Interviews with German anthropologists - Video Portal for the History of German Anthropology post 1945

Martin Heydrich, born 1889 in the small village Ottendorf not far from Pirna/Saxonia, was the son of the Prostestant vicar Max Ludwig Heydrich, who also served as Schatzmeister und Schriftführer der sächsischen Missionskonferenz (treasurer and secretary of the Saxonian missionary conference) and was member of the Verbandsausschusses der deutschen Missionskonferenzen (the board of the German missionary conference meeting in Herrnhut). Martin Heydrich thus grew up in the cultured environment of a well-to-do upper-middle-class family settled for generations in the vicinity of Dreden.

From 1911 Martin Heydrich studied anthropology, history of art, history, philosophy and geography in Dresden, Freiburg (Breisgau), Munich, Leipzig and Edinburgh, receiving his PhD in anthropology in Leipzig in 1914. During World War I, Heydrich was trained as a pilot by the German Air Force. Sent to Turkey to the region bordering on Iraq by 1917 he was commanding a Turkish Air Force unit.

In 1919, having returned to Germany after the end of the war Heydrich began working as an assistant at the Königlich Zoologische und Anthropologisch-Ethnographische Museen (Royal Zoological Museum and the Anthropological-Ethnographic Museum) in Dresden. In 1925, he was promoted to become the curator of the Anthropological-Ethnographic Museum. Already in 1923, he had started to cooperate with his colleague Fritz Krause in Leipzig. Krause´s plan to establish the Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde, an anthropological society to unite (and not at least influence) the scientific community of German anthropologists, corresponded with Heydrich´s intention to publish the Ethnologischer Anzeiger, an academic journal , designed to include an anthropological bibiography (völkerkundliche Bibliographie). This major project depended on a fixed number of subcribers as well as on (unremunerated) contributions from the academic community. While the first issue of the Ethnologischer Anzeiger and the first part of the anthropological bibliography (völkerkundliche Bibliographie) were published in 1928, the Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde (anthropological society) was founded in Leipzig one year later. Whereas Fritz Krause was the society´s chairman, Martin Heydrich was the editor of the Ethnologischer Anzeiger, which became the society´s mouth piece.

In 1933, when the Nazis took over power in Germany, Martin Heydrich became a functionary of the Nazi-party, the NSDAP. In addition he entered the SA (Hitler´s Sturmabteilung) and started working for the Rassenpolitische Amt (Nazi party´s office of racial policy). Besides, in Klotzsche near Dresden (and today a part of the city), which by 1935 held the Dresdner Luftkriegsschule (the headquarters of the Dresden air war academy), he was promoted to the Hauptstellenleiter für Kultur (director of the head office for culture).

In 1935 Heydrich was invited to give guest lectures in Köln/Cologne, where Julius Lips´ removal, without a qualified sucessor, had left a vacuum at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum and at the university. Behind the scene, negociations to install Martin Heydrich as the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum´s new director started in 1936. One year later in Dresden, Heydrich was promoted to deputy director of the museums (by now: Museen für Tierkunde und für Völkerkunde). His new assistant and later successor Michael Hesch, specialist on Rasse- und Siedlungsforschung (questions of race and settlement) und SS-Unterscharführer (junior squad leader of the SS) directed the museum´s departement of anthropology from 1938 onward. In 1939, Heydrich - while officially holding on to his position in Dresden – unofficially moved to Cologne, where in 1940 he was officially chosen to head the newly established department of anthropology at Cologne University and direct the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum of Anthropology. As during World War II, Michael Hesch, Heydrich´s successor in Dresden, mainly worked for the SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (main office on race and settlement policies) in the German-occupied territories in Poland and Czech Republic, Martin Heydrich kept in regular contact with the Dresden museums and was asked for advice on decisions concerning internal affairs and staff etc.

With generous financial support from the kolonialwissenschaftliche Abteilung des Reichsforschungsrates (department of colonial studies of the Reich research council) Heydrich – now one of the leading exponents of Nazi German anthropology – started to develop in Cologne a new academic program for the training of government anthropologists, that is for the Reich´s future advisors on colonial policy. Furthermore , on behalf of the Cologne museum he was involved in the “appropriation” of art in eastern Europe and France.

After the end of the war and a four-year-process of denazification, Martin Heydrich was able to continue his career unabated. Even the professional assessments he delivered to the Nazi Party´s office on racial policy were swept away by the tides of the cold war. As head of the department of anthropology of Cologne University and as director of the Cologne Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum of Anthropology Heydrich once again ranked among the leading figures of German anthropology. In 1951, he was elected vice-chairman of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde (German anthropological society), taking over the chairmanship in 1954 and after 1957 acting again as a vice-chairman. In his position as head of Cologne university´s department of anthropology Heydrich retired in 1958, but kept his position at the museum until 1960. In 1969 he died decorated with the order of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz).

Martin Heydrich´s selected Bibliography
Heydrich, Martin. „Afrikanische Ornamentik. Beiträge zur Forschung der primitiven Ornamentik und Geschichte der Forschung.“ Suppl. Vol. XXII des internationalen Archivs für Anthropologie, Leiden 1914.

Heydrich, Martin. „Völkerkunde im Geographieunterricht.“ Geographischer Anzeiger, 24 (1923), pp. 97-101.

Heydrich, Martin. „Eine völkerkundliche Bibliographie.“ Koloniale Rundschau 1924, pp. 106ff.

Heydrich, Martin. „Völkerkundliche Theorien und ihre museale Auswertung.“ Bericht über die allgemeine Versammlung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie in Halle 1925, pp. 52-54.

Heydrich, Martin. „Grundsätzliche Fragen völkerkundlicher Bibliographie.“ Africa, Vol.1 (1928), pp. 381-386.

Heydrich, Martin. „Ein altes afrikanisches Kulturgut.“ In: Otto Reche (Ed.). Gedächtnisschrift für den verstorbenen Direktor des Museums Professor Dr. Karl Weule, Leipzig 1929.

Heydrich, Martin. „Gegenwartsaufgaben der Völkerkundemuseen.“ Mitteilungen der Vereinigung sächsischer höherer Staatsbeamter, 8 (1929), pp. 3ff.

Heydrich, Martin. „Ursprung und Bedeutung der Roland-Säulen.“ Rolandblätter (1929), pp. 223-226.

Heydrich, Martin. „Lips, Julius: Einleitung in die Vergleichende Völkerkunde.“ Ethnologischer Anzeiger, Vol 2 (1929-1932), 1930, p. 108.

Heydrich, Martin. „La Réorganisation du Musée Ethnographique de Munich.“ Mousseion, Vol. XI, 2, Paris 1930.

Heydrich, Martin. Koreanische Landwirtschaft. Beiträge zur Völkerkunde von Korea I. Abhandlungen und Berichte der Museen für Tierkunde und Völkerkunde zu Dresden Vol. XIX, Leipzig 1930.

Heydrich, Martin. „Denkmäler einer vergangenen Kunst.“ Das schöne Sachsen No. 6 (1931), pp. 125-127.

Heydrich, Martin. „Ärzte als Entdecker und Forscher in Asien.“ Ciba-Zeitschrift No.12 (1934), pp. 1-12.

Heydrich, Martin. „Museumsfragen. Abgrenzungen und Gestaltung der Völkerkundemuseen.“ In: Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde (Ed.), Tagungsberichte der 2. Tagung 1936 in Leipzig, Leipzig 1937, pp. 181-190.

Heydrich, Martin. „Gustav Klemm und seine kulturhistorische Sammlung.“ In: Michael Hesch and Günther Spannaus (Ed.), Kultur und Rasse. Otto Reche zum 60. Geburtstag, Munic and Berlin 1939, pp. 305-316.

Heydrich, Martin. „Der heutige Stand der deutschen Völkerkunde. Schrifttumsbericht.“ Rasse. Monatsschrift der Nordischen Bewegung/Monatsschrift für den Nordischen Gedanken, 8 (1941), pp. 276-280.

Heydrich, Martin. „Die Rassen der Erde.“ Sonderdruck Spohr´s Schüler Kalender, Spohr-Verlag, Dresden 1942.

Heydrich, Martin. „Europäisierung als völkerkundliches Problem.“ Schriften des Vereins der Freunde und Förderer der Universität Köln, 5 (1942), pp. 15-31.

Heydrich, Martin. „Stand und Aufgaben der afrikanischen Kunstforschung.“ Tagungsbericht I der Beiträge zur Kolonialforschung im Auftrag des Reichsforschungsrates und der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft, ed. by Günter Wolff, Berlin 1943, pp. 33-44.

Heydrich, Martin (ed.). Ethnologischer Anzeiger, Vol. I 1926-1928), Stuttgart 1928; Vol. 2 (1929-1932), Stuttgart 1932; Vol. 3 (1933 – 1939), Stuttgart 1939; Vol. 4 (1940 – 1944), Stuttgart 1944.

Heydrich, Martin. „Die Völkerkunde in Köln.“ Beiträge zur völkerkundlichen Forschung, Kölner ethnologische Mitteilungen Vol. 4, Gedenkband zum 25-jährigen Bestehen des Lehrstuhls für Völkerkunde der Universität zu Köln, ed. by Helmut Petri, Köln 1965, pp. 7-14.


Selected References
Kreide-Damani, Ingrid. „Julius Lips, Martin Heydrich und die (Deutsche) Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde.“ In: Kreide-Damani, Ingrid (ed.). Julius Lips und die Geschichte der „Völkerkunde“. With contributions by Andre Gingrich, Volker Harms, Lydia Icke-Schwalbe, Ingrid Kreide-Damani, Wolfgang Liedtke, Gudrun Meier, Udo Mischek und Dietrich Treide. Wiesbaden 2010, pp. 23- 284.
Pützstück, Lothar. „Symphonie in Moll.“ Julius und die Kölner Völkerkunde. Pfaffenweiler 1995.

(text by courtesy of Ingrid Kreide-Damani)