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Searching for the Perfect Footnote:Friedrich Ratzel and the Others at theRoots of LebensraumMatus Halas aa Institute of European Studies and International Relations ,Comenius University , Bratislava , SlovakiaPublished online: 21 Jan 2014.

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Geopolitics, 19:1–18, 2014Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1465-0045 print / 1557-3028 onlineDOI: 10.1080/14650045.2013.780036

Searching for the Perfect Footnote: FriedrichRatzel and the Others at the Roots of

Lebensraum

MATUS HALASInstitute of European Studies and International Relations,

Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

The story of Lebensraum before World War I resembles a screen-play of an interesting movie. The main villain (Friedrich Ratzel)got the prestige, but did not deserve it, while those that did (Andreeand Peschel), were not given it. Villain’s éminence grise (MoritzWagner) plotted against the hero (Charles Darwin) without mucheffect. Some even tried to turn villain into hero’s servant, yet heproved too resilient and remained determined to conquer andculturally transform the world on his own terms. This plot haseverything necessary for a good drama. An Israeli one, of course.

INTRODUCTION

Professor Eliezer Shkolnik devoted his entire academic life to the carefulanalysis of centuries-old books, yet he received very little recognition forhis efforts. The most cherished credit of his career is a footnote in a bookwritten by his already deceased master. The most significant outcome of hisresearch, the one to which he sacrificed most of his time, is turned worth-less by a colleague, who effortlessly published the same results just a fewweeks earlier. At the same time professor’s own son Uriel, an academicianas well, is successful beyond tolerance of the notoriously overlooked father.This story of a recently made Israeli movie called Footnote (2011), writtenand directed by Joseph Cedar, serves here as a crucial narrative metaphor.Readers interested only in facts rather than narration can easily skip the firstparagraph of each section. It needs to be stressed, however, that the movie

Address correspondence to Matus Halas, Institute of European Studies and InternationalRelations, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University, Mlynske luhy 4,821 05 Bratislava, Slovakia. E-mail: matus.halas@fses.uniba.sk

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helps to define and build the very structure of the following text. It makesthe argument about the controversial concept of living space not only morevivid and telling. Maybe even more importantly, the movie becomes partof the intended message itself and that simply by the use Israeli supportingcast (Shkolniks) behind the German stars (Ratzel). Similarly as it happensin other constitutive relations, any scientific argument turns fully meaning-ful only thanks to the process of its narration. The only difference here isthat the role of narration is intentionally stressed in order to explore all themeanings that the argument can acquire. Getting rid of the Footnote wouldmean getting rid of the text and of its multiple layers that it explicitly and,above all, also implicitly contains.

Of course, the plot of the movie can be seen as a narrative metaphorfor the argument presented here, only if it is relevant for the study of the ori-gins of Lebensraum itself. Some introductory hints might help convince thereader of its significance. Not only that everything important about FriedrichRatzel and his concept of Lebensraum was supposedly already said,1 thusrelegating any additional contribution on the topic to the significance of afootnote. But many times it is references or footnotes (depending on thecitation style, naturally) that can tell you a surprisingly great deal aboutarticles and books that deal with Lebensraum and its author. Occasionallythey might even reveal more than the very body of the text. Last but notleast, prestige of Friedrich Ratzel compared with others that also contributedto the introduction of Lebensraum into the fin de siècle German politicalgeography follows in many ways the relationships between Uriel Shkolnik,his father Eliezer, and the malevolent colleague personified by the profes-sor Grossman. The greatest possible added value of this footnote article onLebensraum lies, therefore, in clearing away the debris that accumulated dur-ing the twentieth-century analysis of life and work of the recognised authorof the term concerned.

This text tries to track down the history of the concept of Lebensraumduring Friedrich Ratzel’s lifetime and to take a closer look at the meaningsthat his own words acquired later, especially after the recent de-tabuisationof German geopolitics. As the text proceeds, topics gradually complicate.Starting with the simple issue of the first use, it then goes on to investigatethe impact of biology upon its original conceptualisation, and ends up withthe analysis of general scientific perceptions of what is sometimes calleda Ratzelian ideology. Uses and misuses of the concept of living space bythe Nazis are not the main concern of this article since the focus is laid onRatzel and his contemporaries. Research of the nineteenth-century Germanacademic sources presented here shows that Ratzel was in fact not the firstone to use the concept. Moreover, his understanding of the term heavilyresembles ideas of his old mentor, Moritz Wagner. Cultural imperialism asthe main feature of Ratzel’s writings is finally identified in the last sectionthat tries to oscillate fluently between primary and secondary sources inorder to deal with the contradictory interpretations of his work.

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Searching for the Perfect Footnote 3

GOOD TEXTS IN WRONG BINDINGS

Yehuda Grossman is the evil professor of Hebrew studies that publishedthe original version of the Jerusalem Talmud shortly before Eliezer Shkolnik.They knew each other for a long time and Grossman was also perfectlyaware of the fact that Shkolnik was trying for dozens of years already toreconstruct the Jerusalem Talmud from an immense number of quotationsfound in different ancient sources. By accidentally finding a complete originalcopy of the Jerusalem Talmud in some Italian monastery inside the bindingsof some obscure old books Grossman effortlessly jeopardised his colleague’slifelong work and put Shkolnik’s academic career in danger. By publishingthe original copy, he made a nightmare of anyone’s academic dreams cometrue for Eliezer Shkolnik and turned the results of his research immediatelyobsolete. Condemned to be only the second, Eliezer would envy undeservedprestige of his colleague for the rest of his life.

Nothing similar happened in the case of Lebensraum, but Ratzel’s pres-tige is not perfectly justified either. Almost all scholars agree that FriedrichRatzel is the author of the term,2 yet only some of them add that he usedit even before the well-known book with the same name.3 The very firstmention by Ratzel was most probably in a short article in the journal DieUmschau,4 in which he published several times during the last years of hislife. It is not true that the term appeared in the preface to the 1897 editionof his Politische Geographie5 as suggested by Lange.6 In fact, the term occurson the very first page only of the second, revised edition published in 1903,but not in the previous one. Similarly, Ratzel included the term in the revised1899 edition of the first volume of his Anthropogeographie,7 while it did notappear in the one from 1882. Thus it seems that he started to use the termonly at the very end of 1890s and included it subsequently also in revisionsof his major works. At the same time it also suggests that there is little reasonto analyse his writings on living space from the perspective of the temporaldevelopment of his own ideas. He used the term for the first time only sevenyears before his death and his book on the topic was published four yearslater in 1901. There was simply not enough time for him to rethink what hehad just written.

What is more important as regards the story of Footnote is that the posi-tion of Friedrich Ratzel partly resembles the role of Grossman. He receivedall the fame even if others (like Eliezer Shkolnik) deserved at least a goodshare of it. Interestingly enough, Ratzel was not the first one to use theterm Lebensraum. Furthermore, he was not the first one who used it in theway we understand it now with respect to human geography. And mostimportantly, he was not even the first German geographer to use it in thatway. A few years before Ratzel a renowned German cartographer RichardAndree published his ethnographical study of Jews, in which he used theterm Lebensraum in the same way as Ratzel did in 1897.8 Contrary to the

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view stressed by Ratzel, he thought that living space requires extremely longperiods in order to affect given species in any significant way and thusthat the effects known from human history are strongly overestimated. Withrespect to Jews he then wrote9:

The Jews are one of the most interesting objects in anthropological sense,since no other racial type except precisely for Jews can be traced backfor millennia, and no other shows such a stability of characteristics, nonehas resisted the time and the effects of living space like this one.

There is some reason to think that Ratzel knew about this work. Andree’sfather Karl, a geographer as well, founded a well-known journal, Globus,and his son took it over in 1891. Ratzel was given an opportunity to pub-lish the first of his studies and short articles in this journal in 1869 at thesame time, when his limited means during the stay in France led him towrite for Kölnische Zeitung. He also reviewed Richard Andree’s AllgemeinerHandatlas in 1880 and another book nine years later. Beside that he wrote ashort study on cannibalism as a reply to Andree’s book on the same topic.10

Considering the fact that he knew the family well and exchanged manyletters with them, it is unlikely that he didn’t read the book on Jews as well.

Yet not even this was the first use of the term Lebensraum. Before mov-ing elsewhere, Andree studied geography and natural sciences in Leipzig andstayed in town for many years until 1890. No wonder then that it was OscarPeschel, the first chair of the Department of Geography at the University ofLeipzig, with whom Andree coauthored the Physikalisch-statistischer Atlasdes deutschen Reichs.11 And it was Peschel himself who was probably thefirst one to use the term Lebensraum in his Völkerkunde in a way we know ittoday.12 More than twenty years before Ratzel, he used it in a self-explanatoryway to describe the geographical conditions of human life in simple termswithout any elaboration or perceived need to clarify what he meant by that.It became more than just an ordinary word in vocabulary only later.

One can be sure that Ratzel as a chair of the same Department ofGeography in Leipzig at the end of the nineteenth century knew the booktoo. He quoted Peschel’s Völkerkunde many times even in the 1882 originaledition of his Anthropogeographie13 and wrote a review of its seventh edi-tion in the late 1890s.14 Not to mention numerous references to Peschel inhis other publications. It was Ratzel too who wrote an entry on Peschel inthe Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie.15 Interestingly enough, Peschel was anenthusiastic Darwinist applying it to the struggle of human races as shownby Weikart.16 This is important especially with respect to the latter part ofthis article. Ratzel’s interpretation of the impact of living space was never-theless different from that of Peschel and both of them related their thinkingto Carl Ritter. Peschel thought that Ritter overemphasised the influence ofenvironment upon history and human population. He also saw only limited

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Searching for the Perfect Footnote 5

space available for the introduction of laws similar to those that can be foundin the natural sciences:17

Physical characteristics of individual countries thus enable different pos-sible developments, but the historical credit for really realizing one or theother belongs to every nation. Course of the history remains bound upby physical laws of the Earth’s surface only in a general way.

Ratzel on the other hand disagreed with Peschel’s understanding of Ritter’swork. The cornerstone of their dispute was the extent of the nature’s leverageupon human history and behaviour. Unlike Peschel, Ratzel did not find CarlRitter overly deterministic and he also believed that properly understood law-like statements must be possible with respect to natural environment and itsimpact upon man.18 For him the problem with Peschel was that he remainedat the surface of the field that later became known as human geography.That instead of going deeper, he tried to reduce possible applications of thispromising scientific idea.19 Ratzel’s perspective can be best illustrated on adifference between space and position:20

Peschel overlooked the great law, that influence of the country on historyof its nation does not lie only in the country itself, but depends also onthe neighborhood, within which the country is embodied.

Ratzel also pointed out that Ritter in fact acknowledged the power of manto limit the impact of nature as the nation proceeds regarding its level ofculture.21 Overall, his understanding of nature’s role was thus significantlygreater than that of Peschel. As in the case of Ritter, Ratzel’s views are inter-preted by many as environmental determinist too. How this corresponds toreality will be dealt with later.

The most important finding so far is that Lebensraum is not the con-cept coined by Friedrich Ratzel. Similarly to Yehuda Grossman, Ratzel’sprestige is not entirely justified and he owes something to others as well.Grossman knew Shkolnik and his work. He could have given the newlyfound manuscript to him in order to support his colleague’s research. Ratzelcould also have acknowledged the work of others but did not find it nec-essary. The (in)famous concept of Lebensraum was apparently used wellbefore the end of the nineteenth century and others deserve at least partof the fame regardless of whether it is Richard Andree, Oscar Peschel, oreven Heinrich von Treitschke, whose alleged use of the term is yet to beverified.22 To state that it is Ratzel who stands behind the concept of livingspace, is thus to put a good idea in wrong bindings. It is he, who propagatedthe term, yet it is neither his term nor did he use it in its present meaningas the first one. This article is, however, about Ratzel and his writings onLebensraum. Even if the research on the first use offers new findings, rather

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sporadic uses of the concept before 1897 promise very little reward fromturning one’s attention to the period before the very end of the nineteenthcentury. It seems more reasonable to focus on what Ratzel himself thoughtabout the concept he promoted.

A FOOTNOTE IN HISTORY

Despite being overlooked for years as regards prestigious academic awards,one recognition of Eliezer Shkolnik’s work makes him particularly proud.That recognition is a simple footnote reference in a book written by hiswell-respected mentor many years ago. Thus although Shkolnik is genuinelyimmersed in his scientific project to which he devoted most of his life, theone missing thing is obviously respect of others. Even the Israel Prize, themost prestigious honor awarded in Israel, was given to him by mistake, whenthe secretary at the ministry confused his name with that of his own son.Absorbed by the popularity of Uriel and the aversion towards Grossman, hislife turns into embittered seclusion among old manuscripts, while preachinghis ideas to the few remaining students. If there is anybody with a life at leastsomewhat similar to that of professor Shkolnik, then it is Moritz Wagner. Hisinfluence upon Friedrich Ratzel’s thoughts is recognised.23 Their relationshipis, however, usually explored either in a footnote or just within a few lines.Considering the fact that Anthropogeographie is the only book that Ratzelever dedicated to anybody (to Wagner, of course), there is some reason tothink that the influence of this traveller turned naturalist is more importantfor understanding Ratzel’s elaboration of Lebensraum than usually assumed.Actually, any systematic analysis of the link between the living space andWagner’s ideas on evolution is still missing in the scholarly literature.

Wagner as a traveller never pursued a purely academic career, althoughhe strived for scholarly recognition. He received his doctoral degree fromthe University of Erlangen24 on a proposal of his brother Rudolf, who servedthere as a professor of zoology. Honorary professorship was given to him bythe University of Munich in 1862, the same year that he also started to takecare of the Bavarian ethnographical collections25 that would later becomeknown as Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Munich. A close, father-son relationship between Wagner and Ratzel developed already in the early1870s and there is little support for the claim that the impact of Wagner’smigration theory on Ratzel diminished over time,26 or that already by the1880s he realised the falsity of his mentor’s views.27

Quite the contrary, Ratzel spoke of Wagner’s theory approvingly evenat the end of the century and regarded its lack of recognition only as a tem-porary ignorance.28 He saw his friend as being equal to Darwin and Wallacewith respect to the evolutionary theory and he was clearly unwilling to takea side on the issue as to whether the spatial separation is a necessary or just

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favourable condition of the emergence of new species.29 Furthermore, Ratzelexpressed his sincere conviction about the great importance of Wagner’smigration theory30 and criticised Darwin for being both genius and philis-tine, while simultaneously speaking rashly about his one-sided view of thestruggle for life.31 One can hardly see there a reason for questioning thelink between Wagner and Ratzel and I would like to illustrate that furtherwith help of the migration theory of the former and the understanding ofLebensraum by the latter.

The issue that separated Darwin and Wagner was the role of spacein the origin of species. Resulting debate between German Darwinists andMoritz Wagner is well documented by Weissman32 and was perfectly under-stood by Ratzel himself who recognised Wagner’s gradual departure fromDarwinism.33 At first, Wagner simply wanted to upgrade Darwin’s theoryof natural selection based on individual variability, heredity, and strugglefor life, with the fourth necessary condition, which was meant to be themigration of organisms that would start the selection mechanism itself.34 ForWagner, migration results from inherent struggle for food (preservation) andreproduction (population increase). This leads all living beings to look fornew territories suitable for colonisation. At the same time according to him:35

Formation of a real variety . . . will only succeed when a few individ-uals, having crossed the barriers of their station, are able to separatethemselves for a long time from the old stock.

Migration and isolation preventing the cross-breeding with original stockbecame necessary conditions of the evolution of new species. Circumstancesof life at such a new territory must have been simultaneously at least some-how different from those of the original population in order to cause thechange.36 The Lamarckian argument about stimulus from the environmentwas employed here and it is actually Lamarck’s theory rather than Darwin’sthat became closer to Wagner’s ideas over time. Changed living conditionscause enhanced variability and lead over several generations in isolation toconstant variation and new species. On the other hand, lack of migration,and thus of variation, leads inevitably to extinction.37

The problem of Wagner already at this early stage was his extremelyshort-time perspective even though natural selection is by definition anexceptionally slow process. He was also unable to clearly distinguishbetween specification into more species and simple modification of a sin-gle one. In spite of this, he still believed that Darwin’s natural selection andhis migration law were compatible and that both were necessary for properexplanation of the origins of species. As the time proceeded Wagner, never-theless, strictly separated Darwin’s natural selection from his own theory.38

Now the variability was not ever-present, but resulted only from migrationand the process stopped when the space was populated. Instead of struggle

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for life as a cause of speciation, he claimed the post for isolation and thestruggle for space leading to migration. By emphasising environment-drivenvariability he moved closer to Lamarck and away from Darwin,39 even if thesetwo theories were not sufficiently distinguished at that time and especiallybefore August Weismann’s tails-cutting experiments.40

But nothing really came out of this for Wagner since no respected biolo-gist sided with him at home or abroad. The only recognition he never forgotto mention41 were two letters from Charles Darwin. In the first one Darwindoubted the necessity of separation, even if he agreed that it might be advan-tageous for speciation.42 In the second one from autumn 1876 he was morecritical of Wagner’s theory and questioned not only the possibility that vari-ability of species differs across periods, but also the way Wagner understoodhis views on isolation.43 By far the clearest expression of Darwin’s opinioncan be found in the sixth edition of his Origin of Species, where he wrotethat he “can by no means agree with this naturalist [Wagner], that migrationand isolation are necessary elements for the formation of new species.”44

Mirroring the relationship of Eliezer Shkolnik with his son Uriel, there is notmuch that can be called today a profoundly Wagnerian contribution to sci-entific inquiry, except maybe for the success of his ‘son’, Friedrich Ratzel.Lack of academic recognition evidently haunts both Eliezer and Moritz too.But how exactly is Lebensraum linked with the migration theory? That is thetopic of the next section.

JUDGES’ DECISION

After Uriel Shkolnik found out that his father, after decades of waiting, waserroneously congratulated by the minister for receiving the Israel Prize, herefused to tell his father the truth as initially asked by the awarding com-mittee, chaired by none other than professor Yehuda Grossman. Followingthe argument between Grossman and Uriel Shkolnik about the role of truthand justice in the committee’s decision-making process, Grossman askedShkolnik to write a judges’ decision instead. At the same time, his father,blinded by the fame of being given the Prize, is making an interview witha young journalist and is expressing his views about the lack of scientificrigor in his son’s research at great length. Angry and insulted Uriel Shkolnikcarefully selects every single word in the judges’ decision after reading theinterview in newspapers. By that he definitely gives the prize to his fatherinstead of receiving it on his own in accordance with the committee’s origi-nal decision. Later in the movie, however, Eliezer Shkolnik discovers that itwas his own son who wrote the judges’ decision. For an experienced philol-ogist it took little effort to distil his son’s handwriting behind the wording ofawarding decision. Similarly, this part of the article tries to identify the influ-ence of Wagner on Ratzel’s writings about Lebensraum. And likewise, the

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findings might be surprising. Ratzel’s positive appraisal of his mentor’s ideasis well known, but detailed assessment of their impact upon the concept ofliving space is still missing.

The question we are going to address is rather tricky. The main treatiseon the topic written by Ratzel45 was published in Fraktur and it was nevertranslated into English. The result is that despite several attempts, it remainsrather poorly studied. When Bassin46 deals with the concept, he mostly refersto the revised editions of Anthropogeographie and only rarely cites the twomost important sources.47 The best example of this peculiarity of Lebensraumis, however, the analysis by Woodruff Smith. He used the concept morethan 500 times in his Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism, but limits him-self to three footnotes in which he referred to the book concerned.48 Onthe one hand, this is perfectly justified. He used the term as a label forwhat he called ‘Lebensraum ideology’, simply because “no more appropri-ate name presents itself”49. After all Strausz-Hupé did the same already fortyyears before Smith.50 But on the other hand, using the term in such a broadand general sense makes it very hard to distinguish between Ratzel’s ownperspective and the contributions of others that modified its meaning.

Yet not even the widely cited previous work by Smith51 is any differ-ent in that respect, although it is devoted to Ratzel’s understanding of theterm in particular. Again, the problem is the interpretation of Lebensraumas Ratzel’s general ideological Weltanschauung and not as just one of hismany specific ideas. Besides migration, Smith for example identifies meth-ods of agriculture as another key element of Ratzel’s Lebensraum.52 No onetries to claim here that Ratzel has not stressed the importance of countrysideand its agrarian population somewhere else.53 But this should be analysedseparately from the concept of Lebensraum. All references to the relevantbook54 that supposedly point in a direction of agricultural understanding ofthe living space55 are either false or misleading. Ratzel simply did not foundhis idea of Lebensraum on the romantic vision of countryside or agriculturein any conceivable sense, even if it would fit well within the glorification ofpeasantry during the final, fascist stage of the conservative road to moder-nity according to Moore.56 It was rather a (re)definition of Lebensraum byKurt Vowinckel more than thirty years after Ratzel’s death that explicitlylinked the living space to German peasants.57 Very similar argument can bemade about Kjellén and his alleged use of Lebensraum as well. If he everused the term in his magnum opus,58 it must have been elsewhere thanclaimed.59 Taking all that into account, it seems that interpreting Lebensraumin such broad terms as was done by some risks turning it into another fuzzyHofstadterian concept.60 And that is both unnecessary and harmful as regardscomprehensive understanding of Ratzel’s work.

Mutually shaping relationship between organic world and its conditionsof life can be seen as the main idea of Ratzel’s book on Lebensraum instead.61

From the general point of view, it deals predominantly with territorial

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diffusion of plants and animals on the Earth’s surface with only limited ref-erences to humans and their societies. Still, one must agree with Weikart62

that for Ratzel, and with respect to natural conditions above all, humans arenothing special and they are dependent on Earth similarly to any other livingbeing.63 There is no clear definition of Lebensraum offered in the book, butit is viewed as an integral part of all living beings.64 One can then be hardlysurprised to find applications of the theory upon primrose, polar fox, andhuman races within a couple of pages. Relative lack of examples associatedwith humans thus cannot serve as a justification for refusing the continuitybetween ideas of Ratzel and their later modifications during the first half ofthe twentieth century.

Intellectual origins of the living space were suggested, but unfortunatelynot explored beyond the footnote remark, by Bassin more than twenty yearsago.65 As regards the focus of our study, already the opening chapter of DerLebensraum dealing with the variability of life illustrates the inspiration byWagner. Ratzel’s coupling of variability with changed provisions of life andhis statement that tight space with altered conditions must lead to new livingforms makes this inspiration in the first chapter rather obvious.66 Moreover,he departed from Darwin’s assumption of random variations, because envi-ronment was granted not only the power to strengthen but also to channelevolutionary process of variation. On the other hand, migration itself can-not be regarded as following some predetermined path67 and any attemptto identify places of origin are usually doomed to fail. For Ratzel, differentforms of life have also naturally different spatial needs and require differentliving spaces.68 This holds for Kulturvölker competing with Naturvölker aswell as for the former competing among themselves, and it reasserts the levelof culture as a proxy for understanding spatial growth.69

Wagnerian link is the most explicit in a chapter dedicated to strugglefor space. Darwin’s inspiration by Malthus was sadly enough never fullydeveloped according to Ratzel,70 albeit it clearly pointed toward struggle forspace as a result of Earth’s limits:71

There is a contradiction between the movement of the life that neverstops and the space of Earth that doesn’t change. The struggle for spaceis born out of this contradiction. Life quickly conquered the face of theEarth but as it got to its ends, it turned around and since then the lifefights with life for space all around the whole Earth and without break.The much-abused and even more misunderstood term “struggle for life,”in fact means first of all “struggle for space.”

This emphasis on reinterpreting evolutionary theory in spatial terms is com-mon to both Ratzel and Wagner. Development of races and species isdescribed in a Wagnerian way so that primordial forms come into beingwithin limited regions and then they slowly spread covering the available

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space with groups closely related to each other. The whole area is ulti-mately united again as single species or race predominates over the others.72

Isolation would be needed at the start but thereafter both nations/races aswell as all non-human organic beings must spread as they grow beforestabilising again after filling up the space at hand.73 In other words:74

New species and subspecies will in many cases need a small space fortheir differentiation. But when they get their new characteristics, thenthey have to prove their resilience against crossbreeding and climateeffects in greater space.

With respect to nations defined by Ratzel as politically unified groups thatare at the same time united also in territorial terms, instead of ethnic orlinguistic,75 he stressed the tendency towards greater spaces. The strugglefor space among states was identified with military battles.76 Therefore itseems that his concept of living space does not have to be upgraded at allin order to serve as a justification for expansionist imperial politics.

To sum it up, and contrary to some views,77 Ratzel’s Lebensraum rep-resents an elaboration of Wagnerian ideas on variation and on the strugglefor space. There is no sign of diminishing influence of the master upon hisapprentice. Any increase in organic world, whether it is growth, migration,expansion or colonisation, can be understood as a spatial movement andevery spatial movement is for Ratzel “the mastery of the space”.78 The sameelements present in Ratzel’s theory can be identified also in that of Wagner.79

Variation requires changed conditions of life. Speciation is impossible with-out isolation. And reproduction of all living beings on the limited surface ofEarth leads towards inevitable struggle for space. As far as the movementis natural for all organic life including states80 and since the living spaceis the very part of it, struggle for space must according to Ratzel representa non-reducible and in fact necessary part of our (natural) history. If onenation loses some land and gradually becomes extinct thanks to the expan-sion of the other, it is merely a repetition of the process common in nature.81

Specifically, it points to differences in the levels of culture since with devel-opment of culture comes also closer bond to the land and the environment,82

together with their more effective use by a given nation.By understanding humans as part of nature and by applying the same

evolutionary mechanisms upon states, perceived as living organisms, Ratzelupgraded migration theory’s argument so that now it enabled justifying ter-ritorial acquisitions. It is hardly an accident that the term Lebensraum wasmentioned most often in a chapter named Der Kampf um Raum. And withrespect to the story of Eliezer Shkolnik’s life, one can hardly doubt that thejudges’ decision in the case of Lebensraum was in fact written by MoritzWagner. Although the link between Ratzel and Wagner has been well knownfor a long time, the possibility of direct inspiration of the former’s ideas

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12 Matus Halas

on Lebensraum by the latter’s migration theory was never really explored.This intellectual background of the concept of living space is made stillmore relevant in the context of a widely held assumption about decreasinginfluence of Wagner upon Ratzel’s thoughts toward the end the nineteenthcentury. Based on the previous lines, one can say instead that Wagner’s ideasapparently held true for Ratzel even shortly before his death.

THE WORD OF FOOLS IS NO PROOF

The title of this part refers to the second most favourite sentence of profes-sor Eliezer Shkolnik. He always used it with great pleasure as a response tostudents, who by referring to an allegedly respected authority with a differ-ent opinion were too stubborn to accept that only his interpretation of theanalysed text is correct and no other. When trying to put Ratzel’s writingson Lebensraum in a broader context one must deal with a similar problem.Individual interpretations of his work are absurdly contradictory. Moreover,their authors strictly adhering to scientific courtesy would claim often merelyin the footnotes that the opposite views are not entirely correct. The confu-sion is thus hard to disentangle. It is not clear who is the ‘fool’ since nobodywants to be seen as another Shkolnik. No attempt to identify the single onecorrect and fixed interpretation of Ratzel’s writings is made even here. Afterall, interpretation always depends on particular reading of the text and thecontext in which the interpretation is made, not on intentions of the authorhim/herself. Ratzel’s work had naturally different meaning in the 1900s thanin the 1930s, or 1980s. Differences are therefore legitimate. What is, however,attempted here, is to recreate in brief one specific meaning of Ratzel’s ideas.The meaning partly present in many secondary sources that specifically payattention to his work as embedded within the context of his times. That isof the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Layers that his thoughtsacquired later are not of our interest here.

As regards his Weltanschauung and general ideological position, Ratzelwas claimed to be both a racist83 and fundamentally opposed to racialtheories84; a social Darwinist85 but also critical of the most brutal proponentsof it86; an environmental determinist87 and being far from it88; a nationalist89

and against the state unification of one’s own nation90; a materialist, empiri-cist and positivist91 yet for others at the same time also an advocate of stateorganism being “subject to mystical analysis rather than a physical being sub-ject to scientific-materialist analysis”.92 Getting rid of taboos in the analysisof the German school of political geography after the 1980s obviously camealong with the plethora of incompatible opinions about who Friedrich Ratzelactually was. Different labels should be understood contextually and appliedcarefully when dealing with the author that promoted Lebensraum.

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Searching for the Perfect Footnote 13

The claim that Lebensraum was about plants and animals is for instanceas true as the claim that Ratzel, a graduated zoologist, was an environmentaldeterminist. It is a broad generalisation, but not very helpful if one wantsto properly understand his writings and their impact. The previous linesstressed that as regards Lebensraum, Ratzel made no distinction betweenanimals/plants on the one hand and states on the other. He even consideredthe latter as “not only similar, but a great more solid” organism.93 Similarly, hislifetime mission was to show the impact of natural conditions upon humansand that was also one of the tasks of human geography according to him.94

But he never forgot to stress that this impact always went through socialand economic organisation of a nation.95 Therefore his emphasis upon cul-ture and the claim that “human free will is not transformed by the fact thatman is in his geographical expansion dependent upon external conditions”.96

Environment just sets more or less defined limits, but it does not determine.There might be also different opinions on what exactly the label “social

Darwinist” means, ranging from any use of biological theories by socialscientists97 to specifically Darwinist evolutionary theory as applied uponhuman interactions.98 We might easily describe Ratzel and his concept ofLebensraum as inherently social Darwinist in the first sense. The problem isthat it would require labelling Moritz Wagner as a Darwinist too, which isa rather unfortunate corollary. As we saw, many things that hold for ideasof Wagner can be said about Ratzel’s views as well. Their understanding ofevolutionary theory is no exception. In fact, Ratzel not only criticised Darwinand many of his followers, but he also understood evolution as a directedand not random process.99 Both of them were thus much more Lamarckiansthan Darwinists.

The issue of race is a bit less complicated one. Ratzel’s opinion on thatstayed consistent for his entire academic career. Race fanatics like Gobineauand Chamberlain were condemned mostly for their idea of fixed races100 andthe same holds for the concept of inequality of races too.101 Since the giftsof reason, speech, and religion are common to everybody, humanity wasunderstood as united despite existence of different races.102 The very idea ofpure races seemed unsound to Ratzel. On the contrary, he promoted mixingof races as beneficial for the health of nations. No fundamental differencesin capabilities can be identified among races and any bodily differences aretoo shallow criteria for substantial inequality.103 The only distinctions worthmention are again those of culture. Here Ratzel willingly spoke against “unre-stricted mixing” that can lead to similar fall from the already achieved culturallevel as in the case of the Portuguese in Latin America.104 Thus his opinionswere hardly racist, but he definitely pleaded cultural imperialism. Any well-educated gentleman from London living at that time was unfortunately nobetter than Ratzel on that account

Nationalism and imperialism are two thematically closely related phe-nomena in Ratzel’s work. He did object to purely ethnically based politics

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as a step back that would unnecessarily limit possible territorial needs of agiven state and its population.105 Linking ethnicity with state would restrictterritorial growth of the latter and as far as borders are ever-changing bynature, their stability can only be a sign of death.106 In the same spirit hepraised nations that are not afraid of foreign elements, but instead are con-fident enough to admit and absorb them. He also criticised attempts to fightor oppress minorities as a sign of cultural weakness.107 It is, however, nottrue that he “rejected on principle the claims of the Germans in the Balticregions to membership in a German state”.108 What Ratzel said with respectto them instead was that109

while it is questionable whether their reunification [of the Germans inBaltics, Austria, and Switzerland, living beyond borders of Germany] canmake us stronger, it is sure that it would not enrich our German spirituallife, but only make it more homogeneous.

A (cultural) imperialist need for expansion received precedence over purelyethnic understanding of nation and state, as is also confirmed by the veryfirst law of the growth of states.110 Ratzel was thus not opposed to unificationof Germans. He just saw it as a too limited political goal to pursue.

Finally, one should reconsider the materialist and empiricist label oftenassigned to Ratzel’s thoughts by the secondary literature. In his article pub-lished a few years before his death Ratzel explicitly stressed the limits ofreason and criticised materialism, Darwinism, as well as excessive trust con-ferred on them and on natural sciences. He claimed instead the importanceof belief in God and of its role in solving the most important questions of theday, including that of the purpose and the goal of evolution.111 Moreover,he doubted the very possibility of separating faith and science seeing itas particularly harmful when trying to construct an appropriate world view(Weltanschauung) that neither materialism, nor positivism, nor monism (ref-erence to Haeckel) were able to achieve so far.112 As regards scientific lawshe even wrote that113

we see one ‘generally shared’ view after another falling apart and aban-doning ever more the belief in the universal and eternal validity ofsupposed natural laws that were presented to us with an appearance ofinfallibility, but that are then withdrawn even under completely neutralcircumstances.

This hardly proves his unshaken trust in scientific explanations, human expe-rience, and reason. It is much more an illustration of the fact that evenif proposing seven laws of the growth of states,114 he still kept backdoorsopen.

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Searching for the Perfect Footnote 15

THE END

By selecting specific lines and quotes, one can justify virtually any opinion onFriedrich Ratzel and his work. This is nothing new and if we carefully chooseappropriate paragraphs and sentences, it might even seem that neither Ratzel,nor Kjellén, nor Haushofer were racists, social Darwinists, or had anythingin common with German foreign policy after 1939. Nazism then becomessome kind of deus ex machina, which is not very helpful. If there oughtto be some profit from breaking the taboos of research on German politicalgeography, we should at least try to think twice before reaching contradictoryconclusions. The word of fools is no proof after all.

Lenin and Stalin were not exactly the champions in thoroughgoingapplication of Karl Marx’s ideas, yet it does not make them any less com-munist. Nazis were not the best students of Friedrich Ratzel either, but thatdoes not make them any less Ratzelian. To look for a scholarly consistencyin Nazi ideology would be a ridiculous project anyway. They used the sameconcepts and catchphrases as Ratzel did, including living space, biologisa-tion of politics, and expansionist urge. Given the fact that Ratzel establishedGerman school of political geography and that its advocates and represen-tatives draw inspiration from him, it is more than deserved to make himintellectually responsible. However, the paper is more about Ratzel thanabout ideas from the 1930s and it is precisely here that the story of an Israelimovie acquires one of its implicit meanings. At least to some extent it keepsthe link between the early twentieth-century concept of Lebensraum andthe discursive practices preceding World War II open throughout the article.The story reminds us that the concept has a history going beyond Ratzel’sunderstanding of the term.

But as I wrote at the beginning of this article, another study of Ratzel’sideas might possibly have a footnote significance. It is because overall assess-ment of his work including the concept of Lebensraum is correct in seeing itfirst and foremost as a scientific legitimisation of imperialist expansionism.115

There is still some need for a clarification with respect to general understand-ing of his ideas especially as regards crucial role of nation (Volk) defined incultural rather than ethnic or linguistic terms and also as to his environ-mental determinism and materialism. Moreover, there might be significantdifferences in interpretations of his writings depending on linguistic and cul-tural context of the secondary analysis (as for example French vs. English orAmerican reading of Ratzel). The article was, nevertheless, focused on some-thing else. It paid attention to Ratzel’s views on living space and especiallyto its links with the migration theory of Moritz Wagner. The message of thetext is then very simple. Friedrich Ratzel is not the author of the conceptof living space and his development of that idea in the last years of his lifeowes very much to his mentor at the start of his academic career, namely toMoritz Wagner.

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16 Matus Halas

NOTES

1. M. Bassin, ‘Imperialism and the Nation State in Friedrich Ratzel’s Political Geography’, Progressin Human Geography 11/4 (1987) pp. 473–495; W. D. Smith, ‘Friedrich Ratzel and the Origins ofLebensraum’, German Studies Review 3/1 (1980) pp. 51–68; A.-L. Sanguin, ‘En Relisant Ratzel’, Annalesde Géographie 99/555 (1990) pp. 579–594; G. Ó Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics (London: Routledge2005) pp. 28–29.

2. J. Agnew, Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics (London: Routledge 2003) p. 99; M. Bassin,‘Race Contra Space: The Conflict Between German Geopolitik and National Socialism’, Political GeographyQuarterly 6/1 (1987) p. 130; H. Heske, ‘Karl Haushofer: His Role in German Politics and in NaziPolitics’, Political Geography 6/2 (1987) p. 136; T. Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory(Manchester: Manchester University Press 1997) p. 199; B. Madley, ‘From Africa to Auschwitz: HowGerman South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in EasternEurope’, European History Quarterly 35/3 (2005) p. 432; W. D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of NaziImperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1986) p. 83; O. Tunander, ‘Swedish-German Geopolitics fora New Century Rudolf Kjellén’s “The State as a Living Organism”’, Review of International Studies 27/3(2001) p. 451.

3. F. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (Tübingen: Lauppschen Buchhandlung 1901).4. F. Ratzel, ‘Ueber den Lebensraum. Eine biogeographische Skizze’, Die Umschau 1/21 (1897)

pp. 363–367.5. F. Ratzel, Politische Geographie (München & Berlin: R. Oldenbourg 1923) pp. III–IV.6. K. Lange, ‘Der Terminus “Lebensraum” in Hitlers “Mein Kampf”’, Vierteljahrshefte für

Zeitgeschichte 13/4 (1965) p. 429.7. F. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (Stuttgart: J. Engelhorn 1909) pp. 149, 151.8. R. Andree, Zur Volkskunde der Juden (Bielefeld & Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing 1881) pp. 1–3,

7, 24.9. Ibid., p. 24, emphasis added.

10. F. Ratzel, Kleine Schriften (München & Berlin: R. Oldenbourg 1906) pp. II 150–157; V.Hantzsch, ‘Ratzel-Bibliographie 1867-1905’, in F. Ratzel, Kleine Schriften (München & Berlin: R.Oldenbourg 1906) pp. II I–LVIII.

11. R. Andree and O. Peschel, Physikalisch-statistischer Atlas des deutschen Reichs (Bielefeld &Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing 1876).

12. O. Peschel, Völkerkunde (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot 1874) pp. 21, 58, 85, 397.13. See, for example, Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. 368.14. Hantzsch (note 10) p. LII.15. Ratzel, Kleine Schriften (note 10) pp. I 429–447.16. R. Weikart, ‘Progress through Racial Extermination: Social Darwinism, Eugenics, and Pacifism

in Germany, 1860-1918’, German Studies Review 26/2 (2003) p. 276.17. O. Peschel, Abhandlungen zur Erd- und Völkerkunde (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot 1877) p.

I 372.18. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) pp. 22ff.19. Ratzel, Kleine Schriften (note 10) p. I 442.20. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. 65.21. Ibid., p. 24.22. Strausz-Hupé claimed that Treitschke used the term as the first one, but he didn’t support this

claim with reference to any particular page or even work of him. See R. Strausz-Hupé, Geopolitics: TheStruggle for Space and Power (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1942) p. 36.

23. E. G. Ravenstein, ‘Obituary: Friedrich Ratzel’, Geographical Journal 24/4 (1904) p. 486; K.Hassert, ‘Friedrich Ratzel. Sein Leben und Wirken’, Geographische Zeitschrift 11 (1905) pp. 309ff; R.Weikart, ‘The Origins of Social Darwinism in Germany, 1859-1895’, Journal of the History of Ideas 54/3(1993) p. 486; H. Beck, ‘Moritz Wagner als Geograph’, Erdkunde 7/2 (1953) p. 125; Smith, ‘FriedrichRatzel’ (note 1) p. 66; Bassin, ‘Imperialism’ (note 1) p. 487; Sanguin (note 1) pp. 584–585.

24. Not from Göttingen as claimed by C. Weissman, ‘The Origins of Species: The Debate betweenAugust Weismann and Moritz Wagner’, Journal of the History of Biology 43/4 (2010) p. 729.

25. F. Ratzel, ‘Wagner, Moritz’, Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliography 40 (1896) pp. 536, 543.26. Sanguin (note 1) p. 586.

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27. W. D. Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 1840-1920 (New York: OxfordUniversity Press 1991) p. 142.

28. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. X.29. Ratzel, ‘Ueber den Lebensraum’ (note 4) p. 363.30. Ratzel, ‘Wagner, Moritz’ (note 25) p. 539.31. F. Ratzel, Glücksinseln und Träume (Berlin: Georg Reimer 1911) p. 399.32. Weissman (note 24).33. Ratzel, ‘Wagner, Moritz’ (note 25) pp. 538–539.34. M. Wagner, The Law of the Migration of Organisms (London: Edward Stanford 1873) pp. 10–11.35. Ibid., p. 29.36. Ibid., p. 29.37. Ibid., p. 52.38. M. Wagner, Die Entstehung der Arten durch räumliche Sonderung (Basel: Benno Schwabe

1889) pp. 396–397.39. Ratzel, ‘Wagner, Moritz’ (note 25) p. 538.40. T. C. Leonard, ‘Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism: The Ambiguous Legacy of Richard

Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American Thought’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 71/1(2009) p. 41.

41. Wagner, The Law (note 34) p. 4; Wagner, Die Entstehung (note 38) p. 407–408.42. F. Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (London: John Murray 1887) pp. III

157–158.43. Ibid., pp. III 158–159.44. C. Darwin, The Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured

Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th ed. (London: John Murray 1872) p. 82.45. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3).46. Bassin, ‘Imperialism’ (note 1).47. Ratzel, ‘Ueber den Lebensraum’ (note 4); Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3).48. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3).49. Smith, Ideological Origins (note 2) p. 83.50. Strausz-Hupé (note 22) p. 139.51. Smith, ‘Friedrich Ratzel’ (note 1).52. Ibid., p. 54.53. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. 126.54. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3).55. Smith, ‘Friedrich Ratzel’ (note 1) pp. 54, 61; also Sanguin (note 1) p. 589.56. B. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books

1966) p. 452.57. K. Vowinckel, ‘Zur Begriff Lebensraum’, Zeitschrift für Geopolitik 16/8-9 (1939) p. 639.58. R. Kjellén, Der Staat als Lebensform (Berlin: Kurt Vowinckel Verlag 1924).59. Smith, ‘Friedrich Ratzel’ (note 1) p. 55.60. Leonard (note 40).61. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3).62. Weikart, ‘Origins’ (note 23) p. 486.63. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3) p. 1.64. Ibid., p. 5.65. Bassin, ‘Imperialism’ (note 1) p. 487.66. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3) pp. 4, 9.67. See ibid., pp. 24ff.68. Ibid., p. 45.69. Ibid., pp. 56ff; compare with F. Ratzel, ‘Die Gesetze des räumlichen Wachstums der Staaten’,

Petermanns Geographischen Mitteilungen 42/5 (1896) p. 98.70. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3) pp. 51–52; Ratzel, ‘Ueber den Lebensraum’ (note 4) p. 366.71. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3) p. 51.72. Ibid., pp. 71–72.73. Ibid., pp. 67–68.74. Ibid., pp. 72.75. Ratzel, Politische Geographie (note 5) p. 3.

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76. Ratzel, ‘Ueber den Lebensraum’ (note 4) p. 366.77. Smith, ‘Friedrich Ratzel’ (note 1) p. 67.78. Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3) pp. 12–13.79. Wagner, The Law (note 34); Wagner, Die Entstehung (note 38).80. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. 73.81. Ibid., p. 150; Ratzel, Der Lebensraum (note 3) p. 62.82. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) pp. 126, 154.83. H.-D. Schultz, ‘Herder und Ratzel: Zwei Extreme, Ein Paradox?’, Erdkunde 52/2

(1998) pp. 138–139.84. Sanguin (note 1) p. 588; Smith, ‘Friedrich Ratzel’ (note 1) p. 54.85. R. Peet, ‘The Social Origins of Environmental Determinism’, Annals of the Association of

American Geographers 75/3 (1985) p. 310; Weikart, ‘Origins’ (note 23) pp. 485–486.86. Bassin, ‘Imperialism’ (note 1) pp. 477, 487.87. Bassin, ‘Race Contra Space’ (note 2) p. 116; Schultz (note 83) p. 140.88. G. Mercier, ‘La région et l’État selon Friedrich Ratzel et Paul Vidal de la Blache’, Annales de

géographie 104/583 (1995) p. 216; Sanguin (note 1) p. 579.89. Smith, Ideological Origins (note 2) p. 146.90. Bassin, ‘Imperialism’ (note 1) pp. 480–481.91. Bassin, ‘Race Contra Space’ (note 2) p. 117; Smith, Politics (note 27) pp. 92, 144–145.92. Peet (note 85) p. 317.93. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. 2; see also Ratzel, Politische Geographie (note

5) pp. 8–11.94. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. 49.95. Ibid., p. 34.96. Ibid., p. 63.97. See G. M. Hodgson, ‘Social Darwinism in Anglophone Academic Journals: A Contribution to

the History of the Term’, Journal of Historical Sociology 17/4 (2004) pp. 449–450.98. M. Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press 1997) p. 31.99. F. Ratzel, ‘Weltentwicklung und Weltschöpfung’, Die Grenzboten 61/24 (1902) pp. 575,

579–580.100. Ratzel, Kleine Schriften (note 10) pp. II 485–486.101. Ibid., p. II 482.102. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. 132.103. Ratzel, Kleine Schriften (note 10) pp. II 479, I 442.104. F. Ratzel, ‘Die Beurtheilung der Völker’, Nord und Süd 6 (1878) pp. 195–196; see also Ratzel,

Kleine Schriften (note 10) p. II 483.105. Ratzel, Politische Geographie (note 5) p. 25.106. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie (note 7) p. 170.107. Ratzel, ‘Beurtheilung der Völker’ (note 104) pp. 192–193; see also Ratzel, Kleine Schriften (note

10) p. II 472.108. Bassin, ‘Imperialism’ (note 1) p. 481.109. Ratzel, ‘Beurtheilung der Völker’ (note 104) p. 198.110. Ratzel, ‘Die Gesetze’ (note 69) p. 98.111. Ratzel, ‘Weltentwicklung’ (note 99).112. Ibid., pp. 577–578.113. Ibid., p. 571, emphasis in original.114. Ratzel, ‘Die Gesetze’ (note 69).115. Bassin, ‘Imperialism’ (note 1) p. 474; Smith, ‘Friedrich Ratzel’ (note 1) p. 63; Schultz (note

83) p. 140.

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