Adolf Bartels (15 November 1862 – 7 March 1945) was a German journalist and poet. Known for his völkisch worldview, he has been seen as a harbinger of National Socialist anti-Semitism.
Bartels was born at Wesselburen, in Holstein, and educated at Leipzig and Berlin. An artisan's son, Bartels studied literature. After 1895 a free-lance journalist in Weimar, he gained a reputation as a Hebbel scholar. In 1897 he wrote a history of German literature that was marked by racist evaluations and rabid antisemitism; it became a pioneering work for National Socialist literary reviews. According to Bartels, even authors whose names sounded Jewish, who wrote for the "Jewish press", or who were friendly with Jews were "contaminated with Jewishness". The noblest task of völkisch cultural policy would therefore be a radical de-Jewing of the arts, and thus the "salvation of National Socialist Germany" (German: National-sozialistisches Deutschlands Rettung; 1924). Bartels died in Weimar on 7 March 1945. Bartels's further literary productions, including Die Dithmarscher (1898), based on his native region, and Martin Luther (1903), are largely forgotten today.
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This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.