Paul Anton de Lagarde (born Paul Bötticher, 2 November 1827 – 22 December 1891) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest orientalists of the 19th century. Lagarde authored dozens of books, many on politics. His anti-Semitism, anti-Slavism, and aversion to traditional Christianity were influential precursors of Nazism.
Life and career Paul Bötticher was born in Berlin on November 2, 1827. His father, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Bötticher, was a philologist who taught languages at the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium. His mother, Luise, was only eighteen years old. Luise died several days after Paul was born. Wilhelm was bereft. He blamed his newborn son for the loss and treated him miserably. Paul's woeful upbringing led him to feel nothing upon his father's death. Two aunts of Luise nurtured Paul emotionally and financially. One of them, Ernestine de Lagarde, eventually adopted Paul.
Bötticher attended Humboldt University of Berlin from 1844–1846 where he studied Oriental languages, theology, and philosophy under professors like Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, who was a friend of his father. His primary mentor was Friedrich Rückert."In Memoriam: Abraham Kuenen — Paul Anton de Lagarde", Andover Review, Vol. XVII, No. XCVIII. February, 1892. 201–207. He attended the University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1846–7.
In 1852, Bötticher received a 1,000 thaler grant from King Frederick William IV to study abroad. He used it to travel to London to work at the British Museum. He lodged at the Prussian Embassy in London and worked part time as Ambassador von Bunsen's secretary.Jordan, Alexander. "Thomas Carlyle and Paul de Lagarde of Göttingen: Their Correspondence", Carlyle Studies Annual, no. 34, 2021. 99–126. On his way home in January 1853, Bötticher stayed in Paris to work in the Bibliothèque nationale. He relied on Ernest Renan to check out manuscripts for him. The Syriac texts he studied while abroad led to the publication of Didascalia apostolorum syriace in 1854.
That year, Bötticher married Anna Berger. He also decided to change his name to Paul de Lagarde in honor of his mother's family and to move past his painful childhood. He had already published several volumes under his birth name.Hauck, Albert.Realencyklopädie für Protestantische Theologie und Kirche, Elfter Band. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, 1902. 212–218.
In 1855, Paul de Lagarde taught languages at Köllnisches Gymnasium in Berlin where his duties included teaching gymnastics.Bonwetsch, G. Nathanael. "Aus vierzig Jahren deutscher Kirchengeschichte. Briefe an E. W. Hengstenberg," Beitrage zur Förderung christlicher Theologie, 2d series, XXIV:2. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1919. 5–6. He continued to publish scholarly work, much of it at his own expense. In 1858, he transferred to the Friedrichswerdersches Gymnasium. In 1866, he was given three years leave for research. In 1869, he took over Heinrich Ewald's professorship of oriental languages at the University of Göttingen.
The decade it took to become a professor deepened the bitterness Lagarde already felt over his childhood. He was dogmatic and distrustful of others. Lagarde shunned professional affiliations and frequently attacked colleagues and peers. In a letter to Adolf Hilgenfeld, Lagarde described himself as an "anchorite", simultaneously lamenting and imposing his self-isolation.Pölcher, Helmut M. "ΣΥΜΦΙΛΟΛΓΕΙΝ: Briefe von Paul de Lagarde an Adolf Hilgenfeld aus den Jahren 1862–1887," in Lebendiger Geist: Hans-Joachim Schoeps zum 50. Geburtstag von Schülern dargebracht. Leiden: Brill, 1959. 31.
Lagarde was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1891 and kept the diagnosis secret. He had an operation to treat it on 19 December. It was unsuccessful, and he died three days later. His own eulogist, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, described Lagarde as a lonely man who sowed the wind and reaped the storm.Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. "Am Sarge von Paul Lagarde" in Reden und Vorträge. Weidmann, 1901. 92.
Scholarship Paul de Lagarde's father Wilhelm Bötticher was a prolific scholar. Lagarde loathed the assembly-line nature of his father's writing. Ironically, he would be similarly overproductive, writing many works that were underbaked.Rahlfs, Alfred. Paul de Lagardes wissenschaftliches Lebenswerk im Rahmen einer Geschichte seines Lebens dargestellt. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1928. He wrote dozens of books on a broad range of topics, moving fluidly between multiple languages. His main focus was elucidation of the Bible. A bibliography of his work was prepared in 1892, and it ran to eighteen pages.Gottheil, Richard. "Bibliography of the works of Paul Lagarde", in Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, 21–23 April 1892. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 15. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1893. CCXI-CCXXIX.
In 1865, he set a massive goal of creating a critical edition of the Septuagint. The project obsessed him for most of his career.Neuschäfer, Bernhard. "Alteri saeculo – Paul Anton de Lagardes ‚Lebensarbeit‘ an der Septuaginta" in Die Göttinger Septuaginta : Ein Editorisches Jahrhundertprojekt. Edited by Reinhard G. Kratz and Bernhard Neuschäfer. De Gruyter, Inc., 2013. 235–64. Just before his death, Lagarde showed his pupil Alfred Rahlfs his plans for the project so that his work could continue.Hedley, P. L. "The Göttingen Investigation and Edition of the Septuagint", Harvard Theological Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 1933. 57. Lagarde relied on the Codex Reuchlinianus to produce Prophetae chaldaice (1872), a text of Targum Jonathan. He did this work in fierce opposition of the relatively new Wissenschaft des Judentums approach.Houtman, Alberdina, and Harry Sysling. Alternative Targum Traditions: The Use of Variant Readings for the Study in Origin and History of Targum Jonathan. Brill, 2009. 43.
Lagarde's studies of Arabic language manuscripts are still widely cited.Kachouh, Hikmat. "The Arabic Versions of the Gospels: A Case Study of John 1.1 and 1.8", in The Bible in Arab Christianity. Netherlands, Brill, 2007. 9. He edited an Arabic translation of the Gospels (Die vier Evangelien, 1864), a Syriac translation of the Old Testament Apocrypha (Libri V. T. Apocryphi Syriace, 1861), and a Coptic translation of the Pentateuch (Der Pentateuch Koptisch, 1867).
Lagarde published an edition of Eusebius' Onomasticon in 1870.The Onomasticon of Eusebius of Caesarea and the Liber Locorum of Jerome. Translated by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville. Carta Jerusalem, 2003. 7.
He was also a student of Persian, publishing Isaias Persice (1883) and Persische Studien (1884). In 1880, de Lagarde attempted to reconstruct a Syriac version of Epiphanius' treatise On Weights and Measures."Recent German Works", Bibliotheca Sacra. Darper, 1881. 389. He published manuscripts of Coptic apocrypha as Aegyptiaca in 1883.Coptic Apocryphal Gospels. In Texts and Studies: Contributions to Biblical and Patristic Literature, Vol. IV No. 2. Translated by Forbes Robinson. Cambridge University Press, 1896. xx.
Lagarde published several volumes of miscellany such as Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1866), Symmicta (I. 1877, II. 1880), Semitica (I. 1878, II. 1879), Orientalia (1879–1880) and Mittheilungen (1884).Lougee, Robert W. Paul de Lagarde, 1827–1891 : A Study of Radical Conservatism in Germany. Harvard University Press, 2013.
Political writing Lagarde was a member of the Prussian Conservative Party until 1849 when it fabricated evidence of treason against Benedikt Waldeck. He became deeply disenchanted and politically unaligned. Lagarde supported the unification of Germany in 1871, but the spirit of the new country dissatisfied him. He began to write about politics, and in 1874, Lagarde published Politische Aufsätze (Political Essays). He sent a copy to Thomas Carlyle who responded with an admiring letter.
The opening essay was first delivered as a lecture in November 1853.Lagarde, Paul de. Politische Aufsätze. Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1874. It proposes a German colonization of Europe to create a Mitteleuropa. Though he also writes with the casual antisemitism that was widespread at the time, Lagarde expresses admiration for the discipline of Jewish life. He specifically points to Judaism as an example of how a national religion benefits a population. The book's second essay plays out this theme of a national religion. Lagarde calls for a radical morality where actions are solely "duty or sin".
Lagarde's views of religion were incoherent. He prized the rituals of religion and ongoing revelation.Viaene, Vincent. "Paul de Lagarde: A Nineteenth-Century 'Radical' Conservative — and Precursor of National Socialism?", European History Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 4, 1996. 527–557. He viewed the Bible as a bricolage of dubious texts. He admired the early iteration of Christianity but despised what Catholicism had become, and he ridiculed Protestantism as an elaborate fantasy.
Lagarde had a similarly vague sense of national identity. In 1875, he wrote, "Germany is the totality of all German-feeling, German-thinking, German-willing Germans: In this sense, every one of us is a traitor if he does not consider himself personally accountable in every moment of his life for the existence, fortune and future of the fatherland, and each is a hero and liberator if he does."Lagarde, Paul de. Deutsche Schriften. Göttingen: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1892.
As Lagarde aged, the bitterness he felt about so much of life also hardened his antisemitism. His rhetoric advanced well beyond the prevailing prejudice into a conspiratorial fever. He corresponded with Adolf Stoecker, the founder of the antisemitic 1880s Berlin movement. He also showed interest in antisemitic societies, including Bernhard Förster and Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg's Deutscher Volksverein, and Theodor Fritsch's Deutschsoziale Partei.Sieg, Ulrich. Germany’s Prophet: Paul de Lagarde & the Origins of Modern Antisemitism. Translated by Linda Marianiello. Brandeis University Press, 2013.
Lagarde considered Jews to be the greatest barrier to German greatness, and he suggested they be moved to Madagascar.Brechtken, Magnus. Madagaskar für die Juden: Antisemitische Idee und politische Praxis 1885–1945. Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, Band 53. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaft, 1998. 16f. In 1887, he wrote, "One would have to have a heart of steel to not feel sympathy for the poor Germans and, by the same token, to not hate the Jews, to not hate and despise those who – out of humanity! – advocate for the Jews or are too cowardly to crush these vermin. Trichinella and bacilli would not be negotiated with, trichinella and bacilli would also not be nurtured, they would be destroyed as quickly and as thoroughly as possible."Lagarde, Paul de. Juden und Indogermanen: Eine Studie nach dem Leben. Göttingen: Dieterichsche Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1887. 339. He also despised Slavs and wrote, "the sooner they perish the better it will be for us and them".Soucy, Robert. "Fascism: Intellectual origins", Encyclopaedia Britannica. 21 October 2024.
In 1878, Lagarde first collected his political essays in Deutsche Schriften (German Writings). He published a second volume in 1881 and a combined edition in 1886. Fritz Stern zeroed in on the aimless nature of these writings:"He wrote as a prophet; he neither reasoned nor exposited, but poured out his excoriations and laments, his intuitive truths and promises. There was nothing limpid or systematic in his work; within each essay he skipped from subject to subject, alternating abstract generalities and concrete proposals. The pervasive mood of the book was despair and the dominant tone a kind of whiny heroism."Stern, Fritz The Politics of Cultural Despair: a Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. University of California Press, 1961.
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