References to Folklore in Nazi Ideological Discourse: The Myth of Siegfried

Abstract

The Nazi Era (1933-1945) varied in terms of mass propaganda and mass manipulation activities. The ideological background of these activities is largely based on the "political pseudo-myths" created by Nazi ideologues, especially Adolf Hitler. In our opinion, the term "contemporary myths" used by Roland Barthes for the symbolic tools of modern times is also valid for the artificial mythology produced by the Nazi ideolo-gy. Nazi ideologues did not hesitate to include old myths that did not belong to them. Such an attitude they adopt clarifies the term "working of myths", the role (function) they have assumed as a form of discourse in Hans Blumenberg's work titled Arbeit am Mythos. Focusing on the myth of Prometheus, which is seen as a "fundamental myth" for Western culture, later European cultural variants (i.e. co-texts) of an authentic Ancient Greek myth were created. With a similar logic, the Nazi discourse refers to the Siegfried myth with a similar orientation instead of the Prometheus myth. So, in this study, we aim to focus on the Siegfried myth, one of the main elements of Germanic folklore, to reveal how this myth was "processed" by the Nazi ideolo-gy, in other words, it was transformed in a new context and instrumentalized in a political discourse. Such an interrogation necessitates recalling some established definitions and functions of myth. Therefore, at the first stage, by referring to some general definitions of the concept of "myth", each mythology was rewritten in one way or another in later periods, made a part of this or that discourse, gained existence through oral or written transmission, updated in another way, that is, its form and we will emphasize that it is a "processed" form of an old mythological narrative that has become stereotyped with its content. These definitions are also intended to draw attention to the fact that there is no myth that has not been "processed", "pure" or "original", in other words, not transformed, as Gilbert Durand, which Kubilay Aktulum discussed in his book İmgelem Çözüm-lemesine Giriş, expressed in the context of myth analysis. In this way, Nazi ideologists believed that it was an effective way to consider the share of the mythological content that they found ready in their own time and that continued from one period to another in their propaganda discourse, and therefore they believed that it was necessary to use mythical material in their ideological discourses, and they tried to justify this in their discourses. Accordingly, as a requirement of the theoretical determination, it is inevitable to focus on the meaning of the Siegfried myth, which ideologists found ready at the first stage, in German culture. As we shall see, the myth of Siegfried has undergone several 'processes', undergoing a semantic as well as formal transformation. For example, the first stop of the mythical discourses of ideologues is the Nibelungen epic written in the 13th century. The myth of Siegfried was filtered through the feudal culture in this text written in Middle High German. The sub-text of the mythical discourse adopted by the Nazi ideologues is this epic. The second stop is the operations of the German Romantics, who brought about the rebirth of Germanic mythology around 1800; that is, the myth of Siegfried represents the search for a 'national consciousness' for the German romantics. The third important stage is Richard Wagner and Nietzsche's vision of Siegfried (last quarter of the 19th century), which shares his views. Richard Wagner transforms this myth into a symbol of German identity. Nietzsche also makes use of myth in this direction. Similarly, Nazi ideologues (hence the chief ideologue Adolf Hitler) deliberately distorted the Siegfried myth and instrumentalized it in order to manipulate the masses. In Nazi ideology, a parallel is drawn between the betrayal and murder of the figure of Siegfried and the German Empire's defeat (allegedly stabbed in the back) of the First World War. While the Nazis infuse a folklore element into their discourse, they draw parallels between Siegfried's mythological destiny and their own real conditions. In this study, how an old mythological story is transformed and instru-mentalized in an ideological context will be analyzed in a thematic perspective.