Viktor Paulsen

Viktor Paulsen (born May 29, 1913 in Graz , † October 20, 1987 ) was an Austrian Slavist . During the Second World War he was involved in a leading role in the robbery of archival documents, works of art and books in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union .

Life

Paulsen attended the Bundesrealgymnasium in Klagenfurt and studied from the winter semester 1931/1932 to the summer semester 1935 at the University of Vienna . He received his doctorate in 1935 as Dr. phil. with a study of the phonology of the Slovenian Gailtaler dialect in Carinthia , the first study of this kind by a non-native speaker. Paulsen also passed the teaching examination for Slovene language and history and in 1937 became a trial teacher at the Klagenfurt Realgymnasium. From 1937 to 1939 he was trained at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research to serve in the Carinthian State Archives . He also supported the press and translation service in the state archive under Karl Starzacher .

Paulsen was a member of the Southeast German Research Association , which in 1938/39 promoted his linguistic work on Germanness in Slavonia , and from 1939 worked alongside Irma Steinsch and Alfred Karasek as a country officer for South Slavia and Bulgaria for their Vienna Publications Office under Wilfried Krallert . In 1939/40 he made several trips to Belgrade, Agram and Laibach in order to establish contacts with the German ethnic group and scientists willing to collaborate.

During the Balkan campaign and after the German invasion of the Soviet Union , Paulsen was part of the Künsberg special command . During the operation carried out in Belgrade in mid-April 1941 under Krallert's command and with Paulsen as interpreter, maps, books and statistics were confiscated at the statistical office there, in the military geographic institute and in the geographic institute of the university and finally brought to Vienna under Paulsen's direction sighted and forwarded. The material obtained in this way was processed into ethnographic maps that the Wehrmacht and SS used as the basis for ethnic cleansing . Paulsen thus worked on the development and implementation of the National Socialist national politics .

In addition to the Berlin-Dahlem publication center, the Vienna P-point was intended to be a kind of distribution center for the material captured by the Künsberg Special Command. During the German-Soviet War , Vienna was responsible for material from Moscow (planned), Kiev and Odessa . Paulsen was assigned to the "Nuremberg" task force of the Künsberg special command under SS-Hauptsturmführer Bernhard Nitsch, where he held the card position. In addition to Krallert, Jürgen von Hehn and Alfred Karasek, he was constantly active as a representative of the ethnic German research associations in the Künsberg special command. The task force looted archives, libraries and monasteries in Kiev, Kharkov , Odessa, Simferopol and Sevastopol , Minsk and Smolensk and in the North Caucasus. Taganrog formed the base for the operation in the Caucasus . Among other things, Paulsen searched the Kiev Pechersk Lavra in 1942, the museum of which was to be taken over by the Künsberg Special Command.

From the captured maps and statistics, the Vienna P-point compiled ethnographic maps of the Crimea and the Caucasus, which were used for the resettlement of the Volga and Bessarabia Germans . After the division of the "Nuremberg" commando in the summer of 1942, Paulsen was with the task force South A and at the same time a regional clerk in the scientific staff of the Künsberg special command in the area of ​​the Army Group South . Nalchik in the Caucasus was the furthest place that the task force reached with Paulsen. Here the State Library, the Pedagogical Institute, the Institute for Improvement and Agricultural Planning and the Kabardinian Museum were looted. On February 19, 1943, Paulsen returned to Berlin after more than six months of cultural robbery.

After the dissolution of the Künsberg Sonderkommando, Paulsen, meanwhile with the rank of SS-Untersturmführer, moved to the newly established group VI G ("Scientific and Methodological Research Service") under Krallert in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). The main task of this group was to search university libraries and institutes in the conquered areas for useful material. Paulsen was in charge of the central map office in Berlin, which created maps for secret operations of the RSHA VI S group (training, fight against resistance) under Otto Skorzeny on the basis of the material evaluated by the Vienna P office.

After the war Paulsen worked as an insurance director in Austria.

Fonts

• The phonology of the Slovenian Gailtaler dialect in Carinthia. Diss. Phil. Vienna 1935.
• The place names of Southeast Carinthia and their significance in terms of settlement history. (The place names of the political district Völkermarkt.) . Term paper at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research, 1939.

literature

• Michael Fahlbusch : Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften from 1931-1945 . Baden-Baden 1999.
• Manfred Stoy: The Austrian Institute for Historical Research 1929-1945. Vienna 2007. (= Communications from the Institute for Austrian Historical Research , Supplementary Volume 50)
• Petra Svatek: "Vienna as a gateway to the south-east" - The contribution of Viennese humanities scholars to the exploration of Southeast Europe during National Socialism. In: Mitchell G. Ash, Ramon Pils, Wolfram Nieß (eds.): Humanities in National Socialism. The example of the University of Vienna. Vienna 2010, pp. 111–139.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tijmen Pronk: The Slovene Dialect of Egg and Potschach in the Gailtal , Austria . Amsterdam 2009, p. 9.
2. ^ Stoy: Institut , pp. 183, 366.
3. ↑ Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft , p. 337.
4. ^ Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft , p. 655.
5. ↑ Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft , p. 482; Svatek: Vienna , pp. 120, 133f.
6. ↑ Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft , pp. 486-490.
7. ^ Fahlbusch: Wissenschaft , p. 171.