The Ahnenerbe (, ''ancestral heritage'') operated as a
think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
between 1935 and 1945.
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
, the ''
Reichsführer-SS
(, ) was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the (SS). ''Reichsführer-SS'' was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest rank of the SS. The longest-servi ...
'' from 1929 onwards, established it in July 1935 as an
SS appendage devoted to the task of promoting the racial doctrines espoused by
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
and by his governing
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
. The Ahnenerbe specifically fostered the idea that the modern Germans descended from an ancient
Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern I ...
seen as biologically superior to other racial groups. The group comprised scholars and scientists from a broad range of academic disciplines.
Hitler
became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and turned the country into a
one-party state
A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system, or single-party system is a type of sovereign state in which only one political party has the right to form the government, usually based on the existing constitution. All other parties ...
under the control of the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
and governed by his personal dictatorship. He espoused the idea that modern Germans descended from the ancient Aryans, who he claimed—in contrast to established academic understandings of prehistory—had invented most major developments in human history, such as agriculture, art, and writing. The majority of the world's scholarly community did not accept Hitler's racial theories and claims about prehistory, and the Nazis decided to give such theories greater scholarly backing, establishing the Ahnenerbe with the purpose of providing evidence for Nazi racial doctrine and to promote these ideas to the German public through books, articles, exhibits, and conferences. Ahnenerbe scholars interpreted evidence to fit Hitler's beliefs, and some consciously fabricated evidence in order to do so. The organisation sent out various expeditions to other parts of the world, intent on finding evidence of ancient Aryan expansion.
The Nazi government used the Ahnenerbe's research to justify many of their policies. For instance, German propaganda cited the think tank's claim that
archaeological evidence indicated that the ancient Aryans lived across eastern Europe in justification of German military expansion into that region. Ahnenerbe research was also cited in justification of the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
, of the
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...
of Jews and other groups—including Roma and homosexuals—through
extermination camps and other methods. In 1937 the Ahnenerbe undertaking became an official SS body, renamed the "Research and Teaching Community 'Ancestral Heritage'" (''Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft 'Das Ahnenerbe).
Some of the group's investigations were placed on hold after the outbreak of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
in 1939. Towards the end of the war, Ahnenerbe members destroyed much of the organisation's paperwork to avoid it incriminating them in forthcoming war-crimes tribunals.
Many Ahnenerbe members escaped the
de-Nazification
Denazification (german: link=yes, Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by remov ...
policies in West Germany and remained active in the country's archaeological establishment throughout the post-war decades. This stifled scholarly research into the Ahnenerbe, which intensified only after
German reunification in 1990. The Ahnenerbe's ideas have retained an appeal for some
neo-Nazi and far-right circles and have also influenced later
pseudo-archaeologists.
Background
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
believed that one could divide humanity into three groups: "the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, the destroyers of culture". The founders of culture, in Hitler's view, were a biologically distinct
Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern I ...
who (he believed) had been tall, blond, and originating in Northern Europe. He believed that in prehistory, the Aryan race had been responsible for all significant developments in human culture, including agriculture, architecture, music, literature, and the visual arts. He believed that most modern Germans were the descendants of these Aryans and had genetically inherited the Aryans' biological superiority to other races. The destroyers of culture, in Hitler's view, were the
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, whom he regarded not as a genetically diverse population sharing certain ethno-cultural and religious traits—as they were then widely recognized—but as a unified, biologically distinct race. He believed that wherever Jews went, they damaged and ultimately destroyed the cultures surrounding them.
Hitler had promoted his ideas about the greatness of Germany's ancestors in his 1925 book, ''
Mein Kampf''. Outside Germany, most scholars and scientists regarded Hitler's ideas about human evolution and prehistory as nonsense, in part due to the absence of any evidence that North European communities had ever originated major developments in prehistory, such as the development of agriculture and writing, all of which first appeared in the Near East and in Asia.
In January 1929 Hitler appointed Nazi Party member
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
to head the ''
Schutzstaffel
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe duri ...
'' (SS), a paramilitary group founded in 1925 to serve as personal bodyguards to Hitler and other Nazis. Himmler set out to re-organise the SS, introducing a better system of organisation, and gathering intelligence on prominent Jews and
Freemasons, as well as on rival political groups. In 1929, Himmler launched an SS recruitment campaign, and by the end of 1931 the group had 10,000 members. Himmler aimed to ensure that this membership was as racially
Nordic as possible, establishing the
SS Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) to screen both applicants and the women whom SS members proposed to marry. In believing in the existence of a "Nordic" racial type which was the purest survival of the ancient Aryans, Himmler was influenced by the
Nordicist ideas of
Hans F. K. Günther (1891–1968), which had been popular in
German nationalist
German nationalism () is an ideological notion that promotes the unity of Germans and German-speakers into one unified nation state. German nationalism also emphasizes and takes pride in the patriotism and national identity of Germans as one nat ...
circles over the preceding decades.
Himmler had an abiding interest in the past, and in how it could provide a blueprint for the future. However, his views of the ancient Germanic peoples differed from Hitler's in certain areas. Hitler was perplexed as to why ancient societies in southern Europe had developed more advanced technology and architecture than their contemporaries in northern Europe. Hitler stated that "People make a tremendous fuss about the excavations carried out in districts inhabited by our forebears of the pre-Christian era. I am afraid that I cannot share their enthusiasm, for I cannot help remembering that, while our ancestors were making these vessels out of stone and clay, over which our archaeologists rave, the Greeks had already built the Acropolis." Hitler explained this by claiming that the Aryans must also have inhabited the south of the continent and that they were responsible for establishing the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. Specifically, he believed that it was the warmer climates of the south that enabled these Aryans to develop in ways that those living further north, in colder and wetter climates, did not. Himmler was aware of these views but, unlike Hitler, admired what he believed was the fierceness and valour of the Germanic tribes of northern Europe. He was particularly interested in
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
's
''Germania'', an ethnographic and historical account of the Iron-Age Germanic tribes written by the Roman historian at the end of the first century CE.
Nazi Party takes power
In the
1932 federal election, the Nazis secured 230 seats in the
Reichstag, making them the largest single party but without a controlling majority. Six months later, President
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg (; abbreviated ; 2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934) was a German field marshal and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany fr ...
invited Hitler to become
Chancellor, after which the latter cemented Nazi dominance over the government. In February 1933, Hitler convinced von Hindenburg to issue the
Reichstag Fire Decree
The Reichstag Fire Decree (german: Reichstagsbrandverordnung) is the common name of the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (german: Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat) issued by Germ ...
, legally suspending
civil liberties. Himmler, who was newly appointed as the police chief of
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
, ordered the arrests of those he regarded as a threat to the Nazis—including journalists, labour organisers, Jewish community leaders, socialists, and communists—and their incarceration in
Dachau concentration camp. Hitler approved of Himmler's tactics and appointed him head of the political police across Germany.
![Wewelsburg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Wewelsburg.JPG)
In 1933, Himmler initiated plans to establish a "Nordic Academy" to assist the instruction of the SS upper ranks. He was assisted in this by
Karl Maria Wiligut Karl Maria Wiligut (alias Weisthor, Jarl Widar, Lobesam; 10 December 1866 – 3 January 1946) was an Austrian occultist and SS-Brigadeführer.
Early life
Wiligut was baptised a Roman Catholic in Vienna. At the age of 14, he joined the ''Kadetten ...
, an
occultist
The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism a ...
who was popular in German ultra-nationalist circles. Himmler brought Wiligut into the SS—where he eventually rose to the rank of
Brigadeführer
''Brigadeführer'' (, ) was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) that was used between the years of 1932 to 1945. It was mainly known for its use as an SS rank. As an SA rank, it was used after briefly being known as ''Untergruppenf ...
—and gave him a private villa in Berlin.
Using Wiligut's prophecies as his guide, Himmler selected
Wewelsburg
Wewelsburg () is a Renaissance castle located in the village of Wewelsburg, which is a district of the town of Büren, Westphalia, in the ''Landkreis'' of Paderborn in the northeast of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The castle has a triangul ...
castle in
Westphalia
Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants.
The territory of the regio ...
to serve as a base for many SS operations. The architect
Hermann Bartels was employed to oversee renovations to the castle to make it fit for the SS's use. As part of these alterations, one of the rooms in the building became known as "the Grail Room" with a rock crystal representing the
Holy Grail
The Holy Grail (french: Saint Graal, br, Graal Santel, cy, Greal Sanctaidd, kw, Gral) is a treasure that serves as an important motif in Arthurian literature. Various traditions describe the Holy Grail as a cup, dish, or stone with miracu ...
being placed in a central position. Himmler also established a private museum at the castle, employing the young archaeologist
Wilhelm Jordan to manage it.
In 1934, Himmler met the Dutch prehistorian
Herman Wirth
Herman may refer to:
People
* Herman (name), list of people with this name
* Saint Herman (disambiguation)
* Peter Noone (born 1947), known by the mononym Herman
Places in the United States
* Herman, Arkansas
* Herman, Michigan
* Herman, Min ...
, who was then living in Germany, at the home of
Johann von Leers
Omar Amin (born Johann Jakob von Leers; 25 January 19025 March 1965) was an ''Alter Kämpfer'' and an honorary ''Sturmbannführer'' in the ''Waffen-SS'' in Nazi Germany, where he was also a professor known for his anti-Jewish polemics. He was on ...
, a Nazi propagandist.
Wirth was one of the most controversial prehistorians in Germany. After examining symbols found in rural Frisian
folk art
Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative. The makers of folk art are typically tr ...
, he became convinced that they represented the survival of an ancient script used by a prehistoric Nordic civilisation. This script, Wirth believed, was the world's oldest written language and had been the basis for all other ancient scripts. Wirth also believed that if he could decipher it, he could then learn the nature of the ancient religion of the Aryan race. This belief conflicted with established scholarly understandings of the past; by the 1930s, scholars were aware that the world's two oldest scripts were those of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and that northern Europe only developed its own form of literacy, that of the
runes
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
, under the influence of
Etruscan script between 400 BCE to 50 CE. Attempting to explain the lack of any archaeological or historical evidence for an ancient advanced Nordic civilisation, Wirth claimed that the Aryans had evolved in an Arctic homeland two million years ago, before establishing their advanced society on a land in the North Atlantic, which had since sunken into the sea, giving rise to the stories about
Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and '' Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that b ...
.
Wirth's ideas were rejected and ridiculed by the German archaeological establishment, although they had gained the support of several wealthy backers, which assisted him in promoting them. Himmler was among those who liked Wirth's ideas. Himmler was interested in the pre-Christian religions of northern Europe, believing that a
modern Pagan religion modelled on them could replace Christianity as the primary religion of the German people. Himmler disliked Christianity because of its Semitic origins, its presentation of
Jesus of Nazareth as a Jew, and its advocacy of charity and compassion. Later, Himmler privately told his personal physician that after the Second World War, "the old Germanic gods will be restored".
History
Formation
![Emblem_SS_Ahnenerbe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Emblem_SS_Ahnenerbe.png)
On July 1, 1935, Himmler organised a meeting at the Berlin headquarters of the SS where he discussed his desire to launch a prehistoric research institute. Both Wirth and the agriculturalist
Richard Walther Darré were present, and both responded with enthusiasm to the idea. The group was launched as a department of RuSHA. Wirth became the group's president, while Himmler took the role of superintendent, a position entailing considerable control by placing him in charge of its board of trustees. Its formal goal was "to promote the science of ancient intellectual history".
The organisation was initially named the "Deutsches Ahnenerbe Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte" (''Society for the Study of the History of Primeval Ideas''), but this was soon shortened to Ahnenerbe. This was a German term for "something inherited from the forefathers". The Ahnenerbe's first premises were at number 29 and 30 of the Brüderstrasse, a thirteenth-century street in Berlin. These corner buildings were rented from the city's
department store
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...
magnate
Rudolf Herzog. Initially, it employed seven members of staff. Reflecting Wirth's fixation on the idea of an ancient Aryan script, the organisation's early focus was upon what Wirth called "script and symbol studies". One of its researchers,
Yrjö von Grönhagen, was for instance tasked with collecting the Finnish wooden calendars which were engraved with various symbols.
Starting in 1934, Himmler began financially supporting and visiting excavations in Germany. This brought him into contact with archaeologists like ,
Hans Schleif, and
Wilhelm Unverzagt, director of the ''
Staatliches Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte'' in Berlin. Initially, there were two departments within the SS engaged in archaeology: the ''Abteilung Ausgrabungen'' of the ''Persönlicher Stab des Reichsführers der SS'' and the ''Abteilung für Vor- und Frühgeschichte'' at the RuSHA. The latter ("RA IIIB") was established in 1934 and was supposed to serve as a "general staff" for all SS activities related to prehistory. It was responsible for archaeological research and related propaganda and led by Rolf Höhne, a geologist. Höhne was eventually replaced by Peter Paulsen, an archaeologist, in October 1937. The department did not conduct any excavations itself, but was intended to extend the influence of the SS over other institutions, especially those responsible for education/research and monument preservation. In fact, Langsdorff did this in Himmler's personal staff. The department also tried to make use of pre-history in the training and indoctrination of SS members. When the RuSHA was restructured, the department was dissolved with its responsibilities passing to the ''Ahnenerbe''. The ''Abteilung Ausgrabung'' in Himmler's personal staff was established in 1935 on the initiative of Langsdorff. In March 1937, Höhne joined the leadership of this department. By 1937, it was responsible for SS excavations and maintained its own personnel for this activity.
Its official mission as twofold. Its first purpose was to reveal new evidence for the accomplishments of the ancestors of the modern Germans "using exact scientific methods". Its second purpose was to convey its findings to the German public through magazine articles, books, museum exhibits, and scholarly conferences.
According to Pringle, it was however "in the business of myth-making", repeatedly "distorting the truth and churning out carefully tailored evidence to support the racial ideas of Adolf Hitler." Some members of the Ahnenerbe consciously altered their evidence and interpretations to match Hitler's beliefs; others appear to have been unaware of how their adherence to Nazi doctrine was shaping their interpretations.
Himmler regarded the Ahnenerbe as an elite
think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
which would sweep away previous scholarship on the development of humanity and reveal that Hitler's ideas on the subject were true.
Himmler also believed that the group's investigations might reveal ancient secrets about agriculture, medicine, and warfare which would benefit Nazi Germany.
It employed scholars from a wide range of academic fields, including
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
,
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
,
ethnology
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...
,
folkloristics
Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
,
runology
Runology is the study of the Runic alphabets, Runic inscriptions and their history. Runology forms a specialized branch of Germanic linguistics.
History
Runology was initiated by Johannes Bureus (1568–1652), who was very interested in the ling ...
,
Classics,
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
,
musicology,
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
,
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
,
zoology
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...
,
botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
,
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...
, and
medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...
. Himmler believed that scholars active in all of these different fields would piece together a view of the past that would revolutionise established interpretations; in his words, it would represent "hundreds of thousands of little mosaic stones, which portray the true picture of the origins of the world
On July 1, 1935, at SS headquarters in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
, Himmler met with five "racial experts" representing Darré and with Wirth. Together they established an organization called the "German Ancestral Heritage—Society for the Study of the History of Primeval Ideas" (''Deutsches Ahnenerbe—Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte''), shortened to its better-known form in 1937. At the meeting they designated its official goal, “to promote the science of ancient intellectual history,” and appointed Himmler as its superintendent, with Wirth serving as its president. Himmler appointed
Wolfram Sievers ''Generalsekretär'' (General Secretary) of the Ahnenerbe.
![Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S72707, Heinrich Himmler](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-S72707%2C_Heinrich_Himmler.jpg)
Through 1937, the Ahnenerbe was essentially engaged in amateur ''völkisch'' research. Financial and academic pressure caused Himmler to start looking for an alternative to Wirth as early as the spring of 1936. In September, Hitler negatively referred to Wirth's beliefs regarding
Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and '' Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that b ...
and their influence on "
Böttcherstrasse architecture" in a speech at the Reichsparteitag.
In March 1937, the Ahnenerbe was given a new statute, implementing the ''
Führerprinzip
The (; German for 'leader principle') prescribed the fundamental basis of political authority in the Government of Nazi Germany. This principle can be most succinctly understood to mean that "the Führer's word is above all written law" and th ...
'' (leader principle) and giving Himmler extensive powers. Wirth was deposed as president and appointed honorary president, a powerless position. Himmler's position as ''Kurator'' was given more power.
Walther Wüst was appointed the new president of the Ahnenerbe. Wüst was an expert on India and a dean at
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, working on the side as a
Vertrauensmann for the ''
Sicherheitsdienst
' (, ''Security Service''), full title ' (Security Service of the '' Reichsführer-SS''), or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization ...
'' (SD, Security Service). Referred to as ''The Orientalist'' by Wolfram Sievers, Wüst had been recruited by him in May 1936 because of his ability to simplify science for the common man.
After being appointed president, Wüst began improving the Ahnenerbe, moving the offices to a new headquarters that cost in the
Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin. He also worked to limit the influence of “those he deemed scholarly upstarts,” which included cutting communication with the RuSHA office of
Karl Maria Wiligut Karl Maria Wiligut (alias Weisthor, Jarl Widar, Lobesam; 10 December 1866 – 3 January 1946) was an Austrian occultist and SS-Brigadeführer.
Early life
Wiligut was baptised a Roman Catholic in Vienna. At the age of 14, he joined the ''Kadetten ...
.
[
The ''Generalsekretariat'' led by Sievers was turned into the institution's ''Reichsgeschäftsführung''. The Ahnenerbe was renamed ''Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft Das Ahnenerbe e.V.''. It was moved from the RuSHA to Himmlers's personal staff.]
Wirth and Wilhelm Teudt lost their departments in Ahnenerbe in 1938. In 1939, the statutes were changed again and Wirth was deposed as honorary president. Himmler's and Wüsts' titles were switched with Himmler now the president. Next to Wüst, the academic with most influence in the institution after 1939 was Herbert Jankuhn
Herbert Jankuhn (8 August 1905 – 30 April 1990) was a German archaeologist of Prussian Lithuanian heritage who specialized in the archaeology of Germanic peoples. He is best known for his excavations at the Viking Age site of Hedeby, and for h ...
, who in 1937 still had categorically rejected cooperation with the "unscientific" Ahnenerbe.
Ahnenerbe was a mix between an SS department and an ''Eingetragener Verein
An (; "registered association" or "incorporated association"), abbreviated (), is a legal status for a registered voluntary association in Germany. While any group may be called a , registration as confers many legal benefits, because it con ...
''. Membership was open to all natural and legal persons. Its staff were SS members, many also working in other SS positions, and thus subject to SS jurisdiction.
In late 1936, Ahnenerbe took over the publication of Teudt's magazine ''Germanien'', first in cooperation with Teudt, then without him. The monthly now became the official voice of Ahnenerbe and was aimed at a wider audience. From December 1936, the magazine was distributed free of charge to all SS leaders.
Cooperation with other SS departments was initially limited, but improved after 1937. Contacts with the SD-HA and the editorial team of the SS weekly ''Das schwarze Korps'' intensified. Ahnenerbe eventually had the scientific responsibility for the ''SS-Leithefte'' and in conjunction with the SS-HA, Ahnenerbe established ''Germanische Leitstelle
During World War II, Germanische Leitstelle was a department of the SS-Hauptamt under the command of Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger. It oversaw the recruitment and propaganda offices for the Waffen SS in Oslo, Copenhagen, Brussels and The Hagu ...
'' and ''Germanischer Wissenschaftseinsatz''.
In 1939, the Ahnenerbe held its first independent annual convention, at Kiel. The event's success contributed to the trend that archaeologists were increasingly turning to the Ahnenerbe and away from Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...
's rival '.
In fiscal year 1938–1939, the budget for the excavations department was , about 12% of the Ahnenerbe's total budget. More than a third of that went to the Haithabu
Hedeby (, Old Norse ''Heiðabýr'', German ''Haithabu'') was an important Danish Viking Age (8th to the 11th centuries) trading settlement near the southern end of the Jutland Peninsula, now in the Schleswig-Flensburg district of Schleswig-Hols ...
activities. Under Jankuhn's direction four more archaeological departments were set up: in April 1938 the ''Forschungsstätte für naturwissenschaftliche Vorgeschichte'' (a laboratory for analyzing pollen) was established at Dahlem under the leadership of . The ''Forschungsstätte für Wurtenforschung'' at Wilhelmshaven led by , the ''Forschungsstätte für germanisches Bauwesen'' led by Martin Rudolph and the ''Forschungsstätte für Urgeschichte'' directed by followed in 1939.
As a gift for Hitler's fiftieth birthday, among the presents which Himmler procured for him was a set of leather bound books, one of which was on the subject of the Ahnenerbe's research.
The Ahnenerbe sought to cultivate an air of professional integrity. The Ahnenerbe became an integral part of the SS.
By 1939, the Ahnenerbe employed 137 scholars and scientists, as well as 82 support workers, including artists, photographers, laboratory technicians, librarians, accountants, and secretaries.
The Holocaust
Himmler used the Ahnenerbe's research to fuel and justify the Holocaust. In a 1937 speech at Bad Tölz, Himmler announced that the bog bodies
A bog body is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies, sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated to between and the Second World War. Fischer ...
of northwestern Europe, which testified to an Iron Age tradition in which individuals were deliberately killed and deposited in bogs, must have represented the eradication of homosexuals. This was an idea that he had adopted from Ahnenerbe archaeologist Herbert Jankuhn
Herbert Jankuhn (8 August 1905 – 30 April 1990) was a German archaeologist of Prussian Lithuanian heritage who specialized in the archaeology of Germanic peoples. He is best known for his excavations at the Viking Age site of Hedeby, and for h ...
. His adoption of this suggestion was linked to his homophobic
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, m ...
fear that male homosexuality was transmittable and that it could spread within the ranks of the SS and other spaces of male bonding unless strong measures were implemented to prevent it. Himmler then claimed this alleged ancient tradition as legitimation for the extermination of homosexuals within his own society. As many as 15,000 gay men were rounded up and imprisoned in concentration camps, where up to 60 percent died.
Second World War
Amid the German invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...
in 1939, the Ahnenerbe sent a team into Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
to remove any items from its museums which they believed to be German in origin. In 1939, the Ahnenerbe's further four planned expeditions—to Iran, the Canary Islands, the Andes, and Iceland—were indefinitely postponed. At the end of the war in Europe, members of the Ahnenerbe destroyed much of the organisation's paperwork lest it incriminate them during future war crime tribunals.
Institutes
The Ahnenerbe had several different institutes or sections for its departments of research. Most of these were archeological but others included the Pflegestätte für Wetterkunde (Meteorology Section) headed by Obersturmführer Dr Hans Robert Scultetus
Hans Robert Scultetus (*20 March 1904 in Halle (Saale) - 17 March 1976) was a German meteorologist, who headed the ''Pflegestätte für Wetterkunde'' (Meteorology Section) of the Nazi Ahnenerbe think tank.
"
Scultetus earned his PhD with the disse ...
, founded on the basis that Hanns Hörbiger
Johannes "Hanns" Evangelist Hörbiger (29 November 1860, in Atzgersdorf – 11 October 1931, in Mauer), better known as Hanns Hörbiger, was an Austrian engineer from Vienna with roots in Tyrol. He took part in the construction of the Budapes ...
's ''Welteislehre
Welteislehre (WEL; "World Ice Theory" or "World Ice Doctrine"), also known as Glazial-Kosmogonie (''Glacial Cosmogony''), is a discredited cosmological concept proposed by Hanns Hörbiger, an Austrian engineer and inventor. According to his idea ...
'' could be used to provide accurate long-range weather forecasts, and a section devoted to musicology, whose aim was to determine "the essence" of German music. It recorded folk music on expeditions to Finland and the Faroe Islands, from ethnic Germans of the occupied territories, and in South Tyrol. The section made sound recordings, transcribed manuscripts and songbooks, and photographed and filmed instrument use and folk dances. The lur
A lur, also lure or lurr, is a long natural blowing horn without finger holes that is played with a brass-type embouchure. Lurs can be straight or curved in various shapes. The purpose of the curves was to make long instruments easier to car ...
, a Bronze Age musical instrument, became central to this research, which concluded that Germanic consonance
In music, consonance and dissonance are categorizations of simultaneous or successive sounds. Within the Western tradition, some listeners associate consonance with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability, and dissonance with harshness, unpl ...
was in direct conflict to Jewish atonalism
Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. ''Atonality'', in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about the early 20th-century to the present day, where a hierarchy of harmonies focusing on a ...
.
Expeditions
Karelia
In 1935, Himmler contacted a Finnish nobleman and author, Yrjö von Grönhagen, after seeing one of his articles about the Kalevala
The ''Kalevala'' ( fi, Kalevala, ) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and ...
folklore in a Frankfurt newspaper. Grönhagen agreed to lead an expedition through the Karelia region of Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
to record pagan sorcerers and witch
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
es. Because there was uncertainty about whether the Karelians would allow photography, the Finnish illustrator Ola Forsell also accompanied the team. Musicologist brought along a magnetophon, hoping to record pagan chants.
The team departed on their expedition in June 1936. Their first success was with a traditional singer, , who knew a song closely resembling one in the Kalevala
The ''Kalevala'' ( fi, Kalevala, ) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and ...
although he was unaware of the book. Later, in Tolvajärvi, the team photographed and recorded Hannes Vornanen playing a traditional Finnish kantele
A kantele () or kannel () is a traditional Finnish and Karelian plucked string instrument (chordophone) belonging to the south east Baltic box zither family known as the Baltic psaltery along with Estonian kannel, Latvian kokles, Lithuania ...
.
One of the team's final successes was in finding Miron-Aku, a soothsayer believed to be a witch by locals. Upon meeting the group, she claimed to have foreseen their arrival. The team persuaded her to perform a ritual for the camera and tape recorder in which she summoned the spirits of ancestors and "divine future events." The team also recorded information on Finnish sauna
The Finnish sauna ( sv, bastu) is a substantial part of Finnish and Estonian culture.
It was inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists at the December 17, 2020 meeting of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguardi ...
s.
Bohuslän
After a slide show on February 19, 1936 of his trip to Bohuslän, a region in southwestern Sweden, Wirth convinced Himmler to launch an expedition to the region, the first official expedition financed by the Ahnenerbe. Bohuslän was known for its massive quantity of petroglyph rock carvings, which Wirth believed were evidence of an ancient writing system predating all known systems. Himmler appointed Wolfram Sievers to be the managing director of the expedition, likely because of Wirth's earlier troubles balancing finances.[
On August 4, 1936, the expedition set off on a three-month trip, starting at the German island of ]Rügen
Rügen (; la, Rugia, ) is Germany's largest island. It is located off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea and belongs to the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
The "gateway" to Rügen island is the Hanseatic city of Stralsund, where ...
, then continuing to Backa, the first recorded rock-art site in Sweden. Despite the existence of scenes showing warriors, animals and ships, Wirth focused on the lines and circles that he thought made up a prehistoric alphabet. While his studies were largely based on personal belief, rather than objective scientific research, Wirth made interpretations of the meanings of ideograms
An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiari ...
carved in the rock, such as a circle bisected by a vertical line representing a year and a man standing with raised arms representing what Wirth called "the Son of God."[ His team proceeded to make casts of what Wirth deemed the most important carvings and then carried the casts to camp, where they were crated and sent back to Germany. Once satisfied with their work at the site, the team set out on a trek through Sweden, eventually reaching the Norwegian island of Lauvøylandet.
]
Italy
In 1937, the Ahnenerbe sent the archaeologist Franz Altheim
Franz Altheim (6 October 1898 – 17 October 1976) was a German classical philologist and historian who specialized in the history of classical antiquity. During the 1930s and 1940s, Altheim served the Nazi state as a member of Ahnenerbe, a ...
and his wife, the photographer Erika Trautmann, to Val Camonica
Val Camonica (also ''Valcamonica'' or Camonica Valley, Eastern Lombard dialect, Eastern Lombard: ''Al Camònega'') is one of the largest valleys of the central Alps, in eastern Lombardy, Italy. It extends about from the Tonale Pass to ...
, to study prehistoric rock inscriptions. The two returned to Germany claiming that they had found traces of Nordic runes on the rocks, supposedly confirming that ancient Rome was founded by Nordic incomers.
Also, an expedition to Sardinia
Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label=Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after ...
was planned in the 1930s, but the reasons for it still remain unknown.
Central Eurasia
In 1938, Franz Altheim
Franz Altheim (6 October 1898 – 17 October 1976) was a German classical philologist and historian who specialized in the history of classical antiquity. During the 1930s and 1940s, Altheim served the Nazi state as a member of Ahnenerbe, a ...
and his research partner Erika Trautmann requested the Ahnenerbe sponsor their expedition from Central Europe
Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the a ...
through Western Asia
Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Ana ...
to study an internal power struggle of the Roman Empire, which they believed was fought between the Nordic and Semitic peoples. Eager to credit the vast success of the Roman Empire to people of a Nordic background, the Ahnenerbe agreed to match the put forward by Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...
, an old friend of Trautmann's.[
In August 1938, after spending a few days traveling through remote hills searching for ruins of Dacian kingdoms, the two researchers arrived at their first major stop in ]Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
, the capital of Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...
. There Grigore Florescu, the director of the Municipal Museum, met with them, and discussed both history and the politics of the day, including the activities of the Iron Guard.
After traveling through Istanbul
)
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code = 34000 to 34990
, area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side)
, registration_plate = 34
, blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD
, blank_i ...
, Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
, and Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...
, the researchers went to Damascus. They were not welcomed by the French, who ruled Syria as a colony at the time. The newly-sovereign Kingdom of Iraq was being courted for an alliance with Germany,[ and Fritz Grobba, the German envoy to Baghdad, arranged for Altheim and Trautmann to meet with local researchers and be driven to ]Parthia
Parthia ( peo, 𐎱𐎼𐎰𐎺 ''Parθava''; xpr, 𐭐𐭓𐭕𐭅 ''Parθaw''; pal, 𐭯𐭫𐭮𐭥𐭡𐭥 ''Pahlaw'') is a historical region located in northeastern Greater Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Med ...
n and Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
ruins in southern Iraq, as well as Babylon.
Through Baghdad, the team went north to Assur
Aššur (; Sumerian: AN.ŠAR2KI, Assyrian cuneiform: ''Aš-šurKI'', "City of God Aššur"; syr, ܐܫܘܪ ''Āšūr''; Old Persian ''Aθur'', fa, آشور: ''Āšūr''; he, אַשּׁוּר, ', ar, اشور), also known as Ashur and Qal ...
where they met Sheikh Adjil el Yawar, a leader of the Shammar
The tribe of Shammar ( ar, شَمَّر, Šammar) is a tribal Arab Qahtan confederation, descended from the Yemeni tribe of Tayy as they originated in Yemen before migrating into present day Saudi Arabia, It is the biggest branch of Tayy tribe. I ...
Bedouin tribe and commander of the northern Camel Corps. He discussed German politics and his desire to duplicate the success of Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud who had recently ascended to power in Saudi Arabia.[ With his support, the team traveled to their final major stop, the ruins of ]Hatra
Hatra ( ar, الحضر; syr, ܚܛܪܐ) was an ancient city in Upper Mesopotamia located in present-day eastern Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq. The city lies northwest of Baghdad and southwest of Mosul.
Hatra was a strongly fortified ...
on the former border between the Roman and Persian empires.
New Swabia
The third German Antarctic Expedition took place between 1938 and 1939. It was led by Alfred Ritscher (1879–1963).
Germany
Hedeby
Excavations that had been ongoing at Hedeby
Hedeby (, Old Norse ''Heiðabýr'', German ''Haithabu'') was an important Danish Viking Age (8th to the 11th centuries) trading settlement near the southern end of the Jutland Peninsula, now in the Schleswig-Flensburg district of Schleswig-Holst ...
since 1930 were formally put under the aegis of Ahnenerbe in 1938 by Jankuhn.
Baden-Württemberg
In 1937–1938, Gustav Riek led an excavation at the ''Heuneburg
The Heuneburg is a prehistoric hillfort by the river Danube in Hundersingen near Herbertingen, between Ulm and Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg, in the south of Germany, close to the modern borders with Switzerland and Austria. It is considered ...
'' on the Danube
The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , p ...
in Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...
, where an ancient fortress had been discovered much earlier. The Ahnenerbe thus won out over Hans Reinerth
Hans Reinerth (13 May 1900, in Bistritz, Austria-Hungary – 13 April 1990, in Unteruhldingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany) was a German archaeologist. He was a pioneer of Palynology (pollen analysis) and modern settlement archaeology, but is co ...
of the ' who had competed for the excavation. Riek focused on the burial mound known as where he found the main burial chamber to have been plundered in antiquity. In its direct vicinity another grave was discovered, however, that included rich grave furnishings. Due to the outbreak of war in 1939 the excavations were discontinued.[.]
A private expedition by Richard Anders and Wiligut into the Murg Valley of northwestern Baden-Württemberg had nothing to do with the Ahnenerbe.
Mauern
The Ahnenerbe also was active in the ' (Mauern caves) in the Franconian Jura
The Franconian Jura ( , , or ) is an upland in Franconia, Bavaria, Germany. Located between two rivers, the Danube in the south and the Main in the north, its peaks reach elevations of up to and it has an area of some 7053.8 km2. Emil Meyn ...
. R.R. Schmidt discovered red ochre, a common pigment for cave paintings made by the Cro-Magnon.
In autumn 1937, , a Frisian nationalist who had applied to the SS Excavations Department earlier that year, took over the excavation. His team proceeded to find artifacts such as burins, ivory pendants, and a woolly mammoth
The woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with '' Mammuthus s ...
skeleton. They also discovered Neanderthal
Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the ...
remains buried with what appeared to be throwing spears and javelins, a technology thought to have been developed by the Cro-Magnons.
Bohmers interpreted this to mean that Cro-Magnons had left these stones in the caves over 70,000 years before, and this was therefore the oldest Cro-Magnon site in the world. To validate his claims, Bohmers traveled around Europe speaking with colleagues and organizing exhibitions, notably in the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
France
At the Parisian Institute for Human Paleontology, Bohmers met with Abbé Henri Breuil, an expert on cave art. Breuil arranged for Bohmers to visit Trois Frères
''Trois'' is a 2000 erotic thriller film directed by Rob Hardy and produced by William Packer. It stars Gary Dourdan, Kenya Moore and Gretchen Palmer. The film was given a limited theatrical release and was one of the years highest grossing Afri ...
, a site whose owners allowed only a small number of visitors.[ First, however, Bohmers took a quick trip to ]London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, followed by a tour of several other French points of interest: Font-de-Gaume
Font-de-Gaume is a cave near Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in the Dordogne départment of south-west France. The cave contains prehistoric polychrome cave paintings and engravings dating to the Magdalenian period. Discovered in 1901, more th ...
(a site featuring Cro-Magnon cave paintings), Teyat, La Mouthe and the caves of Dordogne
Dordogne ( , or ; ; oc, Dordonha ) is a large rural department in Southwestern France, with its prefecture in Périgueux. Located in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region roughly half-way between the Loire Valley and the Pyrenees, it is name ...
. Then Bohmers moved on to Les Trois-Frères.[
]
Bayeux Tapestry
The Ahnenerbe took great interest in the 900-year-old Bayeux Tapestry. In June 1941, its staff oversaw the transport of the tapestry from its home in Bayeux Cathedral to an abbey at Juaye-Mondaye, and finally to the Château de Sourches. In August 1944, after Paris was liberated by the Allies, two members of the SS were dispatched to Paris to retrieve the tapestry, which had been moved into the basement of the Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
. Contrary to Himmler's orders, however, they chose not to attempt to enter the Louvre, most likely because of the strong presence of the French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
in the historic area.
Tibet
In 1937, Himmler decided that he could increase the Ahnenerbe's visibility by investigating Hans F. K. Günther’s claims that early Aryans had conquered much of Asia, including attacks against China and Japan in approximately 2000 BC, and that Gautama Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in Lu ...
was himself an Aryan offshoot of the Nordic race. Walther Wüst later expanded on this theory, stating in a public speech that Adolf Hitler's ideology corresponded with that of the Buddha, since the two shared a common heritage. However, according to contemporary research Hitler himself was not interested in Buddhism or Tibet.
Poland
After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, Wolfram Sievers wrote to Himmler stressing the need to appropriate exhibits from numerous museums.[, BA (ehem BDC) Ahnenerbe: Paulsen, Peter (October 8, 1902).] Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) ''Standartenführer'' Franz Six oversaw SS-''Untersturmführer'' , who was commanding a small team that entered Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
to obtain the 15th-century Veit Stoss altar
Veit is a personal name. Notable people with the name include:
Surname
* Gustav Veit (1824–1903), German gynecologist and obstetrician, a native of Leobschütz
* Johann Veit (1852–1917), German gynecologist
*Mario Veit (born 1973), German box ...
. Because the Poles had foreseen the German interest in the altar, they had disassembled it into 32 pieces, which were shipped to different locations, but Paulsen located each piece, and on October 14, 1939, he returned to Berlin with the altar in three small trucks and had it stored in the locked treasury of the Reichsbank
The ''Reichsbank'' (; 'Bank of the Reich, Bank of the Realm') was the central bank of the German Reich from 1876 until 1945.
History until 1933
The Reichsbank was founded on 1 January 1876, shortly after the establishment of the German Empi ...
. After conferring with Hitler, who had not initially been told of the operation to capture it, it was decided to send the altar to an underground vault in Nuremberg, for safety.
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
, then head of RSHA, sent Paulsen back to Kraków in order to seize additional museum collections,[ but Göring had already sent a team of his own men, commanded by SS-''Sturmbannführer'' Kajetan Mühlmann under the supervision of ]Dagobert Frey
Dagobert Frey (Vienna, 23 April 1883 – 13 May 1962, Stuttgart) was an Austrian art historian, a criminal responsible for the theft of the most valuable European and Polish collections from the Warsaw and Kraków museums and national art galler ...
, to loot the museums. Mühlmann agreed to let Paulsen take items of scholarly interest back to the Ahnenerbe, while keeping artworks for Göring. During the looting, Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Frank was an early member of the German Workers' Party ...
, the head of the German General Government in occupied Poland, issued an order dated November 22, 1939 prohibiting the “unapproved export” of Polish items. Paulsen obeyed the order, but his colleague Hans Schleif arranged for five freightcars of loot from the Warsaw Archaeological Museum to be shipped to Poznań
Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...
, which was outside Frank's control. In return, Schleif was appointed as a trustee for Wartheland
The ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' (initially ''Reichsgau Posen'', also: ''Warthegau'') was a Nazi German ''Reichsgau'' formed from parts of Polish territory annexed in 1939 during World War II. It comprised the region of Greater Poland and adjacent ...
. Paulsen later tried to take credit for the freightcars' contents in his report to RuSHA, but was reassigned.[, BA (ehem. BDC) Ahnenerbe: Paulsen, Peter (October 8, 1902).]
Eduard Paul Tratz of the Ahnenerbe also removed some exhibits from the State Zoological Museum in Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
to the Haus der Natur, the museum in Salzburg
Salzburg (, ; literally "Salt-Castle"; bar, Soizbuag, label= Austro-Bavarian) is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020, it had a population of 156,872.
The town is on the site of the Roman settlement of ''Iuvavum''. Salzburg was founded ...
of which he was founder and director.
Crimea
After the German Army conquered the Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
in early July 1942, Himmler sent Herbert Jankuhn, as well as and Baron Wolf von Seefeld, to the region in search of artifacts to follow up the recent display of the Kerch
Kerch ( uk, Керч; russian: Керчь, ; Old East Slavic: Кърчевъ; Ancient Greek: , ''Pantikápaion''; Medieval Greek: ''Bosporos''; crh, , ; tr, Kerç) is a city of regional significance on the Kerch Peninsula in the east of t ...
“Gothic crown of the Crimea” in Berlin.
Jankuhn met with senior officers of ''Einsatzkommando'' 11, part of '' Einsatzgruppe D'', while waiting at the field headquarters of the 5th SS Panzer Division. Commander Otto Ohlendorf
Otto Ohlendorf (; 4 February 1907 – 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary and Holocaust perpetrator during the Nazi era. An economist by education, he was head of the (SD) Inland, responsible for intelligence and security within Germ ...
gave Jankuhn information about the Crimean museums.[, BA (ehem. BDC).] Traveling with the 5th SS Panzer, Jankuhn's team eventually reached Maykop
Maykop (russian: Майкоп, p=mɐjˈkop mɐj'kop); ady, Мыекъуапэ, Mıéquapə ) is the capital city of the Republic of Adygea in Russia, located on the right bank of the Belaya River (a tributary of the Kuban River). It borders Ma ...
, where they received a message from Sievers that Himmler wanted an investigation of Mangup Kale, an ancient mountain fortress. Jankuhn sent Kersten to follow up on Mangup Kale, while the rest of the team continued trying to secure artifacts that had not already been taken by the Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...
. ''Einsatzkommando'' 11b's commander Werner Braune
Karl Rudolf Werner Braune (11 April 1909 − 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era and a Holocaust perpetrator. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union of 1941, Braune was the commander of ''Einsatzkommando'' 11b, ...
aided the team.
Jankuhn was ultimately unable to find Gothic artifacts denoting a German ancestry, even after intelligence about a shipment of 72 crates of artifacts shipped to a medical warehouse. The area had been ravaged by the time the team arrived and only 20 crates remained, but they contained Greek and stone-age artifacts, rather than Gothic.[
]
Ukraine
In June 1943, 27-year-old SS-''Untersturmführer'' Heinz Brücher
Heinz Brücher (14 January 1915, Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse – 17 December 1991, Mendoza Province, Argentina) was a botanist and plant breeder who served as a member of the special science unit in the SS Ahnenerbe in Nazi Germany. He was ...
, who held a PhD from Tübingen
Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three ...
in botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
, was tasked with an expedition to Ukraine and Crimea. SS-''Hauptsturmführer
__NOTOC__
(, ; short: ''Hstuf'') was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations such as the SS, NSKK and the NSFK. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' was a mid-level commander and had equivalent seniority to a ...
'' Konrad von Rauch and an interpreter identified as Steinbrecher were also involved in the expedition.
In February 1945, Brücher was ordered to destroy the Ahnenerbe's 18 active research facilities to avoid their capture by advancing Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
forces. He refused, and after the war continued his work as a botanist in Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
and Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...
.[.]
Cancelled expeditions
Bolivia
After winning in a writing contest, Edmund Kiss traveled to Bolivia in 1928 to study the ruins of temples in the Andes
The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...
. He claimed that their apparent similarity to ancient European structures indicated that they had been designed by Nordic migrants millions of years earlier.[.] He also claimed that his findings supported the World Ice Theory
Welteislehre (WEL; "World Ice Theory" or "World Ice Doctrine"), also known as Glazial-Kosmogonie (''Glacial Cosmogony''), is a discredited cosmological concept proposed by Hanns Hörbiger, an Austrian engineer and inventor. According to his ideas ...
, which held that the universe originated from a cataclysmic clash between gigantic balls of ice and glowing mass. Arthur Posnansky
Arthur Posnansky (1873–1946), often called "Arturo", was at various times in his life an engineer, explorer, ship’s navigator, director of a river navigation company, entrepreneur, La Paz city council member, and well known and well respec ...
had been studying a local site called Tiwanaku
Tiwanaku ( es, Tiahuanaco or ) is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia near Lake Titicaca, about 70 kilometers from La Paz, and it is one of the largest sites in South America. Surface remains currently cover around 4 square kilo ...
, which he also believed supported the theory.
After contacting Posnansky, Kiss approached Wüst for help planning an expedition to excavate Tiwanaku and a nearby site, Siminake. The team would consist of 20 scientists, who would excavate for a year and also explore Lake Titicaca
Lake Titicaca (; es, Lago Titicaca ; qu, Titiqaqa Qucha) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. By volume of water and by surface area, i ...
, and take aerial photographs of ancient Incan roads they believed had Nordic roots. By late August 1939, the expedition was nearly set to embark, but the invasion
An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity aggressively enter territory (country subdivision), territory owned by another such entity, gen ...
of Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
caused the expedition to be postponed indefinitely.
Iran
In 1938, the Ahnenerbe's president, Walther Wüst, proposed a trip to Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
to study the Behistun Inscription, which had been created by order of the Achaemenid
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest emp ...
Shah
Shah (; fa, شاه, , ) is a royal title that was historically used by the leading figures of Iranian monarchies.Yarshater, EhsaPersia or Iran, Persian or Farsi, ''Iranian Studies'', vol. XXII no. 1 (1989) It was also used by a variety of ...
Darius I, who had declared himself to have been of Aryan origin in his inscriptions.[ The inscriptions were recorded atop steep cliffs using ]scaffolding
Scaffolding, also called scaffold or staging, is a temporary structure used to support a work crew and materials to aid in the construction, maintenance and repair of buildings, bridges and all other man-made structures. Scaffolds are widely use ...
that was removed after the inscriptions were made. Unable to afford the cost of erecting new scaffolds, Wüst proposed that he, his wife, an amanuensis, an Iranian student, a photographer and an experienced mountaineer
Mountaineering or alpinism, is a set of outdoor activities that involves ascending tall mountains. Mountaineering-related activities include traditional outdoor climbing, skiing, and traversing via ferratas. Indoor climbing, sport climbing, an ...
be sent with a balloon-mounted camera. The onset of the war, however, saw the trip postponed indefinitely.
Canary Islands
Early travelers to the Canary Islands had described the Guanche Guanche may refer to:
*Guanches, the indigenous people of the Canary Islands
*Guanche language, an extinct Berber language, spoken by the Guanches until the 16th or 17th century
*''Conus guanche
''Conus guanche'' is a species of sea snail, a ma ...
natives as having golden-blond hair and white skin, and mummies had been found with blond tresses—facts which Wirth believed indicated that the islands had once been inhabited by Nordics. His colleague Otto Huth proposed an autumn of 1939 expedition to study the ancient islanders’ racial origins, artifacts and religious rites. At the time, the Canary Islands were part of Francisco Franco’s fascist Spanish State (''Estado Español''). Because Franco refused to side with the Axis when the war started, however, the trip was cancelled.
Iceland
Bruno Schweizer had already traveled to Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
three times in 1938 when he proposed an Ahnenerbe expedition with seven others to the country in order to learn about their ancient farming practices and architecture, record folksongs and dances, and also collect soil samples for pollen analysis.
The first setback for the expedition was the ridicule of the Scandinavian press, publishing stories in February 1939 claiming the expedition was based on false ideas about Icelandic heritage and sought old church records that did not even exist. An enraged Himmler publicly shut down the trip, but after calming down he allowed the planning of the trip to be secretly continued. The final setback occurred when Himmler's personal staff was unable to get enough Icelandic crowns—Iceland's currency. Not being able to quickly solve this problem, the trip was rescheduled for the summer of 1940.[ In May 1940, the British invaded neutral Iceland, but when the war had started the expedition had already been shelved.
In 1940, following the British occupation of Iceland, the Ahnenerbe-funded Bruno Kress, a German researcher who was in the country at the time, was rounded up along with other German nationals present on the island. Kress was interned in ]Ramsey
Ramsey may refer to:
Geography British Isles
* Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, a small market town in England
* Ramsey, Essex, a village near Harwich, England
** Ramsey and Parkeston, a civil parish formerly called just "Ramsey"
* Ramsey, Isle of Man, t ...
on the Isle of Man
)
, anthem = "O Land of Our Birth"
, image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg
, image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg
, mapsize =
, map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe
, map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green)
in Europe ...
, but was allowed to correspond with Sievers through letters. Kress's ''Grammar of Icelandic'' was eventually published in East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
in 1955. Kress later worked for the East German '' Staatssicherheit'' (Stasi).
Other Ahnenerbe activities
Master Plan East
After being appointed Commissioner for the Strengthening of the German Race, Himmler set to work with Konrad Meyer on developing a plan for three large German colonies in the eastern occupied territories. Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, northern Poland and the Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
would be the focal points of these colonies intended to spread the Aryan race. The Crimean colony was called Gotengau, or “Goth district”, in honor of the Crimean Goths
The Crimean Goths were Greuthungi-Gothic tribes who remained in the lands around the Black Sea, especially in Crimea. They were the longest-lasting of the Gothic communities. Their existence is well attested through the ages, though the exact p ...
who had settled there and were believed to be Aryan ancestors of the Germans
, native_name_lang = de
, region1 =
, pop1 = 72,650,269
, region2 =
, pop2 = 534,000
, region3 =
, pop3 = 157,000
3,322,405
, region4 =
, pop4 = ...
.
Himmler estimated that Aryanization of the region would take twenty years, first expelling all the undesirable populations, then re-distributing the territory to appropriate Aryan populations. In addition to changing the demographics of the region, Himmler also intended to plant oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...
and beech trees to replicate traditional German forests, as well as plant new crops brought back from Tibet
Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Taman ...
. To achieve the latter end, Himmler ordered a new institution set up by the Ahnenerbe and headed by Schäfer. A station was then set up near the Austrian town of Graz where Schäfer set to work with seven other scientists to develop new crops for the Reich.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place after Hitler read a work by Alfred Frauenfeld which suggested resettling inhabitants of South Tyrol
it, Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano – Alto Adige lld, Provinzia Autonoma de Balsan/Bulsan – Südtirol
, settlement_type = Autonomous area, Autonomous Provinces of Italy, province
, image_skyline = ...
, believed by some to be descendants of the Goths, to Crimea. In 1939 the South Tyroleans were ordered by Hitler and Benito Mussolini to vote on whether they wanted to remain in Italy and accept assimilation or emigrate to Germany. Over 80% chose the latter (for details see South Tyrol Option Agreement
The South Tyrol Option Agreement (german: Option in Südtirol; it, Opzioni in Alto Adige) was an agreement in effect between 1939 and 1943, when the native German and Ladin-speaking people in South Tyrol and several other municipalities of northe ...
). Himmler presented Master Plan East (''Generalplan Ost
The ''Generalplan Ost'' (; en, Master Plan for the East), abbreviated GPO, was the Nazi German government's plan for the genocide and ethnic cleansing on a vast scale, and colonization of Central and Eastern Europe by Germans. It was to be under ...
'') to Hitler and received approval in July 1942.
Full implementation of the plan was not feasible because of the war, but a small colony was founded around Himmler's field headquarters at Hegewald, near Kiev. Starting on October 10, 1942, Himmler's troops deported 10,623 Ukrainians from the area in cattle cars before bringing in trains of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche
In Nazi German terminology, ''Volksdeutsche'' () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". The term is the nominalised plural of '' volksdeutsch'', with ''Volksdeutsche'' denoting a sin ...
) from northern Ukraine.[ The SS authorities gave families supplies as well as land, but also informed them of ]quotas
Quota may refer to:
Economics
* Import quota, a trade restriction on the quantity of goods imported into a country
* Market Sharing Quota, an economic system used in Canadian agriculture
* Milk quota, a quota on milk production in Europe
* Indi ...
of food they would be required to produce for the SS.
Failed seizure of Tacitus manuscript
The Ahnenerbe had tried to gain possession of the Codex Aesinas
The Codex Aesinas (''Codex Aesinas Latinus 8'') is a 15th-century composite manuscript. It was discovered by chance in 1902 at the former private estate of the Count Baldeschi Balleani family located in Jesi, in the province of Ancona, Italy. ...
, a famous medieval copy of Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
' '' Germania''. Although Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...
had originally promised it as a gift in 1936, it remained in the possession of the Count Aurelio Baldeschi Guglielmi Balleani outside Ancona
Ancona (, also , ) is a city and a seaport in the Marche region in central Italy, with a population of around 101,997 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region. The city is located northeast of Rome, on the Adriatic ...
, from where the Ahnenerbe tried to obtain it after Mussolini was deposed.[.]
Headquarters relocation
On July 29, 1943, the Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...
's firebombing of Hamburg led Himmler to order the immediate evacuation of the main Ahnenerbe headquarters in Berlin. The extensive library was moved to Schloss Oberkirchberg near Ulm
Ulm () is a city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Danube on the border with Bavaria. The city, which has an estimated population of more than 126,000 (2018), forms an urban district of its own (german: link=no, ...
while the staff was moved to the tiny village of Waischenfeld near Bayreuth, Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
. The building selected was the 17th century ''Steinhaus''. While much of the staff was not ecstatic about the primitive conditions, Sievers seemed to have embraced the isolation.
Financing
Financially, the Ahnenerbe was separate from the Nazi Party treasury and had to find funding from other sources including membership dues and donations. After 1938, it received funds from the ''Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...
''. In addition, a foundation (''Ahnenerbe-Stifterverband'') was established, set up with funds from business leaders. One of the largest donations, approximately , came from Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
boardmember Emil Georg von Stauß
Emil Georg von Stauss (often rendered Emil Georg von Stauß, 6 October 1877 in Baiersbronn – 11 December 1942 in Berlin) was a German banker who served as Director-General of the board of the Deutsche Bank.
Business career
As well as his banking ...
associates, including BMW and Daimler-Benz
The Mercedes-Benz Group AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufactur ...
.[ The foundation also received royalties from patents partially held by the SS (see below). During the war, Ahnenerbe also received money from other SS departments and profited from the ''Arisierung'' of Jewish property—its headquarters in Dahlem had been purchased at half its market value. In 1940, another estate in Munich was added.]
In 1936, the SS formed a joint company with Anton Loibl, a machinist and driving instructor. The SS had heard about reflector pedals for bicycles, that Loibl and others had been developing. Assuring that Loibl got the patent himself, Himmler then used his political weight to ensure the passing of a 1939 law requiring the use of the new reflective pedals—of which the Ahnenerbe received a share of the profits, in 1938.[
]
Medical experiments
The ''Institut für Wehrwissenschaftliche Zweckforschung'' ("Institute for Military Scientific Research"), which conducted extensive medical experiments using human subjects, became attached to the Ahnenerbe during World War II. It was managed by Wolfram Sievers.[Peter Witte et al., eds., ''Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers'' 1941/32, pp. 390–91.] Sievers had founded the organization on the orders of Himmler, who appointed him director with two divisions headed by Sigmund Rascher
Sigmund Rascher (12 February 1909 – 26 April 1945) was a German ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) doctor. He conducted deadly experiments on humans pertaining to high altitude, freezing and blood coagulation under the patronage of ''Reichsführer-SS'' Hei ...
and August Hirt
August Hirt (28 April 1898 – 2 June 1945) was an anatomist with Swiss and German nationality who served as a chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II. He performed experiments with mustard gas on inmates at the Natz ...
, and funded by the Waffen-SS
The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
.
Dachau
Sigmund Rascher was tasked with helping the Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...
determine what was safe for their pilots—because aircraft were being built to fly higher than ever before. He applied for and received permission from Himmler to requisition camp prisoners to place in vacuum chambers to simulate the high altitude conditions that pilots might face.[
Rascher was also tasked with discovering how long German airmen would be able to survive if shot down above freezing water. His victims were forced to remain out of doors naked in freezing weather for up to 14 hours, or kept in a tank of icewater for 3 hours, their pulse and internal temperature measured through a series of electrodes. Warming of the victim was then attempted by different methods, most usually and successfully by immersion in very hot water, and also less conventional methods such as placing the subject in bed with women who would try to sexually stimulate him, a method suggested by Himmler.][.]
Rascher experimented with the effects of Polygal, a substance made from beet
The beetroot is the taproot portion of a beet plant, usually known in North America as beets while the vegetable is referred to as beetroot in British English, and also known as the table beet, garden beet, red beet, dinner beet or golden beet ...
s and apple pectin, on coagulating blood flow to help with gunshot wounds
A gunshot wound (GSW) is a penetrating injury caused by a projectile (e.g. a bullet) from a gun (typically firearm or air gun). Damages may include bleeding, bone fractures, organ damage, wound infection, loss of the ability to move part ...
. Subjects were given a Polygal tablet, and shot through the neck or chest, or their limbs amputated without anaesthesia. Rascher published an article on his experience of using Polygal, without detailing the nature of the human trials, and also set up a company to manufacture the substance, staffed by prisoners.
Similar experiments were conducted from July to September 1944, as the Ahnenerbe provided space and materials to doctors at Dachau concentration camp to undertake “seawater experiments”, chiefly through Sievers. Sievers is known to have visited Dachau on July 20, to speak with Ploetner and the non-Ahnenerbe Wilhelm Beiglboeck, who ultimately carried out the experiments.
Skulls
Walter Greite rose to leadership of the Ahnenerbe's ''Applied Nature Studies'' division in January 1939, and began taking detailed measurements of 2,000 Jews at the Vienna emigration office—but scientists were unable to use the data. On December 10, 1941, Beger met with Sievers and convinced him of the need for 120 Jewish skulls.[Sievers, “Tagebuch: 10.12.1941,” BA, NS 21/127.] During the later Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...
, Friedrich Hielscher testified that Sievers had initially been repulsed at the idea of expanding the Ahnenerbe to human experimentation, and that he had “no desire whatsoever to participate in these.”
* Jewish skeleton collection: Beger collaborated with August Hirt
August Hirt (28 April 1898 – 2 June 1945) was an anatomist with Swiss and German nationality who served as a chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II. He performed experiments with mustard gas on inmates at the Natz ...
, of the Reich University of Strassburg, in creating a Jewish skeleton collection for research. The bodies of 86 Jewish men and women were ultimately collected and macerated.
Post–World War II
Trials
* Wolfram Sievers: In Waischenfeld American troops captured a slew of documents that would be used in the case against Sievers which would be a part of the Doctors' Trial
The Doctors' Trial (officially ''United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al.'') was the first of 12 trials for war crimes of high-ranking German officials and industrialists that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone ...
. Sievers was charged for aiding in the Jewish skull collection
The Jewish skull collection was an attempt by the Nazis to create an anthropological display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish race" and to emphasize the Jews' status as ''Untermenschen'' ("sub-humans"), in contrast to the G ...
and human medical experiments at Dachau and Natzweiler. In his defense, Sievers claimed he had helped a resistance group since 1929, which was supported by testimony from Friedrich Hielscher on April 15, 1947.[ Sievers was nevertheless found guilty on all four counts on August 21, 1947, and sentenced to death. He was hanged on June 2, 1948, at ]Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west-southwest of Munich and south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler was held in 1924, af ...
.
* Richard Walther Darré: One of the founders of the Ahnenerbe, Darré was tried in the Ministries Trial
__NOTOC__
The Ministries Trial (or, officially, the ''United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsäcker, et al.'') was the eleventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg af ...
. He received seven years imprisonment after being found not guilty on more serious charges.
* Edmund Kiss: His Bolivia trip having been cancelled, Kiss served in the armed forces the rest of the war, taking command of SS men at Wolfschanze near the end. He was interned in the Darmstadt camp after the war, but was released in June 1947 due to severe diabetes
Diabetes, also known as diabetes mellitus, is a group of metabolic disorders characterized by a high blood sugar level ( hyperglycemia) over a prolonged period of time. Symptoms often include frequent urination, increased thirst and increased ...
. His de-Nazification classification was as a “major offender”. This allowed him to only take a manual labor job. Following this decision, Kiss hired a lawyer to protest this decision, a major component of his case being he had never been a member of the Nazi Party.[ After somewhat renouncing his past, Kiss was reclassified as a ''Mitläufer'' in 1948 and fined 501 DM.
* Walther Wüst: Although the president of the Ahnenerbe from 1937 until the end of the war, Wüst's claims that he was unaware of any medical experiments were acknowledged, and in 1950 he was classified as a ''Mitläufer'' and released, returning to the ]University of Munich
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...
as a professor-in-reserve.[
* ]Bruno Beger
Bruno Beger (27 April 1911 – 12 October 2009) was a German racial anthropologist, ethnologist, and explorer who worked for the ''Ahnenerbe''. In that role he participated in Ernst Schäfer's 1938–39 journey to Tibet, helped the Race and Sett ...
: In February 1948, Beger was classified as "exonerated" by a denazification tribunal unaware of his role in the skeleton collection. In 1960, an investigation into the collection began in Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg (; Swabian: ''Ludisburg'') is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, about north of Stuttgart city centre, near the river Neckar. It is the largest and primary city of the Ludwigsburg district with about 88,000 inhabitants. It is s ...
, and Beger was taken into custody on March 30, 1960. He was released four months later, but the investigation continued until coming to trial on October 27, 1970. Beger claimed that he was unaware the Auschwitz prisoners he measured were to be killed. While two others indicted in the trial were released, Beger was convicted on April 6, 1971, and sentenced to three years in prison for being an accomplice in the murder of 86 Jews. Upon appeal, his sentence was reduced to three years of probation. Neither of his colleagues with whom he was tried, Hans Fleischhacker
Hans Fleischhacker (10 March 1912 – 30 January 1992) was a German anthropologist with the Ahnenerbe and a commander in the SS of Nazi Germany. He worked with Bruno Beger on some projects, making measurements of Jewish people. He was with Bege ...
and Wolf-Dietrich Wolff, was convicted.[
]
Legacy
Academic study
During the 20th century, little scholarly research into the Ahnenerbe took place. Many scholars had likely been dissuaded from exploring the subject because ex-Ahnenerbe members held prominent academic positions in West Germany and did not want younger historians or archaeologists investigating their links with the SS. The main scholar to explore the subject in this period was a Canadian historian, Michael Kater Michael Hans Kater (born 1937) is a German historian of Nazism. He is a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of history at York University, Toronto, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Sociét ...
, who conducted his research while in Germany. As the University of Heidelberg
}
Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...
sought to publish Kater's thesis on the subject in 1966, Walther Wüst unsuccessfully tried to legally prevent it from doing so. Kater's research was then published in 1974 as ''Das "Ahnenerbe" der SS 1935–1945''.
Following German unification
The unification of Germany (, ) was the process of building the modern German nation state with federal features based on the concept of Lesser Germany (one without multinational Austria), which commenced on 18 August 1866 with adoption of t ...
in 1990, Achim Leube began an examination of the surviving historical evidence on the Ahnenerbe, much of which had been based in West Germany. In November 1998, Leube oversaw an international academic conference in Berlin on the Nazis' relationship with prehistory.
Influence in pseudo-archaeology
Many of the ideas inherited or developed by the Ahnenerbe remain influential. Canadian author Heather Pringle has particularly drawn attention to the influence of Edmund Kiss' various "crackpot theories" concerning such matters as the World Ice Theory and the origins of Tiwanaku upon subsequent writers such as H.S. Bellamy, Denis Saurat and, later, Graham Hancock
Graham Bruce Hancock (born 2 August 1950) is a British writer who promotes pseudoscientific theories involving ancient civilizations and lost lands. Hancock speculates that an advanced ice age civilization was destroyed in a cataclysm, but t ...
.
In popular culture
Much misinformation about the Ahnenerbe has circulated, due in part to adaptations of the group in fiction, and historically dubious conspiracy theories
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
*
*
* The term has a nega ...
that sometimes confuse the Ahnenerbe with the roughly contemporaneous Thule Society
The Thule Society (; german: Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the ''Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum'' ("Study Group for Germanic Antiquity"), was a German occultist and '' Völkisch'' group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, n ...
, or the historically unverified Vril
''The Coming Race'' is a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published anonymously in 1871. It has also been published as ''Vril, the Power of the Coming Race''.
Some readers have believed the account of a superior subterranean master race and th ...
society.
The Ahnenerbe formed the basis for the depiction in the '' Indiana Jones'' franchise of Nazis searching for religious artifacts.
The antagonist of the 2019 animated film, '' Lupin III: The First'' is part of a fictional branch of the Ahnenerbe.
See also
* Deutsche Physik
''Deutsche Physik'' (, "German Physics") or Aryan Physics (german: Arische Physik) was a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s which had the support of many eminent physicists in Germany. The term was taken ...
and Deutsche Mathematik
''Deutsche Mathematik'' (German Mathematics) was a mathematics journal founded in 1936 by Ludwig Bieberbach and Theodor Vahlen. Vahlen was publisher on behalf of the German Research Foundation (DFG), and Bieberbach was chief editor. Other editors ...
* List of Nazi Party organizations
A list of organizations established by or closely associated with the Nazi Party, sortable by their German or English title.
{, class="sortable wikitable"
, -
!Native Language Name
!English name
!Description
!Date founded
, -
, Abwehr
, Abwehr
, ...
* List of Ahnenerbe institutes
The following is a list of the various institutes set up as subsidiary bodies of the German "Ahnenerbe" organization.
Social Sciences
*Indogermanisch-arische Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft (Indogermanic-Aryan Language and Cultural Studies), direct ...
* Nationalism and archaeology
* Nazi mysticism
The association of Nazism with occultism occurs in a wide range of theories, speculation, and research into the origins of Nazism and into Nazism's possible relationship with various occult traditions. Such ideas have flourished as a part of popu ...
* Reich Research Council
* Thule Society
The Thule Society (; german: Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the ''Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum'' ("Study Group for Germanic Antiquity"), was a German occultist and '' Völkisch'' group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, n ...
* Kokugaku
''Kokugaku'' ( ja, 國學, label= Kyūjitai, ja, 国学, label=Shinjitai; literally "national study") was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period. Kokugaku scholars worked to r ...
, a similar, if earlier, project to recapture legendary heritage in Japan
References
Bibliography
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* Цибулькін В. В., Лисюк І. П. СС-Аненербе: розсекречені файли. – К. – Хмельницький: Поділля, 2010. – 288 с. (Tsibulkin V.V., Lysyuk I.P. (2010). ''SS-Anenerbe: declassified files. - K. -'' (in Ukrainian). Khmelnytskyi
Khmelnytskyi ( uk, Хмельни́цький, Khmelnytskyi, ), until 1954 Proskuriv ( uk, Проску́рів, links=no ), is a city in western Ukraine, the administrative center for Khmelnytskyi Oblast (region) and Khmelnytskyi Raion (dist ...
: Podillia)
External links
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{{Authority control
Nazi SS
Occultism in Nazism
Nazi culture
Nazi Party organizations
Pseudoarchaeology
Pseudohistory
Organizations established in 1935
Organizations disestablished in 1945
1935 establishments in Germany
Heinrich Himmler
1945 disestablishments in Germany
Science in Nazi Germany