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In a manner and on a scale unknown in France, politicians in Germany interfered in an unprecedented fashion with the university curriculum around 1930. The Thuringian minister of culture and member of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), Wilhelm Frick, created a chair for the study of "Race Science" despite faculty protest at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, renamed thus in 1934, and appointed to it F.K. Günther.¹Völkisch student groups' demands to add the examination of Germans' racial characteristics to the curriculum had been realized. ² The symbolism of the event captured attention: prominent scholars concluded that an era of "unfreedom" approached, threatening the mind and spirit, the Geist, of their guild, the Zunft.³ At the moment of this caesura in academic affairs, a collection of opinions informing reactions to French scholarship, and to Annaliste pre-history in particular, ceased to hold sway in scholarly discourse.⁴ Context offers insight in explaining this, namely the stability of professional formation. ⁵ No professors joined the NSDAP before 1930. ⁶

DOI: 10.1057/9781137294982_5

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