The “Holy Grail” of modern Antinatalism unearthed: scans & electronic text of Kurnig’s “Neo-Nihilismus”

Hello everyone.

If you’ve read the History of Antinatalism volume edited by Kateřina Lochmanová, or listened to the “Exploring Antinatalism Podcast”, you’ve probably heard the name Kurnig – a pseudonym used by a mysterious, hitherto unknown author, who might very well be regarded as the first antinatalist in the modern sense of the word, having written an entire book – in German – about this ideology, for which he coined the (to modern readers, slightly misleading) term “neo-nihilism”. (“Modern” as in non-metaphysical, and with the expressed goal of human extinction.) His Neo-Nihilismus is a pamphlet comprised of a collection of essays, dialogues, fragments, poems, and quotes, in which he takes Schoperhauer’s philosophy one step further and strongly argues that we, as a race, should cease procreation and go extinct in order to minimize suffering in the world, while also touching on a variety of topics such as religion, anthropology, geology, military policy, education, and sexology.

Karim Akerma, the distinguished antinatalist philosopher from my hometown of Hamburg, Germany, contributed an entire chapter in the aforementioned History of Antinatalism volume about Kurnig and his philosophy (pp. 125–145) and has published a number of articles on Kurnig:

• “Exodus aus dem Sein. Kurnigs Neo-Nihilismus als buddhistisch säkularisierter Geist des frühen Christentums” (2015) (in German)
• “Kurnig – The First Modern Antinatalist” (2018) (in English, an earlier version of his article in History of Antinatalism)
• … and, of course, there’s a section about Kurnig in the German version of Akerma’s very useful and interesting Antinatalism: Ein Handbuch (5th ed. 2018, pp. 396–400).

Akerma writes: “In discussions on the internet Zapffe’s voluminous book Om det tragiske (“On the Tragic”) is sometimes heralded as antinatalism’s yet unexploited Holy Grail. Upon closer inspection, however, the book contains but a few truly antinatalistic statements.” (Karim Akerma: “Kurnig and His Neo-Nihilism: The First Modern Antinatalist”, in: Kateřina Lochmanová (ed.): History of Antinatalism: How Philosophy Has Challenged the Question of Procreation, 2020, 125–145, p. 128.)

But could we, perhaps, apply this term to Kurnig’s work?

Akerma also discusses his remarkable discovery and the traces this elusive thinker has left in late 19th and early 20th century Europe as well as the difficulties in obtaining a copy of Kurnig’s book with Amanda Sukenick on the 18th episode of the “Exploring Antinatalism Podcast” (1:08:12–1:18:32).

Unfortunately, very few copies have survived two world wars and a Nazi dictatorship since Kurnig’s Neo-Nihilismus had been published some 120 years ago (and not reprinted since), and the ones that have are very difficult to access, even for scholars. It can’t be stressed enough how obscure this book is: not only was it published under a pseudonym (actually, Kurnig had used a variety of other pseudonyms earlier), but in the second edition, published by Max Spohr of Leipzig, the indication of the publishing house had to be physically removed from the book, either blackened out or cut out, most probably for fear of persecution. Moreover, it’s written in Fraktur, a type of blackletter script which was common back then, but even Germans may have some trouble reading it today.

At 1:17:09 into the interview, Amanda Sukenick (AS) asks Karim Akerma (KA):

AS: “So, this might be kind of an odd question, but do you know what the current copyright status of his book is, “Neo-Nihilism”? Do you think it might be possible that we could try to petition for some sort of reprint? ‘Cause I want to read it!”
KA: “We definitely could, according to German, to European law, I think, – I don’t know, I’m not quite sure – since his book appeared more than a hundred years ago, there will be no copyright. What we have to do is to get a clean copy, and somebody would have to transcribe the gothic script into Roman letters. I could do that, but it would be very time-consuming, I can tell you.”
AS: “Of course. All right, well, maybe in the distant future a project to look forward to.”
KA: “Yes. And once we have a clean copy, the translation process would be easy, because his German is simple, he doesn’t use many technical terms, it’s very simple German which can be understood by everybody.”

Well, I guess, someone had to do it. I happen to be a student at Karim Akerma’s Alma Mater, the University of Hamburg, and there are actually two copies of Kurnig’s book in Hamburg: one in the library of our university’s medical faculty, and one in some Catholic institute’s library.

First, I went to the medical library, and, since I’m not a student of medicine (but of classical philology), I was lucky to have the librarians retrieve it for me from the dark corners of the medical library’s archives that same day and let me use their precious copy of the VIII + 192-page, expanded second edition of Kurnig’s which, however, maybe due to its old age, maybe to the controversial nature of its subject, I wasn’t allowed to take home, but could only use at the library under the librarians’ supervision. Fortunately, there was a book scanner available there, so I scanned the entirety of the book. You can find a PDF file of the scan here. Note the deletion of the publisher on the first couple of pages. However, I must apologize, as this was the first time I used this brand-new scanning device, some pages may look a bit weird due to the automatic page recognition and finger removal function, and I didn’t have the time to scan the whole book another time before the librarians demanded it back, but I made double sure that all of the text is included and readable. Maybe not the “cleanest” copy imaginable, but there you go.

Then, I went to this Catholic institute’s library, which, for some reason, is only open for three hours a day. In order to borrow books from this library, I first had to get a library card of this library, which, fortunately, I got without any fees or difficulties, even though I am not Catholic and in no way associated with this institute. So I was handed their copy of Kurnig’s book, which was actually a xerox photocopy in A4 horizontal format of another copy of the 1903 edition published by Max Sängewald in Leipzig. It includes all of the contents of the edition mentioned above (VIII + 192 pages), plus a 32-page appendix, curiously, not written in Fraktur. In the first part of the appendix, Kurnig replies to the criticism he received in a number of journals and often pokes fun at the indignation and ignorance of his critics (that’s how they did it back in the day, when there was no social media!). The second part is a chapter entitled “Geogenie”, a poem about the nature of the world. I spent the rest of the day driving through town and experimenting with various scanning devices, until I managed to create what I would call a flawless scan of this subpar xerox copy. Here it is. So, this time, if the pages look a bit weird (e.g. pp. 192–193), I can assure you, that’s just how it is printed in the copy I got. Sometimes, the page numbers seem to be cut off, but all of the text is readable.

I then proceeded to transcribe the whole thing. (Well, someone had to do that, too.) Unfortunately, optical character recognition (OCR) software was of little to no use here, even with the Fraktur script expansions installed, so I had to type up those 200 pages manually in MS Word, which took me a couple of weeks. I tried to stay as faithful as possible to the original text and its orthographic conventions, its punctuation etc. (some of which is considered outdated today), but I made sure I included the original page and note numeration so that you can cite the text without having to get a (physical or digital) copy of the original Fraktur version. As Fraktur is mainly reserved for German text, but French and Latin words, for example, are rendered in a different typeface, I indicated this change of fonts using italics. I myself used only one font (Times New Roman) throughout the text.

Other than that, the quotation section (entitled “Der Pessimismus der Anderen”) got a major overhaul: The quotes themselves are, of course, left untouched, but for the sake of transparency, I added or corrected the sources to the best of my knowledge and ability, and where Kurnig’s sources list the original version or other translations, I added those as well.

The few minor changes I made (mainly printing errors that needed to be fixed), are indicated in the Transcriber’s Notes. Moreover, I added hyperlinks to the quotations of passages of Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and a couple of other works and added lots of cross-references for your convenience, so you can just click on the page number Kurnig refers to.

So, without further ado, here‘s my electronic text of Kurnig’s Neo-Nihilismus.

However, I feel I should add that this is not yet the final version, as a couple of things are still waiting to be fixed:

• First, if there’s anyone willing to help proof-read and correct the electronic text, your help will be greatly appreciated, so please let me know if you come across any errors or inconsistencies, no matter how small or insignificant, as I am sure that, despite every care and effort, there are still a couple of those left. I am open to all kind of feedback and criticism, and if you have any questions about the work itself or the transcription process, feel free to ask.
• Many errors spotted by u/SiegyDiFridely, which now are fixed in the current version!
• Second, you may notice three illustrations that can be found in the scans but are missing in the electronic text: fig. 1 on p. III; fig. 2 on p. 11; fig. 3 on p. 31*. This is because I was unable to extract and convert them to into decent black-and-white images (like the ones you find in the Project Gutenberg e-books, for example). Maybe someone who has some skill and experience with image editing can help out? Here I uploaded the images in question from the numerous scans I made. Once we have a good digital version of these, I will gladly include them in the next, updated version.
• Images edited by the amazing u/WackyConundrum can now be found in the current version!

That being said, you are, of course, free to use it as you like. Repost it, publish it on your websites, in your journals, wherever you want, if you want to spread Kurnig’s “propaganda of non-propagation” and want it to be reliably preserved and readily accessible for (hopefully not so many) future generations as well. The scans and my transcript can be found here.

As Karim Akerma has correctly pointed out, Kurnig’s literary style is, for the most part, rather simple (when compared to the likes of, say, E. M. Cioran or the highly recommended, but in the English-speaking world virtually unknown, literary scholar and radical pessimist thinker Ulrich Horstmann) and even today, some 120 years later, quite easy to understand, so it shouldn’t be too hard to translate. In fact, large parts of Kurnig’s work consist of extensive quotations from works that have already been translated into English and other languages, such as the works of Erasmus, G. Leopardi, A. Schopenhauer, D. F. Strauß, and R. von Krafft-Ebing. Lots of quotations from Kurnig’s own work translated into English can be found in the articles by Karim Akerma linked above, so this should give you an impression of what to expect. Maybe you could start a fundraiser or make it a collaborative effort? (Due to the now, at places, somewhat obsolete early 20th century orthography, translation tools may or may not work well here, but see for yourselves.)

edit: Thank you very much for your response! This has motivated me to start the English translation process. Feel free to get in touch if you want to contribute.

Meanwhile, u/VomKriege is working on a Spanish translation of Kurnig’s book. Feel free to send a PM if you want to help!

At the time I’m writing this, Dr Karim Akerma and myself might very well be the only two people living today that have read the entire book by Kurnig. But, hopefully, this will change very soon! It is about time this well-kept secret is once more unleashed to the rest of the world. Consider this my contribution to both the antinatalist cause and the scholarship on early modern antinatalist thought.

Thank you for reading.

TL;DR: I created scans of a much-requested work of early modern antinatalism (scan #1, scan #2), then typed up and formatted the whole thing for your convenience and in order to facilitate the translation process, which has already started.

You can find all files mentioned in this post – and more – here: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Kurnig%22

This link may also be useful in the future when the first versions of the electronic German text and the English translation are replaced with updated versions.

Current version: v. 1.3 – 2024-03-11

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originally posted on Reddit [2022-08-01]

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Also check out this video: Kurnig – The First Modern Antinatalist | Karim Akerma & Lenny