[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Berhard SCHWARZ and Hans GRIMM

[Richard Benert]

Günther and all,

I get the same reaction to some books on Ostsiedlung, but I guess I like to 
think well of a person as long as I can, especially when he writes about 
Volhynia as beautifully as Schwarz does.  In the case of Kurt Lück (another 
fallen soldier), my admiration was of short duration.  He wore his Nazi 
sympathies on his sleeve.  The titles of Schwarz's two other books may 
shorten my fling with him, too, although "The self-liberation of the German 
spirit" is one I'd like to read, I think (providing I can understand it). 
The problem is in deciding where to draw the line between a legitimate 
ethnic concern and downright imperialism.  The one shades into the other.

I hadn't noticed that Langen published both Grimm and Schwarz, even though I 
have (for some unknown reason) Volk ohne Raum on my shelf.  Perhaps in my 
next life I'll get around to reading its 1,353 pages.  Plenty of room in the 
book!

Dick


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Günther Böhm" <GHBoehm at ish.de>
To: "Wolhynien-Liste" <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 4:44 AM
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Berhard SCHWARZ and Hans GRIMM


Richard Benert schrieb:

> Günther, and whoever else is interested, Good Morning.
>
> I think you're being a bit too hard on poor Schwarz.  It's true, he
> looked down on the Poles and Muzhiks he was writing about, but I
> really think he was trying to convey how the German migrants felt AT
> THE TIME (not how 20th-century Nazis felt about them).  And I don't
> think you can say that the 18th- and 19th-century colonists and
> weavers who moved into Poland had designs of domination.  Or can you?

Hello Dick,
sorry for my allergical reaction, I just read an article on nazi
'Ostsiedlung'.

BUT: do you think it is by accident that Hans GRIMM's 'Volk ohne Raum'
(like all of his nationalist and colonialist publications) and Bernhard
SCHWARZ' 'Wolhyniendeutsches Schicksal' came from the same editor
(Langen-Müller, München)? That Bernhard SCHWARZ also published (together
with Friedrich HACKENBERG) the schoolbooks 'Das ewige Deutschland' [The
Eternal Germany] and 'Die Selbstbefreiung des deutschen Geistes' [The
Self-Liberation of the German Spirit]?

In times of the Third Reich and especially after 1939 no book or article
with such a political subject could be edited without permission of
Josef GOEBBELS' Reichsschrifttumskammer. You was allowed to publish if
you bended just the proposed little bit to fit your message into the
official ideology. The German tragedy came because too many people did
what they were ordered or just told to do.

Günther


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