page_title: Dietrich Eckart
section_title: Eckart and Hitler
hierarchical_section_title: Dietrich Eckart / Eckart and Hitler
caption_attribution_description: English: September 10 - Bloody Sunday Of Bromberg - If The Light Clashes With Darkness There Is No Making Of Agreements, There Is Only A Fight Of Life And Death Until The One Or The Other Part Is Destroyed. — Dietrich Eckart Deutsch: 10. September - Bromberger Blutsonntag Wenn Das Licht Mit Der Finsternis Zusammenprallt Gibt Es Kein Paktieren, Da Gibt Es Nur Kampf Auf Leben Und Tod Bis Zur Vernichtung Des Einen Oder Anderen Teiles.
context_page_description: Dietrich Eckart was a German anti-Semitic volkisch poet, playwright, journalist, publicist, and political activist who was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party, the predecessor to the Nazi Party. Eckart was a key influence on Adolf Hitler in the early years of the Party, the original publisher of the party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, and the lyricist of the first party anthem, Sturmlied. He was a participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and died on December 23 of that year, shortly after his release from Landsberg Prison, from a heart attack compounded by alcoholism and morphine addiction. He was buried in Berchtesgaden.
  Eckart was elevated to the status of a major thinker upon the establishment of Nazi Germany in 1933, and was acknowledged by Hitler to be the spiritual co-founder of National Socialism.
context_section_description: Eckart was instrumental in creating the persona of Adolf Hitler, and was one of the first propagators of the "Hitler Myth".  Their relationship was not simply a political one, there was a strong emotional and intellectual bond between the two men.  Although the need to present himself as a self-made man prevented him from publicly writing or speaking about the debt he owed to Eckart, in private Hitler acknowledged Eckart as having been his teacher and mentor, and the spiritual co-founder of Nazism.
  The two first met when Hitler gave a speech before the DAP membership in 1919. Hitler immediately impressed Eckart, who said of him "I felt myself attracted by his whole way of being, and very soon I realized that he was exactly the right man for our young movement." Although not a member, Eckart was involved at the time with the Thule Society, a secretive group of occultists who believed in the coming of a "German Messiah" who would redeem Germany after its defeat in World War I.  He began to see in Hitler the possibility that he was that person.
  Eckart, who was 21 years older than Hitler, became the father-figure to a group of younger volkisch men, including Hitler and Hermann Esser, and acted as mediator between the two when they clashed, telling Esser that Hitler, who he esteemed as the DAP's best speaker, was the far superior man. He became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and helping to establish theories and beliefs of the Party. He lent Hitler books to read, gave him a trench coat to wear, and made corrections to Hitler's style of speaking and writing, as well as schooling the provincial Hitler in proper manners.  He regarded Hitler as his protégé.
  Hitler and Eckart had many things in common, including their interest in art and politics, that both thought of themselves primarily as artists, and both were prone to depression.  They also shared that their early influences were Jewish, a fact which both preferred not to speak about. Although, unlike Hitler, Eckart did not believe that Jews were a race apart, by the time the two met, Hitler's goal was "the total removal of the Jews", and Eckart had expressed the opinion that all Jews should be put on a train and driven into the Red Sea. He also espoused that any Jew who married a German woman should be jailed for three years, and executed if he repeated the crime. Paradoxically, Eckart also believed that the existence of humanity depended on the antithesis between Aryans and Jews, that one could not exist without the other. In 1919, Eckart has written that it would be "the end of all times ... if the Jewish people perished."
  Eckart provided Hitler with entré into the Munich arts scene. He introduced Hitler to the painter Max Zaeper and his salon of like-minded anti-Semitic artists, and to the photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. It was Eckart who introduced Alfred Rosenberg to Hitler. Between 1920 and 1923, Eckart and Rosenberg labored tirelessly in the service of Hitler and the party. Through Rosenberg, Hitler was introduced to the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Rosenberg's inspiration.  Both Rosenberg and Eckart were influential with Hitler on the subject of Russia.  Eckart saw Russia as Germany's natural ally, writing in 1919 that "German politics hardly has another choice than to enter an alliance with a new Russia after the elimination of the Bolshevik regime."  He felt strongly that Germany should support the Russian people in their struggle against the "current Jewish regime", by which he meant the Bolsheviks.  Rosenberg also counseled Hitler along these lines, with the two men providing Hitler with the intellectual basis for his Eastern policy, which was then made practical by Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter.
  In March 1920, at the behest of Karl Mayr – the German General Staff officer who first introduced Hitler to politics – Hitler and Eckart flew to Berlin to meet Wolfgang Kapp and take part in the Kapp Putsch, as well as to forge a connection between Kapp's forces and Mayr.  Kapp and Eckart knew each other - Kapp had donated 1,000 Marks in support
caption: Wochenspruch der NSDAP of 6 September 1942 quotes Eckart: "If the light clashes with darkness there is no making of agreements, there is only a fight of life and death until the one or the other part is destroyed."
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