Community of Neighbours vs Society of Merchants: The Genesis of Reinhard Höhn's Nazi State Theory

Reinhard Höhn's writings have provided the Nazi ideological discourse with a crucial synthesis of various models of anti-liberal modernity discussed in the Weimar era. Influenced by cultural pessimism, Höhn's intention to reverse the trend of the social development back to pre-modern community corresponded to an extreme attempt to prevent ‘the decline of the west’. His ‘communitarian law doctrine’ connected Ferdinand Tönnies' sociology of community with the teachings of his right-wing counterparts, Jerusalem and Freyer. His constitutional theory correlated the ‘political neighbourhoods' conceived by the leader of the Young German Order, Artur Mahraun, and Carl Schmitt's ‘concrete orders' as the basis for the Third Reich's new social order. The common feature was the desire to overcome the ‘atomized society of Hobbesian egoistic individuals'. For Höhn, the individualistic rationality had to be erased by a combination of forces from above – the Führer – and below – closed communities obtained by re-structuring the social body into a net of neighbourhoods. This article shows the gradual transformation of Höhn's public law theory as he was trying to devise a social structure fitting the demands for a ‘substantial’ democracy and social justice. His final outcome was Führerdemokratie, an anti-rationalist leadership legitimized by power relationships among members of exclusive communities.