Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck
An undated portrait of van den Bruck
Born	(1876-04-23)April 23, 1876 Solingen, Westphalia, German Empire
Died	May 30, 1925(1925-05-30) (aged 49) Berlin, German Republic
Spouses	Hedda Eulenberg (m. 1897; div. 1904)

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (April 23, 1876 – May 30, 1925) was a German cultural historian and writer, best known for his controversial 1923 book Das Dritte Reich (The Third Reich), which promoted German nationalism and was a strong influence on the Conservative Revolutionary movement and later the National Socialist German Workers' Party. He did not support the party, however. From 1906 to 1922, he also published Elisabeth Kaerrick's first full German translation of Dostoyevsky's works.

Arthur Wilhelm Ernst Victor Moeller van den Bruck was born on 23 April 1876 in Solingen, Westphalia as the only child of bourgeois parents. His father was Ottomar Victor Moeller, a German state architect, and his mother was Elise van den Bruck, the daughter of Dutch architect van den Broeck and—allegedly—a Spanish mother. At birth Moeller van den Broek was assigned the first name "Arthur" (in honor of Arthur Schopenhauer), but he would later drop the part from his name.

He was expelled from a gymnasium (a type of German secondary school) for his indifference towards his studies. The young Moeller van den Bruck believed German literature and philosophy, particularly the works of Nietzsche to be a more vital education. Afterwards, he continued his studies on his own in Berlin, Paris, and Italy.

In 1897 he married Hedda Maase (later Eulenberg). She divorced him in 1904.