Juenger & Drucker (Re: The Ultimate Prescription)

[e-ensign <e-ensign@thing.net>]

-- [ From: e-ensign * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] --

> Drucker, of course, has intellectual integrity himself,
> and sees things as they really are. He left Austria in 1937
> because he was one who read Mein Kampf and took the
> author of that book at his word.

Peter Drucker actually left Austria in 1927 and went to Germany, where he
lived until 1933. He then went to London and came to the US in 1937, where
he became the "father of modern management." 

What is of interest to this list is that Drucker explicitly referred to
Juenger in his 1939 book "The End of Economic Man". In the chapter "The
Return of the Demons" he called Juenger "the only writer of first rank in
the postwar period who accepted war not only as inevitable but as an
essential sphere of human life," and in the chapter "Miracle or Mirage?" he
referred to him as "the one really profound German philosopher of the
totalitarian state." 

Drucker is indeed a striking example of intellectual integrity. Let me quote
a passage from the afterword of Drucker's book "The Ecological Vision.
Reflections on the American Condition" (Transaction Books, 1993). Drucker
talks about his essay "Friedrich Julius Stahl. Konservative Staatslehre und
geschichtliche Entwicklung", published in Germany shortly after the Nazis
had come to power:

"It was written during 1932 as an anti-Nazi manifesto - for Stahl the great
conservative had been a Jew. It was meant to make it impossible for the
Nazis ever to have any use for me and for me ever to have any use for them.
And it was meant also, in the event of a Nazi victory to be among the first
books they would banish. It succeeded in its objectives. It was accepted by
Germany's leading social science publisher, Mohr in Tuebingen, and published
as Number 100 in the prestigious series on law and government - a singular
honor for a totally unknown, twenty-three year old. It came out - a pure
coincidence, but still very much to my delight - two weeks after Hitler had
seized power in 1933 - and it was promptly banned by the Nazis." (p.445) 

The book nevertheless had some effect. Many conservatives were encouraged by
Drucker's essay on Stahl not to collaborate with the Nazis during the so-
called Third Reich. Drucker told me last year that one of them has been
Walter Hallstein, who became one of the founding fathers of the European
Union (initially called EEC) after WWII and also its first president. 

Friedrich Julius Stahl (1802-1861), the subject of Drucker's essay, was a
contemporary of Hegel and the leading conservative parliamentarian of the
pre-Bismarck period. Stahl gets also mentioned - although in a negative, if
not anti-semitic way - in Carl Schmitt's "Der Leviathan" (1937), where
Schmitt refers to him as "Stahl-Jolson" (pp.106f. of the "Edition Maschke"
edition). In a footnote Schmitt mentions the "Nachlass" of Stahl in an
archive in Wolfenbuettel, which he had used for research. On one occasion
Schmitt had been accompanied by Ernst Juenger, as Juenger himself remarked
in "Siebzig verweht 3": 

"Wolfenbuettel, 24. Juni 1984 ... In der beruehmten Bibliothek war ich zum
ersten Mal ziemlich genau vor fuenfzig Jahren - damals begleitete ich Carl
Schmitt waehrend eines seiner Goslarer Besuche; er beschaeftigte sich hier
mit der Hinterlassenschaft des preussischen Staatsrechtlers Julius Stahl."

For those interested in Peter F. Drucker, here are some links:

--> Interviews Drucker gave to WIRED magazine:

http://www.hotwired.com/wired_online/4.08/drucker/

--> A review of Jack Beatty's "The World According to Peter Drucker" written
by Newt Gingrich and published in March 1998 in INC. magazine ("Speaker of
the House Gingrich explains why Drucker is the most influential writer of
the 20th century"):

http://www.inc.com/incmagazine/archives/03980701.html


Regards,
RBR