Maximillian Harden Censor Germaniae the Critic in Opposition from Bismarck to the Rise of Nazism

Maximilian Harden, editor of the magazine Die :(,ukunft (The Future), which appeared weekly from 1892 until 1922, was Wilhelminian Germany's greatest publicist. Bismarck and Clemenceau as well as Max Reinhardt and Pirandello recognized his political and literary genius. Thomas Mann sent early works to him with the inscription: 'To the hero and savior';1 and when Paul Valery learned that Harden had attended one of his lectures, he wrote that there was 'nothing more flattering and. . . intimi­ dating than to know that you were among those who had listened to me. '2 Today Harden is misunderstood, if not forgotten. It is known that he was an actor who turned to journalism and became famous as a champion of the retired Bismarck. He was the most persistent and daring critic of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He befriended Friedrich von Holstein, the disgraced 'evil genius' of the Foreign Office. He entered the First World War a flaming patriot, but later became the voice of the 'good German. ' He vainly aspired to a post of high responsibility under the Weimar Repub­ lic; and he died in 1927, allegedly a bitter, misanthropic radical. His name is associated with the homosexual scandals of 1907-1909, which were the result of his public campaign against Prince Eulenburg, the Kaiser's close friend and advisor. More than anything else, the Eulenburg affair has obscured Harden's accomplishments as the master critic and guide to a generation of German intellectuals and politicians.