Chapter 4 VOLK, BEVÖLKERUNG, RASSE, AND RAUM Erich Keyser’s Ambiguous Concept of a German History of Population, ca. 1918–1955 Alexander Pinwinkler Introduction: The Current State of Research Recent debates on the role of German historians and of German historiog- raphy in the period encompassing the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the early Federal Republic assign a relatively minor function to the person and work of Erich Keyser (1893–1968). Hermann Aubin, Werner Conze, and Theodor Schieder are much more conspicuous topics of current discussion than is the historian Keyser, a member of the faculty at Danzig, then at Marburg after 1945. Much greater influence on the development of postwar German historiography is attributed to these other historians than to Keyser. In overviews of the history of the discipline, Keyser is usually portrayed as a representative of ethnically oriented (völkisch) groups dur- ing the Weimar Republic who later openly supported the Nazis during the Third Reich. 1 Nevertheless, his professional career after 1945 has remained virtually unnoticed in the literature. Keyser’s publications and his ethi- cally questionable activities aimed at the “scientific” legitimation and the technocratic realization of Nazi racial and genocidal policies have also only rarely been a matter for detailed study. 2 The purpose of this essay is to outline the image of a völkisch historian 3 who as early as the 1920s considered history of population (Bevölkerungs- geschichte) to be an appropriate instrument for restoring Germany’s lost position as a superpower. Keyser, who had been socialized within the con- servative cultural and educated elite of Danzig, was unreservedly com- mitted by 1933 at the latest to a National Socialist transformation of Europe. Under these political conditions, his concept of history of popu- lation 4 or, more precisely, of a population history of Germany, had much Notes for this chapter begin on page 96. 4 4 4