Dresden

Recently I found this work online, it is written by Martin Roessler. The EPaper gives a historical overview of Ethnology in the german-speaking countries. He means on page 20, that Ethnology and the NSRegime were subject to reciprocation, but he states, that political influences were stronger on the science, than the other way round. Except that the NSRegime was interested in colonial affairs, ethnologists during WWII pronounced racist stands and the hierarchical order of peoples from the view of an extreme nationalism. Some people in Dresden were Otto Reche´s alumni, notably one Michael Hesch, who wrote a Festschrift for Reche 1939 and who became the director of the Museums of Ethnology and Zoology in 1941. He was a member of the NSParty since 1933 and it seems, that his friendship with Reche was of great help for him, because his NSCareer was furthered in the years after 1941. He had been responsible for erbbiologische Abstammungsgutachten and later moved to Vienna, where he was a member of the Anthropological Society. He not only was scientifically influential during WWII, he also acquired certain ranks in the uniformed NSMilitia, namely one SSRank called Hauptsturmfuehrer. Sadly enough, the Museum of Ethnology´s website has only two or three sentences left for the time of WWII in Dresden.

Dresden

A group to find out more about the Dresden Museum of Ethnology and Institute was formed during the first part of the seminar concerning the german-speaking regions during WWII. The Dresden Museum keeps an old collection since 1560, which was found by Kurfuerst August of Sachsen. The Inventarien describe these collections furthered by the King of Poland, who was August the Strong since 1794. Adolf B. Meyer founded the ethnographical department 1875, to be a part of the Museum of Natural History. Meyer had close contact with Rudolf Virchow and Adolf Bastian, two scientists important for the german-speaking countries. Remember Adolf Bastian and his work with Francis Boas, who later moved to North America. During WWII Dresden was destroyed, but luckily most of the museum collections were saved in time. As early as 1946 the anthropological collection arrived in the Museum.

Here is an excerpt of the time table, the time in question is only touched with some sentences on the website http://www.voelkerkunde-dresden.de/site.php?g=geschichte&css=fc (2007-10-16 04:58 PM):

1940 - 1945
Auslagerung von Archivunterlagen und Sammlungen. Vernichtung eines Teils der in Ausstellungen verbliebenen Großobjekte während der Bombardierung Dresdens.

1945/46/47
Nach Beendigung des II. Weltkrieges Trennung der Museen für Tierkunde und Völkerkunde. Das Museum für Völkerkunde wird der Hauptverwaltung der Staatlichen Museen, Schlösser und Gärten im Lande Sachsen unterstellt.

This Museum of Ethnology has a Wikipedia article here http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_f%C3%BCr_V%C3%B6lkerkunde_Dresden (2007-10-16 05:00 PM), where the same contents, as above mentioned, are repeated. Here is a list of Departments in Germany http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/ethno/links.html#2 (2007-16-10 05:06 PM), this already of big help for students in the seminar held by Professor Gingrich at the University´s Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology.

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