Rudolf Jung

Who was Rudolf Jung?

Rudolf Jung was an instrumental force and agitator of German Bohemian National Socialism and, later on, became a member of the Nazi Party.

Rudolf Jung was born in Plasy and went to school in Jihlava, a town fractured by national antagonisms. He was a civil engineer employed by the national railways of the Austro-Hungary. His party work took him from Vienna, to Bohemia. In 1909, he joined the German Workers' Party and became an ardent party agitator. Because of his party provocations, Jung was fired but his party put him on their payroll and he devoted himself to theoretical work. Along with Dr. Walter Riehl, he drafted the Jihlava party program of 1913 "which contained a more detailed comparison of international Marxism and national socialism and a more pointed attack on capitalism, Democracy, alien peoples, and Jews. Here, anti-semitism ranked behind anti-Slavism, anti-clericalism and anti-capitalism." ³ It is noted that Nazi ideology does not oppose capitalist relations or production, just the supposed excesses of capitalism. In 1919, he completed his theoretical work Der Nationale Sozialismus. Jung expressed the hope in his introduction that his book would play the same role for national socialism that Das Kapital did for Marxian socialism. It is he that convinced Hitler to use the term "National Socialist" for the DAP's counterpart in Germany; Hitler originally wanted to rename the German DAP into the "Social Revolutionary Party". ²¹