GOBINEAU, JOSEPH COMTE DE (1816– 82)

GOBINEAU, JOSEPH COMTE DE (1816– 82)

Joseph-Arthur Count Gobineau was a French diplomat, writer, ethnologist and social thinker whose works in the realm of racial and racist theories had a profound impact, either directly or indirectly, on the subsequent development of ‘race science’ and on protagonists of racial and racist thinking such as Richard Wagner or Hitler. He was not so much the ‘father’ of racist ideology but rather a synthesizer who drew on history, linguistics and anthropology to explain that ‘race’ (see ANTHROPOLOGY AND RACE) was the key to understand the world and its history.

Entries A-Z 245 Gobineau-himself of bourgeois descent, having acquired the title of ‘Count’ only after

his uncle’s death in 1855—was very well educated in languages and in the cultures of the orient. During TOCQUEVILLE’S brief term as minister of foreign affairs he served as his secretary, after which he embarked on a diplomatic career. He became well known through fictional writings such as the famous Pleiads (LesPléiades, 1874, trans. 1928), as well as through scholarly works on the histories and religions of Asia (Histoire des Perses, 1869; Religions et philosophie dans l’Asie Centrale, 1865) and on The Renaissance (1877, trans. 1913). However, it was his early work on The Inequality of Human Races (Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, 1853–5, trans. 1915) that was to become the most famous and influential of all his publications, above all in Germany.

Gobineau saw the true cause of the fall of great civilizations in the adulteration of blood, in the physical and moral degeneration of the people’s ‘body’.

History was thus not a history of class struggles but of race conflicts, and geography and climate were not seen as influential factors in the fortunes of a people. Nor were government and politics of much significance in determining social existence. What mattered in the lives of peoples was the degree of degeneration caused by ‘miscegenation’, the cross-breeding between races: Gobineau argued that miscegenation was always a betrayal of superior birth since it was always the respective superior race that had to make the racial sacrifice.

Gobineau distinguished between three fundamental races: white, black and yellow. The whites comprised not only Caucasians but also the Semitic races, and the yellows counted various branches such as the Mongols, Finns or Tartars. There were, however, no more truly pure races because of the ongoing mixing of races; instead, peoples were marked by various degrees of miscegenation. Blacks were marked by an almost animal- like nature with usually very limited intellect but great energy and will-power; they were sensual and musical, but had no concept of true vice and virtue—a ‘slave race’. The yellow race was seen as the antithesis of the Negro, showing no physical strength, a certain apathy and a weak desire, a love of utility and business, and respect for the law. Such qualities made the yellows superior to the Negroes, but they were still mediocre vis- à-vis the whites.

The white race was considered the only true bearer of culture and civilization. Whites displayed an energetic intelligence, they loved life and liberty but valued honour even more. To Gobineau, the most remarkable branch were the ‘Aryans’, a ‘master race’ that was believed to have originated in northern India and migrated to Europe, and which was accredited with all the high civilizations. ‘Aryan’ was a notoriously multi-faceted term in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discourse, which was based on linguistic similarities between Sanskrit and most European languages. Race-thinkers had differing notions of which nations or even parts of nations belonged to this alleged ‘race’ and which rank they occupied in its hierarchy. Gobineau argued that the Aryans had contributed to the formation of the Hindu, Iranian, Hellenic, Celtic, Slavonic and Germanic peoples; to him, the Germanic stock amongst the European peoples constituted the very top of the racial pyramid. However, the Aryans’ chief weakness was their great susceptibility to miscegenation—which he considered a huge problem since he regarded the strength and thus the fate of civilizations as being based on their racial composition. In his system of racial thought the Slavs were at the forefront of miscegenation with the yellow race. Jews, although belonging to the Semitic races and thus to the whites, were

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not considered a civilizing force in humanity. In his Essai he used the image of a textile fabric with regard to the role of races in his system of racial thought: the two most inferior varieties of the human species, the black and yellow races, were the crude foundation, the cotton and wool, made supple by the families of the white race by means of adding their silk; while the Aryan group, circling its finer threads through the noble generations, was designing on its surface a dazzling masterpiece of arabesques in silver and gold.

Gobineau was—despite his praise of the Germanic element—not in praise of contemporary Germans, although he had some hopes for northern Germany. In his view the German people did not contain much of the ancient pure Germanic racial material— an assessment that he applied to varying degrees to all contemporary European nations.

He was deeply imbued with ideas of cultural pessimism, arguing that the ongoing mixing of races was leading to the final demise of the last vestiges of Aryandom and to the universal establishment of societies of mediocre quality. Only in later years, in his work on the Renaissance and, most notably, in his novel Pleiads, glimmers of hope can

be detected: the existence of a tiny number of noble characters—in the Pleiads metaphorically also referred to as ‘sons of kings’—who have preserved enough racial value to rise with their thoughts and deeds above the surrounding sea of ‘fools’, ‘scoundrels’ and ‘brutes’. This elite was not bound to any particular nation but rather constituted an inter-national brotherhood of Aryans.

Gobineau did not find much resonance in the French Far Right, which did not appreciate the fact that he did not extol the French ‘race’. He became famous only by his later amicable association with Richard Wagner, who found his own thoughts of race and degeneration confirmed in Gobineau’s work, but added his idea of redemption and regeneration to it. After both Gobineau’s and Wagner’s death the Bayreuth circle was instrumental in popularizing Gobineau in the German-speaking world and in creating a movement called ‘Gobinism’. Nationalist and racist associations in Germany adapted Gobineau’s ideas to German requirements: Gobineau’s fear of the ‘yellow peril’ from the East stepped back in favour of an aggressive anti-Semitism; the German ‘race’ was exalted. At the turn of the century Gobineau was thus turned into a prophet of both German racial superiority and the need to defend the German ‘race’ against its racial enemies.