Nationalsozialistisches Volksgruppenrecht – National Socialist Ethnic Group Law & The Idea of Non-Territorial Autonomy

Description of the work carried out during the grant:

The STMS helped me a lot to advance my dissertation due to several reasons. Firstly, I had close contact to the NTA working group of Börries Kuzmany, fruitful official appointments and often helpful informal chats with group members and learned much more about the concept of NTA, its roots, developments and characteristics. My dissertation benefitted from this input, the discussions and multi-dimensional contextualization a lot and especially as legal historian I am very thankful for the newly gained perspectives from “real” historians. I am confident to continue the exchange with Oskar Mulej and other close contact persons also after my short-term stay. Moreover, I had the opportunity to present my dissertational topic before the working group which opened the door to helpful feedback and pointed to crucial aspects that are worth to analyse more deeply.

Secondly, I was able to conduct intense research in the University of Vienna’s Archive and the Austrian State Archive which provided a lot (partly unexpected) archive material about leading professors, institutions and concepts of the NS Volksgruppenrecht. Also, several publications that are not available in libraries any more, were part of the material, allowing me to better draw connections between key actors of the legal branch I work on. In total, I spent one week of working days in these archives and was able to collect and digitalise a lot of useful material which will be fruitful also long after my stay in Vienna.

Thirdly, I am thankful for the opportunity of taking part in the concluding conference of the NTA project which opened much broader perspectives on the topic than I had before. Also the prominent role of Karl Renner and other Austro-Marxists became more apparent to me. The content-related similarities

Description of the main results obtained:

Comparing the previous plans for the weeks of my STSM in Vienna and the outcome, leads to the conclusion of a very fruitful stay at the NTA working group of Börries Kuzmany and the meeting of all relevant targets. The close cooperation between my colleagues in the working group and me (including the possibility to present my dissertational topic and receive concrete, deep feedback as well as having

many discussions with several team members mainly about NTA theories), the large amount of documents I could find in the two central archives, and the benefits I took from taking part in the concluding conference of the NTA working group amount together to an intense stay in Vienna which contributed to the progress of my dissertation and opened the door for valuable interdisciplinary input. The central questions I had noted down for the working group before I came, could fortunately all be answered. The stay in particular opened the path to continue formalised and informal exchange about also the “dark sides” of NTA by the example of National Socialist Volksgruppenrecht and the Sudeten German “Gesetzesanträge” (Oskar Mulej), transnational dimensions (including the European Nationality Congress; Marina Germane) and terminological questions (Anna Adorjáni). In the archives, I was able to collect particularly valuable material on the leading Nazi Volksgruppenrecht jurists Hermann Raschhofer, Norbert Gürke and Karl Gottfried Hugelmann who all worked to a certain extent and also together at the University of Vienna. The subproject on far-right interpretations of NTA during the interwar period, including its digitalised (archival and other document) resources, and the participation in the regular team meetings (which partly might continue online also after my stay in person) led to a productive deepening of my knowledge in NTA and to an interdisciplinary enrichment of my dissertation as well. The same applies for the many useful books from the NTA book collection of the working group I could read during my stay.

Not only the conference report I wrote for HSozKult, but also probably a later envisaged common article of Oskar Mulej and me about the “völkisch” instrumentalisation of the NTA concept or the entanglements between NTA concepts and Nazi ethnic group law can be seen as a result of my stay in Vienna and the STSM. Also a lot of background knowledge and the localisation of my dissertation topic within the cosmos of NTA ideas are results the STSM provided for my dissertation (of course this support will be appreciated in the preface of my book). It is not unlikely that future cooperations, for instance via conferences (like one which is planned in Göttingen for March 2023), will take place. Besides, several chapters of my dissertation became larger, deeper and more precisely reformulated due to my stay, the calm and productive working environment in the project office and the exchange in Vienna.

Therefore, I am thankful for the possibility to achieve the goals of my STMS and look forward to maintain the connection that could be built during this time