Volkstum (lit. "folkdom" or "folklore", though the meaning is wider than the common usage of the termfolklore) is the entirety of utterances[citation needed] of aVolk or of anethnic minority over its lifetime, expressing a "Volkscharakter" which the people of such anethnicity allegedly have in common.[1] It was the defining idea of theVölkisch movement.
German nationalists coined the term in the context ofGermany's"Freedom Wars" of 1813 to 1814, in marked and conscious opposition to ideals of theFrench Revolution such asuniversal human rights. This sense of the word is now criticised in academia, though it is still in use in the protection ofethnic minorities and is a legal standard inAustria.
In theAge of Enlightenment the adjectivevolkstümlich usually meant the cultural achievements of uneducatedGermans as well aspopular culture. TheVolksdichtung (People's Poetry) was 'high' literature, the culture of distinction, and partly devalued theelite education and partly idealised it. The concept was not yet tied to a certain nation, and attributed some of its characteristics to non-German culture.
Justus Möser (1720–1794),Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803),Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) and other GermanRomantics gradually increased the concept by their actions into an unspoiled, organic, person liable closed and eternal "People's character" (Volkscharakter) and charged against the monarchies then dominating Germany.[clarification needed] Möser already bordered on being the "Vater der Volkskunde" (Father ofEthnology) theDeutschtum against thecosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment and against theFrench Revolution.
Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (Deutsches Volksthum 1810) is considered the inventor of the nounVolkstum. He translated the foreign wordNation and thus moved it into an "unerring something" in everyVolk. For him and forErnst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860) andJohann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), GermanVolkstum was a revolutionary source not only against the foreign domination of Napoleonic France, but also against dynasties and the church, with the word Enlightenment becoming less and less used.[2] For all three thinkers, the idea of a uniform anti-Enlightenment position with an opposed Volkstum was already linked withAntisemitism. Arndt wrote inDer Rhein, Deutschlands Strom, aber nicht Deutschlands Grenze 1813:
Cursed just by humanity and cosmopolitanism, making her prahlet[clarification needed]! Right across the world those Jews sense that they must praise us as the highest summits of human formation!
He strictly rejectedJewish emancipation, whilst seeing it as every man's natural right and goal, and in particular of the German people to the whole human race was living.[clarification needed] He then summarised the concept as exclusive to those on the inside, not as being outside and expansive.[3]
The founding of theGerman Reich in 1871, as a "Kleindeutsche Lösung" under Prussian domination, only fulfilled part of the German nationalists' objectives, wishing and struggling as they did for the unification of all German speakers in a singlenation state.
The moreVolkstum concept was now part of a nationalist ideology and political propaganda. It often served as a patriotic or visionary binding-agent to cover over or overcome the real contradictions inside and outside the German empire: for example, by providing a "Volkstumskampf", it summoned a corporate-agrarianVolksgemeinschaft or ideal community as the key features ofVolkstum, though these did not actually exist. It was the term of choice for every figure wishing to turn to an irrational feeling and definition of unity, against both enemies inside and outside theReich.[4]
While theBrothers Grimm had not yet distinguished betweenGemeinschaft (community) andGesellschaft (society), Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) noted in his 1887 workGemeinschaft und Gesellschaft that the two were mutually exclusive – he defined "community" as a form of mutual affirmation of the people in themselves as in their resources, their respective communities (such as their family) but as an understood purpose – as opposed to its mutual form as "society" in which the individual himself was a purpose, with a 'community' (e.g. a corporation) watching over his means. 'Community' would in his terms be felt by children as "the permanent and genuine" against the "temporary and apparent cohabitation" of 'society'. This was directed against the Marxism of social democracy, whose "scientific" reasoned ideal of the classless society was felt by Tönnies to be unworkable. He was very sceptical about a concept such as "Volksgemeinschaft" – in the political sphere, he held that the ancientpolis, or the medieval Hanseatic city as its most pronounced form, little more than which could be expected by modern people.[5]
Underscored by the context ofWilhelminemilitarism andimperialism on the eve of theFirst World War, however,Heinrich Claß (chairman of theAlldeutscher Verband) in contrast defined Volkstum as national assertiveness and "Menschlichkeit" (humanity):
This so-called 'humanity' may apply again if we are politically, morally, medically and culturally reformed, and then they will always find their [only] limits will be the bill for which each victim will be bought for the health of the Volk.
He also took the "German disease" to be the German Jewish minority, who for him embodied all the moral values and ethnic roots of "corrosive"internationalism.[6]
During the war the "Deutsche Volkstum" and "Deutschtum", particularly in universities, again became popular, in the sense ofchauvinism. In "Deutschen Reden in schwerer Zeit" (German Speeches in a black time), 35 Berlin professors spoke out against muchdegeneration and foreigners, calling the World War a "Reinigungsbad" and the "fountain cellar of a new culture". Gustav Röthen, for example, saw it as the mass killings of the "sacred flame, faithful to the world-historical mission of the German people against barbarism and sub-culture".
UnderNational Socialism Volkstum was aggressively interpreted.Adolf Hitler, inMein Kampf, put Volkstum alongsiderace, "because the Volkstum, better than Race, lies not just in the speech, but in the blood."[7]
After the "Machtergreifung", various university and non-university groups oriented towards völkisch and volkstum-politics were linked to cross-disciplinary "research communities", into which "Volk history" and "Ostforschung" were integrated, closely connected to the Nazistate andparty. Their specialist disciplines became programmes with more state backing and funding than ever before. The concept of an "ethnic Volkstum" was divided into "Volksgenossen" (Volk comrades) and "Volksfeinde" (Volk enemies), so that the Volkstum concept was revised and became more strongly oriented towards racist and warlike solutions.
Above all, the Prussian archivistAlbert Brackmann advocated and led theGleichschaltung of the Nordostdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (Northeast German Research Foundation), which centrally directed research on East German history and controlled numerous projects on the issues of border demarcation and population policy. The young historians ofKönigsberg supported the "Ostpolitik" (Eastern Policy) of the NSDAP, for no academic elite had emerged within the party itself. After 1937 the Norddeutsche and Ostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschafts combined as a single large state-funded research organization. The impact of Volkstum historians was decisive in the use of their expertise in the Nazi ethnic policies in the conquered areas of eastern Europe from 1939 onwards. They drafted numerous maps and statistics, serving Nazi planning as the basis of its settlement and population policy in Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine and Belarus.
The Nazis during the war made repeated efforts to propagate Volkstum ("racial consciousness"), pamphlets were issued that enjoined all German women to avoid sexual relations with all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood.[8]
The policy of "Eindeutschung" propagated and legitimated by the Volkstum historians, which made so-called German installations as ethnically and culturally, also favoured the Holocaust, even if they did not conceive it and were not directly involved in it.[9][clarification needed]
After 1945 the concept was first used in its political sense in Germany as an expression of nationalist ideology and avoided by neutral words likeBevölkerung (population).Bertolt Brecht formulated it as: "Das Volk ist nicht tümlich." ("TheVolk is nottümlich.") In theGDR, the termVolk – without thesuffix-tum – expressed the supposed conformity of the population with theSED and the state in word combinations such asVolksdemokratie (people's republic),Volkspolizei (people's police) andVolksarmee (people's army). By contrast, a later opposition slogan was "Wir sind das Volk" ("We are the people").
In Austria the concept was equally used, but in a multi-ethnic monarchy. Thus, in the 1976 National Minorities Act, the termVolksgruppe served as a rough synonym for "national minority", according to theFramework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of theCouncil of Europe. Section 6 in the GermanFederal Expellee Law also used the expression.[10] The legislature of Switzerland definedVolkstum, at the time of ratification of the Framework Convention, as "inspired by the desire [...] to commonly preserve what relates to their common identity, including their culture, their traditions, their religion, or their language."[11] In accordance with this,Volkstum is primarily used for the self-perception of a population group. In its popular sense (close to the usual English sense offolklore), the term occasionally denotes regional traditions ofethnic minorities within Germany, orethnically German minorities abroad (e.g., theVolkstum of theSorbs,Frisians,Danube Swabians,Romanian Germans).
The term 'Volkstum', meaning approximately national character and tradition but particularly stressing inherited and racial characteristics [...].