Dietrich Eckart

Dietrich Eckart appears as both a self-styled literary figure and an active political propagandist. His exchange with Adolf Hitler sets the two roles beside one another: Eckart speaks of his fiction, poems, and lack of recognition, then turns to antisemitic claims and plans for political publication. The scene makes his literary self-image part of the same conversation as his effort to recruit Hitler and shape public opinion.

Identity and Literary Self-Portrait

Eckart tells Hitler that he has written a novel called The Morning, whose main character is essentially himself: an unrecognized literary genius addicted to morphine, though able to manage what Eckart calls the “sweet gift of morphine.” The description gives his literary ambition a distinctly personal cast. He does not present the character merely as an invention, but as a version of his own identity and frustrated standing.

Eckart’s sense of recognition is conflicted. Hitler praises the anguish and beauty of his poems, but Eckart complains that his recognition rests on his translation of the Norwegian work Peer Gynt—a work he says he hates. The exchange places admiration and resentment together: even the recognition he has received seems to him attached to someone else’s work rather than to his own writing.

From Literary Grievance to Political Writing

Eckart describes writing pamphlets to explain Germany’s defeat in the war, claiming that the enemy the nation should fear was not in the trenches. He also recalls sending This is the Jew to a professor, who returned it with a note calling it full of hate. Eckart answers by contrasting the German schoolmaster who, in his account, won the war of 1866 with the professor who lost the World War in 1914. The anecdote shows how he converts criticism of his writing into an accusation against intellectuals, presenting his polemic as a corrective to their failures.

His political language is openly antisemitic. Eckart says that Jews will destroy German culture if allowed to do so, and identifies himself as an antisemite; Hitler immediately aligns himself with that declaration. Eckart’s literary aspirations therefore do not stand apart from his politics: his writing and proposed publications are presented as instruments in a struggle he frames as cultural defense.

Political Partnership with Hitler

Eckart proposes a weekly newspaper, Auf gut Deutsch, and urges Hitler to join the Thule Society. Hitler replies that he is already a member. The brief exchange establishes Eckart as an initiator who brings a publication plan to Hitler and seeks to draw him into a political circle, while also showing that Hitler is not a newcomer to that organization.

The scene’s movement—from the novel and poems to pamphlets, antisemitic claims, and a newspaper—binds Eckart’s literary self-conception to his political activity. He seeks recognition as a writer, resents the grounds on which he has received it, and turns that grievance toward a public campaign against the people he blames for Germany’s cultural and political condition.