Herbert Jankuhn
Encyclopedia
Herbert Jankuhn was a German
archaeologist and supporter of the Nazi Party. He undertook a series of investigations on behalf of the Ahnenerbe
before going on to be one of post-war Germany's leading archeology academics.
politics, publishing a pamphlet entitled Is There a Purssian Lithuania?. He followed his father's beliefs in a Greater Germany and also became a devotee of the Teutonic Knights
, a passion which both reinforced his political beliefs and convinced him to follow a career in archaeology. His first major work was at the Viking
settlement at Haithabu where he directed the excavations. Whilst in this post he met Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler
who was impressed by Jankuhn's work and provided significant funds to the operation. As a professor of archaeology he also worked at the University of Kiel
and the University of Rostock
.
and the Ahnenerbe
, with Jaunkuhn eventually being appointed head of the latter body's excavation and archaeology department in 1940. He was also a member of the Nazi Party itself. Himmler respected Jankuhn's theories and endorsed his view that the bog people were actually anti-social elements in ancient Germanic society, in particular homosexuals and deserters, put to death for their supposed crimes. It has even been argued that Jankuhn's research in this area helped to convicne Himmler to crack down on homosexuality.
Jankuhn supervised digs across Germany and also spent time in both Norway
and France
after their respective falls, both touring their major archaeological sites and secretly investigating attitudes towards the occupying Nazis on behalf of the Sicherheitsdienst
.
Jankuhn was sent there by Himmler to lead a team of archaeologists whose job was to prove that the area was the cradle of the Goths
. Setting out on 21 July 1942, Jankuhn was accompanied by Bronze Age
expert Karl Kersten and Russian
-speaking archaeologist Baron Wolf von Seefeld. Jankuhn hoped to raid the areas museums for their treasures but found that these had all been shipped to the Caucasus
during the invasion and so went there via 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking
command at Starobesheve. Travelling with the Division as they battled to Maikop
Jankuhn reached the city on 9 August only to receive a telegram from Wolfram Sievers
telling him that Himmler wanted Jankuhn to investigate a possible Gothic residence in Manhup-Kale after Ludolf von Alvensleben
had told Himmler of its existence. Unwilling to miss out on the treasures he had came for, Jankuhn sent Kersten to investigate and continued his search in the Caucasus.
Arriving at Maikop museum on the 26th August, Jankuhn took a number of ancient Greek
, Stone Age
and Scythian artefacts, believing the latter to be (like the Goths) ancestors of the modern Germans, although his search for anything Gothic proved fruitless. Faced with the problem of transporting the goods to Germany, Jankuhn was aided by Dr. Werner Braune
, the head of the Einsatzkommando
11b and himself an amateur archaeologist, who put his men at Jankuhn's disposal. The remainder of the Crimean expedition, which failed in its main objectives of providing evidence of a Gothic empire in the region and recovering the Kerch
"Gothic crown of the Crimea" that had been exhibited in Berlin
before Operation Barbarossa
, was largely left in the hands of Kersten.
Jankuhn spent the remainder of the war with the Viking Division as an intelligence officer and was with them in 1945 when they made a swift retreat from the Eastern Front in order to surrender to the US Army in Bavaria, fearing that their treatment at the hands of the Red Army
would be much worse.
courts. As such he continued his earlier work on Haithabu only through grants and published the findings privately, whilst also giving guest lectures. His work lead to theories on the impact of the development of such "emporia" (trade ports) that was considered highly innovative in its field.
He returned to university life in 1956 as a lecturer at the University of Göttingen and within ten years had risen to be dean of the philosophy
faculty and a widely respected academic in Germany. Elsewhere this was less the case as was noted in 1968 when he offered to give a lecture at the University of Bergen
and was refused permission. His disrespect of Norway's historic sites as an SS officer and his dismissive attitudes towards the work of famed Norwegian archaeologist Anton Wilhelm Brøgger
meant that he was, in the words of Anders Hagen
, "not welcome".
Politically he remained a supporter of a Greater Germany until the end and also argued that only SS concentration camp guards, rather than the SS as a whole, should be held responsible for the Holocaust
. Following his death in 1990 an obituary appeared in the Nouvelle Droite
magazine Nouvelle Ecole in which Alain de Benoist
, the journal's editor and the head of far right
Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne
, acknowledged Jankuhn as one of the "sponsors" of the magazine.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
archaeologist and supporter of the Nazi Party. He undertook a series of investigations on behalf of the Ahnenerbe
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935, by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan...
before going on to be one of post-war Germany's leading archeology academics.
Early years
Jankuhn was born in East Prussia where his schoolteacher father was involved in local nationalistNationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
politics, publishing a pamphlet entitled Is There a Purssian Lithuania?. He followed his father's beliefs in a Greater Germany and also became a devotee of the Teutonic Knights
Teutonic Knights
The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem , commonly the Teutonic Order , is a German medieval military order, in modern times a purely religious Catholic order...
, a passion which both reinforced his political beliefs and convinced him to follow a career in archaeology. His first major work was at the Viking
Viking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
settlement at Haithabu where he directed the excavations. Whilst in this post he met Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
who was impressed by Jankuhn's work and provided significant funds to the operation. As a professor of archaeology he also worked at the University of Kiel
University of Kiel
The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...
and the University of Rostock
University of Rostock
The University of Rostock is the university of the city Rostock, in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.Founded in 1419, it is the oldest and largest university in continental northern Europe and the Baltic Sea area...
.
Under the Nazis
The two would become close and within a few months of the meeting Jankuhn had joined both the SchutzstaffelSchutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
and the Ahnenerbe
Ahnenerbe
The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935, by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan...
, with Jaunkuhn eventually being appointed head of the latter body's excavation and archaeology department in 1940. He was also a member of the Nazi Party itself. Himmler respected Jankuhn's theories and endorsed his view that the bog people were actually anti-social elements in ancient Germanic society, in particular homosexuals and deserters, put to death for their supposed crimes. It has even been argued that Jankuhn's research in this area helped to convicne Himmler to crack down on homosexuality.
Jankuhn supervised digs across Germany and also spent time in both Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
after their respective falls, both touring their major archaeological sites and secretly investigating attitudes towards the occupying Nazis on behalf of the Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
.
Soviet expedition
Following the capture of CrimeaCrimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
Jankuhn was sent there by Himmler to lead a team of archaeologists whose job was to prove that the area was the cradle of the Goths
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
. Setting out on 21 July 1942, Jankuhn was accompanied by Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
expert Karl Kersten and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
-speaking archaeologist Baron Wolf von Seefeld. Jankuhn hoped to raid the areas museums for their treasures but found that these had all been shipped to the Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
during the invasion and so went there via 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking
5th SS Panzer Division Wiking
The 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking was one of the elite Panzer divisions of the thirty eight Waffen SS divisions. It was recruited from foreign volunteers, from Scandinavia, Finland, Estonia, The Netherlands, and Belgium under the command of German officers...
command at Starobesheve. Travelling with the Division as they battled to Maikop
Maikop
Maykop or Maikop may refer to:*Maykop, capital of the Republic of Adygea, Russia*Maykop culture, prehistoric culture of the northern Caucasus, ca. 3500 BCE–2500 BCE...
Jankuhn reached the city on 9 August only to receive a telegram from Wolfram Sievers
Wolfram Sievers
Wolfram Sievers was Reichsgeschäftsführer, or managing director, of the Ahnenerbe from 1935 to 1945.-Early life:...
telling him that Himmler wanted Jankuhn to investigate a possible Gothic residence in Manhup-Kale after Ludolf von Alvensleben
Ludolf von Alvensleben
Ludolf-Hermann Emmanuel Georg Kurt Werner von Alvensleben was a Nazi official in the rank of SS-Gruppenführer and Major General of the Police. His familiar name was "Bubi" .- Background :...
had told Himmler of its existence. Unwilling to miss out on the treasures he had came for, Jankuhn sent Kersten to investigate and continued his search in the Caucasus.
Arriving at Maikop museum on the 26th August, Jankuhn took a number of ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, Stone Age
Stone Age
The Stone Age is a broad prehistoric period, lasting about 2.5 million years , during which humans and their predecessor species in the genus Homo, as well as the earlier partly contemporary genera Australopithecus and Paranthropus, widely used exclusively stone as their hard material in the...
and Scythian artefacts, believing the latter to be (like the Goths) ancestors of the modern Germans, although his search for anything Gothic proved fruitless. Faced with the problem of transporting the goods to Germany, Jankuhn was aided by Dr. Werner Braune
Werner Braune
Karl Rudolf Werner Braune was a German member of the Nazi police and military organization known as the Schutzstaffel, or, more commonly, by its German initials, SS. He held the rank of Obersturmbannführer...
, the head of the Einsatzkommando
Einsatzkommando
During World War II, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos were a sub-group of five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads—up to 3,000 men each—usually composed of 500-1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to kill Jews, Romani, communists and the NKVD collaborators in the captured...
11b and himself an amateur archaeologist, who put his men at Jankuhn's disposal. The remainder of the Crimean expedition, which failed in its main objectives of providing evidence of a Gothic empire in the region and recovering the Kerch
Kerch
Kerch is a city on the Kerch Peninsula of eastern Crimea, an important industrial, transport and tourist centre of Ukraine. Kerch, founded 2600 years ago, is considered as one of the most ancient cities in Ukraine.-Ancient times:...
"Gothic crown of the Crimea" that had been exhibited in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
before Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, was largely left in the hands of Kersten.
Jankuhn spent the remainder of the war with the Viking Division as an intelligence officer and was with them in 1945 when they made a swift retreat from the Eastern Front in order to surrender to the US Army in Bavaria, fearing that their treatment at the hands of the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
would be much worse.
Post-war
Jankuhn spent three years in an internment camp and was barred from university lecturing by the denazificationDenazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...
courts. As such he continued his earlier work on Haithabu only through grants and published the findings privately, whilst also giving guest lectures. His work lead to theories on the impact of the development of such "emporia" (trade ports) that was considered highly innovative in its field.
He returned to university life in 1956 as a lecturer at the University of Göttingen and within ten years had risen to be dean of the philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
faculty and a widely respected academic in Germany. Elsewhere this was less the case as was noted in 1968 when he offered to give a lecture at the University of Bergen
University of Bergen
The University of Bergen is located in Bergen, Norway. Although founded as late as 1946, academic activity had taken place at Bergen Museum as far back as 1825. The university today serves more than 14,500 students...
and was refused permission. His disrespect of Norway's historic sites as an SS officer and his dismissive attitudes towards the work of famed Norwegian archaeologist Anton Wilhelm Brøgger
Anton Wilhelm Brøgger (archaeologist)
Anton Wilhelm Brøgger was a Norwegian archaeologist.-Personal life:He was born in Stockholm as a son of professor of geology Waldemar Christofer Brøgger and Antonie Scheel Siewers . He was a grandson of the book printer Anton Wilhelm Brøgger.In September 1909 he married Inger Ursin...
meant that he was, in the words of Anders Hagen
Anders Hagen
Anders Hagen was a Norwegian archaeologist. Anders Hagen was most associated with the study of Norwegian archeology and cultural heritage.-Biography:...
, "not welcome".
Politically he remained a supporter of a Greater Germany until the end and also argued that only SS concentration camp guards, rather than the SS as a whole, should be held responsible for the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. Following his death in 1990 an obituary appeared in the Nouvelle Droite
Nouvelle Droite
Nouvelle Droite is a school of political thought founded largely on the works of Alain de Benoist and GRECE .-Etymology and history:...
magazine Nouvelle Ecole in which Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist is a French academic, philosopher, a founder of the Nouvelle Droite and head of the French think tank GRECE. Benoist is a critic of liberalism, free markets and egalitarianism.-Biography:...
, the journal's editor and the head of far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne
Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne
The Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne , also known by its French acronym GRECE is an ethnonationalist think-tank, founded in 1968 by the journalist and writer Alain de Benoist.GRECE distinguishes itself from other traditionalist conservative organizations in...
, acknowledged Jankuhn as one of the "sponsors" of the magazine.