2 The Serpent

Theopolitics from Weimar to Nazi Germany

We have come to recognize that the political is the total, and as a result we know

that any decision about whether something is unpolitical is always a political

decision.

—Carl Schmitt

Here is the serpent in the fullness of its power!

—Martin Buber

1919 and After: The Shape of the Theopolitical Problem

Buber’s version of the “theologico-political predicament” was strongly influenced
by his understanding of the legacy of Gustav Landauer’s anarchism, on the politi-
cal side of the hyphen, and by his work with Franz Rosenzweig, on the theologi-
cal side. Buber began this struggle after the failure of the Bavarian Revolution,
during the turbulent life of the Weimar Republic. From the outset, many Ger-
mans did not welcome the rise of parliamentary democracy. Liberalization and
universal suffrage had been discussed throughout the war years, but conservative
and military elites resisted; the most prominent move of the Supreme Military
Command toward democratization came only when the war was nearly lost, in
an attempt to shift blame for the defeat from the military to a new civilian gov-
ernment.^1 This strategy of blaming the home front for the military loss continued
into the peace years. But the theme of “legitimacy” signaled the questionable na-
ture of the Weimar Republic in intellectual discourse across political divisions,
as Hans Mommsen has written: “Even its strongest supporters were ambivalent
toward the new political order.”^2 Meanwhile, the radical left attempted to prevent
and preempt the birth of the Republic in order to foster either dictatorship of the
proletariat or decentralized democracy in council form. Throughout the 1920s,
the specter of revolution was frequently used to justify states of emergency and
repressive measures.
Ambivalence about the Republic crossed denominational as well as political
divides. As Klaus Tanner points out: “The majority of Protestants considered the