The Nazi ethnographic research of Georg Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp in Ukraine, and its north American legacy

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 28-64

  Schmaltz, Eric J ^a   Sinner, Samuel D ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA LINCOLN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNIC GROUP; ETHNOLOGY; GERMANY; HISTORY; HOMICIDE; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; NORTH AMERICA; PERSONNEL; POLITICAL SYSTEM; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL CONTROL; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SOLDIER; UKRAINE;

ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURAL; ETHNIC GROUPS; GERMANY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOMICIDE; HUMANS; MILITARY PERSONNEL; NATIONAL SOCIALISM; NORTH AMERICA; PREJUDICE; RESEARCH PERSONNEL; SOCIAL CONTROL POLICIES; UKRAINE;

EID: 0005273328     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/14.1.28     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. In 1988, Michael Burleigh observed: "This is not a history of a radicalized and opportunistic 'lunatic' fringe but of a section of the established, educated élite. The advent of a regime bent upon drastic territorial revisions in the East presented an opportunity to translate the labours of the study into present political fact. The Ostforscher voluntarily and enthusiastically put their knowledge at the disposal of the Nazi regime, rapidly disowning their conservative political backgrounds, and taking on board as many aspects of Nazi racial dogma as were consistent with their own (limited) notions of scholarly propriety." Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of "Ostforschung" in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 9
2. Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards, p. 10
3. See also Götz Aly, "The Planning Intelligentsia and the 'Final Solution,'" in Michael Burleigh, ed., Confronting the Nazi Past: New Debates on Modern German History (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), pp. 140-53
4. Michael Fahlbusch, Wissenschaft im Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik? Die 'Volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften" von 1931-1945 (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999)
5. Fahlbusch has worked on the NS-Zeit Akademiker. Several brief references to Stumpp and Leibbrandt from his comprehensive 1999 study appear in this article's findings. Independently of our article, Fahlbusch suggested that "ethno-specialists" like Stumpp may have had a more active role in the genocide. See Fahlbusch's "Die 'Volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften': Ein Brain-Trust der NS-Volkstumspolitik?" (conference report, Frankfurt, 13 September 1998)
6. See also Hartmut Lehmann and James Van Horn Melton, eds., Paths of Continuity: Central European Historiography from the 1930s to the 1950s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). This study discusses the continuation of "social history" (Volksgeschichte) in a post-Nazi context. The ethnographic trend of social histories (structural group histories) also appears in Leibbrandt's and Stumpp's postwar work. One frequent complaint is that too much of the Russian-German literature has consisted of broad structural and sociological approaches, partly outgrowths of the Nazi-era Volksgeschichte. There is still keen interest in grass-roots history, but cultural, intellectual, and biographical studies are not as numerous
7. See "Abschied von Dr. Leibbrandt 5.9.1899 bis 19.6.1982," Volk auf dem Weg (Stuttgart) 8-9 (Aug.-Sept. 1982), p. 9
8. "Dr. Karl Stumpp," Volk auf dem Weg (Stuttgart) 2 (Feb. 1982), p. 3
9. "Dr. Karl Stumpp 12.5.1896 - 20.1.1982," Volk auf dem Weg (Stuttgart) 5 (May 1996), p. 5
10. Arthur E. Flegel, "Memories of Dr. Karl Stumpp," Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 5:1 (Spring 1982), p. 5
11. Adam Giesinger, "Dr. Karl Stumpp (1896-1982): A Life of Service to His People," Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 5:1 (Spring 1982), p. 1
12. Emma S. Haynes, "Dr. Karl Stumpp - In Memoriam," Journal of the Historical Society of Germans from Russia 5:1 (Spring 1982), p. 3
13. Joseph S. Height, "Dr. Georg Leibbrandt: Scholar, Author, Publisher" and "Dr. Karl Stumpp: Scholar, Author, Lecturer," in Homesteaders on the Steppe: Cultural History of the Evangelical Lutheran Colonies in the Region of Odessa, 1804-1945 (Bismarck: North Dakota Historical Society of Germans from Russia [Germans from Russia Heritage Society], 1975), pp. 395-96, 399-400
14. Fred C. Koch, "A Bibliographic Survey," in The Volga Germans in Russia and the Americas, from 1763 to the Present (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), p. 326
15. James W. Long, From Privileged to Dispossessed: The Volga Germans, 1860-1917 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), p. 256
16. Franz Usselmann, "Karl Stumpp," Volk auf dem Weg (Stuttgart) 2 (Feb. 1982), p. 3
17. See also Roger Bartlett, "The Russian-Germans and Their Neighbors," Slavonic and East European Review 73:3 (July 1995), pp. 499-504
18. On page 500, Bartlett observes, "There already existed a considerable body of literature, especially in German, on the Russian-Germans, although much of it was written either for tendentious reasons by proponents of Great Russian or Greater German political views or with distorting tunnel vision by members of the ethnic group itself." Cf. Sidney Heitman, "Introduction [Germans]," Guide to the Study of the Soviet Nationalities: Non-Russian Peoples of the USSR (Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1982), p. 232
19. The mountains of evidence scattered in the German War Records can be intimidating. Hundreds of Ukrainian villages are listed in various charts, but a smaller number (between eightyone and ninety-nine) relate to the so-called Dorfberichte. According to Adam Giesinger, eighty-one village reports were completed on the Ukraine's German villages. Yet Richard H. Walth argues that up to ninety-nine villages were documented. Stumpp's twelve diary reports (Tagebuchfrontberichte) are also found among these. Giesinger, "Captured German Documents," American Historical Society of Germans from Russia Work Paper No. 13 (Dec. 1973), p. 12
20. Giesinger, "Reports of 1942-43 from German Villages in the Ukraine," American Historical Society of Germans from Russia Work Paper No. 24 (Fall 1977), pp. 19-23
21. Richard H. Walth, Flotsam of World History: The Germans from Russia between Stalin and Hitler (Essen: Klartext, 1996), pp. 328-36, 338-72
22. Many Nazi criminals, especially vocal anti-Communists, were allowed to pursue postwar careers. An important topic in itself, the issue receives attention in Gilad Margalit, "The Justice System of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 11:3 (Winter 1997), pp. 330-450
23. The two North American Russian-German historical societies include the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, or AHSGR (Lincoln, NE), established in 1968; and the Germans from Russia Heritage Society or GRHS (Bismarck, ND), created in 1971. At various times, Dr. Stumpp held the office of honorary president of both. One must note that most members of these organizations, who number in the thousands, know little or nothing about the details of Stumpp and Leibbrandt's careers. The "controversy" is confined to a small number of academically trained members. On Stumpp's numerous visits to heritage society conferences see Michael M. Miller, comp., Researching the Germans from Russia: Annotated Bibliography of the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection (Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, North Dakota State University, 1987), pp. 174-75
24. Ingeborg Fleischhauer and Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 94-95
25. Meir Buchsweiler, Volksdeutsche in der Ukraine am Vorabend und Beginn des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Ein Fall doppelter Loyalität? (Gerlingen: Bleicher, 1984), p. 21
26. Fleischhauer, Das Dritte Reich und die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), p. 33
27. Fleischhauer and Pinkus, Die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion: Geschichte einer nationalen Minderheit im 20. Jahrhundert (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1987), pp. 18, 220-26
28. Giesinger, "Dr. Karl Stumpp (1896-1982)," p. 1
29. Buchsweiler, p. 21
30. Fleischhauer, Das Dritte Reich, p. 33
31. Fleischhauer and Pinkus, Die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion, pp. 220-21
32. See also Dr. Karl Stumpp's DAI personnel file in the microfilmed German Records T-81, Roll 349, Frame 5078430 (e.g., GR T-81, R 349, F 5078430). See also Stumpp's own account of the early days in "Ein Leben für mein Volkstum," in Heimat-Kalendar der Bessarabiendeutschen 1978 (Hannover: Landsmannschaft der Bessarabiendeutschen im Auftrage des Hilfkomitees der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche aus Bessarabien, 1978), pp. 94-106
33. See also Georg Leibbrandt, ed., Die deutschen Kolonien in Cherson und Bessarabien: Berichte der Gemeindeämter über Entstehung und Entwicklung der lutherischen Kolonien in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Ausland und Heimat Verlags-Aktiengesellschaft, 1926). The second volume only is available at the North Dakota State University Libraries Germans from Russia Heritage Collection in Fargo. By the late 1930s, coinciding with his new ministerial duties, Leibbrandt established the well-known Sammlung Georg Leibbrandt, which published valuable sources and materials on Eastern Europe's Germans
34. See also Leibbrandt's 9 June 1939 speech in Stuttgart, appearing in Deutsche Post aus dem Osten 11:6-7 (June/July 1939). In the late 1930s, the Verband der Deutschen aus Rußland (VDR) in Berlin made the Deutsche Post aus dem Osten available to some ethnic Germans in North America. A copy resides at the North Dakota State University Libraries Germans from Russia Heritage Collection
35. Height, pp. 399-400
36. Walth, Flotsam of World History, pp. 45-46, 49
37. Long, pp. 60-61
38. Fleischhauer and Pinkus, The Soviet Germans, pp. 94-95
39. Fahlbusch, p. 591
40. Buchsweiler, p. 83
41. Cf. Stumpp, "Zur Volksbiologie des Rußlanddeutschtums," GR T-81, R 608, F 5399053-56 (1940); "Gesundheitsübersicht vom Gebiet Emiltschino," GR T-81, R 606, F 5396990
42. Buchsweiler, pp. 21, 46-52, 64-85
43. Stumpp, "Ein Leben für mein Volkstum," pp. 100-106
44. Buchsweiler, p. 21; Fleischhauer, Das Dritte Reich, p. 33
45. Giesinger, "Dr. Karl Stumpp (1896-1982)," pp. 1-2
46. Cf. Stumpp, Von der Urheimat und Auswandenrung der Deutschen in Bessarabien (Stuttgart: Kurier-Verlag, 1938). This 60-page study by Stumpp contains genealogy, tables, and two maps. A photocopy resides at the North Dakota State University Libraries Germans from Russia Heritage Collection
47. Cf. Buchsweiler, p. 270 (fn. 472)
48. Hermann Maurer (trans. Adam Giesinger), "A Report Sent Home to Germany by a Sergeant in a German Army Unit Stationed in the Kutschurgan Villages 13-28 August 1941," Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 7:1 (Spring 1984), pp. 1-3, 5-3. Cf. GR T-454, R 20
49. "Einwohnerverzeichnis (mit Ergänzungsliste) des Ortes Neu-Glückstal [1944 NeuGlückstal Family Register with Supplementary List and Notes]," comp, in Walth, Auf der Suche nach Heimat: Die Rußlanddeutschen - In Search of a Home: The Germans from Russia (Dülmen: Laumann-Verlag, 1990), pp. 195-238
50. Cf. J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Nazism, 1919-1945: Vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination: A Documentary Reader (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1988), p. 1086ff
51. Fahlbusch, pp. 607-9, 613
52. Cf. Buchsweiler, pp. 364-83
53. Fahlbusch, p. 613
54. Cf. Buchsweiler, pp. 315-24, 364-83
55. Emil Meynen (in English) cited in Fahlbusch, p. 609
56. Fahlbusch, pp. 102, 590-609, 613
57. Cf. Stumpp, Bericht über das Gebiet Chortitza: Im Generalbezirk Dnjepropetrowsk (Berlin: Publikationsstelle Ost, 1943), 10 pp.
58. Stumpp, Bericht über das Gebiet Kronau-Orloff (Orloff jetzt Marienburg) (Berlin: Publikationsstelle Ost, 1943), 7 pp. Copies reside at the North Dakota State University Libraries Germans from Russia Heritage Collection in Fargo
59. Fahlbusch, p. 609
60. Walth, The Flotsam of World History, pp. 70-71
61. See also Doris L. Bergen, "The Nazi Concept of 'Volksdeutsche' and the Exacerbation of Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1933-1945," Journal of Contemporary History 29:4 (Oct. 1994), pp. 569-82
62. Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1957)
63. Robert F. Koehl, RKFDV: Gennan Resettlement and Population Policy, 1939- 1945: A History of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957)
64. and Valdis O. Lumans, Himmler's Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the Gennan National Minorities of Europe, 1933-1945 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993)
65. See examples of Dorfberichte in Buchsweiler, pp. 252-53, 370
66. Fahlbusch, p. 612
67. Giesinger, "Reports of 1942-43 from German Villages in the Ukraine," p. 20
68. Giesinger, "Captured War Documents," p. 12
69. Stumpp, "In the Wake of the German Army" (Winter 1984), p. 17
70. Walth analyses the reports' cultural focus, but he incorrectly locates all the blame for the mass killings with the Nazi authorities (excepting, of course, his mentors Stumpp and Leibbrandt), away from the villagers themselves. Ethnic Germans were involved in the special SS defense units (Selbstschütze) participating in the mass killings of Jews, Gypsies, Soviet commissars, and other "undesirables." Walth's view is representative of ethnic-German complicity. Yet one must recognize that the majority of Ukrainian Germans was helpless to prevent extermination actions. Responses ranged from active participation to mild protest. See also Anton Bosch and Josef Lingor, Entstehung, Entwicklung und Auflösung der deutschen Kolonien am Schwarzen Meer am Beispiel von Kandel von 1808 bis 1944 (Stuttgart: Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland, 1990), pp. 138-99, 543
71. See also Stumpp, "Zur Volksbiologie."
72. Stumpp writes in one report: "[Die Deutschen] wurden von den arbeitsscheuen Juden genie aufgenommen und als Arbeitssklaven ausgenützt [The Germans were taken by the workshy Jews and exploited as slave labor]." Buchsweiler, p. 380
73. Stumpp, "In the Wake of the German Army" (Spring 1984), pp. 10-11. This particular report continued with the author's - perhaps unwitting - observation of the desperate plight of the Jews: In many business places, coffee houses, hair-dressers, there are notices: "Jews not desired" or even "Jews are forbidden to enter." One day the streets were blocked so that one could hardly get through. Jews were standing there in large numbers offering all sorts of household objects for sale: gold jewelry, silver cutlery, watches, fountain pens. . . . An imposed sum of twenty million rubles has to be raised in a few days. Surprising only is the fact that the buyers are mostly German soldiers. For the first time in the history of this city, its beautifully planted parks will be free of Jews on Sundays
74. Maurer, pp. 1-3, 5-3
75. Buchsweiler, pp. 368-39. See also fn. 298 concerning Giesinger's possible misinterpretation of ausgesiedelt
76. Buchsweiler, pp. 368-69
77. GR T-81, R 607, F 5397081, 5397088
78. GR T-81, R 606-7
79. Fahlbusch, pp. 608-9
80. See also Otto Bräutigam's autobiography concerning the SS-RMO rivalry and his boss, Georg Leibbrandt: So hat es sich zugetragen: Ein Leben als Soldat und Diplomat (Würzburg: Holzner Verlag, 1968), pp. 380-88, 622-25, 627ff
81. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing the Leibbrandt correspondence was unavailable. It is located at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. In late 1998 and early 1999, the YIVO Archives closed for relocation. Please consult Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes and Meir, 1985), vol. 1, p. 352
82. Cf. "Leibbrandt to Reichskommissar Ostland," 13 Nov. 1941, Occ E 3-32
83. Document 3663-PS, Vol. 6, in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, p. 401
84. Cf. Document 3663-PS, Vol. 32, in Trial of the Major War Criminals, pp. 435-36
85. Document 3663-PS, pp. 401-2 in Vol. 6 of Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression
86. Document 3666-PS, pp. 402-3 in Vol. 6 of Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression
87. Cf. Hilberg, vol. 1, pp. 376-77
88. Cf. "Leibbrandt via Lohse to Kube," 23 Oct. 1942, Occ E 3-45
89. Buchsweiler, pp. 314-16
90. Our translation. Buchsweiler, p. 315
91. Buchsweiler, pp. 272-73, 314-15
92. See also Horst Gerlach (trans. John D. Thiesen), "Mennonites, the Molotschna, and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle in the Second World War," Mennonite Life 41:3 (Sept. 1986), pp. 4-9
93. Buchsweiler, pp. 111-13
94. Stumpp, "Zur Volksbiologie des Rußlanddeutschtums" (1940); "Gesundheitsübersicht vom Gebiet Emiltschino."
95. Consult Samuel D. Sinner's forthcoming study, The Open Wound: The Genocide of German Ethnic Minorities in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1915-1949 and Beyond/Der Genozid an Rußlanddeutschen 1915-1949, preface by Eric J. Schmaltz, foreword by Gerd Stricker (Fargo: Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, North Dakota State University Libraries, 2000). Consider that Anton Bosch and Josef Lingor also argued in 1990 that Stumpp's village figures remain incomplete: "All these numbers represent the lowest possible figures; the actual losses of this part of the Black Sea German ethnic group will probably never be determined, even if the Soviet government under Gorbachev would open the archives soon. Entire families were missing [in the villages covered by the Dorfberichte]. These whom the Soviets had exiled, banished, or sent out of the world by whatever other means could give no testimony." In Bosch and Lingor, Entstehung, Entwicklung und Auflösung der deutschen Kolonien am Schwarzen Meer, pp. 171-72
96. The statistics are documented in Samuel D. Sinner, The Open Wound, pp. 59-62
97. Der Genozid, pp. 69-70, 76-79
98. See Gerd Stricker, ed., Deutsche Geschichte im Osten Europas, Rußland (Berlin: Siedler, 1997), p. 202
99. In the 1930s, not only Karl Stumpp and Georg Leibbrandt, but the latter's brother Gottlieb, were frequent contributors to Deutsche Post aus dem Osten (DPO). Gottlieb's articles consisted mostly of anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik slogans and propaganda. After the war Gottlieb emigrated to Canada. Cf. Adolf Eichler, "Die völkische Widerstandskraft der Ruß landdeutschtum" in DPO, no. 3 (1938), pp. 245; no. 4 (1938), pp. 9-12
100. Joseph Geiger, "Die rassische Beschaffenheit der rußlanddeutschen Kolonisten" in DPO, no. 2 (1936), pp. 23-25
101. and Stumpp, "Zur Volksbiologie des Rußlanddeutschtums" in Volk und Reich 16 (1940), pp. 124-27
102. GR T-81, R 606, F 5396899
103. Bräutigam, p. 627ff.
104. Height, p. 400
105. Resulting from his archival collections, three of Stumpp's best known postwar works include: Stumpp, The German-Russians: Two Centuries of Pioneering (Bonn: Edition Atlantic Forum, 1967 〈1964〉)
106. Stumpp, ed., Das Schrifttum über das Deutschtum in Rußland (Tübingen: Selbstverlag, 1980 〈1958〉)
107. Stumpp, ed., Die Auswanderung aus Deutschland nach Rußland in den Jahren 1763-1862 (The Emigration from Germany to Russia in the Years 1763-1862) (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1978 〈1973〉). This thousand-page tome is the product of forty years of genealogical research. Besides the Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Rußland, Stumpp was also an active member in the Landsmannschaft der Bessarabiendeutschen (Stuttgart)
108. Height, p. 396
109. See also Giesinger, "Germans from Russia in Germany in the 1950s: The Early Years of the Landsmannschaft," Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 4:1 (Spring 1981), pp. 26-33
110. Giesinger, "The History of the AHSGR: The Important Role of Dr. Stumpp in the Early Years: Based on the Documents in the Society Files," Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 5:2 (Summer 1982), pp. ii-43
111. On the five categories of Nazi guilt that the Allied occupation authorities established, see H. Vonk, "Entnazifizierung," Volk auf dem Weg (Stuttgart) 5 (May 1996), p. 5
112. Robert M. W Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen (Zürich: Europa, 1961), p. 155
113. Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 315, 701
114. Kempner, Eichmann und Komplizen, pp. 155-57
115. Cf. the English translation of this crossexamination in Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 349-50
116. Leibbrandt's reaction to the cross-examination should be compared with other Wannsee witnesses at Nuremberg. Cf. Kempner, Das Dritte Reich im Kreuzverhör (Munich: Bechtle, 1969), pp. 188-93
117. and Kempner, SS im Kreuzverhör (Munich: Rütten und Loening, 1964), pp. 208-22, 291-93
118. See Height, pp. 399-400. The late Dr. Joseph S. Height, a Canadian of Russian-German descent, was an acquaintance of Stumpp and Leibbrandt
119. Cf. Giesinger, The Way It Was: A Family History and Autobiography (Winnipeg: Adam Giesinger [Hignell], 1992 〈1993〉). This book is located at the AHSGR archives in Lincoln, NE
120. See also Gerhard P. Bassler, "The Problem of German-Canadian Identity," in Yearbook of German-American Studies 33 (1998), pp. 157-65
121. Cf. Hermann Kurthen, "Gone with the Wind?: German Language Retention in North Carolina and the United States in Comparative Perspective," in Yearbook of German-American Studies 33 (1998), pp. 55-83. Opposed to the prevailing opinion, Hermann Kurthen argues that the German language's decline in America was not only a product of anti-German and "nativist Americanization" World War I policies; nor was it primarily the Germans' "moral isolation, psychological defeat and retreat into passivity and silence before and during World War II." On the contrary, although these factors figured, Kurthen holds that the fate of German-language use in the United States "is not much different from that of most other European immigrant languages" (pp. 55-56). The overall decline of German-American institutions and reduced German immigration were already late nineteenth-century trends
122. "David J. Miller, Esq. 1906-1993: Founder and First President," Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 16:2 (Summer 1993), p. 53
123. Cf. Giesinger, The Way It Was