Re: Gobineau, the "Bayreuth Circle" and Schemann

Hi Mike, 
Yes, I think that you're right about the early history of sciences.
People get the urge to create great systems before they had enough
data to begin theorising, and with much of the "data" actually no more
than anecdote and prejudice.  And in the 18th century I suppose
system-making was part of the Spirit of the Age anyway.

Thanks for the tip on Robert Knox, the anatomist. It's funny how bits
of knowledge can sit quietly in separate categories, and never quite
connect. I've been coming upon Knox's name all over the place, in
reading about the state of scientific racism in Gobineau's time.  But
I never connected Robert Knox the racist theorist with Robert Knox the
Wicked Doctor of Edinburgh, who bought the suspiciously fresh corpses
from Burke and Hare, the Resurrection Men. Bad man. Well, it figures.


Anyway, here continues the survey of Gobinism.  


4 Master race theories: or, Where have all the Aryans gone?

Two on-line Encyclopedias, the NationMaster.com and the Wikipedia,
tell us that Gobineau invented the concept of "Master race".  In their
entry on "Master race" they helpfully provide the German,
"Herrenrasse" and Herrenvolk", and then say:

"The originator of the theory of the master race was Count Arthur de
Gobineau, who argued that cultures degenerate when distinct 'races'
mix."

The existence of these two Encyclopedia entries suggest that it is
widely believed that the "Master Race" was Gobineau's idea: "it's on
the Internet, so it must be true."

However it isn't true to say Gobineau invented the Master Race
concept, or even that he held to a Master Race concept.  However
Gobineau is not completely guiltless.  Gobineau did think of Aryans as
a race rather than as a number of different peoples whose languages
were related, but he didn't invent that idea: it was mainstream
anthropoligical science of his day. Philological dissenters like Max
Müller, who challenged the notion of Aryans as a racial group, hadn't
published their dissent when Gobineau wrote and published his _Essai_.

And Gobineau presented Aryans as the most advanced and splendid of
peoples, and as the people who were likely to set up civilisations and
put themselves in charge. there too he was simply writing what
scientists thought at the time. Gobineau's contribution to the
development of the Aryan myth is probably his prose style rather than
his assertions. That is, he helped to romanticise the idea of the
tall, blond Aryan peoples.

But there are three reasons why it is unfair to say that Gobineau was
a Master Race theorist.  First, Gobineau didn't really suggest that
Aryans should rule other peoples. What he suggested was that
historically it had commonly been the case that Aryans ruled other
peoples. But those Aryans were, Gobineau suggested, long gone; their
blood had long since been diluted out of effective influence. And
Gobineau had no real interest in making prescriptions for the present.

Second, Gobineau was not a nationalist of any sort. He did not think
that the French were a superior people, nor the Germans, nor the
people of any other nation-state on earth.

However, Gobineau did think that traces of Aryanism had survived.
Being an aristocrat of sorts (there are some doubts about his right to
his title), Gobineau thought that the people who ruled in the key
European states were the Aryans.  That is, the French were a bunch of
bastardised peasants, but their aristocrats, like Gobineau, had
preserved themselves in something like Aryan purity. Similarly, the
Germans were, by and large, a degenerate racial rabble: but the German
aristocracy still preserved some of the blood of their noble Aryan
ancestors.  Gobineau's doctrine was that no nation had any special
claim to be Aryan, but that the people in that nation who had
hereditary privilege were likely to have inherited at least some Aryan
blood. The history of racial theory is full of self-serving
assertions; but Gobineau's claim that the aristocrats, in each state,
were the real Aryans, was unusually specific in its self-servingness.

Thus it can be seen that Gobineau's ideas were no help to anyone who
wanted to assert that the German people, or the French people, or the
English, Spanish, or whatever people, had greater claim to racial
nobility than any other people. Except in the sense that Gobineau
considered "White" people to be superior to "Yellow" or "Black"
people.

So where a racial Master Race theorist would think that the German, or
English or French people were superior to the people in the
neighbouring states, Gobineau had no time for such things. He only
thought that the Aristocrats in each nationstate were likely to be
racially superior to the ordinary people of that nationstate. Thus the
French, German, Spanish (and so on) ruling classes all had more in
common with each other than any of them had in common with their
people.


What did Wagner think of this idea of Gobineau's?  


Wagner never directly commented on this idea of Gobineau's. The
closest thing to a Wagnerian comment on Gobineau's attitude to
"aristocrats" is this, from Cosima's _Diaries_, Friday September 23,
1881:
"He said recently that W. Sc[ott] was like Gobineau; the legitimate
rulers – in this case the Stuarts – could do whatever they wished and
still remain divine, whereas someone like Cromwell, however fairly
treated, was nevertheless treated as a unique curiosity."

But everything we know about Wagner's character and opinions indicate
that he must have found ludicrous the idea that Europe's aristocrats
were a racial elite.  Wagner was prepared to flatter aristocrats if
they were writing him cheques, or if he thought they might; but
otherwise his attitude seemed to have varied all the way between the
patronising and the contemptuous.

This is a short post, because there have to be short posts sometimes. 
And I'm knocking off for the evening, before dealing with the
miscegentation issue, which really does come next.

Cheers!


Laon