Nazi archaeology was a movement in pseudoarchaeology, directed and funded by leaders of Nazi Germany such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, that sought material evidence for a prehistoric Aryan master race in the archaeological record of Germany and Europe. Drawing on the ethnocentric theories of the philologist Gustaf Kossinna, its practitioners aimed to show that the Germanic peoples had created an advanced civilization responsible for the major achievements of Western culture.
The principal institutions of Nazi archaeology were the Ahnenerbe, founded in 1935 and controlled by Himmler's SS, and the rival Amt Rosenberg under the party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg. Backed by state funding, they organised excavations and expeditions in Germany and abroad and produced films, journals and open-air museums to promote a nationalistic view of the German past. Kossinna's Kulturkreis theory, which equated material culture with ethnicity, was used to justify German territorial claims to Poland, Czechoslovakia and other lands; after these territories were occupied, sites such as Biskupin were re-excavated and reinterpreted as Germanic.
Much of the work was carried out by scholars from outside archaeology and produced no credible evidence for its claims; sites such as the Externsteine yielded nothing to support the idea of an ancient Germanic sanctuary. Historians regard Nazi archaeology as a propaganda tool and a form of pseudoscience, and it is often cited as a case study in the political misuse of the discipline. Many of the archaeologists involved retained academic positions after the war, and a sustained reckoning with this history came only decades later.
Overview The search for an inspirational, nationalistic, Aryan-centric national prehistory of Germany began after the German Empire suffered defeat in World War I in 1918. Subsequently the country faced a severe economic crisis due to the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. One of the leading experts who engaged in research and study in German prehistory was German philologist and archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna (1858–1931), whose ideas were taken up by Nazi organisations such as the Amt Rosenberg (officially established in 1934) and the Ahnenerbe (founded in 1935). Researchers specialised in German prehistory, armed with funding from the Nazi Party for such studies; thus the Nazis were able to add pseudoarchaeology into their extensive propaganda campaigns directed at the German people. "According to Nazi doctrine, the Germanic culture of northern Europe was responsible for virtually all major intellectual and technological achievements of Western civilization."
Kossinna's approach, known as settlement archaeology (Siedlungsarchäologie), held that sharply defined archaeological cultures corresponded to particular peoples, so that the distribution of a distinctive material culture could be used to map the former territory of an ethnic group. On this basis he argued that any land where "Germanic" artefacts were found had once been Germanic soil, a claim set out in works such as Die deutsche Vorgeschichte, eine hervorragend nationale Wissenschaft (1912). After his death in 1931 this reasoning was taken up by Nazi ideologues, who presented prehistoric material as proof of Aryan superiority and as justification for territorial expansion.
Tenets
The Kulturkreis ("culture circles") theory, originally by German ethnologists Fritz Graebner, but used in studies by Gustaf Kossinna, stated that recognition of an ethnic region is based on the material culture excavated from an archaeological site. This theory was used by the Nazis to justify takeover and occupation of foreign lands such as Poland and Czechoslovakia. One such example of Kulturkreis is shown in Kossinna's article "The German Ostmark", in which Kossinna argued that Poland should be a part of the German Reich, since any lands where an artifact was titled "Germanic" were therefore ancient Germanic territory, in which the artifacts had been "wrongfully stolen" by "barbarians". The Social Diffusion Theory, which stated that cultural diffusion occurred through a process whereby influences, ideas and models were passed on by more advanced peoples to the less advanced whom they came into contact with. Examples offered by Kossinna and Alfred Rosenberg presented a history of Germany equivalent to that of the Roman Empire, suggesting that "Germanic people were never destroyers of culture—not like the Romans—and the French in recent times." Combined with Nazi ideology, this theory gave the perfect foundation for the view of Germany as the locomotive of world civilization. Weltanschauungswissenschaften, or "world-view sciences", held that culture and science were one and carried certain "race-inherent values". The theory called for older cultural models such as sagas, stories and legends to be reincorporated into mainstream culture, arguing that "the guiding principle in Germany must be to emphasise the high cultural level and the cultural self-sufficiency of the Germanic people." It also held that the ideas and conclusions of German scientists were inherently more valid than those of "lesser-race" scientists, and was reflected in the use of Aryan regalia such as the swastika and of German legends and runic symbols in the SS. Deutsche Reinheit ("pure German man") held that Germans were "pure Aryans" who had survived a natural catastrophe and developed a highly advanced culture during a long migration to Germany. It also claimed that the ancient Greeks were themselves Germanic, citing supposed "Indo-Germanic" artifacts found in Greece. The theory supported the Kulturkreis theory tangentially, allowing archaeologists who were uneasy with the uses of Kulturkreis theory to endorse it instead. The Ahnenerbe and its own role as an organisation with the purpose of using its archaeological "findings" to further support the propaganda machine of the Nazi regime through the use of previously listed tenets presented and built on by German archaeologists such as Gustaf Kossinna.
Organisations and operations
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe Organisation, formally the Deutsches Ahnenerbe – Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte (German Ancestry - Research Society for Ancient Intellectual History ) was an organisation, started as the Research Institute for the Prehistory of Mind, that was connected to the SS in 1935 by Walther Darré. In 1936, it was attached to Hitler's Reichsführer-SS and led by chief of police Heinrich Himmler. By 1937, it was the primary instrument of Nazi archaeology and archaeological propaganda, subsuming smaller organisations like Reinerth's Archaeology Group, and filling its ranks with "investigators". These included people like Herman Wirth, co-founder of the Ahnenerbe, who attempted to prove that Northern Europe was the cradle of Western civilization.
The main goals of the organisation were:
To study the territory, ideas and achievements of the Indo-Germanic people To bring the research findings to life and present them to the German people To encourage every German to get involved in the organisation.
Although the organisation claimed to have a research goal, Himmler had no official training in archaeology and was known for his interest in mysticism and the occult. Himmler defined the organisation as working towards a prehistory that would prove the pre-eminence of the Germans and their Germanic predecessors since the beginning of civilization. He is quoted as saying, "A nation lives happily in the present and the future so long as it is aware of its past and the greatness of its ancestors."
The Ahnenerbe had difficulty finding scientists to work on the projects and was run largely by scholars from branches of the humanities, which made their research both unskilled and less professional. The group went on to be responsible for pseudoarchaeology, illustrated by open-air displays honoring Germanic heritage such as the Externsteine, a sandstone formation that was thought to have been a key Germanic cult site. Another example is the Sachsenhain, where 4,500 Saxons were executed as a punishment for Widukind's uprising. This site was used as an idealised shrine that was considered sacred to the Germanic people and highlighting their readiness for self-sacrifice.
Although there were other sites researched by Ahnenerbe, many of them were censored from the public since they did not have the correct Germanic interpretations. The sites chosen for excavations were limited to those of Germanic superiority such as Erdenburg, where the Ahnenerbe claimed to have clear evidence of the victorious campaign of the Germani against the Romans.
Some of the Ahnenerbe's most extravagant activities include:
Edmund Kiss tried to travel to Bolivia in 1928 to study the ruins of temples in the Andes mountains. He claimed their similarity to ancient European construction indicated they were designed by Nordic migrants that had arrived at the area millions of years earlier. In 1938, Franz Altheim and his research partner Erika Trautmann requested the Ahnenerbe sponsor their Middle East trek to study an internal power struggle of the Roman Empire, which they believed was fought between the Nordic and Semitic peoples. In 1936 an Ahnenerbe expedition visited the German island of Rügen and then Sweden, with the objective of examining rock-art which they concluded was "proto-Germanic". Nazi theorists took a huge interest in the Bayeux Tapestry, going so far as to attempt archaeological digs to find other contemporary artwork that would support their assertion of Germanic might. In 1938 the Ahnenerbe backed the German expedition to Tibet, led by Ernst Schäfer, on which the anthropologist Bruno Beger took skull and body measurements of some 376 people to compare Tibetan features with those associated with Aryans.
Amt Rosenberg The Amt Rosenberg, headed by the party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, promoted archaeology intended to demonstrate the superiority of Germanic culture. Rosenberg saw world history as a struggle between a Nordic race, which he traced to Atlantis, and the "Semites"; he held that only the Germanic peoples had brought culture to the world, and advocated a racial materialism in which only the Aryans should survive. His archaeological interests were pursued through the Reichsbund für deutsche Vorgeschichte (Reich Association for German Prehistory), which grew out of the older Society for German Prehistory and sought to bring the country's local prehistory societies under central control.
The Reichsbund was led by the archaeologist Hans Reinerth, whom Rosenberg appointed "Reich Deputy for German Prehistory" in 1934. The rivalry between Rosenberg's organisation and Himmler's Ahnenerbe dominated what little archaeological work the regime produced. Reinerth's combative style, which included public campaigns against established scholars such as Gero von Merhart, alienated many members, and archaeologists increasingly gravitated towards the better-funded and more prestigious Ahnenerbe. Control of the Externsteine was itself a front in the contest: Reinerth extended the Amt Rosenberg's influence over the antiquarian society in Lippe, which prompted Wilhelm Teudt to turn to Himmler for support.
Goals
To the public