Killing Hitler Word by Word: The Oath as Apocalyptic Lawmaking

Abstract How to depose an absolute ruler and constitute law anew? This question is about lawmaking in the face of the apocalyptic. I suggest a framework of analysis that puts the oath at its centre and understands it as a technique by which the authors of a coup leave a violent, non-constituted space and vouchsafe themselves personally to a new order. A few weeks in advance of the 20 July 1944 attempt at Hitler’s life, Berthold and Claus von Stauffenberg formulated an oath, addressed to the innermost circle of conspirators – and the brothers themselves. I argue that the poiesis of an oath of this kind is the very paradigm of pouvoir constituant . As suggested by Giorgio Agamben, the oath constitutes law and language in one move, committing the speaker to the emergence of a future truth. The Stauffenbergs were poets; their oath should be understood as apocalyptic lawmaking. I set out a typological history of political oaths and demonstrate its relevance by drawing on the U.S. coup attempt of 6 January 2021. On inauguration day 2025, the 47 th U.S. President used the oath of office to inscribe the stolen election claim into the semantic content of the U.S. Constitution.