Gobinism
Gobinism, also known as Gobineauism, was an academic, political and social movement formed in 19th-century Germany based on the works of French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau. An ethnically pro-Germanic while anti-national ideology, particularly against the French nation; the movement had influenced German nationalists and intellectuals such as Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche. Historians have described Gobinism as becoming cult-like by the end of the nineteenth century, with powerful and influential followers, specifically in the Pan-Germanism movement. The Gobineau Association was founded in 1894 by Ludwig Schemann, who also made the first German translation of Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races.
Becoming popular in German intellectual cliques, particularly the Bayreuth Circle, in the phenomena that Walter Charles Langer described as "Gobineau Societies", Gobinism was later adapted by the likes of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Alfred Rosenberg to forge elements of Nazi philosophy. Gobineau's antisemitism was emphasized within Gobinism to ideologically bridge to the later Nazi movement.
Historians have made much of the significant philosophical gap between the pessimism of Gobineau himself, particularly his insistence that his vision was of mythical Aryans as a fallen and lost people, versus the optimism and themes of rejuvenation of the disciples and members of the Gobinism movement. It has been suggested that the spawning of Gobinism went on to majorly influence all future racial theories of the period. Nietzsche's Übermensch was largely inspired by the movement. Some historians believe the influence of Gobinism was still affecting racial discourse into the mid-20th-century.
