Akademik

(1894-1934)

   right-wing publicist; among the first Young Conservatives to publicly oppose the NSDAP. Born to a middle-class family in Ludwigshafen, he studied law at Lausanne under Vilfredo Pareto and then prac-ticed in Munich before volunteering in 1914 for the army. Alienated by postwar society—he was among the officers whose insignia were ripped off in the No-vember Revolution*—he joined Freikorps* Epp* in 1919, participating in Mu-nich's liberation in May. After completing a doctorate in 1920, he briefly opened a legal practice in Zweibrücken. An early member of the DVP, he opposed separatism in the Palatinate and resisted the Ruhr occupation.* He formed his own Kampfbund (Action League) in 1923 and cooperated with the Bund Ob-erland and the infamous Organisation Consul* in arranging the assassination* of Franz Josef Heinz-Orbis, leader of the Palatine separatists. When the French expelled him from the Palatinate, he returned to Munich to reestablish his legal practice. Although he drifted from the Party, he ran unsuccessfully on the DVP list for the Reichstag's* two 1924 elections.

   A member of, and publicist for, the Herrenklub* and the Munich branch of the Jungkonservativen, Jung established a reputation that brought comparisons with Oswald Spengler* and Arthur Moeller* van den Bruck. In 1928 he pub-lished the popular Herrschaft der Minderwertigen (Rule of the inferiors), cited as "the bible of neoconservatism." Invoking a romantic image of the Middle Ages, the book maligned the tendency of democracy to permit the rule of the unqualified, the monied, and the masses. But while he yearned for a conservative revolution that embraced Christianity, the creation of a corporative structure, and a return of monarchy, he believed that Germany could not restore the Hoh-enzollerns.

   Energetic and with good connections, Jung became Franz von Papen's* sec-retary in 1932 and wrote many of the former Chancellor's speeches in 1933-1934. Earlier than his friends, he perceived the contradictions and brutality of Nazism. Sinndeutung der deutschen revolution (Significance of the German rev-olution), published in 1933, focused his opposition to the Nazi state; he wanted the book to foster a conservative resistance to Hitler.* When a scathing com-mencement address he had written was delivered by Papen on 17 June 1934 at Marburg, Hitler had him arrested and then utilized the Rohm* purge to have him executed. His life and death became an inspiration for the emerging resis-tance to Hitler.

   REFERENCES:NDB, vol. 10; Struve, Elites against Democracy; Von Klemperer, Ger-many's New Conservatism.