Karl Christian von Loesch

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Karl Christian von Loesch , pseudonym Sylvanus as the author of the Deutsche Rundschau , (born December 18, 1880 in Oberstephansdorf near Breslau , † January 1, 1951 in Stuttgart ) was a German university professor and ethnologist . He taught folklore at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and was also a paleontologist .

Life

Loesch came from the noble family Loesch , who had been resident in Silesia , whose progenitor is the citizen's son Hans Lesche from Magdeburg , first mentioned in 1638 . His father was the Prussian court assessor and Rittmeister Konrad von Loesch (1829–1886), who was raised to the Prussian nobility in 1863 as the owner of the Oberstephansdorf, Falkenhain and Seedorf estates. After attending the Royal High School in Königsberg in the Neumark , he studied law at the Universities of Bonn, Berlin and Breslau up to the legal traineeship. In 1901 he was received by the Corps Borussia Bonn . He then studied natural sciences at the universities of Jena and Munich. In 1910 he received his doctorate in paleontology in Munich ( About some nautilids of the white Jura )

In 1922 Loesch became chairman of the German Protection Association for Border and Abroad Germanism. In 1925 he founded the “Institute for Border and Foreign Studies” (IGA) in Berlin together with the national politician and publicist Max Hildebert Boehm . 1925 appeared in the anthology "Volk unter Völkern", Bücher des Deutschtums, Volume 1, edited by Loesch, his contribution Einedeutsche, Dedeutsche und Renegaten , in which he coined the term Umvolkung . Until 1945 this term was used extensively in place of denationalization . Loesch was referring to in his conceptualization not only to de-Germanization or return Germanization but more broadly on assimilation of members of one people by another people.

From 1936 Loesch employed Theodor Heuss in his institute after he had lost his teaching post and was prohibited from publishing. After the Second World War , Heuss thanked him and, as Federal President , advocated Loesch's retirement as a university professor.

Loesch was also an advisor on nationality issues to the Gustav Stresemann government , also at conferences of the League of Nations , as well as a member of the working group for nationality law of the Academy for German Law founded in 1933 by the National Socialist Hans Frank . Together with Georg Schreiber , he recommended that Franz Thierfelder promote the German language abroad, especially in the Balkans , which led to the establishment of the Goethe Institute as an organ of the German Academy .

Loesch was a member of the right-wing intellectual Juniklub and also in its successor organization, the Deutscher Herrenklub . Loesch joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 ( membership number 3,020,147).

At the time of the war of annihilation waged against the Soviet Union , he was head of the Institute for Border and Foreign Studies and Boehm was the deputy head.

Loesch rejected the instrumentalisation of minority and ethnicity research by the SS and, although invited ad personam , did not take part in the deliberations on the General Plan East . The IGA was represented by Gerhard Teich , who, as group leader in the East Ministry, was responsible for the “political guidance of foreign ethnic groups in the East”. The SS then took over the IGA in 1943 and incorporated it into the Reich Security Main Office. Loesch left Berlin and moved to Austria .

Loesch's relations with the assassins of July 20 brought him an interrogation by the Gestapo in Hagenberg Castle in 1944 . Since he was seriously ill and incapable of imprisonment , the Gestapo waived his internment . In 1945 the government of Yugoslavia applied for his extradition, which was refused by the Austrian government thanks to the intervention of former Vice Chancellor Vinzenz Schumy .

During the denazification in 1947 in Stuttgart he was classified as a follower .

He was married to Maria Fürst (1894–1991) for the second time. His son, born in 1934, is the specialist author Heinrich von Loesch .

Works

  • State and Volkstum , Deutscher Schutzbund Verlag, Berlin 1926
  • (Ed. Together with Max Hildebert Boehm): Ten years of Versailles. Vol. 3, 1930
  • The face of the borderlands , Bruckmann, Munich 1933
  • German trains in the face of the earth , F. Bruckmann, Munich 1935
  • (Ed. Together with Max Hildebert Boehm): Deutsches Grenzland. Yearbook of the Institute for Border and Foreign Studies 1935 , Kurt Hofmeier, Berlin 1935
  • The structure of the German people's border , people and empire, Berlin 1937
  • (Ed. Together with Ludwig Vogt): The German people. Its soil and its defense , people and empire, Berlin 1937; 2nd edition 1938; therein by himself: Die deutsche Volksgemeinschaft , p. 384ff.
  • The foreign policy effects of the decline in the birth rate are shown using the example of the French. Junker & Dünnhaupt , Berlin 1938
  • (together with Erich Gierach ): Bohemia and Moravia in the German Empire , 1939
  • The Polish national character , Junker & Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1940
  • (Ed. Together with Max Hildebert Boehm): The liberated east , German book distribution center Hofmeier, Berlin 1940
  • Croatia restituta , o. O., 1941
  • Bohemia and Moravia in the German landscape , in: Das Böhmen und Moravia book, Volkskampf und Reichsraum , Volk und Reich, Berlin 1943, pp. 13-126
  • The peoples and races of Southeast Europe , Berlin 1943

literature

  • Hans-Werner Retterath, Alexander Korb: Karl Christian von Loesch , in: Ingo Haar et al. (Ed.): Handbook of the Volkish Sciences . De Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-043891-8 , pp. 446–452

Web links

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  1. ^ Precise life data from: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 378
  2. ^ Hans-Werner Retterath: German-Americanism and Volkstumsgedanke. On the construction of ethnicity through German cultural work abroad between 1918 and 1945 . Dissertation, Philipps-Universität-Marburg 2000 ( full text ), p. 413
  3. ↑ Published by Kastner and Callwey, Munich 1912. He also published: The Nautiles of the White Jura. First part . (With plates X – XV (I – VI) and 8 text figures),. Palaeontographica, 1914, pp. 57–146, Internet Archive , A fossil pathological nautilus shell , New Yearbook for Mineralogy, Geology and Paleontology, Volume 1912, II. Volume, pp. 90-102.
  4. ↑ Kurt Düwell : Overpochal learning process : Overpochal learning process - The Goethe Institute between 1932 and 1951 , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 5, 2005, No. 206 / page 10, as a book review on Eckard Michels : From the German Academy to the Goethe Institute. Language and foreign cultural policy 1923-1960. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag , Munich 2005.
  5. ^ A b c Hans-Werner Retterath: Karl Christian von Loesch
  6. ^ Carsten Klingemann : The sociological folk theory of Max Hildebert Boehm and the National Socialist Germanization policy . In: Rainer Mackensen , Jürgen Reulecke , Josef Ehmer (eds.): Origins, types and consequences of the construct “population” before, during and after the “Third Reich” . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009, p. 356.
  7. ↑ Quarterly Issues for Contemporary History Vol. 6 (1958), Issue 3, Der Generalplan Ost (p. 283; PDF; 5.2 MB)
  8. ↑ Gerd Simon : Mother tongue and persecution of people (PDF; 36 kB) , p. 9, footnote 1.
personal data
SURNAME Loesch, Karl Christian von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sylvanus (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberstephansdorf near Breslau
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1951
Place of death Stuttgart