Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner

Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner (23 February 1939 – 12 April 2011) was an Austrian writer, independent scholar and philosopher.

Biography

Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner was born in Vienna, Ostmark, German Empire. He studied philosophy, law and political science at the University of Vienna. In 1962, he moved to Germany, where he worked as a publishing editor, among other things. From 1974 to 1988, he published the Initiative series at Herder publishing house. After the series was discontinued in 1988, he lived as a freelance writer in the Black Forest. He was a founding member of the PEN Liechtenstein.

He published in the magazines Zeitbühne, Criticón, Epoche, Saka-Informationen, Theologisches, MUT and in Junge Freiheit. His last book was published in 1996 and he spent the following years in extreme seclusion.

In 2000, Kaltenbrunner publicly acknowledged sedisvacantism by commenting on a planned public statement by the Mexican Priestly Society of Trent (SST) under the leadership of the Sedevacantist bishop Martín Dávila Gandara and giving advice on how Catholics could live religiously during this long period of sedisvacantism. In point 1 of his statement, he expressly affirmed Wigand Siebel's proof of the sedis vacante, in point 2 Kaltenbrunner took the view that Pius XII was the last pope, and in point 3 he defended the term ‘sedis vacantism’.

He died on 12 April 2011 in Lörrach in southern Baden. His final resting place is in the cemetery in Perchtoldsdorf near Vienna.

Thought

Conservatism

Kaltenbrunner first became known in the 1970s as a publicist and thought leader in the conservative political spectrum. His book Reconstruction of Conservatism, which was presented as a conservative counter-proposal to the 1968 movement, was published in 1972. His metapolitical ideas of an ‘evolutionary traditionalism’ were based on the utopian thinking of the Conservative Revolution.

The Initiative series, for which he was able to attract numerous authors of various colours until it was discontinued in 1988, addressed a variety of topics beyond the purely political, which were expressed in titles such as: Why still Read? On the Necessary Abundance of Books / Reason to Celebrate. Abolition and Return of Festivals or Nest Warmth in a Cold Society: Ashrams, Communes, Kibbutzim and What Else.

Kaltenbrunner's political publications from the 1980s include Elite. Education for the Case of Emergency (1984) and What is German? The Inevitability of Being a Nation (1988). Compared to his previous publications, these were characterised by a sharper tone and an increased preoccupation with the topic of ‘nation’, which also led to increased criticism, for example from the political scientist Claus Leggewie.

Particularly programmatic for the New Right was his essay Does Hitler Determine the Guidelines of Our Politics?, which appeared in the magazine MUT in 1987 and was reprinted in a large number of conservative and right-wing magazines.

Europe trilogies

In the course of the 1980s, Kaltenbrunner's interests increasingly shifted from politics to culture. In his youth, his cultural interests were shaped in particular by his encounter with Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the Pan-European movement.

Testimony to this is the three-volume work Europe. Its Spiritual Sources in Portraits from Two Millennia and the three-volume follow-up publication The Spirit of Europe. Both works contain a collection of several hundred monographic essays on people from European intellectual history, with a recognisable focus on cultural figures who have — in Kaltenbrunner's opinion — fallen into unjustly oblivion.

Religious-mystical later work

From the early 1990s, Kaltenbrunner ceased dealing with political issues. Instead, he devoted himself to questions of religious philosophy in several publications: in addition to several smaller hagiographical volumes, the two extensive books John Is His Name (1993) (about Prester John) and Dionysius of the Areopagus (1996) are particularly noteworthy.

In these works, Kaltenbrunner brought together various philosophical, theological and historical-theoretical approaches — in particular those of the traditionalist school (René Guénon, Julius Evola and above all Leopold Ziegler), negative theology and mysticism (Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa), idealistic philosophy (Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Wolfgang Struve), as well as the utopianism of Romantic literature and medieval legendary and Grail poetry — with the aim of creating a comprehensive overview of Western Christian culture.

Works

• Hegel und die Folgen (1970)
• Rekonstruktion des Konservatismus (1972)
• Konservatismus international (1973)
• Der schwierige Konservatismus (1975)
• Europa. Seine geistigen Quellen in Portraits aus zwei Jahrtausenden (1981–1985; 3 volumes)
• Elite. Erziehung für den Ernstfall (1984)
• Wege der Weltbewahrung (1985)
• Geheimgesellschaften und der Mythos der Weltverschwörung (1987)
• Vom Geist Europas (1987–1992; 3 volumes)
• Was ist deutsch? Die Unvermeidlichkeit, eine Nation zu sein (1988)
• Die Seherin von Dülmen und ihr Dichter-Chronist (1992)
• Tacui (1993)
• Johannes ist sein Name. Priesterkönig, Gralshüter, Traumgestalt (1993)
• Dionysius vom Areopag. Das Unergründliche, die Engel und das Eine (1996)
• Vom Geist Europas. Ursprünge und Porträts (2019; 2 volumes; combined partial reprint of Vom Geist Europas and Europa)

References

• Becher, Phillip (2022). "The (Almost) Forgotten Elitist Sources of Right-Wing Populism. Kaltenbrunner, Höcke and the Distaste for the Masses". In: Michael Oswald, ed., The Palgrave Handbook of Populism. Cham: Springer, pp. 213–24.
• Faber, Richard (1991). Konservatismus in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
• Gmehling, Magdalena S. (2012). Leitstern am geistigen Firmament. Erinnerungen an Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner. Kißleg: Christiana.
• Grebing, Helga (1978). "Erneuerung des Konservatismus?," Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Vol. XIX, No. 3, pp. 372–91.
• Greiffenhagen, Martin (1979). "The Dilemma of Conservatism in Germany," Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. XIV, No. 4, pp. 611–25.
• Hermanns, Manfred (1992). "Rezension zu Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner (Hrsg.), Volksparteien ohne Zukunft? Die Krise des Parteienstaates. Freiburg i. Br. 1988". In: Jahrbuch für Jugendsozialarbeit, Vol. XIII, pp. 329–31.
• "Kaltenbrunner, Gerd-Klaus". In: Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing, ed., Lexikon des Konservatismus. Graz: Leopold Stocker Verlag, p. 291.
• Kroll, Frank-Lothar (2018). "Konservatismus in Deutschland Nach 1945 – Probleme Und Perspektiven." In: Uwe Niedersen, ed., Reformation in Kirche Und Staat.: Von Den Anfängen Bis Zur Gegenwart. Duncker & Humblot GmbH, pp. 366–75.
• Kuhn, Helmut (1980). "Fünf jahre »Initiative«," Zeitschrift für Politik, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, pp. 291–94.
• Leggewie, Claus (1987). Der Geist steht rechts. Ausflüge in die Denkfabriken der Wende. Berlin: Rotbuch-Verlag.
• Steber, Martina (2023). "The Arduous Quest for Conservatism in the Federal Republic of Germany." In: The Guardians of Concepts: Political Languages of Conservatism in Britain and West Germany, 1945-1980. Berghahn Books, pp. 107–356.

External links

• Works by Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner at JSTOR
• Works by Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner at German National Library
• Works by Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner at German Digital Library