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Foundations of the Nineteenth Century #1
Foundations of the Nineteenth Century: With an introduction by Lord Redesdale. Volume 1
Translated by John Lees. This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1911 edition by F. Bruckmann, A. G., München.
- GenresHistory
686 pages, Paperback
First published July 3, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 16, 2025
"If the men who should be the most competent to pronounce an opinion on the essence and significance of Race show such an incredible lack of judgment—if in dealing with a subject where wide experience is necessary for sure perception, they bring to bear upon it nothing but hollow political phrases—how can we wonder that the unlearned should talk nonsense even when their instinct points out the true path? For the subject has in these days aroused interest in widely various strata of society, and where the learned refuse to teach, the unlearned must shift for themselves."
Houston Stewart Chamberlain is often mentioned in the same breath as Oswald Spengler, Arthur de Gobineau, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard. As I've read their principal works, it was inevitable that I'd come to Foundations of the Twentieth Century. As expected, the first volume is a brilliant work of racialism. Chamberlain pioneered the concept of the Aryan race, and so his writing has been vilified and misrepresented. It may not be accurate in every picayune particular, but its essence captures the pure, unadulterated "true path" our "learned" elites seek to hide from us.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain is often mentioned in the same breath as Oswald Spengler, Arthur de Gobineau, Madison Grant, and Lothrop Stoddard. As I've read their principal works, it was inevitable that I'd come to Foundations of the Twentieth Century. As expected, the first volume is a brilliant work of racialism. Chamberlain pioneered the concept of the Aryan race, and so his writing has been vilified and misrepresented. It may not be accurate in every picayune particular, but its essence captures the pure, unadulterated "true path" our "learned" elites seek to hide from us.
October 2, 2025
10/10.
One of the best historical works I have ever read. Chamberlain is a true rival, if not companion, to Spengler, and I sense that he may be Spengler's superior in truth.
Volume 1 of this true magnum opus covers the Greeks, the Romans, the ancient Hebrews, and the coming of the Germanics into European history. It discusses the influences of all of these groups on the modern day (the late Nineteenth Century, in Chamberlain's case). It is not a chronology whatsoever, but a racial-spiritual investigation of these societies and their impact on modern European man.
The Ancient Greek, with his artistic genius, brought the spirit of creation to Europe. Whether in sculpture, architecture, poetry, drama, or the countless other types of art that he excelled at, the Ancient Greek truly has no rivals. Even to this day, discounting the utterly degenerative influences of modernism, postmodernism, and Critical Theory, all of Western art is indebted to this small little outpost of the world, in such a short period of time, for nearly all of our forms. Even Rome itself created essentially nothing in this area; all of its works were copied from Greek forms, whether in sculpture, in the Aenied, or in philosophy (all movements started in Greece and moved thence to Rome).
But Rome did give our people something else: our foundations of law and the family. The Roman family structure was perhaps the strongest to ever manifest on this earth, and from that basis of the family came forth a jealous independence and need to preserve one's people and therefore one's state. The Roman family was under the complete and total legal jurisdiction of the father until his death, whether that be at age 30 or 90. But, at the same time, the father had a divine duty to serve his family and to protect them and give them a loving, strengthening influence. Not one case of parricide (killing one's parents) was recorded for 500 straight years, until the Republic began to degenerate.
Unfortunately, the Republic did degenerate and afterwards came the Empire, and with the Empire, the globalist, imperialistic vision of homogenization and lack of care about one's nation. Soon enough, North Africans, Syrians, Gauls, Goths, Hebrews, and other such people flooded into Rome, slave or not. The True Romans lost their specialized citizenship; it got expanded more and more, until it was given to every last slave. The Imperium was ruled by a Syrian this year, then by a Gaul the next, and then by a North African. Not one of them cared for the true Romans, who had been slaughtered in many a massacre by men such as Sulla.
And thus Rome degenerated, and thus the old Classical World fell into what Chamberlain calls a "racial chaos". Only one race, forging documents, faking historical lineages, and armed with the most intolerant, prejudicial, and materialistic religion the world has ever seen, maintained itself through this time. But up North, in the Black Forest, running through the fields of Scandinavia, rude, childlike, not informed of the wonders of Greek philosophy nor or the acceptability of miscegenation, came the Germanics.
And these men stormed South. The Ostrogoths like Alaric helped preserve the old Roman sculptures, which were being torn down left and right by the unidentifiable "people of chaos". They stormed into France, Spain, Northern Italy, all the way down the Adriatic coast, and these men founded the Europe of the future. Keeping their own laws (the Ostrogoths of Northern Italy would not marry outside of their ethnicity for 800 years), they were the fire that forged the Europe that we all know.
What characterized these Germanics? What is the Germanic spirit? Is it the "spirit of man", the "spirit of equality", as all of our moralists tell us today? Absolutely not! Their spirit was unique, just as is the spirit of all peoples of this earth. And the Germanic spirit has two featured traits: freedom and loyalty. The Germanic freely wills and accepts an obligation — whether to a king to pledge his loyalty to or to a spiritual truth like Kant — and then loyally follows through that free acceptance of duty. His Faustian spirit looks high to the Heavens, and looks searchingly; after much thought, he sees a beautiful object to devote himself to, and off he goes for years or decades, with complete duty and necessity, towards this duty which he has freely placed upon himself.
Such is the Germanic. And, thankfully, some of us still carry on that spirit today. Today, just as in the late Roman Empire, the chaos grows all around us. No one has any identity, and crass materialism, the absolute lowest of all devotions and professions, only suited to a people whose spirit is utterly contrary to the true Germanic, consumes us all. Let us pray, just as perhaps did Hermann, to God above us all — I say, let us pray to Him that we may remember: about our history, about our past, about our greatness, and, most importantly, about who we truly are. And with that burning passion inside of our hearts, let us go forth out into the world and recreate it once more.
One of the best historical works I have ever read. Chamberlain is a true rival, if not companion, to Spengler, and I sense that he may be Spengler's superior in truth.
Volume 1 of this true magnum opus covers the Greeks, the Romans, the ancient Hebrews, and the coming of the Germanics into European history. It discusses the influences of all of these groups on the modern day (the late Nineteenth Century, in Chamberlain's case). It is not a chronology whatsoever, but a racial-spiritual investigation of these societies and their impact on modern European man.
The Ancient Greek, with his artistic genius, brought the spirit of creation to Europe. Whether in sculpture, architecture, poetry, drama, or the countless other types of art that he excelled at, the Ancient Greek truly has no rivals. Even to this day, discounting the utterly degenerative influences of modernism, postmodernism, and Critical Theory, all of Western art is indebted to this small little outpost of the world, in such a short period of time, for nearly all of our forms. Even Rome itself created essentially nothing in this area; all of its works were copied from Greek forms, whether in sculpture, in the Aenied, or in philosophy (all movements started in Greece and moved thence to Rome).
But Rome did give our people something else: our foundations of law and the family. The Roman family structure was perhaps the strongest to ever manifest on this earth, and from that basis of the family came forth a jealous independence and need to preserve one's people and therefore one's state. The Roman family was under the complete and total legal jurisdiction of the father until his death, whether that be at age 30 or 90. But, at the same time, the father had a divine duty to serve his family and to protect them and give them a loving, strengthening influence. Not one case of parricide (killing one's parents) was recorded for 500 straight years, until the Republic began to degenerate.
Unfortunately, the Republic did degenerate and afterwards came the Empire, and with the Empire, the globalist, imperialistic vision of homogenization and lack of care about one's nation. Soon enough, North Africans, Syrians, Gauls, Goths, Hebrews, and other such people flooded into Rome, slave or not. The True Romans lost their specialized citizenship; it got expanded more and more, until it was given to every last slave. The Imperium was ruled by a Syrian this year, then by a Gaul the next, and then by a North African. Not one of them cared for the true Romans, who had been slaughtered in many a massacre by men such as Sulla.
And thus Rome degenerated, and thus the old Classical World fell into what Chamberlain calls a "racial chaos". Only one race, forging documents, faking historical lineages, and armed with the most intolerant, prejudicial, and materialistic religion the world has ever seen, maintained itself through this time. But up North, in the Black Forest, running through the fields of Scandinavia, rude, childlike, not informed of the wonders of Greek philosophy nor or the acceptability of miscegenation, came the Germanics.
And these men stormed South. The Ostrogoths like Alaric helped preserve the old Roman sculptures, which were being torn down left and right by the unidentifiable "people of chaos". They stormed into France, Spain, Northern Italy, all the way down the Adriatic coast, and these men founded the Europe of the future. Keeping their own laws (the Ostrogoths of Northern Italy would not marry outside of their ethnicity for 800 years), they were the fire that forged the Europe that we all know.
What characterized these Germanics? What is the Germanic spirit? Is it the "spirit of man", the "spirit of equality", as all of our moralists tell us today? Absolutely not! Their spirit was unique, just as is the spirit of all peoples of this earth. And the Germanic spirit has two featured traits: freedom and loyalty. The Germanic freely wills and accepts an obligation — whether to a king to pledge his loyalty to or to a spiritual truth like Kant — and then loyally follows through that free acceptance of duty. His Faustian spirit looks high to the Heavens, and looks searchingly; after much thought, he sees a beautiful object to devote himself to, and off he goes for years or decades, with complete duty and necessity, towards this duty which he has freely placed upon himself.
Such is the Germanic. And, thankfully, some of us still carry on that spirit today. Today, just as in the late Roman Empire, the chaos grows all around us. No one has any identity, and crass materialism, the absolute lowest of all devotions and professions, only suited to a people whose spirit is utterly contrary to the true Germanic, consumes us all. Let us pray, just as perhaps did Hermann, to God above us all — I say, let us pray to Him that we may remember: about our history, about our past, about our greatness, and, most importantly, about who we truly are. And with that burning passion inside of our hearts, let us go forth out into the world and recreate it once more.
August 20, 2026
Terminado el primer volumen. Es una obra artística por la forma personal en la que divide y une conceptos hacia un Todo y por la finalidad de elevar (consiguiéndolo), tal como el autor explica. Contiene un basto conocimiento que apenas puede resultar denso en ciertos capítulos pero que muestra una vida de erudición y sabia al mismo tiempo. Podrán haber discrepancias científicas a día de hoy en según qué estudio de su repertorio infinito de fuentes pero la forma con la que afronta la obra, como un vuelo elevado hacia la verdad, hace que no haya nada que le pueda derribar.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews