Max Hildebert Boehm

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Max Hildebert Boehm (1962)

Max Hildebert Boehm (born March 16, 1891 in Birkenruh near Wenden ( Livonia ); † November 9, 1968 in Lüneburg ) was a German folk politician, sociologist and publicist.

Origin and youth

The Boehms family moved from Wenden to Lorraine in 1902 . His father Maximilian Boehm worked there as a high school teacher. Boehm studied the history of the humanities and art, philosophy and sociology and finished his studies with a dissertation on Johann Gottlieb Fichte .

Political and professional career

During the First World War , Boehm was committed to German cultural propaganda (see Propaganda in the First World War ) and the political “borderland work”. At the same time, he conducted research in connection with topics such as “ Border and German Abroad ” and European nationalities. From 1926, together with the founder of the German Protection Association for Border and Abroad Germans , Karl Christian von Loesch , he headed the Institute for Border and International Studies (IGA) in Berlin-Steglitz , which had emerged from the Office for Nationality and Tribal Problems at the Political College . From 1933 to 1945 he held a professorship for folk theory and ethnicity sociology at the University of Jena , where he also taught nationalities and border studies.

June club and ethnic group politics

In the interwar period, Boehm Ulrich Prehn was one of the "most important representatives of both the 'young conservative' or 'conservative-revolutionary' spectrum and of the so-called ethnic German movement ".

In 1918 Boehm worked under Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter in the " Upper East VIII Press Office " for the German occupiers in Riga . Other employees were Otto von Kursell and Arno Schickedanz .

In 1919 he founded the völkisch-national Juniklub together with Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , Heinrich von Gleichen and Hans Roeseler .

Boehm headed numerous associations and organizations, including the German Society for Nationality Law (formerly: Committee for Minority Law), which also “significantly influenced” the debates on minority, autonomy and “ ethnic group ” rights internationally .

According to Prehn, Boehm was “since the twenties at the latest as one of the decisive producers and accumulators of meaning, interpretation and ideology at the interface between theoretical-conceptual work and political activism on the political right, which argues and agitates primarily with 'ethnic' categories active in Germany ”.

Volkish thinking

Boehm, whose world of thought developed on the basis of the völkisch movement , constructed distinctive dualistic ways of thinking in the field of tension between role models and enemy images . For him, the peoples were the only “true”, powerful historical subjects. " People " and " Volkstum ", " Stamm ", " Landschaft " and " Landsmannschaft " as well as the construct of the "Volks- und Kulturboden" of the geographers Albrecht Penck and Wilhelm Volz were considered by Boehm to be the most important counter-terms to what he called " ideology " mentions modern mass society, civilization and belief in progress , "Westernism", liberalism and individualism as well as all models of a citizen nation .

His book The Independent People (1932), for example, was intended to distinguish it from state theories. According to Prehn, Boehm bases his “theory formation on a multitude of sometimes poorly defined compounds of the term 'people' derived primarily from the political ideas of German Romanticism and the anti-Napoleonic wars of liberation ”.

In addition to terms such as “people's individuality” and “people's personality” and in contrast to the “national” area, in which, according to Boehm, the tension between people and state is located, the following additional derivations, each neatly differentiated from one another, appear in the headings of individual sections of his writings :

  • "People as a species concept: the ethnic",
  • "People as a social structure: the folk-like",
  • "People as an independent being: the people",
  • "People's Being" as well as above
  • "Folkness as an attitude" (Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of the Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud , in: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.) . Völkische Gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 130)

According to Prehn, the German " Volksgemeinschaft " ideology propagated by him and by large parts of the right wing, the German National Movement and the young conservatives was aimed "essentially at smashing the political foundations of Weimar democracy and at revising the post-war European order" . After the fall of the empire, a “nationally responsible” German “national community” was supposed to defy class, class and denominational boundaries and served as a means of propaganda for the “state boycott”.

The formula of corporatism

For him, “ corporatism ” had a special meaning in the context of Boehm's political concepts . On the basis of this corporate state principle, he believed, for example, in an “organic national structure” and a “recovery” of the German people, who saw the “national” rights threatened by the “western civilization cult ” and “massification ”. At the same time, this model served as a model for him for a supranational "principle of order", which was expressed in the demand for "cultural autonomy of nationalities".

According to Boehm's worldview, peoples or “ ethnic groups ”, but not the state, should shape the law. For example, he wrote: "Cultural autonomy and popular law, phenomena from related roots, cannot be granted by the state, only recognized".

anti-Semitism

Like a general supporter of ethnic ideology, Boehm was also a decided anti-Semite. The breed category "blood" was for him z. B. a good means of exclusion to Germanize the occupied eastern territories, because "the term German blood was excellent to set us apart from the Jews."

Radicalization under National Socialism

In all aggressiveness and radicalism Boehm formulated his "anti-assimilationist", ethnopolitical program, in his - according to Prehn - "the offensive justification of the National Socialist 'Jewish policy' of 1933 in the young conservative magazine ' Der Ring ' of April 28, 1933."

During the time of National Socialism , Boehm, as a “ prompter of power” (van Laak), “as an expert and political advisor in the field of 'folk politics' and nationality law, among other things in various committees of the Academy for German Law , propagated the consistent' dissimilation 'of' ethnic groups '".

In December 1944, “at a working meeting of the Reich Ministry of Economics on sociological issues and tasks, convened by the SD / SS intellectuals Otto Ohlendorf and Reinhard Höhn , ” according to Prehn, he “campaigned for the responsible men in German economic management and planning if they confronted the “economic exponents ” of the “ foreign peoples ”, they should be equipped ”. Boehm said literally:

“(...) with a certain tool of people's psychology , very practical in the sense that they know what effect the structural concepts of our people's order have without them being forced on other peoples in the course of this responsible planning etc. If we want to lead, one will have to be content with a minimum of impositions [,] and if one wants to do so, one must have a certain idea of ​​what the popular order of the other peoples looks like [,] and also a certain idea of ​​the national one Conditionality of our own people's order. "

After 1945

In October 1945 Boehm was dismissed from the public service . He moved from the Soviet zone of occupation to the British zone , but was unable to re-establish himself academically. In 1951 he founded the later state-sponsored "North-East German Academy" in Lüneburg . It was later renamed the "East German Academy" or " East Academy ".

In the Soviet occupation zone, the following writings by Boehm were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out:

  • What we need (Kulturliga, Berlin 1919).
  • The betrayal of the East and the endangered Prussia (sales office for political writings, Berlin 1921).
  • Call of the Young (Urban-Verlag, Freiburg 1933).
  • The German borderlands ( Hobbing , Berlin 1930).
  • The citizen in the crossfire ( Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1933).
  • Volksdeutsche demands for university renewal ( Kohlhammer , Stuttgart 1933).
  • January 18 and the other Germans ( Fischer , Jena 1934).
  • Popular theory as political science (Frommann, Jena 1934).
  • The crisis of nationality law (Frommann, Jena 1935).
  • Popular theory and national politics of the present ( Junker and Dünnhaupt , Berlin 1935).
  • ABC der Volkstumskunde (Volk und Heimat Verlag, Potsdam 1936).
  • Folklore ( Weidmann , Berlin 1937).
  • Ethnic change and assimilation policy (Frommann, Jena 1938).
  • German-Austria wanderings and homecoming ( Essener Verlagsanstalt , Essen 1939) as well
  • The Liberated East, published by Boehm together with Karl Christian von Loesch (German book sales office Hofmeier, Berlin 1940).

In the German Democratic Republic , this list was followed by Boehm's writings

Up until the 1960s, Boehm's areas of work were mainly in refugee, displaced persons and Germany policy .

After the end of the war, Boehm continued to develop his always pragmatic political concepts in the refugee policy discourse. Together with other former employees like Eugen Lemberg , he began “ semantic conversion work” in order to be able to tie in with his earlier designs. The “sometimes content-related and conceptual conversions”, Prehn says, “on closer inspection often often hardly any more” “as relabelling, adaptations and rather slight, superficial transformations of 'old' designs from the 1920s / 30s”.

An intensive historical-political phase of revision and, above all, offsetting with expulsions and forced resettlements as well as the flight of the Germans from the German eastern regions, which were now considered lost in the long term, began .

Impact history

In retrospect, Ulrich Prehn, Samuel Salzborn and Axel Schildt, in particular, point to the sustainability of the concepts and constructions with which he and other right-wing intellectuals such as Hermann Raschhofer shaped the ethno and regulatory discourses in Germany up to the 1960s.

Honors

Fonts

  • The independent people. Popular theoretical foundations of ethnopolitics and the humanities , Göttingen 1932
  • The independent people. Introduction to the elements of a European sociology of nations. Göttingen 1932
  • (Ed. Together with Karl Christian von Loesch ): Deutsches Grenzland. Yearbook of the Institute for Border and Foreign Studies 1935 , Kurt Hofmeier, Berlin 1935
  • (Ed. Together with Karl Christian von Loesch): The liberated east , Dt. Book sales office Hofmeier, Berlin 1940

literature

  • Jürgen Elvert : Max Hildebert Boehm , in: Michael Fahlbusch , Ingo Haar , Alexander Pinwinkler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften. Actors, networks, research programs . With the collaboration of David Hamann, Vol. 1, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-042989-3 , pp. 66–70.
  • 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, ISBN 978-3-531-91514-2 , pp. 345–361.
  • Dirk van Laak : "After the storm you hit the barometer ..." Right-wing intellectual reactions to the end of the "Third Reich" . In: Werkstatt Geschichte 17, 1997
  • Ulrich Prehn: Max Hildebert Boehm. Radical orderly thinking from the First World War to the Federal Republic. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1304-0
  • Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a “Europe of Nations” in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud . In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.): Völkische Bande. Decadence and rebirth. Analysis of right-wing ideology . Unrast, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-737-9 , pp. 123–157.
  • Ulrich Prehn: On the thin line between science and politics: Max Hildebert Boehm and the founding history of the (North) East German Academy . In: Deutsche Studien 39, 2003/2004, H. 149, pp. 27–51.
  • Samuel Salzborn: Fight against the Enlightenment. The ethno-cultural concept of ethnic group politics . In: Forum Wissenschaft 1/2003
  • Eyk Ueberschär: Young conservative notions of a nationality law in Max Hildebert Boehm. Series Scientific Contributions of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Conservatism Research Issue 2, 1990.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The following is a reference and quotation from Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 126.
  2. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 125.
  3. ^ A b Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist, Munich 2005, p. 62.
  4. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 126.
  5. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 130.
  6. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 131.
  7. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 132.
  8. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 132.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of peoples' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 135.
  10. ↑ Carola Dietze, Nachgeholtes Leben: Helmuth Plessner 1892–1985, Göttingen 2006, p. 410.
  11. ^ 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". Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 345–361, here: p. 349.
  12. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 137.
  13. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 137.
  14. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 138.
  15. ↑ Quoted in Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 139.
  16. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 127.
  17. ^ Lists from 1946 ( b , o ) and 1948 on polunbi.de.
  18. ^ Lists from 1953: f and b .
  19. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 128.
  20. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: p. 140.
  21. ↑ Ulrich Prehn: The changing faces of a 'Europe of Nations' in the 20th century. Ethno-political ideas with Max Hildebert Boehm, Eugen Lemberg and Guy Héraud. In: Heiko Kauffmann, Helmut Kellershohn, Jobst Paul (eds.). Ethnic gang. Decadence and Rebirth - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Münster 2005, pp. 123–157, here: pp. 140 f.
personal data
SURNAME Boehm, Max Hildebert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hugin (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German national politician and sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Birkenruh in Cesis / Cesis in Livonia
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1968
Place of death Luneburg