Kurt Lück

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Kurt Lück, approx. 1938

Kurt Lück (born December 28, 1900 in Kolmar , Posen Province ; † March 5, 1942 near Orscha , Belarusian Socialist Soviet Republic ) was a German folklorist , minority activist in Poland and SS-Obersturmbannführer .

Life

After completing his notabitur in 1918, he took part in the battles of German and Polish associations for the town of Schneidemühl . A year later he left Poland and studied Slavic , English and German at the University of Wroclaw . He completed his studies in 1924 with a dissertation on farmers in the Polish novel of the 19th century. He then returned to Poland to temporarily work as a translator. Lück became increasingly involved within the German minority organizations secretly financed by the German Reich during the Weimar Republic . After completing a second degree in economics at the University of Poznan , he tried to build up powerful German cooperative organizations in Lutsk in Volhynia .

After 1934 he took on important functions within the German minority in Greater Poland , including as managing director of the Historical Society for Posen and as editor of the German monthly magazine in Poland . He also acted as a shop steward for Reich German organizations, including a member of the Northeast German Research Association . The Polish authorities arrested him several times for his activities, the last time shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939. After the German invasion of Poland , Lück became a member of the Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz , which actively participated in the persecution and murder of the Polish intelligentsia .

From November 1939, Lück regularly wrote political leading articles in the East German Observer , the central organ of the NSDAP in Wartheland . As head of the so-called grave center, he also documented the persecution of ethnic Germans by Poles and contributed to the propagandistic increase in the number of victims. As SS-Hauptsturmführer and member of the NSDAP (since autumn 1941, backdated to December 1940) Lück played an active part in the resettlement of the German minorities from Eastern Europe to the Wartheland.

A connection to Reinhard Heydrich's SD is suspected, but has not yet been proven. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, the " thoroughly reliable Nazi historian " (Michael Burleigh) volunteered for the Wehrmacht . In March 1942 he was shot as a special leader by Soviet partisans during a "cleanup" in the central section of the Eastern Front . In his scientific work, Lück combined historical and folklore aspects with active field research. He included Polish works in his studies, but not without emphasizing German cultural hegemony at all times. The wealth of material in the works undoubtedly makes them useful as a collection of sources to this day; however, the ethnic-national approach should always be taken into account.

Kurt Lück presented in a detailed work in 1934 the "maximum" extent of German settlement in the Polish Carpathians in the 15th century. His criteria were very broad and tendentious and should therefore be assessed critically. For example, a single surname of the resident Jakób Kielb was enough for him to designate the village Rogóżno near Łańcut as German.

Fonts

  • The German settlements in the Cholmer and Lublin Lands . Plauen 1933.
  • German construction workers in the development of Poland . Research on the German-Polish neighborhood in Eastern Central Europe, Plauen 1934.
  • The Myth of the German in Polish Folk Tradition and Literature . East German Research Vol. 7. Posen 1938, 2nd edition 1943.
  • The struggle for life in the German-Polish border area . Berlin 1940 (= series of publications of the NSDAP, group VII, vol. 4).
  • Volksdeutsche soldiers under Poland's flags. Fact reports from the other front from the campaign of the 18 days . Berlin 1940.
  • German designers and folders in the east . Poznan 1940, 2nd edition 1943.
  • with Viktor Kauder : German-Polish neighborhood. Life pictures of German helpers in Poland. Publications of the Göttingen working group, 178. Holzner Verlag, Würzburg 1957.

literature

  • Richard Breyer:  Luck, Kurt. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 446 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Michael Burleigh : Germany Turns Eastwards. A Study of “Ostforschung” in the Third Reich. Cambridge 1988.
  • Michael Fahlbusch : Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics . Baden-Baden 1999.
  • Hans-Werner Rautenberg: The historiographical work of Kurt Lück. In: Between Confrontation and Compromise. Munich 1995, pp. 95-107.
  • Jan Zimmermann: The FVS Foundation's Culture Awards 1935–1945. Presentation and documentation . Edited by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation FVS, Hamburg 2000.

Web links

Wikisource: Kurt Lück  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christoph Klessmann : September 1939. War, occupation, resistance in Poland. Eight posts. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989, p. 69.
  2. ↑ German settlement of Malopolska and Rotreussens in the 15th century . Edited u. drawn by Kurt Lück, 1934.
  3. ^ Wojciech Blajer: Uwagi o stanie badań nad enklawami średniowiecznego osadnictwa niemieckiego między Wisłoką i Sanem [comments on the state of research on the enclaves of medieval German settlement between Wisłoka and San]. In: Późne średniowiecze w Karpatach polskich. Rzeszów 2007, pp. 64–65.
personal data
SURNAME Luck, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German folklorist and minority activist in Poland
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Kolmar , Poznan Province
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1942
Place of death near Orsza , Belarusian SSR