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3. Weltanschauungswissenschaften or World View Sciences, which stated that culture and science were as
one, and carried certain race-inherent values. The
theory suggested that older cultural models, such as
sagas, stories and legends, should be not only reincorporated into mainstream culture, but that the
guiding principle in Germany must be to emphasise the high cultural level and the cultural selfsuciency of the Germanic people. Examples were
the use of Aryan-styled regalia such as the swastika,
the use of German legends and runic symbols in the
SS, and the idea that German scientists and their
conclusions were more correct than the views of
lesser-race scientists.
Overview
The search for a strongly nationalistic, Aryan-centric national prehistory began after Germanys loss in World
War I in 1918, . At this point, the country faced a
severe economic crisis due in part to the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles. Later on, Hitler was behind the
Nazi Party's funding for German pre-historical research.
The rst inuential academic engaging in such research is
said to be Gustaf Kossinna. His ideas and theories were
picked up by the Nazi organisations Amt Rosenberg and
Ahnenerbe. Presenting Germany as the place where civilisation began, the Nazis added pseudoarchaeology as part
of its extensive propagandizing of the German people.[1]
Tenets
1. The Kulturkreis (culture circles) theory of Gustaf
Kossinna, which stated that recognition of an ethnic region is based on the material culture excavated
from an archeological site. This theory was used by
the Nazis to justify takeover of foreign lands such as
Poland and Czechoslovakia. For example, in his article The German Ostmark", Kossinna argued that
Poland should be a part of German Reich, since
any lands where an artifact was titled Germanic
were therefore ancient Germanic territory, wrongfully stolen by barbarians.[1]
5. The unspoken, unpublished point of Nazi archaeology was summed up in the actions and purpose
of the Ahnenerbe, which was the wholesale creation
of archaeology that would support the propaganda
machine of the Nazi regime.
Archaeology Group, and lling its ranks with investigators. These included people like Herman Wirth, cofounder of the Ahnernerbe, who attempted to prove that
Northern Europe was the cradle of Western civilisation.
Although it included some real archaeologists with extreme views, such as Hans Reinerth and Oswald Meghin
(who became high-ranking party ocials due to their
cooperation), much of the membership of Ahnenerbe
were second-rate archaeologists or untrained researchers,
backed up by amateur enthusiasts.[3]
In 1936 an Ahnenerbe expedition visited the German island of Rgen then Sweden, with the objective of examining rock-art which they concluded
was 'proto-Germanic'.
In 1938 the Ahnenerbe sent an expedition to Tibet with the intention of proving Aryan superiority
by conrming the Vril theory, which was based on
Edward Bulwer-Lytton's book Vril, the Power of the
Coming Race. Their study included measuring the
skulls of 376 people and comparing native feature
to those associated with Aryans. The expeditions
most scientic ndings are associated with biological nds.
4.2
To archaeologists
4
4.1
3
public museums also gained immense popularity and
pushed the people to believe in and search for their Germanic past.
All of this, gathered together, created a skein of Germanic pride that was used to reinforce the nationalistic, fascist message Adolf Hitler was crafting with his
speeches, open-air meetings, and public image.[5]
4.2 To archaeologists
Prior to the formation of the Ahnenerbe, there was little funding for or interest in Germanic archaeology. This
reality made it even easier for the Nazis to push their ethnocentric views onto the uninformed public, but the true
eect was felt in some scholarly circles. German scholars who specialised in archaeology had long been envious
of the advancements in archaeology their neighbors had
made during their excavations in the Middle East; however, such archaeologists could do little.
With Hitler that changed: funds were made available for
scholars to make great advancements beyond their neighboring countries. Under Nazi rule, archaeology went
from having one chair in prehistory in Marburg in 1933
to having nine chairs in the Reich in 1935. Once archaeology started gaining popularity, scholars were also able
to excavate castles, old ruins and the like, and bring back
pieces for display in museums.
One example of those changes was that the RmischGermanisches Zentralmuseum (Romano-Germanic Central Museum) in Mainz in 1939 became for a time
the Zentralmuseum fr deutsche Vor- und Frhgeschichte
(Central museum for German pre- and early history).[4]
(Note the dierence between the original RmischGermanisch which denotes a historical period, and
deutsche, implying a continuous history and one people. Anglo-Saxon and English would be rough analogies.)
In their enthusiasm for the Nazi regimes support of archaeology, many German archaeologists became pawns
and puppets of the real goals behind the movement. They
answered to the requests of the Ahnenerbe, and not always in the interests of pure archaeology.
5 Notable gures
5.1 Gustaf Kossinna
5 NOTABLE FIGURES
versity of Berlin. He laid the groundwork for an ethnocentric German prehistory. One of his theories, the
Kulturkreis theory, was a basis on which Nazi archaeology was founded. Kossinna also published books for
a general readership which were useful tools for German propaganda and created archaeological expeditions
which allowed the Nazis to use Kulturkreis theory as an
excuse for territorial expansion. In one of his most popular books, Die deutsche Vorgeschichte eine hervorragend nationale Wissenschaft (German Prehistory: a Preeminently National Discipline), Kossinna puts forward
the idea of an Aryan race superior to all peoples, the Germani, and shows Germany as the key to an unwritten history. The point of the book is clear from the beginning as
the dedication reads, To the German people, as a building block in the reconstruction of the externally as well
as internally disintegrated fatherland. Kossinna died in
1931, 13 months before Hitler seized power.[1]
5.2
Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg was a Nazi Party ideologist who supported excavation and the study of provincial Roman
Germany. He stated, as a summary of his research and
thoughts, that An individual to whom the tradition of
his people and the honor of his people is not a supreme
value, has forfeited the right to be protected by that people. Rosenbergs perspective on German prehistory led
mainly to racist distortion of data which did not directly
apply to the Germanic people. Rosenbergs book Der
Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twen-
Ernst Sprockho
Ernst Wahle
Wilhelm Unverzagt
Joachim Werner
Hans Zei
Werner Radig
Albert Funk
See also
Nazi propaganda
Nationalism and archaeology
Ahnenerbe
List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
References
External links
Archaeological Organisations
Hitlers Willing Archaeologists (How the SS perverted the Paleolithic record to support Nazi ideology) by Heather Pringle in Archaeology, Volume 59,
Number 2, March/April 2006.
A Nordic civilisation on the lost continent of Atlantis
in The Daily Telegraph, May 3, 2006.
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