Ergonomic Institute

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Labor Science Institute (AWI) of the German Labor Front (DAF) under Robert Ley was founded in 1935 and developed into a planning center for the Nazi dictatorship in the socio-political field.

Structure and history

The goals that were formulated by the DAF after the 1934/35 Führer mandate already covered a broad spectrum and were subsequently adapted to the course of the war from 1939: The institute was supposed to track down trouble spots and remove the basis from workers' resistance , make increasing performance requirements acceptable, the home front Strengthening in total war or increasing the "efficiency" of foreign forced laborers, developing concepts to reduce sick leave and preparing the "reorganization of Europe".

As the think tank of the DAF, the institute produced memoranda, reports and numerous periodicals. Great social-technological concepts should finally solve the social question in Europe in the sense of the racist Nazi ideology . At the same time, the AWI prepared extensive sociological studies and proposals for the exploitation of these countries for the occupation policy of the Schutzstaffel , administration and Wehrmacht. A yearbook appeared from 1935 to 1941, other publications until 1944. The authors were often not named.

The head of a working group was initially honorary in 1935 and officially in office since 1936 was the well-networked ministerial official of the Reich Labor Ministry, Wolfgang Pohl , who went into private industry in 1941, but had other managerial tasks. In terms of facilities, the institute had an archive based, among other things, on the archives of the disbanded trade unions , a library, a statistical central office and a research center with work areas, the number of which increased over the years: history of work, social science, economics, labor law , statistics , Business psychology, occupational hygiene, occupational education. The formation of numerous interdisciplinary working groups was typical. The number of scientific employees was around 200, plus other commissioned employees. Deputy head from 1940 was the head of the research center Theodor Bühler , also known as the general advisor.

Work-up

The edition of all the remaining works of the AWI gave the chance to come to terms with the historical processing of German social policy between the labor movement and the Nazi dictatorship. In 1986 the Hamburg Foundation for the Social History of the 20th Century started a large-scale research project on the “Social Strategies of the German Labor Front”. The aim was to examine the influence of the “Ergonomic Institute” (AWI) of the “German Labor Front” (DAF) on the social policy of the “Third Reich”. In 2000, Karl Heinz Roth presented a documentation on the DAF's secret service and its contribution to the destruction of the labor movement between 1933 and 1938.

Publications

  • "The penetration of the east into raw materials and agriculture". Proposals of the Ergonomic Institute of the German Labor Front for the exploitation of the USSR from 1941 , introduced by v. Michael Hepp, in: 1999, No. 4, pp. 96-134 (1987) online

Publications of the secondary edition 1986ff.

  • Part A Yearbooks of the Ergonomic Institute of the German Labor Front 1936–1940 / 41, Volumes 1–6, Saur, Munich 1986–1992
  • Part B Memoranda, reports and publications of the Ergonomic Institute of the German Labor Front

literature

  • Timothy Mason : Social Policy in the Third Reich. Working class and national community , Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1977
  • Karl Heinz Roth : Intelligence and Social Policy in the "Third Reich". A methodological-historical study using the example of the Ergonomic Institute of the German Labor Front , [Diss. phil. University of Bremen], Munich et al. 1993. google books online
  • Ders .: The Ergonomic Institute of the German Labor Front and Eastern Planning , in: Mechthild Rössler (Hrsg.): Der "Generalplan Ost". Main lines of the National Socialist planning and extermination policy , Berlin 1993, pp. 215-231.
  • Ders .: facets of terror. The secret service of the German Labor Front and the destruction of the labor movement 1933 to 1938 , Bremen 2000.
  • Rüdiger Hachtmann : Arbeitswissenschaftliches Institut , in: Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften: Actors, Networks, Research Programs, ed. v. Michael Fahlbusch u. a., de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2017, pp. 1338–1349 google-books online

Employee

See also

Web links