Joseph Otto Plassmann

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Joseph Otto Plassmann , often also Plaßmann , (born June 12, 1895 in Warendorf in Westphalia, † January 12, 1964 in Celle ) was a German German studies scholar , university professor and leading member of the National Socialist Research Association German Ahnenerbe .

Life

Joseph Otto Plassmann was the son of the Arnsberg senior teacher and later full honorary professor for astronomy Joseph Plassmann . The résumés that he himself produced on various occasions show considerable differences. It can be assumed as certain that he attended the Catholic elementary school in Münster from 1901 to 1905 and the Paulinum grammar school there from 1905 . After graduating from high school, he took up the " study of Germanic, English and Romance philology " at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster and also dealt with antiquity and folklore.

In 1944, Plassmann stated that he had served in Infantry Regiment 13 from September 1, 1914 to November 6, 1916. Until February 15, 1915 he was used as a front-line fighter. His last rank was that of a private. He received medals and decorations: Iron Cross II. Class (1914), Wound Badge , War Merit Cross II. Class and the Cross of Honor for Frontline Fighters .

In a résumé, dated September 18, 1943, and submitted to the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and National Education , he stated that he had been seriously wounded in the head and lungs in Russia in the winter of 1914/15 . After his recovery he continued his studies in Münster. At another point, Plassmann stated that he had reported to the German civil administration in Brussels in occupied Belgium , where he worked in the army until November 1918 as an assistant officer on Flemish people's policy, language issues and school issues and, among other things, headed the commission to determine the language border in Brabant. At this time he met Herman Wirth . As an occupation soldier, Plassmann massively promoted the Flemish movement of irredentist Belgians.

From 1919 to 1921 Plassmann was a platoon leader in the resident army in Münster. From 1920 Plassmann wrote numerous essays and books on ethnic , folk and Germanic content. At the end of 1920 he passed the state examination for higher teaching qualifications (German, English and French) and in 1921 he received his doctorate with the submission of a dissertation on Die Werke der Zuster Hadewych , ("one of the oldest Dutch literary monuments and an early testimony to Germanic mysticism") to the Dr. phil.

Because of his war injuries, he was rejected both for the library career he was aiming for and for higher education. Then Plassmann worked as a freelance writer and private scholar "in the sense of a revival of Germanic thought" and translated the "Orphic Hymns" and the Epistolae obscurorum virorum . During his hospital stays in Davos in 1924 , Plassmann met Wilhelm Gustloff , the Swiss national group leader of the NSDAP's foreign organization . From this acquaintance, a collaboration developed that lasted until Gustloff's murder. During this time he also got to know the publisher Eugen Diederichs and worked with him on the series “ Deutsche Volkheit ”, which attempted to outline German history and folk culture from the popular point of view. From 1927 he also took part in Wilhelm Teudt's research . Plassmann became Teudt's scientific advisor. However, he thought Teudt was a layman and advised him to learn the old Germanic languages ​​in order to be able to make his own judgment on important matters. But Teudt could not be persuaded to do so.

Role in National Socialism

In 1929 he joined the National Socialist Association of War Victims of the NSDAP. From 1936 to 1943 he was editor of the magazine "Germanien, MONTHLYhefte für Germanenkunde ", the organ of the Ahnenerbe organization . From 1933 he directed the traveling exhibitions of Herman Wirth. In 1936, at the suggestion of the SS Brigade Leader Hermann Reischle, he became department head in the " Race Office " at the Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) of the SS and was thus admitted to the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS ( Heinrich Himmler ). For 1937, his deputy head of the “Morals” department is occupied in this “office”. At the end of 1937 he became head of the teaching and research facility for Germanic cultural studies and landscape studies of the SS Ahnenerbes, known as the "Führer".

After the beginning of the Second World War in July 1939, Plaßmann vom "Ahnenerbe" was employed as part of the resettlement of the South Tyroleans in Bolzano . In 1940 he was assigned to the Einsatzkommando West under Helmut Bone as SS-Hauptsturmführer . 1943 habilitation Plassmann in Tübingen at Hermann Schneider , 1943 he was a lecturer at the University of Tuebingen for German customer and Nordic philology. In March 1944 he took over a professorship for Germanic folklore at the University of Bonn , on October 26, 1944 he was appointed associate professor there.

Meaning for Heinrich Himmler

Plassmann had made a name for himself as a connoisseur of the history of the Ottonians . The Canadian historian Michael H. Kater explains in his study of the “Ahnenerbe”: “To the extent that imperialist ideas shaped the propaganda of the Nazi regime, the literature of the Himmler research community (“ Ahnenerbe ”) was also penetrated. JO Plassmann gave this level of development obvious expression when he remembered Heinrich I's Ostpolitik in Kiel in July 1939 (title of the lecture: ' Heinrich I 's Ostpolitik ' ). To the 'creation and recovery of the German folkish habitat' a thousand years ago, he conjured up a current parallel to the principle of political conquest that the highest leaders of the regime had just written on their shields at the time, not least Heinrich Himmler, who was the first Heinrich in more as one aspect should still be taken as an example ”.

With his habilitation thesis accepted by the Germanist Hermann Schneider in Tübingen in 1943, Plassmann wanted, according to Walther Wüst , president and curator of the “Ahnenerbes” and from 1941 rector of Munich University, “to build the historical image of the Saxon emperors on an old Germanic basis, thus finally wresting this historical image from the clutter of Roman history and thus help to realize the intentions of the Reichsführer SS in a way and strength that could not be imagined more impressively ”.

post war period

Plassmann was released in 1945 and retired in 1958 . After 1945 he pointed out several times that he was never a member of the NSDAP. In fact, no evidence of such membership has been found to date. Gerd Simon also points this out in his study. Plassmann described himself as a "resister" and repeatedly emphasized in this context that he had been removed from the SS in September 1937 because of testimony against the Hitler Youth . In 1954 he became chairman of the Association of German War Disabled and Relatives of War (BDKK).

In the German Democratic Republic , Plassmann's writings Germanische Kulturgeschichte (1935) and Honor is Compulsive Enough (1942) were placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

Works

  • History of the city of Münster in Westphalia. From the oldest times to the present. 1925.
  • The life of Emperor Friedrich II von Hohenstaufen . 1927.
  • King Heinrich the Vogler . 1928.
  • The life of Emperor Conrad II des Saliers. 1928.
  • Viking journeys and Norman empires. 1929.
  • The life of Emperor Otto the Great. Told according to the sources.
  • The jewelry in the Nordic folk belief. 1938.
  • German Austria's Germanic broadcast. 1939.
  • German land is returning home. Ostmark and Sudetenland as Germanic people's soil. 1939.
  • Small treasures from art and history. 1940.
  • Honor is compulsion enough, thoughts on the German heritage , Berlin-Dahlem 1941.
  • The Ostpolitik Heinrich I. In: Herbert Jankuhn : The "Ahnenerbe". Report on the Kiel conference in 1939 . Karl Wachholtz, Neumünster 1944, pp. 203-210.
  • Letters from dark men to Magister Ortvinus Gratius from Deventer , Professor of Fine Arts in Cologne . Translated from kitchen Latin by Jodocum Plassmann, master of liberal arts and humble, albeit unworthy doctor of philosophy. Nordland-Verlag , Berlin 1940.

literature

  • Esther Gajek : Joseph Otto Plassmann. An academic career under National Socialism . In: Kai Detlev Sievers (ed.): Contributions to the history of science of folklore in the 19th and 20th centuries . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1991, ISBN 3-529-02475-9 .
  • Uta Halle : "The Externsteine ​​are Germanic until further notice!". Prehistoric Archeology in the Third Reich (Habilitation), Institute for Lippe Regional Studies, Detmold 2002 (special publications of the Natural Science and Historical Association for the Land of Lippe, vol. 68), Verlag für Regionalgeschichte Gütersloh, 608 pp., 100 ill., ISBN 3-89534 -446-X .
  • Michael H. Kater: The “Ahnenerbe” of the SS 1935–1945 , 4th edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-486-57950-9 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . 2. through Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Plassmann: Weltschauicher und Politischer Lebenslauf, February 11, 1937 (source: Plassmann personal files, Federal Archives (BA) and Berlin Document Center (BDC), 702 + 819 K, + NS 21).
  2. ↑ ibid
  3. ^ Plassmann curriculum vitae, September 18, 1943, Federal Archives BA British Doc. Center BDC REM, personal file Plassmann Bl. 5358-60 K.
  4. ↑ Personnel file , ibid
  5. ^ Plassmann memorial protocol of May 19, 1963, Institute for Contemporary History Munich, IfZ M ZS / A-25/2 Bl. 270.
  6. ↑ Michael H. Kater: The “Ahnenerbe” of the SS 1935-1945 , 4th edition, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006, p. 119.
  7. ↑ quoted in Michael H. Kater (2006), p. 135.
  8. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-p.html
personal data
SURNAME Plassmann, Joseph Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plaßmann, Josef Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Warendorf
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1964
Place of death Celle