Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945)

This publication of 1739 pages in three volumes with 42 contributions is focused on anthropology from Vienna during the Nazi years, inside the „Third Reich“ and in exile. Institutional and biographic networks as well as aspects of intellectual history are at the core of these investigations. They systematically present the history of an academic discipline within the general socio-political Central European and wider international contexts of those times. Beyond “Völkerkunde”/socio-cultural anthropology at the centre of investigation here, its wider range also includes important neighboring fields such as physical anthropology, archeological prehistory, folklore studies and African as well as Japanese studies. The present publication’s crucial research questions pursue the varieties of anthropological projects in and from Vienna, and their intersections with corresponding political interests. In these ways the extent of involvement in criminal Nazi activities is highlighted, while participation in the anti-Nazi resistance also is outlined. Special attention is given to the fine nuances between adaptation and resistance. These contributions by 28 authors required documents’ assessments from more than one hundred archives in ten different countries. These were supplemented by published or initiated interviews with eye witnesses and family members wherever still possible. These three volumes are enriched by a helpful index in several parts and by more than 250 visual source materials, many of them publicly accessible here for the first time.