Search Results - Dietrich Eckart

Eckart was born Johann Dietrich Eckart in 1868 in Neumarkt, Germany (which is about twenty miles southeast of Nürnberg/Nuremberg), the son of a royal notary and lawyer. His mother died when he was ten years old; in 1895, his father died also, leaving him a considerable amount of money that Eckart soon spent.

Eckart initially studied medicine in Munich, but decided in 1891 to work as a poet, playwright and journalist. He moved to Berlin in 1899, where he wrote a number of plays, often autobiographical; becoming the protégé of Graf Georg von Hülsen-Haeseler, the artistic director of the royal theatre. Eckart was a very successful playwright, especially for his adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gyant, one of the most well attended productions of the age with more than 600 performances in Berlin alone. It was this success that not only made Eckart a wealthy man, but gave him the social contacts needed to introduce Hitler to dozens of important German citizens of the day. These introductions proved to be pivotal in Hitler's ultimate rise to power.

Later on, he developed an ideology of a "genius higher human", based on writings by Lanz von Liebenfels; he saw himself following the tradition of Arthur Schopenhauer and Angelus Silesius. He also became fascinated by the Buddhist doctrine of Maya (illusion). Eckart loved and strongly identified with Peer Gynt, but never had much sympathy for the scientific method.