Christian von Ehrenfels
Christian von Ehrenfels was born on 20 June 1859 in Rodaun near Vienna and grew up at his father's castle Brunn am Walde in Lower Austria. He joined secondary school in Krems and first studied at the Hochschule für Bodenkultur in Vienna and then changed to the Universität Wien.
Christian von Ehrenfels
In April 1895, the German Emperor Wilhelm II had a nightmare where all the nations of Europe appeared as "prehistoric warrior goddesses" who were protected by Germany which took the form of the Archangel Michael. To the East, they were threatened by a dark, stormy cloud in which a Chinese-style dragon carried a Buddha wreathed in fire under which marched millions of Asians who destroyed all in their path, killing all whites. After his nightmare, which Wilhelm regarded as a message from God about the coming, apocalyptic great "race war" between Europe and Asia which would decide the future of the 20th century, he had a painting of his nightmare done by his court painter Hermann Knackfuss in September 1895. The painting, which was known as the Yellow Peril painting was very popular in its time. Ehrenfels saw the Yellow Peril painting in December 1895 and was greatly impressed. From 1895 onwards, Ehrenfels was greatly influenced by the "Yellow Peril" propaganda put out by the German government, in which Wilhelm repeatedly warned of the alleged Asian menace to the West. As a Wagnerite who deeply involved in the various Wagner societies in Vienna, Ehrenfels got to know Prince Philip von Eulenburg, the German ambassador to Austria-Hungary and an anti-Asian racist who promoted the fear of the "Yellow Peril" to anybody who would listen. In this viewpoint, to protect European civilization white men would have to wage a "primitive" and "primordial" racial war against the "Yellow Peril", which justified both white supremacy and male supremacy. The same sort of language and imagery was always frequently invoked with the fears about a "race war" with the blacks and the Jews. European racists often considered the Jews to be a race apart from the rest of humanity, and so the Jews were lumped in with the blacks and the Asians.