Militant League for German Culture

The Militant League for German Culture (German: Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, KfdK), was a nationalistic anti-Semitic political society during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi era. It was founded in 1928 as the Nationalsozialistische Gesellschaft für deutsche Kultur (NGDK, National Socialist Society for German Culture) by Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and remained under his leadership until it was reorganized and renamed to the National Socialist Culture Community (Nationalsozialistische Kulturgemeinde) in 1934. Its aim was to make a significant imprint on cultural life in Germany that was based on the aims and objectives of the inner circles of the Nazi Party. Upon its reorganization, it was merged with the Deutsche Bühne (German Stage), connected with the establishment of the official body for cultural surveillance, the "Dienstelle Rosenberg" (DRbg, Rosenberg Department), which was later known as the Amt Rosenberg (ARo, Rosenberg Office). Members and followers The number of members, who were organized in local chapters, rose from approximately 300 in 25 chapters in April 1929 to about 38,000 in 450 chapters by October 1933. The members and supporters included representatives of the extreme right wing of the National Socialist movement. These included anti-Semitic literary historians Adolf Bartels, Ludwig Polland, Gustaf Kossinna, physicist and Albert Einstein-opponent Philipp Lenard, publishers Hugo Bruckmann and Julius Friedrich Lehmann, the leaders of the Bayreuth Society Winifred Wagner, Daniela Thode, Hans Freiherr von Wolzogen, the widow of racial ideologist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Eva Chamberlain, the composer Paul Graener, the philosophers Otto Friedrich Bollnow, and Eugen Herrigel, the poet and later president of the Reichsschrifttumskammer Hanns Johst; the architect Paul Schulze-Naumburg, who edited the periodical Kunst und Rasse [Art and Race], and who spoke at many events; Gustav Havemann, a violinist and later leader of the Reichsmusikkammer (who founded and lead a Kampfbund orchestra); the theater director Karl von Schirach; Fritz Kloppe who led Werwolf, a paramilitary organization; and the theologian, nationalist musicologist Fritz Stein, actors Carl Auen and Aribert Mog, philosopher, sociologist and economist Othmar Spann, and Austrian political philosopher and a teacher of Friedrich Hayek. After an ad on April 20, 1933, Edwin Werner, PhD, founded his own association in Passau.