The Failed Individuation of Heinrich Himmler

Martin Klüners "But - to me the struggle." The failed individuation of Heinrich Himmler The text was originally published in German under the title "Doch - mir der Kampf." Die gescheiterte Individuation des Heinrich Himmler. In: Jahrbuch für psychohistorische Forschung 21, 2020/21, pp. 291-321. (The text was translated using the software deepL.com. The author apologises for any errors or inaccuracies resulting from the automatic translation.) Introduction The Reichsführer SS regularly confronts his biographers with the same conundrum: there was little or nothing to indicate that the young Heinrich Himmler could one day become the greatest mass murderer in history. 1 While Stalin's 2 and Hitler's 3 psychopathological predispositions are relatively clear from the circumstances of their socialisation, from the fact that they were shaped by a sufficiently violent milieu, things are by no means so obvious in the case of the humanist's son. The circumstances in which he grew up were apparently intact, even sheltered. 4 And while there is nothing to prevent us from characterising the Himmlers as a well-bourgeois, prosperous, classically educated family in the best sense of the word, even distinguished from other families of this kind by contacts to the Bavarian royal family, 5 Heinrich Himmler's childhood and youth proceeded accordingly in - outwardly seen - relatively orderly ways. 6 The historian George Hallgarten, who attended the Wilhelm Gymnasium in Munich with Himmler between 1910 and 1913, remembered his former classmate in retrospect "as the gentlest lamb imaginable, a boy who could not harm a fly. 7 Himmler's own diary entries show an adolescent capable of no small 1 Longerich (2008), p. 9 and 759; Mües-Baron (2011), p. 10. Service (2004), pp. 16-19 and 21f.; Altrichter (2018), p. 21f.; Jörg Baberowski ultimately attributes the specificity of Stalinist crimes in essence to the person of Stalin and his aspiration to be "lord over life and death." (Baberowski (2012), p. 10f.) The fact that the young Stalin presumably also perceived his father as "lord over life and death" will have had a decisive influence on Stalin's later style of rule. Of course, early childhood experience is not a sufficient, but at best a "necessary" criterion to explain abnormal political careers, as Himmler's case also shows (cf. below). However, just as Stalinism is unthinkable without Stalin's personality, Himmler's "personal maxims", i.e. "his personal preferences, foibles, phobias and images of the enemy" shaped the SS (Longerich (2008), p. 395). 3 Miller (1983); Klüners (2019). 4 Bradley Smith calls it both "inaccurate" and "unfair" to postulate "that Gebhard Himmler and his wife were nothing but pedants who imposed a series of tedious routines on their children. They made a sincere effort to give them a happy life, gave them plenty of toys and let them pass the time as they pleased." (Smith (1979), p. 31) Through the testimonies that have come down to us from him, the father Gebhard Himmler indeed proves to be a family head who was decidedly concerned about the welfare of his own. 5 The latter went back to the time when Father Himmler had been the educator of Prince Heinrich. The Himmlers' second son of the same name even had the special honour of being this prince's godchild (Himmler (2005), pp. 3640). 6 Hannah Arendt calls Himmler "more normal" than all the other Nazi greats of the early period (Arendt (1955), p. 541). 7 Hallgarten (1960/61), p. 4. 2 1 degree of self-reflection, even self-criticism; 8 a devout Catholic who not only attended mass but prayed out of inner conviction 9 and, with regard to the custom of mensuration, asked himself whether it could be reconciled with his religious principles; 10 one who, despite all his devotion to the national cause, gave expression to his compassion for French prisoners of war. 11 Even in later years, eyewitnesses repeatedly described him as exceptionally polite, jovial, even "amiable"; 12 and he was probably not quite as humourless as is often reported. 13 Even in 1920, the young Himmler was comparatively critical of what he saw as the one-sided anti-Semitism of his reading at the time. 14 And finally, his sincere Catholic confession and his temporary commitment to the Bavarian People's Party, 15 purely theoretically, would also have made a career like that of Josef Müller, who was only two years older - a BVP member in the Weimar period, an activist of the Catholic resistance during National Socialism, and the first CSU chairman after the war - within the realm of possibility. 16 In short, the middle son of Himmler could have become a completely different person. And yet, he became the organiser of millions of murders; the absolute face of National Socialist terror; and the only one in the leadership of the Nazi state who knew the sites of extermination from his own direct experience. 17 So he knew exactly what he was talking about when he said in "one of the most terrifying testimonies in the German language ever" 18 : "Most of you will know what it means when 100 corpses lie together, when 500 lie there or when 1000 lie there. And to have endured this and to have remained decent in the process - apart from exceptional 8 Cf. Smith (1979), pp. 152, 158f. and Himmler (2005), p. 77. Smith (1979), pp. 119-121; Longerich (2008), p. 40. He was also still a member of the church choir at the age of 21 (Longerich (2008), p.53). 10 Ackermann (1970), p. 31; Smith (1979), p. 119f.; Himmler (2005), p. 76. 11 Smith (1979), p. 60 and Longerich (2008), p. 27. This, incidentally, despite a clearly anti-French basic attitude, which, according to George Hallgarten's recollections, was shared by all classmates at the time (Hallgarten (1960/61), pp. 5f. ). The 21-year-old Heinrich Himmler also felt compassion for an old lady who was povertystricken and to whom he secretly left food at the door (Loewenberg (1971), p. 621). See also Ackermann (1970), p. 38. 12 Thus, among others, Ackermann (1970), p. 18; Longerich (2008), p. 8 as well as 746; cf. Arendt (1955), p. 541 note 51. Cf. also Fromm (1980), p. 339f. who admittedly expresses doubts about the sincerity of this friendliness reported by contemporary witnesses. 13 Count Bernadotte reports that Himmler's humour had a "stab of gallows humour" (quoted from Longerich (2008), p. 746). The following quotation from the adolescent in a letter to his younger brother Ernst, whom he obviously liked, is also evidence of humour: "I was also very pleased with your good grades. But don't think anything of it, you only have the fact that the others are a shade dumber than you to thank for that (which must actually be difficult)" (quoted from Himmler (2005), p. 84). 14 Ackermann (1970), p. 25f.; Smith (1979), p. 126; Longerich (2008), p. 48. Around this time, however, according to Bradley Smith, Himmler became "increasingly susceptible to anti-Semitic clichés" (Smith (1979), p. 125). Hallgarten recalls that Himmler as a youth was "in no way anti-Semitically minded" (Hallgarten (1960/61), p. 5). 15 By the end of 1918 he had already become a member of the party that had just been founded (Smith (1979), p. 93, cf. also ibid. p. 87f.; Longerich (2008), p. 32f.; on the break with the BVP, cf. Smith (1979), p. 121). 16 On Josef Müller, cf. Menges (1997). 17 Mües-Baron (2011), p. 9. 18 Fest (1994), p. 161. 9 2 human weaknesses - has made us tough and is a glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned." 19 In view of such a development, one would like to ask with Alfred Andersch: "Does humanism protect us from nothing? " 20 One is immediately reminded of Freud's admonition that civilisation is a thin crust that can only with difficulty keep the impulses of the unconscious in check. However, such a statement seems too general for the analysis of individuals. But the doctrine founded by Freud can help to better understand Himmler's conspicuous career, especially since in his case it is countered by a comparatively good source situation. 21 In the following, three prominent attempts will be discussed that use psychoanalytical means and methods to decipher the mystery of Himmler: these are the interpretations of Peter Loewenberg, Erich Fromm and Peter Longerich. Subsequently, we will attempt our own interpretation, partly contradicting them, partly building on them. Peter Loewenberg: The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler (1971) In an essay published in 1971, the psychoanalytically informed historian Peter Loewenberg attempts to solve the puzzle described in the introduction by examining the diary entries of the young Himmler for signs of an "emotional coherence" 22 between the adolescent and the later mass murderer. He thus explicitly opposes the perspective that assumes an alleged "discontinuity between the child, the adolescent, and the man" 23 and endeavours to separate a largely "normal" early Himmler from the later psychopath. 24 Loewenberg, on the other hand, attests to the adolescent Himmler, on the basis of the analysed material, a fundamental inability to express feelings, indeed a lack of feeling manifested in the pallor and colourlessness of his descriptions. He interprets this finding in terms of a "rigid, repressed character" or "obsessive-compulsive character" and a lack of "emotional structure". 25 For Himmler, the diary basically fulfilled the task of being a "tranquiliser", while the selfimposed strictness and self-discipline that Himmler regularly reported on, just like his sexual abstinence, functioned as a means of controlling subliminal aggression, 26 an overall immature 19 Fest quotes this passage from Himmler's speech to SS group leaders in Posen on 4 October 1943 ibid, p. 162, but the written reproduction is inaccurate. The original recording of Himmler's speech can be heard at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRO04q_lQi4 (retrieved 07.08.2021). 20 Afterword to the story The Father of a Murderer (Andersch (1982), p. 99). 21 Himmler kept a diary from the age of ten (Himmler (2005), p. 44f.; Longerich (2008), p. 23f.). 22 Loewenberg (1971), p. 613. 23 Ibid, p. 641. 24 Ibid, p. 613. 25 Ibid, pp. 615-617. Later he additionally refers to him as a "borderline character" (p. 637). 26 Ibid, p. 614. 3 emotionality and an unconscious sadism. 27 Loewenberg identifies Himmler's latent sadism, among other things, in an episode described in his diary: according to his own words, he feels pity for a girl who argues with her father, described by Himmler as tyrannical, about attending dance lessons. However, he adds to his description how beautiful the girl looked when she was crying. 28 In Loewenberg's interpretation, Himmler's predilection for exact, even over-exact, time entries is also a protection against "dangerous instinctual demands" and is deeply rooted in "oral and anal erotism". 29 According to Loewenberg, the fact that he goes into almost as much detail about the food he consumed during visits to his parents' house can be read as a sign of oral regression, and Himmler's frequently recurring self-accusation of "talking too much" and thus sometimes provoking conflicts is "another classic oral characteristic". 30 Himmler's stomach problems, which began at the age of 14 and accompanied him throughout his life, were also to be understood primarily psychosomatically, since the gastrointestinal tract was the "classic target area for anxiety". Loewenberg also interprets the aetiology of Himmler's stomach complaints as "orally dependent". 31 In the years 1919 to 1922, in Loewenberg's words a time of "acute identity diffusion" for Himmler, he had felt "hunger fears" "that he dealt with by consuming great quantities of food." 32 Through this clear presence of oral themes in the reports, the person is also indirectly present to whom their author otherwise hardly pays attention: Himmler's mother. 33 The mother is only mentioned twice in the diaries, "as though she hardly existed. 34 Loewenberg also names a central source problem corresponding to this: "Little is known about her. " 35 The analysis of Himmler's psychological development must therefore largely rely on speculation for the reconstruction of its perhaps most important part, the mother-child relationship. Loewenberg, however, makes assumptions about the relations of mother and father and of parent and child. He assumes that the decidedly patriarchal structure of Himmler's household contributed to the son's association of the paternal and masculine with strength, severity and hardness, but of the maternal and feminine with softness and weakness. 36 In Himmler's fantasies, a "defenseless mother" was confronted by the powerful father who subjugated the 27 Ibid, p. 620 and 623 respectively. Cf. also p. 628f. Ibid, p. 620f. 29 Ibid, p. 619. 30 Ibid, p. 626. 31 Ibid, p. 635f. 32 Ibid, p. 622. 33 Ibid, p. 627. 34 Ibid, p. 614. This fact is reminiscent of André Green's "dead" mother (Green 2004). 35 Loewenberg (1971), p. 618. 36 Ibid, p. 635. 28 4 mother. 37 The weak, defenceless mother had to be protected from the "bad father", but also from his own sadistic impulses. 38 However, while few reliable statements can be made about the real mother, 39 this is somewhat different in the case of Himmler's father: Several entries show that the father was sometimes prone to bitterness, moodiness and irascible and accusatory behaviour. From this point of view, Loewenberg finds it striking that Heinrich leaves little room for his own anger against his father, and sometimes even takes his father's side. 40 Against this background, Hitler finally became a kind of surrogate father for Himmler, "from whom he received superego sanction to act out his libidinal and aggressive fantasies". This "paternal" carte blanche and the conviction that only the will of the Führer was to become reality had made possible an anal sadistic regression of the greatest magnitude, whereby for the adult murderer, just as for the adolescent, the control of emotions was the highest commandment and proof of male "toughness". Loewenberg refers, among others, to the psychoanalytically arguing Jewish theologian Richard Rubenstein, according to whom the National Socialist extermination camps could be interpreted as the acting out of the most primitive fantasies of excremental aggression. For him, the ideology that Himmler followed meant above all protection against "identity diffusion". 41 For all the validity of Loewenberg's analysis in detail, it must be stated that the knowledge of the Reichsführer's later crimes sometimes leads the author to over-interpret details from episodes in the life of the young Himmler - which results in the problematic impression of determinism. Too little consideration is thus given to the environmental and socialisation conditions beyond the nuclear family, in particular also historical "triggers", 42 among which inflation, as will be shown later, is of decisive importance. Erich Fromm: Heinrich Himmler, a clinical case of anal hoarding sadism (1973) As part of his large-scale study of "human destructiveness" 43 , Erich Fromm devotes a section of just under 30 pages to the "bloodhound of Europe", whom he calls "an excellent example of a vicious, sadistic character" and of "the connection between sadism and the extreme forms of 37 Ibid, p. 625. Himmler's emigration plans are interpreted by Loewenberg as an escape from his mother (p. 623). 39 Loewenberg can only speculate about the real relationship of the parents: "Could it be that he had witnessed such scenes at home and that his father had treated his mother in this way?", Loewenberg asks in the context of the analysis of Himmler's feelings for the girl scolded by her father (p. 620). 40 In one of these diary entries, as Loewenberg points out, the defence of the father is followed by the remark that the young, undisciplined generation, demanding freedom and self-determination, is a danger to the fatherland (p. 632). 41 Ibid, pp. 637-640. 42 Cf. Klüners (2019). 43 The American original was published in 1973. The German paperback edition from 1980 was used here. 38 5 the anal-hoarding, bureaucratic, authoritarian character". Fromm quotes eyewitnesses who emphasise Himmler's insecurity, his lack of self-confidence and submissive nature, but above all his excessive pedantry. 44 These reports do not actually create - and here Fromm agrees with Loewenberg 45 - the image of "a hater", but rather that of "an extremely dehumanised bureaucrat. The characteristic of being a "will-less tool in Hitler's hands" was, of course, countered by a "love-hate relationship" with the Führer, as Himmler's former adjutant Karl Wolff, also quoted by Fromm, testified. Himmler's intrusive talkativeness, which according to the memoirs of the former Gauleiter Albert Krebs must still have been virulent in later years, is described by Fromm as a means of "dominating" the other person; it is "typical of the sadistic character. 46 As mentioned above, Loewenberg had interpreted this habit of Himmler's as a classical orally conditioned characteristic, which, of course, need not contradict each other. Fromm also discusses Himmler's stomach complaint, to which he attributes a "strong psychogenic factor", but without defining it in more detail. However, Fromm assumes that physical ailments such as Himmler's stomach ailment were a kind of gain from illness and, moreover, "strengthened his bond with his parents". 47 Although Fromm does mention the role of the parents, mostly in subordinate clauses, he does not, unlike Loewenberg, undertake an actual psychobiographical analysis of Himmler's character. He tends to make more general observations, which is certainly connected to the aim of his study, which is to draw up basic typologies of aggressive to sadistic characters and not to examine individual psycho-historical cases in the narrower sense. It is therefore not surprising that, in addition to many apt characterisations, certain aspects remain underexposed in the study of the respective sadism of historical actors. For example, while Fromm speaks of Himmler's "deep and intense dependence on his mother", he further confines himself to characterising this mother's relationship with her son as a form of primitive affection - as for a "small child"; she "loved and pampered" him, which is why Himmler, in Fromm's opinion, contrary to common clichés criticised by him, "certainly did not suffer from a lack of love on the part of his mother". Fromm also mentions the mother's excessive fear for her son when he became ill, but does not specifically address the pathological implications that an overanxious mother can fundamentally hold for a young child. Himmler's "need for a strong father" was 44 Fromm (1980), p. 338f. See also Ackermann (1970), p. 18f. Loewenberg writes in a very similar vein: "He did not act out of rage or intense hatred". (Loewenberg (1971), p. 641) 46 Fromm (1980), p. 338f. 47 Ibid, p. 346. 45 6 admittedly "based on the helplessness" that accompanied his diagnosed dependence on his mother. 48 It is striking, however, that Fromm strongly relativises the role of the father in the son's socialisation; Gebhard Himmler senior was a "basically weak person, an old-fashioned, authoritarian father and teacher" of whom the young Heinrich had had "no exaggerated fear". Himmler's subalternity, his tendency to submit to authority, was consequently due to a fear "not of authority" as such, "but of life" in general. 49 As in the case of Hitler's father, whom Fromm claims was "not a tyrant", "not a frightening figure" who "necessarily had to terrify a son" - he also calls Alois Hitler a "well-meaning, stable, normal and non-destructive person" 50 - it is important for him to point out that Himmler's "father was not such a harsh and frightening disciplinarian as he is sometimes portrayed." 51 Himmler's later ideological radicalisation and his transition "from Christianity to Aryan paganism" should therefore not be understood in the sense of a "rebellion". 52 As true as it may be that parents are in principle not liable for the misconduct of their adult children, one wonders after reading Fromm's explanations what in Himmler's case actually evoked the "malignant, sadistic character" that Fromm himself characterises him as (just as one wonders what made Hitler a so-called "clinical case of necrophilia"). In Fromm's reading, the psychopathologies of the leading Nazi figures seem strangely unmotivated. Despite the closeness of their approaches, Fromm does not cite Loewenberg's essay published two years earlier. However, taking Loewenberg's interpretations into account would probably have given Fromm's reflections a greater overall realism with regard to the role of the parentchild relationship in Himmler's socialisation. Longerich: Himmler as a case of an attachment disorder (2008) In a comprehensive biography published for the first time in 2008, the historian Peter Longerich also addresses Himmler's early psychological development. In doing so, he incorporates insights gained through participation in psychoanalytic discussion groups in Cologne and Hamburg. 53 Longerich interprets Himmler's fundamental problem "in assessing the emotional behaviour of his fellow human beings and reacting to it accordingly" as the result of "a weakness in attachment or an attachment disorder. Letters written by the young Himmler made 48 Ibid, p. 343 and 345 respectively (emphasis in original). Ibid., p. 341f. 50 Ibid, p. 420. 51 Ibid, p. 345f., note 26. 52 Ibid, p. 342. 53 He mentions both discussion groups and their participants in the acknowledgements of his Himmler biography (Longerich (2008), p. 771). 49 7 it clear that he "actually [struggled] with an insatiable desire for affection and care - at first especially on the part of his mother, later also related to his circle of friends." His helpfulness and alacrity, but also his constant "efforts to overcome and control himself" were a means to compensate for such weaknesses and to cover up his "emotional immaturity in interpersonal intercourse". Of course, such efforts were also supported by the ideal of his generation, the socalled war youth generation, which cultivated a lifestyle of "sobriety, coolness, hardness and objectivity". What specifically caused Himmler's weakness of attachment is at best a matter of speculation: "Perhaps the frequent illnesses of the older brother played a role, perhaps also the fact that Himmler soon faced competition from the younger brother and he fell into the classic role of the middle child who felt neglected." 54 In fact, not only Himmler's older brother Gebhard suffered from childhood illnesses, but Himmler himself got a dangerous lung infection in February 1903, at the age of two; the fear of a subsequent infection with tuberculosis, which was still extremely deadly for children at the time, became a constant companion for his family. 55 Katrin Himmler also points out that Heinrich was "susceptible to health problems" even before the family moved to Passau in the summer of 1902, well before his second birthday. 56 It was only in 1904-05, i.e. after more than a year of illness and uncertainty, that Heinrich became completely well. No sooner had Heinrich recovered than his older brother fell ill, so the parents' attention shifted to the firstborn. Finally, the mother became pregnant again in 1905, which is why she "spend[d] little time or energy on Heinrich's state of health". 57 After his enrolment in school in 1906, however, Heinrich was again hit by one infection after another, 58 so that he missed a total of 150 days of lessons in his first school year. Longerich suspects, like Fromm, that the illnesses were also an opportunity for Himmler to win back the care of his parents; this was possibly "the root of his later psychosomatic complaints". 59 It remains to be said that, in the sense of the psychoanalytical phase model, little Heinrich Himmler had to fight for years during the anal and the complete oedipal phase for his health as well as for the attention of his parents. 54 Ibid. Gregor Strasser allegedly once reproached Himmler for his "lack of sensitivity" (Ackermann (1970), p. 20 note 17a). 55 Longerich (2008), p. 21. Cf. also Smith (1979), p. 40. 56 Himmler (2005), p. 40. 57 Smith (1979), p. 42f. 58 According to Smith, he also suffered a "relapse" of the dreaded lung disease (Smith (1979), p. 44). 59 Longerich (2008), p. 22. 8 It is therefore perhaps no coincidence that "struggle" is a relatively frequently recurring term in Himmler's notes, often in connection with descriptions of depression. 60 In February 1922 Himmler also noted: "One only notices how one thirsts for love and yet how difficult and responsible it is to commit oneself and to choose. - It makes you think, if only it were fighting again, war, marching out - I'm looking forward to my Mensur." Three quarters of a year later, on the occasion of his elder brother's engagement, follows an entry that is also very revealing: "For thou shalt leave father and mother and cleave to the wife. I am happy that again two people so close to me have found happiness. But - to me the struggle." 61 The relationship between the need for attachment and love on the one hand and the "struggle" on the other, which Himmler himself implicitly portrays as antagonistic, becomes clear here. 62 Longerich attributes Himmler's "enthusiasm for the military" above all to the possibilities that "[t]he ordered life of the military" and the relative "lack of emotion in this man's world" would have offered an attachment-disordered personality like his. 63 This may not be an insignificant aspect. However, there is something to be said for assuming the deeper reason for Himmler's self-stylisation as a fighter in a psychodynamic dialectic, which is communicated by the diary entry quoted above: Where attachment is difficult or impossible, the struggle begins, namely the psychological struggle for recognition or for parental attention, which on a more elementary, early childhood level bears features of a struggle for survival. The military struggle is a way of acting out such a disturbance. 64 This unresolved conflict is also expressed in the second of the entries from Himmler's diary quoted here: while his brother "leaves father and mother", finds a "wife" and thus successfully detaches himself from the parental home, he himself is supposedly left only with "the fight". 65 Longerich's basic thesis that Himmler suffered from an attachment disorder and that this, together with his physical defects, was the actual "key" to understanding his personality, 66 can certainly be agreed with. However, it is questionable whether, as Longerich writes, in Himmler's childhood and adolescence years there is actually "no evidence whatsoever of special 60 Cf. ibid., pp. 41, 43, 58. Cited ibid., p. 58. 62 Himmler's "will to fight" was most pronounced when he suffered from psychological problems (triggered, for example, by a frustrating experience with a girl), according to Ackermann (1970), p. 23. 63 Longerich (2008), p. 46. 64 Cf. Janus (2011), pp. 196-199, 227. 65 Incidentally, several authors emphasise Himmler's envy of his big brother, especially his greater fearlessness in dealing with the opposite sex (Smith (1979), p. 156; Fromm (1980), pp. 356, 365; Himmler (2005), p. 66). This envy may also have played a role in an episode that Fromm saw as evidence of Himmler's "sadistic insidiousness" (Fromm 1980, p. 358). Here Himmler acted as the self-appointed defender of the "family honour" and fought the supposedly unfaithful girlfriend of his brother Gebhard with conspicuous sharpness. 66 Longerich (2008), p. 760. 61 9 educational problems [...] or of conspicuous aggressiveness" and whether it is "wrong" to assume "a father-son conflict rooted in an extremely authoritarian upbringing" as being of essential importance for his psychosocial development, 67 is questionable. The reasons for the attachment disorder postulated by Longerich himself also remain vague in his discussions in this regard. Knowledge of Loewenberg's article, whose implicit determinism one does not have to share, could possibly have led to a more differentiated assessment of Himmler's personal psychopathology in detail here as well. Fateful year 1922 Himmler's political radicalisation took place in the same year as the diary entries quoted above. 68 Thus, it was not, as with so many others, 69 the defeat in the war in 1918 or the announcement of the Versailles peace terms in 1919 that was responsible for this: according to his biographer Longerich, Himmler rather spent the first years of the Weimar Republic "in a dream world determined by the paramilitary subculture of the German post-war period" according to this, it was only inflation, which prevented further studies in 1922 and thus destroyed personal hopes for the future, that brought Himmler into contact "with reality". 70 The end of his first degree already put him in a depressive state: he "could have cried" in view of the fact that "[t]he beautiful blissful student days are already over", he writes in an entry of 21 February 1922. 71 Only four days later he complains: "I have such a strange mood. Dreary, longing for love. Expecting the future, but wanting to be free because of foreign countries and because of the war that is coming and sadness that the past is already over." 72 The need for love and grief over loss are mixed in a meaningful way with the hope for "liberation" and the "war" or "struggle" he so often cites. Katrin Himmler aptly interprets this "struggle", which he apparently firmly expected, as "the very personal test that lay ahead of him - to stand on his own two feet soon, to grow up." 73 In the case of the later Reichsführer SS, however, growing up was obviously only possible with massive destructive side effects. Among other things, an increasing preoccupation with the "Jewish question" can be observed for the same period, whereby the racial anti-Semitism of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, for 67 Ibid, p. 759. Cf. ibid., pp. 66-73. 69 Hitler's radicalisation was prompted by the announcement of the Versailles peace terms (Klüners (2019) with the references there). 1919 was also the year in which students in particular became radicalised (Herbert (1991), p. 120f. ). 70 Longerich (2008), p. 761. 71 Cited in Himmler (2005), p. 86. In general, Himmler was struggling at the time "with constant mood swings, depression, inner doubts and rigid moral concepts" (ibid. ). 72 Entry of 25 February 1922, quoted after Smith (1979), p. 268. 73 Himmler (2005), p. 85. 68 10 example, which presented itself as scientific, initially offered a possibility of circumventing the "radical anti-Semitism" of the time, which was obviously perceived as too primitive. In the summer of 1922, however, the number of openly anti-Semitic statements grew, and it was precisely around this time that Himmler gave his life the decisive direction - he became an activist of the radical right. Longerich identifies one event in particular as the "occasion" for this change of course: the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, the - incidentally Jewish - symbolic figure of the hated political system, on 24 June 1922. 74 In contrast to numerous people from his environment, Himmler welcomes the act; Rathenau, he is convinced, had not acted "for Germany". 75 The people directly involved in the murder were all generation comrades of Heinrich Himmler - Ernst Werner Techow was 20, Erwin Kern 23 and Hermann Fischer 26 years old 76 - while Rathenau himself, born in 1867, was almost as old as Himmler's father Gebhard Himmler senior (born 1865). That there may be more than a mere coincidental parallel here, that the joyful affirmation of a political murder speaks of the desire for the death of the "bad" father and for detachment from the parental home - albeit not to be achieved peacefully - will be explained in more detail in the following sections. Supply and struggle Rathenau's murder took place exactly one week after a personally very important initiation rite for Himmler, his Mensur. 77 He completed his studies in agricultural science at about the same time. He had already had to bury the original dream of an officer's career, but now he was also to give up the desire to continue his studies and obtain a doctorate. Inflation had shrunk the family's fortune, which could no longer afford to finance his studies, and "[t]he parental home 74 Longerich (2008), p. 66f. Barely one and a half years later Himmler already took part in Hitler's Ludendorff Putsch as a flag bearer (ibid., pp. 73-76). 75 Cited ibid., p. 69. 76 Sabrow (1994), p. 96. The assassins shared with Himmler the fate of being bourgeois sons threatened by social decline (ibid., p. 118f.). Fromm sees Erwin Kern's motive in particular in "chronic[r] devotion [...] to hatred and destructiveness" (Fromm (1980), pp. 312-316; here: S. 312). The words that Ernst von Salomon put into Kern's mouth in an autobiographical novel published in 1930 are revealing: "We do not fence so that the people may be happy. We fence to force it into its line of destiny. But if this man [Rathenau] once again gave the people faith, if he once again raised them to a will, to a form that is the will and form of a time that died in the war, that is dead, three times dead, I would not bear it. [...] so everything in me now lives solely for the nation" (quoted in ibid., p. 313). The generational impulse of the "mission" described is clearly recognisable. Incidentally, the majority of the SS's leadership personnel were recruited from two generational cohorts, namely the "war volunteers" born primarily in the late 1890s and the members of the war youth generation born, like Himmler himself, in the first decade of the 20th century (Longerich (2008), p. 327). Götz Aly calls the National Socialist movement, whose personnel were all relatively young, "the most successful generational project of the 20th century in a destructive sense" (quoted in Welzer (2005), p. 53). 77 Cf. the diary entry from February 1922 quoted above. 11 now no longer appeared as the secure base" that it had otherwise meant for him. 78 So things were now getting serious for the young Himmler. According to Longerich, the choice of study 79 of agricultural science, which at first seemed strange for the son of a grammar school professor, had been a kind of postponement of his earlier intentions to become an officer; because officers who were no longer needed after the war were increasingly drawn to agriculture, and in this environment the militarily inspired young man was able to meet numerous like-minded people. 80 From a psychoanalytical point of view, however, the influence of the themes of "struggle" and "supply" is again unmistakable. In economically uncertain times, cultivating one's own land probably seemed the most suitable way to secure one's personal supply. 81 Thus the desire to become a farmer can also be interpreted as the result of a fear of being separated from the parental home. Himmler's stomach pains, which began during puberty of all times, refer to massive fears as well as to the complex of orality, as already mentioned in the section on Loewenberg's essay. Now, from 1922, such "fears" were to come true; oral supply fears were reactivated. The following quotation from December 1919 makes it clear that Himmler felt comfortable with his caring parents and de facto feared being separated from the parental home: at home he was "just the happy, carefree boy, but as soon as I leave the parental home, I am transformed. 82 It is not least such statements by the young Himmler that favour the assumption that there was a state of unclouded harmony between parents and son. Longerich, analogously, considers it "quite wrong to interpret Himmler's radicalisation as a break with the conservative views of his parental home" 83 , in which, as shown, he agrees with Fromm. 84 Something else seems much more plausible: based on the premise that the same reference persons can be experienced as both a "good object" and a "bad object", 85 it will have to be shown that Heinrich Himmler's actually massive psychopathology is rooted in what are in all probability strongly ambivalent object relations, especially with his parents. Both 78 Longerich (2008), p. 71f. Smith (1979), pp. 95-97, among others. 80 Longerich (2008), p. 34. 81 The choice of profession was made in order to strengthen the body, according to Smith (Smith (1979), p. 98); in order to be closer to organic life processes, writes Loewenberg (Loewenberg (1971), p. 623). Loewenberg, however, as mentioned, at the same time gives an indication of Himmler's central conflict, which may indeed have been primarily effective here: "He felt hunger fears [...]" (ibid., p. 622; cf. above, section on Loewenberg). 82 Quoted from Longerich (2008), p. 44 (cf. Smith (1979), p. 113). At about the same time Himmler noted: "It is just nowhere as beautiful as at home" (quoted from Longerich (2008), p. 44). Ackermann quotes an entry from 21 December 1919 as follows: "It's just nice to be home again, you can be a child again and let yourself go a little" (quoted from Ackermann (1970), p. 32). 83 Longerich (2008), p. 68. 84 Cf. above. Incidentally, Ackermann already held this view (Ackermann (1970), p. 31). 85 Kernberg (1997), p. 42. 79 12 Himmler's mother and his father, for all their superficial harmony, possessed threatening aspects for him from early childhood; a circumstance that promoted the formation of corresponding introjects. Himmler's radicalisation can therefore very well be interpreted as an - albeit equally concealed and destructive - "emancipation" from his parents (or from said parental introjects). Unresolved conflicts that had lain dormant in Heinrich Himmler since childhood thus unfolded their fatal effect during externally unfavourable times in the context of an unsuccessful individuation. Himmler's father: Joseph Gebhard Himmler (1865-1936) Himmler's father and the role he played in his son's development have, as already indicated above, repeatedly become the subject of discussion. In particular, the story by Alfred Andersch, which the author gave the title Der Vater eines Mörders (The Father of a Murderer), triggered a debate after its publication that was as excited as it was missing the core of the problem, especially among former students of Gebhard Himmler. 86 The story as such is open to interpretation, as is typical in literature - it even constructs a father-son conflict that certainly does not correspond to the facts, according to which Himmler's decision in favour of National Socialism was a rebellion against his father's traditional conservatism, i.e. de facto a rebellion against his father (who in this way was put in a relatively more favourable light by the author, despite all the implicit criticism). 87 It is probably more accurate to see Heinrich Himmler's ideological radicalisation initially as an intensification of already existing attitudes. 88 What united him with his father in particular was his concern for the "Fatherland". 89 Significantly, in a congratulatory address to his father on his birthday in May 1921, he calls the fatherland "next to God, [...] first and [...] supreme"; his "first wish" on his father's day of honour even refers to the fatherland: he actually wishes the latter, above all others, to "experience" "that our German fatherland will become great and happy again. 90 The seemingly awkward formulation "great and joyful" possibly refers to an inner conflict: the adjective "joyful" is not suitable for characterising a nation, but it is suitable for characterising people. In truth, an unconscious infantile wish could have found expression here: Not the fatherland, the father may in fact be "great again" (and thus Himmler himself a child 86 See, among others, Himmler (2005), pp. 29-31; Longerich (2008), pp. 17f. Critically, Longerich (2008), p. 68. 88 Also Longerich (2008), p. 68 and Himmler (2005), p. 90. 89 The father's emphasis on the "national" upbringing of his sons is made clear by a letter written to his wife in the run-up to a trip to Greece, according to which the sons were to become "truly German-minded men" (quoted from Himmler (2005), p. 48, emphasis in the original; on the trip to Greece, also below, section on Himmler's mother). 90 Quoted from Smith (1979), p. 138. 87 13 again) "and cheerful" - which in itself suggests that he has not always been this. This assumption is consistent with the son's descriptions of his moody, irascible father quoted above 91 , whom he nevertheless regularly comes to his defence. Apparently Himmler tried to avoid conflict with his father. Theoretically, the reasons for this could have been manifold: a feeling of notorious inferiority rooted in infantile experiences is just as conceivable as the fear, founded as it were in early childhood, of losing the protection connoted by his father. However, the fact that there was never an open break with the father should not tempt us to classify this relationship - as Fromm and Longerich do 92 - as largely "free of conflict". Loewenberg has already identified the essential and sometimes highly problematic elements of this relationship - not least the father's unchallengeable position of power within a hierarchically structured family, his strictness and harshness, etc.. 93 Even if this father, who was concerned about the well-being of his family, was not actually an inhuman being, it remains striking "how fiercely kindness and severity, liberality and authority fought with each other in him [...]. " 94 Gebhard Himmler, like many fathers of that era, 95 was an ambivalent figure. 96 This manifests itself not only in the aforementioned harshness and his much-cited pedantry, which was to be transferred to the son. 97 A very important aspect of Himmler's style of upbringing has hardly been considered so far: the corporal punishment of the sons. There are several indications that justify the assumption that this was used as an educational method in the Himmler household. Katrin Himmler quotes a report by her great-uncle Gebhard Himmler junior, according to which "boyish pranks" were met with "well-dosed" physical punishment. 98 Her father remembered his own father Ernst Himmler, the younger brother of Gebhard and Heinrich, "only punishing and beating", 99 which, in the sense of a transgenerational transmission of educational methods, 100 will be an indication that Ernst once experienced 91 Cf. the section on Loewenberg's essay. In this respect, Longerich argues similarly to Fromm: "Paternal authority did not express itself in aloofness or despotic severity, but in patient work on the sons [...]". (Longerich (2008), p. 20). 93 Cf. above. 94 Himmler (2005), p. 47. 95 Erikson (1984), p. 326f. 96 Incidentally, the circumstances in which Himmler's father Gebhard grew up were very similar to those in Alois Hitler's family: "At the time of his marriage, Johann Himmler was 53 years old and his bride 29 [...] For his family he represented the personification of ambition and pride in the status he had achieved, which played a very large role in the middle-class thinking of the last century". (Smith (1979), p. 25) Katrin Himmler further points out that Johann Himmler had been a "customs official" (Himmler (2005), p. 32). This too forms a parallel with Alois Hitler. 97 Gebhard Himmler's "all-encompassing pedantry was evident in the steno entry in his private files, filed under Heinrich's name: 'Himmler, Heinrich. Father Gymnasium-Konrektor [...]" (Smith (1979), p. 90). Heinrich Himmler himself was, in Smith's words, almost "ridiculously pedantic" (ibid., p. 16). See also Ackermann (1970), pp. 2325. 98 Himmler (2005), p. 43. 99 Ibid, p. 25. 100 Cf. Gebhardt (2004). 92 14 comparable things in his own body. And finally, there are reports that also prove Heinrich Himmler himself to be a beating father or stepfather: His daughter Gudrun received beatings even as a small child, while his adopted son Gerhard von der Ahé was, in his own words, regularly "afraid of his stepfather's visits to Gmund" because he "got a beating from him, sometimes with a riding whip." 101 To all appearances, educational violence was part of Gebhard Himmler's paternal heritage, and the fear that the stepson felt of Heinrich Himmler had probably once been felt in a similar way by Heinrich Himmler himself. As a result of this ambivalence of the father figure, the thesis seems plausible that Himmler's image of the father had to be split up: the son was loyal to the good, protective, caring father, certainly in the sense of an authoritarian character, which he undoubtedly was. This relation was transferred to the relationship to the "fatherland", which took on the function of a cipher in which, for Himmler, the positive, literally "paternalistic" paternal qualities were condensed, which were to be defended at all costs against external threats. Probably in order not to endanger this positive image of the father and, as mentioned above, to avoid open conflict with the father and to continue to be protected by the "good" father, the "bad", threatening object had to be shifted to an "enemy", which, from 1922 onwards, when the final separation from the parental home was imminent, increasingly became Judaism for Himmler. In 1923, for example, he read a book by the anti-Semitic author Theodor Fritsch about the "false god" Yahweh and, under the impression of his reading, spoke of Judaism as "this terrible scourge of God and danger by which we are being strangled". 102 Twenty years later, he would use a similar formulation to justify the murder of millions under his direction when, in a secret speech delivered in Posen on 4 October 1943, he called the Jews a people "who wanted to kill us". 103 Approval was also given to an anti-Semitic diatribe by a Baron von der OstenSacken, which was obviously motivated by "persecution mania", as Himmler himself noted, but which he nevertheless praised as a profitable "description of the Jewish system of condemnation to moral death". 104 These quotations speak of a clearly recognisable fear of annihilation as well as the fear of a persecuting, punishing superego; the nexus of fear of annihilation and an unconscious sense of guilt was also constitutive for Hitler's development into an anti-Semite. 105 The findings also 101 https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/politik/article124437648/Himmlers-Nachwuchs.html, retrieved 31.07.2021. 102 Quoted from Longerich (2008), p. 85. 103 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRO04q_lQi4, retrieved on 08.08.2021 (cf. above, introduction). 104 Ackermann alsoidentifies a kind of persecution mania in the later Himmler: "He was so convinced of the 'Jewish world conspiracy' that his whole way of thinking was to track down Jewish influence everywhere. (Ackermann (1970), p. 29) 105 Klüners (2019). 15 essentially confirm the theses of the psychoanalyst Rudolph M. Loewenstein on the genesis of anti-Semitism: it is fed by the ambivalence of the relationship with the father, in which admiration for the father, who is revered as a role model, is mixed with fear and hatred; negative feelings for the father are repressed into the unconscious, the image of the father is consequently split and the "bad" half, i.e. the imago of the "feared and despised father[s]", is projected onto the Jew. 106 The murder of the Jewish Foreign Minister Rathenau by his generation comrades, however, brought the longed-for - the destructive "liberation" from the bad father-introject that supposedly threatened not only himself but ultimately also the "good" father or the "fatherland" - within reach in Himmler's subjective experience, which had already been sufficiently radicalised by corresponding images of the enemy. Under the surface of an outwardly harmonious relationship with his parents, Himmler's political radicalisation thus took place in the classic sense of externalising an inner conflict. Superficially, it may not have been directed "against" the father; but if one abstracts from the real father-son relationship, it was definitely "anti-father" to a certain and not insignificant degree. Himmler's mother: Anna Maria Himmler née Heyder (1866-1941) Even if, as already explained in the section on Loewenberg's essay, the relative scarcity of sources makes it considerably more difficult to make statements about Himmler's mother and her relationship with her son, there are at least a few indications that nevertheless allow the approximate characterisation of her person. Anna Maria Heyder came from a wealthy family of merchants in Munich 107 and in a sense put the "finishing touches" to the social rise of her husband Gebhard Himmler. 108 Bradley Smith considers it worth noting that the ages within her family were "strikingly similar to those of her husband's family. Her father was 56 when she 106 Loewenstein (1968), p. 27. According to Loewenstein, the image of the Old Testament God is often already shortened by Christian education to attributes such as anger and vengefulness; in this way, the Jewish God appears "related to the spirit of evil" (ibid., p. 88). The persecuting superego, fed by negative object relations, bears traits of such a distorted image of God (Klüners (2019), p. 327). Himmler's talk of "describing the Jewish system of condemnation to moral death" is just as telling in this regard as his reading about the "false god" Yahweh. Incidentally, he also commented on ultramontanism with words expressing a fear of annihilation: "What have we done to these people that we should not live" (quoted in Longerich (2008), p. 86). Longerich considers hostility towards Christians in Himmler to be an even stronger motivation than anti-Semitism (ibid., pp. 227-235). Sexualpolitical considerations in particular were decisive for this (ibid., p. 386). The psychological implications of this hostility towards Catholicism and the church, which was probably sexually motivated at its core, could be the subject of a separate essay. 107 Himmler (2005), p. 37. 108 According to her great-granddaughter, her dowry for the marriage, which took place on 22 July 1897 in the presence of guests from the Bavarian royal family, among others, amounted to an extraordinary 300,000 gold marks (Himmler (2005), p. 38). 16 was born and died when she was eight." 109 The father had died of typhoid fever. She had also lost a brother who had fallen victim to diphtheria. Her second son Heinrich, who was already sickly in infancy and whom she had at the age of 34, became, in Katrin Himmler's words, her "problem child" mainly because of these early experiences of loss. 110 The mother's excessive fearfulness could therefore be one of the central roots of the attachment disorder that Peter Longerich certainly rightly assumes. 111 Even as a young adult, Heinrich "admonished his mother about her fears and asked her in his letters 'not to read between the lines'." 112 Conversely, this did not prevent him from expressing resentment against his mother when she allegedly wrote to him too infrequently, as well as using "repeated horror stories, especially about his health" as bait and pressure to force her attention. 113 When he actually fell ill with paratyphoid fever in September 1919 during a year of farm work and was hospitalised, his mother was extremely worried. 114 Apparently, the mother also tended towards strong negative reflections. A diary entry by Heinrich Himmler from 29 July 1914, i.e. immediately before the outbreak of the First World War, could indicate this: "Beginning of the war between Austria and Serbia. Trip to Lake Waginger. [...] I felt sick to death on the way. I went straight to bed. During the night Mutti became seriously ill." 115 The mother's illness was probably a psychosomatic reaction both to the outbreak of war and - above all - to the illness of her 13-year-old son. 116 How the father judged his wife can be seen in letters he wrote to all members of his family, including his sons, who were still very young at the time, in the run-up to a trip to Greece in 1910. 117 In them, he exhorted them to support their mother in the event of his death. Katrin Himmler consequently assumes that he regarded Anna Maria above all as "weak and helpless". He opens the letter to his youngest son Ernst, who was only four years old at the time, with remarks about how he "silently cried his eyes red" over the "possibility" that he would "never again be able to love" his son. 118 Even if one takes into account that a trip to Greece at that time was a much riskier undertaking than it is today, this quotation in connection with the meticulous 109 Smith (1979), p. 29. Cf. above, section on Himmler's father. Himmler (2005), p. 40. 111 Smith describes the parents' care for the sick son as "overanxious" (Smith (1979), p. 42). 112 Smith (1979), p. 99. 113 Ibid, p. 80. Cf. also ibid, p. 83f. 114 Ibid., p. 99f. 115 Cited ibid, p. 55 (emphasis in original). 116 Furthermore, it cannot be ruled out that Henry's nausea is also to be interpreted as a reaction to the threatening event, which was certainly not greeted with joy unconsciously, in contrast to later, consciously war-affirming statements. 117 Himmler (2005), pp. 45-49. 118 Ibid., p. 46f. 110 17 preparation of the trip as well as all eventualities not only testifies to Gebhard Himmler's usual pedantry, but also to the fact that the anxiety in the Himmler household was obviously not limited to the mother alone. However, this timidity decisively hindered Himmler's development. His grandniece rightly points out that the status of the problem child made Heinrich's detachment process a difficult undertaking. 119 His sexuality was also affected. During the first semester, he preferred to read fiction about "love, eroticism and the battle of the sexes" and called the novel The Dead Bruges by Georges Rodenbach "psychologically very good". The sinister story is about a man whose deceased wife continues to hold him under her spell, which is why he kills his mistress when she tries to take her place. 120 One of the reasons why Himmler liked the work so much was that, on a symbolic level, there must have been parallels between the novel's plot and his own life situation: Giving up his ("dead"? ) 121 mother for another woman was obviously difficult for him. This is also indicated by his long abstinence from sexual matters, although he himself judged his own sexual drive to be relatively intense. Himmler was obviously afraid of sexuality. 122 In principle, his image of women knew only the antagonism of "high woman and whore". 123 However, the "high woman" could take on different forms. In November 1921 Himmler wrote about the "3 ways" in which a "right" man should love a woman. man has to love a woman: "As a dear child, whom one has to quarrel with and perhaps punish in her unreasonableness, whom one protects and cherishes because she is tender and weak and because one loves her so much. - Then as a wife and as a faithful, understanding companion who fights through life with you, who faithfully stands by your side everywhere without inhibiting your husband and his spirit and without putting him in chains. - And as a goddess to whom one must kiss the feet, who gives one strength through her feminine wisdom and childlike pure holiness not to flag in the hardest battles [...]". 124 The repeated emphasis on the "childlikeness" (and weakness) of the woman is striking, as is her faithfulness and support in "battles". The first two of the three "types" of love for a woman described by Himmler probably reflect the mother-father 119 Ibid, p. 67. Longerich (2008), p. 47. 121 Cf. above, section on Loewenberg. 122 Smith (1979), p. 154. An entry from February 1922 about his sexual hardships seems almost psychoanalytical: "It is the hot unconscious longing of the whole individual for the release of a horribly strong natural instinct" (quoted in Longerich (2008), p. 56). 123 Longerich (2008), p. 48. Cf. ibid. p. 63 and Smith (1979), p. 262. 124 Quoted from Longerich (2008), p. 63. 120 18 relationship in the Himmler household, while Himmler's own mother idealisation is expressed in the third. 125 In addition to the "defence mechanism against women" in the young Himmler, Longerich also notes "the abrupt overlapping of erotic ideas with fantasies of violence", but at the same time points with Theweleit to the typical nature of this attitude for the era and milieu. 126 Loewenberg's assumption of sadistic impulses towards a presumably very fearful mother, who is also perceived as weak and "defenseless", is probably correct in view of these findings. The ambivalent mother-child relationship probably forms the historical core of Himmler's problematic personality development. For his part, the father was able to become so overpowering for Himmler primarily because the mother was so weak. At the same time, "[t]he intense attachment to the frustrating mother" is, in Otto Kernberg's words, in principle "the original reason for the transformation of rage into hatred". 127 This was probably also the case with Himmler. For Himmler, in contrast to Fromm's and Loewenberg's assessment, was indeed a "hater" - albeit one who needed a rationalising justification for his hatred through (pseudo) "scientific" arguments, such as those provided by the racist theses of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. It was no coincidence that hatred became a chronic condition for Himmler at the very moment when he needed to stand on his own two feet. Kernberg also makes it clear that early childhood experience often interprets "contradictory, unreliable behaviour on the part of the mother" "as the betrayal of a potentially good object", "which in this way becomes an unpredictable and overwhelmingly bad object." 128 This could be the reason for the importance Himmler attached to the concept of "loyalty": loyalty to positive introjects guaranteed survival according to his unconscious perception. 129 Negative introjects, on the other hand, threatened with annihilation and had to be fought against with all the force they had learned from their father. 125 Similarly Loewenberg (1971), p. 628. Longerich (2008), p. 59f. 127 Kernberg (1997), p. 43. 128 Ibid. 129 His hatred for his older brother's allegedly unfaithful fiancée (see above) speaks volumes. Of course, Himmler himself did not take marital fidelity very seriously. The fact that he had an extramarital affair with his secretary Hedwig Potthast, with whom he had two children, was probably also the reason for his generosity towards his subordinates in such matters, which at some point even took on the character of official standards of behaviour (Longerich (2008), pp. 386-389 and 481f.). 126 19 "...since the human-animal is too powerful in us after all." 130 - Himmler and the Perversion of the "Process of Civilisation Half a century ago, Loewenberg already formulated the central insight: Himmler was "normal" at best on the face of it. In truth, the middle of the three brothers from a good family was a severely disturbed man. With some plausibility, his psychosocial development can be reconstructed as far back as his earliest childhood, which was marked by massive fears. 131 The fear of annihilation and the glorification of the "struggle", which were decisive for his later radicalisation, certainly originated here. It is also possible that his frequently attested motor problems, which were to become noticeable not only in gymnastics classes, can be traced back to early childhood causes. 132 The cult of strength and toughness, in turn, was based on such experiences of blatant physical and psychological weakness. 133 However, Himmler put clear restraints on his - certainly not small - hatred, at least in comparison to the thugs of the SA or Hitler, the petty bourgeois son who beguiled his audience with rage tirades. For Himmler, self-control was the declared goal, even in destructiveness taken to extremes. Here the effect of the secondary bourgeois virtues imparted from an early age becomes apparent; it is no coincidence that the word "decent" appears with eloquent regularity (and by no means only in the infamous quotation from the Posen secret speech) 134 in Himmler's utterances. Longerich attributes this tendency towards "decency" to the attempt to keep the strong "desire to be allowed to be 'indecent' for once under control". 135 Control is thus one of the central categories for characterising Himmler's personality. He learned "control" decisively from his father. A vivid example is the way he came to keep a diary in the meticulous manner typical of him: The father wrote the first entry himself and then checked the son's notes based on it. Even when the father's checks were discontinued at some 130 Diary entry of 27 May 1922, quoted after Longerich (2008), p. 58. The quotation refers to "the heavy-blooded, strict" characters to which Himmler counts himself. The following sentence reads: "Perhaps with us, however, the fall is then a much heavier one." (ibid.) 131 It cannot be said with certainty whether developmental disorders already occurred in Himmler's pre-, peri- and postnatal stages (cf. also Smith (1979), p. 39). The phrase "danger by which we are strangled" quoted above could indicate this (cf. Janus (2011), p. 197), provided he did not draw it from the literature he read. 132 On bicycle tours, for example, Heinrich regularly fell and "[tore] his clothes in the process" (Smith (1979), p. 63; cf. also Fromm (1980), p. 346). At school, he became the laughing stock of his classmates because of his difficulties on the high bar (Hallgarten (1960/61), p. 6). On his compensatory ambition in physical matters, cf. Fraenkel/Manvell (1965), p. 18. 133 Compare the following excerpt from the Posen speech of 4 October 1943 reproduced in Ackermann (1970), p. 23: "What is hard is good, what is strong is good, what asserts itself physically, willingly, mentally out of the struggle for life, that is the good...". Physical and mental weakness should be eradicated. 134 Cf. the introduction. A documentary film by Vanessa Lapa about Heinrich Himmler, released in 2014, is significantly titled Der Anständige. 135 Longerich (2008), p. 395. 20 point, Himmler followed the practice he had once learned. Self-control" had replaced paternal supervision. 136 It is not wrong to see in this educated bourgeois method of upbringing the mechanism of social coercion into self-coercion described by Norbert Elias. 137 Heinrich Himmler, however, is the best example of the fact that the "civilisation process" (incidentally, also according to Elias' own understanding) 138 does not mean a simple upward movement, but can experience setbacks and even perversions. The tempering of affects does not lead to their disappearance; they are merely channelled differently. 139 And when frames of reference within which certain actions take place change within a very short time, what previously seemed impossible suddenly becomes possible. 140 "Affect control" can then paradoxically be put in the service of a particularly efficient way of killing, whose own affective character is suppressed. Thus, the humanist son, still striving for control and self-control in murder, is in a certain sense the actual face of the rupture of civilisation and of the "Enlightenment" which, in the sense of Horkheimer and Adorno, turns into its opposite. 141 However, there is no direct path from the defects of the young Himmler to the Reichsführer SS. "If Himmler had been guided into sensible paths," Josef Ackermann aptly put it, "he would hardly have become 'the organisational genius of murder'." 142 Himmler's childhood therefore only became "political" in a narrower sense when he decided to enter politics. This decision, however, was again preceded by external occasions and their linkage with inner predispositions. As in the case of Hitler and many others, 143 so in Himmler's case, too, a "trigger" was needed that promoted regressions which led to the well-known fateful development. This external trigger, which was decisive for Himmler, now lies almost 100 years in the past: inflation and with it the threat of social decline for the young member of the war youth generation who had just left his parents' home. But inflation is only one of the many triggers of the Weimar period: first, there was the defeat in the war and, a little later, the announcement of the Versailles peace terms; political assassinations and coup attempts accompanied the economic crises and inflation 136 Ibid, p. 23f. It can be assumed that the corporal punishments by the father also had a "controlled" character, as it were; the violence perpetrated by the SS was supposed to proceed in a controlled manner in Himmler's eyes. 137 Elias (1976), p. 317. 138 Klüners (2013), p. 122f. 139 Erdheim (1996), p. 164. 140 For details on this, see Welzer (2005) and Neitzel/Welzer (2011) (on the speed with which this took place between 1933 and 1945: Welzer (2005), p. 16). Ultimately, however, the question remains as to what causes frames of reference to shift in the first place. Psychopathological processes are decisive here, because frames of reference correlate with superego structures. Moreover, those who convince themselves that they are acting on command can successfully rationalise their own impulses to destroy. 141 Horkheimer/ Adorno (1947). 142 Ackermann (1970), p. 38 with a formulation by Hannah Arendt (emphasis in original). 143 Klüners (2019). 21 in the early 1920s; and after a brief phase of consolidation, the calamity of the stock market crash and the subsequent world economic crisis came, heralding the end of democracy in Germany. Without these triggers, the personal psychopathologies of Hitler, Himmler and countless others would probably never have had such a catastrophic effect. Psychopathology is thus a decidedly historical quantity: its transgenerational transmission represents a kind of "longue durée"; its destructive potential, however, unfolds in decided dependence on external events. References Ackermann, Josef (1970): Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe (Musterschmidt, Göttingen et al. 1970). Altrichter, Helmut (2018): Stalin. The Lord of Terror. 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