Karl Zimmermann (race theorist)

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Karl Zimmermann (born September 29, 1889 in Zwickau ; † unknown) was a leading National Socialist German racial theorist .

Life

Zimmermann was the son of a railroad engineer. He attended a secondary school in Leipzig , studied in Leipzig natural sciences and philosophy and a doctorate in 1912 on the aesthetics at Jean Paul Dr. phil. In 1915 he volunteered as an interpreter for military service in the First World War , but in 1916 was reclaimed for school service at the Realgymnasium Meissen . In 1926 he became a teacher at the higher girls' school in Zwickau , and after 1933 he also took over as senior director . From 1921 he was a lecturer, from 1924 head of the Leipzig Fichte University , a folk high school .

Zimmermann was considered an “ old fighter ”: in 1921 he joined the German-Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund , in March 1929 the NSDAP , in 1930 the SA , the NS teachers' association and the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur , whose local groups he helped to build up . In 1929 he was elected to the Zwickau city council for the NSDAP, in 1931 he took over the management of the local NSLB group and organized training courses. In the run-up to the city council elections in 1929, Zimmermann welcomed the dismissal of Hildebrand Gurlitt , the city museum director in the König-Albert-Museum , which had been decided for financial reasons , because his purchases had shown him as a “friend of art Bolshevism”. In an article from February 21, 1930 in the Zwickauer Zeitung , Zimmermann continued to incite against modern artists such as Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach , who only came from the "lower racial" part of the people. The art scandal made waves across the country.

In 1934 he became Reich clerk for race issues in the main office for educators at the NSLB in Bayreuth . In addition, he had a teaching position for "Social and Cultural Biology and Racial Education" at the TH Dresden . In 1937 he took over the management of the Hans-Schemm-Oberschule (Steinbachstrasse 21) Radebeul , which is why he had to postpone work in Bayreuth. With Erich Meyer he published the racist biology book for secondary schools, “ Lebenskunde ”, which took up twin research for propaganda purposes.

His most successful book in 1933 was German History as Racial Destiny . The Leipzig historian Karl Hampe was repulsed by this.

In numerous educational articles, he expressed his racist view of history:

“Today we have recognized it as the immortal merit of the Norman Count Gobineau and the German-elect Chamberlain that, in spite of traditional science, they first showed the race as the basis of historical events, yes, that they also said one, the Germanic-Aryan, or we better have proven the Nordic as the most significant cultural and state-building force of the past and the Jewish as a culture and state-destroying force. "

Fonts

  • Jean Paul's Aesthetics of the Ridiculous - Dissertation Leipzig 1912
  • German history as racial fate , Quelle and Meyer, Leipzig 1933 (several editions) ( excerpt in Léon Poliakov : The Third Reich and its Thinkers, p. 418)
  • The spiritual foundations of National Socialism, Leipzig 1933
  • National Socialism, Zoology and New Education , Leipzig 1934

editor

  • Magazine German Monatshefte , Berlin 1924-1930
  • Series The Third Reich. Building blocks for the new state and people, Quelle and Meyer, Leipzig 1933–34
  • Life science. Biology book for high schools , 4 volumes, Erich Stenger, Erfurt 1934–1944

literature

  • Carl Justi : The Zwickauer Scandal , in: Museum der Gegenwart 1, Issue 2, 1930, pp. 48–60.
  • Hans-Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt: Racial hygiene as an educational ideology of the Third Reich: Bio-bibliographical manual. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2006, pp. 203f. u. 498f.
  • Constantin Goschler: Equality as a Nature Experiment . In: C. Goschler, Till Kössler (ed.): Heredity or Environment ?: Inequality between biology and society since 1945, Wallstein, Göttingen 2016, p. 36f, ISBN 978-3-835317055 .

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Gewandhausstraße 11a, no longer available today
  2. ↑ Maurice Philip Remy: The Gurlitt case: The true story of Germany's greatest art scandal . Europe, Berlin 2017.
  3. ↑ Folker Reichert: Learned life: Karl Hampe, the Middle Ages and the history of the Germans. Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 2009, accessed July 21, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Dr. Karl Zimmermann: Racial biology as a basis for a new view of history , in: National Socialist Education, 2nd year 1937, issue 1, January 1937, p. 13.
personal data
SURNAME Zimmermann, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German racial theorist (NSDAP)
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Zwickau
DATE OF DEATH 20th century