Believers Writing for Believers: Traces of Political Religion in National Socialist Pulp Fiction

ISSN： 1469-0764

Source： Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol.8, Iss.1, 2007-03, pp. : 77-92

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Abstract

The following article analyses numerous brochures, short biographies and books for young people published on the National Socialist martyr figure Horst Wessel in 1933-4 in so far as their politically religious contents are concerned. The analysis shows how the Wessel biographers, mostly simple party sympathisers, transform Goebbels's original version of a sanctified Wessel into a new myth. Wessel appears as a popular saint of the people whose life story strongly resembles a Christian saint's vita. The construction of Wessel as a saint is not a conscious act; their way of writing identifies the biographers as believers in their own stories. The Wessel biographies thus offer valuable insight into the mechanisms through which political religion can be created 'from below', i.e. among common supporters of totalitarian regimes, making it possible to compare this 'political religion from below' with the intended and unintended sacralisation of politics 'from above', by the leaders of the regime.