Ahnenerbe Group

[Guest]

Reference to a Group called Ahnenerbe caught my attention. This contains great historical information and provides some substance for our current discussions about Fredrick Bararabossa. I will be sure to make the content below more reader friendly as soon as I can get to my PC!   For now I hope you enjoy this bit of info.

AHNENERBE 

 

 

 

Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage) was a project in Nazi Germany to research the archaeological and cultural history of the Aryan race.

Founded on July 1, 1935, as the Study Society for Primordial Intellectual history, German Ancestral Heritage (Studiengesellschaft für Geistesurgeschichte‚ Deutsches Ahnenerbe), by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe group later conducted experiments and launched expeditions in an attempt to prove that mythological Nordic populations had once ruled the world.

 

 In 1937 the project was renamed the Research and Teaching Community of the Ancestral Heritage (Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft des Ahnenerbe).

 

Through 1937, the Ahnenerbe was essentially engaged in amateur völkisch research. Financial and academic pressure caused Himmler to start looking for an alternative to Wirth as early as the spring of 1936. In September, Hitler negatively referred to Wirth's beliefs regarding Atlantis and their influence on "Böttcherstrasse architecture" in a speech at the Reichsparteitag.

In March 1937, the Ahnenerbe was given a new statute, implementing the Führerprinzipand giving Himmler extensive powers. Wirth was deposed as president and appointed honorary president, a powerless position. Himmler's position as Kurator was given more power.

 

Walther Wüst was appointed the new president of the Ahnenerbe. Wüst was an expert on India and a dean at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, working on the side as a Vertrauensmann for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, SS Security Service). Referred to as The Orientalist by Wolfram Sievers, Wüst had been recruited by him in May 1936 because of his ability to simplify science for the common man. After being appointed president, Wüst began improving the Ahnenerbe, moving the offices to a new headquarters that cost 300,000 Reichsmark in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin. He also worked to limit the influence of “those he deemed scholarly upstarts,” which included cutting communication with the RuSHA office of Karl Maria Wiligut.

 

The Generalsekretariat led by Sievers was turned into the institution's Reichsgeschäftsführung. The Ahnenerbe was renamed Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft Das Ahnenerbe e.V.. It was moved from the RuSHA to Himmlers's personal staff. 

Spoiler

RuSHA:  SS Race and Settlement Main Office, (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS, RuSHA) One of its duties was to oversee the marriages of SS personnel in accordance with the racial policy of Nazi Germany. After Himmler introduced the "marriage order" on December 31, 1931, the RuSHA would only issue a permit to marry once detailed background investigations into the racial fitness of both prospective parents had been completed and proved both of them to be of Aryan descent back to 1800.

 

Wirth and Wilhelm Teudt lost their departments in Ahnenerbe in 1938. In 1939, the statutes were changed again and Wirth was deposed as honorary president. Himmler's and Wüsts' titles were switched—Himmler now became president. Next to Wüst, the academic with most influence in the institution after 1939 was Herbert Jankuhn, who in 1937 still had categorically rejected cooperation with the "unscientific" Ahnenerbe.

Ahnenerbe was a mix between an SS department and an Eingetragener Verein. Membership was open to all natural and legal persons. Its staff were SS members, many also working in other SS positions, and thus subject to SS jurisdiction.

 

In late 1936, Ahnenerbe took over the publication of Teudt's magazine Germanien, first in cooperation with Teudt, then without him. The monthly now became the official voice of Ahnenerbe and was aimed at a wider audience. From December 1936, the magazine was distributed free of charge to all SS leaders.[2]

Cooperation with other SS departments was initially limited but improved after 1937. Contacts with the SD-HA and the editorial team of the SS weekly Das schwarze Korpsintensified. Ahnenerbe eventually had the scientific responsibility for the SS-Leithefteand in conjunction with the SS-HA, Ahnenerbe established Germanische Leitstelle and Germanischer Wissenschaftseinsatz.

In 1939, the Ahnenerbe held its first independent annual convention, at Kiel. The event's success contributed to the trend that archaeologists were increasingly turning to the Ahnenerbe and away from Alfred Rosenberg's rival Reichsbund für Deutsche Vorgeschichte (de).

In fiscal year 1938/39, the budget for the excavations department was 65,000 Reichsmark, about 12% of the Ahnenerbe's total budget. More than a third of that went to the Haithabu activities. Under Jankuhn's direction four more archaeological departments were set up: in April 1938 the Forschungsstätte für naturwissenschaftliche Vorgeschichte (a laboratory for analyzing pollen) was established at Dahlem under the leadership of Rudolf Schütrumpf (de). The Forschungsstätte für Wurtenforschung at Wilhelmshaven led by Werner Haarnagel (de), the Forschungsstätte für germanisches Bauwesen led by Martin Rudolph and the Forschungsstätte für Urgeschichte directed by Assien Bohmers (de) followed in 1939.

 

The organization was incorporated into the Allgemeine SS (General SS) in January 1939.

In 1938 the Ahnenerbe sent an expedition to Tibet with the intention of proving Aryan superiority by confirming the Vril theory, which was based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's book Vril, the Power of the Coming Race. Their study included measuring the skulls of 376 people and comparing native feature to those associated with Aryans. The expedition's most scientific findings are associated with biological finds.

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All of this, gathered together, created a skein of Germanic pride that was used to reinforce the nationalistic, fascist message Adolf Hitler was crafting with his speeches, open-air meetings, and public image. 

 

Operation Bararbossa: was the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, starting Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. The operation stemmed from Nazi Germany's ideological aims to conquer the western Soviet Union so that it could be repopulated by Germans, to use Slavs as a slave-labour force for the Axis war-effort, and to seize the oil reserves of the Caucasus and the agricultural resources of Soviet territories.

 

Operation Bararabossa was Phase one of the Final Solution. 

*Cough Cough* The Holocaust.. 

 

@anonymous  I got more for you my friend.

[anonymous]

Dahlem! I've stumbled upon that name before but I don't know why I never started about it. So it was an Ahnenerbe station too? If I recall correctly, it was also the place where Nazi scientists had developed wonder weapons such as the V1 and the V2, world's first rocket.

 

A perfect setting for a future DLC, if you ask me.