Taken together, these two books do much to explode what they characterize as the myth of  two German folklores.  This is the notion, still disturbingly widespread in German academia, that during the National Socialist era the field of Volkskunde was split into two distinct groups, the first consisting of serious scholars whose work remained largely untainted by Nazism, and the second consisting of hacks, publicists, and weak scholars who championed the Nazi ideology and program. By dispelling this myth, these volumes contribute to the ever-growing body of scholarship that documents the role of traditional German elites in the legitimation and promotion of National Socialism. The simplistic differentiation between a respectable and moderate establishment, on the one hand, and a radicalized Nazi insurgency on the other, might have helped facilitate the reintegration of academic and cultural elites into postwar West German society, but it has not held up under the scrutiny of historians

Steinweis, Alan E.

English

UNL | Libraries

University of Nebraska - Lincoln 
DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 
Faculty Publications, Department of History History, Department of 
Summer 1995 
Review of Folklore and Fascism: The Reich Institute for German 
Volkskunde, by Hannjost Lixfeld, and The Nazification of an 
Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich, edited and 
translated by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld 
Alan E. Steinweis 
University of Nebraska - Lincoln, asteinweis1@unl.edu 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyfacpub 
 Part of the History Commons 
Steinweis, Alan E., "Review of Folklore and Fascism: The Reich Institute for German Volkskunde, by 
Hannjost Lixfeld, and The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich, edited and 
translated by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld" (1995). Faculty Publications, Department of History. 
82. 
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyfacpub/82 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History, Department of at DigitalCommons@University 
of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications, Department of History by an 
authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 
BOOK REVIEWS 
Folklore and Fascism: T h e  Reich Institute for German 
Volkskunde. By Hannjost Lixfeld. Edited and translated by James 
R. Dow. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1994. Pp. xxi 
+ 308. $35.00. ISBN 0-253-33512-4. The  Nazification of an 
Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich. Edited and 
translated by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld. Bloomington: 
Indiana University Press. 1994. Pp. xx + 354. $35.00. ISBN 
0-253-31821-1. 
Taken together, these two books do much to explode what they charac- 
terize as the myth of "two German folklores." This is the notion, still 
disturbingly widespread in German academia, that during the National 
Socialist era the field of Volkskunde was split into two distinct groups, the 
first consisting of serious scholars whose work remained largely untainted 
by Nazism, and the second consisting of hacks, publicists, and weak scholars 
who championed the Nazi ideology and program. By dispelling this myth, 
Published in Central European History, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1995), pp. 250-252
Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for Central
European History of the American Historical Association. Used by permission.
BOOK REVIEWS 
these volumes contribute to the ever-growing body of scholarship that 
documents the role of traditional German elites in the legitimation and 
promotion of National Socialism. The simplistic differentiation between a 
respectable and moderate establishment, on the one hand, and a radicalized 
Nazi insurgency on the other, might have helped facilitate the reintegra- 
tion of academic and cultural elites into postwar West German society, 
but it has not held up under the scrutiny of historians. 
Folklore and Fascism by Hannjost Lixfeld, is a monographic study of a 
single proposed institutional base for the study of folklore in Nazi Ger- 
many, the Reich Institute of German Volkskunde. Nazijication of an Aca- 
demic Discipline, edited by Lixfeld and James R. Dow, is a more wide-ranging 
anthology of articles on German Volkskunde before and after 1933. Lixfeld, 
Dow, and the contributors to the anthology are, without exception, scholars 
of folklore rather than historians. All except Dow are German. Conse- 
quently, these volumes constitute an effort by scholars to come to terms 
with the history of their own discipline. In the epilogue to Nazijication, 
Lixfeld and Dow note that attempts to expose both the record of folklor- 
ists during the Nazi era as well as the partly National Socialist pedigree 
of post-1945 German Volkskunde has met with bitter resistance in Ger- 
man academic circles. The younger scholars who have contributed to 
these volumes have been denounced as Nestbeschmutzer by senior col- 
leagues seeking to protect the reputations of their own Doktorvater who 
had been active during the Nazi years. It is a virtue of both volumes that 
critical engagement with the history of the discipline rarely dissolves into 
polemics. The authors instead have compiled overwhelming documentary 
evidence to make their case. 
Lixfeld's monograph traces the development of Volkskunde as an aca- 
demic discipline from the German Empire through the Third Reich, fo- 
cusing on the institutionalization of scholarship in the Reichsgemeinschaft 
f i r  deutsche Volksforschung and the Reichsinstitut h r  deutsche Volkskunde, 
which was planned but never actually established. The book's brief text 
is supplemented by appendixes containing 14 useful documents. Lixfeld 
argues that folklorists played a key role in the construction of a 
Germanenideologie in the decades before 1933, identifjing and cataloging a 
myriad of peculiarly Germanic customs, habits, and values. After 1933, 
the Nazi regime found obvious uses for such research, to which it de- 
voted expanded financial resources. Academic folklorists who, before 1933, 
had operated in the "bourgeois-national" tradition readily cooperated with 
regime-sponsored programs, not only out of sheer academic opportunism 
but also because the tendencies of their previous work had been so proximate 
to the central assumptions of National Socialism. 
Much of Lixfeld's book describes the now familiar byzantine bureau- 
cratic machinations of Alfred Rosenberg, Bernhard Rust, Heinrich Himmler, 
and other Nazi leaders who sought to establish control over folklore re- 
search. Although important for understanding how Volkskunde became 
institutionalized in the Nazi state, as well as for illuminating the modalities 
252 BOOK REVIEWS 
of academic collaboration with the regime, much of this information will 
seem arcane to readers who are more interested in what folklorists actu- 
ally argued and wrote. 
For readers seeking a more comprehensive treatment of the subject, 
the Naz$cation anthology, edited by Lixfeld and Dow, will probably be 
of greater practical utility than Lixfeld's monograph. Most of the thirteen 
contributions in this volume are less concerned with institutional issues 
than they are with the substance of Volkskunde as practiced during the 
Nazi era. With one exception, all of the contributions have been pub- 
lished previously in German, in some cases as far back as the 1960s. 
Notable contributions include Christoph Daxelmiiller's account of the Nazi 
attack on Jewish folklore studies, Rolf Brednich's detailed analysis of folklore 
research on the swastika and other supposedly Germanic symbols, and 
Anka Oesterle's extensive examination of how folklore scholarship was 
organized in the SS and eventually applied in the wartime plundering of 
artifacts and during operations to resettle ethnic Germans. Two contribu- 
tions focus on the post-1945 legacy. Wolfgang Jacobeit's article on folk- 
lore studies in the German Democratic Republic traces the search for a 
usable Volkskunde in a Communist framework and how it subverted the 
traditions of the discipline (although Jacobeit seems unwilling to acknowledge 
the problems inherent in the politicization of scholarship in the GDR).  
Lixfeld and Dow conclude the volume with an account of the struggles 
over Vergangenheitsbewaltigung among West German folklore scholars. 
Lixfeld and several of the contributors to the anthology underscore the 
racialist, as opposed to merely culturally ethnocentric, underpinnings of a 
great deal of folklore scholarship produced during the Nazi period. I t  is 
therefore somewhat curious that they cling so steadfastly to the term and 
concept of "fBscism." Radical racialism distinguished German National 
Socialism from other right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist movements and 
regimes, and Volkskunde,  as the authors show, was among the most ra- 
cialist of academic disciplines in Germany. It seems to me, therefore, that 
the scholarship contained in these volumes undermines the notion of a 
generic fascism, and I wonder to what extent the frequent references to 
fascism are echoes of an academic "antifascism" that has more to do with 
post-1945 political identity than it does with heuristic utility. 
The extensive bibliographies found at the end of both of these vol- 
umes should be a boon to scholars in a number of fields. Unfortunately, 
these important books contain German-style name indexes, making it 
extremely difficult to locate information pertaining to specific subjects. 
Also unfortunately, the difficulties inherent in translating academic Ger- 
man, with its long, contorted sentences and multiplicity of compound 
and hyphenated nouns, are conspicuous in these volumes. 
ALAN E. STEINWEIS 
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, LINCOLN 


Review of \u3ci\u3eFolklore and Fascism: The Reich Institute for German Volkskunde\u3c/i\u3e, by Hannjost Lixfeld, and \u3ci\u3eThe Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich\u3c/i\u3e, edited and translated by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld

DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications, Department of History History, Department of Summer 1995 Review of Folklore and Fascism: The Reich Institute for German Volkskunde, by Hannjost Lixfeld, and The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich, edited and translated by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld Alan E. Steinweis University of Nebraska - Lincoln, asteinweis1@unl.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyfacpub  Part of the History Commons Steinweis, Alan E., "Review of Folklore and Fascism: The Reich Institute for German Volkskunde, by Hannjost Lixfeld, and The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich, edited and translated by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld" (1995). Faculty Publications, Department of History. 82. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyfacpub/82 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications, Department of History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. BOOK REVIEWS Folklore and Fascism: T h e  Reich Institute for German Volkskunde. By Hannjost Lixfeld. Edited and translated by James R. Dow. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1994. Pp. xxi + 308. $35.00. ISBN 0-253-33512-4. The  Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich. Edited and translated by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1994. Pp. xx + 354. $35.00. ISBN 0-253-31821-1. Taken together, these two books do much to explode what they charac- terize as the myth of "two German folklores." This is the notion, still disturbingly widespread in German academia, that during the National Socialist era the field of Volkskunde was split into two distinct groups, the first consisting of serious scholars whose work remained largely untainted by Nazism, and the second consisting of hacks, publicists, and weak scholars who championed the Nazi ideology and program. By dispelling this myth, Published in Central European History, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1995), pp. 250-252Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for CentralEuropean History of the American Historical Association. Used by permission.BOOK REVIEWS these volumes contribute to the ever-growing body of scholarship that documents the role of traditional German elites in the legitimation and promotion of National Socialism. The simplistic differentiation between a respectable and moderate establishment, on the one hand, and a radicalized Nazi insurgency on the other, might have helped facilitate the reintegra- tion of academic and cultural elites into postwar West German society, but it has not held up under the scrutiny of historians. Folklore and Fascism by Hannjost Lixfeld, is a monographic study of a single proposed institutional base for the study of folklore in Nazi Ger- many, the Reich Institute of German Volkskunde. Nazijication of an Aca- demic Discipline, edited by Lixfeld and James R. Dow, is a more wide-ranging anthology of articles on German Volkskunde before and after 1933. Lixfeld, Dow, and the contributors to the anthology are, without exception, scholars of folklore rather than historians. All except Dow are German. Conse- quently, these volumes constitute an effort by scholars to come to terms with the history of their own discipline. In the epilogue to Nazijication, Lixfeld and Dow note that attempts to expose both the record of folklor- ists during the Nazi era as well as the partly National Socialist pedigree of post-1945 German Volkskunde has met with bitter resistance in Ger- man academic circles. The younger scholars who have contributed to these volumes have been denounced as Nestbeschmutzer by senior col- leagues seeking to protect the reputations of their own Doktorvater who had been active during the Nazi years. It is a virtue of both volumes that critical engagement with the history of the discipline rarely dissolves into polemics. The authors instead have compiled overwhelming documentary evidence to make their case. Lixfeld's monograph traces the development of Volkskunde as an aca- demic discipline from the German Empire through the Third Reich, fo- cusing on the institutionalization of scholarship in the Reichsgemeinschaft f i r  deutsche Volksforschung and the Reichsinstitut h r  deutsche Volkskunde, which was planned but never actually established. The book's brief text is supplemented by appendixes containing 14 useful documents. Lixfeld argues that folklorists played a key role in the construction of a Germanenideologie in the decades before 1933, identifjing and cataloging a myriad of peculiarly Germanic customs, habits, and values. After 1933, the Nazi regime found obvious uses for such research, to which it de- voted expanded financial resources. Academic folklorists who, before 1933, had operated in the "bourgeois-national" tradition readily cooperated with regime-sponsored programs, not only out of sheer academic opportunism but also because the tendencies of their previous work had been so proximate to the central assumptions of National Socialism. Much of Lixfeld's book describes the now familiar byzantine bureau- cratic machinations of Alfred Rosenberg, Bernhard Rust, Heinrich Himmler, and other Nazi leaders who sought to establish control over folklore re- search. Although important for understanding how Volkskunde became institutionalized in the Nazi state, as well as for illuminating the modalities 252 BOOK REVIEWS of academic collaboration with the regime, much of this information will seem arcane to readers who are more interested in what folklorists actu- ally argued and wrote. For readers seeking a more comprehensive treatment of the subject, the Naz$cation anthology, edited by Lixfeld and Dow, will probably be of greater practical utility than Lixfeld's monograph. Most of the thirteen contributions in this volume are less concerned with institutional issues than they are with the substance of Volkskunde as practiced during the Nazi era. With one exception, all of the contributions have been pub- lished previously in German, in some cases as far back as the 1960s. Notable contributions include Christoph Daxelmiiller's account of the Nazi attack on Jewish folklore studies, Rolf Brednich's detailed analysis of folklore research on the swastika and other supposedly Germanic symbols, and Anka Oesterle's extensive examination of how folklore scholarship was organized in the SS and eventually applied in the wartime plundering of artifacts and during operations to resettle ethnic Germans. Two contribu- tions focus on the post-1945 legacy. Wolfgang Jacobeit's article on folk- lore studies in the German Democratic Republic traces the search for a usable Volkskunde in a Communist framework and how it subverted the traditions of the discipline (although Jacobeit seems unwilling to acknowledge the problems inherent in the politicization of scholarship in the GDR).  Lixfeld and Dow conclude the volume with an account of the struggles over Vergangenheitsbewaltigung among West German folklore scholars. Lixfeld and several of the contributors to the anthology underscore the racialist, as opposed to merely culturally ethnocentric, underpinnings of a great deal of folklore scholarship produced during the Nazi period. I t  is therefore somewhat curious that they cling so steadfastly to the term and concept of "fBscism." Radical racialism distinguished German National Socialism from other right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist movements and regimes, and Volkskunde,  as the authors show, was among the most ra- cialist of academic disciplines in Germany. It seems to me, therefore, that the scholarship contained in these volumes undermines the notion of a generic fascism, and I wonder to what extent the frequent references to fascism are echoes of an academic "antifascism" that has more to do with post-1945 political identity than it does with heuristic utility. The extensive bibliographies found at the end of both of these vol- umes should be a boon to scholars in a number of fields. Unfortunately, these important books contain German-style name indexes, making it extremely difficult to locate information pertaining to specific subjects. Also unfortunately, the difficulties inherent in translating academic Ger- man, with its long, contorted sentences and multiplicity of compound and hyphenated nouns, are conspicuous in these volumes. ALAN E. STEINWEIS UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, LINCOLN 

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1081&amp;context=historyfacpub

Review of \u3ci\u3eFolklore and Fascism: The Reich Institute for German Volkskunde\u3c/i\u3e, by Hannjost Lixfeld, and \u3ci\u3eThe Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich\u3c/i\u3e, edited and translated by James R. Dow and Hannjost Lixfeld

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