Chamberlain, Houston Stewart

CHAMBERLAIN, HOUSTON STEWART. - Philosopher and musicologist, b. at Portsmouth on Sept. 2, 1855, d. at Bayreuth on Jan. 9, 1927. He studied science, philosophy and music at Geneva, Dresden and Vienna. An enthusiastic follower of Wagner, whose daughter he married, he defended not only his music but also his conception of the world and of life in various writings.

Principal ones: Das Drama R. Wagners (Leipzig 1892); Die ersten 20 Jahre der Bayreuther Bühnenfestspiele (Bayreuth 1896); Parsifal-Märchen (Munich 1900). C.'s fame, however, rests on the book Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (ibid. 1899): a historical-philosophical work that was of no small importance as a precursor of the Germanic Aryan racial myth. To Germandom is attributed the renewal and purification of blood, culture and ethics. Dante, Humanism, Christ himself are forced and explained in this light. Typical in this regard are the works I. Kant, die Persönlichkeit als Einführung in sein Werk (Munich 1905), and Goethe (ibid. 1912). C. believed that the war of 1914-18 would bring about the pan-Germanist racial myth, for which reason he was a fervent propagandist for it and obtained German naturalization in 1916. Some of his writings from these years were translated into Italian.