Hans Joachim Beyer

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Hans Joachim Beyer (14 June 1908 – 25 August 1971) was a German historian, folklorist, employee of the Reich Security Main Office and SS-Hauptsturmführer. In the 1950s, he was responsible for the academic training of history teachers at the Flensburg College of Education.

Biography

Early life and education

Hans Beyer was born in Geesthacht, Hamburg, the son of a secondary school teacher. He grew up in a German nationalist Protestant family. After graduating from a Hamburg secondary school in 1926, he worked for a year and a half in an export business. He then studied history, law, and anthropology in Graz, Königsberg, and Hamburg, and received his doctorate in history from the University of Hamburg in 1931 with a thesis on the foreign policy of Edward VII.[1] He then initially worked as a freelance journalist, and it was not until 1933 that he obtained a position in the Prussian Ministry of Culture as an advisor for the newly established Landjahr ("Land Year")[2] area of responsibility, as well as a clerk for library issues.[3]

Beyer took his middle name — Joachim — only in 1934 and dropped it again after 1945. In addition, during the Third Reich era he used the pseudonym "Joachim" or "Jochen Kühl" in accordance with this middle name and his mother's maiden name.[4]

National Socialism period

Beyer joined the SA in July 1933[5] and the NSDAP in 1936.[6] In 1934, he became a lecturer at the College of Teacher Education in Danzig.[7] A year after his appointment, in his paper "Aufbau und Entwicklung des ostdeutschen Volksraums" (Structure and Development of the East German Ethnic Area), he lamented the "intermingling" of German settlers in the East with Slavs, so that the perspective was to free Bohemia as a traditional German settlement area from its predominantly Czech settlement.

From May 1936,[8] Beyer worked at the "Mittelstelle für auslandsdeutsche Volksforschung," served as editor of the journal Auslandsdeutsche Volksforschung from 1937,[9] and in September 1939 became a full-time employee in the Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS.[10] At the Reich Security Main Office, he worked under the direction of Franz Alfred Six as a library consultant in the area of "Gegnerforschung" (enemy research) and collected material for the closure of unpopular institutions critical of the party; for example, Beyer's collection of material led to the closure of the Dual Institute for Foreign and Ethnic Studies in Münster, which was directed by Georg Schreiber.[11] With the help of Franz Alfred Six, Beyer habilitated in Munich in 1939.[12] Oswald Kroh was involved in Beyer's habilitation with his favorable opinion on the habilitation thesis Repopulation Processes, Especially in East-Central Europe. The writing was "an expression of a welcome popular political responsibility" and a "contribution to the conquest of a significant new territory of German research."[13]

On April 20, 1940, he was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer[14] and on April 20, 1941, to SS-Obersturmführer.[15] That Beyer was promoted on each of "Führer's birthdays" is remarkable.

When Beyer became a professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin in 1940 at the age of 32, he "continued to work for Heydrich's Reich Security Main Office on the side."[16] He held the chair of "Ethnic Studies with Special Reference to Eastern Europe" at the newly founded "German Institute for Foreign Studies," which was formed from the German Academy for Politics and whose director was Franz Alfred Six.

In this position, Beyer lectured on topics including "Race, People, Space" and "Eastern Jewry," as well as seminars on "The Occupied Eastern Territories" and the "Historical Development of German, English, and French Eastern Ideology."[17] He also wrote articles on developments in Slovakia, the General Government, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia[18] for the "Yearbook of World Politics" edited by Franz Alfred Six. In various publications, he called for the elimination of Jews from all European peoples, who were supposedly only adapted to deceive, an allowance of mixed marriages only among "kindred peoples", the reclamation of the "German achievement heritage," and the hierarchization of Eastern European "ethnic tribes" according to their "German influence," ranking the Poles behind the Ukrainians and the latter behind the Czechs."

In June 1941, Beyer was given leave of absence in order to march into Lemberg with SS Einsatzgruppe C in July 1941 as a political advisor after the start of Operation Barbarossa. Its Einsatzkommando 4a executed many Polish intellectuals "whose names were on a wanted list compiled by Beyer."[19] At the end of September 1941, Beyer received a call to the University of Posen to the chair of "Folk doctrine, including frontier and foreign German studies."[20] At the same time, he became Heydrich's chief advisor on population issues, and on April 1, 1942, at his instigation, he became Heydrich's chief political advisor.

On April 1, 1942, at Heydrich's instigation, he became director of the "Institute for European Anthropology and Folk Psychology," later to become the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation for Population Research in Eastern and Southeastern Europe.[21][22] Also in 1942, he advanced to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer.[23] After Heydrich's death, Beyer was appointed professor of "Ethnology and Nationalities of Eastern Europe" at the German Charles University in Prague in 1943.[24] As a result of this activity, his main work Umvolkung was printed in Brünn in the last days of the war.

Postwar period

After Beyer had been "smoothly denazified," the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schleswig-Holstein made him its press spokesman in 1947.[25] In 1951, Beyer became professor of history and its didactics at the Flensburg College of Education, where he trained the next generation of teachers until his retirement from the university in 1961.[26] According to Flensburg historian Gerhard Paul, it was above all Edo Osterloh, then the EKD's school officer and later Minister of Education, who had lobbied for Beyer's academic career.[27] Although newspaper reports had drawn attention to Beyer's SS past as early as 1953, "Minister of Education Osterloh did not take him out of the line of fire of criticism until 1961, when he released him 'for research work' with full pay."[28]

Beyer was also active as a church historian, conducted regional historical studies in the context of the Schleswig State Archives, and belonged to the "Southeast German Historical Commission," the "Eastern Europe or Southeast Institute" then in Munich and now in Regensburg, as well as the "East German Cultural Council" under its vice president Wilhelm Weizsäcker.[29]

His 1939 work, Great Germans Abroad, which he edited with Otto Lohr, was censored in the Soviet Occupation Zone.[30]

Later life and death

In the mid-1950s, Beyer edited textbooks for history classes for the publishing house Moritz Diesterweg, which presented students with sources on European politics since 1919. In 1971, Hans Joachim Beyer died in Hamburg at the age of 63.[31]

Works

  • Die Reisen König Eduard VII. und ihr politischer Ertrag (1932; dissertation)
  • Deutschland ohne Protestantismus? : eine Kampfschrift (1933)
  • Aufbau und Entwicklung des ostdeutschen Volksraums (1935)
  • "Fragen der Umvolkung," Auslandsdeutsche Volksforschung, Vol. I, No. 4 (1937; further contributions in this issue include Oswald Kroh, A. O. Isbert, Maximilian Ittenbach)
  • Das Werden unseres Volkes. Ein Bildersaal deutscher Geschichte (1938; with Erwin Hölzle and Walther Peter Fuchs)
  • Reich, Neutralität, Judentum und außendeutsche Volksgruppen – Bemerkungen zu dem Werke Christoph Stedings und einigen Schriften über das ostmitteleuropäische Judenproblem (1939)
  • Umvolkungsvorgänge, vor allem in Ostmitteleuropa (1939; habilitation thesis; revised version for print: Umvolkung. Studien zur Frage der Assimilation und Amalgamation in Ostmitteleuroa und Übersee, 1945)
  • Große Deutsche im Ausland. Eine volksdeutsche Geschichte in Lebensbildern (1939; with Otto Lohr)
  • Das Schicksal der Polen. Rasse – Volkscharakter – Stammesart (1942)
  • Die deutsche Einheit des größeren Mitteleuropa und ihr Verfall im 19. Jahrhundert (1943)
  • 1919 bis 1955. Quellen zur europäischen Politik (1955; with Fritz Seelig)
  • Die Mittelmächte und die Ukraine 1918 (1956)
  • Die Landvolkbewegung Schleswig-Holsteins und Niedersachsens 1928–1932 (1957; under the pen name Hans Beyer)
  • "Recht, Volk und Obrigkeit in der schleswig-holsteinischen Erhebung 1848/49. Nach Briefen an oder von Chr. Christiansen (Medelby), Gräfin Ida Hahn-Hahn, H. Hansen (Viöl), Claus Harms, L. Lorentzen (Adelby), Bischof Martensen (Kopenhagen) u. N. J. E. Nielsen (Schleswig)," Jahrbuch f.d. Schleswigsche Geest, No. 5 (1957)
  • Die Agrarkrise und die Landvolkbewegung in den Jahren 1928–1932. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte „revolutionärer“ Bauernbewegungen zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen (1962; reprinted in Archiv für Agrargeschichte der Elbmarschen, 5th volume, edited by Klaus-Joachim Lorenzen-Schmidt, 1983)
  • Die britische Labourpartei und die Probleme des Sudeten- und Karpatenraumes: 1936–1939 (1958)
  • Föderationspläne im Donauraum und in Ostmitteleuropa (1958)

Notes

  1. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 271.
  2. ↑ One year of compulsory service on a farm.
  3. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 272.
  4. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 324.
  5. ↑ Gerwarth (2011), p. 305.
  6. ↑ Wiedemann, Andreas (2000). "Die Reinhard Heydrich-Stiftung in Prag (1942–1945)," Berichte und Studien, No. 48, p. 55.
  7. ↑ Klee (2003), p. 46.
  8. ↑ Gerwarth (2011), p. 305.
  9. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 237.
  10. ↑ Gerwarth (2011), p. 305.
  11. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 281.
  12. ↑ Konrad, Ota (2004). "Die Geisteswissenschaften an der Prager Universität (1938/39–1945)". In: Karen Bayer, Frank Sparing and Wolfgang Woelk, eds., Universitäten und Hochschulen im Nationalsozialismus und in der frühen Nachkriegszeit. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, p. 237.
  13. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 284.
  14. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 281.
  15. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 285.
  16. ↑ Gerwarth (2011), p. 305.
  17. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 287.
  18. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 287.
  19. ↑ Gerwarth (2011), p. 305.
  20. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 289.
  21. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 299.
  22. ↑ Gerwarth (2011), p. 305.
  23. ↑ Klee (2003), p. 46.
  24. ↑ Klee (2003), p. 46.
  25. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 315.
  26. ↑ Klee (2003), p. 46.
  27. ↑ Paul, Gerhard (1. Februar 2001). "Flensburger Kameraden". In: Zeit Online.
  28. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 315.
  29. ↑ Roth (1997), p. 315.
  30. ↑ "Deutsche Verwaltung für Volksbildung in der sowjetischen Besatzungszone, Liste der auszusondernden Literatur." Berlin: Zentralverlag (1946).
  31. ↑ Klee (2003), p. 46.

References

  • Danker, Uwe; Astrid Schwabe (2006). Schleswig-Holstein und der Nationalsozialismus. Neumünster: Wachholtz.
  • Fahlbusch, Michael (1999). Wissenschaft im Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik? Die „Volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften“ von 1931–1945. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
  • Gerwarth, Robert (2011). Reinhard Heydrich. Biographie. München: Siedler.
  • Harten, Hans-Christian; Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt (2006). Rassenhygiene als Erziehungsideologie des Dritten Reichs. Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
  • Klee, Ernst (2003). Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.
  • Roth, Karl Heinz (1997). "Heydrichs Professor. Historiographie des „Volkstums“ und der Massenvernichtungen: Der Fall Hans Joachim Beyer." In: Peter Schöttler, ed., Geschichtsschreibung als Legitimationswissenschaft 1918–1945. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 262–342.
  • Wiedemann, Andreas (2008). "Hans Joachim Beyer". In: Ingo Haar and Michael Fahlbusch, eds., Handbuch der völkischen Wissenschaften. Personen – Institutionen – Forschungsprogramme – Stiftungen. München: Saur, pp. 65–68.

External links

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