Ludwig Wilser

Ludwig Wilser (born October 5, 1850 in Karlsruhe , † November 19, 1923 ) was a German doctor, ethnic writer and race historian . He should not be confused with the geologist Julius Ludwig Wilser (1888–1949).

Live and act

During his studies, which he completed with a doctorate to become Dr. med. ended, Wilser became a member of the Allemannia Heidelberg fraternity in 1869 . After studying in Freiburg , Heidelberg and Leipzig , Wilser practiced as a doctor in Karlsruhe until 1897, then moved to Heidelberg, where he worked as a private scholar.

Between 1886 and 1894, Wilser Otto Ammon assisted in measuring the shape of the skull ( craniometry ) of conscripts from Baden , for which the government made 12,000 marks available. He is said to have always measured the skull a little higher and longer.

Later, Wilser, who was a member of the general board of the Pan-German Association , got in touch with Heinrich Claß , who was then active on the executive committee, and confirmed this in his inclusion of ethnic racism in Pan-German nationalism.

Wilser developed a lively activity as an author and speaker in anthropological circles (where he saw himself in the tradition of Alexander Ecker ) as well as in prehistory, which was still to be established . He was particularly concerned with questions about the origin of peoples and races. B. in his books The Origin of the Germans (1885) - in which he advocated the thesis that Scandinavia was the original home of the Germanic peoples and the Indo-Europeans -, family tree and expansion of the Germanic peoples (1895) and origin and prehistory of the Aryans (1899). The thesis that not Central Europe, but Scandinavia or the Baltic Sea region is the starting area of ​​the Germanic language (s), was up to this point only represented by a minority of prehistorians. The influential prehistorian Gustaf Kossinna also initially contradicted Wilser on this point, but in the years that followed turned around, which helped Wilser's theory to break through.

Later (1909) he developed the social Darwinist thesis of the "Nordic hearth of creation", according to which the inhospitable living conditions in the Scandinavian-Arctic regions had produced the strongest Germanic race through natural selection, and thus vested in world domination. As an advocate of the ex-septentrione-lux theory, Wilser successfully fought against the supporters of the ex-oriente-lux theory among the ethnic groups and postulated southern Sweden as the “workshop of the peoples” and the starting point for all “ Aryan migrations”, most recently the Teutons.

Wilser et al., Who was contentious in matters of race, experienced sharp public criticism and rejection. a. by Rudolf Virchow , Hermann Klaatsch , Paul Ehrenreich , Otto Hupp , Eugen Mogk and initially also Gustaf Kossinna , which, however, did not detract from his popularity. He received praise and a. by Hans Wolfgang Behm and Karl Felix Wolff as well as often in völkisch periodicals such as Heimdall , Alldeutsche Blätter and the Politisch-Anthropologische Revue , for which Wilser, as a friend of the publisher Ludwig Woltmann , wrote articles since its publication in 1902 and this also after Woltmann's death in 1907 and the takeover of the magazine (from 1915 political-anthropological monthly for practical politics, for political education and upbringing on a biological basis ) by Otto Schmidt-Gibichenfels in 1911 and the takeover by the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund in 1920.

The federal management of the Schutz- und Trutzbund also included Wilse's writings in 1920 in the guidelines for the creation of the local group libraries, where they - in addition to works by Gobineau , Chamberlain , Woltmann, Pastor and Kossinna - were intended for instruction in "race and ethnicity issues" . Wilser also experienced a positive reception from the folk journalist Bruno Tanzmann , who wanted him to be a teacher for the “Germanic race” in his memorandum on the establishment of a German adult education center (1917), the “Volksbund” founder Paul Hartig , who was guided by his concept of race , and Karl Ludwig Schemann , who paid tribute to him as part of his Gobineau reception.

A particular bestseller was his book Germanien (1915, five editions until 1923), a translation of Tacitus' Germania , which he dedicated to the "memory of Otto von Bismarck " and which, according to his own statements, was intended to "strengthen German consciousness". In the foreword Wilser praises “the Germans” as direct descendants of the Germanic peoples. The swastika , which was published by Richard Jubelt in 1917 by Sis Verlag and had seven editions by 1933 (including the Hammer Verlag by Theodor Fritsch ), sold even better by origin, occurrence and meaning . In 1933 Rudolf von Sebottendorf claimed that “[e] it was only through the research of Wilser [...] that the symbol [i. e. the swastika ] was recognized as a common Aryan sun sign and since then it has been worn as a national symbol ” and called it an “ enlightener in the German sense ” .

Wilson's books The Superiority of the Germanic Race (Stuttgart: Strecker & Schröder 1915) and The Swastika According to Origin, Occurrence and Meaning (Leipzig: Fritsch 1933) were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone and in the GDR after the end of the war .

Ludwig Wilser is one of the authors of the late Wilhelmine Empire who played a decisive role in promoting a racially based German nationalism . Although he did not belong to the National Socialist movement that emerged around 1918 or could no longer belong to it after he died in 1923, he is one of its influential thought leaders. His ideas are now considered outdated or refuted in almost all areas. However, the theory that goes back to Wilser, that Scandinavia was the original home of the Germanic peoples, remains unchanged , although archaeological evidence of an expansion movement from Scandinavia to Central Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages is still missing today.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ludwig Wilser in the catalog of the German National Library

References and literature

1. ^ Place of birth after Wilhelm E. Oeftering: History of literature in Baden: A demolition . P. 206.
2. ^ Hugo Böttger (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1911/12. Berlin 1912, p. 223.
3. ↑ Marga Maria Burkhardt: Sick in the head: patient stories of the sanatorium and nursing home Illenau 1842–1889 , University of Freiburg 2004, p. 62f.
4. ↑ Walter Jung: Ideological requirements, contents and goals of foreign policy programs and propaganda in the German national movement in the early years of the Weimar Republic: the example of the German national protection and defensive association . University of Göttingen 2000, p. 55.
5. ↑ Michael Hau: "Body formation and social habitus. Social meanings of corporeality during the Empire and the Weimar Republic ”, in: Rüdiger vom Bruch and Brigitte Kaderas (eds.): Sciences and Science Policy : Inventories of Formations, Breaks and Continuities in Germany in the 20th Century , Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, p 133. ISBN 3-515-08111-9 .
6. ↑ Gretchen Engle Creates: From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich . University of Illinois Press, Urbana & Chicago 2004, p. 44. ISBN 0-252-02930-5 .
7. ↑ Ingo Wiwjorra: "The German research on prehistory and its relationship to National Socialism and Racism", in: Uwe Puschner (Ed.): Handbook on the "Völkische Movement" 1871-1918 . Saur, Munich a. a. 1996, p. 194. ISBN 3-598-11241-6 .
8. ↑ Uwe Lohalm: Völkischer Radikalismus: The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923 . Leibniz-Verlag, Hamburg 1970, p. 36. ISBN 3-87473-000-X .
9. ↑ Wolfram Euler , Konrad Badenheuer : Language and Origin of the Germanic Peoples - Abstract of Proto-Germanic Before the First Sound Shift , 244 pp., ISBN 978-3-9812110-1-6 , London / Hamburg 2009, p. 45.
10. ↑ Wiwjorra in Puschner 1996, pp. 195f.
11. ↑ Uwe Puschner : “ The German ideology in the context of the völkisch Weltanschauung (PDF; 128 kB)”, in: Göttinger Forum für Altertumswwissenschaft 4 (2001), p. 95.
12. ↑ ^{a b} Wiwjorra in Puschner 1996, p. 196.
13. ↑ Jung 2000, p. 58, note 372.
14. ↑ Wolfgang Weber: "Völkische Tendenzen in der Geschichtswwissenschaft", in: Puschner 1996, p. 851.
15. ↑ Wiwjorra in Puschner 1996 S. 197th
16. ↑ Jung 2000, p. 56f.
17. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 129.
18. ↑ Justus H. Ulbricht: “Völkische Adult Education. Intentions, programs and institutions between the turn of the century and the Weimar Republic ”, in: Puschner 1996, p. 268.
19. ↑ Ulbricht 1996, p. 296.
20. ↑ Hildegard Châtellier: "Wagnerism in the Imperial Era", in: Puschner 1996, p. 599.
21. ^ Rudolf von Sebottendorf: Before Hitler came . Deukula-Verlag Grassinger & Co., Munich 1933, pp. 240, 263.
22. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-w.html
23. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-w.html
24. ↑ Wolfram Euler , Konrad Badenheuer: Language and Origin of the Germanic Peoples - Abriss des Proto-Germanic before the First Sound Shift , 244 pp., ISBN 978-3-9812110-1-6 , London / Hamburg 2009, pp. 43–47.