Hans Plischke

Hans Hermann Joseph Plischke (born February 12, 1890 in Eilenburg , † April 28, 1972 in Göttingen ) was a German ethnologist and from 1934 to January 1946 and from 1949 to 1959 professor and director of the Institute for Ethnology in Göttingen. From 1933 to 1945 he was a member of the NSDAP and the NS teacher and lecturer association.

Life

Childhood and youth

Hans Plischke was born on February 12, 1890 in Eilenburg, Saxony, as the son of the office and mayor as well as farmers Max Plischke and Elisabeth Plischke (née Sieg). In his hometown he attended both the citizen school and the secondary school, which was later renamed the reform secondary school and the Eilenburg secondary school.

Education

Plischke began to study in the summer semester of 1910. He was matriculated at the universities of Munich , Göttingen and Leipzig in the subjects of ethnology , folklore and anthropology as well as in various natural sciences. He received his doctorate under Karl Weule at the University of Leipzig in January 1914. His subject was The Legend of the Wild Army in the German People . During this time he trained as a museum ethnographer at the Leipzig Museum of Ethnology and was then referred to the newly founded State Research Institute for Ethnology in Leipzig by his doctoral supervisor Weule. There he worked as an assistant from autumn 1914. With the outbreak of the First World War, his scientific career was interrupted. He was brought to Romania in 1917 with a military department, where he tried to do ethnographic work. However, these remained without results. From 1918 he worked again as an assistant at the Leipzig Research Institute for Ethnology and from 1919 began to hold an ethnographic seminar at Leipzig University. He then received a scheduled assistant position there in 1920. In the same year Plischke married the business teacher Eleonore Sieg. Four years later, in 1924, Plischke completed his habilitation at the philosophy faculty at Leipzig University. His topic was The Occident and the Peoples of the Pacific Ocean - A Contribution to the History of Ethnology . With the specialty South Seas he was awarded the Venia Legendi for ethnology in May 1924 .

1925-1932

In 1925 Plischke's first son Hermann was born, who later worked as a publishing clerk. Hans Plischke had four children in total, but two of them died very early. Meanwhile, his career was promoted by his Leipzig doctoral supervisor Weule. He recommended him to Göttingen because of the lack of career opportunities in Leipzig. As a young private lecturer , Plischke made a good impression on his first visit to Göttingen in 1925. However, due to the poor state finances, the financing of his position was not guaranteed, and it was not until the summer semester of 1928 that he was able to take up a teaching position in ethnology. In the meantime, Hans Plischke had doubted that the Prussian Ministry of Culture was interested in ethnological science.

So he moved to Göttingen with his family. There he should open up, expand and increasingly integrate the ethnographic collection into teaching. Plischke became an associate professor in 1929 . At first his teaching position was attached to the mathematics and natural sciences faculty, but as early as 1932 ethnology became an independent major in the philosophy faculty. To Plischke's satisfaction, the number of students increased, so that 130 to 150 participants could be counted during his lectures. His second son Heinz was born in 1932. The future printing engineer was the last child of the Plischkes.

Political engagement and work under National Socialism

Hans Plischke joined the NSDAP in 1933 and thus began to support the NS regime. Before that he was a member of the German National People's Party. On November 11, 1933, he signed the professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist state at German universities . When the National Socialist faculty was founded, he was appointed head of the academic office. One of his tasks was to establish a science belonging to the Nazi regime and to organize scientific life at the university. Lecturers were registered by him and reported to a head office in Berlin , where they received further training in National Socialist ideology . In the NSDAP he acted as an appraiser for the party official examination commission for the protection of NS literature . Hans Plischke headed the ethnology department in the war effort of the humanities at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . In addition, from 1933 to 1939 he was a supporting member of the SS , a member of the National Socialist People's Welfare and the Nazi teachers' association . He was counted among the most politically active lecturers.

At Göttingen University, he continued to develop his ethnology seminar and expanded the ethnographic collection. In 1933 he succeeded in getting his informal management of the ethnographic collection recognized by the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs and he was now officially appointed director. In 1935, he was finally promoted to full professor and professor nominated for Ethnology. From November 1934 to October 1935 he was also dean of the Philosophical Faculty in Göttingen. In this function, he was involved in the early retirement of colleagues, such as the English professor Hans Hecht . He was also active as the head of the university's press office. In December 1936, Plischke inaugurated the new Völkerkunde-Museum at what was then Adolf-Hitler-Platz, today's Theaterplatz, which also served as the institute building. In his inauguration address he praised the seizure of power by the National Socialists, as this would have made it possible to found the museum. However, the construction costs were taken over by the Fritz Behrens Foundation from Hanover . The museum, which was popularly called Plischkeum, was visited by 20,000 people in the first 16 months. Until the beginning of the war in September 1939, Plischke tried to expand the collection. In addition, he took advantage of the war situation to acquire collections, including from occupied Lodz in western Poland. Plischke also brought foreign, ethnological literature from the occupied neighboring countries to Göttingen and accepted ethnographic collections from France, which were offered to him by German soldiers. However, the ethnological museum remained closed during the war.

However, teaching at Göttingen University was continued. In the summer semester of 1940, he succeeded in being appointed deputy prorector and a member of the university's senate. He also became the representative of the Vice Dean of the Philosophical Faculty. From the trimester of 1941 until the summer semester of the same year he was the managing rector. In November 1941 he was made rector of the University of Göttingen and remained so until September 1943. In the summer semester of the following year he was vice-rector and member of the business commission of the Academy of Sciences . When the war ended in May 1945, the ethnological institute of the Göttingen University was also closed. Nevertheless, Plischke continued to work on expanding the ethnographic collection.

Relief and work after 1945

His commitment to expand the ethnographic collection after the war, taking advantage of the precarious economic situation in Germany , failed when he was suspended from work on January 24, 1946 as a politically undesirable person. Plischke was divided into the categories of activists, militarists and beneficiaries by the investigative committee for the teaching staff of the university and the main committee of the city of Göttingen . But already in November 1947 he was classified as a minor offender by the military government. Plischke objected to the assessment of the city's main committee several times, until it also joined the military government. This result ruled out teaching and the subordination of staff was also forbidden.

In February 1948, after a renewed appeal, the judgment was modified so that he was allowed to continue working and publishing scientifically and was also to receive 50 percent of his pension. A formal error meant that Plischke was able to appeal again and was finally classified in the category exonerated by the city's denazification committee on September 28, 1948 .

Plischke's tactics of wriggling out of his entanglement with the Nazi regime were very sophisticated and shaped by the distortion of his activities and memberships. After the failed Hitler assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Hans Drexler , then rector of the University of Göttingen , put him on a list of people who were far from National Socialism . So two other professors should be covered, since they would not attract further attention among self-confessed National Socialists. In 1944 Plischke contradicted this classification, later he used it skillfully to position himself as an opponent of the Nazi regime. Plischke further argued before the committee that although he had joined the NSDAP in 1933 as a staunch National Socialist , he quickly recognized the real intentions of the National Socialist leadership. He stated that he was very reluctant to accept all offices and that he used his position to sabotage processes. His speeches as rector of the university are said to have been interspersed with Nazi rhetoric, but only to protect himself and to make the Nazi system ridiculous in its exaggerated, bombastic form. Witnesses confirmed that he had both condemned the Reichspogromnacht and had campaigned for the matriculation of “non-Aryan” students. Especially his work against the then Gaudozentenbundführer Schürmann was given positive credit. Plischke had pushed him into disciplinary proceedings on account of the allegation of plagiarism , thus rendering him incapable of acting. During the entire proceedings against Hans Plischke, numerous colleagues came to his aid and gave positive testimony about him. In 1946, for example, Rudolf Smend , the new rector of the University of Göttingen, declared that Plischke, as a person of practical work, supported the Nazi regime in the first few years, but very soon made good his mistakes and created a liberating mood as the rector of the University of Göttingen . All of these arguments convinced the members of the main committee and they finally classified Plischke as exonerated. The British military government was not very convinced and classified the decision as strange, but after a brief lockdown it left the final decision to the Germans.

With the support of the rector of the Göttingen University and other colleagues from science and research, Hans Plischke succeeded in the winter semester 1949/1950 in getting his chair for ethnology again in Göttingen. He also took the position of director of the ethnographic collection. In December 1949 he was again full professor at Göttingen University. The Minister of Education of Lower Saxony reinstated him in all of the old offices.

In 1957 the Academy of Sciences accepted him again. Hans Plischke retired in 1958, but still represented his ethnological chair in Göttingen until September 1959.

The last few years

After Hans Plischke retired , he remained a recognized scientist, and many of his students continued his efforts to expand ethnology in Germany and to increase its influence. Plischke himself held lectures at Göttingen University until 1964. Hans Plischke died on April 28, 1972 at the age of 82 in Göttingen. His wife Eleonore died six years later.

Act

Ethnographic teaching and research

Hans Plischke embodied the National Socialist duty man with organizational talent. He was successful in teaching, expanding the ethnological collection in Göttingen and positioning ethnology in Germany as an independent subject.

At the beginning of his career he was mainly interested in the history of discovery. His focus was on Oceania . He was the founder of the Brockhaus series, Old Travel and Adventure, and published four volumes himself on famous explorers. This commitment gave him the opportunity to work on additional sections for the Brockhaus editorial team for a longer period of time. Due to financial bottlenecks and the outbreak of the Second World War, he was initially unable to do field research . Despite a lack of experience in the field, he became a sought-after theoretician of ethnological science. He is assigned to the cultural-historical school, even if, as a theory skeptic, he was always open to new influences. This liberal stance was also reflected in his methodological orientation. Plischke succeeded time and again in establishing a connection between the humanities and the natural sciences. In addition, he linked folklore and ethnology, as well as literary studies and history. From this interdisciplinary interest and his National Socialist ideology, a racist, ethnological theory developed.

Hans Plischke investigated the influence of people's “race” on their culture , and in the Third Reich began his lectures in the 1931 summer semester with racist topics. He tried to combine scientific anthropology with humanities and ethnology. So he let physical-anthropological questions flow into the research and used anthropological knowledge to develop ethnology theoretically. He developed the theory that a pure “race” no longer exists and that this makes it difficult to determine the connection between race and culture. In doing so, he did not rely on his own research, but instead incorporated the term “race” into his publications and lectures, on the one hand to do justice to National Socialist propaganda and on the other to cover up theoretical gaps. Although he had studied anthropology, he made "racial affiliation" a fact and ignored the lack of theoretical evidence.

The definition of primitive peoples established by Plischke also clearly showed the relationship he had with the ethnological research subject. In 1921 he considered indigenous peoples to be groups of people who were exposed to their environmental conditions to a high degree. However, Plischke did not achieve a transfigured, romantic idealization of these peoples. Furthermore, he rejected evolutionary theoretical concepts and assumed a cultural development that is influenced by the environment and “race”. He also turned against the culture circle theory , since there only individual objects were compared. Thus his concept of culture was shaped holistically. For him, cultures were products of the environment, history and “race”.

Plischke divided ethnology in Germany into ethnology and ethnography . The aim of the study should be to examine the three factors that create culture, environment, history and “race”. There should also be a reconstruction of human history and cultural development. Despite its methodological liberality he sat in these studies mainly on the cultural comparison .

Colonial Interest

The “Colonial” theme was a focus of Hans Plischke's work and research. In the summer semester of 1934, he began his detailed, thematic examination of the then current and non-historical colonial possessions of the German Reich. From the winter semester of 1939/1940 onwards, he expanded the university offering in the “Colonial” area. He also had a political interest and expressed himself in public on colonial issues. In November 1940, for example, he held a colonial scientific working meeting in Göttingen, which was mainly attended by National Socialist professors. In January 1943 he repeated this workshop. When it became foreseeable in the summer semester of 1943 that Germany could lose the war and with it the hoped-for colonies , this topic disappeared from the course catalog .

In Hans Plischke's National Socialist logic, colonialism was a natural process in which weaker peoples, or “races”, had to give way to the stronger. However, he did not advocate the annihilation of the colonized, but found that they were needed as workers. Since it is not possible for “white” Europeans to work in tropical colonies, these are needed, according to Plischke's logic. The ethnologist should play the role of mediator and supervisor of the culturally foreign peoples. He saw dangers not only in the adverse environmental conditions, but also in the numerical size of the colonized, for example in Africa . He denies the indigenous peoples any right to self-determination and personal responsibility.

Plischke had not only taken up the National Socialist propaganda here , but also developed it further and defended it scientifically. With the end of the Second World War, his wishes and ideas about colonialism developed. So the enthusiasm died when it was foreseeable that the German Reich would not receive any colonies in Africa and at the end of the war this point disappeared completely from his ethnographic publications.

anti-Semitism

The anti-Semitism was a basic element of national socialism . Hans Plischke also showed anti-Semitic tendencies in letters and lectures . In 1935 he dismissed the historian Alfred Hessel on the grounds: “He is a Jew. Therefore it is necessary to turn it off ”.

These reservations cannot be seen in his scientific publications. Plischke's anti-Semitism became particularly evident when the textbook on ethnology was published by the Berlin ethnologist Konrad Theodor Preuss in 1937 . One of the contributions was written by the Jewish ethnologist Leonhard Adam . In a letter to the Minister of Culture in Berlin on November 22, 1937, Hans Plischke expressed himself clearly anti-Semitic. He wrote that he declined to work on the book because he knew of Adam's Jewish roots. In addition, Plischke demanded that non-Jewish people should work on a textbook intended for German students. This makes it clear that Plischke represented anti-Semitic positions, even if there was no opportunistic reason for this. In comparison to his colleagues, Plischke was a committed anti-Semite and managed, among other things, to remove Leonhard Adam's contribution from the second edition of the textbook on ethnology.

Hans Plischke tried to denounce Jewish colleagues. No professional criteria were decisive, only his anti-Semitic worldview. Plischke was thus a supporter of the anti-Semitic persecution during the Third Reich.

Theory after 1945

With his final rehabilitation in 1949, Hans Plischke was able to publish scientific papers again. The ban on publication after the victory over Nazi Germany was thus lifted. A complete theoretical reorientation of Plischke cannot be determined. With the end of the Third Reich, he was aware that terms such as “race” should be avoided, but there were few changes beyond that. His areas of interest remained Southeast Asia and the history of the world.

Plischke was still highly regarded among colleagues. The establishment of the Göttingen Institute for Ethnology and the expansion of the ethnographic collection continued to give him great credit. Despite the outdated, ethnological theories, he was a sought-after professor for lectures even after 1945. Hans Plischke had succeeded in accompanying over twenty dissertations . By the end of his university career he built up a broad student body.

plant

overview

Hans Plischke was one of the most productive ethnologists of his time. Since he has no scientific talent and his stays in the field usually failed in preparation, his publications were often just hard work. The focus was on the evaluation of sources. His oeuvre includes several hundred titles.

Monographs

• From the barbarians to the primitives (1926)
• Kukailimoku, a Hawaiian god of war (1929)
• Ethnology (1930)
• The ethnographic collection of the University of Göttingen, its history and importance (1931)
• Tahitian mourning robes (1931)
• Age and origin of the European wing kite (1936)
• The Germans' Contribution to the Discovery of the Pacific Ocean (16th – 18th Centuries) (1936)
• Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's Influence on the Explorers of His Time (1937)
• The Peoples of Europe (1939)
• A breast ornament from Tonga taboo and the processing of whale bones in Polynesia (1939)
• Göttingen Contributions to Colonial History (1940)
• From Cooper to Karl May (1951)
• The cultures of the non-European continents at a glance (1954)
• The silent ocean (1959)
• The first circumnavigation (1964)

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 465
• Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttingen Ethnology and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000
• Renate Kulick-Aldag in: Bernhard Streck: Ethnology and National Socialism . Publishing house Escher, Gehren 2000
• Erhard Schlesier:  Plischke, Hans Hermann Joseph. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 545 ( digitized version ).
• Kersten Thieler: "[...] unworthy of having a German academic degree." The withdrawal of doctoral degrees from the Georg-August University in Göttingen during the "Third Reich" . Goettingen State and University Library, Goettingen 2004

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Frankfurt am Main, S. Fischer Verlag, p. 465.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 52.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Erhard Schlesier:  Plischke, Hans Hermann Joseph. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 545 ( digitized version ).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Renate Kulick-Aldag, in: Bernhard Streck: Ethnology and National Socialism . Verlag Escher, Gehren 2000, p. 104.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Karl Arndt (et al.): Göttinger Gelehre. The Academy of Sciences in Göttingen in portraits and awards 1751–2001 . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2001, p. 464.
6. ↑ Kersten Thieler: "[...] unworthy of having a German academic degree." The withdrawal of doctoral degrees from the Georg-August University of Göttingen during the "Third Reich" . Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen, Göttingen 2004, p. 14
7. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag, in: Bernhard Streck: Ethnology and National Socialism . Verlag Escher, Gehren 2000, p. 106.
8. ^ ^{A b} Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 53
9. ^ Uta Schäfer-Richter, Jörg Klein: The Jewish Citizens in the Göttingen District 1933–1945. A memorial book. Göttingen, Hann. Münden, Duderstadt . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1992. ISBN 978-3892440482 .
10. ↑ ^{a b c} Renate Kulick-Aldag, in: Bernhard Streck: Ethnology and National Socialism . Verlag Escher, Gehren 2000, p. 105.
11. ^ ^{A b} Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 54.
12. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 73.
13. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 74.
14. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 75.
15. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 76.
16. ↑ Kersten Thieler: "[...] unworthy of having a German academic degree." The withdrawal of doctoral degrees from the Georg-August University of Göttingen during the "Third Reich" . Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen, Göttingen 2004, p. 16.
17. ^ Bernhard Streck: Ethnology and National Socialism . Verlag Escher, Gehren 2000, p. 16.
18. ↑ ^{a b} Werner Lang (et al.) (Ed.): Of foreign peoples and cultures. Contributions to ethnology . Droste Verlag, Göttingen 1955, p. 5.
19. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag, in: Bernhard Streck: Ethnology and National Socialism . Verlag Escher, Gehren 2000, p. 109.
20. ^ ^{A b} Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 55.
21. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag, in: Bernhard Streck: Ethnology and National Socialism . Verlag Escher, Gehren 2000, p. 110.
22. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 61-63.
23. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 465.
24. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag, in: Bernhard Streck: Ethnology and National Socialism . Verlag Escher, Gehren 2000, p. 111.
25. ↑ Renate Kulick-Aldag: The Göttinger Völkerkunde and National Socialism between 1925 and 1950 . LIT Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 64.