Völkisch
Völkisch is an adjective that is derived from Volk . Since the end of the 19th century, the term has been important in everyday language, the media and politics, especially during the Nazi era . From the middle of the 20th century, the word was used less there, but has recently been increasingly used again to describe them since the rise of völkisch-national movements in Germany and Austria . The term was adopted as a loan word in English.
Völkisch , in its modern variant, transports a racist concept of the people, which in particular also includes anti-Semitism . In the German-speaking countries it was adopted as a self-designation by the völkisch movement and became a key concept of völkisch nationalism . Individual, formerly leading politicians of the AfD also spoke out in favor of rehabilitating the term völkisch .
Away from right-wing populist and right-wing extremist circles is ethnically negative connotations . The suffix -isch contains Günter Hartung According to a pejorative component as -lich in national terms does not contain (see. Childish - childish ).
To the history of origin
The adjective völkisch is an old and for a long time seldom used derivation of people , in the historically broad meaning of this word from "war people" to the collective term for socially defined groups of people ("common people", "lower classes" or "majority of the population" in distinction) to the "ruling classes") to the ethnic filling (" We are one people "), as it arose in response to the French Revolution in Germany in the 19th century and is associated with names such as Friedrich Ludwig Jahn , Ernst Moritz Arndt and Johann Gottlieb Fichte , who used völkisch as an explanation for German as early as 1811 . In 1875, Hermann von Pfister suggested using the term völkisch as a German for national .
Empire
Since the founding of the empire , the meaning of the term in media, political, scientific and everyday use has narrowed considerably. At the same time, its use expanded greatly. 1875 was the linguist Hermann von Pfister-Schwaig Husen (1836-1916), fought the "foreign" for cleaning up the German language and culture of influences, ethnic as a substitute word for the coming from the Latin national proposed. In this sense (e.g. regarding nationality law), völkisch was used in academic publications in the interwar period.
The narrowing or redefinition of the term can be traced back to the increasing importance of the nationalist milieu and its media and political representatives such as the Pan-German and conservative parties in the German-speaking area since the last decades of the 19th century . Since around 1880 a "völkisch 'racial anti-Semitism'" was virulent in the German-speaking area, which culminated in violent anti-Semitic campaigns in the 1880s. Anti-Semitic and racist tendencies began to "merge". In his main work principles of the nineteenth century , the author interprets Houston Stewart Chamberlain , the ancient Greece with its significance for philosophy and art, Rome as the founder of the law and the imperial idea and the Jews in völkischem sense new. The ancient Greeks and Romans are equated with the Germans or the world-ruling "Aryan race", to which the Jews are compared as a negative counter-image.
The anti-Semitic Pan-German Association successfully propagated and organized a “Pan-Germanic-Völkisch nationalism”. This included the creation of a homogeneous, nationally, politically and “racially” uniform “ people's community ” that would overcome the market class society of the imperial era , that is, a “people” as a hereditary-biological mystified “blood community” and as a kinship association. The widespread, politically instrumentalized anti-Semitism as an outlet for class antagonisms and this völkisch conception of nationalism were linked. Jews and other ethnic, “racially” defined minorities fell out of the ethnic definition of community per se. Another, closely related component as early as the 19th century was the social Darwinist concept of the “struggle for existence” of ethnic-racial collectives.
A concept became suitable for the masses which, in retrospect, showed “clearly pre-fascist features”.
With the growing spread as a conscious self-description and self-designation, the pejorative appeal was lost.
The emergence of the modern category völkisch from the peculiarities of German history in modern times also means that it is difficult or impossible to translate the word into other languages, such as English.
Weimar Republic
The previously neutral meaning was completely lost as a result of the new connection with, as one of the theorists put it, “primarily race-theoretical politics and worldview”. As early as 1926, the State Encyclopedia described the völkisch circles as those who would declare Judaism and nationalism (“national sentiment”) to be incompatible and wanted to see Jews excluded “everywhere”, and explicitly referred to the National Socialist-Völkisch “national concept”, the “Volkstum “Under the influence of the racial ideologues Gobineau and Chamberlain understand and use more racially than culturally. Even non-National Socialist circles such as the George Circle , to which personalities such as the emigrated Ernst Kantorowicz belonged, cultivated “ethnic” ideas.
At the latest by the end of the 1920s, “völkisch” was firmly established in this understanding and had an ideological key concept of the integration function across the entire nationalist spectrum and in particular enabled the integration of anti-Semitism and racism. For example, the party organ of the NSDAP, which has been published since 1920, was given the title “ Völkischer Beobachter ”.
This more recent conceptual history of "völkisch" is part of the prehistory of National Socialism, because the NSDAP saw itself as a constant within a larger völkisch movement as early as the Weimar years . Among the multitude of ethnic actors, the NSDAP emerged as the strongest German-ethnic force. Under National Socialism , the ideological concept could be converted into a violent practice without having to find “essentially new things”.
National Socialism
Although Adolf Hitler used the word völkisch frequently in 1919/20 , it was missing from the NSDAP's 25-point program . In Mein Kampf and in other utterances of the 1920s, he explicitly spoke out against the collective term völkisch , as it was too vague and offered “no yardstick for belonging” to a movement. Nevertheless, he continued to use it himself repeatedly, for example as an antonym to international . The National Socialist demarcation from the rest of the Volkish movement also shows Joseph Goebbels ' diary entry from January 8, 1925, that Volkisch and National Socialist are "two things that are opposed to each other like fire and water". In the time of National Socialism from 1933 onwards, völkisch or Deutschvölkisch was often used synonymously with National Socialist , the word was part of the regime's vocabulary: The Volks-Brockhaus defined it in its 1940 edition as "national with emphasis on the values of race and ethnicity" . The ethnic-racial variant of anti-Semitism to other European fascisms was a distinguishing feature .
Despite the Nazis' vague attempts at demarcation, the NSDAP's party newspaper appeared unchanged under the name Völkisch he Observer as a combat paper from December 1920 (almost 10 months after the founding program announced by Hitler) to April 30, 1945 (the anniversary of Hitler's death) .
The term völkisch was contrasted with alien ethnic groups with the same ideological basis . “ Aliens ” population groups therefore represented a danger for the national community, which had to be separated from them. It is true that “foreign national” labor was to be used, but its supporters formed groups of inferior rights or had no rights. For an invention to Nazi language creator is also at fremdvölkisch not. The racial ideologist Hans FK Günther used the term in Kleine Rassenkunde of the German people before 1933 and was able to refer to the leader of the Pan-Germans Heinrich Claß and his bestseller If I were the Kaiser . As early as 1912, Claß advocated “foreign nationals” as workers in the German Reich.
present
In the post-war period, the term continued to mean "(ethno) national, ethnic" for several decades, especially in the context of ethnic minorities in Eastern and Central Europe.
The sociologist Friedrich Heckmann declared in 1992 that the word had a burdened history and was therefore “no longer usable”. Today it can only be found in historical use and to describe today's nationalistic phenomena in society and politics such as the weekly Junge Freiheit or political formations such as the NPD . In 2016, Frauke Petry , former chairwoman of the right-wing populist AfD party , declared that the term “positive again” had to be used and that equating “völkisch is racist” was an inadmissible shortening. It is just the "associated attribute of people". Numerous media voices referred the spokeswoman to the Duden ( folk- like equals "National Socialist, in the racist ideology of National Socialism"). In addition to Petry, Björn Höcke and André Poggenburg (both from the right wing of the AfD, Poggenburg party Awakening German Patriots since January 2019 ) tried to rehabilitate the words völkisch and Volksgemeinschaft . In the opinion of the political scientist Hajo Funke , they use them differently than the National Socialists did, but they are concerned with an ethnocentric narrowing of the concept of the people: Höcke regards people who do not correspond to it as “foreigners”, and their immigration as a threat to identity and national homogeneity of Germany. In doing so, he is not only turning against the refugees , but also against the current constitution of Germany , to which such a narrow popular term is alien. This "paranoia of national marginalization" distinguishes Höcke's criticism of the federal government's refugee policy from that of democratic politicians, which is not based on racism but on "practical (material, logistical or security-political) issues".
The historical homeland movements as places of "ethnic ideology"
Völkisch concepts and representatives of ethnic ideology were of major importance, both for the nationwide regional homeland movements and for the Lower German movement , which was independently established in northern Germany , beyond the end of National Socialism. After 1918 at the latest, one can speak of a “nationalist radicalized home movement”. National Socialism and the Heimat movement combined a “mutual national disposition”. The concept of “ Heimatkunst ” of the 1920s, closely linked to ideas of “Heimatschutz” and “Heimatbewegung”, was a national concept. It goes back very much to the avowed anti-Semite Adolf Bartels . “The völkisch thought”, he declared in a program in 1923, was “German worldview”. The aim of the völkisch idea, which one could meet for the first time among the personalities "Fichte, Arndt, Jahn etc." - who were revered in völkisch circles not least as anti-Semites -, therefore also the aim of a folkish "Heimatkunst" and "Heimat movement", is the " German rebirth ”beyond the Weimar constitutional state .
Also fremdvölkisch survived Nazism and was initially continue in use. The term has now almost disappeared from everyday language.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ All information according to Günter Hartung: Völkische Ideologie. In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Munich u. a. 1996, pp. 22-41, here p. 23.
- ↑ Heiko Steuer: The “völkisch” Germanic in German prehistory and early history research. In: Heinrich Beck u. a. (Ed.): On the history of the equation "Germanic-German". Language and names, history and institutions. Berlin 2004, pp. 357–502, here pp. 375 and 387.
- ^ Völkisch Movement and Ideology. In: Richard S. Levy : Antisemitism. A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. Volume 1, Santa Barbara 2005, pp. 743-744, here p. 743.
- ↑ Martin Dachselt: The legal relationships of the foreign minorities in Germany. In: Archives for Politics and History. Volume 6, No. 1, 1926, pp. 317–352, here p. 321: “The language issue with regard to the ethnic minorities was settled differently by the individual German states, partly by legal means, see above […]”, or p . 329: "As for the protection of the ethnic character of the Poles in East Prussia and the Grenzmark, [...]."
- ^ Günter Hartung: Völkische Ideologie. In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Munich u. a. 1996, pp. 22-41, here p. 28.
- ↑ Johann Chapoutot : From Humanism to Nazism: Antiquity in the work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain , Section 4. Online
- ↑ Wolfgang Kruse: Nation and Nationalism. In: Dossier "The German Empire". on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education , September 27, 2012; Hans-Ulrich Thamer : Volksgemeinschaft: Mensch und Masse. In: Richard van Dülmen (Hrsg.): Invention of humans. Dreams of Creation and Body Images 1500–2000. Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1998, pp. 367–386; Hans-Ulrich Thamer: Nation as a national community. Völkisch ideas, National Socialism and community ideology. In: Jörg-Dieter Gauger, Klaus Weigelt (Hrsg.): Social thinking in Germany between tradition and innovation. Bonn 1990, pp. 112-128.
- ↑ Hellmuth Auerbach: Völkische movement. In: Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml , Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Stuttgart 1998, p. 784.
- ↑ Wolfgang Kruse: Nation and Nationalism. In: Dossier "The German Empire". on the website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, September 27, 2012.
- ↑ Helmut Zander : Social Darwinist race theories from the occult underground of the empire. In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Munich u. a. 1996, pp. 224-250, here p. 244.
- ^ So Max Hildebert Boehm , 1932, cited above. after Günter Hartung: Völkische Ideologie. In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Munich u. a. 1996, pp. 22-41, here p. 24.
- ↑ Hermann Sacher (Ed.): Staatslexikon. Freiburg im Breisgau 1926, cit. according to haGalil.com .
- ↑ Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht: Handbook on the "Völkische Movement" 1871-1918 . Walter de Gruyter, 1996, ISBN 3-11-096424-4 ( google.de [accessed on February 4, 2018]).
- ↑ Marina Schuster: Fidus - an opinion artist of the national cultural movement. In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Munich u. a. 1996, pp. 635-650, here p. 643.
- ↑ The anti-Semitic coding was “always” part of the modern content of the term. So Wolfgang Benz on the question "What does völkisch mean?": Wolfgang Benz: The 101 most important questions. The Third Empire. Munich 2006, p. 26.
- ^ Günter Hartung: Völkische Ideologie. In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Munich u. a. 1996, pp. 22-41, here p. 22.
- ↑ Hellmuth Auerbach: Völkische movement. In: Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism. Stuttgart 1998, p. 784.
- ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Berlin / New York 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-092864-8 , pp. 645 ff. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online); Christian Hartmann , Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger, Roman Töppel (eds.): Hitler, Mein Kampf. A critical edition . Volume 1, Institute for Contemporary History Munich, Berlin / Munich 2016, pp. 928 and 929 (here the quote).
- ↑ Quoted from Christian Hartmann, Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger, Roman Töppel (eds.): Hitler, Mein Kampf. A critical edition . Volume 2, Institute for Contemporary History Munich, Berlin / Munich 2016, p. 1669.
- ↑ Wolfgang Benz: The 101 most important questions. The Third Empire. Munich 2006, p. 26.
- ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Berlin / New York, 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-092864-8 , pp. 645 ff. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
- ↑ Uwe Andersen, Woyke Wichard (Hrsg.): Concise dictionary of the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany. 5th, updated Edition. Opladen 2003.
- ↑ See e.g. B. Dieter Gosewinkel: Naturalization and exclusion: The nationalization of citizenship from the German Confederation to the Federal Republic of Germany. Göttingen 2001, p. 413.
- ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Berlin / New York 2007, p. 329 f.
- ↑ Rosemarie Künzler-Behncke: Origin and development of foreign ethnic neighborhoods in the urban organism. A contribution to the problem of “primary” quarter formation. (= Frankfurt geographical booklets. 33rd – 34th vol.). Frankfurt am Main 1960.
- ↑ Günther Tontsch: Statutargesetzgebung and justice as the core powers of the Saxon Nation University. In: Wolfgang Kessler (Ed.): Group autonomy in Transylvania. 500 years of the Transylvanian-Saxon University of Nations. Böhlau, Köln / Wien 1990, p. 30: “With the University of Nations, the personal legal community of the Transylvanian Saxons […] has created the […] representative body with whose help it […] was empowered to maintain its ethnic existence […] itself to design. ”Or at: Maja Philippi: The population of Kronstadt in the 14th and 15th centuries. Settlement conditions and ethnic composition. In: Paul Philippi (Ed.): Contributions to the history of Kronstadt in Transylvania. (= Transylvanian Archives. Volume 17). Böhlau, Cologne 1984, p. 109: "Since all homeowners are entered by name in this [tax register], they offer the possibility of precisely determining the ethnic composition of the population at that time." Philippi otherwise largely prefers "ethnic" and "national" in the article as corresponding terms.
- ^ Friedrich Heckmann: Ethnic minorities, people and nation. Sociology of Inter-Ethnic Relations. Ferdinand Enke Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-432-99971-2 , p. 49, note 24 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
- ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2007, pp. 645–647, here p. 647.
- ↑ Helmut Kellershohn: The völkisch nationalism of the NPD. Basics of the NPD program. In the S. (Ed.): The "German Voice" of the "Junge Freiheit". Readings of völkisch nationalism in central publications of the extreme right (= Edition DISS. Volume 23). 1st edition. Unrast Verlag, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-89771-752-7 ( online ).
- ↑ Frauke Petry promotes the term "völkisch". In: The time. September 11, 2016. (zeit.de)
- ↑ Petry wants the term “völkisch” to have a positive connotation. In: The world. (welt.de , accessed on September 11, 2016)
- ↑ E.g .: Frauke Petry advertises the term “völkisch”. In: The time. September 11, 2016. (zeit.de) ; AfD boss Petry wants to occupy "völkisch" positively. In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 11, 2016. (tagesspiegel.de)
- ↑ See Duden online : duden.de .
- ^ Hajo Funke: Volk, völkisch, Volksgemeinschaft - historical concepts. Right-wing populists today and the society of diversity. In: insight. Bulletin of the Fritz Bauer Institute. 9th year, 2017, No. 18, pp. 25–30, here p. 30 f.
- ↑ Ulf-Thomas Lesle : Hamburg as "center and source of strength". The "Low German Movement" - its requirements and connections. In: I. Stephan, HG Winter (Ed.): "Love that throws anchor in the abyss". Authors and literary field in 10th century Hamburg. Hamburg 1990, pp. 69-82.
- ↑ See e.g. B. Justus H. Ulbricht: Völkische Adult Education. Intentions, propaganda and institutions between the turn of the century and the Weimar Republic. In: Uwe Puschner, Walter Schmitz, Justus H. Ulbricht (eds.): Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Munich u. a. 1996, pp. 252-276; Joachim Wolschke Bulman: Homeland Security. In: dies, pp. 532-544.
- ^ Willi Oberkrome: "Deutsche Heimat". National conception and regional practice of nature conservation, landscape design and cultural policy in Westphalia-Lippe and Thuringia. Paderborn 2004, p. 390.
- ^ Willi Oberkrome: "Deutsche Heimat". National conception and regional practice of nature conservation, landscape design and cultural policy in Westphalia-Lippe and Thuringia. Paderborn 2004, p. 144.
- ↑ Adolf Bartels: The völkisch thought. A guide. Weimar 1923, p. 5.
- ↑ Rosemarie Künzler-Behncke: Origin and development of foreign ethnic neighborhoods in the urban organism. A contribution to the problem of “primary” quarter formation. (= Frankfurt geographical booklets. 33rd – 34th vol.). Frankfurt am Main 1960.