Friedrich Burgdörfer

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Friedrich Wilhelm Burgdörfer (born April 24, 1890 in Neuhemsbach , † November 18, 1967 in Schramberg ) was a German population scientist .

Life

Burgdörfer's father was the brewer Heinrich Burgdörfer from Neuhemsbach, married to Elisabeth Lang. In 1906 he attended secondary school in Kaiserslautern. This was followed by a practical activity in the Bavarian State Statistical Office . He attended the Realgymnasium in Munich as a private student in 1912. In the same year he began studying political science at the University of Munich.

After Burgdörfer took part in the First World War as a volunteer , he was seriously wounded in 1914. To the Dr. oec. publ. He received his doctorate in 1916. He then took up employment as a scientific assistant in the Bavarian State Statistical Office, where he became a student of Friedrich Zahn (1869-1946) in the implementation of statistical projects. As a member of the commission for the consultation of questions of the preservation and increase of the people's strength he participated in 1918 in the establishment of the guiding principles of marriage consensus and marriage prohibition through medical commands. One of the main demands was that racially unfit elements should be reduced, since these would have a negative effect on the national wealth and on part of the national strength.

Burgdörfer was married to Camilla Conradt, the daughter of the businessman Paul Conradt and his wife Anna Seidel from Vienna, from May 16, 1917. The marriage resulted in 2 sons and 2 daughters. In Berlin-Steglitz he lived in Sedanstrasse. 2.

Civil service

Beginnings in Munich and census

In 1919 Burgdörfer took up a position as head of the food office in Munich, where he was promoted to city administrator in 1920. A year later he had a job in the municipal flour office in Munich. He then went to Berlin and was hired on May 1, 1921, as a councilor in the Reich Statistical Office. Four years later, he was promoted to the senior government council and in 1929 was appointed director and head of the department for population, business, agriculture and cultural statistics .

In 1925 he was first involved in organizing a census , which gave him some reputation. He was also involved in the later censuses of 1933 and 1939. In the 1925 census, the physically and mentally infirm were recorded for the first time in a special census, and the result of the evaluation of this census was published in 1926. In the analysis of the 1925 census, Burgdörfer pointed out the abnormalities and distortions in the demographic structure of the population, which no longer allow a reliable forecast of reproductive activity. Only a cohort analysis is the means to make better statistical statements. It was introduced in the censuses that the annual labor performance in the individual marriage cohorts is regularly added up and updated .

Eugenics and service in the Nazi regime

On July 2, 1932, he took part in the meeting of the Prussian State Health Council on the subject of “Eugenics in the service of the people's welfare”, which initiated the legislative process for the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring , which came into force on July 14, 1933 .

Burgdörfer praised the new National Socialist Reich government because, as the government of the national levy, it simplified the legislative procedure through the Enabling Act and enabled a new inventory of the German people and its national economy through a Reich law of April 12, 1933. From 1933 he took up a position as a lecturer in Berlin in addition to his professional duties, for example at the German University of Politics and at the State Academy of Public Health. In the same year he also became a member of the Advisory Council on Population and Race Policy in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. He accepted a teaching position at the business school in 1934. In 1937 he was appointed honorary professor at the University of Berlin. In the same year he joined the NSDAP .

"Jewish question" and "freedom of defense"

Also in 1937, Burgdörfer became a member of the advisory board of the anti-Semitic “Research Department Jewish Question ” of the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany . Here he dealt with, for example, the "baptism of Jews" and the "assimilation of the Jews". In 1938 he wrote his book Die Juden in Deutschland und in der Welt on this subject . He continued to work at the Academy for German Law in the committee for legal questions of population policy, as a consultant in the race policy office of the NSDAP and at the German Society for Racial Hygiene .

In 1936 he wrote a study on the question of regained freedom of defense . Here he made calculations of the number of recruits that would be available in the future. He made comparisons with other countries and gave the judgment that in 1940 the situation in the German Reich was favorable compared to the countries compared. After that, the situation would develop unfavorably for the empire. From those born after 1918, 300,000 young men fit for war would be ready to be drafted in the Reich every year .

Professorship in Munich and the topic of Nazi racial policy

In 1939 he moved to the Bavarian State Statistical Office and became its president. In Munich he was appointed honorary professor for statistics and population policy at the university. In 1940 he wrote an expert opinion for the Foreign Office , which dealt with the possibility of resettling Jews to Madagascar . He also took on duties as co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde and the Archive for Racial and Social Biology . With the Ministerialrat Herbert Linden from the Reich Ministry of the Interior he wanted to set up a Reich Institute for Population Science and Population Policy in 1942 , but this did not go beyond a concept.

In Munich he remained in office until October 1945 before he was dismissed by the American military government. Four years later he took on a teaching position at the University of Munich and became a member of the German Society for Population Science . The German Statistical Society accepted him as an honorary member in 1960.

Burgdörfer's population theses and forecasts

Burgdörfer has written some writings on the German population development, whereby his writing People Without Youth caused quite a stir. In this book, he also introduced the concepts of pyramid, bell, and urn of an age structure . As a result of the rationalization of sexual life, he predicted that as a result of the two-child system, the high-quality, culture-bearing part of the population would automatically be eradicated to the point of self-destruction , while, on the other hand, the lower classes of the population were still increasing in a 'proletarian' manner . Furthermore, with regard to the countries east of the German Reich, he saw a population overpressure building up in Poland, so that a biopolitical border struggle came about . Only through the consistent settlement of farmers would it be possible to build a dam against the Slavic flood . Burgdörfer saw the low birth rate in large cities, especially Berlin, as another problem area. In order to maintain their population, they pull the child-bearing population from rural areas to them like giant suction pumps . In the long term, they destroy the substance of the rural population, which had a low birth rate, but still sufficient to maintain the population without emigration, and thus ensure an accelerated shrinking of the German population.

He summarized his statements on population policy in 1935 in the publication German People in Need . Here he came to talk about the consequences of the decline in the birth rate and gave theses that led to uncertainty among the population. By 1975, he predicted that the number of retirees would double with a simultaneous decline in the workforce. In 1975 this would mean that two workers would have to finance the pension payment for a pensioner. The German people would then not only be a people without youth , but also a people without space .

In 1935 he wrote an expert report for the Friedrich List Society , entitled Back to the Agrarian State? captured a dramatic perspective of population decline. From the balance sheets of population development and migration, he sharpened his judgment on two theses. On the one hand, there is a possible desertification of the land because not enough farmers can cultivate the land. On the other hand, the urban population would shrink so much that the cities could deteriorate. For the German people this is a crucial question of fate .

Population scientist in the time of Burgdörfer

In addition to Paul Mombert (1876–1938) and Hans Harmsen , Ernst Engel (1821–1896), Wilhelm Lexis (1837–1914), Lujo Brentano (1846–1931), Julius Wolf (1862–1937), Werner Sombart (1863–1941) ), Alfred Grotjahn (1869–1931), Robert René Kuczynski (1876–1947) and Gerhard Mackenroth (1903–1955) counted Burgdörfer among the early German population scientists.

Works

  • The population problem. Its coverage by family statistics and family politics , 1917
  • The 1916 and 1917 war censuses in Bavaria , 1919
  • The movement of the population in the German Reich 1929 and 1921 with J. Rahts, in: Statistics of the German Reich, Volume 307, 1924
  • The infirm in the German Reich after the census of 1925/26 , in: Statistics of the German Reich, Volume 419
  • The decline in the birth rate and how to combat it. The vital question of the German people , Berlin 1929
  • On the life and death of our people , Berlin 1929
  • Population issue and tax reform , Berlin 1930
  • People without youth. Birth loss and aging of the German national body. A Problem of the National Economy, of Social Policy, of the National Future , 1932
  • Back to the agrarian state? Town and country from a folk-biological perspective. Dynamic basic lines of future German agricultural, settlement, housing and economic policy , Berlin 1933
  • Child wealth-national wealth in the series of publications of the People's Committee for Public Health Service, issue 6, Berlin 1933
  • The population, occupation and company census 1933 , General Statistical Archive 23 (1933/34)
  • Are the white peoples dying? The future of white and colored peoples in the light of biological statistics , Munich 1934
  • Heredity, race care, population policy. Questions about the fate of the German people with Alfred Kühn and Martin Staemmler. Published by Heinz Woltereck, Leipzig 1935
  • Population development in the Third Reich. Facts and Criticism , Heidelberg 1935
  • German People in Need , Bielefeld and Leipzig 1935
  • Peoples on the Abyss , attached a picture attachment "Population development in the occidental culture with special consideration of Germany". (= Political Biology. Writings for natural law politics and science, Issue 1), Munich 1936
  • National and military force, war and race , Berlin 1936
  • Volksdeutsche Zukunft - A biological-statistical consideration of the nationwide question of population , Berlin 1938
  • The Jews in Germany and in the World , in the series by Walter Frank, Research on the Jewish Question, 1938
  • Children of trust. Population-political successes and tasks in the Greater German Reich , Berlin 1940
  • The statistics in Germany according to their current status. Honorary gift for Friedrich Zahn , 2 volumes, Berlin 1940
  • War and population development , Munich 1940
  • Birth shrinkage - the cultural disease of Europe and its overcoming in Germany , in: Supplements of the journal for geopolitics, Heidelberg 1942
  • The Jews in Germany and in the world. A statistical contribution to the biological, professional and social structure of Judaism in Germany . In: Research on the Jewish question , Vol. 3, 2nd edition, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1943, pp. 155–210
  • Population dynamics and population balance; Development of the earth's population in the past and future , Munich 1951
  • World Population Atlas. Distribution of the world's population around 1950 , Hamburg 1954

credentials

  • Udo Perina, False Prophets - For over a hundred years, population scientists have been predicting an aging society , in: Die Zeit, May 16, 2007
  • Götz Aly . Karl Heinz Roth , The complete collection - census, identification, segregation under National Socialism , Frankfurt / Main 2000
  • Ernst Klee , Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt / Main 2003
  • Herrmann AL Degener , Who is it? , Berlin 1935
  • DBE, Volume 2, Munich 1995
  • Wilhelm Kosch , Biographical State Handbook , first volume, Munich 1963

literature

  • The development of science as an expression of the “ zeitgeist ” using the example of the treatment of population issues in Germany in the 20th century. Subproject in the German Research Foundation DFG, Priority Program # 1106: Origins, Types and Consequences of the Construct Population Before, During and After the Third Reich http://www.bevoelkerungsforschung.tu-berlin.de/ ( Memento from February 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) .
    • Conference in June 2006 in Bonn (Rhine), Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning
    • Final conference in November 2007 in Berlin-Dahlem; including Hansjörg Gutberger: Population science and politics: Science and politics as resources for one another. via FB
    • ders .: Ecology and the construct 'population'. Perspectives from social and natural sciences. in: The population challenge. Developments in modern thinking about the population before, during and after the “Third Reich”. Ed. Ursula Ferdinand, Josef Ehmer, Jürgen Reulecke. VS Verlag , Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 3531155563 , pp. 99–112 (whole book: results for # 1106)
  • Federal Statistical Office : Population censuses under National Socialism. 2001
  • Thomas Bryant: Friedrich Burgdörfer 1890-1967. A discourse biographical study on the history of German demography in the 20th century. Row: Pallas Athene. Contributions to the history of universities and science, 32nd Stuttgart 2010 ISBN 9783515096539 .
  • Florence Vienne: Une science de la peur. La demographie avant et après 1933. Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2006 ISBN 3631552998 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Burgdörfer, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burgdörfer, Friedrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German population scientist
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuhemsbach
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 1967
Place of death Schramberg