Biography
Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (also Moeller-Bruck) was born in Solingen in 1876, the son of Ottomar Moeller, a government building official, and Elisabeth van den Bruck, the daughter of a building official.
He was expelled from a gymnasium (a type of German secondary school) for his indifference towards his studies. The young Moeller van den Bruck believed German literature and philosophy, particularly the works of Nietzsche to be a more vital education. Afterwards, he continued his studies on his own in Berlin, Paris, and Italy.
1897 he married Hedda Maase (later Eulenberg). She divorced him in 1904.
Moeller van den Brucks eight-volume cultural history Die Deutschen, unsere Menschengeschichte ("The Germans, our people's history") appeared in 1905. In 1907 he returned to Germany and in 1914 enlisted in the army at the start of World War I. Soon thereafter, he joined the press office of the Foreign Ministry and was attached to the foreign affairs section of the German Supreme Army Command.
His essay "Der Preußische Stil" ("The Prussian Style"), in which he celebrated the essence of Prussia as "the will to the state", appeared in 1916, marking his embrace of nationalism. It showed him as an opponent of parliamentary democracy and liberalism, and exerted a strong influence on the Jungkonservativen ("young conservative movement").
After a nervous breakdown, he committed suicide in Berlin on May 30, 1925.
Moeller van den Bruck was the joint founder of the "June Club" (Juniklub), which sought to influence young conservatives in the fight against the Treaty of Versailles. Later, it was renamed "Deutscher Herrenklub" (German Gentlemen's Club): it became very powerful, helping Franz von Papen to become Reichskanzler in 1932.
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