Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann

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Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann (born October 1, 1904 in Düsseldorf , † May 11, 1988 in Wiesbaden ) was a German sociologist and ethnologist .

Life

Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann grew up in Düsseldorf and passed his Abitur there in 1925. In the same year he began studying anthropology with Eugen Fischer in Freiburg. He also attended Edmund Husserl's lectures on philosophy and race psychology . In the winter semester of 1926/1927 Mühlmann studied racial hygiene with Fritz Lenz in Munich and attended anthropological lectures by Theodor Mollison . He then moved to Hamburg in 1927 to hear lectures by Heinrich Poll , Siegfried Passarge and Walter Scheidt . In the winter semester of 1929/1930 he moved to Berlin, where he studied ethnology and sociology with Richard Thurnwald . From 1928 he began to publish and in 1931 became editor of the journal Sociologus (which was previously called Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sociologie and was founded by Richard Thurnwald). In September 1931 he was at Thurnwald with his work The Secret Society of Arioi: a study of Polynesian secret societies, with special emphasis on the sieving and readout operations in Old Tahiti doctorate .

From 1934 to 1936 Mühlmann worked as an assistant at the Hamburg Völkerkundemuseum . 1935/1936 he tried to Hamburg habilitation , but failed "because of political unreliability". Walter Scheidt had given him a negative report. From 1937 to 1938 Mühlmann worked in Breslau as head of the ethnographic collection at the institute of the racial anthropologist Egon von Eickstedt . Only after joining the NSDAP in 1938 was Mühlmann able to complete his habilitation at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin . From 1939 he worked as a private lecturer in ethnology and ethnic psychology. From 1937 to 1943 he was editor of the journal Archive for Anthropology and Völkerforschung . Shortly before the end of the war in 1945, Mühlmann and his wife fled from Berlin to Wiesbaden.

After the war, Mühlmann was denazified as "unencumbered" in 1947 due to his alleged diary entries which he published under the title Thirteen Years . The ethnologist Ute Michels, who edited Mühlmann's estate, later discovered that this publication was not identical to the actual diaries. She exposed the publication as an elaborate “made up of invented and re-dated notes from the real diaries”.

In 1949 he acted as an expert in the denazification process of Hans FK Günther (one of the authors of the National Socialist racial ideology), in which he stated that he had never found anything in Günther's writings that was even remotely related to the so-called racial measures of the National Socialist state " have confessed.

Soon after its re-establishment in 1946, Mühlmann (like Günther) was again accepted as a member of the German Society for Sociology . In 1950 he received a diet lecturer at the newly founded University of Mainz with the title "Professor" at what is now the Institute for Ethnology and African Studies . From 1956 until his death he was co-editor of Homo magazine . In 1957 he was appointed full professor for ethnology and with a venia for " sociology , especially ethnic psychology".

In 1960 he took over the newly established chair for ethnology at the University of Heidelberg, where he set up and headed the institute for sociology and ethnology. However, he had to vacate the chair 10 years later, because after his National Socialist past had been discovered, students had put him under pressure. In 1970 Mühlmann retired early . The Chair of Social Anthropology was transferred to the South Asia Institute .

In 1963/1964, a controversy about his past in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit caused a stir , which had no consequences.

He died on May 11, 1988 at the age of 83 in Wiesbaden.

Publications

Mühlmann works in an interdisciplinary manner, especially in the areas of linguistics , prehistory and early history , race research , folk research, ethnic psychology and sociology , as well as ethnography and ethnology .

He coined the term “holistic anthropological triangle” from anthropology, psychology and sociology.

Race and Ethnology (1936)

Mühlmann defines race as "a group of people who have similar physical and mental personality traits and who develop and maintain their group type through screening and subsequent selection." (Mühlmann 1936, p. 213).

Races, Ethnic Groups, and Cultures (1964)

Mühlmann differentiates here between a biological, genetically determined "A-race" and a sociological "B-race", which arise from the formation of groups and group differentiations through the formation of categories. In his works on race, Mühlmann also deals with “hierarchies of races ”, “racial mixing”, “race breeding” and “racial hygiene”.

War and peace. A Guide to Political Ethnology (1940)

Here Mühlmann resolves the contradiction between scientific-civil and military-political action. In his opinion, social processes are to be seen as total war . A peaceful relationship is therefore pure fiction because of the complexity of social relationships. "The extreme form of war is not characterized by particular bloodyness, but by particularly well-planned, total use of all intellectual, economic and technical means of power [...]". Peace is only an illusory thought structure in which economy, technology and science are not sufficiently integrated into social contexts.

This publication, published by the Heidelberger Verlag Winter, was placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone after the end of the Second World War .

Assimilation, Umvolung, Volkswarning (1944)

Mühlmann criticized the working methods of the previous ethnologists, who paid too little attention to societies, to people as “bearers of culture”, but instead focused too much on individual cultural elements such as technology, religion or language. Here, he also criticized the Kulturkreislehre of Father Wilhelm Schmidt and Leo Frobenius . The focus must be shifted from the genesis myths to the “actual structure of society”.

It is also important to consider the effects of contacts between different societies and to deal with "interethnic relationships", whereby the effects on the individual are particularly important.

Re- population, however, only includes a process that takes place between two ethnic groups, which, however, presupposes a certain “popular state of maturity”.

As a people , Mühlmann defines the highest form of human society. Whereby there are only a few “real peoples”. Most societies are merely ethnic stratifications, religious peoples, incompatible mixtures or pending nationalities. Mühlmann names the following conditions for becoming a people: the realities of space, race and spiritual powers. So be, for example, the " Negroids unlike the" " Mongoloids " and especially the " Caucasians " step for "Volkwerdung" never succeeded. The Jews are simply the "pseudo-people". The "floating peoples" and "false peoples" also include mestizos , mulattos and vagrants at Mühlmann . Ute Michel establishes the connection between Mühlmann's term and Nazi politics: “Here a 'people's political' term tailored to Nazi interests is invented, which forms a comprehensive ethno-sociological category of arbitrarily ethnically persecuted and religiously ostracized population groups as well as social fringe groups assigned. At the same time, this category gives the Nazi system the appearance of scientific legitimacy ”.

For further differentiation, Mühlmann coined the term ethnicity . In the case of “interethnic relations”, the “concept of assimilation ” is to be preferred to that of “re- population ”. According to Mühlmann, the effectiveness of assimilation can be measured using five indicators: statistics and demographics of indigenous peoples, language statistics, religion statistics, political expansion, and cultural and economic expansion.

Other publications (selection)

  • The secret society of the Arioi: a study of Polynesian secret societies, with special reference to the screening and selection processes in ancient Tahiti . Berlin, 1932.
  • Race and ethnology: life problems of races, societies and peoples . Braunschweig, 1936
  • Methodology of Ethnology , 1938
  • War and peace. Winter, Heidelberg 1940 ( Cultural History Library 2 NF)
  • Assimilation, population change, people becoming. A global overview and a program , Stuttgart 1944
  • The peoples of the earth , Berlin 1944
  • The idea of ​​a comprehensive anthropology. In: Karl Gustav Specht (Ed.): Sociological research in our time. A compilation. Leopold von Wiese on his 75th birthday. Cologne / Opladen 1951, pp. 83-93
  • Chiliasm and nativism , [o. O.], 1961
  • Homo Creator. Treatises on sociology, anthropology and ethnology. O. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1962.
  • Races, ethnicities, cultures. Modern ethnology. Neuwied / Berlin 1964
  • History of Anthropology , 1968
  • The metamorphosis of women. Female shamanism and poetry , Berlin 1981

literature

  • Hans Fischer: Ethnology in National Socialism. Aspects of adaptation, affinity and assertion of a scientific discipline . Reimer, Berlin et al. 1990, ISBN 3-496-00387-1 ( Hamburg contributions to the history of science 7).
  • Frank-Rutger Hausmann : The "war effort" of the German humanities in the Second World War (1940-1945) . In: Winfried Schulze , Otto Gerhard Oexle (Hrsg.): German historians in National Socialism. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-14606-2 ( Fischer 146069; Die Zeit des Nationalozialismus ), pp. 63–86.
  • Siegfried Jäger : Critical Discourse Analysis. An introduction . 3rd compared to the 2nd revised and expanded edition. Unchanged edition. Duisburg Institute for Language and Social Research, Duisburg 2001, ISBN 3-927388-40-8 ( DISS studies ).
  • Dirk Kaesler :  Mühlmann, Wilhelm Emil. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 292 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • René König : Sociology in Germany. Founder, advocate, despiser . Hanser, Munich et al. 1987, ISBN 3-446-14888-4 .
  • Ute Michel: Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann (1904–1988). A German professor. Amnesia and amnesty. On the relationship between ethnology and politics under National Socialism . In: Yearbook for the History of Sociology 1991, ISSN  0939-6152 , pp. 69–119.
  • Ernst Wilhelm Müller : Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann . In: Journal of Ethnology . Volume 114, 1989, pp. 1-15.
  • Fritz K. Ringer : The Scholars. The decline of the German mandarin 1890–1933 . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-12-912030-0 .
  • Hellmut Seier: The National Socialist Science Policy and the Problem of University Modernization . In: Walter Kertz (Ed.): University and National Socialism . Universitäts-Bibliothek, Braunschweig 1994, ISBN 3-927115-19-3 ( project reports on the history of the Carolo-Wilhelmina 9; presentations at the workshop on the history of the Carolo-Wilhelmina on July 5 and 6, 1993), pp. 55–67.
  • George Steinmetz: Neo-Bourdieusian Theory and the Question of Scientific Autonomy: German Sociologists and Empire, 1890s – 1940s . In: Political Power and Social Theory , Vol. 20 2009, pp. 71-131.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ute Michel: New ethnological research approaches in National Socialism? From the biography of Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann (1904-1988). In: Thomas Hauschild (Ed.) Lust for life and xenophobia. Ethnology in National Socialism. Suhrkamp 1995, p. 163.
  2. ↑ Carsten Klingemann , Sociology and Politics: Social Science Expert Knowledge in the Third Reich and in the early West German post-war period , VS Verlag 2009, p. 367
  3. ↑ Henning Borggräfe, Sonja Schnitzler: The German Society for Sociology and National Socialism. Association-internal transformations after 1933 and after 1945 , in: Michaela Christ, Maja Suderland (editors), Sociology and National Socialism: Positions, Debates, Perspectives . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2014, pp. 445–479, here p. 462.
  4. ↑ Florian Eisheuer: Displacement, Renaming, Carrying On Ethnology in National Socialism and afterwards.
  5. ↑ https://www.soziale-welt.nomos.de/fileadmin/soziale-welt/doc/SozWelt_09_03.pdf
  6. ^ Wilhelm E. Mühlmann: The idea of ​​a comprehensive anthropology. 1951, p. 90.
  7. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-932-0 (= Würzburg medical historical research. Supplement 3.) - At the same time: Dissertation Würzburg 1995), p. 198.
  8. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-m.html
  9. ↑ Ute Michel: Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann (1904–1988). A German professor. Amnesia and amnesty. On the relationship between ethnology and politics under National Socialism . In: Jahrbuch für Soziologiegeschichte , 1991. P. 97. Quoted from: König: Archived copy ( Memento from February 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Mühlmann, Wilhelm Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist and ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 1, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1988
Place of death Wiesbaden