Friedrich Naumann - Wikipedia Friedrich Naumann From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Friedrich Naumann" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Friedrich Naumann Reichstag Personal details Born (1860-03-25)25 March 1860 Störmthal (now part of Großpösna) near Leipzig Died 24 August 1919(1919-08-24) (aged 59) Travemünde Political party Christian Social Party National-Social Association Freeminded Union Freeminded People's Party Democratic Party Spouse(s) Maria Magdalena Zimmermann Occupation Theologian, Politician Friedrich Naumann (25 March 1860 – 24 August 1919) was a German liberal politician and Protestant parish pastor. The Friedrich Naumann Foundation of the Free Democratic Party is named after him. However, Naumann is also somewhat controversial as he is accused of inspiring the Nazi foreign policy and for his anti-Armenian statements.[1] Contents 1 Life 2 Reception 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links Life[edit] Naumann was born in the vicarage of Großpösna near Leipzig in Saxony. He attended school in Leipzig and the Fürstenschule in Meissen, whereafter he studied theology at the universities of Leipzig and Erlangen. From 1883 he worked at the Rauhes Haus charity institution established by Johann Hinrich Wichern in Hamburg, before in 1886 he took over the rectorate of Lengenberg near Glauchau in Saxony. From 1890 he also served in the Inner mission in Frankfurt. Originally a follower of the conservative-clerical and antisemitic Berlin movement led by Adolf Stoecker and his Christian Social Party, Naumann later became interested in the social theories advocated by his friend Max Weber, one of the most pronounced critics of Emperor Wilhelm II. His ideal was that of helping the workers, whose miserable life circumstances he had witnessed in Hamburg. His goal was to raise interest in this issue among the middle class, however, initially he was hindered by the German middle class fear of the proletariat, who were regarded as potential revolutionaries. Naumann later tried to involve Weber in politics, but this failed due to the bad health and temper of Weber. Already from 1894 he published the weekly magazine Die Hilfe ("The Help") to address the social question from a non-marxist middle class point of view. To this end he wrote the short book, Soziale Briefe An Reiche Leute ("Social Letters to Wealthy People") published in Göttingen in 1895. Together with Rudolph Sohm and Caspar René Gregory, he founded the National-Social Association in 1896; an attempt to provide a social liberal alternative to the Social Democrats, that could address the growing social rift between rich industrialists and the poor working class. During the 1890s Hamidian massacres, Naumann became known for expressing anti-Armenianism in Die Hilfe including the famous "potter's quote" in which Naumann allegedly quoted a German potter in Constantinople as stating: I am a Christian and hold “Love thy neighbor” as the first commandment, and I say that the Turks did the right thing when they beat the Armenians to death. There is no other way for the Turk to protect himself from the Armenian. […] The Armenian is the worst type in the world. He sells his wife, his still under-aged daughter, he steals from his brother. The whole of Constantinople is being morally poisoned by the Armenians. It is not the Turks who have attacked, but the Armenians. […] An orderly means of protecting oneself against the Armenians does not exist. The Turk is acting in self-defense.[1] Historian Stefan Ihrig states that "Naumann had exposed a very broad audience to justifications for killing Armenians and had made Germany’s ears deaf to the Armenian plight as well as anti- Armenianism 'morally' and politically more acceptable".[2] Later in his life, Naumann worked for an approachment of German social democratic and liberal movements, but faced major opposition from conservatives. Industrialists like Freiherr von Stumm called Naumann and his associates "Allies of the Socialists". Naumann wanted to preserve Christian values, which he hoped would improve the fraught relations between workers and corporate businessmen. The National-Social Association failed in the German elections of 1898 and 1903 and was then dissolved into the Freeminded Union. Naumann became a member of the Reichstag parliament upon the 1907 federal election. In 1907, he co-founded the Deutscher Werkbund association. On the eve of World War I, Naumann proved to be a monarchist and adherent of the German emperor Wilhelm II. He espoused a kind of liberal imperialism, signing the 1914 Manifesto of the Ninety-Three, and still in 1918 backed the "Anti-Bolshevist League" of Eduard Stadtler. In 1919, Friedrich Naumann was among the founders of the social liberal German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP) with Theodor Wolff and Hugo Preuss. As a member of the Weimar National Assembly, he became one of the "Fathers of the Constitution" of the Weimar Republic, and, shortly before his death, was elected as the first president of the Democratic Party. Reception[edit] Naumann is often considered an advocate of German nationalism with militarist and annexionist ideals, due to his book Mitteleuropa (1915) on the geopolitics of a Central Europe under German leadership.[3] The work had a great public impact, though it did not affect the military strategy of World War I. Like many scholars of his time, Naumann upheld the theories of Social Darwinism and Volksgemeinschaft. He shared his views with the intellectual circles he frequented, including not only Max Weber, but also Lujo Brentano, Hellmut von Gerlach, young Theodor Heuss, his wife Elly Heuss-Knapp, and Gustav Stresemann. See also[edit] Liberalism List of liberal theorists References[edit] ^ a b Ihrig, Stefan (2018). "Germany and the 1890s Armenian massacres: Questions of Morality in Foreign Policy". Études arméniennes contemporaines (11): 75–92. doi:10.4000/eac.1871. ISSN 2269-5281. ^ Justifying Genocide p. 77 ^ Naumann, Friedrich (1915). Mitteleuropa (in German). Berlin, Germany: Georg Reimer. Further reading[edit] Wolfhart Pentz (2002). "The Meaning of Religion in the Politics of Friedrich Naumann". Journal for the History of Modern Theology. 9 (1): 70–97. Theodor Heuss (1949). Friedrich Naumann: der Mann, das Werk, die Zeit. Stuttgart & Tübingen: Wunderlich. External links[edit] Works by or about Friedrich Naumann at Internet Archive Media related to Friedrich Naumann at Wikimedia Commons Friedrich Naumann; Christabel Margaret Meredith; William James Ashley (1917). Central Europe. King. Newspaper clippings about Friedrich Naumann in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Authority control BNF: cb13002756m (data) CANTIC: a10370420 GND: 118738178 ISNI: 0000 0001 0858 6227 LCCN: n83318166 NDL: 00517865 NKC: skuk0000989 NLA: 35081568 NLI: 000292605 NLP: A1186820X NTA: 070834881 PLWABN: 9810594978505606 SNAC: w60k3mqp SUDOC: 033758158 Trove: 820920 VcBA: 495/225772 VIAF: 73985753 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n83318166 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Friedrich_Naumann&oldid=994972776" Categories: 1860 births 1919 deaths People from Leipzig (district) People from the Kingdom of Saxony German Lutheran clergy National-Social Association politicians Free-minded Union politicians Progressive People's Party (Germany) politicians German Democratic Party politicians Members of the 12th Reichstag of the German Empire Members of the 13th Reichstag of the German Empire Members of the Weimar National Assembly Geopoliticians Political party founders Hidden categories: CS1 German-language sources (de) Articles needing additional references from October 2018 All articles needing additional references Use dmy dates from October 2018 Articles with Internet Archive links Commons category link is on Wikidata Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLA identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLP identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers Wikipedia articles with VcBA identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Languages العربية Bân-lâm-gú Български Čeština Dansk Deutsch Español فارسی Français Italiano עברית ქართული Latina Македонски مصرى 日本語 Norsk bokmål Polski Português Română Русский Svenska Türkçe 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 18 December 2020, at 14:42 (UTC). 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