Western area

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the ethnic and national socialist context, the term western area referred to a number of regions of different national and ethnic affiliations between the North Sea and Channel coasts and the Alps . These regions were understood as the German “ people and culture soil ” or as a German “border area”. As a politically motivated but scientifically legitimized spatial concept , the “western space” formed a paradigm of so-called western research . In his strategic function he aimed at cultural penetration, political infiltration and military appropriation of these areas. In contrast to older spatial concepts, the “western area” was not limited to the German border areas ceded in the Versailles Peace Treaty , nor to the area between the state and language borders . Rather, it belonged to a group of spatial concepts that understood all sections of the German imperial border as areas that extended far into the neighboring states (e.g. " Ostraum ", "Südostraum", "Nordmark").

Geographic dimension

The majority of the authors and actors understood the western area: the inner-German Rhenish border areas, the Alsace-Lorraine and Eupen-Malmedy areas ceded in the Versailles Treaty , the internationalized Saar area , the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , the Netherlands , Belgium , the north-east and east of France and the German-speaking area Switzerland . The Ruhr area , the rest of Switzerland and the areas of historic Burgundy and Savoy were added in variations , allowing the “western region” to be extended to the Rhone or even the Mediterranean .

In the geographical and geopolitical , but also in the historiographical discourse, the “western area” was roughly equated with the river basin of the Rhine , to which the Meuse and Scheldt were assigned as tributaries. If Burgundy is included, geographical arguments aim at the interrelationships between the Rhine and the Rhone and the connecting function of the Burgundian Gate as a mountain-free connecting landscape between the Upper Rhine plain and south-eastern France. The homogeneity of the electricity systems was sometimes transferred to a homogeneity of the transport systems , the cultural or economic areas. Alternative geographical and geopolitical arguments interpreted the low mountain ranges ( Artois , Ardennes , Eifel , Hunsrück , Vosges , Jura ) as natural forbidden landscapes and emphasized their strategic function in the event of war.

Historical dimension

From a historical perspective, the “western area” appeared to be the venue for a cross-epoch Franco-German struggle (cf. German-French hereditary enmity ). The medieval and modern history was here understood as the progressive destruction and appropriation of the German "West Area" by France. Associated with this were ideas of a fortress function in this area, which France had systematically overridden. The focus could have been on the relationship between Romanesque and Germanic culture, the Germanic settlement movements of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the Frankish divisions ( Merovingian Austrasia , Carolingian Lotharingia ) or the union of Lotharingia with the Ottonian Eastern Empire . From an imperialist point of view, Ernst Hasse already demanded a strong expansion of German rule and borders to the west (and also to the east) at the turn of the century, if the empire were denied overseas colonies. Hannah Arendt has presented his thoughts on this in detail in elements and origins of total domination .

Franz Petri's thesis of a Germanic settlement of Wallonia and north-east France played a prominent role among the roots of the “western region” that were simultaneous with the Nazi regime ; Further core theses described the development of the language border as a retreat of the Germanic ( Franz Steinbach ) or placed the affiliation of Romanesque populations, the so-called Imperial Romans, to the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation at the center. During the Second World War , this line of argument also allowed Francophone collaborators to be recruited as members of the “western region”. The Petri Steinbach “Institute for historical regional studies of the Rhineland” in Bonn, including the founder Hermann Aubin , existed beyond the end of the war in 1945, it was dissolved in 2005 and its fields of work were distributed to various other university institutions (see Department for Rhenish Regional History of the Institute for History of the University of Bonn ).

Concept history and synonyms

A German Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund was the breeding ground for the term "western area" in the second half of the 1920s. He was quickly picked up by radical young conservative borderland activists. The term "Westland" has existed synonymously since the beginning of the 1920s and was later used as the name of a standard of the Waffen SS . A magazine close to the SS and published by the German “ Reich Commissioner for the Occupied Dutch Territories” Seyß-Inquart also bore this name.

The term "Westmark", which Heinrich von Treitschke proposed for the occupied Alsace-Lorraine for the first time in 1870, can be used as a further synonym . Picked up by the Pan-German Association and radical folk circles at the turn of the century, it was expanded to include the above-mentioned areas by the First World War and linked to ideas of a dictatorial administration and a Germanizing population policy. In the war target movement , the term "Westmark" finally stood for the occupied francophone territories in which, after an "annexation free of people", German military farmers were to be systematically settled. This aggressive expansion of the term into a concept of conquest and displacement was one reason why younger folk activists replaced it with a new term after the defeat in 1918 and tried to substantiate it scientifically as Western research.

Relationship to German occupation policy

After the start of the western campaign on May 10, 1940 , the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior , Wilhelm Stuckart , presented a memorandum on the future German western border drawn up on behalf of Adolf Hitler . It contained the essential argumentation schemes of the "Western space" discourse and contained precise plans for the "resettlement" of the Francophone population from the north-east and east of France. The proposed new western border essentially corresponded to the extension of the "western area" assumed in pan-German and ethnic discourse. Other memoranda, such as the Reich Office for Spatial Research, aimed in a similar direction. However, the redefinition of the border was not implemented immediately, but in the form of a partial cordoning off of the future occupation area. Specifically, a German Gau Westmark was imagined and the first steps towards it were taken.

Primary literature

  • Paul Ritterbusch , Carl Krauch , Hermann Roloff et al. Ed .: Raumforschung und Raumordnung . Monthly publication of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung. Volume 6, issue 6/7, Vowinckel-Verlag , Heidelberg 1942. In it: Hermann Roloff: Planning in the Netherlands (20 pages) and Werner Schürmann : Belgium. Land and regional planning (10 pages)
  • Arthur Seyß-Inquart (Ed.): Westland. Sheets for landscape, history and culture on the Rhine, Moselle, Maas and Scheldt. 2nd episode. People and Empire, Amsterdam z. B. 1943. Contributions by Franz Petri, Wilhelm Lotz , Max Hildebert Boehm and others. a.
  • Friedrich hot (ed.): Germany and the western area. In collaboration with Günter Lohse and Waldemar Wucher. People and Reich, Berlin 1941. With pictures.
  • "Westland-Serie", 10 episodes. Westland Verlag, Amsterdam 1942–1943 (in Dutch):
    1. De oorsprong van ons people. 5000 jaar Noordsch-Germaansche kultuurontwikkeling
    2. Joodsche wereld-politiek
    3. Volksche cultureele opbouw
    4. Watched eighth Roosevelt
    5. The subject of the racial idea en hun strijd Methode
    6. De poort van Rusland openbroken! 25 years soviet en Jodenheerschappij. 25 years of sale at the end of the year
    7. De uitlezing in the Erfstroom van het volk Gedachten over opvoeden en suffer
    8. Finlands heldenstrijd. De titanenstrijd van een klein land voor het big Europa
    9. Kort overzicht der rassenkunde steunende op de " Rassenkunde des Deutschen Volkes"

Remarks

  1. ↑ Roloff was one of the most active "western researchers" in National Socialism. In an article from 1943 in the magazine Westland (No. 1, vol. 1, pp. 32-37) he presented the drainage of the Zuidersee and the resulting polders as a model for German settlement projects in the eastern part of Europe As an occupier in the Netherlands, he worked on plans for the Reich Office for Spatial Planning for this country, in particular for the establishment of colonies from Dutch people, who were considered Aryans, in the German-conquered areas in the east. See Faludi , p. 248. After a post-war academic career at the TH Aachen , Roloff created a power base in the Federal Ministry for Housing from 1953
  2. ↑ Contents: Hans Schäfer: The West and His Landscapes ; Adolf Helbok : Problems of the German and French prehistory ; Friedrich Grimm : The dogma of the French expansion policy ; Ernst Anrich: France's advance eastward ; Karl Mehrmann: Burgundy ; Franz Pauser: Switzerland ; Robert Ernst : Alsace and Lorraine ; Franz Steinbach: Luxembourg ; Martin Spahn : The Reich, the Maas-Mosel-Rhine area and the Netherlands ; Kurt von Raumer : England's Rhine Policy ; Rudolf Craemer : Germany and the Western Frontier since 1648 ; Hermann Raschhofer : Basis and end of the French primacy ; Karl von Loesch: France's popular weakness ; Max Clauss: The mainland sword broke. Deception and self-deception of the entente cordiale; Wolfgang Treue : German and French spirit ; Wilhelm Lotz : Germanic architecture in the west ; Hans Müller: The Dutch painting ; Josef Nadler : Poetry and Spiritual Life in Switzerland ; Emil Kohl: Geology and Mineral Resources ; Walter Geißler: The economic areas of the Central European West ; the same: traffic directions and traffic relations . In the picture: colored French occupation troops on the Rhine; Adolf Hitler at the Westwall , quote: “The Führer, who designed the plan of the Westwall himself with ingenious foresight on the coming events, has always followed the progress of the work on the spot, greeted warmly by his workers who did the work in the completed the ordered time. "

literature

  • Thomas Müller: Imagined West. The concept of the "German western area" between political romanticism and National Socialism . Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-8376-1112-0 .
  • Peter Schöttler : "A kind of 'General Plan West'". The Stuckart memorandum of June 14, 1940 and the plans for a new German-French border in World War II , in: Sozial.Geschichte 18, 2003, pp. 83–130.
  • Thomas Müller: "Outside work in the west". A memorandum of the "Security Service" of the SS on the German infiltration policy in the "Benelux" countries before the Second World War. History in the West , GiW, vol. 18, Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 2003 ISSN  0930-3286 , pp. 82-105. ( Full text )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Freund / Thomas Müller: "Westforschung", in: Info Haar u. Michael Fahlbusch (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften . Saur, Munich 2008, pp. 751-760.
  2. ^ A b Arnold Hillen Ziegfeld: The fight for the Westland, a review of three years of Western work by 'Volk und Reich' , in: Volk und Reich 5, 1929, pp. 608-776.
  3. ^ Karl Haushofer : "Rheinische Geoppolitik", in: ders. (Ed.): The Rhine. His living space, his fate . Vol. 1, Book 1 / IK Vowinckel, Berlin-Grunewald 1928, pp. 1-18.
  4. ^ Franz Kerber (ed.): Burgundy. The land between the Rhine and the Rhone . Hünenburg-Verlag , Strasbourg 1942.
  5. ^ Johannes Wütschke: "A basic geopolitical law in the development of French politics", in: Journal for Geopolitics 1 (1924), pp. 271-276.
  6. ^ Paul Wentzcke : Rhine fight . 2 vols., K. Vowinckel, Berlin-Grunewald 1925.
  7. ^ Franz Petri: Germanic folk heritage in Wallonia and northern France. The Frankish conquest of France and the Netherlands and the formation of the Germanic-Romance language border . Röhrscheid, Bonn 1937.
  8. ^ Franz Steinbach: Studies on West German tribal and folk history . G. Fischer, Jena 1926.
  9. ↑ Franz Petri: The historical position of the Germanic-Romanic borderlands in the west , in: Westland, Jg. 1, H. 2, 1943, pp. 66–71.
  10. ↑ Deutscher Schutzbund (Ed.): The eighth federal conference of the German Schutzbund, Regensburg 1927 . Deutscher Schutzbund-Verlag, Berlin 1927, p. 8 f.
  11. ↑ Gjalt R. Zondergeld: “'We want to go west!'. The magazine 'Westland' as a meeting place for 'Westraumforscher' ”, 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 . Waxmann, Münster 2003, pp. 655-671. In google books online. Primary source: "Westland" magazine, Saarbrücken Sept. 29, 1934, contains: "The business of Mr. Röchling "; "Questions of fate in the Saar economy"
  12. ^ Heinrich von Treitschke: "What do we ask of France?" In: Prussian Yearbooks 26 (1870), pp. 367-409.
  13. ^ Contemporary critical analysis: Martin Hobohm, Paul Rohrbach: Die Pandeutschen . Engelmann, Berlin 1919
  14. ↑ Heinrich Claß : "Memorandum concerning the national, economic and socio-political goals of the German people in the current war", Sept. 1914, in: Reinhard Opitz (ed.): Europastratigien des Deutschen Kapitals . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1977, pp. 226-266.
  15. ↑ Peter Schöttler: “A kind of 'General Plan West'. The Stuckart memorandum of June 14, 1940 and the plans for a new German-French border in World War II ”, in: Sozial.Geschichte 18 (2003), pp. 83–130.