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Heinrich Himmler’s
Cultural Commissions
HEINRICH
HIMMLER’S
CULTURAL
COMMISSIONS
PROGRAMMED PLUNDER
IN ITALY AND YUGOSLAVIA

JAMES R. DOW

the university of wisconsin press

The University of Wisconsin Press
1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor
Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059
uwpress.wisc.edu

3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden

London WC2E 8LU, United Kingdom
eurospanbookstore.com

Copyright © 2018 by James R. Dow

All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical
articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any format or by any
means—digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise—or conveyed via the internet or a website without written
permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. Rights inquiries
should be directed to rights@uwpress.wisc.edu.

Printed in the United States of America

This book may be available in a digital edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dow, James R., author.

Title: Heinrich Himmler’s cultural commissions: programmed plunder in
Italy and Yugoslavia / James R. Dow.
Description: Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press,
[2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017046342 | ISBN 9780299316501 (cloth: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Kulturkommission Ahnenerbe. | National socialism and
folklore. | Folklorists—Germany—History—20th century. | Germans—
Italy—Trentino-Alto Adige—Folklore. | Germans—Slovenia—
Ko†cevje—Folklore. | Trentino-Alto Adige (Italy)—History—20th
century. | Ko†cevje (Slovenia)—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC GR166 .D69 2018 | DDC 398.092/2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046342
Meinen Freunden
Hannjost Lixfeld (1937–98)
und
Peter Assion (1941–94)
gewidmet
Contents
List of Illustrations ix

Introduction 3

1 October 21, 1939 10

2 The Intellectual Atmosphere 16

3 Who’s Who? 43

4 Much Ado about Nothing? 112

5 Gottschee 145

6 Then and Now 171

Acknowledgments 201
Appendix 1: Call for Collecting Folktales 205
Appendix 2: Gisela Schmitz-Kahlmann’s Summary of Activities
(German) 207

vii
viii Contents

Appendix 3: Josef Ringler’s Summary of Activities of Gertrud

Pesendorfer (German) 212
Appendix 4: Handbills Calling for Optanten to Stay Home in Italy 214
Appendix 5: Mussolini Letter Supporting Alcuni documenti 221
Notes 225
Bibliography 251
Index 263
Illustrations
Typed-in letterhead of the Kulturkommission 12
Hanns Hörbiger’s grave site 20
Walther Wüst delivering a lecture at the University of Munich,
1937 32
Crossed horsehead gables in South Tyrol 36
Church registers in South Tyrol 40
Bronze swastika with horse heads 50
“Ancient Germanic house” 61
Bruno Schweizer conducting fieldwork in Italy 63
Cymbrian woman photographed by Bruno Schweizer 65
Costume design by Gertrud Pesendorfer 85
Margarethe (Gretel) Karacek 85
Gertrud Pesendorfer mannequin in Innsbruck Folk Art Museum 89
Circular mowing in South Tyrol 96
Shaped bread (Gebildbrot) for New Year’s Day 97
Snapping critters (Schnappviecher) in Tramin 101
Wolfram Sievers and Wilhelm Luig in uniform at the Egetmann
festival, 1941 102
Klosn in Stilfs 102

ix
x Illustrations

Choral group seated around a table 109

South Tyrolean children being resettled in the Reich 113
South Tyrolean young men in Wehrmacht uniforms 117
Walther von der Vogelweide statue being removed
from the main square in Bozen 123
Brass memorial plates (Stolpersteine) in Meran 143
Father and son being “measured” for resettlement in the Reich 150
Citizens of Gottschee by EWZ trains 151
Richard Wolfram conducting fieldwork 189
Cow decorated with a swastika from the Schnalstal in South
Tyrol 192
Alfred Quellmalz, Richard Wolfram, and Karl Aukenthaler
taking a break from fieldwork, 1941 193
Heinrich Himmler’s
Cultural Commissions
Introduction

T his book is about an unprecedented and unparalleled occurrence

in the annals of the humanities and social science scholarship.
During the early years of World War II, between 1940 and 1943, more
than a dozen folklorists and language scholars were sent to South Tyrol
in Italy and to Gottschee in Yugoslavia, to carry out field investigations
of narratives, songs, beliefs, superstitions, customs, dances, costumes,
village settlements, vernacular architecture, and folk speech, as well
as to conduct dialect-geography, before the ethnic Germans who had
been living in these two regions for centuries were to be resettled in the
German Reich. Previously I have maintained that the fieldwork carried
out in South Tyrol was arguably the largest in history, but now I must
modify this statement by considering even more precisely what really
happened.1
The fieldwork was undertaken by members of a so-called Kultur­
kommission (Cultural Commission), a subdepartment of Heinrich
Himm­ler’s SS-Ahnenerbe (SS Ancestral Inheritance). The project par-
ticipants were at best a mixed bag of individuals, ranging from habili-
tated academics, engineers, and secretaries to almost everything else
in-between. Supporting these field-workers were others, with similarly
wide-ranging backgrounds. Among the participants there were in fact a

3
4 Introduction

few with scholarly credentials, but there were also individual Nazis
clearly chosen for their political allegiance to the Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, National Socialist German Workers
Party), or membership in the Schutzstaffel (SS, Protective Guard). In
many cases it is not at all clear why or how the participants were chosen,
and in time nepotism would also play a role; but a minimally educated
secretary in a research position raises questions.
Work began in South Tyrol in the spring of 1940 and intensified
during the summer, with most of the work conducted in a period of
about one and a half to two years. By the fall of 1941, while the work
was still under way in Italy, several participants in the commission
were reassigned to Yugoslavia, where there was another, much smaller
group of ethnic Germans who were also to be resettled, and where the
same folklore and language field investigations were to take place. Al-
most all work at both locations was completed by 1942. In the summer
of 1943, Mussolini fell from power, and in September the German mili-
tary occupied northeastern Italy, but by this time most of the commission
participants had returned home or been sent off to war.
Massive files of data have been acquired from these endeavors in
Italy and Yugoslavia. Many of these field investigations have been pub-
lished, some few by the Cultural Commission participants themselves,
but gradually over the last two decades, much more has been treated
by individuals who had no connections to the commission. In this study
I examine these materials, published before, during, and after the war,
and through close readings try to understand not just the scope but also
the significance of Heinrich Himmler’s dual Cultural Commissions and
the results of their field investigations. The ideology that drove the col-
lection is now quite clear, the practitioners and their theories have long
since been discredited, and all the materials collected in Italy in the
early 1940s are demonstrably fraught with difficulties. When Gottschee
is added to the picture, and one looks even more closely at the individual
field-workers, their motivations, and their subsequent publications, the
same difficulties for any assessment of their work arise.

Historical Background
For millennia various forms of Germanic language and culture can be
found down through the Italian peninsula: during the great migrations
of the fourth and fifth centuries, Goths invaded and contributed to the
demise of the Roman Empire in 476, after which Tyrol became part of the
Introduction 5

Ostrogoth Kingdom; West Germanic Bavarians migrated southward

around 553, moving as far south as Salurn/Salorno; and by the end of
the nineteenth century that portion of the province known today as
South Tyrol, in northeastern Italy, had become the Austro-Hungarian
county of Tyrol. The region has thus for many centuries been an inter-
ethnic and intercultural zone where both German and Italian dialects
are spoken by virtually all residents, and where German and Latin cul-
tures elide.
Provincial Tyrol has traditionally been divided geographically into
northern, southern, and eastern regions. Today Austrian Tyrol includes
the northern and eastern regions, named in German simply Tirol and
Osttirol. To the west, bordering Switzerland, is the Austrian state of Vor­
arlberg, where the Alemannic German dialect is spoken, not Bavarian
German as in all of Tyrol except in the district of Reutte and in a small
western region called the “Außerfern,” where Alemannic is also spoken.
The southern region—an Italian province—is referred to in modern-day
Italian as Trentino-Alto Adige, in German as Trentino-Südtirol, and
Trentin-Südtirol in Ladin, a modern version of Latin spoken by the
other large minority in the region.2 This multilingual autonomous state
south of the Brenner Pass, on the southern slopes of the Alps, covers
2,857 square miles (7,400 square kilometers), and today has a population
of a little more than half a million, with a population density of 77.62
inhabitants per square kilometer, quite low compared to Italy’s average
of 201.5 per square kilometer.
South Tyrol is only one of several such German-language and
cultural regions along Germany’s political borders: Alsace-Lorraine
(France), Limburg and Brabant (East Belgium), the former Upper Sile-
sia (Poland), and, of course, the Sudetenland in what was previously
Czecho­slovakia but not a German border region. For centuries signifi-
cant numbers of ethnic Germans have also lived all along the Baltic Sea
and throughout central and southeastern Europe—in Hungary, Slova-
kia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Romania—as well as in the former
Soviet republics and now the newly independent countries of Ukraine
and Kazakhstan, the best known being the Volga Germans. Outside
Europe there are also significant German heritage and language settle-
ments in North and South America, as well as in Africa, but they were
not subjected to resettlement, forced or otherwise, and thus will not be
mentioned further. Clearly linguistic, cultural, and ethnic-identity ex-
pressions of Germanness, or of any other heritage, cannot be limited to
people within a political boundary, like Südtirol and Gottschee.
6 Introduction

South Tyrol under Italian Fascism

In 1915, during World War I, South Tyrol became a pawn in the hands
of politicians. The Allies promised Italy that if it rejected its allegiance
to Germany during the war and supported the Allies, the Brenner Pass
in the southern Alps would become a permanent boundary between
the German- and the Italian-speaking states. Italy complied, and at the
1919 peace conference in Saint-Germain-en-Laye the Italian foreign
minister, Baron Sonnino, insisted that the wartime agreement be up-
held. He was supported by the French delegation, but the English tried
to modify the agreement, fearing that a permanent Brenner boundary
would stand in the way of any subsequent rapprochement between
Germany and Italy. The American president Woodrow Wilson, in an
address to the joint houses of the US Congress on January 8, 1918, laid
out in his Fourteen Point Plan the basics for a peace treaty. Wilson—the
moralist, the “honest broker,” whose guiding principle was the right of
people to self-determination—set his principles aside, however, and
gave his support to Italy regarding the South Tirol.3 Point 9 reads: “A
readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly rec-
ognizable lines of nationality” (emphasis added). But no such regard
for national identity was taken into consideration.
With the arrival of fascism in Italy during the 1920s, continuing
through the 1930s and into the early war years of the 1940s, the German-
heritage inhabitants of South Tyrol found their lives radically changed.
Cultural traditions, schooling, and even church participation were
rapidly subjected to interference, often violence. No one less than Il Duce
himself, Benito Mussolini, stated: “If the Germans have to be beaten
and stomped to bring them to reason, then so be it, we’re ready.” 4 An
extreme nationalist senator from Rovereto, Ettore Tolomei, set forth in
1922 his thirty-two points for the Italianization of the region, three of
which stipulate exclusive use of Italian in public offices, closure of the
majority of German schools, and incentives for immigrants from other
Italian regions to move into South Tyrol.5
In October 1939 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini agreed to a “re-
adjustment,” to use President Wilson’s term, concerning the German
Reich’s southern flank. The new agreement left South Tyrol in Italy, but
it called for the resettlement of its citizens. This meant that more than a
quarter million ethnic German inhabitants were given the choice of
being resettled in the National Socialist (NS) German Reich or remain-
ing behind under Italy’s Partito Nazionale Fascista (Party of National
Introduction 7

Fascists). By December 31, 1939, the majority of these South Tyroleans

had indeed “opted” for Germany. Thousands migrated into the Reich
over the next few years, with the understanding that they would be
moved later to a place in Germany’s realm of influence, somewhere in
the East.

Goals and Difficulties

A German settlement outside the political boundaries was referred to as
a Sprachinsel (language island), and many of these Volksdeutsche (ethnic
Germans) became part of massive resettlements—Zwangsmigrationen
(forced migrations)—during and after World War II. 6 They were to
some degree part of the larger National Socialist policy of heim ins Reich
(home to the Reich), sometimes referred to as Blutauffrischen (freshening
of blood).7 People were relocated—not resettled—with little more than
the clothes on their backs and what they could carry in a suitcase.8 There
were, of course, many other reasons to move people, not the least of
which were the needs of the German army, the Wehrmacht. There were
in fact major differences between the ethnic Germans of South Tyrol,
less so in Gottschee, and all the others being forcefully relocated. The
German-heritage inhabitants of South Tyrol seem to have received un-
usual and even privileged treatment.
1. They were given a choice of being relocated into the German Reich (as
Optanten, the term for those opting for resettlement) or of remaining (as
Dableiber, the term for those remaining behind). By December 31, 1939, the
majority of South Tyroleans had opted for the German Reich, and as many
as eighty thousand were resettled over the next few years. It was a planned
resettlement of the people and most of their personal belongings into a new
homeland.9
2. Unlike virtually all the other ethnic Germans who were moved or forcibly
relocated, a program of research was to be carried out with the inhabitants in
the villages and high mountain valleys of the region. Before they were to be
moved, they became contributors to and participants in researching and
recording their own folk traditions. Thus the working groups of German
and Austrian folklorists, dialecticians, photographers, and filmmakers were
sent to South Tyrol to collect a full range of Volkskunde and to conduct folk
speech and dialect studies, using for the most part state-of-the-art recording
and photographic equipment.
3. Finally, this collected traditional heritage and folk speech would be cleansed
of all foreign elements and returned to the South Tyroleans once they had been
resettled in their new homeland, somewhere in Germany’s realm of influence.
8 Introduction

The three points do reveal major differences between the planned

resettlement of the inhabitants of South Tyrol and the other relocations.
The work among the South Tyroleans, and soon the Gottscheers, by the
hastily created Cultural Commission in northern Italy and then in Yu-
goslavia in fact bears little if any resemblance to the forced mass move-
ments of people taking place throughout war-torn Europe. The first
and most obvious difference was that Germany was dealing here with
Italy, ostensibly its Axis ally. All the other relocations were of people—
only some of whom were ethnic Germans—living in countries that
were for the most part occupied by the German military and who were
certainly not allies. More important for this study is point number 2,
that research of folk traditions and language for later use in a new
homeland was at the center of the endeavors in Italy and Yugoslavia.
The Cultural Commission was created to carry out this program
for collecting the folkloric and language (philological) data from two
regions, both outside the political boundaries of the German Reich.
German and Austrian field-workers—now all citizens of the Reich—
were selected and sent to South Tyrol in the summer of 1940, and the
fieldwork resulted in enormous—I prefer the term massive—collections
of material and has led to more than seven decades of publications.

Questions Abound
It is important to focus on and establish goals for a more complete under-
standing of the importance of this “unparalleled occurrence.” Many
studies have adequately dealt with the underlying ideology; disserta-
tions have treated two of the participants, Alfred Quellmalz and Willi
Mai, in elaborate detail; and some of the collectanea has been published,
even in this century. Important questions remain, however. First, why
did Hitler and his henchman Heinrich Himmler agree to leave South
Tyrol? The literature offers some reasons, none of which fully answers
the question. Was it because Hitler was an admirer of Mussolini, or
merely because he needed to secure Germany from the South? Hitler
repeatedly rejected any claim to South Tyrol, stating as early as 1923, in
his Mein Kampf: “I do not hesitate to declare that, now the dice have
fallen, I not only regard a re-conquest of the South Tyrol by war as im-
possible, but that I personally would reject it.”10 Did he intend to annex
the region later? Second, were these ethnic Germans really treated better
than others who were being moved about? Third, is there some real and
inherent value in the collectanea? And fourth, what was the motivation
Introduction 9

of the field investigators beyond employment away from the war

fronts? Some questions will be answered in the text, but final answers
remain elusive.
Missing in particular is a detailed evaluation of this “research”
within the scholarly world and not just limited to that of folklore and
language study. Such an assessment can only come from thorough,
close readings of the archival files of the primary individual participants
as well as their published and unpublished works. That is the methodol-
ogy followed in this study. Some obvious answers to the questions raised
will yield to more penetrating analyses, dealing with the psychological
motivation and career opportunism of the participants and the planned
plunder by the Ahnenerbe. The larger geographical locus has been
fixed and will only be clarified through analysis of the work conducted
in specific valleys, villages, and cities. Most importantly, however, a
contemporaneous historical context and the troubling intellectual atmo-
sphere out of which these investigations grew must first be established.
1

October 21, 1939

O n October 21, 1939, German and Italian representatives signed an

Abkommen (accord) in Rome concerning the people and the land
of Italy’s South Tyrol.1 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini’s primary
concerns were certainly political; Germany wanted to resettle these
ethnic Germans and Italy wanted to complete the Italianization of its
northeastern province. The Rome agreement focused on the resettle-
ment of these German-heritage inhabitants, not on field investigations
of their heritage.2 The accord had actually been outlined after the spring
1938 meeting in Rome between Hitler and Mussolini, and during the
first half of 1939. In chapter 2 of his 1962 book Südtirol und die Achse
Berlin-Rom 1938–1945, Conrad Latour describes these meetings as a
“diplomatic prelude” to the October signing, and in chapter 3 he de-
scribes the development of what came to be called the “radical ethnic
solution.” He cites an unbelievably offensive German term used in the
negotiations, describing the resettlement as a “völkische Flurbereinigung,”
perhaps best translated as “racial [ethnic] cleansing.”3 Latour frequently
cites Germany’s general consul in Milan at that time, Otto Bene, as one
of his major sources, and I too will rely to some degree on Bene’s un-
published chronicles for some historical context,4 but Bene has become
a questionable resource.

10
October 21, 1939 11

Attached to the Rome document were coauthored guidelines by

Otto Bene and the prefect of Bozen/Bolzano, Giuseppe Mastromattei,
dealing primarily with the removal of cultural material possessions of
the inhabitants to the German Reich. Based on this 1939 agreement, the
ethnic Germans of South Tyrol were promised, by Himmler himself,
resettlement in new German locations “somewhere . . . in the East.” 5
Several places were under consideration, beginning with Moravia in
Czechoslovakia, next the Beskid Mountains in southern Poland, then in
the Alsace-Loraine and Burgundy regions of France, and finally in the
Crimea in the Soviet Union.6 The ultranationalist Italian senator Ettore
Tolomei, who has already been mentioned, even suggested sending the
South Tyroleans to the Italian colony of Abyssinia, which later became
the modern-day country of Eritrea.7 The location for a final complete
resettlement was never definitively agreed to, and the plan remained
nothing more than a wild fantasy that served as talking points.
An official office was established to arrange for this mass movement
of South Tyroleans; named the Amtliche Deutsche Ein- und Rückwan­
derungsstelle (ADERSt, Official German Immigration and Remigration
Bureau), it was located in Bozen/Bolzano. There were, of course, many
other subbranches and offices, which will be discussed below.
The guidelines attached to the October 1939 accord led Heinrich
Himmler, on January 2, 1940, to establish a cultural commission within
his SS-Ahnenerbe,8 to be staffed by German scholars, assisted by a
goodly number of locals. It should be noted here that even though the
Cultural Commission existed as a subdepartment of the Ahnenerbe, and
much of the planned fieldwork was indeed carried out, there was no
official listing for it among the many departments of the Ahnenerbe—
as presented by Michael Kater in an appendix to his work—and in all
the archival files I have investigated, I found no documents that include
an official letterhead. All such letters, memoranda, and personal notes
have the commission name and addresses typed in the upper left- or
right-hand corner of the page; only one document revealed a rubber
stamp with the Cultural Commission on it. This lack of official recogni-
tion did not seem to hinder the director and the participants from assum-
ing that they were indeed an official branch of the Ahnenerbe.
It is difficult to say precisely who first suggested the large folklore
undertaking in South Tyrol, but it can easily be documented that the di-
rector of the Südostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Southeast Ger-
man Research Community), Hugo Hassinger, made such suggestions
12 October 21, 1939

Typed-in letterhead of the Kulturkommission.

in 1939.9 His primary concern was the resettlement of these ethnic Ger-
mans in the Beskid Mountains of Galicia, in southern Poland. By No-
vember of that same year, one of his colleagues in Vienna, the director of
the Lehr- und Forschungsstätte für germanisch-deutsche Volkskunde
(Teaching and Research Post for Germanic-German Folklore) in Salz-
burg, Richard Wolfram, had written the following to Sievers: “In regard
to the resettlement, we must take the following into consideration, that
the collective cultural goods (including household implements) are to
be taken along wherever this is possible. The farms themselves should
also be investigated for their folk goods. Further, in our opinion, advisers
with knowledge of the folk practices of this group must be employed
[since] they will be responsible during the rebuilding for creating racial
purity.”10
The directive of January 2, 1940, by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himm­
ler thereby established the parameters for the cultural project in South
Tyrol. Very soon thereafter, in March 1940, the Reich business leader of
the Ahnenerbe, Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram Sievers, took a lengthy
trip to South Tyrol “in order to lay out the breadth of assignments for
recording and securing of the entire material and intellectual cultural
October 21, 1939 13

goods in South Tyrol.”11 The research plan was broadly conceived, and
a preliminary cost was set at five million Italian lire, an enormous sum
but considering the magnitude of the project not too excessive. In his
report to Himmler, Sievers clearly accepted Richard Wolfram’s sugges-
tion that “experts of the individual working groups” form a “commis-
sion” and that “a unified working plan be laid out.” In order to gain
approval for the commission, Wolfram Sievers asked “with emphasis”
and tried with superlatives to make the entire undertaking appealing to
Himmler: “In carrying out the cultural assignment, it is of utmost im-
portance to see that South Tyrol has been systematically researched for its
folklore. Because South Tyrol is a unique manifestation of German folklore,
with an unbelievable richness of traditions, a full range of significant scholarly
questions will be answered with the help of the South Tyrolean material. Before
this ethnic settlement is broken up, its richness must be recorded; now
is the last and only time to record it completely” (emphasis added).12
This letter seems to be the first usage of the term Kommission, soon to
become the Kulturkommission, and there is thus good reason to believe
that in fact Richard Wolfram was the primary figure in recommending
the establishment of the commission. Many years later, in 1987, Wolfram
tried to distance himself from its origins: “Filled with doubt, I tried—as
far as I could—to rescue whatever was possible . . . in my area of exper-
tise on South Tyrol’s cultural heritage. I was thus able to secure a position
in the Cultural Commission for South Tyrol.”13
The war would provide commission participants one significant
benefit, among others. While working in the beautiful surroundings of
the region, most participants were declared unabkömmlich (indispens-
able), abbreviated uk. The individuals named to head the various depart-
ments of the commission were virtually all declared uk because their
positions were designated as kriegswichtig (important for the war effort)
by Himmler himself. Here they were able to pursue their professional
interests, and their primary assignment was “to rescue as much as pos-
sible in the way of cultural goods.”14 I emphasize, however, that the
German-Italian agreement made no mention of a cultural commission
interested in ephemera; it did specify that “furniture, old wall panels,
cupboards, tile warming stoves, household wares, art objects, materials
for making traditional clothing, tombstones, archives, church registers
were to be taken into the German Reich,” a statement that would subse-
quently be interpreted as license to plunder.
By July 1, 1940, many of the participants in the working groups of the
Cultural Commission had been named, and the number of departments
14 October 21, 1939

considered important for the war effort continued to expand.15 Not all
the personnel assignments of the working groups could be staffed in
the format planned in advance. By mid-October 1940 the following con-
figuration appeared; note the prominent position of Richard Wolfram:16

I. Folklore and Folk Research17

1. Custom, Folk Belief, Folk Dance/Movement Forms: Prof.
Dr. Richard Wolfram, Vienna
2. Utensils and Household Goods: Dr. [Ernst Otto] Thiele,
Rosenberg Bureau
3. Costumes: Gertrud Pesendorfer, Folk Art Museum
Innsbruck
4. Folk Narrative, Fairy Tales, Legend: Dr. Wilhelm Mai,
Ancestral Inheritance
5. Symbols, House Signs and Kinship Symbols: Dr. Otto
Plaßmann, Ancestral Inheritance
II. Folk Music, Folk Song, Folk Dance/Musical Part: Dr. Alfred
Quellmalz, State Institute for German Music Research,
Assisted by Karl Horak
III. House Research and Architecture: Docent Dr. Martin Rudolph,
Technical University Braunschweig
IV. Construction and Settlement Culture: Prof. [Wilhelm] Sachs,
Bozen
V. Dialects, Place and Family Names: Dr. [Matthias] Insam,
Munich, Dr. [Bruno] Schweizer, Ancestral Inheritance
VI. Archives: Dr. [Franz] Huter, State Archives Vienna
VII. Church Registers and Kinship Studies: Dr. [?] Kayser, Reich
Post for Kinship Research Berlin
VIII. Prehistory: Dr. [Georg] Innerebner, Bozen
IX. Museums, Art Treasures, Statue Art and Folk Art: Dr. [Hans]
Posse, Director of the Art Gallery Dresden; Dr. Graf [Os-
wald] Trapp, Innsbruck, State Curator for Tyrol; Dr. [Wal-
ter] Frodl, Klagenfurt, State Curator for Carinthia; Dr.
[ Josef] Ringler, [Folk Art Museum] Innsbruck
X. Film: Captain [Hellmut] Bousset, Berlin
XI. Folk History, Tribal Studies: [illegible: Karl Felix Wolff?18 ]

The names of the individual departments changed repeatedly, osten-

sibly to delineate research specializations, but frequently it was because
individuals could not get along with each other and saw others as
October 21, 1939 15

professional competition. In at least one case a participant, Ernst Otto

Thiele, fled to the competing ideological umbrella organization, the
Amt Rosenberg (Rosenberg Office), a good example of exchanging the
black uniform of Himmler’s SS for the brown of Rosenberg’s SA (Sturm­
abteilung, Storm Detachment).19 Several departments were very ac-
tive, particularly those of Richard Wolfram, Alfred Quellmalz, Bruno
Schweizer, and Willi Mai, but as one can easily see, many others were
deeply involved: Matthias Insam, Georg Innerebner, Gertrud Pesendor-
fer, Martin Rudolph, and Hellmut Bousset. Others such as Franz Huter
and Otto Plaßmann seemed to simply carry out bureaucratic duties, and
a few on the various lists, like Karl Felix Wolff, apparently did no identi-
fiable fieldwork for the commission. All these departments were under
the influence of an ideology focused on “all things Nordic,” which I
have treated elsewhere,20 as have Peter Assion, Peter Schwinn, and
Konrad Köstlin.
These field-workers were presented with guidelines clearly stating,
not suggesting, that the materials they were to collect were nothing less
than remnants of ancient Germanic traditions and language. Their pri-
mary assignment was to register and collect these cultural possessions
of the South Tyroleans and prepare them for cleansing. All followed the
mandate, and some were believers, but before we proceed further, we
need to consider the intellectual atmosphere among the participants.
2

The Intellectual Atmosphere

A quarter million South Tyroleans were to be resettled in a new home-

land, and several thousand were indeed moved, mostly to the
north, into the Reichsgau Tirol-Vorarlberg.1 One small group of 546
ethnic Germans, the Mòcheni who had migrated from Munich to the
Fersina Valley (Fersental) in Trient/Trentino in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries, were in fact forcefully moved in 1942–43 to Budweis
and Aussigin, Bohemia/Czechoslovakia, where there were sufficient
language-use domains for preserving the German language, on a 28,000
hectare reservation, about 11,333 acres. The term used here for these
forced migrants was Menschenmaterial (human material), whose task it
was to revive German tribal-root feelings among the indigenous ethnic
Germans in Budweis.2
What has not yet been adequately addressed concerning this entire
“unparalleled occurrence,” as I have euphemistically called it, is a full
treatment of the actual work accomplished, beginning with the intel-
lectual atmosphere surrounding the participants. “Scholars” of every
type, some few of whom were indeed highly educated in the German
world’s best universities and technical schools, were to carry out the
“research” portion of the Ahnenerbe’s Cultural Commission. Of the nine
individuals I will examine in considerable detail, three were habilitated
or soon would be, three had completed doctorates, one was a licensed

16
The Intellectual Atmosphere 17

engineer, and two were secretaries, one without any completed edu-
cation. I will place this activity within the world of German scholarly
prestige, where most of these individuals occupied a range of positions
or wished to, and begin with the Nobel Foundation awards.

Scholarly Shadows
Between the establishment of the Alfred Nobel Foundation in 1901 and
the end of World War II, scholars in Germany were awarded Nobel Prizes
a total of forty-six times: seventeen in chemistry, twelve in physics, nine
in physiology-medicine, five in literature, and three peace prizes. The
awards went to individuals whose names are well known and whose
accomplishments still affect us: Otto Hahn in chemistry; Wilhelm Rönt-
gen, Werner Heisenberg, Albert Einstein, and Max Planck in physics;
Thomas Mann in literature; and Gustav Stresemann for the Peace Prize.
When Austria is added to the list, there are thirteen more, three in chem-
istry, four in physics, four in physiology-medicine, and two Peace Prizes,
for a total of fifty-nine recipients associated with German-language uni-
versities, of which, interestingly, about 30 percent were Jewish.3 Using
only the Nobel Prize as a gauge, German excellence in scholarship during
this period was unquestioned, and students and scholars from around
the world made their way to German and Austrian universities to study
and work with these individuals. Among them was the American Stith
Thompson, who initiated contact with colleagues in Europe during the
academic year 1926–27, later established the folklore program at Indiana
University in the 1940s, and called it the Folklore Institute, using the
German word Institut instead of department, which was standard at
American universities.
During this same period, from the turn of the century and for our
purposes to the end of the war, not only were such reputable scientific
studies under way—many of which would contribute to the National
Socialist war effort4—but there were also numerous popular science
publications and an active academic pseudoscientific scene. I will use
the more polite terms popular and pseudoscientific, but the reader may
assume that I have junk science in mind for both. Initially I thought that
these individual precursors and predecessors of Volkskunde (folklore),
their institutes, and their publications were simply casting distant “sci-
entific” shadows on the work that is being treated here, but slowly I
came to feel that pseudoscience in particular was also very much at
home in the renowned universities and research institutes or at least
18 The Intellectual Atmosphere

loosely associated with those same academic institutions. These insti-

tutions would provide pure, unadulterated junk science publications
that acquired a false legitimacy from other scientific accomplishments,
particularly the highly acclaimed Nobel Prize–winning scholarship.
These “studies” come from the nonacademic world but also from ha-
bilitated professors at German and Austrian universities, Berlin and
Vienna in particular, and emanate from within and emerge alongside
other scholarly endeavors during the National Socialist years, that is,
quasi-science surrounded by legitimate science. If shadows were indeed
being cast from within the world of creditable and reputable German
scholarship, which I believe they were, they take on the appearance of
scholarly legitimacy. I will demonstrate that all of the Cultural Commis-
sion participants’ work was carried out as little more than popular and
pseudoscience.
By using the word shadows, I am deliberately not limiting myself to
the good German term Zeitgeist, understood internationally, to describe
this “unprecedented and unparalleled occurrence.” My choice of words
is intended to be far more inclusive of the larger society over an extended
period of time, specifically the latter part of the nineteenth century and
most particularly in the first four decades of the twentieth century. I am
well aware that the popular science and pseudoscience I am treating
was not limited to the German world; one need only consider the wide
range of similar studies bundled together into the new science of eu-
genics, particularly in the early twentieth century in the United States.
Exemplary are the publications of physician William Duncan McKim
(1855–1935), who proposed in his 1900 book, Heredity and Human Prog-
ress, the liquidation of the “very weak and the very vicious” by the state
through the use of carbonic acid gas, and Madison Grant (1865–1937),
whose 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, is an elaborate work of
racial hygiene. The Eugenics Record Office, founded in 1910 in Cold
Spring Harbor, New York, produced reports, articles, and charts that
were considered scientifically factual in their day. It is also clear that
much of this early twentieth-century “science” is closely associated
with renowned American universities. A prime example was Harvard
professor Alexander Hamilton Rice, who conducted expeditions in the
1920s into Amazonia, perhaps in search of a mythical great civilization
of pale-skinned people who had left behind a magnificent city that
awaited rediscovery.5 Rice funded his excursion with funds from his
wealthy wife, Eleanor Elkins Widener, who endowed the Widener Li-
brary at Harvard as a memorial to her elder son, Harry Elkins Widener.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Asbestos Table Mats Reinforced with Wire
Netting
Ordinarily heavy pieces of sheet asbestos are used for the mats
placed under hot dishes on the dining table. These are easily broken
if bent, and a simple method of overcoming this breakage is to make
mats as follows: Cut two pieces of sheet asbestos, each about one-
half the thickness of that usually used, one having about ³⁄₄ in.
around the edge which may be used as a binder in pasting the
sheets together. Cut notches into this edge, at intervals of about 2
in., and insert a disk of wire window screening between the pieces of
asbestos. Turn the edges of the larger piece over and paste in place.
 Device for Corrugating Strips

Having a sheet-metal cog rail to make for the adjusting

mechanism of an enlarging screen, I built a cog-forming device as
shown in the sketch. A block of wood served as the case and two
levers with hinges were fixed to one end of it. Two pieces of
hardwood were grooved at their ends as shown in the smaller
sketch, to fit over three tenpenny nails, A, held in place on the block
by staples. Four small nails, B, were set into the block, as shown, to
act as guides for the strip of metal, which was fed between the
forming blocks and the nails on the case. By pressing down on the
hinge levers, the strip was formed into corrugations or teeth. In order
to make the teeth uniform it was necessary to guide the forming
pieces by having one of the cogs fit over the first nail. The strip thus
formed was fixed to a wooden piece and served as a cog rail.—R. E.
Henderson, Walla Walla, Washington.
Birch-Bark Leggings Made in the Woods
 An excellent pair of leggings for use in brush and forest land can
be made in a few minutes from birch bark cut in the woods. Select a
suitable tree, about 6 or 8 in. in diameter, and cut into the heavy bark
to obtain two rolls around the circumference of the tree, taking care
not to cut deep enough to injure it. Fit these sections around the legs
leaving 6-in. portions overlapping. Trim the bark to the proper shape
and soak it in water to soften the grain. Place the bark close to the
fire until it curls. The leggings are then ready for use.
 Stretcher for Drying Small Fur Hides

Small hides should be dried over a stretcher to give the best

results, and the device shown in the sketch will be found useful for
this purpose. It is made of two strips of ¹⁄₂-in. wood, hinged at the
pointed end. Small holes are drilled into the upper surface at the
other ends and adjustment is made by means of a wire bent at the
ends and inserted in the holes.—Elmer Tetzlaff, East DePere, Wis.

¶Wire mesh is useful for drawer bottoms in tool cases where dirt is
likely to accumulate.
 Reel for Use with Seed-Planting Guide String

This Reel Aids in Setting Out Plants in Rows

Many gardeners derive as much pleasure from the orderly

arrangement of the plants in their “farms” as from any other feature
of this home diversion, and I am one of them. In order to facilitate the
planting I made a reel like that shown in the sketch. The frame is of
wood, and the reel is made of a piece of broomstick to which two
small tins, or box covers, are nailed. A wire handle made of a long
nail is fitted to one end, and a shoulder hook is used as a stop for the
handle when it is desired to check the line. A screw eye driven into
the back of the frame holds it at various heights on the stake. This
device is far superior to the common use of two stakes for the
planting cord.—James M. Kane, Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
 Kinks on the Care of Umbrellas
Deriving long use from an umbrella depends in part on proper
selection, care of the cloth and frame, and precautions against loss
or theft. A silk cover is desirable to shed rain, and a cotton one for a
sunshade. The hot sun dries out the silk and heats the metal ribs
under it, quickly destroying it. If silk is used for sun protection, wet
the cover occasionally. Always set an umbrella to dry, handle down if
there is not space to dry it open.
A broad ribbon loop on the handle of a woman’s umbrella permits
carrying it on the wrist and prevents forgetting it. An umbrella with a
removable handle can be folded into a suitcase, and putting the
handle in the pocket when leaving the umbrella in any public place
makes it less liable to theft. An umbrella should bear the name and
address of the owner.
A Bell-Ringing Mail Box
 The annoyance of watching for the arrival of the mailman was
overcome by the fitting of an electrical alarm to the mail box, as
shown in the sketch. A strip of metal, A, was pivoted in the box and
weighted on one end. A bell, B, was wired to dry cells in the box
below the container for the mail. When the mail is dropped in the box
the end A is forced down, forming an electrical contact and
completing the circuit from the cells C through the wire D and back
through the wire E. When the mail is removed the weight raises the
metal strip.—James E. Noble, Portsmouth, Canada.
 A Simple Polarity Indicator
An ordinary compass, fitted flush in a wooden frame as shown in
the sketch forms the basis for the polarity indicator described. The N,
or north, and S, or south, points of the compass should run
lengthwise with the frame with the former on the end farthest from
the binding posts, C and D. Five turns of No. 18 gauge, or any
similar wire are wound lengthwise around the frame and over the
compass. The ends of the wires terminate at the two binding posts.
Begin at C and wind toward the compass, binding the wire at D.
 If the two ends of a wire are free, and it is desired to know whether
there is any current present, and if so, its polarity, fasten one wire to
the post C and the other to D. Before connecting the wires, hold the
compass and frame in such a way that the needle is over the N point
on the compass dial. If, after the wires are connected, the needle
moves, there is a current flowing. If the needle is deflected toward
the east, the negative wire is on C; if it is deflected toward the west,
the positive wire is on C.
When it is desired to ascertain the polarity of a wire, which is
covered by a floor, ceiling, or molding, hold the compass as
explained, and either directly above or below the wire. Then turn on
the current. If the instrument is above the wire, the wire extending
parallel with it north and south, and the needle is deflected toward
the west, the current is flowing from the north to the south end of the
wire. If the wire runs east and west and the needle is deflected to the
west, the current is running from west to east.
If the wire runs on a diagonal between the directions mentioned,
and the needle is deflected toward the west, he current is flowing
from the quadrant between N and W on the compass dial toward the
quadrant between S and E. If the instrument is held over the wire
and the needle is deflected toward E, the polarity is the opposite to
that last indicated. Should the instrument be held below the wire, if
the needle goes toward W, it is equivalent to going toward E when
above the wire.—H. Sterling Parker, Brooklyn, New York.

¶If the white of an egg is used to seal an envelope which has no

mucilage on the flap, it cannot be opened by steaming it.
 Flash Light Used as a Bedroom Night Light

To save groping about in the dark for my flash light when suddenly
awakened in the night, I devised the arrangement shown in the
sketch and by which a “flash” is used as a wall night light, without
lessening its common uses. The holder B and the board A are of
wood, and into the box is fitted a metal clip, C, to hold the light. A
round hole of proper size is cut through the top of the box and the
light set through it so that the bottom end rests in the clip, the tin
ferrule pressing against it firmly. A light spring, D, makes contact with
the upper terminal of the push switch without closing it. The
apparatus is fastened to the wall, and insulated wires, soldered, one
to the clip C, and the other to the spring D, are connected to a switch
placed in a convenient position. This switch replaces that on the
light. The ceiling serves to reflect and distribute the light rays.—B. L.
Dobbins, Harwich, Mass.
 Pie-Plate Gas Heater

A satisfactory gas heater to take the chill out of the air in a small
room by fitting a pie plate over a gas burner was made by me, as
shown in the sketch. The wires which formerly held the glass shade
were fitted into holes punched in the rim of the plate. It could thus be
removed quickly when not needed and the glass shade put back in
place.—Morris Tinsky, Chicago, Illinois.
A Folding Table with Split-Bamboo Tray for Top