Walter Frank

This article describes the historian Walter Frank. For the politician, see Walter Frank (politician) .

Walter Frank (pseudonym: Werner Fiedler ) (born February 12, 1905 in Fürth ; † May 9, 1945 in Groß Brunsrode ) was a German historian . As a staunch anti-Semite and National Socialist, he was appointed President of the newly founded Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany in 1935, which was at times the leading historical institution of the Third Reich. Frank committed suicide on May 9, 1945 shortly after the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht .

Life

Walter Frank's family, his father was a military officer , moved to Munich in 1910 . The Munich Soviet Republic in the spring of 1919, but above all the Hitler coup in November 1923, shaped Frank's political socialization and made him a supporter of National Socialism and anti-Semitism at an early age . When the family lived in Nuremberg in 1921/1922, he regularly attended rallies by the editor of the striker Julius Streicher . As a high school student, Frank was a member of the German National Youth Association .

In 1923 Frank began studying history , among others with Hermann Oncken , Karl Haushofer and Karl Alexander von Müller at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . At Müller he received his doctorate in 1927 on the founder of the anti-Semitic "Christian social movement", Adolf Stöcker . From 1923 Frank wrote for the Völkischer Beobachter and other National Socialist newspapers.

After graduating, Frank wrote only a few scientific papers and mainly published newspaper articles in magazines of the youth movement . From 1930 he published in the monthly magazine Deutsches Volkstum , edited by Wilhelm Stapel , under the pseudonym Dr. Werner Fiedler , which was apparently borrowed from Hanns Johst's novel So they go . Under the Nazi pseudonym Klaus Witt , Frank published, among other things, in Joseph Goebbels' newspaper The Attack . It was only during National Socialism that articles by him appeared in specialist journals such as the historical journal and the historical quarterly journal .

Even without being a member of the NSDAP , Frank made a steep career after the " seizure of power ". In 1934, his application to become director of the Reichstag library failed . However, he found employment as a consultant for history in the Rosenberg office and in the " staff of the deputy of the Führer ". Alfred Rosenberg and Rudolf Heß , with whom he had been friends since studying with Karl Alexander von Müller, became Frank's supporters. From 1934 Frank was a consultant for history in the university commission of the NSDAP . In May 1935 he was appointed professor and in July 1935 he was appointed head of the newly founded Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany . The Reichsinstitut was regarded as the successor to the historical commission founded by Friedrich Meinecke . This made Walter Frank “leading National Socialist historian” at the time.

From his position, Frank mainly pursued science policy. He propagated the reorganization of German historical science as a "fighting science" in a kind of "war service of the spirit" alongside the politics of the National Socialists . Frank took care of the elimination of unpopular historians, including his former academic teacher Hermann Oncken , whom he sharply attacked in 1934 in his book “Kämpfende Wissenschaft” and in an article in the Völkischer Beobachter in February 1935 . Shortly afterwards Oncken was forced to retire. Frank also intervened with professorships and magazines. So he tried to get the historical magazine in hand by appointing Karl Alexander von Müller as editor. Frank founded a department there on the “History of the Jewish Question”.

On November 19, 1936, Frank set up a “Research Department on Jewish Issues” in his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany, the director of which was the National Socialist Wilhelm Grau . After Grau moved to the Rosenberg office after differences with Frank and took over the management of the " Institute for Research on the Jewish Question " founded by Rosenberg, a dispute over competencies and leadership developed between Rosenberg and Frank. In this partially open conflict, Frank was defeated in December 1941 and was given leave of absence. His successor was provisionally Karl Richard Ganzer .

Frank's last publications went largely unnoticed, only the journal Research on the Jewish Question , which he had published annually since 1937, he continued to run until 1944. His main goal was to publish a complete edition and a biography of the colonial pioneer and colonial ideologist Carl Peters , as he saw in him a direct spiritual forerunner of National Socialism. The publication did not get beyond the first three volumes of the work edition. The biography was not completed and, according to the historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler, is not a scientifically usable biography, but rather a proof of the unrestrained admiration of the Nazi historian for the object of his depiction.

The research institute offered young historians the opportunity to make a career in the slipstream of the NSDAP. Most famous of them was Fritz Fischer , who in the 1960s caused an international sensation with his publications on the causes of the First World War. A number of historians who were able to establish themselves academically after 1945 had also worked on the history of the “ Jewish question ” under Frank's aegis , such as the well-known economic historian Hermann Kellenbenz .

Walter Frank died on May 9, 1945 by suicide , which he justified with the fact that after the death of Adolf Hitler the world had become meaningless for him.

After the end of the war, many of his writings were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet zone of occupation .

Fonts (selection)

• Court preacher Adolf Stoecker and the Christian social movement . Published by Reimar Hobbing, Berlin 1928.
• Traders and soldiers. France and the Jewish question in the "Dreyfus Affair" . Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1933.
• Nationalism and Democracy in France of the Third Republic (1871 to 1918) . Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1933.
• Fighting Science. With a preliminary speech by the Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach . Hanseatic Publishing House, Hamburg 1934.
• On the history of National Socialism. Lecture. Hanseatic Publishing House, Hamburg 1934.
• Franz Ritter von Epp. The way of a German soldier . Hanseatic Publishing House, Hamburg 1934.
• Mind and power. Historical-political essays . Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1938.
• “Hear Israel!” Studies on the Modern Jewish Question . Hanseatic Publishing House, Hamburg 1939.
• Walther Rathenau and the blonde breed . In: Research on the Jewish question, Vol. 4, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1940, pp. 9–67.
• The Panama scandal . Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1942.
• "Apostates." Maximilian Harden and Wilhelmine Germany . In: Research on the Jewish question , Vol. 3, 2nd edition, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1943, pp. 9–61.
• Adolf Hitler - the perfecter of the Reich . Manuscript, 1944.

literature

• Matthias Berg : Walter Frank. In: Michael Fahlbusch , Ingo Haar and Alexander Pinwinkler (eds.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften. Actors, networks, research programs. With the assistance of David Hamann. 2nd, fundamentally expanded and revised edition. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin / Boston 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-043891-8 , pp. 173-179.
• Helmut Heiber : Walter Frank and his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany (= sources and representations on contemporary history. Vol. 13). German publishing house, 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 quiet 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. In: Yearbook on the history and effects of the Holocaust , 1998/1999, ISSN  1432-5535 pp. 17–42.
• Hagen Schulze: Walter Frank. In: Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.): German historians (= Small Vandenhoeck series. Vol. 1464). Vol. 7. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980, ISBN 3-525-33449-4 , pp. 69-81.
• Mario Wenzel: Frank, Walter. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Vol. 2: People. Part 1: People: A – K. De Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-24072-0 , p. 245 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Frank in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Walter Frank in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Remarks

1. ↑ Helmut Heiber : Walter Frank and his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany (= sources and representations on contemporary history. Vol. 13). Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1966, p. 81.
2. ↑ Helmut Heiber: Walter Frank and his Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany (= sources and representations on contemporary history. Vol. 13). Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1966, p. 87.
3. ↑ Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich. S. Fischer-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-10-091052-4 .
4. ↑ Reich Institute. In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism 5th, updated and expanded edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-34408-1 , p. 738.
5. ↑ Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy. Synchron, Wissenschaftsverlag der Authors, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 51.
6. ↑ One of his book titles, from 1934.
7. ↑ Friedrich Meinecke: Literature report on the book "Kämpfende Wissenschaft" . In: Historische Zeitschrift , Vol. 125, 1935, Issue 1, pp. 101-103.
8. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-f.html .
9. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-f.html .