Walther Steller

Walther Steller (* 1. October 1895 in Breslau , † 29. December 1971 in Kiel ) was a German university professor, specialist in German ( Frisist ) and folklorist , a member of the Nazi Party in the era of National Socialism . After the Second World War he was also federal cultural warden for the Silesian Landsmannschaft .

Scientific activity

Walther Steller was born on October 1st, 1895 as the son of the merchant Max Steller and his wife Gertrud (née Quiehl) in Breslau. In 1919 he received his doctorate here with Theodor Siebs . In 1922 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on " The Old West Frisian Schulzenrecht " (published in 1926). The value of this work is judged differently: While Nils Århammar said that Steller entered “ new methodological territory ”, Harm-Peer Zimmermann describes it as “ little more than an annotated source edition ”. In 1928 his “ Abriß der Altfriesischen Grammar ” appeared, but it is only rated as a “ compilation from the 'History of the Frisian Language' by his teacher Theodor Siebs ” (Århammar). In the same year Steller took over the management of the “ Folklore Department ” of the “ German Institute ”. Since 1926/27 he was also responsible for recording Silesian as well as North, East and West Frisian dialects on behalf of the " Silesian Society for Folklore ". Since 1927 he has been involved in the " Atlas of German Folklore ", whose " Lower Silesia Regional Office " he led.

In 1935 he married in Breslau. In 1937 he was given a teaching assignment for Frisian by the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . At the same time he took over the work on the “ North Frisian Dictionary ” as part of the “ Institute for Folklore and Regional Studies ”. His writings " Generationsprobleme des Neufriesischen " (1940) and " Nordfriesland " (1941), which appeared in this context, were well received in their time and secured Steller an appreciative obituary from the Frisian side after his death. In 1940 he was appointed non-official extraordinary professor for " German Philology " at Kiel University with a focus on Frisian. Since then he has also offered folklore events again. Due to illness, Steller only taught irregularly in Kiel until the end of the war.

In 1945 he was released and was only able to resume lecturing at the University of Kiel after his denazification in the summer semester of 1947. Up to and including the winter semester 1961/62 he read at the Germanic seminar, especially on folklore and Frisian topics. In addition, he was federal culture warden of the Silesian country team. Walther Steller died on December 29, 1971 in Kiel.

Political activities in the Weimar Republic and in the Nazi state

Steller joined the right-wing extremist political camp early on, but by no means unusual for a humanities scholar. In retrospect, he described himself as an “ unconscious follower of Hitler ” from the very beginning. Steller was particularly involved in the question of the controversial eastern border of Germany after the First World War. Since 1920 he took an active part in the "border fight" in Upper Silesia , in which the German and Polish sides made territorial claims with scientific (see, for example, Gustaf Kossinna ), but sometimes also with terrorist means, and moved in same mission also through the Sudetenland .

As early as 1922/23 he planned the expansion and upgrading of the Germanic seminar to a " German Institute " so that " Breslau as the university of the German south-east " could counter the Slavic movement more effectively . These ideas were then implemented in 1928. In his 1924 anonymously published work “ Germania! Quo vadis? "Steller summarized his nationalistic convictions in an ideological catechism, the first point of which was:" I believe in the ideal of a German national community ". Furthermore, he called for the commitment to “ to life ”, “ to action ”, “ to the great deeds of the fathers ”, to “ creation and tradition ” as “ religion for the renewal of Germany ”. Apparently in the hope of a possible conversion, he sent his nationalist pamphlet to the Reich President Friedrich Ebert in 1924 . Another copy went to Adolf Hitler on April 3, 1933.

In 1925, Steller founded the “ Academic Equestrian Club ” in Breslau “ in the spirit of military sport ” and his political creed (“ German men, unite your fists ”) . This resulted in the town's " mounted SA ", of which Steller was a founding member. For the völkisch -nationalist agitation he also mainly used teachers' meetings, which he arranged as part of his work on the " Atlas of German Folklore ".

In April 1933 Steller joined the NSDAP , although long before he had made no secret of his sympathy for this party. From this time on he also appeared on the university campus and in his lectures and seminars in SA uniform. In the following weeks and months, in addition to membership of the NSDAP, memberships came in the " Reichsfachschaft Hochschullehrer " of the " NS Teachers Association ", in the " NS Teachers Association " and in the " Political Organization ", which was founded for the broad implementation of the National Socialist worldview and for purposes of harmonization. of the party ("PO" of the NSDAP). Supported in this way, Steller advanced to become the fiercest champion of National Socialism at the University of Breslau . On May 10, 1933, he gave the “Flame Speech” in the auditorium of the Leopoldina , which preceded the book burning . A few days later he affirmed his “ commitment to the German way ” in front of the “academic SA”.

After he was refused a lectureship at the University of Breslau in 1937, he denounced the respected folklorists Friedrich Ranke and Will-Erich Peuckert there and put both of them in mortal danger. Ranke had to emigrate, Peuckert lost his teaching permit until 1945.

Steller's "turning thesis"

In 1959, in his capacity as federal culture warden of the Silesian Landsmannschaft, Steller published a work on " Name and Concept of the Wends (Sclavi) " in the messages of the Landsmannschaft Schlesien, Landesgruppe Schleswig-Holstein No. 15 . A verbal study. “In this he took up the “ primitive German theory ”, which was particularly popular during the Nazi era , but carried it further by not only asserting the continued existence of a Germanic population in East Germany, but at the same time denying any significant immigration of Slavic groups (see also Germania Slavica ). The high medieval settlement in the east would not have led to a growing together of the German and Slavic populations, but only a “ Christianization and Germanization of the old East Germanic element with a certain influx of German populations ” (see “ Slav legend ”). With these remarks he primarily linked political goals, in that he wanted to intervene with his “discoveries” in the “questions of the German eastern border” (see Oder-Neisse border ). Under the catchphrase " error of science - loss of homeland ", he accused the various historical scientists of having caused the loss of the eastern German territories by tolerating and spreading alleged old heresies.

These theses were enthusiastically taken up by Steller's theses in the publications of the associations of expellees and authors with similar ideas such as Hans Scholz from Berlin. Right up to the present day, they are repeated and continued by various right-wing extremist authors such as Lothar Greil and Helmut Schrätze . In doing so, they create a largely self-contained system of mutual evidence and quotations, in which the results of scientific research are either negated or falsified and abbreviated. Archaeological, historical and linguistic research rejected such theses from the beginning and has now completely ignored them.

Criticism of Steller's theses

Soon after his work was published, replies and reviews from well-known experts such as the archaeologists Wolfgang La Baume and Georg Kossack , the Slavist Ludolf Müller , the Germanist Gerhard Cordes and the regional historian Wilhelm Koppe appeared in various publications , in which this work was unanimously rejected with sharp words has been.

The medieval historian Wolfgang H. Fritze also dealt intensively with Steller's theses and methods in 1961: The reader “ notes ... with a growing consternation from side to side, the hair-raising dilettantism of the author, who exposes himself in the most embarrassing way with this book yes - it must be said - the scientific death sentence speaks itself. He was only able to achieve his revolutionary 'results' by restricting himself to a few sources - which he also interprets with imaginable arbitrariness - while disregarding all others. In addition, he only uses previous research where it suits him . ”In conclusion, Fritze stated for one of the“ originals ”of such theories from Steller's pen,“ that we are dealing here with a typical product of National Socialist pseudoscience . The narrow-minded overestimation of Germanism compared to Slavicism, which is to be discriminated by its 'Sarmatian' qualification as 'Asian', the racism that haunts the books and the primitive, pre-scientific equation of Nordic race and Germanism are clear characteristics. .... The whole book, this grotesque and at the same time harrowing product of an academic half-education guided by political tendencies, deserves to be taken seriously only in one point: its importance as a symptom. ... ".

Fonts

• Folklore work in the light of National Socialism. In: Folklore gifts. John Meier offered on his seventieth birthday, Berlin: de Gruyter 1934, pp. 244-252.

credentials

1. ↑ ^{a b c} registry office Breslau III: birth register . No. 3412/1895.
2. ^ Harm-Peer Zimmermann: Walther Steller in Breslau (1920 to 1937) In: Volkskunde und Frisistik under the sign of National Socialism , North Frisian Yearbook, New Series Volume 30, 1994, pp. 41–54.

literature

About Steller's life and work

• Harm-Peer Zimmermann : Walther Steller in Breslau (1920 to 1937). Folklore and hairdressing under the sign of National Socialism . North Frisian Yearbook, New Series 30, 1994, pp. 41–54. ( Memento from April 10, 2004 in the Internet Archive )

Here are more obituaries for and work on Steller.

• Harm-Peer Zimmermann: From the sleep of reason. German Folklore at Kiel University 1933-1945. In: Hans-Werner Prahl (Ed.): Uni-Formierung des Geistes. University of Kiel under National Socialism . Vol. 1. Publication of the Advisory Board for the History of the Labor Movement and Democracy in Schleswig-Holstein. Kiel 1995, pp. 171-274.
• Brigitte Bönisch-Brednich: Folklore research in Silesia: a history of science . Series of publications of the Commission for German and Eastern European Folklore in the German Society for Folklore eV 68. Marburg: Elwert, 1994. ISBN 3770810414 .

Reviews of Steller's Slav thesis

• Wolfgang H. Fritze: Slavomania or Germanomania? Comments on W. Steller's new theory of the older population history of East Germany . Yearbook for the history of Central and Eastern Germany 9/10, 1961, again in: Fritze, Wolfgang: Early days between the Baltic Sea and the Danube. Selected contributions to the historical development in Eastern Central Europe from the 6th to the 13th century, ed. v. Ludolf Kuchenbuch and Winfried Schich, Berlin 1982, pp. 31–46.
• W. Kuhn in: Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 8, 1960, p. 214.
• Wolfgang La Baume in: Ostdeutscher Literatur-Anzeiger 6, 1960, p. 145.
• W. Kuhn in: Journal for Agricultural History and Agricultural Sociology 8, 1960.
• Georg Kossack, Ludolf Müller, Gerhard Cordes, Wilhelm Koppe in: ZSHG 85/86 (1960/61), pp. 296-318.
• H.-D. Kahl in: Research questions of our time 7, 1960, p. 74 ff.
• L. Müller, "Ostholstein-Slavic". Reply to an article by Prof. Steller . Schleswig-Holstein, Monthly Bulletin for Heimat und Volkstum 12, 1960, p. 292 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Walther Steller in the catalog of the German National Library