Blood-and-soil ideology

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Symbol of the Reichsnährstandes with the party eagle of the NSDAP , swastika , sword and ear of wheat
Richard Walther Darré at a rally of the Reichsnährstand in Goslar on December 13, 1937

The blood-and-soil ideology is an ideology of agricultural policy which postulates the unity of a racially defined national body with its settlement area. Peasant lifestyles are not only idealized and set as a counterweight to urbanity , but also linked with racist and anti-Semitic ideas that oppose a Germanic-Nordic race as a peasantry to an alleged Jewish nomadism. According to the blood-and-soil ideology for a “ people without space ”, new settlement areas are needed to be conquered as living space in the east for the strived for peasantization of society .

“Blood and soil” was a central catchphrase of the National Socialist ideology. Going back to the national ideology of the Artamanen and the writings of Walther Darré , the ideas of the blood and soil ideology were mainly adopted by Adolf Hitler , Heinrich Himmler and Baldur von Schirach and determined the National Socialist agricultural policy . The Reichserbhofgesetz (Reichserbhofgesetz) , passed in 1933, is an expression of the blood-and-soil ideology. Darré ran the implementation of his settlement and selection concept as head of the Reich Office for Agricultural Policy , Reichsbauernführer , Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture and head of the Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS , whose imaginations he shaped.

origin

Blood and soil , although conflicting and not understood as a unity, is proven as a pair of terms in the work Der Untergang des Abendlandes by Oswald Spengler , published in 1922 , in the “battle between blood and soil for the inner form of a transplanted animal and human species “Is spoken of. Max Wundt wrote in 1924 in "What does völkisch mean?" The Eugen Diederichs publishing house in Jena brought its 1927/28 publishing program under the title Bond in Blood and Soil. The last publisher's appearances in groups . The picture was also taken from August Winnig , whose writing Liberation from 1926 as well as his book Das Reich als Republik (1928) begin with the sentence: “Blood and soil are the fate of the peoples (people)”.

In 1929 the Artaman leader August Georg Kenstler became the editor of “Blood and Soil. Monthly for peasantry with strong roots, for German character and national freedom ”. By Richard Walther Darré , also a member of the Artamanen, was the concise formula by a 1930 published book titled new aristocracy of blood and soil gave to a central concept of the Nazi ideology, between racial, economic dependence and an inner Tries to establish agricultural policy ideas.

There was also a "Blut und Boden Verlag" for books from 1933 to 1945, which often operated under the name " Reichsbauernstadt Goslar". The publishing house was located at Goslarer Bäckerstrasse 20-22, its managing director was Rudolf Damm , who continued to work as a publisher after 1945 and published “peasant writings based on the blood and soil ideology”.

continuity

In her 1985 biography entitled Blood and Soil , the British historian Anna Bramwell advocated the thesis that the arguments of the environmental movement of the 1980s resembled Darré's theses in terms of content and formulation. Darré and his followers would have shaped the ecological thinking of the 20th century. The “green thinking” of the present is right in its tradition. Darré was less convinced of the National Socialist than a supporter of organic agriculture . Blood and Soil , but also later Bramwell publications such as Ecology in the 20th Century (1989), aroused sharp criticism. Bramwell's portrait of Darrés is considered apologetic and her portrayal of National Socialist “ecology” is uncritical. Piers Stephens stated that Bramwell neglected the importance of social Darwinism . According to the research, the focus of Darré's thinking was not “soil” but “blood”. He was concerned with a racial renewal of the German people from the country. Bramwell's argument that Darré was a follower of Rudolf Steiner and his anthroposophical agriculture is rejected as unfounded. The historian Thomas Rohkrämer stated in 2007 that there was broad consensus in research that there was no “green wing” of the NSDAP. The American historian Peter Staudenmaier, on the other hand, maintained that although there was no coherent faction or a like-minded cadre within the party, there were a number of activists and functionaries in the Nazi regime and movement who could be viewed as environmentalists by today's standards. He also referred to substantial convergences between the philosophy of biodynamic agriculture and the blood-and-soil ideology, which went back to the time before the emergence of National Socialism. Germanocentrism and race theory were an important part of anthroposophy long before Hitler's rise , while important representatives of biodynamic teachings were involved in institutions of Nazi racial politics.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Blood and Soil  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Max Wundt: What does völkisch mean? Hermann Beyer and Sons , Langensalza 1924, p. 32. - The 4th edition of the book was published by the same publisher in 1927 under the title Volk, Volkstum, Volkheit .
  2. ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Entry blood and soil. In: dies .: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007, pp. 110–112 (preview) .
  3. ↑ Johann Böhm: August Georg Kenstler, editor of the monthly “Blood and Soil” and active pioneer of the National Socialist agricultural policy , in: Half-year publication for Southeast European History, Literature and Politics , Issue 1, 2003, pp. 19–43.
  4. ↑ Chapter: "Blood and Soil". In: Sigmund von Frauendorfer: History of ideas of agricultural economy and agricultural policy in the German-speaking area. Volume 2: From World War I to the Present. Bayerischer Landwirtschaftsverlag, Munich 1958, pp. 162–175.
  5. ↑ Margarete Lemmel: Goslar - Darrés Reichsbauernstadt . In: Harz magazine for the Harz association for history and antiquity . Lukas, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86732-252-2 , pp. 177 .
  6. ^ Frank Uekötter: Nature and landscape protection in the Third Reich. A literature review . In: Joachim Radkau u. Frank Uekötter (Ed.): Nature conservation and National Socialism . Campus, Frankfurt / M. 2003, pp. 459-461.
  7. ^ Peter Staudenmaier: Between Occultism and Nazism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race in the Facist Era . Brill, Leiden 2014, p. 129; Frank Zelko: The Politics of Nature . In: Andrew C. Isenberg (Ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History. Oxford UP, Oxford 2014, p. 728.
  8. ^ Piers HG Stephens: Blood, Not Soil: Anna Bramwell and the Myth of "Hitler's Green Party". In: Organization & Environment 14 (2001); Pp. 173-187.
  9. ↑ a b Thomas Rohkrämer: Preservation, Redesign, Restoration? Conservative ideas about space and homeland in Germany 1900-1933. In: Wolfgang Hardtwig (Ed.): Orders in the crisis. On the political and cultural history of Germany 1900-1933 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, p. 66.
  10. ^ Gesine Gerhard: Richard Walther Darré - conservationist or "breed breeder"? In: Joachim Radkau u. Frank Uekötter (Ed.): Nature conservation and National Socialism . Campus, Frankfurt / M. 2003, pp. 257-271.
  11. ^ Peter Staudenmaier: Right-Wing Ecology in Germany. Assessing the Historical Legacy . In: Janet Biehl u. Peter Staudenmaier (Ed.): Ecofascism Revisited. Lessons from the German Experience . New Compass Press, Porsgrunn 2011, p. 105.
  12. ^ Peter Staudenmaier: Organic Farming in Nazi Germany. The Politics of Biodynamic Agriculture, 1933-1945. In: Environmental History 18 (2013), pp. 383-411, here pp. 397 f., Doi : 10.1093 / envhis / ems154