Ostland Institute, Gdańsk

Ostland Institute, Gdańsk

1. Brief description

Ostland Institute in Danzig/Gdańsk, founded in 1927, ceased operations around 1940, based at the State Archives of the Free City of Danzig.

2. Tasks

The Ostland Institute was part of the Danzig State Archives and was funded by the Reich Ministry of the Interior. However, no detailed information is available.[1]

Initially, the work focused on translations and summaries of Polish texts from newspapers, magazines and books, and their publication in the Institute’s own publications. From 1931 onwards, the Institute also published its own academic works, primarily on West Prussia and Pomerelia (Polish: Pomorze).

3. Organisation

The head of the Institute was Walther Recke (1887–1962), who was also director of the State Archives and a professor at the Technical University of Danzig. Among those working there were Detlef (after 1945: Hanns von) Krannhals (1911–1970) and Rudolf J. Neumann (1901–1983).

4. History

The Ostland Institute was established on the initiative of Karl Josef Kaufmann (1865–1945), Director of the Danzig Archives, in co-operation with the völkisch-oriented Leipzig-based‘Foundation for Research into German Ethnic and Cultural Heritage’, headed by the geographer Wilhelm Volz (1870–1958). The Institute’s primary aim was to monitor and analyse Polish publications concerning the German-Polish border regions. The centre of this monitoring was on the ‘Baltic Sea Institute’ (Instytut Bałtycki), founded in 1927 in Toruń and Gdynia, and the University of Poznań.

Cover of the publication ‘Seven Hundred Years of Thorn 1231–1931’ by Reinhold Heuer, published in the ‘Ostland-Darstellungen’ in Danzig in 1931 [Photo: BKGE Library].
Cover of the publication *The Port of Danzig as Depicted by the Poles* by Rudolf Neumann, published in the *Ostland-Schriften* series in Danzig in 1933 [Photo: BKGE Library].

The approach taken by the ‘Ostland Reports’, which had been published since 1927, consisted of disseminating translated extracts and summaries of Polish texts and then frequently commenting on them with highly polemical and biased anti-Polish or anti-Slavic remarks. These reports therefore served not only to facilitate access for German academics, journalists and politicians who did not speak Polish to Polish accounts – particularly concerning history, culture and geography – but were also intended to provide them with suitable arguments for the politically motivated refutation of Polish theses.

Explaining the rationale behind this approach, Recke wrote in 1927 in the introduction to the Ostland Reports: “We no longer smile at such attempts [to demonstrate the Proto-Slavic-Polish character of the territories east of the Elbe, JH] now that we have seen what disastrous effects this pseudo-scientific evidence had on Germany’s territorial integrity during the negotiations in Paris and Versailles.”[2] At the same time, the Institute saw itself not merely as a translation agency, but also sought to initiate counter-arguments to Polish academic and journalistic publications.

Kaufmann evidently wished to develop the Institute into a ‘central office for Eastern research’ and worked closely with the‘Foundation for German Ethnic and Cultural Heritage Research’in Leipzig, which between 1926 and 1931 sought to coordinate German research on the East for the first time. However, Kaufmann came into conflict with the Prussian archival administration under Albert Brackmann (1871–1952) over the ‘Grenzmark-Posen-Westpreußen State Archive’ established within the Prussian Secret State Archive, and resigned as director of the archive in 1928. Recke, as Kaufmann’s successor at the helm of the Danzig Archive, worked more closely with Papritz and the‘Publikationsstelle Berlin-Dahlem’(PuSte), which he headed, within the Prussian Secret State Archives. The Prussian ministries, however, viewed the work of the Ostland Institute critically and instead supported Brackmann’s concept for coordinating research on the East at the Prussian Secret State Archives in Berlin. In this context, it was planned that the Ostland Institute should abandon its translation and annotation work in favour of scholarly publications on the territories of West Prussia ceded to Poland.[3] This plan was, however, only partially implemented. Furthermore, relations between Danzig and Berlin remained strained; nevertheless, Recke remained, in his capacity as director of the institute, a member of the executive committee ofthe ‘North and East German Research Association’(NOFG) until 1945.

With the establishment of the PuSte and the founding of the NOFG, the Ostland Institute – although initially regarded as a key element in the engagement with Polish academia – began to lose its significance from 1934 onwards. The translation of Polish publications was now coordinated by the PuSte.[4] Furthermore, the press agreement following the German–Polish Non-Aggression Protocol of 26 January 1934 largely put a stop to polemics in the press. This also narrowed the scope for the Ostland Institute to engage in polemical debates with Polish publications. Although Recke called for the resumption of the Ostland reports at the end of 1935, reporting was not resumed until 1937 and was extended to the Baltic states in 1938. From 1937 onwards, the Institute developed close cooperation with the NSDAP in the Free City of Danzig. After the outbreak of war in 1939, the reporting was discontinued. The last publication is dated 1940.

5. Bibliographical references

The Ostland Institute published several series:

  1. Ostland Reports – in several series:
    Extracts from Polish books, journals and newspapers, 1–6, 1927–1932, continued as Series A, 7–8, 1933–1934, and then again 1937–1939;
    Series B (Economic News): 1933–1936 (later incorporated into: Eastern European Situation Reports. Monthly Reports on Economic, Political and Cultural Issues in the States of Eastern Europe, edited by the Institute for Eastern European Economics at the Institute of Political Science, Albertus University, Königsberg in Prussia, 1–5, 1934–1939).
  2. Ostland-Schriften, Nos. 1–7, 1928–1933; 8–10, 1936–1938; including, amongst others, *The Struggle for Pomerelia*. A critical review of the book by Wacław Sobieski (1872–1935), *Walka o Pomorze* (1928).
  3. Ostland-Darstellungen, vols. 1–2, 1931–1932, including, amongst others, Reinhold Heuer: Seven Hundred Years of Thorn. 1231–1931.
  4. Ostland research, Nos. 1–5, 1932–1934; contributors included: Wolfgang La Baume, Erich Maschke, Erich Randt; final publication, No. 6, 1940: Berthold Wiegand: Anti-German Propaganda by the Poles from 1890 to 1914.
  5. Baltenland Reports. Reports on issues concerning the belt of peripheral states in Eastern Europe (from 1939: the Baltic states) drawn from German, Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and Swedish publications; approximately 8 issues, 1938–1939.
  6. In addition, individual publications appeared, such as: Detlef Krannhals: Political Danzig. Documents, 1937; German Cultural Achievements in Riga. Documents, 1939.

Materials relating to the history of the Ostland Institute at the Federal Archives in Berlin, collection R153 (Publications Section)

  • Martin Burkert: Eastern European Studies in the Third Reich. Part I: 1933–1939. Wiesbaden 2000 (Research in Eastern European History 55).
  • Michael Fahlbusch: Academia in the Service of National Socialist Policy? The ‘Ethnic German Research Associations’ from 1931 to 1945. Baden-Baden 1999.
  • Ingo Haar: Historians under National Socialism: German Historical Scholarship and the ‘Struggle for National Identity’ in the East (Critical Studies in Historical Scholarship 143). Göttingen 2000.
  • Jörg Hackmann: ‘The Struggle for the Vistula’. German Eastern Research in Danzig from 1918 to 1945. In: *Zapiski Historyczne* [Historical Notes] 58 (1993), pp. 37–58.
  • Jörg Hackmann: ‘German Eastern Studies’ and Historical Scholarship. In: Jan M. Piskorski, Jörg Hackmann et al. (eds.): ‘German Eastern Studies’ and ‘Polish Western Studies’ at the Crossroads of Academia and Politics. A Comparative Study of Disciplines (German Eastern Studies and Polish Western Studies 1). Osnabrück–Poznań 2002, pp. 26–45.
  • Maciej Szukała: Prussian State Archives and German Eastern Studies (Deutsche Ostforschung) in the interwar period of the 20th century (1918–1939). Between Science and Political Engagement [Prussian State Archives and German Eastern Studies between the World Wars in the 20th century (1918–1939). Between Science and Political Engagement]. Warsaw 2011.

Web links

Notes

[1] See the information provided by Martin Burkert: Eastern Studies in the Third Reich. Part I: 1933–1939. Wiesbaden 2000, p. 307.

[2] Walther Recke: ‘Introduction’. In: *Ostland-Berichte* 1 (1927), pp. 1–3, here p. 2.

[3] Burkert, *Eastern Studies*, pp. 294–296. However, Burkert’s assessments should be viewed critically and are often inaccurate.

[4] Lists of translated works were published by the Berlin Dahlem Publications Office (PuSte) from 1936 to 1943.

Citation

Jörg Hackmann: Ostland Institute, Gdańsk. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2021. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p42558 (accessed 13 July 2021).

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