Deaths on January 9

Houston Stewart Chamberlain, English-German philosopher and author (b. 1855)

Houston Stewart Chamberlain (; 9 September 1855 – 9 January 1927) was a British-German philosopher who wrote works about political philosophy and natural science. His writing promoted German ethnonationalism, antisemitism, Social Darwinism, and scientific racism; Michael D. Biddiss (a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) described him as a "racialist writer". His best-known book, the two-volume Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century), published in 1899, became highly influential in the pan-Germanic Völkisch movements of the early-20th century and later influenced the antisemitism of Nazi racial policy. Indeed, Chamberlain has been referred to as "Hitler's John the Baptist".Born in Hampshire, Chamberlain emigrated to Dresden in adulthood out of an adoration for composer Richard Wagner, and was later naturalized as a German citizen. He married Eva von Bülow, Wagner's daughter, in December 1908, twenty-five years after Wagner's death.