Race as the basis of 'völkisch' historiography

Abstract

This article addresses changes in scientific thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Germany and Austria, which favoured the development of a historiography based on concepts of race. The rise of the natural sciences and particularly, of biology and the theory of evolution, led to a multifaceted realignment of social and historical interpretative patterns, at the centre of which guiding concepts such as race and nation were reinforced. Linguistics made a significant contribution to the hierarchisation of races and peoples, which continued to prevail, even when marginalised in the developing scientific disciplines of ethnology, anthropology and prehistory. These developments ultimately fed into a völkisch historiography that became increasingly independent of academic life and laid the foundation for a new National Socialist historiography.

Keywords

• historiography
• race
• natural sciences
• biology
• völkisch