How Is This Possible?

Abstract

Abstract In order to grasp how Fromm responded to the rise of the Nazis, this chapter examines Fromm’s life in Germany before 1933. It examines his personal and professional development amid the social crises that shook Weimar Germany and fed Hitler’s rise to power. The chapter draws on the German expressionist artist Käthe Kollwitz, whose work sheds light on the terrible effects of World War I and captures the emotional and psychological turbulence of the early Weimar years. In the aftermath of World War I, Fromm sought to grasp the social and psychological origins of violence and began to formulate his theory of compassion and solidarity. Fromm and Kollwitz both spent their careers struggling with the horrors of World War I, not daring to imagine that the cumulative deaths of that war would be surmounted by another. By the time that Hitler and the Nazi Party were elected into power, Fromm was familiar with the human proclivity for destruction and hatred, but nothing could prepare him for what was to come, or for how personally painful these tragedies would be.