Ludwig Woltmann i recepcja myśli Arthura de Gobineau (1816–1882) w Niemczech
Ludwig Woltmann and the Reception of the Ideas of Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882) in Germany

Summary/Abstract: The Frenchman Arthur Joseph de Gobineau (1816–1882) is generally considered to be the father of racism. The system created by the Frenchman segregated people by origin, class and race, and these values were the same for him. However, his criteria for evaluating particular groups of people (e.g., the high evaluation of European Jews or the low racial evaluation of Saxon citizens) diff ered so far from later systems of racial qualification that att ention was often drawn to the incompatibility of his assumptions with the theses of German Nazis or American epigones of the Nordic race. The question has arisen, however, as to how the relationship between the system developed by the Frenchman and the creators of racist doctrine in other countries evolved. This text focuses on the reception of the French scholar’s thought by the German sociologist Ludwig Woltmann, a declared social democrat and fi erce nationalist. Woltmann synthesized Gobineau’s writings with those of Darwin and Marx (thus radically reinterpreting the Frenchman’s writings), in eff ect charting a new course of racist ideology that broke with the class interpretation of racism. In his view, Germany was the main habitat of the racially valuable White population, and it was the German-born population that formed the racial core of the elites of the neighboring countries.

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