The Science of Religions in a Fascist State: Rudolf Otto and Jakob Wilhelm Hauer During the Third Reich

The German science of religions of the early twentieth century grew from the seeds of German idealism and Romanticism: anti-rationalism, anti-materialism, vitalism, experientialism, and ardent nationalism. In many accounts, National Socialism grew from these seeds, too. This essay examines the actual relationship between the science of religions and Nazism by examining the two most prominent German scientists of religions during the period, Rudolf Otto and Jakob Wilhelm Hauer. In important aspects Otto and Hauer pursued the same religio-scientific programs, but they realised it differently and so exemplify two different relationships between the science of religions and the National Socialist state.