Data, Maps and Völkisch Heritage: Karl Stumpp and the Russian Germans

• In Event: Jewish, German, and Romanian Entanglements in Ukraine

Abstract

Hans-Christian Petersen (Federal Institute for Culture and History of Eastern Europe, Oldenburg, Germany)

This paper deals with the probably most influential person of transnational Russian-German diaspora activism: Karl Stumpp (1896-1982). Born in 1896 near Odessa, Stumpp participated for the SS in the Heim ins Reich resettlements of the ‘ethnic Germans’ (Volksdeutsche) from Bessarabia, Bukovina and Dobrudja. After the German Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, he led the Sonderkommando Dr. Stumpp, conducting ethnographic and ‘racial’ surveys of the ’German’ population in German-occupied Ukraine. Among other things, the Sonderkommando was involved in the distribution of the houses and clothing of murdered Jews to Volksdeutsche.
After 1945, Stumpp both belonged to the ‘grand old men’ of the German Association of Germans from Russia (Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland) and played a decisive role in the formation of the corresponding organizations in North America. The data, collected by Stumpp and his employees over decades, became the statistical foundation of the Russian-German narrative of the “people on the move”. It was translated into supposedly ‘objective’ maps and into the digital age (Google Maps) and is of strong influence until today.
In my paper, I will focus on two questions: The correlation between the single-minded focus on “Germandom” and the harsh anti-Semitism in the work of Stumpp. And the ongoing challenge how to deal with the völkisch heritage linked inseparably with the data.

Author

• Hans-Christian Petersen, Oldenburg U / Federal Institute for Culture and History of Eastern Europe (Germany)