Hans Schwenkel

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Johannes "Hans" Schwenkel (born March 3, 1886 in Hülben near Urach , † July 15, 1957 in Stuttgart ) was a teacher and state curator as well as a pioneer of nature and landscape protection, landscape writer and monument conservator , photographer and author. Schwenkel was an advocate of the National Socialist nature conservation ideology .

Life

Schwenkel grew up as the fourth of eight children on the Alb plateau . From 1898 he attended the teachers' seminar in Nagold and, after five years of training, took up positions as elementary teacher in Reutlingen , Stuttgart and Tübingen . From 1907/1908 he studied architecture first in Stuttgart, then in Tübingen, then physics, chemistry and geology. With the state examination and the dissertation The Eruptive Gneisses of the Black Forest and their relationship to granite , he completed his scientific training in 1911. Study trips to Italy and North Africa followed as an accompanying tutor. In 1913 he was appointed academic main teacher with the title of professor at the teachers' college in Backnang , where he worked until October 1922.

In 1922 he was appointed to the State Office for Monument Preservation in Stuttgart as head of the nature conservation department, initially on a temporary basis and from 1927 on as a full-time employee. In the field of nature and landscape protection there were only a few positions in the German Reich at that time, for example in Prussia, where Benno Wolf had already been appointed full-time legal advisor to the “State Agency for Natural Monument Preservation in Prussia” in 1915. Schwenkel was the first permanently employed conservationist in a high-ranking position in Württemberg.

Since 1923 Schwenkel was a member of the board of the Swabian Heimatbund and since 1924 a member of the Swabian Alb Association . At the general meeting of the Swabian Heimatbund in Crailsheim in 1932, Schwenkel described the tasks of homeland security as a defense against the threat of modernity. In this article, Schwenkel described homeland security as a cultural and national-political task, the importance of which he justified as follows: “The plight of the present, the political contradictions, the materialistic sentiment of wide circles, the international influences of traffic, the press and the technical perfection of broadcasting , the agglomeration of the people in the big cities and the nature of the way of working of broader groups of people, all of this means a tremendous danger for the civilized man, who is the most important task of homeland security to counter and makes his legitimacy beyond doubt. ” For that of the federal government for Heimatschutz, the annually published Schwäbische Heimatbuch for its members, was the main author of Hans Schwenkel, who provided numerous texts and photographs.

His lectures were well known in southwest Germany, which he illustrated - which was new at the time - with photographs he had taken himself. His picture archive, which is now located in the Baden-Württemberg State Media Center in Stuttgart, includes around 15,000 pictures in various formats and carrier materials from the period between 1908 and 1953 on the topics of topography (especially Württemberg), flora and fauna and rural life.

Schwenkel was particularly committed to the protection of the shores of Lake Constance and pointed out in numerous lectures and publications that "the increasing transformation of beautiful, publicly accessible bank areas into private, fenced-in garden properties could not be in the public interest."

Schwenkel was one of the initiators of the Reich Nature Conservation Act , which came into force in 1935 and for which the lawyer Benno Wolf had already done preparatory work years earlier. In 1938, Schwenkel was assigned the landscape management department at the Supreme Nature Conservation Authority in the Reich Forestry Office in Berlin, and soon afterwards also worked in the Reich Planning Office. Until 1944 he commuted back and forth between Stuttgart and Berlin as a “double occupation”. As a result of the Second World War, the offices of the State Agency for Nature Conservation in Stuttgart were destroyed with all documents, so that Schwenkel had to do new construction work after the war. Even after his retirement he remained officially active until 1953 with special assignments. Since 1956, Schwenkel was a corresponding member of the Natural Research Society .

Schwenkel died in 1957 and was buried in the Prague cemetery in Stuttgart . The obituary for the papers of the Swabian Alb Association was written by the then chairman of the association, Georg Fahrbach .

Schwenkel's daughter Hildegard Gerster-Schwenkel was a well-known Swabian dialect poet.

Relationship to National Socialism

Alongside Walther Schoenichen, Schwenkel was one of the advocates of conservative, reactionary ideas that he brought over from the Weimar Republic to the era of National Socialism and in which he was a consistent protagonist of the National Socialist nature and homeland protection ideology.

In 1933, for example, he referred to Heimatschutz in national Germany as the “ eugenics of culture” , which “ let the sacred fires of our nationality flare up” .

Schwenkel endorsed the racial legislation of the National Socialists with exuberant words: “And it required an ingenious layperson who was not restricted by any specific specialist training and who was still trapped in a dead end (...). I mean our Führer Adolf Hitler (...). ” And further: “ (...) this is the basic biological idea behind the racial and population policy of the National Socialist state, (...) it was the driving force behind it Law on the reduction of hereditary offspring , for the laws on the avoidance of harmful racial mixtures , etc. "

In his essay published in the Swabian Yearbook in 1936 on the ethnic group and landscape in the Swabian region , Schwenkel's biological-racist thinking is also clear. The State Commissioner for Nature Conservation in Württemberg saw nature as the image of a people or tribe. “His equation was: healthy tribe = healthy people = healthy nature, which is why he concluded that the decisive factor remains the genetic makeup. [...] Blood care is culture care and means performance in the German fatherland. It must therefore be taken more seriously than all the accidents of history and landscape, economy and creed. "Schwenkel undertakes" in adventurous racist constructions "the attempt" to bring the peculiarity of the Swabians, which he wanted to preserve through landscape maintenance and nature conservation, in accordance with the racial ideal of the Nordic people. "

In his article Press and Nature Conservation (1937), Schwenkel combines his ideas of “culture” and ethnic “nature conservation” with the anti-Semitic Nazi racial ideology and denies Jews as the allegedly “cultured” and “non-German people” the ability to protect nature: “ According to the first book of Moses, the Jew does not know any nature protection either, because God gives the children of Israel all plants and animals, 'everything that creeps and flies' for food. Only the cultured man, and almost exclusively the Nordic man, gains a completely new relationship to nature, namely that of awe, on which nature conservation is also based. "

As a prominent member of the Swabian Alb Association, he wrote the article The Wanderer and Nature Conservation in 1938 for the anniversary publication for the 50th anniversary of the association. Schwenkel connects the concern of nature conservation with the Nazi habitat ideology : According to Schwenkel, nature conservation is "not about individual things, not natural monuments, not 'little flowers', not individual plants and animals, not even about Nature reserves, but around the whole landscape (...), around the care and preservation of the natural and generally changed by economy, traffic and settlement in Germany. ”In 1939 Schwenkel was appointed by the newly elected“ Leader of the Swabian Alb Association ” Georg Fahrbach in the Main committee appointed, made an honorary member of the Albverein in 1956.

In other articles, Schwenkel lamented the natural alienation of the modern urban population in Germany, for Schwenkel obviously the epitome of a sick and homeless intellectualism, and combined this again with anti-Semitic-racist stereotypes : “There are already many German people who no longer belong to nature can find. (...). They are the urbanized, the nature detached, the asphalt people, the coffeehouse literary figures, the only intellectuals or the obese people; there is also a certain type of woman with high heels and red lips. - But are these people still healthy? "

“Many Germans do not yet see these connections. In some of them the primal instincts from the times of the wilderness are still stirring, (...) still others are inherently un-German, alien materialists, or they are caught up in the technical madness of mastering nature according to the Mosaic command: 'Fill the earth and do they subject you! '"

"In relation to German nature and homeland, it is also about worldview, about American-Jewish or German outlook and way of life."

Denazification, reception and research

Schwenkel, who joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933, was finally denazified by the Stuttgart Chamber of Justice after a lengthy process as a “ fellow traveler ” and sentenced to a fine of 1,500 RM.

Schwenkel's “contributions” to the Nazi race and nature protection ideology were hidden from the public for a long time after 1945. For example, as indicated by the award of the Federal Cross of Merit to Schwenkel in 1952, neither in the commemorative publication for his 70th birthday in 1956 nor in the appreciations of his friend Fahrbach in the Albverein gazette in 1956 and on his death in 1957, there is no evidence of Schwenkel's work in National Socialism. In the 2004 book by Bärbel Häcker: 50 Years of Nature Conservation History in Baden-Württemberg , there is a detailed biographical article, but there is no mention of Schwenkel's Nazi past. This was not discussed at the festive inauguration of the "Hans-Schwenkel-Gedenkstein" with a plaque on the "Prof.-Dr.-Hans-Schwenkel-Platz" in Hülben's birthplace in 2012. With the work of Joachim Radkau / Frank Uekötter (2003), Benigna Schönhagen (2009), Johannes Hansen (2016) and Hans-Werner Frohn (2019), there are now fundamental, historical-critical treatises on Schwenkel and other representatives of nature and homeland protection in National Socialism.

Honors

Works

  • The eruptive gneiss of the Black Forest and their relationship to granite (dissertation University of Tübingen). Vienna: 1912.
  • Naples and environs (Small photo series, series 42). Stuttgart: Lichtbildverlag Th. Benzinger, 1925.
  • About the protection of Lake Constance , in: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings , 54th year 1926, pp. 381–396 ( digitized version )
  • The outside advertisement . Esslingen a. N .: Verlag O. Bechtle, 1929.
  • Cemetery maintenance in Württemberg . Stuttgart: Buchdruckerei Knöller, 1932.
  • Homeland security in national Germany . In: Hermann Eris Busse (Ed.): My home country. Baden papers for folklore, rural welfare, family research, heritage protection and monument preservation , 20th year, issue 7/8, Freiburg 1933, pp. 227–242.
  • Nature and art in landscaping . Stuttgart: Buchdruckerei Knöller, 1934 (special print from the monthly “Württemberg”, July 1934; 64 pages).
  • Tribe and landscape in the Swabian region . Stuttgart 1936.
  • Weiden and Hardte in Swabia. A cultural-historical consideration for nature conservationists . Berlin & Neudamm: Verlag Neumann, 1936.
  • Biological thinking and nature conservation. In: Festschrift for the 60th birthday of Prof. Dr. W. Schoenichen. Supplement to Nature Conservation 17 (7): 9–11. 1936.
  • Together with Gebhard Gagg (1838–1921): History of Hohentwiel - Hohentwiel in War and Peace - A guide through the fortress ruins (edited by Josef Ott along with a historical outline and guide through the town of Singen.) Singen 1937.
  • Press and nature conservation . Lectures given to the editors of the Württemberg press. In: Naturschutz 18, p. 177. Pamphlets of the Reich Agency for Nature Conservation No. 23. Neumann-Neudamm. Berlin. 1937.
  • Basics of landscape management . Berlin & Neudamm: Verlag Neumann, 1938.
  • The hiker and nature protection , in: The Swabian Alb Association and its hiking areas 1888-1938. Dedicated to its members on the occasion of its 50th anniversary by the Schwäbischer Albverein , Alemannen-Verlag, Tübingen-Stuttgart 1938, pp. 41–44.
  • The location of nature conservation in Württemberg . In: Publication of the Württemberg State Agency for Nature Conservation 16. Stuttgart 1940.
  • The guide holds his protective hand over our hedges . Stuttgart: Reichsbund für Vogelschutz e. V., 7th p. 1941.
  • Taschenbuch des Naturschutz (edited by Georg Fahrbach, leader of the Swabian Alb Association). Salach: Verlag E. Kaißer, 1941. New edit. by Albert Ander u. a., ed. by Georg Fahrbach; Stuttgart: Schwäbischer Albverein eV, 1969; 3. revised Edition (21st - 30th thousand).
  • Together with Otto Linck : Leaflets for nature conservation and landscape management ; 4. Guidelines for landscape maintenance in case of reallocations (land consolidation). Stuttgart: Verlag Ulmer, 1949.
  • Together with Gerhard Haas: The Federsee nature reserve . Publications of the Württ. Landesstelle f. Nature conservation and landscape management. Issue 18. 1949.
  • Natural history book of Kirchheim u. Teck and the surrounding area . Stuttgart 1950.
  • Home register of the Nürtingen district . Würzburg: Verlag Triltsch, Vol. I 1950, Vol. II 1953.
  • The cemetery in the country. A guide for cemetery administrators, cemetery gardeners, landscapers and sculptors as well as for surviving dependents . (Writings of the Swabian Heimatbund No. 2). Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1955.
  • The landscape as the work of nature and man (cosmos ribbon No. 213). Stuttgart: Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, 1957.

Editing

  • Family history from the Urach district. Home book of the Urach district (with an appendix on family history from Pastor Ludwig Zeller). Urach: Bühlersche Buchdruckerei Otto Weise, 1933.
  • From nature conservation in Württemberg 1935 . In it: The Reich Nature Conservation Act of June 26, 1935 and the ordinance for the implementation of the RNG of October 31, 1935 with explanations .
  • Together with Hans Klose & Werner Weber: The protection of the landscape according to the Reich Nature Conservation Act. Lectures at the First Reichstag for Nature Conservation in Berlin on November 14, 1936 . Berlin: Verlag Neumann-Neudamm, 1937.
  • Together with Franz Baumann & Joachim Fernau: Das neue Universum (60th volume). Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1939.
  • Publications by the State Agency for Nature Conservation at the Württemberg State Office for Monument Preservation (Issue 2: (without issue title) 1925). Stuttgart: Carl Grüninger Nachf. Ernst Klett, 1925.
  • Publications of the State Agency for Nature Conservation at the Württemberg State Office for Monument Preservation . (Booklet 4: On Nature Conservation in Württemberg 1940). Schwäbisch Hall: Schwendsche Buchdruckerei, 1940.

literature

  • Oskar Rühle: Hans Schwenkel 65 years. In: Swabian homeland. Swabian Heimatbund Stuttgart. 2/1951/79.
  • Reinhard Wolf : Hans Schwenkel - A life for nature and home. In: Swabian homeland. 55th year, issue 4. Stuttgart 2004; Pp. 406-416. ISSN  0342-7579 .
  • Gerhard Raff : The father of the Württemberg nature conservation. Memory of Hans Schwenkel. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung of July 12, 2007.
  • Willi Oberkrome : "German home". National conception and regional practice of nature conservation, landscape design and cultural policy in Westphalia-Lippe and Thuringia (1900–1960). Research on regional history, Volume 47. Schöningh, Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-71693-X .
  • Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn : Nature conservation and democracy !? Martin Meidenbauer, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-89975-077-2 .
  • Hildegard Gerster-Schwenkel: Contemporary witnesses (From the Baurabüeble on d'r Alb to the official nature conservationist - in memory of our father) " . In: Breitwiesenhaus Aktuell, 51 (2013), p. 31.
  • Hildegard Gerster-Schwenkel: contemporary witnesses (who was Hans Schwenkel?) . In: Breitwiesenhaus Aktuell, 51 (2013), p. 32.
  • Conservation and National Socialism. Edited by Joachim Radkau and Frank Uekötter . Frankfurt / New York 2003, passim.
  • Bärbel Häcker: 50 years of nature conservation history in Baden-Württemberg. Ulmer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-4472-7 .
  • Benigna Schönhagen : "... a loyal and conscientious servant and helper ...". The Swabian Heimatbund in the Nazi era. In: Schwäbische Heimat , Heft 2, 2009; Online: www.schwaebischer-heimatbund.de , accessed on August 20, 2020; in it, passim: the role of Hans Schwenkel as a racist and anti-Semitic protagonist in the Swabian Homeland League.
  • Tim Heilbronner: On Theodor Werner's early work: Three previously unpublished works from the estate of Hans Schwenkel , in: Schwäbische Heimat, 2 (2010), pp. 202–211.
  • Johannes Hansen: Braune Natur II - On the function of nature conservation in the Third Reich as a basic category of the National Socialist ideology production. Master thesis University of Neubrandenburg 2016, passim ( online ).
  • Hans-Werner Frohn (ed.): To deal with the Nazi past in nature conservation. Denazification proceedings by leading German conservationists and the case of Wolfgang Engelhardt (= man - nature - culture. Volume 01). oekom, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-96238-164-6 , there the chapter “Own goals”: ​​The denazification process Hans Schwenkels , pp. 77-103; ( Reading sample ; PDF)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Benigna Schönhagen : "... a loyal and conscientious servant and helper ...". The Swabian Heimatbund in the Nazi era. In: Schwäbische Heimat , Heft 2, 2009; Online: www.schwaebischer-heimatbund.de , accessed on August 20, 2020.
  2. ↑ cit. after Wolf (2004)
  3. ^ Georg Fahrbach: Hans Schwenkel † in: Blätter des Schwäbischen Albverein , No. 5, 1957, p. 108; Online (TIFF).
  4. ↑ Hans Schwenkel: Heimatschutz in national Germany , in: Hermann Eris Busse (ed.): Mein Heimatland. Baden papers for folklore, rural welfare, family research, heritage protection and monument preservation , 20th year, issue 7/8, Freiburg 1933, pp. 227–242.
  5. ↑ Hans Schwenkel: Biological Thinking and Nature Conservation (1936/7), p. 9; quoted after Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn p. 93f.
  6. ↑ Quoted from: Benigna Schönhagen: "... a loyal and conscientious servant and helper ...". The Swabian Heimatbund in the Nazi era. In: Schwäbische Heimat , Heft 2, 2009; Online: www.schwaebischer-heimatbund.de , accessed on August 20, 2020.
  7. ↑ Schwenkel Hans: Press and Nature Conservation (1937) p. 117 .; quoted after Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn p. 93f .; see. also: Johannes Hansen: Braune Natur II - On the function of nature conservation in the Third Reich as a basic category of the National Socialist ideological production. Master thesis University of Neubrandenburg 2016; here the chapter on nature conservation and the German human being , p. 44 ff .; ( online ).
  8. ↑ Hans Schwenkel: The hiker and nature protection , in: The Swabian Alb Association and its hiking areas 1888-1938. Dedicated to its members on the occasion of its 50th anniversary by the Schwäbischer Albverein , Alemannen-Verlag, Tübingen-Stuttgart 1938, pp. 41–44, here p. 41.
  9. ^ Josef Forder : Main committee meeting and general meeting in Backnang. Important decisions, changes in the management of the association (...) . In: Blätter des Schwäbischen Albverein , Volume 51, 1939, No. 4, pp. 48–54 ( online ; TIFF, 985 kB).
  10. ↑ Honoring deserved friends of the homeland , in: Blätter des Schwäbischer Albverein , 62nd year 56, No. 3, p. 60; Online (TIFF) .
  11. ↑ Hans Schwenkel: Grundzüge der Landschaftspflege , Neudamm / Berlin 1938 (= landscape protection and landscape maintenance 2), p. 162 f.
  12. ↑ Hans Schwenkel: Vom Wesen des Deutschen Naturschutzes , in: BfNN 21 (1938) 3/4, pp. 74-75.
  13. ^ Hans Schwenkel: The situation of nature conservation in Württemberg (1940), p. 54; quoted according to nature conservation and National Socialism (see literature and sources).
  14. ↑ Hans-Werner Frohn (Ed.): To deal with the Nazi past in nature conservation. Denazification proceedings by leading German conservationists and the case of Wolfgang Engelhardt (= man - nature - culture. Volume 01). oekom, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-96238-164-6 , there the chapter “Own goals”: ​​The denazification process Hans Schwenkels , pp. 77-103; Judgment Chamber File Johannes Schwenkel in the State Archives Ludwigsburg , inventory EL 902/20 (Spruchkammer 37 - Stuttgart: procedural files) Bü 84156.
  15. ↑ See on this: Johannes Hansen: Braune Natur II - On the function of nature conservation in the Third Reich as a basic category of National Socialist ideology production. Master's thesis University of Neubrandenburg 2016, pp. 67–71; [1] online
  16. ^ Konrad Buchwald , Oswald Rathfelder , Walter Zimmermann (eds.): Festschrift for Hans Schwenkel on his 70th birthday. Publication by the State Office for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management Baden-Württemberg and the Württemberg district offices in Stuttgart and Tübingen, issue 24th Annual Issues of the Association for Patriotic Natural History in Württemberg, Volume 111, Issue 2. At the same time, yearbook of the State Museum for Natural History in Stuttgart. Ludwigsburg 1956.
  17. ^ Georg Fahrbach: Hans Schwenkel on his 70th birthday. A life for the Swabian homeland , in: Blätter des Schwäbischer Albverein , 62nd Jg., 2 (1956), p. 35; Online (TIFF)
  18. ↑ Kirsten Oechsner: Relaxation oasis in the middle of the village , report on the inauguration of the square and the unveiling of the memorial stone Südwest Presse, June 26, 2012
  19. ↑ Schwäbisches Heimatbuch 26 (1940), p. 133. See also online list of deceased honorary members of the Schwäbisches Heimatbund (accessed on May 24, 2017).
  20. ^ "Hans Schwenkel †" in Blätter des Schwäbischer Albverein , No. 5, 1957, p. 108
  21. ^ Honorary members of the Society for Natural History in Württemberg
  22. ^ "Honoring deserved friends of the homeland" in sheets of the Swabian Alb Association , No. 3, 1956, p. 60
  23. ↑ Report on the inauguration of the square and the unveiling of the Südwest Presse memorial stone , June 26, 2012

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schwenkel, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwenkel, Johannes (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German state curator and nature conservationist
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Hülben near Urach
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1957
Place of death Stuttgart