The Past As Propaganda: Totalitarian Archaeology in Nazi Germany
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The past as propaganda: totalitarian archaeology in Nazi Germany BETTINA ARNOLD* An important element to the future of archaeology in the ex-Communist countries of central Europe will be the freeing of archaeological ideas from the constraints of a particular set of social theories built into the fabric of the state, CIS Milisauskas noted in the last Ax’rJQLvTY (64: 283-5). This is a timely moment to look at the interference of a different set of social theories in the same region some decades ago. After almost six decades, there is no term Vorgeschichte (prehistory)was rejected as comprehensive account by a German-speaking a survival of anthropological thinking; Urge- prehistorian of the effects on prehistoric scho- schichte (early history) was preferred as better larship of the National Socialist regime, or the emphasizing the continuity of prehistory with Isle played by archaeology in legitimating it. documentary history (Sklenar 1983: 132). The This paper addresses the following questions: writings of the 19th-century French racial What were the foundations of German prehis- philosopher Gobineau provided a doctrine of toric research under the National Socialists the inequality of different races (Daniel & Ken- (NS)? What role did prehistory play in the frew 1988: 104-6). Journals and publications process of political legitimation from 1933 to dealing with the subject of race and genetic 1945? What did the NS system offer to prehis- engineering increasingly appeared in Germany torians in exchange for their part in this legiti- in the early 20th century, among them Volk und mation process? What was the official Party Hasse, which was founded in 1926, and policy regarding prehistoric archaeology? What Fortschritte der Erbpathologie und HC~SS~JI- was the response of the discipline to this hygiene, founded in 1929. Neither publication Faustian bargain? What were the effects of state survived the Second World War. control on excavation and research? How is The groundwork for an ethnocentric German German prehistoric archaeology affected by this prehistory was laid by Gustaf Kossinna (1858- legacy today? 1932), a linguist who was a late convert to prehistory (FIGIJRE1). Kossinna proposed cultu- The foundations of the ‘pre-eminently national ral diffusion as a process whereby influences, discipline’ ideas and models were passed on by more To understand events in German prehistoric advanced peoples to the less advanced with archaeology under the National Socialists, it is which they came into contact. This concept, necessary to look at the discipline well before wedded to Kossinna’s Kulturkreis theory, the Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and the beginning identification of geographical regions with of the Umbruch period of radical change. specific ethnic groups on the basis of material Archaeology in Central Europe at the eve of the culture, lent theoretical support to the expan- First World War was marked by a return of the sionist policies of Nazi Germany. ‘Distribution ethnohistoric approach to theory; in German- maps of archaeological types became a convinc- speaking regions there was a new name for the ing argument for expansionist aims: wherever a disc:ipline to go with its new orientation. The single find of a type designated as Germanic was and his organization, primarily bec:ause it con- centrated on the excavation and stridy of prov incia1 Komari (;f:rmany ( Bollmus 1970; Ilggc:rs 1986: 234). The co11 n c(:t i o n tie t w een p reh i s t or5’ ii n d politics was of long standing, not a nciv product of the National Socialist regime. ’The fledgling d i s(: ip I in e e vo1 ved fro in t h c pan -E u r o p (:a ii geo - graphic divisions and rise of nationalisni that followed the First World War (Sklenar 1983: 131). Politicians began to tako an intercst in prehistoric archaeology, which seemed well sit i t e d to nation a 1is t visions . fl i 11den b u rg ’ s interest in Kossinna’s work is well tloc;umented (Mannus-Uiblio thek 1928 : Fro tit is p ic Wilhelm I1 was a frequent visitor to Schuch- hardt’s excavations at the Kiimerschanze near Potsdam; after one visit, he sent Schuchhardt a t e I egra m : ’ Continue excavations a n d ascertain whether IKiimerschanze] still Volksburg or already Fiirstensitz’ (Eggers 1986: 224). Between 1905 and 1914 the Kaiser also helped finance a number of archaeological excavations undertaken by the Duchess of Mecklenburg, in what is now the Yugoslav Kepublir: of Slovenia. and at Hallstatt in Austria. The skull of a well-preservcd skeleton from Hallstatt was sent to the Kaiser by the Duchess as a gift (Wells 1981: 1, 16). FIG~~RP,1. Gustav Kossinna (Mannus 1931: 337) Prehistory as political legitimation Prehistory played an important role in rehabili- tating German self-respect after the humiliation found, the land was declared ancient German of defeat in 1918, the perceived insult of Ver- territory. .’ (Sklenar 1983: 151) (FIGIJRE2). sailles, and the imposed Weirnar regime. The Alfred Rosenberg, the Party’s ideologist, dedication of the 1921 edition of Gustav Kossin- codified this ethnocentric and xenophobic per- na’s seminal German prehistory: a preeminen- spective: ‘An individual to whom the tradition tly national discipline reads: ‘To the German of his people (Volkstum) and the honor of his people, as a building block in the reconstruction people (Volksehre) is not a supreme value, has of the externally as well as internally disinte- forfeited the right to be protected by that people’ grated fatherland’ (1921: Dedication). (Germanenerbe 1938: 105). Applied to prehis- Kossinna acquired great influence after the toric archaeology, this perspective resulted in death of Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902). \vho was the neglect or distortion of data which did not the most prominent German prehistorian of the directly apply to Germanic peoples; during the late 19th century. Virchow was one of the first 1930s scholars whose main interests were prov- proponents of the ethnohistoric approach to incial Roman archaeology were labeled Rom- prehistory, although he is perhaps remembered linge by the extremists and considered more for his misinterpretation of the first Nean- anti-German (Jacob-Friesen 1950: 4). The derthal skeletal remains in 1856 (Eggers 1986: Romisch Germanische Kommission in Mainz, 202-5). In 1909 Kossinna founded the German founded in 1907 by Schuchhardt and his circle Society for Prehistory in Berlin, later more aptly (Eggers 1986: 220), was the object of defamatory named the Society for German Prehistory (Ge- attacks, first by Kossinna and later by Kosenberg sellschafi fur Ileutsche Vorgeschichte). This FIGURE2. A distribution mclp of 'Germanic' territory during the Bronze Age (Reinerth 1945: figure 2). was much more than a semantic alteration; as mans originated in antiquity - and that was on Alfred Giitze wrote (1933:68): occasion all of Europe. Kossinna's influence increased interest in The name of an organization is its business card. In archaeology as a political tool; as the path order to understand correctly what the Society for German Prehistory means one must remember what it which German Socia'ism was to became more clearly defined, archaeo- M'BS originally called , , , [It means] a prehistory of Germanness, independent of its present-day political logical data were used to endorse it. Gradual or ethnic boundaries, reaching back to its roots and changes manifested themselves in new journal following these wherever the ancestors of the Ger- titles and cover illustrations. The publication series Mannus-Bibliothek, for example, (Picker 1976: 93). This common pieoe of wish- changed its title from the latinate original to the ful thinking was supported by some otherwise germanic Munnus-Bucherei (it was named reputable archaeologists. The Kesearch Report Munnus-Bibliothek again after the war). of the Reichsbund for German Prehistory, Jul!. Mannus Zeitschrift fur Vorgeschichte became to December 1941, for example, reported the Zeitschrift fur Deutsche Vorgeschichte in 1934; nine-week expedition of the archaeologist Hans by 1975 it was Deutsche Zeitschriftfiir Vor- und Reinerth and a few colleagues to Greece where Fruhgeschichte. The editorial staff of these and they claimed to have discovered major neiv other journals turned over rapidly between evidence of Indogermanic migration to Greece 1933 and 1935, as dissenting archaeologists during the Neolithic (Mannus Zeitschrift fur were replaced by ‘right-thinking’ party liners. Deutsche Vorgeschichte 1942 33: 599). The Berlin-based Prahistorische Zeitschrift was one of the few journals relatively unaffected in The Faustian bargain: state support under the form and content by the political trans- NS regime formations of the 1930s. The nature of prehistoric archaeology itself in Many prehistoric archaeologists were drawn its European context is crucial to understanding to the National Socialists because they felt its r61e in Nazi Germany. Peter Goessler stated themselves second-class citizens in the unequivocally, ‘prehistory is an historic disci- academic arena with regard to the classical and pline, not a natural science . and it serves Near Eastern archaeologists; they were gen- historic goals even if its sources are generally erally bitter about their lack of state funding and quite different ones’ (1950: 7). The same point is public recognition. The Party benefited from a made by Eggers: ‘There is only one history, and dual inferiority complex on the part of its prehistory is part of it in its entirety. These two constituency of prehistorians, feeling both the types of scholarship differ only in their different general sense of injustice provoked by the sources: on the one hand written texts, on the Treaty of Versailles and a particular perception other material culture’ (1986: 16). of prehistory as a neglected academic disci- Prehistoric archaeology in Nazi Germany pline. On the creation of the new Polish state in differed from history as a discipline in one 1919, Kossinna published an article, ‘The important respect.