James R. Dow. Heinrich Himmler’s Cultural Commissions

Between 1940 and 1943, German and Austrian researchers working under the auspices of SS-convened Cultural Commissions (Kulturkommission) compiled enormous amounts of material—artifacts, photographs, film footage, and field notes—about the folk customs and linguistic variations among the ethnic Germans living in South Tyrol (Alto Adige) and the Slovene area of Gottschee (Kočevje). Deemed essential to the war effort and thus spared assignment to the front lines, the researchers were meant to collect and “cleanse” ethnic German folklore of foreign influences before returning the purified, fully Germanized version to the ethnic Germans resettled elsewhere in Hitler’s Europe. Unlike in the case of many other German minorities, the ethnic Germans of South Tyrol were treated by the Nazis with a seeming desire to win the ethnic Germans over to their planned resettlement, due in part to Fascist Italy’s status as an important ally. The ethnic Germans responded with willing cooperation in the work of the Cultural Commissions, which often opened the way to wholesale plunder of cultural artifacts and artwork deemed German, antagonizing the Italian authorities.

Archaeology · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Folklore · Front (military) · Geography · German · Judaism · Nazism · Political science · European history and politics · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law