The term ‘Volk’ is thought to be derived from the Germanic word ‘fulka’ (‘people, fighting force’).^[1] Originally, it was used exclusively to refer to a specific group of people who had gathered for a particular occasion or purpose. For instance, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s *German Dictionary* cites “a cohesive unit of warriors, a host” as the actual meaning of “Volk”.^[2] However, the term was also used early on as a pejorative expression to refer to members of the ‘lower classes’. From the 17th century onwards, the term came to be used in constitutional theory in the sense of ‘the people of the state’. In the period that followed, the term became further differentiated and, from the second half of the 18th century onwards, acquired the various meanings that remain inherent to it to this day. Since then, the term has increasingly served as an abstract designation for a group of people united by various criteria.

The entry for the headword ‘Volk’ in the Grimm’s Dictionary (presumably compiled in the early 20th century) lists no fewer than 15 main meanings and nine sub-meanings of the term.^[3] These can be summarised as follows:

• ‘Volk’ as a large crowd of people;
• ‘Volk’ as a group of people united by a particular situation or purpose;
• ‘Volk’ as the ‘lower classes’;
• ‘people’ as the masses of the governed, as distinct from the rulers;
• ‘people’ as the inhabitants of a country linked by descent, language, religion or similar factors;
• ‘people’ as citizens with equal rights in a democracy; and
• ‘people’ as a technical term in hunting terminology and zoology for a group of animals.

For a long time, the word ‘people’ was one of the most frequently used terms in political discourse in Germany. In the 19th century, it was employed by the movementsfor democracy and the nation stateto distinguish themselves from the existing political order and those in power. The former associated it with the demand for parliamentary-democratic rule by the people, whilst the latter used it to assert the unity of all Germans (however defined) as a nation-state. The word’s evocative nature and its various meanings provided points of reference for a wide range of political currents.

Under National Socialism, the term ‘Volk’ – as well as its derivatives and compound words (such as ‘Volksempfänger’, ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ and ‘Volkstum’) – was of great ideological and propagandistic significance. It was used, amongst other things, to legitimise the regime’s dictatorial rule, violent territorial expansion and racist policies. But the term was also used in the GDR – for example, in compounds such as ‘Volkskammer’, ‘Volkseigentum’ or ‘Volkspolizei’; it gave expression to the claim put forward by the SED that the formerly governed ‘lower classes’ had finally come to power in the workers’ and peasants’ state.

Even though its frequency of use declined in the second half of the 20th century, the concept of ‘the people’ in its various meanings is still in use today. Whilst in the national-conservative and far-right camps it is often used to denote a community (‘ethnos’) based on ancestry, language, religion or even ‘race’, in the left-wing camp it is occasionally used in the sense of ‘the masses of the governed’ or ‘the lower classes’ (“plebs”). Furthermore, in political and legal discourse, the concept of the ‘people’ is generally used to denote citizens with equal rights (“demos”).

In discussions about borders, as well as about national minorities and their national affiliation, the concept of ‘the people’ has been – and is still, at times, to this day – repeatedly invoked. The sense of belonging to a ‘people’ is usually postulated here by reference to a (supposed) common ancestry, religion, language, culture or similar factors. Yet the notion of the ‘people’ and its ethnic homogeneity is, to a large extent, a social construct. Much like the argumentative use of the term ‘national character’, the use of the normatively charged term ‘people’ can go hand in hand with mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, as well as with the establishment of hierarchies in relation to other peoples.

Its various meanings and connotations make the term ‘people’ a word that is difficult to translate, or can only be translated depending on the specific context. In English, the term is translated as ‘nation’, ‘people’ or ‘masses’, and in French as ‘nation’, ‘peuple’, ‘faune’ or ‘populo’, although terms such as ‘citizen’, ‘ethnic group’ or ‘citoyen(ne)’, ‘ethnie’ may also be used, depending on the original meaning. In Czech, the term is translated, depending on the context, as ‘národ’ or ‘lid’. In the case of ‘národ’, there is a close semantic connection to the term ‘nation’. The situation is similar in Polish (‘naród’, ‘lud’). Occasionally – particularly in the case of compound words containing ‘Volk’ – the German term is also adopted as a technical term in foreign-language texts without translation.

The term ‘people’ usually refers to a large group of people who belong together – or are imagined to belong together – on the basis of various criteria. In contemporary political discourse, the word refers in particular to a) the ‘lower classes’ (‘plebs’) as distinct from the ruling classes, b) citizens with equal rights (‘demos’) in a democracy, and c) members of a community (‘ethnos’) that is united – or perceived as united – on the basis of ancestry, language, religion, culture, ‘race’ or similar categories (“ethnos”).

The transition from the 18th to the 19th century brought about – to quote the Grimm’s Dictionary – a ‘particularly significant transformation’^[4] in the concept of the ‘people’. Reinhart Koselleck, too, notes a ‘Copernican revolution in the semantic development of the concept of the people’, which he argues took place from the mid-18th century onwards and throughout the 19th century.^[5] The Romantic era and the Enlightenment, the American Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution and the struggle against the Napoleonic occupation had turned the ‘people’ into a central political factor. Among writers and thinkers such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), the prevailing notion was that by studying the ‘lower classes’ – idealised as embodying nature – and their language, customs and traditions, one could uncover the ‘soul of the people’. At the same time, world-historical events in the USA and France – in both countries the ‘people’ had replaced the monarch as sovereign – led to the term taking on political significance.

Both the Romantic and the revolutionary-political conceptions of the people – the latter influenced by Enlightenment thought – drew on the ‘lower classes’ and elevated their status. Furthermore, both conceptions were imbued with ideas of commonality and (national) unity. At the same time, however, the Romantic conception of the ‘people’ differed from the Enlightenment one in its irrational impetus. In the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century, the Romantic concept of the ‘people’ as a ‘naturally evolved order’ and a ‘living social organism’, which even conservative forces could invoke to justify their anti-Enlightenment and anti-revolutionary stance.

Even the mobilisation of the people in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars did little to alter this understanding – indeed, the military success in the ‘Battle of the Nations’ at Leipzig in 1813 helped to cement Romantic ideas such as that of the German people as a natural, pre-political entity existing independently of the individual states and their monarchs. In the absence of a German nation-state , the factors of ‘culture’ and ‘language’ were emphasised, alongside ‘origin’, as constitutive elements of a ‘people’. The concept of the ‘German cultural nation’, the promotion of which was often accompanied by a sense of mission towards other peoples, served as a substitute for the non-existent ‘German nation-state’ until 1871.

Instead of a concept of ‘people’ and ‘nation’ – such as that prevailing in France – concept of ‘people’ and ‘nation’ that was linked to the individual’s desire to belong to a community – a concept prevailed in Germany that attributed the bond between citizens to ethnic criteria regarded as natural, such as language, origin or culture. Only superficially objective, the definition of these characteristics was highly subjective and left to the judgement of the speaker and the listener. This lack of clarity did not, however, prevent ‘people’ and ‘nation’ from becoming central political concepts in the 19th century and, in many cases, from occupying ‘the highest position in the hierarchy of political and moral values’.^[6]

From the late 19th century onwards, radical nationalists described themselves as ‘Völkische’ and thus used a variant of the concept of the ‘people’ to identify themselves and characterise their ideology. The aims of the ‘Völkische’ extended far beyond the realities of Bismarck’s ‘Small German’ Empire. They sought the actual unification of the ‘people’ as a ‘biological-historical “whole”’^[7] beyond all existing national borders. In doing so, they openly advocated a policy of expansion as well as a ‘völkische consolidation of territory’,^[8] as the Chairman of the Pan-German League (ADV), Heinrich Claß (1868–1953), put it after the outbreak of the First World War. Their demands were a mixture of irrational-romantic, conservative and racist-exclusionary ideas. To them, the ‘people’ was either a community defined by ‘race’ or an organic entity with distinct characteristics and a personality of its own – two different concepts that could not be reconciled without some contradiction.

The notion of an ever-present threat to the ‘German people’ from its internal and external enemies formed the foundation of the ‘völkisch’ world view, which was steeped in racism, anti-Semitism, social Darwinism and the conviction of the superiority of ‘German blood’. Contemporary political, economic and social issues were perceived by the ‘Völkische’ as matters of life or death for the people. Although the ‘Völkische’ constituted only a small minority in the German Empire, they made their voices heard so forcefully through associations with large membership, such as the ADV and the German Colonial Society, that they occasionally succeeded in asserting their interests, as was the case, for example, in certain provisions of the Reich and State Citizenship Act passed in 1913, which codified the ‘ius sanguinis’.

Following the end of the German Empire, no new concept of the ‘people’ emerged in the Weimar Republic, the first pan-German democracy; nor did a fundamental social consensus develop regarding the meaning of the term. Even amongst the ‘centrist’ political parties, which were now assuming governmental responsibility at the Reich level, there were varying interpretations of what was meant by the ‘people’. In many cases, they, too, viewed the ‘people’ as a natural entity with a will of its own, which had to be ‘recognised’ and put into practice. Instead of the concept of a multifaceted, pluralistic people, romantically inspired and metaphysical notions were widespread. Nevertheless, within the political centre, the ‘demos’ meaning of the term predominated, whilst on the radical right the ‘ethnos’ variant was particularly prevalent.

One exception, however, was the struggle against the Treaty of Versailles and the loss of the territories in the East settled by Germans. In this context, almost all political camps argued, using a concept of the ‘people’ with more or less explicit ethnic connotations, in favour of these territories belonging to the German Reich and to distinguish the ‘German’ from the ‘foreign’. The fact that by no means all the territories claimed had a predominantly German-speaking population presented a challenge that had to be resolved through argumentation. In some cases, therefore, reference was made to the alleged German cultural and moral influence on the non-German-speaking inhabitants. The Berlin geographer Albrecht Penck (1858–1945) distinguished between ‘German national territory’ and ‘German cultural territory’. ‘Wherever the German people settle,’ Penck wrote in 1925, ‘there is German national territory; there one hears the German language and sees German labour.’ The ‘German cultural soil’, which was characterised by ‘extremely meticulous cultivation that does not stop simply because it becomes difficult’, extended, in his view, far beyond the language boundary.^[9] With the help of this concept – which became widespread from the mid-1920s onwards – and the vague definition of ‘cultural territory’, various areas could be claimed as ‘German’. At the same time, however, Penck’s theory also indirectly acknowledged that a narrow concept of ‘people’, defined solely on the basis of ‘language’, was not sufficient in itself to justify far-reaching territorial claims. Other contemporary scholars, by contrast, used the term ‘people’ in a broader sense. For example, the geographer Otto Maull (1887–1957) understood it as ‘a group of people united by ethnic similarity and by a shared material and intellectual cultural heritage; it is the product of the influences of space and race’.^[10] The folklorist Max Hildebert Boehm (1891–1968) put forward a similar argument; in his work *Das eigenständige Volk* (*The Independent People*), published in 1932, he emphasised the connection between ‘Lebensraum’, ‘people’ and ‘folk culture’.

The use of terminology by the National Socialists, who stood in the tradition of the ‘Völkische’ movement, was even more deeply imbued with ethnic-racist thinking. ‘Only those who are members of the people can be citizens. Only those of German blood can be members of the people, regardless of religious denomination. No Jew can therefore be a member of the people,’ read a passage from the NSDAP party programme of 1920.^[11] The ‘people’ were thus understood by the National Socialists as a ‘community of blood’. Membership was not a matter of individual choice, but a question of ancestry. Excluded were all those whom the National Socialists did not consider to be of ‘Aryan blood’ – primarily Jews, but also Sinti and Roma, Slavs and others.

As a central ideological and propagandistic concept, the National Socialists ’ notion of the ‘people’ was therefore heavily laden with racist and anti-Semitic ideas, but also with organic-metaphysical notions. During the Nazi dictatorship, the word ‘Volk’ and compound terms such as ‘Volksdeutsche’, ‘Volksempfänger’, ‘Volksgemeinschaft’, ‘Volksschädling’ or ‘Volkstum’ were ubiquitous and carried a strong normative weight. In slogans such as ‘One people, one Reich, one Führer’ or ‘You are nothing, your people are everything’, as well as in the phrase ‘a people without space’, central principles and ideologemes of the Nazi regime—such as ‘Führer rule’, ‘racial community’, ‘cult of sacrifice’ or the demand for ‘living space’. In accordance with the Nazis ’ intentions, the term ‘people’ was to be used exclusively in reference to the German people; and so terms such as ‘Catholic people’, ‘Soviet people’ or ‘little tribe of artists’ were banned by press directive; however, given the long history of the term’s usage, this proved largely unsuccessful.^[12]

• Fritz Geschnitzer et al.: People, Nation, Nationalism, Masses. In: Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck (eds.): Basic Historical Concepts. A Historical Lexicon of Political and Social Language in Germany. Vol. 7: Verw–Z. Stuttgart 1992, pp. 141–431.
• Lutz Hoffmann: The German People and Their Enemies. The ‘Völkisch’ Drug. Cologne 1994.
• Jörn Retterath: ‘What Is the People?’. Concepts of the People and Community in the Political Centre in Germany 1917–1924. Berlin, Boston 2016.
• Peter Walkenhorst: Nation – People – Race. Radical Nationalism in the German Empire 1890–1914. Göttingen 2007.
• Michael Wildt: The People, the People’s Community, the AfD. Hamburg 2017.

• ‘People’, ‘ethnic’, ‘people’s community’ – battle cries of the political right to the present day (= Einsicht 18 (2017)), pp. 18–59, https://www.fritz-bauer-institut.de/fileadmin/editorial/publikationen/einsicht/einsicht-18.pdf.

[1]Friedrich Kluge: Etymological Dictionary of the German Language. Berlin 2011, p. 962.

[2] Volk. In: Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm (eds.): German Dictionary. Vol. 12/2: Vesche–Vulkanisch. Leipzig 1951, cols. 453–470, here col. 454.

[3] See ibid., cols. 453–470.

[4] Ibid., col. 454.

[5] Fritz Geschnitzer et al.: ‘People, Nation, Nationalism, Mass’. In: Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck (eds.): Basic Concepts of History. Historical Encyclopaedia of Political and Social Language in Germany. Vol. 7: Verw–Z. Stuttgart 1992, pp. 141–431, here p. 283.

[6] Ibid., p. 284.

[7] Wolfgang Tilgner: ‘People, Nation and Fatherland in Protestant Thought between the German Empire and National Socialism (c. 1870–1933)’. In: Horst Zilleßen (ed.): People, Nation, Fatherland. German Protestantism and Nationalism. Gütersloh 1970, pp. 135–171, here p. 147.

[8] Heinrich Claß: Memorandum on the National, Economic and Social Policy Objectives of the German People in the Current War. No place, no date [Munich 1914], p. 45.

[9] Albrecht Penck: ‘German National and Cultural Heritage’. In: Karl Christian von Loesch (ed.): *A Nation Among Nations*. Breslau 1925, pp. 62–73 (quotations: pp. 62, 64).

[10] Otto Maull: Political Geography. Berlin 1925, p. 380.

[11] NSDAP programme of 24 February 1920, quoted in Wilhelm Mommsen, Günther Franz (eds.): *Die deutschen Parteiprogramme 1918–1930*. Leipzig, Berlin 1931, pp. 91–93, here p. 91.

[12] See ‘Volk’. In: Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. 2nd revised and reworked edition. Berlin, New York 2007, pp. 642–644, here p. 644.

[13] Volk. In: Ruth Klappenbach, Wolfgang Steinitz (eds.): Dictionary of Contemporary German. Vol. 6: Väterlich–Zytologie. Berlin [East] 1976, pp. 4164–4166, here p. 4165.

Jörn Retterath: Volk. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2022. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/32698.html (accessed 11 October 2022).