German Academy (1925)

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Location Munich Residence
Maximilianeum location

The Academy for Scientific Research and Maintenance of Germanness , or German Academy for short , was founded in Munich in 1925 as a cultural-political association for the research and dissemination of German culture and the promotion of the German language abroad. In 1945 it was dissolved. The Deutsche Akademie is the forerunner of today's Goethe Institute .

In the Weimar Republic

It was founded against the background of the “political” and “science-political” situation at the beginning of the Weimar Republic. In science, a specialization in unrelated “individual disciplines” was complained about. Politically, the universities lamented the unexpectedly experienced defeat of Germany in the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, which was perceived as a “national humiliation” . According to these views, Germany's position in the field of cultural relations with foreign countries, which resulted from the First World War and the subsequent one, should be improved. An attempt should be made with a scientific academy to "establish a spiritual organization through the nation and with the nation that wants to help a free German nationality to regain its place in the sun through tenacious and purposeful work."

In 1923 several Munich scientists, including Georg Pfeilschifter , Rector of the Ludwig Maximilians University , Hermann Oncken and Karl Haushofer , envisaged the creation of the "German Academy (DA)", which was officially founded on May 5, 1925 as a private association . According to the statutes, the institution's task was to maintain German nationality as well as "non-official cultural relations with foreign countries and foreign Germans with their homeland in the service of German national consciousness ".

The first president was Pfeilschifter and the first president of the "Scientific Department" Oncken. Among the other employees were predominantly national conservative scientists such as Karl Alexander von Müller , Hanns Dorn , Friedrich von der Leyen and Otto von Zwiedineck-Südhorst . They were supported by an advisory body, the "Senate", whose 100 members were supposed to ensure the scientific and cultural-political integration as well as the financing of the DA. One of the "senators" was Hermann Röchling , who later became the military leader . The academy was housed in the residence on Odeonsplatz until 1932 , then in the Maximilianeum .

Organizationally, the academy was divided into a research-serving “Scientific Department” with four sections and a smaller “Practical Department”, which was supposed to deal with cultural work abroad with a focus on Germans living abroad in Southeast Europe . The practical department was supposed to do language maintenance and language teaching, the scientific department was supposed to "create an intellectual center for all Germans in the world". These main areas of work led the DA, which was dependent on donations for its financing, into a financial crisis in the first few years, as it was faced with a considerable number of competing institutions, including the German Academic Exchange Service , the German Institute for Foreign Affairs and the Verein für das Deutschtum abroad .

From 1928/29, therefore, under the press officer and later Secretary General Franz Thierfelder, the content-related work was realigned, with the focus now being on “language promotion abroad” on the basis of “openness and reciprocity”. In 1930 the first language schools were set up in Southeastern Europe, and in 1932 the "Goethe Institute for the Further Training of Foreign German Teachers" was established. From the beginning of the 1930s, the DA received grants from the Foreign Office .

time of the nationalsocialism

After 1933 , the DA became politicized, adapted to the “ nationalist ” thought that was now being demanded , and introduced the “ Führer principle ” in organizational terms . The “Senate” was “purged” of undesirable members such as Konrad Adenauer , Max Liebermann and Thomas Mann . Thierfelder had to leave the academy at the end of 1937. In 1934 the Rudolf Heß friend Karl Haushofer took over the presidency. His successor, Leopold Kölbl , professor of geosciences at Munich University and SA - Standartenführer , had to resign from his position in 1939 on charges of "fornication with men" and was sentenced to two years imprisonment in a court case. The SA and NSDAP withdrew his membership. His successor was the old warrior and Bavarian NSDAP Prime Minister Ludwig Siebert , who was later followed by the Himmler Protegé Walther Wüst and the Reich Commissioner for the Occupied Netherlands Arthur Seyß-Inquart .

Until the early 1940s, the DA was a bone of contention in the cultural-political struggle between Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop , Heinrich Himmler's Research Association for German Ahnenerbe , Alfred Rosenberg and the Propaganda Ministry , which was ultimately won by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels . In November 1941, the DA was converted into a corporation under public law by means of a “ Führer Decree ” . In the same year, President Siebert formulated the academy's new direction as a "weapon" in the worldview struggle:

“For us Germans it is an uplifting consciousness that in the struggle that is forced upon us we face our opponents incomparably not only with weapons but also with intellectual powers, that not only fortresses fall, positions that are built of cement and iron are overrun but also spiritual walls are being torn down because they have long been rotten and outdated. "

The DA's new propaganda activities for the National Socialist state, which began in 1941, led to an extreme expansion of their activities. The annual budget grew from 550,000 Reichsmarks in 1939 to 9 million RM in 1944, exceeding that of the renowned Prussian Academy of Sciences by 18 times and that of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences by 40 times. The number of employees at the academy rose from under 100 to around 1,000. There were 105 lectureships and around 250 language schools in occupied, allied and neutral states. In 1942, around 64,000 people took language courses. In addition, the DA published teaching materials, such as a language primer for ethnic German members of the Wehrmacht and foreign volunteers of the Waffen SS .

The war-related decline came slowly. In April 1944, the Munich academy buildings were destroyed by bombing raids. 111 of the lecturers had been called up for military service, others were drafted into the Volkssturm at the end of 1944 . In March 1945 the editing offices abroad were closed, in April 1945 the academy activities came to a standstill.

Transition to the "Goethe Institute"

After the end of the war, Thierfelder was appointed acting general secretary in June 1945. The academy but was 31 December 1945 by the US - occupying power dissolved because it was considered a "pan-European propaganda and espionage center". In 1950 the "Deutsche Akademie" was re-entered in the Munich register of associations in order to secure access to the considerable assets of the dissolved institution. The money thus obtained by way of settlement from the state of Bavaria was used in 1951 to found the "Goethe Institute" (GI), in which Thierfelder was also involved.

In its initial phase, the “Goethe-Institut” showed considerable personal continuity with its predecessor organization. Half of the signatories of the founding deed previously worked for the DA, according to the first GI President Kurt Magnus , as well as numerous employees such as GI board member Richard Fehn , Dora Schulz and the later GI director Richard Wolf . Thierfelder himself was on the board of the GI and until 1959 Secretary General of the Institute for Foreign Relations .

literature

scientific literature:

  • Christian Fuhrmeister: The art history seminar of the University of Munich and the (German) visual arts section of the "German Academy for Scientific Care and Research into Germanism". Connections, overlaps and differences . In: Elisabeth Kraus, Ed .: The University of Munich in the Third Reich. Essays . Utz, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8316-0726-6 (Contributions to the history of the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, 4).
  • Edgar Harvolk: Oak branch and swastika. The German Academy in Munich (1924–1962) and its folklore section (=  Munich contributions to folklore . Volume 11 ). Münchner Vereinigung für Volkskunde, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-926844-10-8 .
  • Steffen R. Kathe: cultural policy at any price. The history of the Goethe-Institut 1951 to 1990. Meidenbauer, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-89975-047-0 (also: Trier, Univ., Diss., 2002).
  • Eckard Michels : German as a world language? Franz Thierfelder, the Deutsche Akademie in Munich and the promotion of the German language abroad, 1923–1945 . In: German History . tape 22 , no. 2 , 2004, ISSN  0266-3554 , p. 206-228 (English).
  • Eckard Michels: From the German Academy to the Goethe Institute. Language and foreign cultural policy 1923–1960 (=  studies on contemporary history . Volume 70 ). Oldenbourg, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-486-57807-3 .

Original sources:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Fuhrmeister : The art history seminar of the University of Munich and the (German) visual arts section of the "German Academy for Scientific Care and Research into Germanness". Connections, overlaps and differences . In: Elisabeth Kraus, Ed .: The University of Munich in the Third Reich. Essays . Utz, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8316-0726-6 , p. 176 ff. (Contributions to the history of the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, 4)
  2. ↑ Christian Fuhrmeister: The art history seminar of the University of Munich and the (German) visual arts section of the "German Academy for Scientific Care and Research into Germanness". Connections, overlaps and differences . In: Elisabeth Kraus (Ed.): The University of Munich in the Third Reich. Essays . Munich 2008, p. 177.
  3. ^ A b Eckard Michels: German Academy, 1925–1945. In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria . March 14, 2011, accessed March 8, 2012 .
  4. ^ German Academy . In: Kölnische Volkszeitung , No. 108, February 10, 1925. German Academy . In: Munich Latest News , No. 120, May 2, 1925. Opening of the German Academy . In: Berliner Tageblatt , No. 211, May 5, 1925 (facsimile in the HWWA ).
  5. ^ The statutes of the German Academy (1925) . In: Communications from the Academy for Scientific Research and Maintenance of Germanness, Issue 1/1924, pp. 35–40. (Reprint, PDF) in the Bavarian Historical Lexicon
  6. ^ Franz Thierfelder: Advertisement for the German spirit . In: Hamburg Correspondent No. 486 v. October 16, 1928; The "German Academy" . In: Frankfurter Zeitung No. 786 v. October 20, 1928 (facsimile in the HWWA ).
  7. ↑ Kurt Düwell : Overpochal learning process. Away from propaganda, towards language promotion: The Goethe-Institut between 1932 and 1951. In: FAZ , September 5, 2005. Annual meeting of the German Academy . In: Frankfurter Zeitung No. 778 v. October 18, 1929; Franz Thierfelder: German culture advertising . In: Kölnische Zeitung , No. 590, October 27, 1930 (facsimile in the HWWA ).
  8. ^ Foundation of a Goethe Institute of the German Academy for the further training of foreign German teachers in Munich. In: Communications from the Academy for Scientific Research and Maintenance of Germanness , Issue 1/1932, pp. 1–3. (PDF) in the Bavarian Historical Lexicon
  9. ↑ Tammo Luther: Volkstumsppolitik des Deutschen Reiches 1933–1938. Stuttgart 2004, pp. 75, 142.
  10. ^ Change of presidency at the Deutsche Akademie. In: Völkischer Beobachter , No. 103, April 13, 1934 (facsimile in the HWWA ).
  11. ^ Steffen R. Kathe: cultural policy at any price. Munich 2005, p. 75; Freddy Litten: The "Merits" of a Rector in the Third Reich - Views on the Geologist Leopold Kölbl in Munich. In: NTM. NS 11 (1) 2003, pp. 34–46, litten.de (PDF)
  12. ^ Prime Minister Siebert President of the German Academy.  ( 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. In: Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , March 25, 1939 (facsimile in the HWWA ).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / webopac0.hwwa.de  
  13. ^ The Mission of the German Academy. ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Berliner Börsen-Zeitung , No. 41, February 12, 1944 (facsimile in the HWWA ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / webopac0.hwwa.de
  14. ↑ see on the impact on personnel policy: Maximilian Schreiber: Walther Wüst . Munich 2007, pp. 197-202; Michael H. Kater: The "Ahnenerbe" of the SS 1935-1945. Munich, 4th ed. 2006, p. 281.
  15. ^ Decree of the Führer on the German Academy. From November 15, 1941. In: Reichsgesetzblatt Part I, No. 132 v. November 22, 1941, pp. 717-718. (PDF) in the Bavarian Historical Lexicon
  16. ^ Ludwig Siebert: Center of German intellectual care. In: Volk und Welt , April 1941, pp. 8–11. (PDF) in the Bavarian Historical Lexicon
  17. ^ Steffen R. Kathe: cultural policy at any price. Munich 2005, p. 73.
  18. ^ Steffen R. Kathe: cultural policy at any price. Munich 2005, p. 82 ff. Eckard Michels: From the German Academy to the Goethe Institute. Munich 2005, p. 239; Magnus , however, was removed from his position in the DA Senate in 1933 (see Michels 2005, p. 205).