Houston Stewart Chamberlain

By The Rev. James K. Warner.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain was born in Portsmouth, England. He grew up in France and returned to England where he lived for only a short time. He then lived in Germany, and later became a German citizen. He was a devotee of Wagner and was a close friend of Cosima Wagner, and in fact, later became her son-in-law.
In 1899 he wrote his well known book "The Foundations of the 19th Century" which was printed in many editions.
In it Chamberlain presented a kind of abstract of the nineteenth century. He examines the social processes and intellectual traditions as well as the racial characteristics of those who had shaped the image of the age. It was essential to include in this examination the legacies of the distant past, particularly the impact of the Graeco-Roman and Germanic cultures, and of Judaism and Christianity. Chamberlain identifies as one of the most powerful of these influences, outlasting even the intervening two thousand years, what he calls the Volkerchaos, or general interbreeding which, in his view, was responsible for the collapse of the Roman Empire. Notwithstanding the fact that the Germanic races then became the ‘bearers of world history’, the ruinous effects of miscegenation epitomised for him by Syria, were not totally eliminated.
The ideas and legacy of Houston Stewart Chamberlain concerning race, inheritance and its role in civilisation are regarded by the "politically correct" with vehement hatred - and yet - his ideas are still widespread.
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