Bolko von Richthofen

Bolko Karl Ernst Gotthard Freiherr von Richthofen (born September 13, 1899 in Mertschütz , Liegnitz district , Silesia , † March 18, 1983 in Seehausen am Staffelsee ) was a German prehistorian from the Richthofens aristocratic family .

Life

Youth and education

Bolko von Richthofen was a son of the Jauer district administrator and MP Ernst Freiherr von Richthofen (1858-1933), landlord on Mertschütz, who went down in history through the memoir author Hans von Schweinichen . Bolko von Richthofen is only distantly related to the Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen ; Manfred von Richthofen's younger brother was Karl-Bolko von Richthofen (1903–1971), which sometimes leads to confusion.

Richthofen passed his Abitur in 1917 in Liegnitz . He took part in the First World War from 1917 to 1918 . He was drafted from December 18, 1918 to June 20, 1919 and then served in the Reichswehr ( Black Reichswehr ) until November 20, 1919 . In 1919 he took part in fighting in Berlin and Munich. From April 1 to July 7, 1921, he was a volunteer with the Self-Defense of Upper Silesia (SSOS), which organized the storm on Annaberg . Richthofen acquired the Silesian Eagle when attacking Zembowitz .

Early career

He studied history , classical archeology and geography in Wroclaw and was there in 1924 with a thesis on the older Bronze Age in Silesia doctorate . After completing his studies, he worked from 1924 as a research assistant at the Silesian Museum of Applied Arts and Antiquities in Wroclaw. From 1925 he was head of department and curator at the Municipal Museum in what was then Bytom . From 1925 to 1929 he worked as state shop steward for cultural and historical ground monuments in the province of Upper Silesia in Bytom and Ratibor . He was also the head of the Upper Silesian Provincial Monument Preservation.

From 1929 to 1933 he was head of department and curator at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Hamburg . During this time he completed his habilitation at the University of Hamburg for prehistory and early history .

Career in National Socialism

Bolko von Richthofen joined the NSDAP on April 17, 1933 (membership number 3,039,581), but was described by a specialist colleague to Joseph Goebbels as an "enthusiastic National Socialist" even before that date . During his time in Hamburg before 1933, he had already been an honorary lecturer at the National Socialist Adult Education Center there, and from 1932 he was involved in the National Socialist Kampfbund for German culture . In the Reichsbund für Deutsche Prehistory Richthofen was head of state, in the professional association of German prehistory researchers from 1933 head. During the Nazi era, von Richthofen wrote a number of writings with an anti-Slavic thrust. In 1937 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . Between 1937 and 1939 he became a member of the Ahnenerbe . As a close friend of Hermann Göring , Richthofen was involved in the theft of art that was in Jewish possession. In October 1944 he published an article in Walter Frank's research series on the Jewish question under the title: "Judaism and Bolshevik" Cultural Policy "."

In 1933, Richthofen was appointed professor of prehistory at the University of Königsberg , where he also taught " foreign press studies " from the winter semester of 1939/1940 . He headed the seminar there until 1942, then he accepted the call as a full professor of prehistory at the University of Leipzig . After 1939, however, he was mainly active in the military as an "interpreter officer" and speaker (he supposedly spoke 18 languages). Richthofen worked for the Foreign Army East department . On behalf of the Foreign Office destroyed Richthofen during the Russian campaign , the library of Novgorod Antiquities Society and the Museum in Staraya Russa .

After 1945

After the war, Richthofen emerged as a defense advisor in the so-called Nuremberg Wilhelmstrasse Trial . He did not return to Leipzig after the founding of the GDR and received research contracts in the West from the German Research Foundation , the Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims and the Foreign Ministry.

From 1945 to 1972 he was a member of the CSU . In 1962, Richthofen founded the right-wing extremist Aktion Oder-Neisse together with Gerhard Frey and Erwin Arlt . In 1963 he received the German Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class .

From 1966 Richthofen sat on the Board of Trustees of the Grotius Foundation for the Dissemination of International Law. In 1968, under internal protest, he was accepted into the Germany Foundation , but was excluded again before the 1972 federal election due to his commitment to the NPD .

In 1969 he became President of the Society for Prehistory and Early History (Bonn) . He was also involved in the associations of expellees and published anti-Polish, revanchist literature. In 1970 he founded the right-wing extremist German Citizens' Community together with Herbert Böhme and Fritz Münch . The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution counts the works of Richthofens, which appeared in the right-wing extremist Arndt-Verlag , as "revisionist works (...) in which the main guilt of the Hitler regime for the outbreak of the Second World War is denied."

In March 1983 Richthofen did not return from a walk to his retirement home. Apparently he had fallen into a moat and drowned; his body was only found there in October. His grave is in the Partenkirchen cemetery .

Fonts

• Bolshevik Science and Judaism . In: Bolko von Richthofen (Hrsg.): Bolshevik Science and "Cultural Policy" . Königsberg - Berlin 1938, pp. 289-318.
• Foreign votes on the Upper Silesian referendum (March 20, 1921). Augsburg 1961.
• Silesia and the Silesians. (A regional and tribal overview 3). Wolfenbüttel n.d. (1967).
• War debt 1939–1941. T.1,2, Vaterstetten 1968/1970.

literature

• Uta Halle : “The Externsteine ​​are Germanic until further notice!” Prehistoric archeology in the Third Reich. Special publications of the natural science and historical association for the land of Lippe, volume 68. Publishing house for regional history, Bielefeld 2002, ISBN 3-89534-446-X ( book review for H-Soz-u-Kult ).
• Georg Schaufler: On the biography of the author. In: B. von Richthofen, Silesia and the Silesians. A regional and tribal overview. The Silesians before and after their expulsion from their homeland. Volume 1. Wolfenbüttel 1967, pp. 44-47. (On the biography of Bolko von Richthofens. The biography embellished in some expressions).
• Tobias Weger : Bolko Freiherr von Richthofen and Helmut Preidel. A double case study on the role of prehistorians and archaeologists in the expellees' organizations after 1945. In: Judith Schachtmann, Michael Strobel, Thomas Widera (eds.): Politics and science in prehistoric archeology. Perspectives from Saxony, Bohemia and Silesia. Reports and Studies No. 56, published by the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89971-741-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Federal Archives: R58 / 9002 (ZB I 1223 File 7 Bl. 311-429), Sheet 389, File on Richthofen.
2. ↑ Hans-Dieter Bamberg: Die Deutschlandstiftung eV Hain, 1978, p. 405.
3. ↑ Uta Halle: "The Externsteine ​​are Germanic until further notice!" Prehistoric archeology in the Third Reich. Special publications of the Natural Science and Historical Association for the State of Lippe Volume 68 (Bielefeld 2002), p. 144.
4. ↑ Reinhard Bollmus, Stephan Lehnstaedt : The office of Rosenberg and his opponents. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, p. 220.
5. ↑ http://www.restitutiecommissie.nl/en/rc_1.67/advies_rc_1.67.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 495.
7. ↑ Broockmann, Hartmut: The Königsberg historians from the end of the First World War to the end of the university, in: Rauschning, Dietrich / Nerée, Donata from: The Albertus University of Königsberg and their professors. On the occasion of the founding of the Albertus University 450 years ago, Berlin 1994, 257–281, 273.
8. ^ Hans-Günther Seraphim : The German-Russian Relations, 1939–1941. Nölke, 1949, p. 79.
9. ^ Christiane Mückenberg: German Slavic Studies and East Research. , in: Gerhard Ziegengeist: Science at the Crossroads. Critical articles on Slavic studies, literary studies and East research in West Germany. Academy, Berlin (East) 1964, p. 34.
10. ↑ Hans-Dieter Bamberg: Die Deutschlandstiftung eV Hain, 1978, p. 321.
11. ^ Judith Schachtmann, Thomas Widera: Politics and science in prehistoric archeology. P. 137 ( Google books )
12. ↑ Hans-Dieter Bamberg: Die Deutschlandstiftung eV Hain, 1978, p. 65.
13. ^ Hans-Dieter Bamberg: Die Deutschlandstiftung eV Hain, 1978, p. 512.
14. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report of the Federal Ministry of the Interior 2003, p. 98.

Web links

• Literature by and about Bolko von Richthofen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Bolko von Richthofen in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig