A Germanophile, Teutonophile, or Teutophile [1] is a person who is fond of German culture, German people and Germany in general, [2] or who exhibits German patriotism in spite of not being either an ethnic German or a German citizen. The love of the German way, called "Germanophilia" or "Teutonophilia", is the opposite of Germanophobia. [3]
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The term "Germanophile" came into common use in the 19th to 20th centuries [4] – after the 1871 formation of the German Empire and its subsequent rise in importance. It is used not only politically but also culturally; for example, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), the famous, influential German philosopher, interpreted the geographic triad of Europe as comprising England (utilitarian pragmatism), France (revolutionary hastiness), and Germany (reflective thoroughness).[ vague ]
In 19th-century romanticism in Britain, the term's antonym was Scandophile, expressing a dichotomy of associating "Anglo-Saxon" culture either with continental West Germanic culture or with North Germanic (Scandinavian) culture (the "Viking revival").[ citation needed ] With an affinity to "Teutonic" or Germanic culture and worldview seen as opposed to a predilection for Classical Antiquity.
In 19th-century Continental Europe, the dichotomy was rather between Germany and France, the main political players of the period, and a Germanophile would choose to side with Germany against French or "Romance" interests taken to heart by a Francophile. The corresponding term relating to England is Anglophile, an affinity, in turn, often observed in early-20th-century Germans choosing to side against French influence.
This term was also popularly used in the 20th century to refer to admirers and adherents of the Prussian model of higher education created by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), which were leading in the early 1800s and widely adopted by elite universities from Oslo to Harvard.[ citation needed ]
A number of Serb elites in the 19th century and in the interwar period were staunch Germanophiles. [5]
Argentine poet and writer Jorge Luis Borges was a self-described Germanophile. During World War I, while his family was living in Geneva, in neutral Switzerland, Borges taught himself to speak and read the German language so that he could read the writings of Romantic poet Heinrich Heine in the original language. In later years, Borges cited many other German poets and philosophers as a major influence upon his own ideas and writings. Even in the essays that attacked Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Borges described himself as a Germanophile. Borges further accused the Nazis of rewriting German history, of savagely distorting the interpretation of German literature, and of criminally corrupting German culture. While Borges expressed support for the Allies during World War II, he expressed concern that Western civilization might not be able to do without the achievements and contributions of the German people and that, he warned, was why their corruption by the teachings of hatred was such a horrible crime.
Egyptian-born Ottoman military officer Aziz Ali al-Misri was a self-described Germanophile. He stated in an interview with Al-Ahram that after he learned of the German surrender in 1919 following WWI, he fell into a depression and considered committing suicide. [6] He would later try to go to Germany by various means during WWII without success. His rival in the Ottoman army, Enver Pasha, was also a Germanophile.
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there are some currents of literature influenced to a greater or lesser degree by dialects.
Reich is a German noun whose meaning is analogous to the English word "realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms Kaiserreich and Königreich are respectively used in German in reference to empires and kingdoms. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary indicates that in English usage, the term "the Reich" refers to "Germany during the period of Nazi control from 1933 to 1945".
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern Indo-Iranians as an epithet of "noble". Anthropological, historical, and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.
The master race is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative "Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as "Herrenmenschen".
Germans are the natives or inhabitants of Germany, or sometimes more broadly any people who are of German descent or native speakers of the German language. The constitution of Germany defines a German as a German citizen. During the 19th and much of the 20th century, discussions on German identity were dominated by concepts of a common language, culture, descent, and history. Today, the German language is widely seen as the primary, though not exclusive, criterion of German identity. Estimates on the total number of Germans in the world range from 100 to 150 million, and most of them live in Germany.
German philosophy, meaning philosophy in the German language or philosophy by German people, in its diversity, is fundamental for both the analytic and continental traditions. It covers figures such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle, and the Frankfurt School, who now count among the most famous and studied philosophers of all time. They are central to major philosophical movements such as rationalism, German idealism, Romanticism, dialectical materialism, existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, logical positivism, and critical theory. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is often also included in surveys of German philosophy due to his extensive engagement with German thinkers.
German Romanticism was the dominant intellectual movement of German-speaking countries in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, influencing philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and criticism. Compared to English Romanticism, the German variety developed relatively early, and, in the opening years, coincided with Weimar Classicism (1772–1805).
Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, people, and culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationalism went hand in hand. In linguistics, Germanisation of non-German languages also occurs when they adopt many German words.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, scientific racism, and Nordicism; he has been described as a "racialist writer". His best-known book, the two-volume Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, published 1899, became highly influential in the pan-Germanic Völkisch movements of the early 20th century, and later influenced the antisemitism of Nazi racial policy. Indeed, Chamberlain has been referred to as "Hitler's John the Baptist".
Slavophilia was a movement originating from the 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed on the basis of values and institutions derived from Russia's early history. Slavophiles opposed the influences of Western Europe in Russia. Depending on the historical context, the opposite of Slavophilia could be seen as Slavophobia or also what some Russian intellectuals called zapadnichestvo (westernism).
Geist is a German noun with a significant degree of importance in German philosophy. Geist can be roughly translated into three English meanings: ghost, spirit, and mind or intellect. Some English translators resort to using "spirit/mind" or "spirit (mind)" to help convey the meaning of the term.
Friedrich Konrad Eduard Wilhelm Ludwig Klages was a German philosopher, psychologist, graphologist, poet, writer, and lecturer, who was a two-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the Germanosphere, he is considered one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. He began his career as a research chemist according to his family's wishes, though soon returned to his passions for poetry, philosophy and classical studies. He held a post at the University of Munich, where in 1905 he founded the Psychodiagnostisches Seminar; the latter was forced to close in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. In 1915, Klages moved to neutral Switzerland, where over the following decades much of his mature philosophical works were written. Klages died in 1956.
Swabians are a Germanic speaking people who are native to the ethnocultural and linguistic region of Swabia, which is now mostly divided between the modern states of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, in southwestern Germany.
French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern philosophy by René Descartes, to 20th century philosophy of science, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, and postmodernism.
A Francophile, also known as Gallophile, is a person who has a strong affinity towards any or all of the French language, French history, French culture and/or French people. That affinity may include France itself or its history, language, cuisine, literature, etc. The term "Francophile" can be contrasted with Francophobe, someone who shows hatred or other forms of negative feelings towards all that is French. Some Welsh, who are closely connected to Brittany, prefer calling themselves "Gallophiles" to "Walophiles".
Historism is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century Germany and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe. In those times there was not a single natural, humanistic or philosophical science that would not reflect, in one way or another, the historical type of thought. It pronounces the historicity of humanity and its binding to tradition.
Friedrich Nietzsche's influence and reception varied widely and may be roughly divided into various chronological periods. Reactions were anything but uniform, and proponents of various ideologies attempted to appropriate his work quite early.
The Prussian Lithuanians, or Lietuvininkai, are Lithuanians, originally Lithuanian language speakers, who formerly inhabited a territory in northeastern East Prussia called Prussian Lithuania, or Lithuania Minor, instead of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, later, the Republic of Lithuania. Prussian Lithuanians contributed greatly to the development of written Lithuanian, which for a long time was considerably more widespread and in more literary use in Lithuania Minor than in Lithuania proper.
The various names used since classical times for the people known today as the Celts are of disparate origins.
An Austrophile is somebody who is fond of Austrian culture and Austria in general but not born there. Historically it could be applied to the wider Austrian Empire, but since 1918, it has applied to the more limited boundaries of the modern nation-state of Austria. It was later sometimes taken as part of a wider Germanophile attitude and generally linked to the admiration of the Germanic culture of the German-speaking world or countries, mainly Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.