Wegbereiter Hitlers? Theodor Reismann-Grone

Theodor Reismann-Grone was one of the most enduring figures in the history of German radical nationalism. With Alfred Hugenberg and Heinrich Class, two other figures to whom the same characterisation applies, he was a leading figure in the Pan-German League in the Imperial era. He was then an early patron of the National Socialists in the 1920s, but became increasingly disillusioned with the movement after it took power. Like Hugenberg and Class, he also lived long enough to witness the ruins of the radical nationalist project in a divided Germany. Of this troika, Hugenberg has been the most studied, owing largely to his vast media empire, his significance in the destruction of the Weimar Republic, and the accessibility of his papers. Björn Hofmeister's edition of the Class diaries and Johannes Leicht's dissertation-biography promise to clarify the extent of Class's role in the German Catastrophe. Meanwhile, Stefan Frech's excellent new biography of Reismann-Grone, a revised version of the dissertation he wrote in Berne under Stig Förster's supervision, offers the most concrete and suggestive account to date of the disastrous long-term modulations of German radical nationalism

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