FÜHRER’S MYTH AS A VITAL FATIGUE FROM ROMANTICISM TO NATIONAL SOCIALISM

Abstract

The concept of leadership has undergone a long transformation in meaning from Ancient Greece to our modern world. This concept expressed the monarch with a spiritual reference from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution, but with the spread of parliamentary democracy in European countries, it gained its current political meaning. With the system crisis of parliamentary democracy towards the First World War and the rising wave of nationalism in Europe, the demands for strong power increased, and the concept of leadership took an authoritarian form again and was used to express leadership in totalitarian regimes. In this period, National Socialism revealed Adolf Hitler as Germany's Führer with its effective propaganda works. However, while Adolf Hitler was not yet on the stage of history, the economic, philosophical, and political ground that would facilitate the work of National Socialism had already been formed in the 19th century.