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This chapter begins by considering the numerous appearances of the term ‘conservative revolution’ in cultural writings of the 1920s and 1930s: particularly in those of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arnold Schoenberg, and Moeller van den Bruck. Into this emerging discourse, it weaves the capturing of the term for German historiography by Armin Mohler (1949) and the influence and controversy of Mohler’s usage in subsequent historical debates. Having argued that ‘conservative revolution’ may indeed serve as a revealing lens through which to view musical phenomena of the Weimar era, it proceeds—using the writings of Roger Griffin and Peter Osborne—to place its futural drive amidst the modernist thought with which it is usually contrasted, and thus offers a segue to the studies presented in Chapters 2–5.

The interwar radicalization of politics in East Central Europe was linked to the proliferation of a discourse of crisis. Symptoms of crisis could be localized in certain social groups, institutions, and social relations, such as the generational cleavage. Since the topos of crisis was not bound to any particular ideology, the very same discourse was used by liberal and leftist intellectuals as well. Nevertheless, the most plausible ideological framework offering a way out of the crisis seemed to be the “conservative revolution,” promising to restore the continuity of traditions that had been interrupted by the breakthrough of modernity. This led to the proliferation of “national metaphysics,” defining the specificity of the respective nation with ontological categories. Another face of this “conservative revolution” was the politicization of religion, linked to the renewed interest in myth and popular religiosity. At the same time, there was also a conservative anti-totalitarian stance and, in a few cases, a left-wing reorientation of certain religious subcultures.

Heidegger was a sharp critic of the modern secular and pluralistic condition and hoped for the emergence of a new communal faith that would unite the nation into a tightly knit spiritual community. With the rise of Nazism, he enthusiastically believed that Hitler offered the opportunity for such a new beginning in line with his philosophical aspirations – also because he shared many of the Nazis’ convictions ranging from their call for a völkisch ‘re-awakening’ and their glorification of a socially just national community (Volksgemeinschaft) to a glorification of a specifically German potential combined with prejudices against Communism, Jews and ‘the West’. Though his initial enthusiastic hope that he could become the philosopher guiding the Third Reich’s way in a complete break with the past towards an ideal future was soon dashed, he continued to support the regime because his völkisch chauvinism combined with a complete disregard of the murderous actions of the regime made him unwavering in the belief that a German victory would be best for what he took to be all-important: a new beginning.

This chapter discusses the life and work of Ernst Jünger, who was part of a strain in modern German conservatism that tested the limits of modernity and Enlightenment rationality. He catapulted to fame as a young man on the basis of his World War I memoirs, In Storms of Steel, which made him part of the antidemocratic forces of the Weimar Republic, but he retreated into the inner emigration during the Third Reich. After 1950 he lived a reclusive life but published a stream of essays and books and an impressive diary that chronicled almost four decades of life with sharp observations on a wide range of topics. He was a cultural pessimist who thought that the rise of a unifying planetary technology and the loss of local culture meant that we were entering into a posthistorical world of fragmentation, and new forms of cultural and political tyranny.

This chapter deals with Martin Heidegger’s thinking about empire and imperialism. Hitler, Himmler, and Speer proposed a thousand-year Reich and thousands of years of glorious ruins. Schmitt devoted himself to the neo-Roman problem of how to prolong the time before the fall by returning to the first century. Privileging ancient Greek readiness to face the end, Heidegger analyzed and criticized this Roman desire to endure. In contrast to Schmitt, when Heidegger thought about Reich, he did not return to Rome but turned to archaic Greece. Focusing on Heidegger’s Basic Concepts and his so-called Black Notebooks, the author traces the importance of Oswald Spengler’s thought for Heidegger’s understanding of imperialism and his reconceptualization of Spengler’s notion of Untergang/decline. She also studies Heidegger’s critique of neo-Roman imitation. Like Schmitt, Heidegger belongs to the tradition of conservative revolutionary thinkers of empire that the author has traced through The Conquest of Ruins. The book thus ends with Heidegger’s immersion in Spengler’s theory of Caesarist imperialism and his implicit dismissal of Schmitt’s version of the Pauline katechon.