Karl Heinz Bremer
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Karl Heinz Bremer had taught German at the Sorbonne and the Ecole Normale before the Second World War. When he returned to Germany he joined the Nazi party. Following the fall of France he was the associate director of the German Istitute in Paris, from its creation in the fall of 1940, until he was sent to the Russian front a year later. The German Institute was responsible for editing the French press, and for controlling newly published French books during the Nazi occupation. Bremer is known for the friendship he developed with the infamous French collaborator and journalist, Robert Brasillach. This friendship prospered because both men were eager to exchange knowledge of each other's country and culture. Bremer was sent to the Eastern front, where he later died, because the German government believed his francophilia was too excessive.(1)
K. H. Bremer "diagnosed the situation of the Second Republic in the following manner. While the republicans of 1848 were trying to solve the constitutional question, he observed, Louis Napoleon realized that the social question was the most important one. Parliamentarism, with its conflicting political parties and class struggles, was incapable of solving the social question. Only a dictatorship with a social outlook, in the view of Napoleon could solve it. His great aim was to establish a political system based upon the unity of all classes and of all interests in France. It was he, according to Bremer, who first created the new type of state in the form of authoritarian, plebiscitarian leadership." (2)
Mr. Bremer also said that Proudhon popularized a social idea that was antiliberal in order to give a social significance to the Second Empire. Proudhon developed a social idea for Louis Napoleon that was to bring workers into the Second Empire. Because Proudhon advocated slow changes over time, Napoleon rejected this solution. (3)
Writings of Bremer
- "Der sozialistiche Kaiser", Die Tat, XXX (June, 1938).
References
1) Kaplan, Alice. "The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach." (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000),pg 45-49.
- Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, Social Forces in England and France (1815-1870), J. Salwyn Schapiro, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., NY, l949. pg 328. quoted from Die Tat, pp 160-171.
- Liberalism and the Challene of Fascism, J. Salwyn Schapiro, pg 368.