Max Planck Society Archive

At the end of World War II, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed the Max Planck Society, and the institutes associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were renamed Max Planck Institutes. The records that were archived under the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes were placed in the Max Planck Society Archives.

Research materials related to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, including personnel, photographs, etc. are very difficult to come by. Indeed, information, including photographs of now-deceased researchers, are effectively "classified" (unavailable). This article illuminates why these research materials are difficult to access.

A common goal of all researchers is to piece together who ordered the killings to commence in any given case. If in the twentieth century these mass murders were usually state-sponsored or at least officially sanctioned, who made decisions? What were their motives? These questions are particularly relevant if we want to hold leaders responsible for genocides or other grave human rights abuses before international courts. The problem for historians and jurists is that leaders and their agents try, usually with considerable success, to cover up their crimes and to destroy the evidence. Moreover, some states continue to deny crimes, including cases of mass murder and even genocide, committed by their predecessors. They also limit access to their archives and even persecute or threaten researchers. When scholars are finally granted access to their archives, they often find that evidence has been 'laundered' or destroyed. So reconstructing the decision-making process is often no easy task.

Accessing German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) records

The Max Planck Society Archive has become the repository for records of the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its associated institutes, created during the Second and Third Reichs. After World War II, people such as Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (the last Director of the KWI-A), sought to protect records and photographs from what he perceived to be "the enemies" of Germany. (A written statement to this effect by Verschauer himself, made during the closing days of the Third Reich, exists.) In fact, some of these records were hidden by Verschauer in his own home. Thus, before the Third Reich fell attempts were already being made to hide records. The following statements by an unbiased historian show that records were removed and destroyed, apparently not collected (to avoid their being in the record), or not made available to the public.

Aside from making many of the records of the Second and Third Reichs inaccessible, inasmuch as the records are also related to the Holocaust, these actions also amount to Holocaust denial. In addition, withholding and destroying historic German documents is an insult to the people of Germany, especially those citizens that opposed National Socialism (and were murdered in Nazi concentration camps). The Max Planck Society and its affiliates is supported by German taxes, thus such censorship is a violation of German state laws.

"When the war came to an end, information about what had actually transpired in the camps and occupied territories became public knowledge only over a period of years, and much remains undiscovered and not discussed. The role of anthropologists in the Third Reich was perhaps better known among the populace than reported in the literature, as the following anecdotes illustrate."

"In the 1980s, Benno Müller-Hill tried to gain access to the German Research Society (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, or DFG) records, a primary source of funding of anthropological and other scientific projects in the Third Reich. 'As I tried to get the DFG records in 1981, I was told by the staff that the DFG in the Third Reich was not called the DFG and that access to the files was not granted: the files on the DFG were not available on principle. He was told that he would be sued if he persisted."

"[...] a variety of German laws prohibited access to certain files and documents for fifty years following the war, thus they became available only in 1995. These were primarily files dealing with individuals. [...] many of the documents and much of the information needed to create a history of the era were destroyed, often intentionally."

"[...] Many of the documents that were placed in archives are now missing or have never been collected. In a personal conversation in the early 1990s, the American director of the Berlin Document Center (BDC) told me that he felt certain that some Germans had made connections with the BDC staff for the purpose of destroying damaging documentation."

"[...] [T]hose who use the MPGA [Max Planck Society Archives] must have all copies of materials inspected personally by the director, as I learned. When I used the archives for the first time, I was pleased to find that I could copy documents myself at a copy machine in the hallway. Having the documents in hand would be helpful, as I was preparing to leave Berlin. Much to my surprise, the reading room supervisor told me that I could not take copies with me at that time, that first they would have to be inspected by the director. It was the rule."

"[...] On a visit to the archives of the museum's anthropology department in 2001, I was met by a staff member of the Department of Biological Anthropology with both interest and reserve. She knew of my work with the NAA-SI [National Anthropological Archives (Smithsonian)] and the documents I had archived there. After a brief meeting with the staff, I was told I could look at the literature housed in the archive only if I could name what I wanted to see; I was told that I would not be given access to the card file and could see no records of the IDO [Institute for German Work in the East] because the staff themselves were working on them and hoped to publish them. I could not have access to information about the post-war careers of the IDO members."

Censorship practiced by Germany was not limited to the Third Reich. Censorship of German historical records also applied to German African colonies during the Second Reich. Thus:

"Much archival material also exists. Particularly valuable are the records from the period of German rule divided between the Bibliothèque Nationale in Lomè, Togo, and the Ghana National Archive in Accra. My persistent efforts to gain entrance to the Central Archive in Potsdam were refused."

and

My research necessarily focussed [sic] most of its attention on the 'privileged historical site' of the [National] archives [of Namibia]. The task was not straightforward, however, because files dealing with the administration of the concentration camps, a task that befell the German Army, no longer existed. In 1915, the German Colonial Administration had these files destroyed to avoid them falling in the hands of the rapidly approaching Union troops. German copies of these files are similarly believed to have gone up in flames during the heavy bombardment of Germany in the latter stages of the Second World War. So, there were no files that directly related to the day-to-day administration of Shark Island or the other concentration camps. Moreover, the former head of the archives once claimed not to have seen any substantial evidence of the concentration camps in her alleged research of the archival collection.

Historiography

The historian Lucy Dawidowicz has created a "scientific" form of historiography based upon the idea on "continuity". This idea of continuity allows the historian to examine the present in comparison with the past, or alternatively, to examine the past, to understand the present and future. Using this scientific form of continuity, it is possible to examine historical events such as the Holocaust and show that the Holocaust is NOT an aberration, as anti-Semitism has a long history. Similarly, the long history of anti-Semitism is likely to continue.

Dawidowicz then examines how the historians of various countries deal with the Holocaust. Various methods of dealing with the Holocaust are treated:

• Discontinuous treatments of the Holocaust: American and British historians. The Holocaust was an aberration, caused by a psychotic leader such as Hitler. This brand of historiography is based upon psychology, but denies the continuity of anti-Semitism.
• German historians who recognize that discontinuity fails as a method of historiography, but the consequence of continuity imposes an acceptance and responsibility of anti-Semitism. These historians wish to protect German culture, but do not know how to deal with the problem of continuity in history.
• The historians in the USSR erase any problems dealing with the Holocaust and continuity or discontinuity. Jews effectively do not exist, thus at most, are a problem restricted to Czarist times. Continuity is not a problem, as history is always to be re-written.
• Polish historians are faced with a problem in general. Anti-Semitism permeates their social fabric that since anti-Semitism cannot be denied, Jews continue to be blamed, or Nazis are to be blamed for the Holocaust, certainly not the Polish people. When confronted with undeniable historical facts, anti-Semitism simply re-emerges. Thus the international scandal was caused by the very well-documented book "Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland", by Jan T. Gross, Princeton University Press. The book "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz, An Essay in Historical Interpretation" (Random House, 2006), also by Jan T. Gross, discusses the Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946, after World War II.

Thus Dawidowicz shows that one way to deal with the problem in historiography is to deny continuity. A major way to accomplish this denial of historical fact is to censor the facts, to refuse to collect documents, etc. Dawidowicz focuses upon the Holocaust, but the problem of continuity applies to more than the Holocaust and the period of National Socialism in Germany as well as the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in German South West Africa (and other colonial histories).

Gretchen E. Schafft encountered resistance while trying to exhume the record of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. In "The angel of death has descended violently among them", historian Casper Erichsen recounts the censorship he encountered at the Namibian National Archives from Head Archivist Brigitte Lau, when researching information about the Herero and Namaqua Genocide.

"According to Arendt, H. (1975) The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace, 'African colonial possessions became the most fertile soil for the flowering of what later was to become the Nazi elite. Here they had seen with their own eyes how peoples could be converted into races and how, simply by taking the initiative in this process, one might push one's own people into the position of the master race. Here they were cured of the illusion that the historical process is necessarily "progressive".' "

People such as Eugen Fischer worked in both German South West Africa (during the Second Reich) as well as at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany during the Third Reich. He studied the skulls of the Rehoboth bastards in both German Southwest Africa during the Second Reich, as well as at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, during the Third Reich -- later to become a part of the Max Planck Society, with its censored archive (as noted by Gretchen E. Schafft).

External references

• Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft website: http://www.dfg.de/en/dfg_profile/history/index.html
• Lucy S. Dawidowicz, "The Holocaust and the Historians", Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1981, pp. 43-56, 99-100

See also

• Hannah Arendt
• Lucy Dawidowicz
• First-order logic
• Modal logic
• Nazi concentration camps
• Nuremberg trials
• Predicate logic
• Erasing The KWI-A Record
• Bridging The Second and Third Reichs in German South West Africa
• German Ost (East)