Karl Valentin Müller

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Karl Valentin Müller (born March 26, 1896 in Bodenbach , † August 3, 1963 in Nuremberg ) was a German trade unionist, social democrat, sociologist and social anthropologist. After he had already published and argued in the context of racial hygiene and racial anthropology before 1933 , he made a scientific career under National Socialism . During the Second World War he undertook race-biological studies in Eastern Europe and in 1941 was appointed professor at the University of Prague , where he also carried out basic research for the race and nationality policy of the Reich Security Main Office on behalf of the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation . After the end of the war, Müller made a name for himself as a business and educational sociologist, and from 1955 he was professor of sociology and social anthropology in Nuremberg.

Life

Müller attended elementary school in Bodenbach and Pogrzybow in the province of Posen , where his father worked as a teacher, and then the secondary school in Dresden . After graduating from high school, he volunteered on the Western Front . From 1919 he first studied German in Leipzig , later political and social sciences. In 1922 he was awarded the title of Dr. phil. PhD . He then worked as a traveling teacher in the adult education center in Thuringia and Saxony.

In 1927 a publication was published by Müller on behalf of the trade unions entitled Workers' Movement and Population Question , which was intended to serve as a generally understandable introduction to racial hygiene . An earlier publication on a school child study had already shown that he was oriented towards the “Nordic movement”, which postulated a higher value of the “Nordic race”. In 1929 he also published an essay on "Nordic Thoughts in the Labor Movement". He took the view that the class-conscious labor movement descended from Nordic free farmers and should be distinguished from "proletarians from Art". Müller believed that one could breed a racially high-quality working class elite, and wanted to prevent the reproduction of the "unfit for life". With his radicalism, Müller was an absolute exception in the trade union sector. While there was hardly any positive response from the workers' movement, ethnic racial hygienists like Fritz Lenz were enthusiastic.

From 1927 Müller worked as a scientific consultant, initially for adult education in the Saxon Ministry of National Education, which was then run by the Social Democrats. At the same time, he headed the semi-state business and works council schools of the free trade unions in West Saxony. In 1928 he became a consultant for social education and took over the management of the “official specialist work center for the Saxon works council school system”.

National Socialism (1933-45)

After the National Socialists came to power, Müller was briefly dismissed from civil service because of his membership in the SPD , but was reinstated as a consultant for adult education in the Ministry of Education, which was headed by Wilhelm Hartnacke . In his main work The Rise of the Worker through Race and Mastery (1935), Müller took up the idea of ​​a "new nobility made of blood and soil" by Walther Darré and developed the project of a new working class nobility for the state-sponsored "hereditary farms" in own permanent workers' settlements should arise. With this, Müller wanted to create a “nurturing environment” for a “selection group based on performance and genetic value” to raise their offspring.

In 1936 he completed his habilitation in Leipzig with Hans Freyer and Otto Reche for sociology and population sciences . In 1938 he became a lecturer, and in 1939 provisional professor of sociology at the Technical University in Dresden . Müller headed the sociological seminar at the Institute for Social and Economic Sciences at the TH. In Dresden he gave lectures on “Race, People and Society” and “People and Space ”. In 1939/40 he carried out fertility studies in the Warthegau .

From 1941 to 1945 Müller was appointed to the University of Prague as a specialist in the racial theory of National Socialism and for the historiography of the Bohemian countries. Here he carried out psychological and social anthropological studies on the Czech police and on schoolchildren as well as racial and social anthropological studies on the “German share of inheritance” in the Czech Republic. One of his research goals was the “treatment of the people's political dispositions” in Eastern Europe and the “re- population ” of Czechs. In his writings Legality in Changes in the Social-Anthropological Structure of Racially Related Neighboring Peoples through Umvolkungsvorgänge (1937) and The Importance of German Blood in the Czech Republic (1939) he advocated the melting of the Czech people into the German through Umvolkung. In his capacity as a special commissioner for racial issues in the Bohemian countries, he wrote a memorandum in 1940 in which he called for the entire area to be covered with a “German-specific leadership class ”, for “de-Germanized achievement clans ” to be regained, and for the “German nationality of ... clans with lower performance qualifications to purify ”.

In connection with his university teaching and research activities, Müller was one of the leading figures of the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation alongside Hans Joachim Beyer and Rudolf Hippius , who carried out special assignments to give the plans for the Germanization of Bohemia and Moravia an apparent scientific justification.

As a feeder and academic informant for the security service , he accepted an invitation from SS group leader Otto Ohlendorf to the villa on the Großer Wannsee in December 1944 for an exclusive exchange of ideas on how sociology, as "human knowledge", could be used for the stability of the state.

Karl Valentin Müller worked with leading researchers from the East such as Eugen Lemberg and Ernst Lehmann .

After the war (1946-63)

After 1945 Müller was able to continue his career as a scientist without interruption. As early as 1946, with the support of Lower Saxony's minister of education, Adolf Grimme, he was given the opportunity to set up an “Institute for Gifted Research ” (since 1949 “Institute for Empirical Sociology”) in Hanover . Soon after it was re-established in 1946, he was accepted as a member of the German Sociological Society .

In addition, Müller worked at the Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning (ARL). From 1953 he was both a "full member" and a "corresponding member" of the ARL. Müller headed the research committee "Space and Society" of the ARL (1950–1953).

Müller's book The Rise of the Worker through Race and Mastery ( Lehmann , Munich 1935) was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone .

From 1952 he took a teaching position at the Philosophical-Theological University of Bamberg . In 1955 Müller was appointed to the chair for sociology and social anthropology at the Nuremberg University of Economics and Social Sciences . There was only one name on the list of appointments to fill the chair: Prof. Dr. Karl Valentin Müller. The university had committed itself to a " 131 professor", i. H. to appoint a “ displaced university professor” according to Art. 131 of the Basic Law.

1954 to 1959 Müller was Secretary General of the " Institut International de Sociologie " and at the same time a member of the board of the German Society for Population Science .

Müller mainly worked on the sociology of giftedness and showed with a large-scale study of all students in Lower Saxony's educational institutions and their families born between 1932 and 1937 that the talent gap among primary school students generally corresponded to the social structure of society. He conducted further studies on the sociology of blue-collar and white-collar workers as well as the displaced persons. He also worked on the influence of the socialist society on the local population.

According to Andreas Wiedemann, Müller's racial theories and his folkish assumptions from research on the East were adopted from the inter-war period through National Socialism to German anthropology . This included his ideas about heredity , racial hygiene and the selection of social groups. According to Gesa Büchert, Müller was still in contact with functionaries of the Nazi era at the end of the 1950s . Richard Korherr , author of the Korherr report on the “ Final Solution of the Jewish Question ”, formerly a senior research assistant and confidante of the “ Reichsführer SSHeinrich Himmler , had a teaching assignment for methods of empirical social research and demography at the university from the winter semester 1959/60 to the summer semester 1962 for economics and social sciences at Müller's chair.

Fonts

  • Australian public economy. The community economy, Hermsdorf (Thuringia) 1926, DNB 575172525 .
  • with Martin Springer: people, status, race. An attempt to present a common understanding of race-biological topics [the biological evidence for the necessity of maintaining the middle class]. Publishing house of the society for the care of medium-sized culture, Dresden 1926, DNB 576484547 (119 pages).
  • Labor movement and population question. A common understanding of the most important questions of quantitative and qualitative population policy in the context of trade union theory and practice. (= Trade Union Archive Library , Volume 6). Zwing, Jena 1927, DNB 580783952 .
  • Jobless retraining and training for settlers . In: Adolf Muesmann (Hrsg.): The conversion in the settlement system. Stuttgart 1932
  • The rise of the worker through race and mastery. JF Lehmann, Munich 1935, DNB 575172517 .
  • Labor movement and population issue: A common understanding of the most important questions of quantitative and qualitative population policy in the context of trade union theory and practice , 2 parts, Leipzig 1937, DNB 570931118 Habilitation thesis Uni Leipzig, Philosophical Faculty 1937, 154 pages, volume 2 already in bookshops under the title: The rise of the worker through race and mastery .
  • Origin and occupational screening of a metropolitan salaried and working class. In: Population biology of the big city: Dedicated to the city of Wroclaw on the occasion of the seven hundredth anniversary of its reconstruction after the Mongol storm. 1941, pp. 129-135.
  • German currents of life in the rise of Czechoslovakia. In: German monthly books: magazine for the past and present of East Germany. No. 9 (1942/43) 1942, pp. 310-328.
  • and Siegfried Tzschucke: illegitimacy and racial care. In: Archive for race and social biology including race and social hygiene No. 36 (1942/43) 1942, pp. 345–357.
  • On the racial and folk history of the Bohemian-Moravian area , in: Das Böhmen und Moravia book, Volkskampf und Reichsraum , Volk und Reich, Prague / Amsterdam / Berlin / Vienna 1943, pp. 127-134.
  • (with Elisabeth Pfeil ): Types of social behavior and their locations . An empirical-sociological experiment on the material from the sociological talent survey in Lower Saxony. From the Institute for Empirical Sociology Hanover. In: ARL (Ed.): Space and Society. Lectures and results of the joint conference of the research committees "Space and Society" (head: Prof. Dr. KV Müller) and "Big City Problems" (head: Dr. Elisabeth Pfeil). Bremen: Dorn 1950, pp. 45–52.
  • Social behavior as a component of social screening. In: The Collection; Vol. 5, H. 9, September 1950. 1950.
  • Constitutional type and talent. In: On human inheritance and constitution doctrine, 29. 1950.
  • Talent in social reality. Results of the talent-sociological survey in Lower Saxony based on the count in the Reg.-Bez. Hanover, worked on at the Institute for Empirical Sociology in Hanover. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1951.
  • Displaced youth. A sociological study on the problem of the social fitness of the offspring of the displaced population. Holzner, Kitzingen-Main 1953.
  • Population change and social stratification in Slovakia. Results report on sociological-social anthropological studies in slovakia. State territory, 1944. In: Zeitschrift für Ostforschung: Länder u. Peoples in Eastern Central Europe. 2, No. 3 1953, pp. 400-424.
  • Natural and self-selection in modern forced and emergency migrations. In: East German Science. 1 (1954) 1954, pp. 147-182.
  • Talent and social stratification in a highly industrialized society. Westdeutscher Verl, Cologne, Opladen 1956.
  • Social science and social work. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1956.
  • The employees in a highly industrialized society. West German publishing house, Cologne, Opladen 1957.
  • On the change in the social order of prestige under socialist influence. In: Journal for the entire political science 115 (1959), pp. 292–299.
  • Marital fertility and professional work of the wife with German employees. In: Hans Freyer , Helmut Klages and Hans Georg Rasch (eds.): Actes du XVIIIe Congrès International de Sociologie, Vol. 4. Nuremberg, 10-17 September 1958. Institute International de Sociologie. 4 volumes. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain 1961, pp. 281–283.
  • The connubium as a yardstick for determining social classes. In: Hans Freyer , Helmut Klages and Hans Georg Rasch (eds.): Actes du XVIIIe Congrès International de Sociologie, Vol. 4. Nuremberg, 10-17 September 1958. Institute International de Sociologie. 4 volumes. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain 1961, pp. 331–333.
  • The managers in the Soviet zone. West German publishing house, Cologne, Opladen 1962.
  • Sociology of the white-collar movement. From the work of the Institute for Empirical Sociology. In: social world. Journal for social science research and practice. 12, No. 3 1962, pp. 260-267.
  • Karl Valentin Müller: On the question of the underuse of East German talents. From the Institute for Empirical Sociology. In: Law in the service of human dignity: Festschrift for Herbert Kraus. 1964, pp. 533-543.

literature

  • Gesa Büchert, Harald Fuchs, Peter Löw (ed.): Small history of a large faculty. 75 years of economics and social sciences in Nuremberg. Edelmann, Nuremberg 1994, ISBN 3-87191-201-8 .
  • Ursula Ferdinand: Historical Arguments in the German Debates on Decline in Births and Differential Fertility: Case Study Karl Valentin Müller (1896–1963). In: Historical Social Research. 31, 2006, ISSN  0172-6404 , pp. 208-235 ( full text (PDF; 621 kB) ).
  • Dirk KaeslerMüller, Karl Valentin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 445-447 ( digitized version ).
  • Eduard Kubu: "The meaning of German blood in Czechity". The “science-pedagogical” contribution of the sociologist Karl Valentin Müller to the solution of the problem of the Germanization of Central Europe. In: Bohemia. Journal of the history and culture of the Czech lands. 45, 2004, ISSN  0523-8587 , pp. 93-114.
  • Michael Schwartz : Socialist Eugenics . Eugenic social technologies in debates and politics of the German social democracy 1890–1933 . Dietz, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-8012-4066-5 ( Political and Social History Series 42).
  • Andreas Wiedemann: The Reinhard Heydrich Foundation in Prague (1942–1945). Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism, Dresden 2000, ISBN 3-931648-31-1 ( Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism eV at the Technical University of Dresden. Reports and Studies 28) (PDF; 943 kB) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich and Matthias Schwerendt, Rassenhygiene as an educational ideology of the Third Reich. Bio-biobliographical Handbook Berlin 2006, p. 246.
  2. Michael Schwartz : Socialist Eugenics . Eugenic social technologies in debates and politics of the German social democracy 1890–1933 . Dietz, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-8012-4066-5 ( Political and Social History Series 42), p. 113.
  3. ^ Hans Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich and Matthias Schwerendt, Rassenhygiene as an educational ideology of the Third Reich. Bio-biobliographisches Handbuch Berlin 2006. pp. 245-247, cited above. P. 245.
  4. ^ Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning (ed.): 50 years of ARL in facts . Hanover: ARL 1996, p. 214.
  5. Handbook of Ethnic Sciences. Munich: KG Saur, 2008, here: Reinhard Heydrich Foundation , p. 587.
  6. ^ Andreas Wiedemann: The Reinhard Heydrich Foundation in Prague (1942–1945) (PDF; 943 kB). Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism, Dresden 2000, p. 54 u. Pp. 63-66.
  7. Schreiber, Carsten: Elite in the Hidden . Munich: R. Oldenbourg 2008, here p. 183
  8. Henning Borggräfe, Sonja Schnitzler: The German Society for Sociology and National Socialism. Transformations within the association after 1933 and after 1945. In: Michaela Christ, Maja Suderland (ed.): Sociology and National Socialism: Positions, Debates, Perspectives. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2014, pp. 445–479, here: p. 462.
  9. ^ New German biography. Berlin 1997, vol. 18. pp. 445-447: Müller, Karl Valentin
  10. ^ Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning (ed.): 50 years of ARL in facts . Hanover: ARL 1996, p. 214.
  11. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. Retrieved January 30, 2015 .
  12. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 421. Deviating illustration: "1948-55 Head of the Institute for Empirical Sociology, Hanover-Bamberg" (Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning: 50 Years of ARL in Facts. Hanover: ARL 1996, p. 214.)