Adolf Bartels

Adolf Bartels (15 November 1862 – 7 March 1945) was a German journalist, writer and poet, known today mainly for his antisemitic and national-socialist stance.

In 1897 he wrote a history of German literature that was marked by racist evaluations and rabid antisemitism; it became a pioneering work for National Socialist literary reviews.

The noblest task of völkisch cultural policy would therefore be a radical de-Jewing of the arts, and thus the "salvation of National Socialist Germany" (German: National-sozialistisches Deutschlands Rettung; 1924).

Bartels led a successful campaign to prevent the unveiling of a statue of Heinrich Heine in 1906.

Bartels's further literary productions included Die Dithmarscher (1898), a historical novel based on his native region advocating ruralism, which sold over 200,000 copies by the 1920s,[2] and Martin Luther (1903).