Culture and biology E-Book

• Herausgeber: Königshausen u. Neumann
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Eichstätter Europastudien
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 568

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

R. Nate: The ’New Man’: Historical Perspectives – N. Hagen / B. Isenberg: The Manifestation of Modernity in Genetic Science – M. Schwartz: Sozialistische Eugenik im 20. Jahrhundert – A. Gerstner: A Paneurope of Supermen: Coudenhove-Kalergi’s European Vision – S. Schieren: Die autokratische Versuchung: Britischer Imperialismus, Buren- Krieg, ’Effi ciency‘ und Staatsreform in Großbritannien zur Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert – J. S. Partington: H. G. Wells and Population Control: From a Eugenic Public Policy to the Eugenics of Personal Choice – A. Laukötter: Theoretisieren, Sammeln, Ausstellen: Techniken der Völkerkundemuseen zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts – V. Gutsche: Kulturpessimismus und Geschichtstheorie: Oswald Spengler und Eduard Spranger – R. Nate: Fears of Degeneracy: Paul Rohrbach and the‚ ‘Menace of the Under-Man‘ – B. Klüsener: Biological Theories of the Criminal and Their Impact on British 19th- Century Novels – S. Lampadius: The World State as a Superhuman Organism, from H. G. Wells to Aldous Huxley – V. Shamina: Eugenics in Russia and Its Refl ection in Literature

Leseprobe

Nate / Klüsener (Eds.)

—

Culture and Biology

EICHSTÄTTER EUROPASTUDIEN

Culture and Biology

Perspectives on the European Modern Age

Edited by

Richard Nate

Bea Klüsener

Königshausen & Neumann

Gedruckt mit freundlicher Unterstützung durch die Maximilian-Bickhoff-Universitätsstiftung.

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Contents

Preface

RICHARD NATE / BEA KLÜSENER

Introduction

RICHARD NATE

Visions of a “New Man”: A Historical Survey

BO ISENBERG / NICLAS HAGEN

The Manifestation of Modernity in Genetic Science

MICHAEL SCHWARTZ

Sozialistische Eugenik im 20. Jahrhundert

STEFAN SCHIEREN

Die autokratische Versuchung: Britischer Imperialismus, Buren-Krieg, „Efficiency“ und Staatsreform in Großbritannien zur Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert

ANJA LAUKÖTTER

Strukturen, Strategien, Statistiken der Völkerkundemuseen zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts

ALEXANDRA GERSTNER

A Paneurope of Supermen: Coudenhove-Kalergi’s European Vision

VERENA GUTSCHE

Kulturpessimismus und Geschichtsauffassung: Oswald Spengler und Eduard Spranger

JOHN S. PARTINGTON

H. G. Wells and Population Control: From a Eugenic Public Policy to the Eugenics of Personal Choice

RICHARD NATE

Fears of Degeneracy: Paul Rohrbach and the “Menace of the Under-Man”

BEA KLÜSENER

Biological Theories of the Criminal and Their Impact on British Nineteenth-Century Novels

STEFAN LAMPADIUS

The World State as a Superhuman Organism, from H. G. Wells to Aldous Huxley

VERA SHAMINA

Eugenics and Its Reflection in Twentieth Century Russian Literature

Notes on Contributors

Preface

This volume originated in a series of papers given at an international conference on “Biologie, Anthropologie und Kulturkritik in der europäischen Moderne” / “Biology, Anthropology, and Cultural Criticism in the European Modern Age”, organised by the European Studies programme of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in June 2009. The conference highlighted the manifold connections which existed between biological, anthropological and cultural discourses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In line with the interdisciplinary character of the European Studies programme, it included contributions from the fields of sociology as well as historical, political, literary and cultural studies. Conference languages were English and German.

Our first note of thanks goes to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), to the Maximilian-Bickhoff-Universitätsstiftung, and to the Alumni des Eichstätter Europstudiengangs e.V. for their financial support. The Maximilian-Bickhoff-Universitätsstiftung funded not only the conference but also its proceedings. We would also like to thank Sonja Becker for organising the Academic Project within European Studies of which the conference was a part. Anja Eckelt and Jasmin Dennig who participated in the Academic Project chaired the various sections throughout the conference. Our further thanks go to Ulrike Wiehr for formatting a number of articles, and to Cornelia Barth for checking and completing the bibliographies. Andrew Pickering took a critical look at some of the texts and made some very helpful comments. Norma Berr and Andrea Graf have contributed to the completion of this volume through a careful reading of the articles of which it is comprised. Last, but not least, we would like to thank our publisher Königshausen & Neumann for including this publication in the series Eichstätter Europastudien.

Eichstätt, July 2011

Richard Nate & Bea Klüsener

Introduction

RICHARD NATE / BEA KLÜSENER

In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the application of biological theories to the analysis of social and cultural problems was widespread. Concepts such as “natural selection” or “race”, which were borrowed from evolutionary theory and from a biologically informed anthropology, seemed to offer a new direction for the understanding of social and cultural processes. Since biological explanations of human behavior had the semblance of modernity, they were taken up with great enthusiasm. While Thomas Henry Huxley and Ernst Haeckel were busy popularising evolutionary theory in their own countries, England and Germany, advanced networks of communication, such as scientific societies and their associated journals, contributed to the establishment of an international discourse of biologism the impact of which could be felt in political theory, sociology, ethnography, medicine, pedagogy as well as in the interpretation of culture.

What made biological theories so attractive, was the fact that they seemed to offer a scientific explanation for phenomena which had formerly been a subject of political or moral philosophy. What has been noted about the concept of “race”, namely that it purports to offer a “natural” foundation for ideological concepts,1 can be applied to other sociobiological categories as well. Thus, the traditional idea of a “body politic” assumed a pseudoscientific quality once it was reconceptualised in terms of a “social organism”. Like other organisms, it could fall ill and recover. Most importantly, it served as a vehicle for strategies of inclusion and exclusion. If the “social organism” was to stay in good health, the argument ran, it had to be defended against alien forces such as “bacteria” or “parasites”. On this basis, distinctions were introduced between those elements which genuinely belonged to the social community and those which were regarded as threats from outside.

In order to illustrate the close links which existed between biology and the cultural sphere, the history of eugenics provides a good example. Intended by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton as a method of improving the biological constitution of humanity, it quickly attracted disciples not only in England but also in Germany, where it became known as Rassenhygiene (“racial hygiene”), in the Scandinavian countries, and in the United States.2 Since eugenics seemed to offer a scientifically founded solution for a vast range of social problems, it had followers in the teaching profession, in psychology, in medicine, and in the arts. Although eugenics has often been associated with right-wing ideologies, recent publications have demonstrated that it cannot be restricted to any particular political camp.3 Although Nazi politics revealed to what extremes eugenic programmes could be carried when humanist principles were sacrificed to a biologist creed, they represented only one variant of eugenic discourse. In the early twentieth century, the “science” of eugenics had such a wide appeal that it was embraced by representatives of various political groups, including conservatives, liberals, and socialists.

Another discipline which claimed to have a scientific foundation and also had an international following was racial anthropology. Although many different classifications of human races were suggested, some constructs proved to have a far-reaching impact. One was the hierarchical distinction between “civilized peoples”, “barbarians”, and “savages” which often carried racial undertones. Another one was the “Aryan” hypothesis, which the French writer Arthur de Gobineau had developed from a mixing of linguistic and ethnological criteria. It rapidly developed into an “Aryan myth” which attracted followers in Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, as well as in the United States.4 Other racial constructs were invented to satisfy the needs of smaller communities. While a “Germanic race” was mainly propagated in Germany, the promoters of “Anglo-Saxonism” chiefly came from Great Britain and the United States.5 It is significant in this context that in some early twentieth century texts, the term “native Americans” was used, not to designate the indigenous population of the American continent but Americans of the “old Anglo-Saxon stock”.6 If from a present perspective the years around 1900 signify the beginning of modern internationalization and globalization,7 it is clear that many contemporary authors would not have approved of these developments. When H. G. Wells stated in 1920 that, above all, the history of the world had demonstrated a “mingling of races and peoples”, an “instability of human divisions” and a “swirling variety of human groups and human ideas of association”,8 his universalist attitude stood in sharp contrast to the dominating climate of polarization.

In order to understand the readiness with which categories such as “natural selection” or “race” were applied to the analysis of cultural phenomena, it is necessary to take into account the intellectual, social and political conditions of modern Europe. The years at the turn of the twentieth century were a period of transition in more than one respect. Not only had the theory of evolution led to fundamental changes in the understanding of “man’s place in nature”, but the Industrial Revolution had also created social tensions of an entirely new kind. The fact that the population of industrialized countries such as Germany or Great Britain had multiplied in the second half of the nineteenth century can help explain why social programmes based on Malthusian principles were increasingly called for. Fears of being overrun by so-called “inferior” masses, whose exceptionally high birthrate was frequently pointed out, were particularly strong in the middle classes and among intellectuals.9 Last, but not least, more and more Europeans became aware of the fact that the period of imperialism had reached its peak and they felt that an age of crisis was approaching. Influenced by the Social Darwinist principle of a “survival of the fittest”, fears spread that the world would soon be facing an increasing competition between the “races”. Thus, it is not by accident that theories of biological and cultural degeneration sprang up in the 1890s when the “scramble for Africa” had already signified the limits of territorial expansion and the American frontier was declared closed. A contemporary term like “yellow peril” indicates that the alleged superiority of the European “race” was not taken for granted but rather portrayed as being in constant jeopardy of getting lost.10

In this general atmosphere of anxiety, Social Darwinism offered itself as a tool for identifying and excluding that which was supposed to represent the cultural or racial “other”. While in foreign policies the “struggle for existence” was used as a justification for living out existing racial prejudices, in domestic policies it was employed to warn against an alleged process of “counter selection”.11 In eugenics, both aspects played a role. In primitive societies, it was argued, the process of “natural selection” was generally intact while civilized societies suffered from the fact that, due to improved living conditions and advanced health care, so-called “inferior” individuals had a chance to survive and to propagate. In order to save their country from falling behind in the ongoing competition between nations and “races”, eugenicists demanded an “elimination of the unfit” through marriage restrictions or through sterilisation programmes.12 When the “unfit” were ascribed the characteristics of “primitive races”, as was the case in Cesare Lombroso’s concept of the “born criminal” and in Max Nordau’s theory of cultural degeneration, internal and external strategies of exclusion reinforced each other: the enemy from within was described in terms of the enemy from without and vice versa.

The fact that a number of different trends were detected as “counter selective” processes indicates that biological categories were applied to the analysis of social phenomena often in a very arbitrary manner. An advanced level of technology, for instance, could either be taken to prove the superiority of the European “races”, or it could be identified as the main cause of their degeneration. Sometimes it depended only on the rhetorical context, which of the two factors was highlighted by an author. A similar phenomenon can be observed in the biological explanations of war. If, in 1914, it was still popular to argue that war represented a perfect instrument of natural selection since it proved which of the competing countries was the “fittest”, the rising body counts of World War One soon encouraged the opposite argument that war had a “counter selective” quality since the first ones to be sacrificed were always the “bravest warriors” who would leave behind only “cowards” and “inferiors”.13 The biological effects of civilization could also be interpreted in more than one way. While most authors argued that social welfare encouraged counter-selective processes by giving “inferiors” a chance to survive and propagate, Edward Bellamy tried to demonstrate in his utopian novel Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) that a genuine “natural selection” could only be guaranteed in a society with a high standard of social security. Since in such a society social rank and other non-biological factors no longer played a role in choosing a mate, it was only here that an improvement of the race could be expected.14

In contrast to progressivist writers such as Bellamy, those authors who warned against a racial or cultural degeneration were generally driven by nostalgic desires. In these cases biological categories mainly served to reinforce a pre-established set of values. From a present perspective it is not difficult to see that descriptions of the “Aryan”, “Nordic” or “Caucasian” race owed more to received cultural stereotypes than to scientific principles. If Thomas Carlyle’s glorification of medieval heroism provided one source of inspiration, classicist ideals of beauty and proportion were another.15 It goes without saying that in such descriptions the “fittest” organisms were not those which were best adapted to a specific environment but those which perfectly fitted long-lived cultural ideals. Behind the veil of “scientific” arguments there often lurked concepts which were deeply rooted in European mythical lore.

The articles collected in this volume approach the complex relationship between culture and biology in the European modern age from different perspectives. They are concerned with developments in countries such as Germany, Great Britain, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the United States. They present analyses of various textual sources, ranging from philosophical tracts and political pamphlets to parliamentary acts, museum catalogues, utopian writings and novels.

Richard Nate begins by focusing on the experience of a cultural crisis in the late nineteenth century which was answered by calls for a radical renewal including proclamations regarding the “new man”. Rooted in the New Testament, the idea of a “new man” underwent several metamorphoses. While in the early modern period it was connected to the prevalent scientific utopianism, in the nineteenth century it can be detected in Romantic visions of a cultural renewal as well as in eugenic programmes. Combining the perspectives of geneticist and sociologist, Niclas Hagen and Bo Isenberg trace the manifestation of modernity in genetic science. Starting from a characterisation of modernity as motivated by the experience of contingency, they present early developments of genetics as science and as social practice. Not only can genetics be regarded as expressing contingency, but it also enables modernity to modernise itself.

The next group of articles shed light on specific historical and national contexts. Michael Schwartz regards eugenics as part of the secular process of rationalisation and discusses the emergence and practice of a “socialist eugenics” in Britain, the United States, Germany and Scandinavia. Stefan Schieren focuses on ideas of state reform in Great Britain which were influenced by Darwinist, Social Darwinist and even racist views. Driven by a desire to increase national “efficiency” in the context of British imperialism, programmes of state intervention were intended to limit equality and democracy to a considerable degree. Anja Laukötter’s article deals with anthropological concepts behind ethnological museums. While in the nineteenth century such institutions served the dual function of exhibiting cultural artefacts from exotic countries and of coping with the experience of cultural “otherness”, in the early twentieth century, they were increasingly influenced by eugenic ideas. The important role which colonialism played in the formation of these museums is stressed, and their development before and after Word War I is traced. Alexandra Gerstner concentrates on the works of Richard Count Coudenhove-Kalergi who initiated the Pan-European Movement of the interwar period and is therefore characterized by some as belonging to the founding fathers of the European Union. Gerstner presents a hitherto neglected aspect of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s work by showing how deeply his ideas were involved in the eugenic discourse of his age. In his view, it was a “new aristocracy” based on biological criteria which was to form the ruling elite of a united Europe.

Verena Gutsche traces variants of cultural pessimism in the works of Oswald Spengler and Eduard Spranger by concentrating on their use of biological metaphors. While Spengler’s prophecy of European degeneration was rooted in a view of history inspired by Vico, Herder and Goethe, Spranger critized Spengler’s morphological theory of history as scientifically unfounded. As can be shown, however, Spranger himself was also indebted to some of the traditions which Spengler drew from. John Partington demonstrates how in the works of H. G. Wells eugenics developed from a public policy to a matter of personal choice. In particular, he focuses on Wells’s ideas on population control, on his changing attitude towards eugenics, and how his views may have contributed to a modern eugenics of personal choice.

The four remaining essays can be attributed to the field of literary studies. Richard Nate shows how early twentieth century fears of degeneracy are reflected in the works of the German journalist Paul Rohrbach, especially in his novel Der Tag des Untermenschen (The Day of the Under-Man) from 1929. Rohrbach was indebted to a racist kind of cultural criticism which the American writer Lothrop Stoddard had formulated in his book The Revolt Against Civilization (1922). Stoddard belonged to a group of American “nativists” who combined their opposition to the ongoing immigration of “aliens” with the eugenic idea of an “elimination of the unfit”. Bea Klüsener’s article deals with biological theories of the criminal as reflected in British novels. Following a discussion of theoretical concepts such as “moral insanity”, phrenology, and Cesare Lombroso’s criminal anthropology, presentations of criminal characters in the novels of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bram Stoker are shown to either anticipate or reflect contemporary anthropological views of evil.

Stefan Lampadius looks at ideas of the World State as an “organism” in the utopian writings of H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster and Aldous Huxley. After presenting a historical sketch of organicist views of the state, the dystopian and utopian qualities of these authors’ visions of the “state as a superhuman organism” are discussed. Vera Shamina’s article closes the volume by showing how the theme of eugenics was reflected in Russian literary texts of the twentieth century. A brief survey of the history of eugenics in the Soviet Union is followed by analyses of the literary works of writers such as Mikhail Bulgakov, Alexander Belyaev, Boris Akunin, and Henry Lion Aldee.

References

Adams, Mark B. (1990). The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia. New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bellamy, Edward (2007). Looking Backward 2000-1887. Ed. Matthew Beaumont. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.

Carey, John (1992). The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939. London: Faber and Faber.

Carlson, Elof Axel (2001). The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart (1915). Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts. 11th ed. 2 vols. Munich: Bruckmann.

Farrall, Lyndsay Andrew (1985). The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement 1865-1925. New York / London: Garland.

Geulen, Christian (2002). “Identity as Progress: The Longevity of Nationalism”, in: Friese, Heidrun (ed.). Identities: Time, Difference and Boundaries. New York /Oxford: Berghahn, 222-240.

Grant, Madison (1924). The Passing of the Great Race or The Racial Basis of European History. 4th ed. London: Bell & Sons.

Hall, Stuart (1980). “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance”, in: Unesco (ed.). Sociological Theories, Race and Colonialism. Paris: Unesco, 305-345.

Horsman, Reginald (1981). Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Mehnert, Ute (1995). Deutschland, Amerika und die gelbe Gefahr: Zur Karriere eines Schlagworts in der Großen Politik, 1905-1917. Stuttgart: Steiner.

Mosse, George L. (1978). Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism. New York: Fertig.

Osterhammel, Jürgen (2009). Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. 4th ed. Munich: C. H. Beck.

Poliakov, Léon (1974). The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe.

Trans. Edmund Howard. New York: Basic Books. Turda, Marius (2010). Modernism and Eugenics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wells, Herbert G. (1920). The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. 2 vols. London: George Newnes.

1 Hall (1980: 342).

2 For other countries see the articles in Adams (1990) which cover eugenics in France, Brazil, and Russia. Turda (2010) refers to Romania, Turkey, and China.

3 Turda (2010: 1).

4 Poliakov (1974).

5 For the “Germanic race” see Chamberlain (1915), for Anglo-Saxonism Horsman (1981).

6 See for instance Grant (1924: 263).

7 Osterhammel (2009: 13, 249 ff.).

8 Wells (1920: 666).

9 Carey (1992).

10 On the history of the phrase “yellow peril” see Mehnert (1995). Geulen (2002: 230 ff.) describes the idea of an “endangered community” as a typical element of racist ideologies.

11 For a distinction between an internal and external Social Darwinism, cf. Farrall (1985: 296).

12 Cf. Carlson (2001: 159 ff.).

13 For various Social Darwinist interpretations of the First World War see the articles published between 1914 and 1918 in the American Journal of Heredity, the British Eugenics Review, and the German Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie.

14 Bellamy (2007: 156 f.).

15 Mosse (1978: 21).

Visions of a “New Man”: A Historical Survey

RICHARD NATE

It is known that the years around 1900, when modernism began to take shape, were experienced by many contemporaries as a time of crisis.1 Several factors contributed to this. One was the loss of traditional anthropological beliefs in the wake of the Theory of Evolution. When H. G. Wells stated in his Anticipations (1901) that “throughout the nineteenth century there ha[d] been a shattering and recasting of fundamental ideas, of the preliminaries to ethical propositions, as the world ha[d] never seen before”,2 he had in mind the cultural impact of the Darwinian world view. A second factor was a general uneasiness in political and social spheres. In Great Britain, the expectations which had been raised in the mid nineteenth century seemed a thing of the past. If the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its “Crystal Palace” had signified the triumphs of both British imperialism and Western technology, towards the end of the century the feeling spread that the country could be facing a decline.3 In the field of literature, a mood of fin-de-siècle was dominant. Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde are frequently cited authors in this context, but H. G. Wells’s early narratives also provide good examples.4 In The Time Machine (1895), Wells presented a future Britain in which the former social elite had degenerated into child-like creatures being preyed upon by underground monsters who turn out to be descendants from the former proletariat. In The War of the Worlds (1898), Wells described how the capital of the British Empire was invaded by a superior race from outer space. In the course of the narrative, the war of extermination which the Martians wage upon the Londoners is repeatedly linked with British imperialism: while the Martians have taken the role of the conquerors, the Londoners suffer a fate similar to that of the Tasmanians for whom the encounter with Europeans a few decades earlier had proved fatal.5 Although Wells’s narratives belong to the realm of science fiction, it is clear that they also reflected a general anxiety. At the end of the century, the fear arose that European countries might be forced to give up the political and cultural hegemony they had acquired in the preceding centuries of territorial expansion.

However, fears of degeneration represented but one side of the overall picture. If there was a general feeling of crisis, it provoked not only prophecies of doom but also an increasing search for panaceas. The fin-de-siècle mood had its counterpart in calls for a radical renewal. The Austrian playwright and critic, Hermann Bahr, expressed the general wavering between despair and hope as follows: “It is possible that we are facing the end, the death of an exhausted humanity, and that these are merely the final spasms. It is also possible that we are facing the beginning, the birth of a new humanity, and that these are but the avalanches of spring.”6 With these words, Bahr referred to the idea of a “new man” which was deeply embedded in the European tradition, although it had received different interpretations in the course of the preceding centuries.7 In the years around 1900, the birth of a “new man” was announced in various fields, ranging from romantically inspired criticisms of European civilization to biologically oriented programmes of social reform. The former branch comprised a number of middle-class subcultures such as theosophy, Eastern spiritualism, vitalism, vegetarianism, teetotalism and return-back-to-nature schemes; the latter included the increasing numbers of Social Darwinists and eugenicists. Within the philosophical syncretism which marked the turn of the century, the prophetic gestures of cultural critics and the scientific spirit of the followers of Darwin did not necessarily exclude each other. A romantic critique of modern civilization could thus be underpinned with biological assumptions about the nature of humanity and vice versa. If romantic writers held that the fatigue of European civilization could be overcome only by a revival of medieval heroism, Social Darwinists stated that the “counter-selective” forces allegedly at work in the industrial societies must be held in check through an artificial selection of the “fittest”. Given these correspondences, it is not surprising that visions of a “new man” sometimes represented a strange mixture of medieval chivalry and scientific experimentalism.

Although the “new man” would gain a special significance in the European modern age, its biblical roots should not be forgotten. Several passages of the New Testament include the promise that, through Christ’s grace, human beings will overcome their state of sinfulness and experience a spiritual rebirth. In Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians we read: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”8 In the Epistle to the Colossians, the idea of leaving behind the “old Adam” is extended to the entire Christian community. Faith will help the followers of Christ to establish a new kind of brotherhood transcending all existing ethnic or geographical boundaries:

Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.9

While the letters of Paul were addressed to the Christian communities of the Roman Empire and often related to their particular problems, other New Testament writings are dominated by eschatological themes. Here, the “new man” is placed within a new age promised for the end of all times. Thus, Peter’s Second Epistle includes the prophecy that in the future “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” will appear,10 and the Book of Revelation concludes with an eschatological vision in which human beings find an eternal home in a “new heaven” and a “new earth”.11

Once separated from their original context, however, the biblical visions of a “new man” and a “new earth” were employed to express anthropological concepts and utopian visions of an often divergent character. When the idea of a “new man” was revived within the biologically inspired cultural criticism around 1900, it had already undergone a long process of secularization. Important stages in this development were the scientific and political utopias of the early modern period, the various political visions and secular prophecies which sprang up in the early nineteenth century, and the new biological anthropology of the late nineteenth century. Taken together, these traditions provided the background for visions of a “new man” formulated at the turn of the century.

1. Early Modern Ideas

In the early modern period, an inner-world utopianism and religious chiliasm often went hand in hand. While utopian writing had been revived with the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), the biblical history of salvation was also received in a new light. The discovery of a “new world” beyond the Atlantic ocean played an important role in this context.12 When in Shakespeare’s Tempest (c. 1611), Prospero’s daughter Miranda exclaims: “O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in ‘t!”,13 this has to be taken with a pinch of salt, since the characters she refers to represent the old world rather than the new. Still, her words reflect a general tendency to project traditional ideas of an earthly paradise onto the newly discovered territories. The same holds true for Gonzalo’s Utopian vision in the same play. “Had I plantation of this isle”, he fantasizes, “[…] all things in common Nature should produce, without sweat or endeavour”,14 thus evoking the image of an earthly paradise.

Beginning in the early seventeenth century, utopian writings increasingly functioned as blueprints for a better society in which human beings could overcome their self-inflicted misery by means of their own rationality. No longer dependent on divine grace alone, a better social reality came to be viewed as something which human beings could achieve through their own means.15 Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna (1920) is a typical example of the “rhetoric of newness” emerging in the seventeenth century.16 This work, in which the modern ideology of progress found an early expression, shows that the concept of the future underwent a significant change. In Bacon’s writings, the future ceases to be a divine mystery and becomes something which can be planned methodically. Rather than speaking as a divinely inspired prophet, Bacon’s aim was to anticipate what human beings could achieve through their own collective will.

However, if Bacon intended his experimental philosophy to replace an older, mythical understanding of nature, he never questioned the biblical historical record. Although he described the “Great Instauration” as the result of human endeavours, he also presented it as the fulfilment of a biblical prophecy. In a passage which deals with the impact that recent discoveries had on the advancement of learning, Bacon cited the Old Testament in order to show that his plans were in perfect line with the biblical record:

Nor should the prophecy of Daniel be forgotten, touching the last ages of the world: – “Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased”; clearly intimating that the thorough passage of the world (which now by so many distant voyages seems to be accomplished, or in course of accomplishment), and the advancement of the sciences, are destined by fate, that is, by Divine Providence, to meet in the same age.17

Other seventeenth-century reformers would take a similar course. In his book Via Lucis (1641), Jan Amos Comenius explained that the history of the world was marked by an ever-increasing distribution of human knowledge. The printing press and the compass represented the most recent stages of this process, since they had made possible a coming together of the peoples of the Earth. The final stage was to be the millennium which Comenius envisioned as a period of “universal light”.18

Bacon’s and Comenius’s views on the advancement of learning demonstrate the strange mixture between utopia, prophecy and activism which characterized seventeenth century thought.19 If a millennium was predicted, it no longer depended on divine grace alone.20 Bacon’s Valerius Terminus (c. 1603) reveals that human beings were now believed to overcome the consequences of the fall by themselves:

[…] it is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech, nor lucre of profession, nor ambition of honour or fame, nor inablement for business, that are the true ends of knowledge […]; it is a restitution and reinvesting (in great part) of man to the sovereignty and power (for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names he shall again command them) which he had in his first state of creation.21

In his utopian narrative, New Atlantis (1627), Bacon anticipated the “Great Installation” within a fictional framework. Since the text represents a fantasy as well as a call to action, it can be regarded as an early instance of what Reinhart Koselleck has termed the “temporalization” of Utopias.22 Its reception in seventeenth century England, especially among the members of the Royal Society, proves that Bacon’s text was primarily viewed as a blueprint for scientific reform. With respect to modern eugenics, it is interesting to note that, apart from technical inventions such as submarines or flying-machines, Bacon’s narrative also depicted methods of improving the human physique. Not only have the scientists of “Solomon’s House” discovered ways of prolonging their lives, they are also capable of resuscitating parts of the body which were already “dead in appearance”.23 When viewed against the background of religious orthodoxy, such attempts at expanding the average lifespan of human beings had an ambivalent quality. Although Bacon was eager to attribute the prolongation of life to the framework of Christian charity,24 it could also be interpreted as an act of revolt against divine providence.

In the seventeenth century, the social hierarchies which had long been thought to reflect an eternal cosmic order also became a subject of debate. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) is a prominent example. Although its title indicates the author’s indebtedness to biblical symbolism, Hobbes’s Leviathan no longer functioned as an image of God’s infinite power but was presented as a human creation. When Hobbes quoted a line from the Book of Job: “Non est potestas super terram quae comparetur ei.” (“There is no worldly power comparable to him.”),25 this was merely meant to illustrate the claim that a sovereign installed through a public contract assumed the status of a “mortal god”. Even more significantly, Hobbes conceptualized his ideal commonwealth as an “artificial man”.26 The “sovereignty”, he noted, was but “an artificial soul”, the “pacts and covenants” which constituted the political body resembled “that fiat, or the let us make man, pronounced by God in the creation”.27 Although such a description still drew on the traditional idea of a “body politic”, which was based on the assumption that there existed a natural correspondence between the organization of the human body and that of a kingdom,28 Hobbes interpreted this concept in an entirely new way when he declared his commonwealth to be the product of human creative powers. His reference to the divine fiat is significant in this respect. In Hobbes’s political theory, human beings were ascribed a status which hitherto had been restricted to God.

During the eighteenth century, the confidence in the perfectibility of the human condition gained further momentum. Convinced that the revolutionary spirit of the age would lead to the development of a new social reality, Thomas Paine declared in the second part of his Rights of Man (1792) that the people of his time would “appear to the future as the Adam of a new world”.29 While most writers restricted themselves to the spheres of education and learning when they wrote about the idea of human progress, some also dedicated their thoughts to a possible improvement of humanity’s physical state. Although the title of Antoine Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind) (1795) suggests that its author restricted himself to intellectual matters, he expected the future also to bring about a long-term improvement of the human intellect and physique.30

It would be misleading, however, to assume that the belief in progress went unquestioned. Bacon’s contemporary, the poet John Donne, remarked early on that the new scientific philosophy had produced new uncertainties rather than the promised light of knowledge.31 What was also criticized was a tendency to glorify scientists as heroes or even saints. Since the early seventeenth century, the scientific project had been accompanied by a religiously inspired rhetoric. In the “natural theology” propagated by the chemist Robert Boyle, the study of nature had even been characterised as an act of worship. The glorification of the scientist reached its peak in the obituaries on Isaac Newton in the early 1800s.32 Thus, Alexander Pope changed the divine fiat lux significantly when he stated: “Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night, God said: ‘let Newton be!’ and all was light”.

If the belief in scientific progress had a utopian quality, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) may be regarded as one of the earliest scientific dystopias. In the third book of his novel, Swift reduced the programme of a prolongation of life to absurdity. When Gulliver first hears of an immortal species called the “Struldbruggs”, he sees in them the fulfilment of all his dreams. In the course of the narrative it turns out, however, that the immortals are but pitiful creatures, suffering from a loss of memory after they have reached a certain age, and eventually becoming a nuisance to the rest of the world.33 As Gulliver is forced to learn, the chance to outlive one’s contemporaries is not a blessing but a curse. Representing a kind of modern “everyman”,34 Swift’s protagonist is submitted to a process of spiritual therapy. While, initially, he is carried away by his highflying ambitions, in the end he is forced to accept the limitations of the conditio humana, admitting that he has grown “heartily ashamed” of his “pleasing visions” and that his “keen appetite for perpetuity of life” is “much abated”.35

As we may assume, Swift’s satirical target was not science in general but rather the arrogance which some of its promoters had demonstrated. Thus, the Anglican dean may have read with scorn Joseph Glanvill’s estimation in his Plus Ultra (1668) which held that new optical instruments such as the telescope or the microscope had revealed to humanity “New Heavens as well as a New Earth”.36 Since Glanvill was a minister of the Anglican Church, his allusion to the Book of Revelation was hardly accidental. It is against the background of such a rhetoric that Swift’s depiction of a seemingly ideal society in the fourth book of Gulliver’s Travels must be read. Although the intelligent horses whom Gulliver meets on his last voyage immodestly regard themselves as the “perfection of nature”,37 it soon becomes clear that they illustrate Gulliver’s idolization of the principle of reason more than anything else. Swift’s horses are as rational as they are cruel. Devoid of any feeling of compassion, their annually held “grand debate” is centred on the question whether their enemies, the savage-like “Yahoos”, should be “exterminated from the face of the earth”.38 Since Gulliver himself appears as a “rational Yahoo” to his four-legged masters, he is also banned from their company. Even though it would be an anachronism to discover in Gulliver’s Travels elements of nineteenth-century Social Darwinism, it is hard not to read Swift’s dystopian vision as an anticipation of the “ethnic cleansing” schemes of later centuries.

A century later, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) depicted the negative consequences of the scientists’ ambitions even more drastically. In his desire to become a creator of life, Victor Frankenstein tries to blur the borderline which separates him from his own maker.39 In the monster which he assembles from parts of human corpses, Bacon’s earlier vision of reviving limbs is fulfilled in a grotesque manner. Significantly, Frankenstein’s drama reaches its climax when the monster calls for a female companion and thus creates the spectre of the founding of a new species.40 As Shelley’s subtitle, The New Prometheus, indicates, her novel is not only a narrative about one man’s moral failure, it also represents the watershed between the attempts of early modern scientists to improve humanity’s physical constitution and modern projects of creating new forms of life by artificial means.

2. Modern Ideas I: Romantic Traditions

As pointed out above, scientifically inspired views represent only one aspect of modern definitions of the “new man”. Another was rooted in the cultural criticism of Romantic writers and their followers. In the nineteenth century, ideas of a restored paradise occurred in various contexts, and in some cases it is difficult to decide if religious images reflect an author’s theological standpoint or if they merely serve as a rhetorical device. In Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802), the former seems to be the case. In an inserted fairy tale, the advent of a new world is depicted as the result of the poetic spirit being released from the bondage of rationalism. In the ensuing pastoral paradise all forms of life are rejuvenated:

On many a hill sat a happy, newly awakened couple in long-missed embrace, regarding the new world as a dream and unable to cease convincing themselvse [!] of the beautiful truth. The flowers and trees grew and greened mightily. Everything took on a new life. Everybody talked and sang.41

In contrast to Novalis’s novel, William Blake’s vision of a new age bore political connotations as well. In a few lines prefixed to his epic poem Milton (1804), Blake reinterpreted the biblical eschatology as a kind of national rebirth when he prophesied that the “dark satanic mills” of contemporary Britain would some day give way to a new “Jerusalem”. Although the poem’s vision cannot be separated from Blake’s private mythology, it is clear that his “Jerusalem” sprang from a collective human effort rather than from divine interference. The pledge with which he ended his poem, namely not to rest until “we have built Jerusalem in England’s green & pleasant Land”,42 reflected the political views of an author who came from a dissenter background, took a critical view on the British monarchy and repeatedly complained about the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution.

The dawning of a new age was an idea which attracted many nineteenth century writers. Although Friedrich Nietzsche is known to have declared the “death of God”43 and to have opposed the “slave morality” of Christianity, he would still model his doctrine of the “Superman” on religious discourse. The prophetic style, which characterizes his Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) (1883/85), indicates that his aim was not to abandon religion altogether but rather to replace an old creed with a new one.44 Still, contemporary biology also left its traces. As the following remark suggests, the “Superman” was not only a philosophical ideal but also the outcome of an evolutionary process. “What is the ape to a human?”, Nietzsche wrote, “A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. And that is precisely what the human shall be to the overman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment.”45 In Nietzsche’s later works, this biological orientation became even more obvious. In his Götzendämmerung (Twilight of the Idols) (1888) he anticipated the methods of negative eugenics when he called upon physicians to “create a new responsibility […] for all cases in which the highest interest of life, of ascending life, demands the most inconsiderate pushing down and aside of degenerating life”. Representatives of the latter category were denied not only a “right of procreation”, but also a “right to be born” and, ultimately, a “right to live”.46

In the late nineteenth century, Nietzsche’s idea of the “Superman” would often merge with a neo-romantic heroism in the wake of Thomas Carlyle. The fact that Nietzsche himself had denounced the English writer as a “typical romantic” matters little in this respect.47 Despite the differences which existed between the two authors, there were also some points of intersection. In his essay Past and Present (1843), Carlyle had called for a “new aristocracy” to compensate for the failures of modern industrial society. What “poor struggling convulsed Europe” needed in order to survive the crisis of the present age, he wrote, was “a real Aristocracy, a real Priesthood”.48 The “hero worship” which Carlyle recommended as a panacea for the present crisis was to be carried out with a “religious devotion”.49 Although Carlyle’s admiration of medieval Europe was hardly compatible with Nietzsche’s invectives against Christianity, the call for a “new aristocracy” and the glorification of “great men” were common denominators. It is therefore not surprising that in eugenic programmes of the early twentieth century Carlyle’s “new aristocracy” and Nietzsche’s “Superman” were often mentioned in one breath.50

In the 1890s, the critique of contemporary civilization grew more radical. As pointed out above, visions of doom would often compete with pronouncements of a new beginning.51 The emerging sub-cultures of the German middle class provided one background for a revival of the “new man”. In 1901, Heinrich and Julius Hart published a book in which they stated that the founding of their alternative community, Neue Gemeinschaft (“New Community”), signified the advent of a new type of human being. Special emphasis was laid on the idea of a future elite. The Neue Gemeinschaft was conceived of as an exclusive circle, an Übervolk (“Superpeople”) in the Nietzschean sense. Although the idea of turning one’s life into a piece of art had more in common with contemporary aestheticism than with practical politics, the Hart brothers described their vision also in terms of social planning.52 At the same time, their rhetoric was mythically inspired. Comparing their role to that of Prometheus, they characterised their “New Community” as the harbinger of a new cosmic era. “By creating the new man”, they wrote, “we will create the new earth.”53 Like Blake, they transferred the biblical eschatology to a political sphere when they depicted their “new man” as the citizen of a “new Reich”:

Our community is of a higher character, an image of a future mankind, of a perfect form of living together, and only pure souls who continuously strive to achieve a blessed state of perfection will be able to enter the blissful gardens of the new Reich we will create […]. The distance which separates the rest of humanity from us, who consider themselves its vanguard, has become outrageous and indescribable.54

In the early twentieth century, the “new man” continued to be linked with the anti-modernist attitude of Romanticism. Within the Lebensreform movement, vegetarianism, teetotalism, nudism and Eastern philosophies were equally promoted as remedies against the ills of urbanisation.55 One representative of this group was Gusto Gräser, a self-proclaimed philosopher who had helped initiate the alternative community of “Monte Verità” (“Mountain of Truth”) near Ascona.56 In 1910, Hermann Hesse, who had visited the “Monte Verità” in his younger days, published a short story entitled Der Weltverbesserer (The World Reformer), in which he portrayed the typical Naturmensch in a satirical way. Hesse’s protagonist is a young enthusiast whose attempt to restore himself by turning his back on civilization fails. The description of his private library, however, offers a good illustration of the intellectual syncretism from which the life reformers’ visions of a “new man” sprang:

A strange library grew in that little house, beginning with vegetarian cookbooks and ending with the most fantastic systems, ranging from platonism, gnosticism, spiritism and theosophy to all areas of spiritual life, betraying a propensity towards occult pompousness. While one author was able to explain the identity of the Pythagorean doctrine and spiritism, another interpreted Jesus as the herald of vegetarianism, and a third one revealed the annoying craving for love as a transitional phase in which Nature provisionally relied on reproduction while, in the long run, she would strive to realize the physical immortality of every individual.57

After the First World War, the idea of a “new man” was taken up in a number of different movements. One of them was expressionism, represented by writers such as Johannes R. Becher or Ernst Toller. While the “life reformers” cannot be pinpointed to any particular political view, the expressionists’ sympathies lay primarily on the left. Written under the impression of the war, Becher’s poem, Mensch, steh auf! (Man, Arise!) (1919), emphatically called for the rebirth of a suffering humanity. Toller’s play, Die Wandlung (Transformation) (1919), which depicted a young soldier’s development from a devoted nationalist to a preacher of brotherly love, equally invoked the idea of a new beginning.58 Though not connected to any religious orthodoxy, the prophetic gestures with which expressionist writers underlined their claims demonstrate the lasting impact that religious discourse had on calls for a “new man”. At a time when traditional concepts of salvation were increasingly felt to be outworn, it was the mere pathos of renewal which functioned as a surrogate.59

Another group in which the “new man” was promoted was the Jugendbewegung (“Youth Movement”), an offspring from the neo-romantic Wandervogel which had been founded in Berlin-Steglitz in the 1890s and had soon developed into a mass movement. After 1918, the Youth Movement became a multi-shaped phenomenon, including Christian as well as neo-pagan subgroups, conservative as well as socialist ones. Many of those who sympathized with the original Wandervogel had been influenced by the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. A late example can be found in the naturist Charly Straeßer whose book Jugendgelände: Ein Buch vom neuen Menschen (“Youth Terrain: A Book of the New Man”) appeared in 1926. Straeßer praised the Wandervogel for having paved the way for the dawning of a new age. Its members were depicted as pure and uncorrupted, youthful and healthy, forming a clear contrast to the “decadent worshippers” of the machine age. Convinced that the First World War had sealed the fate of the Christian civilization, the author detected in the Wandervogel a religious spirit of a new kind – one in which the perfecting of the human body played a central role. Straeßer carried further Nietzsche’s attacks on Christianity, when he demanded a liberation of the body from its “Christian confinement”.60 Despite such hostility, however, the Christian tradition still left its mark. In the epilogue to Straeßer’s book, another writer took recourse to the Christian idea of prelapsarian innocence when he stated that the members of the Youth Movement need not be ashamed because of their nakedness, since it was not connected to any unclean thoughts. Furthermore, his disparaging remarks about the Islamic world betrayed an Orientalism which had long since formed a characteristic of the Western tradition.61 What distinguished his views from earlier accounts of the orient, however, was his insistence on racial factors. While in the Arabic world women were forced to conceal their faces, he noted, the uncorrupted “Nordics” were in full control of their sensuality and could easily dispense with such protective measures.62

Depending on an author’s orientation, the “new man” could either be defined as a romantic ideal or with reference to ethnic categories. In the so-called Volkish movement the two aspects overlapped. Characterised by a thoroughgoing nationalism, its members were not interested in the progress of humanity as a whole but in a spiritual rebirth of the German people (Volk).63 The “new man” they called for was part of a widespread pseudo-religious worship of Deutschtum (“Germanness”) which had emerged in the Kaiserreich.64 What the Volkish movement had in mind was a “new Reich”, conceived of as the fulfilment of Germany’s alleged “historical mission”. It is easy to see that this intellectual context also provided the background for the rise of National Socialism after 1920. When in 1924, the publisher Franz Eher distributed a leaflet to advertise Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, it included the announcement of a “new man” who would inhabit the new “German Reich”.65 In the 1920s, however, the Nazis represented only one Volkisch group among many. Dreams of a “third Reich” were equally expressed by the members of the so-called “Conservative Revolution”,66 and even a devoted pacifist like Hermann Hesse recalled in his Morgenlandfahrt (Journey to the East) (1932) that after 1918 the longing for a “third Reich” had been widespread.67 The term itself had become popular through the publication of Arthur Moeller van den Bruck’s book Das dritte Reich (“The Third Reich”) (1923). Seven years later, in 1930, the journalist Edgar Jung published the voluminous second edition of his work Die Herrschaft der Minderwertigen (The Rule of the Inferior) in which he condemned the political system of the Weimar Republic and predicted the advent of a “new Reich” to be inhabited by a “new German man”.68 The chief characteristic of this new type of being, he wrote, was a readiness to sacrifice himself for a “higher entity”, i.e. the German Volk. Ironically, the author’s own sacrifice would occur only a few years later, shortly after Hitler’s seizure of power. After drafting a critical speech for vice-chancellor Franz von Papen, to whom he served as secretary, he was classed as “unreliable” and became one of the victims of the “night of the long knives” in June 1934.69

3. Modern Ideas II: Biologism and Eugenics

Interestingly, the use of biblical imagery was not restricted to neo-romantic, expressionist or ethnically defined ideas of a “new man”. Although the fact that convinced biologists took recourse to religious ideas may seem paradoxical at first sight, it confirms Eric Voegelin’s observation that even decidedly secular ideologies often take on the disguise of “new religions”.70 A reading of the writings of Social Darwinists and eugenicists reveals that a scientific pragmatism of the Baconian tradition was often rhetorically underlined with prophetic gestures. It is therefore not surprising that Francis Galton advocated his ideas concerning a biological improvement of humanity as a “new religion”.71 Equally, Ernst Haeckel employed a religious vocabulary when he published his Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (The History of Creation) in 1868.72 An extreme example of such a religiously inspired agnosticism can be found in Wilhelm Ostwald’s Monistische Sonntagspredigten (“Monistic Sunday Sermons”) (1911 ff.) in which a radical philosophical materialism was defended with the language of the pulpit. Outlining his biological “creed”, Ostwald wrote:

What none of the many religions could achieve which, successively or simultaneously, have offered themselves for this purpose, namely to help man in his suffering and to improve his life, science has fulfilled to an ever increasing extent.73

Although Ostwald argued that people with a higher education tended to refrain from religious devotions and thus intended to make religion a thing of the past, he also wished that science might one day assume the role which religion had hitherto fulfilled.74 A functional equivalence between religion and science is obvious in his prediction that European ecclesiastical houses will shortly be replaced by “monistic homes” where people can gather to seek spiritual aid.75 With such influences, it is no wonder that “monism”, though based on a strictly biological view of nature, at times mutated into a pseudo-religious cult.76

When Francis Galton introduced the term “eugenics” in 1883, the idea of a physical improvement of humanity had been in the air for a long time. In 1871, Edward Bulwer-Lytton had published his utopian novel The Coming Race, in which he depicted an underground community which had superseded humanity mentally as well as physically.77 One year later, Winwood Reade, in his Martyrdom of Man, anticipated future human beings who had successfully overcome all the obstacles of physical life. Although Reade was a devoted Darwinist and intended his book as a “natural history” of humanity, he did not refrain from using biblical images when it came to illustrating the future of the planet.78 He anticipated the Earth becoming a “Holy Land”, inhabited by immortal human beings:

These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals; our minds have already outgrown them; already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come when Science will transform them […]. Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. […] The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man then will be perfect; he will then be a creator; he will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.79

Following in Reade’s footsteps, whom he regarded as a major influence, it was H. G. Wells who soon became a leading voice in the propagation of a “new man”. Beginning with Anticipations (1901), he would repeatedly address the issue of eugenics, although often changing his views concerning particular points.80 In Anticipations, the inhabitants of a so-called “New Republic” are still hard and uncompromising. Preaching the gospel of physical strength, they regard Christian charity as an obstacle to their purposes. In line with Nietzsche’s ideas, their “new ethics” are based on the principle that “inferior” people deserve “little pity and less benevolence”.81 Wells’s later writings, however, present a more complicated picture. While in Mankind in the Making (1903) and A Modern Utopia (1905), he expressed his doubts about the possibility of breeding a race of supermen, his fictional narrative Men Like Gods (1923) presented its readers with a world of biological perfection which recalled Winwood Reade’s vision of the future of earthly life: all annoying insects have been eliminated and all the wild beasts have been tamed. As a result of centuries of selective breeding, humanity has achieved a state of constant physical health and the world has become a garden.82

Such visions of a future humanity were not far from those expressed in the early Soviet Union where the “new man” was defined within a Marxist framework. As Leon Trotsky’s description of a future human species demonstrates, the early years of Soviet Russia were marked by a Baconian belief in the blessings of applied science. In Literature and Revolution (1924) Trotsky wrote:

The human species, the coagulated homo sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands, will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical training. […] Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of his consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.83

Although the Bolshevists would generally subscribe to a strict philosophical materialism which rejected any religious doctrine as an “opiate for the people”, their project of a “new socialist man” could also be read as the revival of an old idea in a new disguise, namely the religious view held in the Greek Orthodox Church that human beings could gradually refine themselves in order to reach a higher spiritual level.84 As Michael Hagemeister has pointed out, the desire to overcome death, which had existed in religious sects prior to the Revolution, continued to thrive among groups such as the “biocosmists” and the “God builders”.85 While the former strove to achieve absolute control over space and time, the latter sought to perfect human beings in such a way that they assumed a God-like quality. In the hope of achieving immortality not only for the living but also for the dead, the early modern idea of a “prolongation of life” could be carried to extremes. Thus, some writers were convinced that a dead organism could be revived, once its physiological structure had been thoroughly analysed.86

Not all contemporaries, however, were willing to share such an unlimited optimism in the perfectibility of human life. While leftist writers like Reade, Wells and Trotsky carried further the scientific enthusiasm of the early Enlightenment, others were haunted by fears that humanity was already facing a biological regression. Within the discourse of degeneration which gained momentum at the beginning of the twentieth century, the “new man” represented a bygone reality rather than a new creation. When Ludwig Woltmann referred to a “new man” in his book Die Germanen und die Renaissance in Italien (“The Germanic Tribes and the Italian Renaissance”) (1905), he had in mind a northern European type whom he regarded as racially superior to the average Italian. Centuries after the defeat of Rome, which Woltmann ascribed to a mixing of races, the “new man” had appeared in northern Italy in order to reclaim his rightful territory:

The Germanic race created a new ideal of beauty and made the education and the colours of its type the reflection of its emotions and experiences. The “new men” were the descendants of those tribes whose heroes and women had been admired by the ancient authors because of their bodies’ strength and beauty.87

Woltmann explained that during the Renaissance period the “new man” had also brought a “new spirit” to the Mediterranean countries. After centuries of decadence, this spirit had made possible a new morality and a revival of the classical concept of beauty.88 As can be gathered from Woltmann’s descriptions, his “new man” was anything but new. More than anything else, he served as a metaphor for the author’s racial prejudices.