. Therefore, the largest stadium in the city was now again found to be too small. In order to maintain the high level of the Munich football clubs, a larger stadium was considered necessary, because the audience still represented the main source of income of the clubs at that time.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Meanwhile, Georg Brauchle, then deputy Mayor of Munich, tried to bring the 1972 Summer Olympic Games to Munich. In October 1965, Mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel and Willi Daume, President of the West Germany National Olympic Committee, decided to test the city's suitability for the Games. After further talks, among others with Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard and Bavaria's Prime Minister Alfons Goppel, they came to the conclusion that an application for the 1972 Summer Olympics could be worthwhile. For this, however, a new and modern stadium had to be built for the city.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: The three square kilometer and largely undeveloped Oberwiesenfeld was selected as the centerpiece of the Olympic Games. Due to the proximity to the city center, Munich was able to promote the games with the slogan "Olympia of the short ways", which contributed to the decision-making process. Since the Oberwiesenfeld had served as a parade ground of the Bavarian cavalry regiment and later mainly military purposes, it was – except for armaments works – free of buildings. From 1931 to 1939 the Munich Airport was located on the Oberwiesenfeld. After the World War II, the debris rubble of the bombing of the city was piled up, from which the Olympic Mountain emerged. This was intentionally created in an oval shape, so that it could be used as a tribune foundation for a stadium.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: In 1964, Munich opened an architectural competition for the planning of a large stadium, which was won by the offices of Henschker from Brunswick and Deiss from Munich. Their stadium design was integrated into an overall concept. In the planning of 1965, the stadium was planned to hold around 100,000 spectators, although later the capacity was reduced for the purpose of reusability. The plans were integrated into an overall concept, with the addition of a multi-purpose arena and a swimming pool on a large, concrete surface. Under the concrete slabs, supply systems and parking lots were to be built. On 26 April 1966, the IOC announced that Munich had prevailed against the other candidates Detroit, Madrid and Montreal. Thus the stadium construction was decided. The original plans of the Olympic Park and the stadium were criticized because of a lack of unity in the urban planning. In addition, the Association of German Architects suggested to avoid any monumentality at the sports facilities because of the Nazi past. The plans were finally rejected.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: In February 1967, an architectural competition was again advertised, in which by the deadline of 3 July 1967 a total of 104 drafts were submitted, one of which came from the architectural firm Behnisch & Partner. The architect Günter Behnisch and his employee Fritz Auer planned to build the stadium, the Olympic Hall and the swimming pool closely adjacent to each other west of the Olympic Tower, for which the base already existed. When a model was built at a scale of 1: 1000, the employee Cordel Wehrse came up with the idea of laying a tent roof construction over the three buildings. He had become aware of Frei Otto's tent roof construction at the World Fair in Montreal through a newspaper article. Together with Carlo Weber and Heinz Isler the model was supplemented with wooden sticks and parts of a women's stocking. The architects thought of the Olympic roof as a circus tent.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Finally, the model was submitted on the deadline. It was already eliminated after the first round by the jury, as it was considered too daring. However, the juror Egon Eiermann intervened and campaigned together with Mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel and NOK President Willi Daume, among others, for the model. Ultimately, the reviewers voted for the plan of Behnisch & Partner, which emerged as the winner of the competition. The decision was announced on 13 October 1967. In addition to the stadium designed for 90,000 spectators, which was then reduced to maximally 75,000. The model convinced with its surrounding landscape architecture and the tent roof construction. Thus, it fulfilled the leitmotif of the games: human scale, lightness, bold elegance and unity of the landscape with nature. In addition, the possibility of reuse was given. Even with regard to short distances, the model convinced the jury.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: To make room for the arena, the terminal building of the old airport had to be blown up. On 9 June 1969 work began on the stadium, the multi-purpose Olympic arena and swimming pool. However, it was only on 14 July 1969 with the laying of the cornerstone in a symbolic ceremony that the construction officially begun. In addition to the three buildings emerging on the Oberwiesenfeld, the Werner von Linde Hall, a volleyball hall, the Olympic Radstadion, the Olympic Village and various other buildings such as stations for U-Bahn and S-Bahn were built. During the time of the construction there was a spirit of optimism in Munich. The inner city received a pedestrian zone between Marienplatz and the Stachus and the metro was implemented. on the Oberwiesenfeld alone, there were 60 construction sites. From a total of 1.35 billion German marks, 137 million were used in the construction of the Olympic Stadium and another 170.6 million in the tent roof. About 5,000 construction workers worked at the construction site for more than one million hours. Contrary to the custom of German construction, the Olympic Stadium was built largely without prefabricated parts.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: According to Behnisch, the stadium was to be a "democratic sports venue" according to the ideas of the Mayor of Munich Hans-Jochen Vogel and the specifications of the Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt, creating a contrast to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin during the period of National Socialism, the hitherto single summer Olympics in Germany. Since the time of National Socialism, Munich had the reputation of being the "capital of the Nazi movement". The Olympics were intended to help improve Munich's reputation. The foundation's deed stated that the planned games should "bear witness to the spirit of our people in the last third of the 20th century".


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Behnisch wanted Frei Otto as a partner architect, whose tent roof construction at the EXPO 1967 in Montreal was a model for the stadium tent roof. Otto had already been involved in numerous construction projects with suspended and membrane structures and became the development consultant for the Olympiastadion tent roof construction. In addition to Behnisch and Otto, an architect team was also formed to realize the roof construction, including Fritz Leonhardt and Wolf Andrä. The planning management was done by Fritz Auer. Otto developed parts of the roof by means of the trial-and-error principle by making larger models of the roof construction, while Andrä and Leonhardt developed the roof with a CAD program elsewhere. Under the direction of civil engineer Jörg Schlaich, the roof over the stadium was completed on 21 April 1972. But the planned flat tent roof to cover an additional 15,000 seats in the eastern stands of the stadium, was never built; only the main foundations to hold the second roof were built, and they are still visible; one in each of curves: behind, respectively under the existing roof. (In total some 60,000 seats would have been under the two separate tent roofs.)


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Already in the summer of 1970 the shell of the buildings was finished and on 23 July 1970 the topping-out ceremony was celebrated. The plans for the stadium had forgotten to allocate cabins for football teams in the stadium interior. For this reason, from 24 May 1972 to the official opening of the stadium on 26 May 1972, two medical rooms were provisionally converted into changing rooms. There was enough room to set up a room for paramedics and referees as well. Later, the cabins were further equipped and remained in place. At the turn of the year 1971/1972 the main works were finished and at the end of June 1972 the finished buildings were handed over to the organizing committee. The planning, construction and financing of the buildings were controlled by the 1967 founded Olympia-Baugesellschaft mbH Munich, which was founded by the Federal Republic of Germany, the Free State of Bavaria and the City of Munich. The stadium is property of the Olympiapark München GmbH, a society wholly owned by the City of Munich's Referat für Arbeit und Wirtschaft.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: Following the Olympics, the stadium became the home of FC Bayern Munich. In 1979 the ground was host to the 1979 European Cup Final in which Nottingham Forest won the first of their consecutive European Cups.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: In the 1990s Bayern Munich's rivals TSV 1860 Munich moved into the stadium. The two teams coexisted in the "Olympiastadion" until 2005, when both clubs moved to the purpose built Allianz Arena.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: On 6 to 11 August 2002 the 18th European Athletics Championships were held at the Olympiastadion and the event will repeat in 15–21 August 2022.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: On 31 December 2006, the stadium made history as being the first venue to host the Tour de Ski cross-country skiing competition. The individual sprint events, held at 1100 m, were won by Norway's Marit Bjørgen (women) and Switzerland's Christoph Eigenmann (men). The snow was made in the stadium by combining the hot air with the cold refrigerated water that causes the snow to act like the icy type one would see in the Alps.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: It was not used in the 2006 FIFA World Cup due to the Allianz Arena being the host stadium in Munich.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: On 23 to 24 June 2007, the stadium was host to the Spar European Cup 2007, a yearly athletics event featuring the top 8 countries from around Europe.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: The DTM touring car series held its first stadium event there in 2011: a Race of Champions-style event which took part over a two-day period, although it was not a championship scoring round. Edoardo Mortara won the first day, and Bruno Spengler the second. The event was repeated in 2012, but the stadium withdrew in 2013 because it proved impossible to turn it into a points-scoring event.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: On 17 May 2012, the ground played host to the 2012 UEFA Women's Champions League Final in which Olympique Lyonnais won their second consecutive trophy. The attendance of that game was a record for a UEFA Women's Champions League Final.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: On 19 May 2012 it hosted the "Public Viewing" of the 2012 UEFA Champions League Final which took place at Allianz Arena in Munich.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: In August 2020, it was announced that Türkgücü München who have been promoted into third division will be playing a couple of their home matches on the ground.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: On 10 October 2020, after more than eight years, Olympiastadion was due to host a professional football match of Türkgücü München against SV Wehen Wiesbaden.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: The stadium was the setting of a skit for Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1972, for The Philosophers' Football Match, in which Greek Philosophers played German Philosophers (plus Franz Beckenbauer) and the Greeks winning the game with a last-minute goal from Socrates. However, the skit was filmed instead at the Grünwalder Stadion.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: American rock band Guns N' Roses filmed parts of their "Estranged" video there when they visited Munich in June 1993.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: The Olympic Stadium also hosted Motorcycle speedway when it held the 1989 World Final on 2 September 1989. Denmark's Hans Nielsen won his third World Championship with a 15-point maximum from his five rides. Simon Wigg of England finished in second place after defeating countryman Jeremy Doncaster in a run-off to decide the final podium places after both had finished with 12 points from their five rides. Three time champion Erik Gundersen of Denmark finished in fourth place with 11 points. Gundersen, the defending World Champion, missed finishing outright second when his bike's engine expired while he was leading Heat 9 of the World Final.


title: Olympiastadion (Munich)

text: In 2021, the stadium was visited during the fourth episode of the ninth season of Belgian reality series "De Mol" for a football-themed assignment.


title: Guide (film)

text: Guide is a 1965 Indian Hindi-language romantic drama film directed by Vijay Anand and produced by Dev Anand, who co-starred in the film with Waheeda Rehman. Based on R. K. Narayan's 1958 novel "The Guide", the film narrates the story of the freelance guide Raju (Anand) and his meeting with Rosie (Rehman), who is the wife of a wealthy archaeologist.


title: Guide (film)

text: A 120-minute U.S. version titled "The Guide" was written by Pearl S. Buck and directed and produced by Tad Danielewski. The film was screened at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, 42 years after its release.


title: Guide (film)

text: "Guide" was a highly successful film at the box-office upon release, and later achieved a cult following; it has since been deemed one of the best Bollywood films produced of all time. It received high critical acclaim, particularly for the performances of Anand and Rehman, as well as the score by S. D. Burman. "Guide" earned several accolades: at the 14th Filmfare Awards, it won for Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Dialogue, Best Story and Best Cinematography. It was entered for Best Foreign Language Film at the 38th Academy Awards, but it was not accepted as a nominee. In 2012, "Time" magazine listed it at #4 on its list of "Best Bollywood Classics".


title: Guide (film)

text: Raju (Dev Anand), a freelance guide, who earns his living by taking tourists to historic sites. The movies starts with Raju being released from jail, and then the story runs in flashback. One day, a wealthy and aging archaeologist Marco comes to the city with his young wife Rosie (Waheeda Rehman) the daughter of a courtesan. Marco wants to do some research on the caves outside the city and hires Raju as his guide. He discovers a new cave and ignores Rosie.


title: Guide (film)

text: While Marco devotes himself to the discovery of the cave, Raju takes Rosie on a tour and appreciates her dancing ability and innocence. Raju learns about Rosie's background as a daughter of a prostitute and how Rosie has achieved respectability as the wife of Marco but at a terrible cost. She has had to give up her passion of dancing since it is unacceptable to Marco. Meanwhile, Rosie tries to commit suicide by consuming poison. Marco, upon knowing the incidence returns from the caves to see Rosie and gets furious on Rosie after seeing her alive. He tells Rosie that her act of committing suicide was a drama, otherwise she would have consumed more sleeping pills so that she could really have died. On returning to Caves which were discovered, Rosie learns that Marco is spending time and enjoying the company of a native tribal girl. Rosie is mad at Marco and both indulge in a serious heated discussion and then Rosie leaves the caves, and again wants to end her life. But Raju calms her by saying that committing suicide is a sin, and that she should live to pursue her dream. She finally says good-bye to the relation of being the wife of Marco. But now she needs support and a place to live. It is here that Raju takes her to his home.


title: Guide (film)

text: Rosie is considered a prostitute too, by Raju's community (as classical dancing traditionally was related with prostitute at Royal court) which leads to many problems including his mother and her brother insisting that Rosie be kicked out. Raju refuses and his mother leaves him. His friend and driver also falls out with him over Rosie. Raju loses his business and the entire town turns against him. Undeterred by these setbacks, Raju helps Rosie embark on a singing and dancing career and Rosie becomes a star. As she rises as a star, Raju becomes dissolute—gambling and drinking. Marco comes back on the scene. Trying to win Rosie back, he brings flowers and has his agent ask Rosie to release some jewelry which is in a safe deposit box. Raju, a bit jealous, does not want Marco to have contact with Rosie and forges Rosie's name on the release of the jewels. Meanwhile Rosie and Raju drift apart due to Rosie's incomprehensible behaviour when she tortures Raju by not obliging him a caring hug even and asks him to leave her room else she says she will have to go out. Before this they also had a discussion about how a man should live when Rosie remembers Marco and tells Raju that Marco was probably correct when he used to say that a Man should not live on a woman's earnings.Raju retorts by saying that she is under a misunderstanding that she has become a star on her own and this was Raju's efforts which has helped her a lot in becoming a star. Then later Rosie learns of the forgery release. Raju is convicted of forgery, resulting in a two year sentence. Rosie does not understand why Raju indulged in forgery. It was not money, it was the loving fascination for Rosie which urged Raju not to reveal Marco's visit to Rosie so that she doesn't remember him again and to eliminate the probability of Rosie and Marco's togetherness, if at all, there was any little chance even. On the day of his release, his mother and Rosie come to pick him up but they are told that he was released six months ago because of his good behaviour.


title: Guide (film)

text: Upon his release Raju wanders alone. Despair, poverty, rags, hunger, loneliness engulf him until he finds a wandering group of sadhus (holy men) with whom he spends a night at a derelict temple in a small town. He sleeps and one of the itinerant holy men places a shawl upon him while he sleeps. The holy men leave. The next morning, a farmer (Bhola) finds Raju sleeping under the orange shawl. Bhola thinks Raju is a holy man. Bhola is having a problem with his sister because she refuses to marry. Raju impresses upon the woman the logic in taking a husband and she submits, which convinces Bhola that Raju is a swami (holy man). Impressed by this Bhola spreads the news through village. Raju is taken as the holy man for the village. The farmers bring gifts for him and start consulting him with their problems. Raju assumes the role of village holy man (Swami Ji) and engages in skirmishes with the local pandits. In telling a childhood story, Raju speaks of a holy man whose 12 day fast resulted in God's bringing rain to end a drought.


title: Guide (film)

text: A drought and ensuing famine hit the region hard. Through miscommunication of a village fool, Raju's (Swami Ji) words are interpreted by villagers that he will fast for 12 days to end the drought. He finds himself trapped by villagers' belief. At first Raju opposes the idea, going as far as telling Bhola that he is just a human like any one of them and even worse a convict who has undergone trial and served a jail sentence over a woman. But even the confession was not enough for the villagers to give up on their belief who quote the story of dacoit Ratnakar who became Valmiki. He reluctantly begins the fast, although he does not believe that there is any relation between a man's hunger and rain. With the fast, Raju undergoes a spiritual transformation. As the fast goes on, his fame spreads. People by the thousands come to see him and take his blessings. An American journalist asks him whether he truly believes that his fast would bring rain, he smiles and says "These people have faith in me, and I have faith in their faith". Upon hearing his fame Rosie pays him a visit, so does his mother and his friend Gaffoor, who is Muslim. Bhola does not allow him to enter the temple on the grounds that he is of a different religion. Raju comes out and asks Bhola what is his religion. He tells Bhola that humanity,love and helping the others is his religion. Then Bhola begs excuse and sees them hugging each other sentimentally and his eyes becomes wet. Raju understands that He now has everything he has lost a long time back. His health starts falling, and he thinks about the meaning of his life. On one side there is Rosie, his Mother and a chance to get back to his past life and on the other side there is a noble cause to fast and hope for the rain. He gets enlightened by the concept that his past sins are washed away by his anguish and the Guide Raju he knew has died. And now the only thing that remains is the spiritual Raju, which is indestructible. He is reconciled with his mother, Rosie and the driver during his ordeal. He transcends this life. Amidst thunder clap and heavy downpour, his soul departs this earth while the crowd rejoices and his beloveds cry. The climax also teaches the Bhagavad Gita's principles: "Man does not die it is only body which dies. Soul remains for ever."


title: Guide (film)

text: Dev Anand was approached by American director Tad Danielewski and writer Pearl Buck for an American film based on the 1958 novel "The Guide" by R. K. Narayan. Anand declined at first, but agreed to collaborate with Danielewski when he met him again at the 1962 Berlin Film Festival. Anand read the novel and contacted Buck, who invited him to the United States to discuss the project. He then reached Narayan to procure the rights to the book.


title: Guide (film)

text: The Indian and American production teams clashed, causing Anand to postpone the Hindi version, thereby freeing Chetan Anand to direct the highly acclaimed "Haqeeqat" (1964).


title: Guide (film)

text: Raj Khosla was to direct the Hindi version and Waheeda Rehman was the first choice to play Rosie. However, Rehman did not wish to work with Khosla following a misunderstanding between the two on the sets of "Solva Saal" (1958). Anand then approached Saira Banu to play the lead, who declined. Vyjayanthimala was considered, but was rejected by Danielewski. Khosla then abandoned the project, thereby presenting an opportunity for Vijay Anand to step in, and the film would prove to be a landmark achievement in his career and the Hindi film industry. Following his appointment, Rehman returned to the project. Buck tutored her on her diction for the English part.


title: Guide (film)

text: The sequence featuring the song "Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hai" was shot in the Chittor Fort in Rajasthan. The film's climax was shot in the town of Limbdi, 90 km from Ahmedabad on the Bhogavo River.


title: Guide (film)

text: The film's music was composed by Sachin Dev Burman, written by Shailendra and sung by Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey and Sachin Dev Burman. The soundtrack was listed by "Planet Bollywood" as #11 on their list of 100 Greatest Bollywood Soundtracks.


title: Guide (film)

text: Rafi had originally recorded a song called "Hum Hi Mein Thi Na Koi Baat, Yaad Na Tumko Aa Sake, Tumne Hume Bhula Diya, Hum Na Tumko Bhula Sake", but later this song was replaced by "Din Dhal Jaaye".


title: Guide (film)

text: Author R. K. Narayan disliked the film adaptation of his novel. Reviewing the English version of the film for the magazine "Life", he called it "The Misguided "Guide.""


title: Guide (film)

text: In a review of the American release in "The New York Times", critic Bosley Crowther praised the cinematography as "... a succession of colorful views of sightseeing spots, busy cities, temples, dusty landscapes and crowds," but lamented that "... the development of the narrative continuity is so erratic and frequently slurred–so clumsy and artless, to be plain-spoken–that both story and emotion are vague."


title: Guide (film)

text: The film was selected as the Indian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 38th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.


title: Guide (film)

text: "Guide" received a leading 9 nominations at the 14th Filmfare Awards and won 7 awards, becoming the most-awarded film at the ceremony. "Guide" was also the first film to win all 4 major awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress.


title: Guide (film)

text: The ceremony also proved to be controversial, as S. D. Burman, who was nominated for Best Music and Lata Mangeshkar, who was nominated for Best Playback Singer for "Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hai", both lost their respective awards to Shankar-Jaikishan and Mohammed Rafi (for "Baharon Phool Barsao"), both for "Suraj", despite being highly favored for winning in their respective categories.


title: Carbon offset

text: A carbon offset is a reduction or removal of emissions of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for emissions made elsewhere. Offsets are measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent (COe). One ton of carbon offset represents the reduction or removal of one ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases. One of the hidden dangers of climate change policy is unequal prices of carbon in the economy, which can cause economic collateral damage if production flows to regions or industries that have a lower price of carbon—unless carbon can be purchased from that area, which offsets effectively permit, equalizing the price.


title: Carbon offset

text: Within the voluntary market, demand for carbon offset credits is generated by individuals, companies, organizations, and sub-national governments who purchase carbon offsets to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions to meet carbon neutral, net-zero or other established emission reduction goals. The voluntary carbon market is facilitated by certification programs which provide standards, guidance, and establish requirements for project developers to follow in order to generate carbon offset credits.


title: Carbon offset

text: Offsets typically support projects that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in the short- or long-term. A common project type is renewable energy, such as wind farms, biomass energy, biogas digesters, or hydroelectric dams. Others include energy efficiency projects like efficient cookstoves, the destruction of industrial pollutants or agricultural byproducts, destruction of landfill methane, and forestry projects. Carbon removal offsets include methods based on net-negative products and processes, such as biochar, carbonated building elements and geologically stored carbon.


title: Carbon offset

text: Offsets may be cheaper or more convenient alternatives to reducing individual or organizational fossil fuel consumption. However, some critics object to carbon offsets, and question the benefits of certain types of offsets. Due diligence is recommended to help businesses in the assessment and identification of "good quality" offsets to ensure offsetting provides the desired additional environmental benefits, and to avoid reputational risk associated with poor quality offsets.


title: Carbon offset

text: Carbon offsets represent multiple categories of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (), methane, nitrous oxide (NO), perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.


title: Carbon offset

text: Both "The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Offsetting" and the Science Based Targets initiative's net-zero criteria argue for the importance of moving beyond offsets based on reduced or avoided emissions to offsets based on carbon that has been sequestered from the atmosphere, such as CO Removal Certificates.


title: Carbon offset

text: The Kyoto Protocol has sanctioned offsets as a way for governments and private companies to earn carbon credits that can be traded on a marketplace. The protocol established the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which validates and measures projects to ensure they produce authentic benefits and are genuinely "additional" activities that would not otherwise have been undertaken. Organizations that are unable to meet their emissions quota can offset their emissions by buying CDM-approved Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs). However, the economy behind the carbon offsets generate a new type of consumption in the complexed carbon economies.


title: Carbon offset

text: According to the World Bank State and Trends 2020 Report, 61 carbon pricing initiatives are in place or are scheduled for implementation globally. These include both emission trading schemes (like cap-and-trade systems) as well as carbon taxes and, although these initiatives represent markets for carbon, not all incorporate provisions for carbon offsets, but instead place greater emphasis on achieving emission reductions within the operations of regulated entities. The original compliance carbon market was initiated by the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Signatories to the Kyoto Protocol agreed to mandatory emission reduction targets, enabled (in part) by carbon offset purchases by higher-income countries from low- and middle-income countries, facilitated by the CDM. The Kyoto Protocol was to expire in 2020, to be superseded by the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement determinations regarding the role of carbon offsets are still being determined through international negotiation specifying the "Article 6" language. Compliance markets for carbon offsets comprise both international carbon markets developed through the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement, and domestic carbon pricing initiatives that incorporate carbon offset mechanisms.


title: Carbon offset

text: Many entities exist within the voluntary carbon market (see offsetguide.org for more information). For example, carbon offset vendors offer direct purchase of carbon offsets, often also offering other services such as designating a carbon offset project to support or measure a purchaser's carbon footprint. In 2016, about US$191.3 million of carbon offsets were purchased in the voluntary market, representing about 63.4 million metric tons of COe. In 2018 and 2019 the voluntary carbon market transacted 98 and 104 million metric tons of COe respectively. These programs generate carbon offset credits provided that an emission reduction or removal activity meets all program requirements, applies an approved project protocol (also called a methodology), and successfully passes third party review (also called verification). Once carbon offset credits are generated, any buyer may purchase them; for example an individual may purchase carbon offsets to compensate for the emissions resulting from air-travel (see more on Air-travel and Climate).


title: Carbon offset

text: In 2009, 8.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent changed hands worldwide, up 68 per cent from 2008, according to the study by carbon-market research firm Point Carbon, of Washington and Oslo. But at EUR94 billion, or about $135 billion, the market's value was nearly unchanged compared with 2008, with world carbon prices averaging EUR11.40 a ton, down about 40 per cent from the previous year, according to the study. The World Bank's "State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2010" put the overall value of the market at $144 billion, but found that a significant part of this figure resulted from manipulation of a value added tax (VAT) loophole.


title: Carbon offset

text: Carbon offset projects in the UK are only available for the voluntary market, due to UN protocols on CERs. Woodland creation and peatland restoration are the two types of offset scheme in the UK which have recognised validation codes, through the Woodland Carbon Code and Peatland Code respectively.


title: Carbon offset

text: In 2015, the UNFCCC created a dedicated website where organizations and companies as well as private persons are able to offset their footprint with the aim of facilitating everyone's participation in the process of promoting sustainability on a voluntary basis.


title: Carbon offset

text: The CDM identifies over 200 types of projects suitable for generating carbon offsets, which are grouped into broad categories. These project types include renewable energy, methane abatement, energy efficiency, reforestation and fuel switching (i.e. to carbon-neutral fuels and carbon-negative fuels).


title: Carbon offset

text: Some offset projects consist of the combustion or containment of methane generated by farm animals (by use of an anaerobic digester), landfills or other industrial waste. Methane has a global warming potential (GWP) 23 times that of CO. When combusted, each molecule of methane is converted to one molecule of CO, thus reducing the global warming effect by 96%.


title: Carbon offset

text: An example of a project using an anaerobic digester can be found in Chile where, in December 2000, the largest pork production company in Chile initiated a voluntary process to implement advanced waste management systems (anaerobic and aerobic digestion of hog manure), in order to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.


title: Carbon offset

text: While carbon offsets that fund renewable energy projects help lower the carbon intensity of energy "supply", energy conservation projects seek to reduce the overall "demand" for energy. Carbon offsets in this category fund projects of several types:


title: Carbon offset

text: Industrial pollutants such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs) have a GWP many thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide by volume. Because these pollutants are easily captured and destroyed at their source, they present a large and low-cost source of carbon offsets. As a category, HFCs, PFCs, and NO reductions represent 71 per cent of offsets issued under the CDM.


title: Carbon offset

text: Soil is one of the important aspects of agriculture and can affect the amount of yield in the crops. During the years of agriculture, there has been a decrease in the amount of carbon that the soil is able to hold. The soil in agriculture is now holding 50% to 66% less carbon and this is due to the many practices that farmers or scientists use. Agriculture affects the environmental quality with the losses of nitrogen and phosphorus to the fields. Soil is a key component to Green Infrastructure (GI), but most urban soils are physically, chemically, or biologically unsuitable for use of GI.


title: Carbon offset

text: The types of crops will have an effect of how well the crops are a carbon sink. The three major types of crop in China are rice, wheat and corn with a total 165.76 TgC. Rice had the highest amount of carbon sink between the three crops. Out of the 165.76 TgC of carbon sink, rice was able to contribute 48.71%.


title: Carbon offset

text: Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) projects focus on natural carbon sinks such as forests and soil. Trees are very efficient at sequestering the carbon from the atmosphere. There are a number of different types of LULUCF projects:


title: Carbon offset

text: Deforestation, particularly in Brazil, Indonesia and parts of Africa, account for about 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. On average, the removal of trees is 7–30% of the greenhouse gasses around the world. Deforestation can be avoided either by paying directly for forest preservation, or by using offset funds to provide substitutes for forest-based products. There is a class of mechanisms referred to as REDD schemes (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation), which may be included in a post-Kyoto agreement. REDD credits provide carbon offsets for the protection of forests, and provide a possible mechanism to allow funding from developed nations to assist in the protection of native forests in developing nations.The management of carbon tree storage is called forest offsets.


title: Carbon offset

text: Reforestation could support an additional 0.9 billion hectares of continuous forest which could store the equivalent of 25% of the current atmospheric pool. Offset schemes using reforestation are available in developing countries, as well as an increasing number of developed countries including the US and the UK.


title: Carbon offset

text: Once it has been accredited by the UNFCCC a carbon offset project can be used as carbon credit and linked with official emission trading schemes, such as the European Union Emission Trading Scheme or Kyoto Protocol, as Certified Emission Reductions.


title: Carbon offset

text: The voluntary Chicago Climate Exchange also includes a carbon offset scheme that allows offset project developers to sell emissions reductions to CCX members who have voluntarily agreed to meet emissions reduction targets.


title: Carbon offset

text: The Western Climate Initiative, a regional greenhouse gas reduction initiative by states and provinces along the western rim of North America, includes an offset scheme. Likewise, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a similar program in the northeastern U.S., includes an offset program. A credit mechanism that uses offsets may be incorporated in proposed schemes such as the Australian Carbon Exchange.


title: Carbon offset

text: Carbon retirement involves retiring allowances from emission trading schemes as a method for offsetting carbon emissions. Voluntary purchasers can offset their carbon emissions by purchasing carbon allowances from legally mandated cap-and-trade programs such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or the European Emissions Trading Scheme. By purchasing the allowances that power plants, oil refineries, and industrial facilities need to hold to comply with a cap, voluntary purchases tighten the cap and force additional emissions reductions.