Institute for German Ostarbeit

The Institute for German Ostarbeit (IDO) was a National Socialist institution for so-called Ostforschung in the occupied Generalgouvernement on the territory of Poland from 1940 to 1945.

Structure and history

The institute was founded on April 20, 1940 on the initiative of Governor General Hans Frank to "continue and increase" the "German research work in the East" and was established in the buildings of the Polish Jagiellonian University in the center of Krakow , which was dissolved in November 1939 . There were branches in Warsaw and Lviv . The head under the President Frank was the administrative lawyer Wilhelm Coblitz , an important employee was Peter-Heinz Seraphim . The IDO dissolved in 1945 after many armaments-critical sections had previously been outsourced. Some of the documents were sent to the Bavarian castles of Zandt and Miltach .

The institute dedicated itself to so-called Ostforschung in order to justify the German claim to space and people by presenting “German achievements” in the past. The results were one-sided investigations into Germanism as well as negative or anti-Semitic contributions about Poles and Jews. Extensive research in 14 institutes also focused on the agricultural sector: from horticulture ( Erich Maurer ) to forestry ( Kurt Mantel , who also taught at the Lemberg Forestry School), to a large test facility for arable and plant cultivation in Puławy under Friedrich Christiansen-Less with a lot of Polish specialists. From 1943 onwards, several arms research sections were formed, in which some prisoner-of-war Soviet researchers z. B. were involved as translators of specialist literature. The section for practical mathematics was headed by Prof. Alwin Walther from Darmstadt.

In addition, the IDO researched current political, economic and administrative problems connected with the administration of the General Government. It participated in crimes, especially the Race and Ethnicity Research section, which worked intensively with the Population and Welfare Department of the Government of the Generalgouvernement as well as with SS agencies such as the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Ethnicity . The section had three papers without any sharp demarcation: race research, ethnology, ethnology research. Section leaders were Fritz Arlt first , and from April 1941 to April 1942 the Viennese anthropologist Anton Plügel , followed by Erhard Riemann ; the racial research department (anthropology) was in fact headed in 1942/43 by Elfriede Fliethmann from Vienna, assisted by Dora Kahlich-Könner , active at the University of Vienna .

The institute was intended to be part of the future overall high school complex of the NSDAP .

literature

• Michael Burleigh : Germany turns eastwards. A study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1988, ISBN 0-521-35120-0 .
• Götz Aly , Susanne Heim : thought leaders of annihilation. Auschwitz and the German plans for a new European order (= Fischer. 11268). Revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-596-11268-0 .
• Gretchen E. Creates: From Racism to Genocide. Anthropology in the Third Reich. University of Illinois Press, Urbana IL et al. 2004, ISBN 0-252-02930-5 .
• Newspaper report on the lecture given by lecturer Peter-Heinz Seraphim from the Institute for German Ostarbeit on July 20, 1940. In: The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Volume 4: Klaus-Peter Friedrich: Poland. September 1939 - July 1941. Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , pp. 322-326, document 4/136.

Web links

• Stefan Lehr: Institute for German Ostarbeit, Krakow. In: Online encyclopedia on the culture and history of Germans in Eastern Europe , 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/53975.html (as of June 16, 2015). on-line

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stanislaw Meducki: Agricultural Scientific Research in Poland during the German occupation. The General Government Agricultural Research Institute in Pulawy. In: Susanne Heim (Ed.): Autarkie und Ostexpansion. Plant breeding and agricultural research during National Socialism (= history of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society during National Socialism. 2). Wallstein, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-89244-496-X , pp. 233-249.
2. ^ Michael Burleigh: Germany turns eastwards. A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich. 1988, p. 266.
3. ↑ Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 9: Poland: Generalgouvernement August 1941-1945 , Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-71530- 9 , pp. 535f. with note
4. ↑ Nazarii Gutsul: The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce and its activities in Ukraine (1941-1944). Gießen 2013, p. 47, (Gießen, Universität, Phil. Dissertation, 2013, digitized version (PDF; 5.42 MB) ).