Karl Haushofer: biography, photos, theories, main works

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:45

The famous and infamous father of German geopolitics, Karl Haushofer, was the central figure of this new discipline from its formal inception in 1924 until 1945. His association with the Hitler regime resulted in one-sided and partly incorrect assessments of his work and the role he played. This situation continued throughout the post-war period. It is only in the last decade that a number of authors have developed a more balanced perspective, without, however, rehabilitating his or his pseudoscience.

Karl Haushofer (photo presented in the article) was born on August 27, 1869 in Munich in a Bavarian aristocratic family and combined scientific, artistic and creative talents. His grandfather, Max Haushofer (1811–1866), was a landscape professor at the Prague Academy of Arts. His uncle, Carl von Haushofer (1839–1895), after whom it was named, was an artist, scientific writer, professor of mineralogy and director of the Technical University of Munich.

Karl Haushofer: biography

Karl was the only son of Max (1840–1907) and Adelheid(1844–1872) Haushofer. His father was a professor of political economy at the same university. Such a stimulating environment could not but affect Karl, who had many hobbies.

After graduating from the gymnasium in 1887, he entered military service in the regiment of Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria. Karl became an officer in 1889 and looked upon the war as the ultimate test of the dignity of man and nation.

His marriage in August 1896 to Martha Mayer-Doss (1877-1946) played a huge role. A strong-willed, highly educated woman had a great influence on her husband's professional and personal life. She encouraged him to pursue an academic career and assisted him in his work. The fact that her father was Jewish would cause problems for Haushofer during the Nazi rule.

In 1895–1897 Karl taught a series of courses at the Bavarian Military Academy, where in 1894 he began teaching modern military history. However, soon after the first publication with an analysis of the military maneuver, which criticized one of his commanders, in 1907 Haushofer was transferred to the 3rd division in Landau.

Travel

Karl seized the first opportunity to escape from there, accepting the offer of the Bavarian Minister of War for a post in Japan. Staying in East Asia became decisive in his career as a geographer and geopolitics. From October 19 to February 18, 1909, he traveled with his wife through Ceylon, India and Burma to Japan. Here Haushofer was seconded to the German Embassy, and then to the 16th division in Kyoto. He twicemet with Emperor Mutsushito, who, like other local aristocrats, made a strong impression on him. From Japan, Haushofer made a three-week trip to Korea and China. In June 1910 he returned to Munich via the Trans-Siberian Railway. This only visit to the Land of the Rising Sun and meeting with the aristocracy contributed to the formation of his idealized and eventually outdated opinion about Japan.

First book

Seriously ill while traveling, Haushofer briefly taught at the Bavarian Military Academy before taking an unpaid leave of absence in 1912-1913. Martha inspired him to write their first book Dai Nihon. Analysis of the military power of Great Japan in the future (1913). In less than 4 months, Marta dictated 400 pages of text. This productive collaboration will only get better with more posts to come.

Scientist career

The first concrete step towards Haushofer's academic career was the admission of the 44-year-old major in April 1913 to the University of Munich as a doctoral student under the guidance of Professor Erich von Drygalski. After 7 months, he received his doctorate in geography, geology and history, defending his thesis en titled German participation in the geographical development of Japan and the sub-Japanese space. His stimulation by the influence of war and military policy” (1914).

His work was interrupted by service during the First World War, mainly on the Western Front, which he completed as a commanderdivision. Immediately after returning to Munich in December 1918, he began working under the previous leadership on the dissertation "The main directions of the geographical development of the Japanese Empire" (1919), which he completed after 4 months. In July 1919, followed by a defense with a lecture on the Japanese inland seas and a nomination for Privatdozent (after 1921 - an honorary title) in geography. In October 1919, Karl Haushofer retired at the age of 50 with the rank of major general and began his first course of lectures on the Anthropogeography of East Asia.

Meet Hess

In 1919, Haushofer met Rudolf Hess and Oskar Ritter von Niedermeier. In 1920, Hess became his student and graduate student and joined the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany. Rudolf was imprisoned with Hitler at Landsberg after the failed 1924 coup attempt. Haushofer visited his student there 8 times and occasionally met with the future Fuhrer. After coming to power in 1933, Hess, Hitler's second-in-command, became the patron of the geopolitician, his protector and link to the Nazi regime.

In 1919, von Niedermeier, a doctoral student in Dryganski, a captain in the German army and later a professor of military sciences at the University of Berlin, enlisted Haushofer to develop Germany's policy towards Japan. In 1921 he persuaded him to prepare secret reports on East Asian affairs for the German Ministry of Defense. This was the reason for Karl's participation in secret tripartite negotiations between Germany, Japan and the USSR in December 1923 andgrowing recognition in political circles as the best German expert on Japan.

Karl Haushofer: geopolitics

The beginning of the publication of his concepts was marked by the publication in 1924 of the book "Geopolitics of the Pacific Ocean". In the same year, the Geopolitika magazine began to be published, edited by Karl Haushofer. The main works of the scientist concerned the role of borders (1927), pan-ideas (1931) and attempts to establish the foundations of defense geopolitics (1932). But the magazine has always been his main tool.

It was somewhat of a family business, as its two gifted sons, Albrecht and Heinz, especially the latter, were active participants in it. Both received their doctorates in 1028, became teachers in 1930, and both held high government positions under Hitler: Albrecht in the Foreign Office and Heinz in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Until 1931, Karl Haushofer published Geopolitika in collaboration with the young geographers Hermann Lautenzach, Otto Maull and Erich Obst. During the paper's heyday in the late 1920s, they published a general introduction to science, The Elements of Geopolitics (1928). In this book, the authors considered geopolitics to be an applied science related to modern politics, which is engaged in the search for patterns of political processes in their connection with the space for making political forecasts. Three years later, however, disagreements over how their "scholarly" journal should evaluate contemporary politics led to the exit of the junior editors. Haushofer remained sole editor from 1932 until publication ceased in 1944

Career advancement

After Hitler came to power in January 1933, the career of geopolitics and his role began to grow due to his close relationship with Rudolf Hess. In a short time, a number of measures were taken to improve his academic status. Initially, his habilitation was changed to "Germanism Abroad, Frontier and Defense Geography". In July 1933, at the request of Hitler's representative in Bavaria, Franz Javier Ritter von Epp, a school and army friend of Haushofer, he was granted the title and privileges, but not the position and salary of a professor. In parallel, various representatives of the University of Munich and the Bavarian Ministry of Culture nominated him for the post of rector of the university, a move taken to use connections with Hitler's right hand to protect the institution from Nazi manipulation. Karl urged Hess to stop these attempts. On the other hand, Hess advocated the creation of a chair for defense geography or geopolitics for Haushofer, but this was denied by the Bavarian minister of culture. Haushofer remained a peripheral member of the Munich geographical office, although his status rose greatly in the public eye.

German World

During the Nazi rule, he held senior positions in three organizations involved in the promotion of German culture and Germans abroad. He did not join the Nazi party, as he found many practices andprograms are unacceptable. On the contrary, he tried to play the role of mediator between party and non-party elements, albeit unsuccessfully, due to the growing pressure of Nazification and the confusion of politics and internal struggles that prevailed in the party and government in the early years of the Nazi regime.

In 1933, Hess, who de alt with the ethnic affairs of Germany, created the Council of Ethnic Germans, headed by Haushofer. The council had the authority to conduct policy towards ethnic Germans abroad. Haushofer's main task was to maintain contact with Hess and other Nazi organizations. Conflict of interest with party organs led to the dissolution of the Council in 1936

Also in 1933, the Academy, fearful of Nazism, offered Haushofer a higher position. Member of the Academy since 1925, he was elected Vice President in 1933 and President in 1934. Although Karl left the post due to a conflict with the leadership, he remained a member of the internal council as a permanent representative of Hess until 1941

The third important organization that the scientist headed for some time was the People's Union for Germans and German Culture Abroad. At the initiative of Hess, Haushofer became its chairman in December 1938 and held this position until September 1942, playing the role of a figurehead, since the once independent union became an instrument of propaganda for the idea of a great German Reich.

Ideas and theories

The rise of the Nazis to power left a mark on the works of the scientist, although more in form than in content. This is especiallynoticeable in his short monograph The National Socialist Idea in a World Perspective (1933), which launched the Academy's New Reich series. It depicted National Socialism as a worldwide movement of national renewal, with a special spatial dynamism of poor societies, to which the author ranked Germany, Italy and Japan. The widely circulated Modern World Politics (1934) followed in 1934, a popular digest of previously published ideas that supported the principles of Nazi foreign policy, which until 1938 roughly coincided with Haushofer's aspirations. Among the many books on Japan, Central Europe, and international affairs published after 1933, Oceans and World Powers (1937) played a special role. It combined the geopolitical theories of Karl Haushofer, according to which the sea power of the state is of paramount importance.

A rapid loss of influence and a growing disillusionment with the regime characterize the last years of the geopolitics' life after his departure from the university. In the same year, he was humiliated and demonstrated his lack of political influence by banning the second edition of The Frontiers (1927) after a protest by the Italian government regarding his treatment of the German ethnic question in South Tyrol. Moreover, after serving as an adviser to the Munich Conference in September 1938, which led to the annexation of the Sudetenland, Karl admitted that his advice to Hitler to refrain from further expansion fell on deaf ears in the dictator's bid for world war.

Karl Haushofer's continental block theory becameone of his most important concepts. It was based on a pact between Berlin, Moscow and Tokyo. The project was implemented from August 1939 to December 1940, until it was buried by the war between Germany and the USSR. The theory concerned a future confrontation between maritime and continental superpowers.

Karl Haushofer, the author of the theory of the continental bloc, was critical and very hostile towards Poland, which resulted in his ardent support for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which eliminated this country.

Collapse

From the end of 1940, Karl and Albrecht, together with Hess, explored the possibilities of peace with Britain. This ended with Hess flying to Scotland on May 10, 1941, where he issued threats that bore little resemblance to Albrecht's peace plan. As a result, the Haushofers lost not only their defender, which was important, given Martha's Jewish origin, but also aroused suspicion and special attention to themselves. Karl was interrogated by the secret police, and Albrecht was imprisoned for 8 weeks. This was followed by the departure of Haushofer from all his political positions with voluntary isolation from September 1942 on his Bavarian estate. His situation worsened after the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, as Albrecht participated in the movement that organized him. Karl was placed in Dachau for 4 weeks, and his sons were arrested in Berlin. There, Albrecht was killed by the SS on April 23, 1945. Heinz survived the war and became a well-known agronomist and keeper of the family archives.

After the war, the American administration interrogated Haushofer about his work and politicalactivities, but did not involve him in participation in the Nuremberg Tribunal, since his role in the war was difficult to prove. He was forced to draw up a document that was supposed to save future generations from German geopolitics. After writing a short work "Defending German Geopolitics" (1946), in which he explained and justified his work more than apologizing for it, Karl Haushofer and his wife committed suicide on March 10, 1946.