Ludwig Wilser

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Ludwig Wilser (5 October 1850 – 19 November 1923) was a German physician, völkisch writer, and historian.

Biography

Born in Karlsruhe, Wilser took his Abitur at the Grand Ducal Lyceum (now the Bismarck Gymnasium) in Karlsruhe. During his studies, which he completed with a doctorate in medicine, Wilser became a member of the Allemannia fraternity in Heidelberg in 1869.[1] After studying in Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Leipzig,[2] Wilser practiced medicine in Karlsruhe until 1897, when he moved to Heidelberg and worked there as a private scholar.

Between 1886 and 1894,[3] Wilser assisted Otto Ammon in measuring the skull shapes (craniometry) of Baden conscripts, for which the government provided 12,000 marks.[4] In the process, he is said to have always measured the skulls somewhat higher and longer.[5]

Wilser developed a lively activity as an author and speaker in anthropological circles (where he saw himself in the tradition of Alexander Ecker) as well as in prehistoric studies, which was still becoming established. He was particularly concerned with questions of the origin of peoples and races, for example in his books Die Herkunft der Deutschen (1885) — in which he argued that Scandinavia was the original homeland of the Germanic peoples and the Indo-Germanic peoples —, Stammbaum und Ausbreitung der Germanen (1895) and Herkunft und Urgeschichte der Arier (1899). The thesis, not Central Europe, but Scandinavia or the Baltic Sea area was the starting area of the Germanic language(s), was represented up to this time only by a minority of the prehistorians. Even the influential prehistorian Gustaf Kossinna initially disagreed with Wilser on this point, but in the years that followed he changed his mind, which helped Wilser's theory to achieve popularity.[6]

In 1909, he developed the Social Darwinist thesis of the "Nordic creation center," according to which the inhospitable living conditions in the Scandinavian-Arctic regions had produced, through natural selection, the strongest race of Germanic peoples and thus the race called to world domination. As an advocate of the Ex septentrione lux theory Wilser successfully fought among the Völkisch the supporters of the Ex oriente lux theory and postulated South Sweden as the "workshop of peoples" as well as the starting point of all "Aryan migrations", at last of the Germanic peoples.[7] Wilser's theory was based on the idea of the "creation origin" of the Germanic peoples.

Wilser, who was belligerent on racial issues, received harsh public criticism from Rudolf Virchow, Hermann Klaatsch, Paul Ehrenreich, Otto Hupp, Eugen Mogk and initially also Gustaf Kossinna, which, however, did not diminish his popularity. He received praise among others by Hans Wolfgang Behm and Karl Felix Wolff as well as frequently in völkisch periodicals such as Heimdall, Alldeutsche Blätter and the Politisch-Anthropologische Revue, for which Wilser, as a friend of the editor Ludwig Woltmann, wrote articles since its publication in 1902 and continued to do so after Woltmann's death in 1907 and the takeover of the journal by Otto Schmidt-Gibichenfels in 1911 and its takeover by the German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation in 1920.

In 1920, the federal leadership of the Protection and Defiance Federation also included Wilser's writings in the guidelines for the creation of local group libraries, where they were intended — along with works by Gobineau, Chamberlain, Woltmann, Pastor, and Kossinna — for instruction in "race and ethnic issues."[8] Wilser also received a positive reception from the völkisch publicist Bruno Tanzmann, who in his Denkschrift zur Begründung einer deutschen Volkshochschule (1917) wished him to be a teacher of "Germanic race,"[9] the "Volksbund" founder Paul Hartig, who drew on his concept of race, and Ludwig Schemann, who paid tribute to him as part of his reception of Gobineau.[10] Wilser's works were also published in the German language.

Wilser's book Germanien (1915, five editions until 1923), a translation of Tacitus' Germania, which he dedicated to the "memory of Otto von Bismarck" and which, according to his own statements, was intended to "strengthen German consciousness," became a particular bestseller. In the preface, Wilser praised the Germans as the direct descendants of the Germanic tribes. Das Hakenkreuz nach Ursprung, Vorkommen und Bedeutung, which was published in 1917 by Richard Jubelt's Sis Verlag, sold even better and had seven editions by 1933 (including one by Theodor Fritsch's Hammer-Verlag). As late as 1933, Rudolf von Sebottendorf claimed that "only through the research of Wilser [...] the symbol [i. e. the swastika] had been recognized as a common Aryan sun sign and had since been worn as a völkisch symbol" and called him an "enlightener in the German sense."[11]

Wilson's books Die Überlegenheit der germanischen Rasse (1915) and Das Hakenkreuz nach Ursprung, Vorkommen und Bedeutung (1933) were placed on the list of literature to be eliminated after the end of the war in the Soviet occupation zone and the German Democratic Republic, respectively.

Notes

  1. ↑ Walter Jung, Ideologische Voraussetzungen, Inhalte und Ziele außenpolitischer Programmatik und Propaganda in der deutschvölkischen Bewegung der Anfangsjahre der Weimarer Republik: das Beispiel Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund. Universität Göttingen (2000), p. 55.
  2. ↑ Marga Maria Burkhardt, Krank im Kopf : Patientengeschichten der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Illenau 1842–1889. Universität Freiburg (2004), p. 62.
  3. ↑ Michael Hau, "Körperbildung und sozialer Habitus. Soziale Bedeutungen von Körperlichkeit während des Kaiserreichs und der Weimarer Republik." In: Rüdiger vom Bruch & Brigitte Kaderas, eds., Wissenschaften und Wissenschaftspolitik: Bestandsaufnahmen zu Formationen, Brüchen und Kontinuitäten im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Steiner (2002), p. 133.
  4. ↑ Gretchen Engle Schafft, From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press (2004), p. 44.
  5. ↑ Ingo Wiwjorra, "Die deutsche Vorgeschichtsforschung und ihr Verhältnis zu Nationalsozialismus und Rassismus." In: Uwe Puschner, Handbuch zur „Völkischen Bewegung“ 1871 – 1918. München: Saur (1996), p. 194.
  6. ↑ Wolfram Euler & Konrad Badenheuer, Sprache und Herkunft der Germanen - Abriss des Protogermanischen vor der Ersten Lautverschiebung. London/Hamburg (2009), p. 45.
  7. ↑ Uwe Puschner, "Die Germanenideologie im Kontext der völkischen Weltanschauung." In: Göttinger Forum für Altertumswissenschaft, 4 (2001), p. 95.
  8. ↑ Uwe Lohalm, Völkischer Radikalismus : Die Geschichte des Deutschvölkischen Schutz- und Trutz-Bundes. 1919–1923. Hamburg: Leibniz-Verlag (1970), p. 36.
  9. ↑ Justus H. Ulbricht, "Völkische Erwachsenenbildung. Intentionen, Programme und Institutionen zwischen Jahrhundertwende und Weimarer Republik." In: Uwe Puschner, ed., Handbuch zur „Völkischen Bewegung“ 1871 – 1918. München: Saur (1996), p. 268.
  10. ↑ Hildegard Châtellier, "Wagnerismus in der Kaiserzeit." In: Handbuch zur „Völkischen Bewegung“ 1871 – 1918. München: Saur (1996), p. 599.
  11. ↑ Rudolf von Sebottendorf, Bevor Hitler kam. München: Deukula-Verlag Grassinger & Co. (1933), pp. 240, 263.

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