MARC DE WILDEcontinuously undermining the fragile democracy of the Weimar Republic, the conserva-
tive revolutionaries in fact paved the way for National Socialism. Schmitt had a consider-
able career during the Third Reich and became an influential state lawyer.^5 An
(unorthodox) interpretation of Catholicism, which permeates his juridical and political
concepts, is at the origin of his political theology.
In the mid 1920s and early 1930s, just before Hitler’s takeover, Benjamin and Schmitt
mutually influenced each other and even corresponded briefly.^6 In the open climate of
the Weimar Republic, it was not unusual for intellectuals to cross political dividing lines.
Intellectuals of opposite political convictions would discuss freely with one another, as is
exemplified by the contacts and affinities between such thinkers as Martin Heidegger and
Herbert Marcuse, or Ernst Bloch and Ernst Ju ̈nger.^7 In some instances, political theology
seems to have functioned as an (implicitly) shared theoretical approach, which made
possible the crossing of political dividing lines. This phenomenon is especially significant
in light of the massive breakdown of political frontlines in January 1933 (National Social-
ism itself having been an amalgam of various political elements, originating in both con-
servative and revolutionary thought^8 ). The hidden dialogue between Benjamin and
Schmitt, to which not only their correspondence but also important references in their
work testify, can be adequately understood only in the light of their shared theologico-
political convictions.
In the work of Benjamin and Schmitt, the concept of political theology covers more
than the political and less than the strictly theological. ‘‘Political theology’’ does not refer
to what is usually called ‘‘politics,’’ but to ‘‘the political [das Politische].’’ Benjamin and
Schmitt argue that the political no longer takes place in the classical political institutions,
such as parliament or political parties, but has become omnipresent: in modern societies
the political is present and active in media, the economy, technology, and so on.^9 What
is usually meant by ‘‘theology,’’ that is, comments on revelation and theories of the reli-
gious, is scarcely to be found in their work. Hence, the concept of political theology
implies neither a political form of theology nor a ‘‘theology as politics.’’ Political theology
actually seems to indicate the reappearance of theological figures of thought in a secular-
ized political sphere, in which their original meanings and functions have become obso-
lete. The theological (re)surfaces not only in fundamental political beliefs, ideologies, and
myths, but also, silently, in theories of sovereignty, decision, and the ‘‘force of law.’’^10
Two dominant interpretations of theologico-political motifs in the work of Benjamin
and Schmitt can be found in the secondary literature. Representatives of the first interpre-
tation (Norbert Bolz, Michael Rumpf, Lutz Koepnick, et al.) suggest that Schmitt, being
a Catholic theorist, is able to justify a top-down conception of political power, since
Catholicism accepts a moment of materialization, namely, the Incarnation, that allows
divine violence to be represented within the juridico-political sphere.^11 According to this
interpretation, Benjamin, contrary to Schmitt, embraces a radical critique of power, since
Judaism doesn’t acknowledge this moment of materialization and thus denounces any
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