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alex revision · 2025-07-27T22:00:53Z

Volkstum as Heritage There was a time, not long since passed, when anyone who wanted to speak in a lively way about Volkstum as its own being was considered a fool. Intergovernmental powers dominated money and public opinion in Germany. Cosmopolitanism, belonging to a supranational organization on both sides, was the slogan... But since all foreign powers thrive the more the unique characteristics of a people are bound and suppressed, the goal of all these parasitic powers was to despise and enslave the Völkisch, that is, the Volk character... But since they see themselves confronted with a living being, one rooted in the timeless, in the divine, one that, like a felled linden tree, continually sprouts and grows from the stump, the foreign powers simply resorted to the ruse of claiming for themselves that which they could not otherwise master, unless they destroyed the people themselves as the bearers of its essence. The insurmountable, however, was reshaped, given new names, given deceptive alien cloaks, trimmed and pruned, until the people, with their clouded eyes, could no longer recognize their own things. Thus, a strange thing is happening today: the very powers that most zealously wanted to destroy the people have preserved much of our own essence and our ancestral heritage—one could even say against our will. For today, after a thousand-year enchanted sleep, the German people have awakened like Sleeping Beauty. They recognize themselves and their eternal mission and, above all, rediscover themselves and their ancestral ways beneath shabby, foreign glitter. This is the secret and the miracle of the resurrection of the German people under National Socialism. Before we go any further, we must now ask ourselves two questions. What is Volkstum ? What of it has become our binding inheritance today? Volkstum means the peculiarity and thus the species-specific nature of a people in relation to itself and at the same time in contrast to the nature of a foreign people. From mysterious roots, it grows like an evergreen tree... From a mighty, vital trunk, branches and twigs grow that blossom and bear fruit, a small image of the world and life tree of the fathers... From the blood of the people, which comes purely from the divine... From the fertile soil where both ancestors and future generations make their home, this mighty tree of folklore grows, a gift from the heavens. It draws eternal, inexhaustible strength from this sacred ground and spreads into countless branches... Into faith and law, custom and tradition, into writing, art, and symbols, into games and dances, fairy tales, legends, songs, sayings, and so much more. We see that one can not speak of Volkstum without speaking of blood and the soil from which it grows... One can not, in turn, affirm Volkstum and, at the same time, deny blood as the bearer of all completely intrinsic values. One could certainly accuse us of falling into a frightening materialism when we speak of blood and soil... But those who accuse us of this do so either against better knowledge, out of an understandable instinct for self-preservation, or out of narrow-mindedness. Neither, however, misleads us. For we know that both blood and the soil from which it grows are the immediate, highest values of the divine... And no Volk can seek its basis in something better and higher than in the divine essence. If we now answer the second question, what has become of our Volkstum as an obligatory inheritance, we are initially astonished at the wealth we inherit today as ancestral heritage. According to what we were taught in school and elsewhere, there seemed to be little or nothing left of the German Volkstum. However, there were eccentric men for that time who wrote down worthy things in books, which they summarized under the name Volkstum. I think, for example, of the immortal Brothers Grimm... But no one read these books. If the German people did read books, they were books by other peoples, certainly not by their own people! What could we possibly have in terms of knowledge worth knowing? What else could we have inherited from our fathers other than their sins, their wickedness? What legacy could such fathers leave us, portrayed as idlers, layabouts, debauchers, drunkards, gypsies, robbers, vagrants—in short, as uncultured, barbaric savages in the woods and swamps, comparable only to some wild tribe of Negroes in Central Africa?... And who, then, dared to acknowledge such dishonoured ancestors, let alone consciously seek their honour and their essence? To name our ancestors and simultaneously deny them their heritage, their culture, and their uniqueness, that became a surprising custom. In contrast, the light from the Orient and Rome and the customs that supposedly came to us from there were allowed to shine all the brighter! This was preached to us until we believed it! Many still believe it today, but the time has come when we renounce the jewish patriarchs who have been...