Eric Voegelin to Hermann Broch, 10 September 1945

Eric Voegelin’s private letter to Hermann Broch, dated 10 September 1945 and reproduced in the supplied 2007 edition, moves from literary gratitude to a pointed disagreement about democracy. Its immediate occasions are Broch’s gift of his “Vergil” and a revised proposal for a law protecting human dignity. Voegelin welcomes both, but distinguishes his acceptance of the revised proposal from his continuing doubts about its feasibility. The letter’s central conceptual move is to separate democratic political participation from the religious and social standards that, in his account, restrain mass politics.

The opening response to “Vergil” is deliberately provisional. Having just returned from months of work in Cambridge, Voegelin has read only the first part, “Wasser,” surrendering himself to the lyricism of its monologue rather than attempting a settled interpretation. Nevertheless, he identifies a significance beyond literary achievement:

Ich weiss vorläufig nur, dass es nicht nur ein grosses Sprachwerk ist, sondern auch eins der Mystik.

English translation: For now I know only that it is not merely a great work of language, but also one of mysticism.

The qualification matters: Voegelin promises fuller comments after working through the book and presents himself modestly as a literary amateur. Mysticism is thus an initial recognition, not an interpretation developed in this letter.

His response to the legislative project likewise combines approval with reservation. Broch has taken Voegelin’s April comments seriously enough to revise it, and Voegelin now finds no substantive objection:

So wie es jetzt steht, habe ich wohl nichts daran auszusetzen -- nur meine Skepsis betreffend die Realisierbarkeit ist dieselbe geblieben -- aber das ist kein Argument gegen die Veröffentlichung.

English translation: As it now stands, I probably have nothing to object to in it -- only my skepticism concerning its feasibility has remained unchanged -- but that is no argument against publication.

The letter does not reproduce the proposal’s provisions, so its legal substance cannot be reconstructed here. Instead, Voegelin moves “beyond” the project to the historical assumptions that may explain their differing practical judgments. He challenges Broch’s apparent identification of the American Constitution with democracy. In Voegelin’s account, the constitutional movement after Shays’s Rebellion arose as an oligarchic response to a democratic threat; the subsequent democratization of suffrage did not eliminate that underlying character.

This interpretation reverses the familiar opposition between democratic resilience and fascist danger:

Im oligarchischen Charakter der amerikanischen Gesellschaft würde ich gerade ihre Widerstandskraft gegen den sogenannten „Fascismus“ sehen. Während ich den Fascismus deutscher Prägung als eine echt demokratische Bewegung klassifizieren würde, welche nicht mehr durch die Standards des ancien régime gehemmt ist.

English translation: I would locate American society’s resistance to so-called “fascism” precisely in its oligarchic character. Whereas I would classify fascism of the German variety as a genuinely democratic movement no longer restrained by the standards of the ancien régime.

Here “democratic” does not function as a guarantee of freedom or human dignity. Voegelin associates it with the political ascendancy of the common man, while assigning a restraining role to inherited elite standards. His treatment of Lincoln follows the same logic: Lincoln’s status as a religious “seeker” makes him, in Voegelin’s terms, a religious aristocrat who mistakenly projects his own disposition onto ordinary people. The letter consequently advances the provocative claim that Hitler’s and Mussolini’s assertions of true democracy have a basis. This is Voegelin’s polemical classification, not a conclusion established through sustained historical demonstration in the correspondence.

The final example adds a qualification: political institutions acquire their meaning from the society in which they operate. Voegelin explains Mussolini’s appropriation of Renan by distinguishing Renan’s proposed privileged gentry and corporate representation from their later use under changed class conditions. What was intended to restrict popular rule could become, fifty years later, an instrument of mass democracy. Institutional resemblance therefore does not establish continuity of political substance.

Voegelin closes by acknowledging that these complications exceed a letter’s scope and returning to thanks for “Vergil.” The document’s relevance lies in this concentrated statement of the disagreement underlying an otherwise cordial exchange: agreement on protecting dignity leaves unresolved whether democratic participation itself supplies protection, or requires restraints grounded in a different social and spiritual order.