Folk genealogy
The term folk genealogy is understood to be the genealogical research of the entire population of a landscape or a community by means of church book mapping and the creation of local family books . Originated in the context of folk ethnography and local history research after the First World War , the entire German population was to be recorded in terms of clans using the methods of folk genealogy during the period of National Socialism . The people's genealogy thus also provided a data basis for Nazi racial policy.
The term was coined in 1920 by the Austrian amateur ethnographer Konrad Brandner , a Styrian pastor and later high school teacher in Graz . His program was implemented in Upper Styria with the participation of many local clergy so that by 1923 12% of the Styrian population were already included. The folk genealogy concentrated on local "farming families" in an agnatic line who had been resident in the places for a long time and mostly owned land. The numerous dispossessed, strangers and illegitimate of a population were not recorded by the church records. Folk genealogical research was accordingly oriented towards the categories of “family” and “people” and was linked to the aristocratic family genealogy of the feudal era and to the historian Ottokar Lorenz's concept of using the genealogical principle to periodize history. The “ families ”, “ ancestors ” or “ clan research ” were linked to the blood-and-soil ideology of National Socialism and its racist theory of “peasantry” via this organicistic view of history .
Further connection possibilities arose to racial biology, racial studies and racial hygiene . In the context of racial biology, folk genealogy was expanded to include the statistical approach of biometrics according to Karl Pearson . At the same time, the more qualitatively oriented folk genealogy at the intersection of the constructs “family”, “people” and “race” aimed at the question of whether populations are genetically “pure” or “mixed” and tried to identify the “parent races”.
During National Socialism , the Working Group for Family Research and Family Care was founded in 1937 for the systematic indexing and mapping of church records . The pastor Josef Demleitner developed together with the clan researcher Adolf Roth a method for mapping church records according to the family sheet method. The aim of the working group was the "genealogical inventory of the entire German people and their unified commitment to racial and clan care tasks". The ideological specifications of the NSDAP were directly linked to the specific recording and evaluation work. The data collected was not only intended to implement the Reichserbhofgesetz , but also to support the activities of the clan offices . The folk genealogy was placed at the service of Nazi racial hygiene and racial politics by providing data on the elimination of those who were not counted as part of the national body .
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Brigitte Fuchs: "Race", "People", Gender: anthropological discourses in Austria 1850-1960 . Campus-Verlag, 2003, p. 244 f.
- ↑ Erika Kustatscher : Everyday life in Tiers: Contributions to population and social history from the 17th century to the First World War on the basis of serial sources . Wagner, Innsbruck 1999, p. 25f .; Ralph Klein: Karl Wülfrath and the "Rhenish Provincial Institute for Family and National Body Research" . In: Burkhard Dietz, Helmut Gabel, Ulrich Tiedau (eds.): Griff nach dem Westen. The "West Research" of the ethnic-national sciences on the north-western European area (1919–1960). Volume 2, Waxmann, Münster 2003, pp. 798f., 801.