Folk and cultural soil research

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In the interwar period in particular, folk and cultural soil research dealt with ethnocentric and geopolitical questions and aspects of national politics in the German Reich . Above all, it served German power and cultural politics. It was institutionalized in 1920 with the Foundation for German Folk and Cultural Soil Research in Leipzig .

Scientific representatives

Already in the German Empire, the paradigms of cultural soil research were represented by the editors of the magazine “Deutsche Erde”, which was published jointly by the Pan-German Association and the German Federation . These included Karl Lamprecht , Friedrich Ratzel , Gustaf Kossinna , Albrecht Penck , Paul Langhans and Dietrich Schäfer .

After the First World War, “folk and cultural soil research”, as a “fighting science”, agitated against the Versailles Treaty to justify revisionist territorial claims. Geopolitical ideas were combined with habitat concepts. Numerous historians such as Werner Conze , Hans Rothfels , Theodor Schieder and Hermann Aubin , as well as agricultural scientists such as Theodor Oberländer, advocated the demand for a “combative science” .

In 1926 the “Foundation for German Folk and Cultural Soil Research” in Leipzig and in 1925 the “German Academy” in Munich were established as central institutions. Ethnicity researchers and politicians worked closely together in both institutions . They were decisive for the ethnocentric discourse of ethnicity research and politics in Germany. The historian Albert Brackmann , who also worked as an electoral researcher and ethnologist and who analyzed the Masurian minorities and their Germanophile voting behavior , was one of the eastern researchers of these institutions . Manfred Laubert , Wilhelm Volz , Karl Christian von Loesch and Hans Steinacher were active in Silesia. There they propagated the German nationality just like Albrecht Penck , for the German " ethnic groups " in western Poland and Max Hildebert Boehm in the Baltic States. Theodor Schieder 1939 called for the deportation of Jews from Poland and building a "healthy national order" in Eastern Europe.

Institutions

The Foundation for German Folk and Cultural Soil Research in Leipzig was transferred to the Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (VFG) in 1931 . The VFG were significantly involved in the reorganization of the Saarland and the preparations for the Munich Agreement and its implementation for Czechoslovakia.

aims

The catchphrase “people and space” can be used to describe the ethnocentric and geopolitical discourse of “German folk and cultural soil research”. Ethnic boundaries should be constructed in order to make the national demarcations after the lost First World War vulnerable.

The ethnocentric geopolitics of culture soil research was directed here by utopian ideas of a Greater German Reich as especially of the Bruck Arthur Moeller van and Max Hildebert Boehm were developed. The mythical model for a German empire was Charlemagne .

The following constructs were created for the identity-creating concept of space and people. The construct of the “people” or “tribe” that has persisted and expanded for centuries. The construct of a naturally appearing “people” as an antithesis to the nation of the French Enlightenment and a people or language area homogeneous in blood and race.

Projects

Central projects of folk and cultural soil research were the “Concise Dictionary of Border and Foreign Germans” (about 700 scientists were involved in this project in 1933 to research the “German ethnic groups”) and the “ Atlas of German Folklore ”. Both projects were important for the work of the SS through the Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften . The Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (VFG) became a cultural-political think tank in which up to 1,000 scientists worked during National Socialism. In addition to memoranda and memoranda, mainly statistics were produced. A new field of activity was advisory and collaborative activities in the population policy measures of the occupation administrations. In terms of quality, research on the "endangerment" of Germanness in Eastern and Southeastern Europe as national minorities was new under National Socialism.

After 1945

After 1945, the relevant science was able to reorganize itself in research networks such as the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council and the Herder Institute . The Association of Historians in Germany elected Aubin as its President in 1953. Hans Joachim Beyer , Heydrich's close colleague, trained state teachers at schools in Flensburg on behalf of the state government and continued to write tirelessly on "ethnicity issues", at times under a pseudonym. Concepts and methods of these protagonists had an influence in folklore, ethnology, history and sociology until the 1990s. The majority of these scientists moved in the displaced environment and oriented themselves there politically and ideologically.

See also

Works

Examples

  • German booklets for folk and cultural soil research , ed. on behalf of the Foundation for German Folk and Cultural Soil Research, Leipzig
  • Adolf Rieth: The geographical spread of Germanness in Rumpf-Hungarians in the past and present , ed. in conjunction with and with the support of the Foundation for German Folk and Cultural Soil Research. Abroad and Home Publishing AG 1927, Leipzig, Stuttgart 1927 (Writings of the German Foreign Institute )
  • Max Hildebert Boehm: The independent people. Popular theoretical foundations of ethnopolitics and the humanities , Göttingen 1932
  • Albrecht Penck: Deutscher Volks- und Kulturboden, in Karl Christian von Loesch Hg .: Volk unter Völkern. Vol. 1, Breslau 1925, pp. 62-73
  • Wilhelm Volz, Ed .: The West German People's Floor. Essays on the Questions of the West. Wroclaw 1925

literature

  • Michael Fahlbusch : "Where the German ... is Germany!" The Foundation for German Folk and Cultural Soil Research in Leipzig 1920–1933 , Brockmeyer, Bochum 1994
  • Michael Fahlbusch: Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” 1931–1945 , Baden-Baden 1999
  • Karen Schönwälder : Historians and Politics. History in National Socialism . Peter Lang, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 3-593-34762-8 .
  • Willi Oberkrome : folk history. Methodical innovations and ethnic ideology in German history 1918–1945 , Göttingen 1993, esp. P. 28ff.
  • Peter Schöttler (Ed.): Historiography as a science of legitimation 1918–1945 , Frankfurt 1997
  • Winfried Schulze , Otto Gerhard Oexle (Hrsg.): German Historians in National Socialism , Frankfurt 1999
  • Ingo Haar : Historian under National Socialism. German history and the “Volkstumskampf” in the east , Göttingen 2000.
  • Rudolf Jaworski , Hans-Christian Petersen: Biographical aspects of the "Ostforschung". Considerations on the state of research and methodology , In: BIOS 15 (2002), Issue 1.
  • 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 - Analyzes of Right Ideology. Unrast, Münster 2005
  • Reinhard Blänkner: According to folk history. Otto Brunner's concept of a "European social history", in: Manfred Hettling Hg., Volksgeschichten in der European interwar period. Göttingen 2003, pp. 326-366
  • Holger Dainat: German literary studies, in Frank-Rutger Hausmann Hg., The role of the humanities in the Third Reich 1933-1945. Munich 2002, pp. 63-86.
  • Norman Henniges: "Natural Laws of Culture": The Viennese Geographers and the Origins of the "People and Culture Soil Theory" , In: ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, Volume 14, No. 4, 2015. P. 1309–1351 . ACME .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Science and Research 1933–1939 , LeMO Lebendiges Museum Online, DHM and HdG
  2. ↑ the key text of the movement