Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany

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The Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany was an institution of the NSDAP . One of the main tasks was to deal with the " Jewish question ". This made it an instrument of Nazi propaganda .

history

The Institute was at the instigation of the Nazi historian Walter Frank and adoption of Bernhard Rust from the Minister for Education, Training and Education was founded on October 4, 1935 with retroactive effect from July 1, 1935, and was based in Berlin . The institute was supposed to replace the Historical Reich Commission founded by Friedrich Meinecke in 1928 .

It was officially founded on October 19, 1935 with a ceremony at Berlin University in the presence of Rudolf Hess , Alfred Rosenberg , Baldur von Schirach and Wilhelm Stuckart . After Harm Peer Zimmermann, Frank strove for a clearing and censorship office for the supervision, alignment and coordination of all historical research.

Walter Frank was appointed president of the institute and Gerhard Schröder took over the management of the institute as a whole .

As a branch of the Reich Institute, the Research Department on Jewish Issues was officially founded at the University of Munich on November 19, 1936 , headed by Wilhelm Grau as managing director. This research department was subordinate to the Reich Ministry of Science. The most famous members were the race researchers Eugen Fischer , Hans FK Günther and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer . Explicitly National Socialist and National Conservative historians such as Johannes Grandinger , Erich Botzenhart and Hermann Kellenbenz were represented. In addition, theologians such as Gerhard Kittel from Tübingen . The genealogist Friedrich W. Euler was one of the close collaborators.

At the end of 1941, Karl Richard Ganzer succeeded Frank as acting president of the institute. After his death, Erich Botzenhart followed him until 1945.

In 1939, Frank dismissed the managing director Grau because he was acting too arbitrarily. When Grau found a job at the Frankfurt Institute for Research into the Jewish Question , where the sponsor Alfred Rosenberg even appointed him director of his own branch, a power struggle broke out between the two institutions over the claim to leadership on the “Jewish question”.

The Reichsinstitut had three main research areas: the first dealt with “Political Leadership in World War I”, the second with “Postwar”, and the third was called “Research Department Jewish Question”, from April 1938 “Main Office for Jewish Question”. The weighting of the focal points and the tasks within the individual areas shifted parallel to the course of the war. Thus, when war broke out against England, the Reich Institute began to publish anti-Jewish articles against English Jews. Until the fall of Benito Mussolini , research on Italian bloodlines in Germany was one of the institute's tasks. This was to document the positive assimilation of the Jews. After Mussolini's fall, work was stopped immediately.

The first tasks Frank took up were to secure post-war documents on the subject of Jews. For this purpose, the institute was officially allowed to forcefully requisition library and archive material. For example, data on Jewish baptism and mixed marriages were collected.

From around 1942, the photographic recording of Jewish cemeteries began, as the prevailing view was that Judaism would be completely wiped out in Europe.

To achieve the goal of a national community , z. For example, in a competition, a prize money of 400 Reichsmarks was offered for the best article on the subject of court Jews in Austria .

The institute was dissolved in 1945.

Task

The task laid down in the statutes of the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany was to “research and present recent German history, especially in the period between the French Revolution and the National Socialist Revolution”.

Ultimately, the institute served to provide the National Socialist government with justification for its anti-Jewish policy. The scientists obtained pseudoscientific material to explain anti-Semitism . Politics used science to "clarify" the question of who a Jew is. The Reich Institute became the center of anti-Jewish German historiography.

Through its publications, the Institute for the National Socialist Party fulfilled the claim of being able to present verifiable scientific facts for their political behavior. Here, there was close cooperation with the Foreign Office , where even secret information was exchanged by consulates and secret services . Not only professional journals , but also the daily press and radio were used to publish the work . Even exhibitions and films like " The Eternal Jew " served to explain the necessity of racial legislation .

Authors of the research series on the Jewish question

In addition to the aforementioned, in the research on the Jewish question published until 1944 :

literature

  • Helmut Heiber : Walter Frank and his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany (= sources and presentations on contemporary history 13, ISSN  0481-3545 ). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1966.
  • Karl Christian Lammers : The "Jewish Studies" in the National Socialist Third Reich. Reflections on the “Research Department of the Jewish Question” in Walter Frank's “Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany” and the research by Tübingen professors on the “Jewish Question”. In: Freddy Raphaël (Hrsg.): “… The whispering of a soft waving…” Contributions to the culture and world of European Jews. Festschrift for Utz Jeggle . UVK-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Konstanz 2001, ISBN 3-89669-810-9 , pp. 369-391.
  • Patricia von Papen: Schützenhilfe of National Socialist Jewish Policy. The “Jewish Research” of the “Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany” 1935–1945. In: "Elimination of Jewish Influence ...": Anti-Semitic Research, Elites and Careers under National Socialism. (= Yearbook on the History and Effects of the Holocaust . 1998/99), ISSN  1432-5535 , pp. 17–42.
  • Patricia von Papen-Bodek: Research on Jews and the persecution of Jews. The habilitation of the director of the research department Jewish question, Wilhelm Grau, at the University of Munich in 1937 . In: Elisabeth Kraus (Ed.): The University of Munich in the Third Reich . Essays. Part 2, Munich 2008, pp. 209–264.
  • Sebastian Pella: The war contribution of the “Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany” - “Jewish research” in the service of “fighting science”. Photographs and documents from the estate of FW Euler . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , 58, 2010, pp. 900–923. ( Online )
  • Dirk Rupnow : Race and Spirit. Anti-Jewish science, definitions and diagnoses of the “Jewish” in the Third Reich . In: zeitgeschichte 2007, issue 1, pp. 4–24.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Fahlbusch, Ingo Haar, Alexander Pinwinkler, Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften: Actors, Networks, Research Programs , Walter de Gruyter 2017, p. 1375.
  2. ↑ Dirk Rupnow, Research on Jews in the Third Reich: Science between Politics, Propaganda and Ideology , Nomos Verlag 2011, p. 67.
  3. ^ Harm-Peer Zimmermann : From the sleep of reason. German Folklore at Kiel University 1933-1945. In: Hans-Werner Prahl (Ed.): Uni-Formierung des Geistes. University of Kiel under National Socialism. Vol. 1, Kiel 1995, ISBN 3-89029-967-9 , p. 176.
  4. ↑ Werner Schochow, German-Jewish History: A History of Their Forms of Organization with Special Consideration of the Specialized Bibliography , Colloquium Verlag 1969, p. 160.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 174.
  6. ↑ Dirk Rupnow, Vernichten und Erinnern: Traces of nationalistic memory politics , Wallstein Verlag 2005, p. 140.
  7. ↑ See Max Weinreich : Hitler's Professors . (1946), new edition, Yale University Press , New Haven 1999 ISBN 9780300053876 , pp. 56f.