The German Institute for Foreign Affairs (DAI) was founded on 10 January 1917 in Stuttgart under the name “Museum and Institute for the Study of the German Diaspora and the Promotion of German Interests Abroad”. Initially, it was known as the “German Overseas Museum”; from the end of 1918, the name “German Institute for Foreign Affairs” became established. The DAI ceased operations in the American occupation zone in 1945.

When it was founded, the DAI comprised an archive, a museum, a library, an information and outreach centre, and a lectures and publications department. It had a representative office in Berlin. In 1923, the DAI was placed under the authority of the Reich Ministry of the Interior. Funded from the Reich budget (Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and, to a lesser extent, by the State of Württemberg, the city of Stuttgart and private donations, the DAI saw its budget rise steadily, reaching 1.6 million RM in 1942/43.

Fritz Wertheimer (1884–1968) was head of the DAI until 1933. As part of the ‘Gleichschaltung’ (bringing everything into line), he was replaced in 1933 by Richard Csaki (1886–1943), who hailed from Transylvania. The same fate befell the chairman of the board, Theodor Wanner (1875–1955), who was replaced by the Nazi Lord Mayor of Stuttgart, Karl Strölin (1890–1963). These personnel changes were apparently carried out without any official instruction from the government. After 1933, the Institute – which, although formerly elitist due to its close ties to big business, was nonetheless non-partisan – allied itself “with those forces within the new power apparatus that played a prominent role in Nazi foreign policy at the time: [the] Foreign Organisation (AO) and [the] Foreign Policy Office (APA) of the NSDAP”.^[1] In 1936, the DAI was placed under the authority of the SS Central Office for Ethnic Germans (VOMI), and in November 1943 it was finally placed directly under the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

With the outbreak of the Second World War, the DAI underwent a massive reorganisation. Links with the most important state bodies were strengthened and new departments established, such as the Statistical Department, the Resettlement Documentation Department, the Staff Department and the Vienna Office.

As early as the First World War, but particularly in its aftermath, German policymakers paid particular attention to Germans living outside the Reich. They became an important factor in ‘German identity policy’, the aim of which was to promote the ‘German diaspora’ economically and to increase its numbers. The DAI supported this policy through a wide range of activities: these included the general promotion of relations with the ‘German diaspora’ as well as research into it and public relations work. The aim was to “paint a comprehensive picture of the entire German diaspora in terms of its material and intellectual culture, its social conditions and its relations with its old and new homelands”.^[2] Furthermore, Germans wishing to emigrate received information and advice from the DAI. The “German diaspora” was to have its headquarters at the DAI in Stuttgart.

German Institute for Overseas Germans, Stuttgart,
Postcard, c. 1930. [T. Weger Archive]

Whilst the DAI remained relatively low-profile politically during the Weimar Republic, it quickly adapted to the Führer principle after the National Socialists came to power in 1933 (in 1934, the DAI awarded Adolf Hitler the ‘German Ring’, its highest honour) and altered its activities accordingly. Its staff openly espoused racist views and saw themselves as part of the National Socialist propaganda apparatus. In this context, the DAI also gathered ‘military and defence-related intelligence’.^[3] The provision of advice to Germans wishing to emigrate declined, as emigration was no longer to be encouraged.

From then on, the DAI placed a particular emphasis on the ethnological discipline of ‘Sippenkunde’ (clan studies), which it deliberately based on the principles of racial and hereditary biology. Rapidly expanding card indexes were used to collect information on ‘ethnic Germans’. ‘Ethnic work’ in Nazi Germany fell within the remit of the SS and became increasingly centralised from 1936 onwards. In this context, the Central Office for the Genealogy of Germans Abroad, which was subordinate to the People’s Association for German Culture Abroad (VDA), was affiliated with the DAI in 1937.

With the outbreak of war, the DAI’s activities changed once again; it now turned its attention to tasks ‘essential to the war effort’. Three main areas of work can be identified: ‘Resettlement documentation’ refers to the detailed recording of the resettlement of ‘ethnic Germans’ to the occupied territories or to Germany. The ‘address campaign’ involved the reconstruction of a central register of ‘ethnic Germans’, which, in addition to the existing data, also contained information on the political views of those recorded. Finally, the DAI was entrusted with special assignments relating to overseas territories and South-Eastern Europe.

The fortnightly journal *Mitteilungen des Deutschen Auslands-Instituts*, which had been published since October 1918, was renamed *Der Auslandsdeutsche* from 1919 (issue 10) and *Deutschtum im Ausland* from 1938 (issue 3). It ceased publication at the end of 1944. From 1936 to 1942, the *Jahrbuch für auslandsdeutsche Sippenkunde* (*Yearbook of Genealogy of Germans Abroad * ) was published by the Central Office for Genealogy of Germans Abroad. Between 1937 and 1944, the DAI also published the quarterly journal *Auslandsdeutsche Volksforschung* (*Ethnological Research on Germans Abroad*).

After the end of the war, the American military government classified the DAI as ‘compromised’; it was forced to close.^[4] Nevertheless, it was re-established in 1949 as the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) and resumed its work in 1951.

• Katja Gesche: Culture as an Instrument of Foreign Policy in Totalitarian States. The German Institute Abroad 1933–1945. Cologne et al., 2006.
• Otto Lerche: The German Foreign Museum in Stuttgart. In: Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 34 (1917), pp. 162–167, here p. 164.
• Ernst Ritter: The German Institute for Foreign Affairs in Stuttgart 1917–1945. An example of German cultural work between the world wars. Wiesbaden 1976 (Frankfurt Historical Treatises 14).
• Martin Seckendorf: The Preservation of German Cultural Identity during the Transition from the Weimar Republic to the Hitler Era, as Exemplified by the German Institute for Foreign Affairs (DAI). A Case Study. In: Wolfgang Jacobeit, Hannjost Lixfeld, Olaf Bochkorn (eds.): ‘Völkische Wissenschaft’. Forms and Trends in German and Austrian Folklore in the First Half of the 20th Century. Vienna et al. 1994, pp. 115–135.
• Martin Seckendorf: The German Institute for Foreign Studies in Stuttgart (DAI) 1917 to 1945. An overview. 2004. URL: www.berliner-gesellschaft.org/1_6_1.html.

[1] Seckendorf: The German Institute for Foreign Studies, Stuttgart (DAI). URL: www.berliner-gesellschaft.org/1_6_1.html (accessed 4 January 2021).

[2] Lerche: The German Museum of Foreign Cultures in Stuttgart, p. 164.

[3] Seckendorf: Institute for Foreign Affairs (note 1).

[4] Gesche: Culture as an Instrument of Foreign Policy in Totalitarian States, p. 86.

Berit Pleitner: German Institute for Foreign Studies (DAI), Stuttgart. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32835 (as at 12 April 2022).