Foundations of Nazi Cultural Policy and Institutions Responsible for Its
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Lesson 12: Handout 4, Document 1 German Youth in the 1930S: Selected Excerpted Documents
Lesson 12: Handout 4, Document 1 German Youth in the 1930s: Selected excerpted documents Changes at School (Excerpted from “Changes at School,” pp. 175–76 in Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior ) Ellen Switzer, a student in Nazi Germany, recalls how her friend Ruth responded to Nazi antisemitic propaganda: Ruth was a totally dedicated Nazi. Some of us . often asked her how she could possibly have friends who were Jews or who had a Jewish background, when everything she read and distributed seemed to breathe hate against us and our ancestors. “Of course, they don’t mean you,” she would explain earnestly. “You are a good German. It’s those other Jews . who betrayed Germany that Hitler wants to remove from influence.” When Hitler actually came to power and the word went out that students of Jewish background were to be isolated, that “Aryan” Germans were no longer to associate with “non-Aryans” . Ruth actually came around and apologized to those of us to whom she was no longer able to talk. Not only did she no longer speak to the suddenly ostracized group of class - mates, she carefully noted down anybody who did, and reported them. 12 Purpose: To deepen understanding of how propaganda and conformity influence decision-making. • 186 Lesson 12: Handout 4, Document 2 German Youth in the 1930s: Selected excerpted documents Propaganda and Education (Excerpted from “Propaganda and Education,” pp. 242 –43 in Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior ) In Education for Death , American educator Gregor Ziemer described school - ing in Nazi Germany: A teacher is not spoken of as a teacher ( Lehrer ) but an Erzieher . -
The Monita Secreta Or, As It Was Also Known As, The
James Bernauer, S.J. Boston College From European Anti-Jesuitism to German Anti-Jewishness: A Tale of Two Texts “Jews and Jesuits will move heaven and hell against you.” --Kurt Lüdecke, in conversation with Adolf Hitleri A Presentation at the Conference “Honoring Stanislaw Musial” Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (March 5, 2009) The current intense debate about the significance of “political religion” as a mode of analyzing fascism leads us to the core of the crisis in understanding the Holocaust.ii Saul Friedländer has written of an “historian‟s paralysis” that “arises from the simultaneity and the interaction of entirely heterogeneous phenomena: messianic fanaticism and bureaucratic structures, pathological impulses and administrative decrees, archaic attitudes within an advanced industrial society.”iii Despite the conflicting voices in the discussion of political religion, the debate does acknowledge two relevant facts: the obvious intermingling in Nazism of religious and secular phenomena; secondly, the underestimated role exercised by Munich Catholicism in the early life of the Nazi party.iv My essay is an effort to illumine one thread in this complex territory of political religion and Nazism and my title conveys its hypotheses. First, that the centuries long polemic against the Roman Catholic religious order the Jesuits, namely, its fabrication of the Jesuit image as cynical corrupter of Christianity and European culture, provided an important template for the Nazi imagining of Jewry after its emancipation.v This claim will be exhibited in a consideration of two historically influential texts: the Monita 1 secreta which demonized the Jesuits and the Protocols of the Sages of Zion which diabolized the Jews.vi In the light of this examination, I shall claim that an intermingled rhetoric of Jesuit and Jewish wills to power operated in the imagination of some within the Nazi leadership, the most important of whom was Adolf Hitler himself. -
1 1 December 2009 DRAFT Jonathan Petropoulos Bridges from the Reich: the Importance of Émigré Art Dealers As Reflecte
Working Paper--Draft 1 December 2009 DRAFT Jonathan Petropoulos Bridges from the Reich: The Importance of Émigré Art Dealers as Reflected in the Case Studies Of Curt Valentin and Otto Kallir-Nirenstein Please permit me to begin with some reflections on my own work on art plunderers in the Third Reich. Back in 1995, I wrote an article about Kajetan Mühlmann titled, “The Importance of the Second Rank.” 1 In this article, I argued that while earlier scholars had completed the pioneering work on the major Nazi leaders, it was now the particular task of our generation to examine the careers of the figures who implemented the regime’s criminal policies. I detailed how in the realm of art plundering, many of the Handlanger had evaded meaningful justice, and how Datenschutz and archival laws in Europe and the United States had prevented historians from reaching a true understanding of these second-rank figures: their roles in the looting bureaucracy, their precise operational strategies, and perhaps most interestingly, their complex motivations. While we have made significant progress with this project in the past decade (and the Austrians, in particular deserve great credit for the research and restitution work accomplished since the 1998 Austrian Restitution Law), there is still much that we do not know. Many American museums still keep their curatorial files closed—despite protestations from researchers (myself included)—and there are records in European archives that are still not accessible.2 In light of the recent international conference on Holocaust-era cultural property in Prague and the resulting Terezin Declaration, as well as the Obama Administration’s appointment of Stuart Eizenstat as the point person regarding these issues, I am cautiously optimistic. -
The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and Its Psychological Consequences
Politics, Religion & Ideology ISSN: 2156-7689 (Print) 2156-7697 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftmp21 The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and Its Psychological Consequences Johannes Steizinger To cite this article: Johannes Steizinger (2018): The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and Its Psychological Consequences, Politics, Religion & Ideology To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21567689.2018.1425144 © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 24 Jan 2018. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ftmp21 POLITICS, RELIGION & IDEOLOGY, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/21567689.2018.1425144 The Significance of Dehumanization: Nazi Ideology and Its Psychological Consequences Johannes Steizinger Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ABSTRACT Several authors have recently questioned whether dehumanization is a psychological prerequisite of mass violence. This paper argues that the significance of dehumanization in the context of National Socialism can be understood only if its ideological dimension is taken into account. The author concentrates on Alfred Rosenberg’s racist doctrine and shows that Nazi ideology can be read as a political anthropology that grounds both the belief in the German privilege and the dehumanization of the Jews. This anthropological framework combines biological, cultural and metaphysical aspects. Therefore, it cannot be reduced to biologism. This new reading of Nazi ideology supports three general conclusions: First, the author reveals a complex strategy of dehumanization which is not considered in the current psychological debate. -
From Charlemagne to Hitler: the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire and Its Symbolism
From Charlemagne to Hitler: The Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire and its Symbolism Dagmar Paulus (University College London) [email protected] 2 The fabled Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire is a striking visual image of political power whose symbolism influenced political discourse in the German-speaking lands over centuries. Together with other artefacts such as the Holy Lance or the Imperial Orb and Sword, the crown was part of the so-called Imperial Regalia, a collection of sacred objects that connotated royal authority and which were used at the coronations of kings and emperors during the Middle Ages and beyond. But even after the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the crown remained a powerful political symbol. In Germany, it was seen as the very embodiment of the Reichsidee, the concept or notion of the German Empire, which shaped the political landscape of Germany right up to National Socialism. In this paper, I will first present the crown itself as well as the political and religious connotations it carries. I will then move on to demonstrate how its symbolism was appropriated during the Second German Empire from 1871 onwards, and later by the Nazis in the so-called Third Reich, in order to legitimise political authority. I The crown, as part of the Regalia, had a symbolic and representational function that can be difficult for us to imagine today. On the one hand, it stood of course for royal authority. During coronations, the Regalia marked and established the transfer of authority from one ruler to his successor, ensuring continuity amidst the change that took place. -
Indictment Presented to the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg, 18 October 1945)
Indictment presented to the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg, 18 October 1945) Caption: On 18 October 1945, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg accuses 24 German political, military and economic leaders of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Source: Indictment presented to the International Military Tribunal sitting at Berlin on 18th October 1945. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, November 1945. 50 p. (Cmd. 6696). p. 2-50. Copyright: Crown copyright is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office and the Queen's Printer for Scotland URL: http://www.cvce.eu/obj/indictment_presented_to_the_international_military_tribunal_nuremberg_18_october_1945-en- 6b56300d-27a5-4550-8b07-f71e303ba2b1.html Last updated: 03/07/2015 1 / 46 03/07/2015 Indictment presented to the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg, 18 October 1945) INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND, AND THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS — AGAINST — HERMANN WILHELM GÖRING, RUDOLF HESS, JOACHIM VON RIBBENTROP, ROBERT LEY, WILHELM KEITEL, ERNST KALTEN BRUNNER, ALFRED ROSENBERG, HANS FRANK, WILHELM FRICK, JULIUS STREICHER, WALTER FUNK, HJALMAR SCHACHT, GUSTAV KRUPP VON BOHLEN UND HALBACH, KARL DÖNITZ, ERICH RAEDER, BALDUR VON SCHIRACH, FRITZ SAUCKEL, ALFRED JODL, MARTIN BORMANN, FRANZ VON PAPEN, ARTUR SEYSS INQUART, ALBERT SPEER, CONSTANTIN VON NEURATH, AND HANS FRITZSCHE, -
Instrumentalising the Past: the Germanic Myth in National Socialist Context
RJHI 1 (1) 2014 Instrumentalising the Past: The Germanic Myth in National Socialist Context Irina-Maria Manea * Abstract : In the search for an explanatory model for the present or even more, for a fundament for national identity, many old traditions were rediscovered and reutilized according to contemporary desires. In the case of Germany, a forever politically fragmented space, justifying unity was all the more important, especially beginning with the 19 th century when it had a real chance to establish itself as a state. Then, beyond nationalism and romanticism, at the dawn of the Third Reich, the myth of a unified, powerful, pure people with a tradition dating since time immemorial became almost a rule in an ideology that attempted to go back to the past and select those elements which could have ensured a historical basis for the regime. In this study, we will attempt to focus on two important aspects of this type of instrumentalisation. The focus of the discussion is mainly Tacitus’ Germania, a work which has been forever invoked in all sorts of contexts as a means to discover the ancient Germans and create a link to the modern ones, but in the same time the main beliefs in the realm of history and archaeology are underlined, so as to catch a better glimpse of how the regime has been instrumentalising and overinterpreting highly controversial facts. Keywords : Tacitus, Germania, myth, National Socialism, Germany, Kossinna, cultural-historical archaeology, ideology, totalitarianism, falsifying history During the twentieth century, Tacitus’ famous work Germania was massively instrumentalised by the Nazi regime, in order to strengthen nationalism and help Germany gain an aura of eternal glory. -
Was Hitler a Darwinian?
Was Hitler a Darwinian? Robert J. Richards The University of Chicago The Darwinian underpinnings of Nazi racial ideology are patently obvious. Hitler's chapter on "Nation and Race" in Mein Kampf discusses the racial struggle for existence in clear Darwinian terms. Richard Weikart, Historian, Cal. State, Stanislaus1 Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, 2. 1. Introduction . 1 2. The Issues regarding a Supposed Conceptually Causal Connection . 4 3. Darwinian Theory and Racial Hierarchy . 10 4. The Racial Ideology of Gobineau and Chamberlain . 16 5. Chamberlain and Hitler . 27 6. Mein Kampf . 29 7. Struggle for Existence . 37 8. The Political Sources of Hitler’s Anti-Semitism . 41 9. Ethics and Social Darwinism . 44 10. Was the Biological Community under Hitler Darwinian? . 46 11. Conclusion . 52 1. Introduction Several scholars and many religiously conservative thinkers have recently charged that Hitler’s ideas about race and racial struggle derived from the theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), either directly or through intermediate sources. So, for example, the historian Richard Weikart, in his book From Darwin to Hitler (2004), maintains: “No matter how crooked the road was from Darwin to Hitler, clearly Darwinism and eugenics smoothed the path for Nazi ideology, especially for the Nazi 1 Richard Weikart, “Was It Immoral for "Expelled" to Connect Darwinism and Nazi Racism?” (http://www.discovery.org/a/5069.) 1 stress on expansion, war, racial struggle, and racial extermination.”2 In a subsequent book, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (2009), Weikart argues that Darwin’s “evolutionary ethics drove him [Hitler] to engage in behavior that the rest of us consider abominable.”3 Other critics have also attempted to forge a strong link between Darwin’s theory and Hitler’s biological notions. -
War: How Britain, Germany and the USA Used Jazz As Propaganda in World War II
Kent Academic Repository Full text document (pdf) Citation for published version Studdert, Will (2014) Music Goes to War: How Britain, Germany and the USA used Jazz as Propaganda in World War II. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent. DOI Link to record in KAR http://kar.kent.ac.uk/44008/ Document Version Publisher pdf Copyright & reuse Content in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated all content is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of research The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record. Enquiries For any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: [email protected] If you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.html Music Goes to War How Britain, Germany and the USA used Jazz as Propaganda in World War II Will Studdert Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History University of Kent 2014 Word count (including footnotes): 96,707 255 pages Abstract The thesis will demonstrate that the various uses of jazz music as propaganda in World War II were determined by an evolving relationship between Axis and Allied policies and projects. -
Document Contains 1,126 Words
No. 19-351 ================================================================================================================ In The Supreme Court of the United States --------------------------------- ♦ --------------------------------- FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, a foreign state, and STIFTUNG PREUSSICHER KULTURBESITZ, Petitioners, v. ALAN PHILIPP, et al., Respondents. --------------------------------- ♦ --------------------------------- On Writ of Certiorari To The United States Court of Appeals For The D.C. Circuit --------------------------------- ♦ --------------------------------- JOINT APPENDIX --------------------------------- ♦ --------------------------------- JONATHAN M. FREIMAN NICHOLAS M. O’DONNELL Counsel of Record Counsel of Record TADHG DOOLEY ERIKA L. TODD BENJAMIN M. DANIELS SULLIVAN & WORCESTER LLP DAVID R. ROTH One Post Office Square WIGGIN AND DANA LLP Boston, MA 02109 265 Church Street (617) 338-2814 P.O. Box 1832 [email protected] New Haven, CT 06508-1832 Counsel for Respondents (203) 498-4400 [email protected] DAVID L. HALL WIGGIN AND DANA LLP Two Liberty Place 50 S. 16th Street Suite 2925 Philadelphia, PA 19102 (215) 998-8310 Counsel for Petitioners Petition For Certiorari Filed September 16, 2019 Certiorari Granted July 2, 2020 ================================================================================================================ COCKLE LEGAL BRIEFS (800) 225-6964 WWW.COCKLELEGALBRIEFS.COM i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Relevant Docket Entries from the United States District Court for the District -
A Moral Persuasion: the Nazi-Looted Art Recoveries of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, 2002-2013
A MORAL PERSUASION: THE NAZI-LOOTED ART RECOVERIES OF THE MAX STERN ART RESTITUTION PROJECT, 2002-2013 by Sara J. Angel A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of PhD Graduate Department Art University of Toronto © Copyright by Sara J. Angel 2017 PhD Abstract A Moral Persuasion: The Nazi-Looted Art Recoveries of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, 2002-2013 Sara J. Angel Department of Art University of Toronto Year of convocation: 2017 In 1937, under Gestapo orders, the Nazis forced the Düsseldorf-born Jewish art dealer Max Stern to sell over 200 of his family’s paintings at Lempertz, a Cologne-based auction house. Stern kept this fact a secret for the rest of his life despite escaping from Europe to Montreal, Canada, where he settled and became one of the country’s leading art dealers by the mid-twentieth century. A decade after Stern’s death in 1987, his heirs (McGill University, Concordia University, and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) discovered the details of what he had lost, and how in the post-war years Stern travelled to Germany in an attempt to reclaim his art. To honour the memory of Max Stern, they founded the Montreal- based Max Stern Art Restitution Project in 2002, dedicated to regaining ownership of his art and to the study of Holocaust-era plunder and recovery. This dissertation presents the histories and circumstances of the first twelve paintings claimed by the organization in the context of the broader history of Nazi-looted art between 1933-2012. Organized into thematic chapters, the dissertation documents how, by following a carefully devised approach of moral persuasion that combines practices like publicity, provenance studies, law enforcement, and legal precedents, the Max Stern Art Restitution Project set international precedents in the return of cultural property. -
Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-6886-4
great deal remains to provide much of the texture of this excellent introduction to the collection. But Greis has also opened a window on the practice of archaeology at the beginning of the last century that adds to our understanding of the ways in which archaeology was practiced by the emerging class of ‘professionals’ and the heirs to a long tradition of amateur activity. Heather Pringle 2006. The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-6886-4. Reviewed by Bruce G. Trigger, McGill University National Socialism provides a chilling example of what can happen when a modern nation state falls under the control of an organization that resembles a criminal syndicate more than it does a political party. Unfortunately, only a few papers are available in English that deal with how archaeology fared under this totalitarian regime. Now Heather Pringle has published a book which provides a narrative history of the Ahnenerbe, or Ancestral Heritage Foundation, a research institute founded in 1935 by Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s minister of security who was also responsible for the implementation of Nazi racial and resettlement policies. In addition to being, like other Nazis, nationalistic and anti- Semitic, Himmler was an extreme romantic who planned to use the tall, blond-haired men of his security service (Schutzstaffel, SS) and selected women to re-breed a pure ‘Aryan’ stock, and to use knowledge collected by Ahnenerbe researchers to tutor these men in ancient German beliefs and farming practices so they might live as their noble ancestors had done.