About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherIndiana University Press

ISBN-100253335124

ISBN-139780253335128

eBay Product ID (ePID)97618

Product Key Features

Book TitleFolklore and Fascism : the Reich Institute for German Volkskunde

Number of Pages336 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicEurope / Germany, Folklore & Mythology

Publication Year2000

IllustratorYes

GenreSocial Science, History

AuthorHannjost Lixfeld

Book SeriesFolklore Studies in Translation, Ser.

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.1 in

Item Length9.6 in

Item Width6.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN93-010014

Table Of ContentForeword by Dan Ben-AmosForeword by James R. DowIntroduction1. Bourgeois-National Volksunde between the Monarchy and Fascism2. The Reich Community for German Folk Research: Forerunner of Fascist Folklore Scholarship3. Fascist Volkskunde and Folk Renewal during the Third Reich4. The Rise and Fall of the Reichsinstitut fur deutsche VolkskundeGuide to the AppendixesAppendix I, Documents of the Rosenberg BureauAppendix II, Documents of the SS Office of Ancestral InheritanceAppendix III, Documents by German FolkloristsTranslations, Terminology, and AbbreviationsNotesBibliographyName Index

SynopsisFolklore and Fascism explores the genesis of the Reich Institute for German Folklore during World War I and the time of the Weimar Republic. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, they recognized that such an organization could serve their purposes of coordinating the political and social orders. When the Nazis gave their support to the formation of the Institute, respected folklorists were swept up in this movement, which promised a realization of their dreams of a pan-German Folklore Center. Lixfeld discusses numerous folklorists in this volume, but special attention is paid to scholars such as John Meier and Adolf Spamer, who had long nurtured and promoted the idea of a Reichsinstitut but assumed an ambiguous stance in their dealings with the fascists. Lixfeld shows that two of the most powerful Nazi ideologists seized on the idea of such an institute and detailed plans to implement it. Alfred Rosenberg, the Commissioner for the Supervision of All Intellectual and World View Schooling and Education of the NSDAP, worked toward an advanced school that would help to implement the Reichsinstitut. Heinrich Himmler, who ran the rival SS Office of Ancestral Inheritance, was also involved in the plan to set up the Institute. Their purpose was always quite clear: the creation of a vehicle for disseminating the new National Socialist world-view. Lixfeld documents how ""respectable"" German folklorists willingly worked with the Nazis, paving the way for an inhuman concept of the ""volk"" and the nation. Nazi archival documents he uncovered in the former East Germany explode the myth of ""two German folklores"" - a folklore of willing Nazi collaborators and one of unwitting collaborators.

LC Classification NumberGR166.L59 1994