Home fabric

In the time of National Socialism , alternatives to scarce raw materials were sought intensively . These were called home fabrics because they could be obtained from “home soil”.

The experiences from the First World War prompted the National Socialist government to pay special attention to self-sufficiency ("blockade security") in the area of ​​raw materials in its economic policy . Particularly in the case of metals, which were important in the field of armaments production , considerable efforts were made to develop substitutes that could be obtained entirely or predominantly from domestic mineral resources. In the case of non-ferrous metals , zinc , aluminum and magnesium and their alloys were increasingly used to replace copper , bronze and brass , which were needed in armaments production.

In practice, this was associated with many problems, for example the iron ore from Germany had a significantly lower iron content than the imported goods from North Africa and Sweden that had previously been predominantly used . During processing, considerably larger amounts of coke had to be used to compensate .

The results of Heimstoff research were ideologized by National Socialist propaganda as evidence of the scientific and technical superiority of German technology. Therefore, great importance was attached to the fact that substitute materials were always identified with the ideologically correct term “home material”.

literature

• Heinrich Hess: The insulating materials of electrical machines, taking home materials into account. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1942 ( Vieweg collection 120).
• Günther Luxbacher: Material, savings, home material. Metal research in Germany 1920–1970. In: Karin Orth , Willi Oberkrome (ed.): The German Research Foundation 1920–1970. Research funding in the field of tension between science and politics . Steiner, Stuttgart 2010 ( contributions to the history of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 4), ISBN 978-3-515-09652-2 , pp. 163-181.