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Verlagsinformation :: Publisher's information
Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) was a Nazi organisation that operated during World War II in the occupied territories of western and eastern Europe. ERR had broad powers in the ideological struggle against the enemies of National Socialism and the confiscation of materials belonging to ideological adversaries of Nazism. Adolf Hitler bestowed these powers upon the Nazi Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg - the Führer’s personal representative for spiritual and ideological training, as well as the education of the members of the NSDAP (Nazi Party).
During World War II, the ERR led Nazi efforts to study, catalogue, and capture cultural materials, both in public and private possession, from the occupied countries of Europe. Among the ERR’s objectives was an effort to understand the ideological and philosophical underpinnings of “opponents of National Socialism”.
Housed at the Central State Archive of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine in Kiev are the ERR’s daily and weekly reports from 1940 until early 1943. The documents are assembled into record group 3676 (Reichsleiter Rosenberg’s Staff for Occupied Eastern Territories) and record group 3674 (Reichsleiter Rosenberg’s Staff for Occupied Western Territories and the Netherlands). They include reports detailing inspections of private apartments, primarily those of Jewish citizens, and the “requisitioning” of libraries, archives, and private collections from such private residences. Judaica and Hebraica materials confiscated from public and private libraries alike were forwarded to the “Institute for Research of Jewish Question”, a Nazi research centre that had been envisioned as a museum that would chronicle Jewish life prior to ist post-war extinction.
A considerable part of ERR archives comprise highly informative summaries and analyses prepared by the different “work groups” within the organisation. Propaganda of Nazi racial ideology and agitation among local population on the occupied territories was one of ERR’s major functions. ERR groups collected examples of Soviet propaganda and scientific works on anthropology, physiology, and racial theory to be used for Nazi propagandistic purposes. Files also include materials relating to other occupied European countries: Belgium, France, Netherlands, among others.
The activity of the ERR was highly varied. This diversity is fully represented in the Kievan collection of ERR documents. The ERR archive offers a great potential for scholarly and general cultural research — not only for studying the transfer of cultural treasures out of museums, libraries and archival collections (governmental and private), but also for researching other topics, such as
the history of the occupation of Europe during World War II; the ideology and culture of Nazi Germany; the fortunes of many specific individuals in the warring parties; and the activity of scholarly and cultural institutions, publishing houses, religious and political organisations in Europe.
The archive brings together official documents concerning the ERR’s daily activity; analytical and scholarly materials; volumes of newspapers and scholarly articles; photographs; and the huge correspondence of the ERR with various departments and organisations of the Third Reich, and with separate individuals.
The archive contains documents of the Staff Directorate (Stabsführung) of the ERR and its sections and other subunits, which worked in close contact with other Nazi Party departments and German governmental institutions. It also offers numerous documents of the EER’s Main Work Groups (MWG), which operated directly in occupied territory: MWG Ukraine, MWG Ostland and MWG Centre as well as the MWG for Belgium and Northern France. Work groups were assigned to carry out the registration, confiscation, and removal of cultural treasures. A significant number of documents reveal the activity of special staffs, commands, and services of the ERR; their assignments included the thorough study of the occupied territories as described above, the preparation of analytical materials, and the execution of the instructions of the ERR Staff Directorate.
The documents of the Kiev archive cast light on various topics, including the organisation of various research projects and the preparation of informational-analytical and survey studies, reports, memoranda, and other materials on all questions that interested the ERR. These questions concerned history, politics, propaganda, administration, economics and public figures who were National Socialism’s ideological foes. An important place was assigned to the study of the
national psychology of various peoples, their traditions, religious beliefs and cultural values; and using that information to construct new ideological (anti-Jewish, anti-Communist or anti-Masonic) postulates. At the same time the ERR gathered information on the natural resources and the demographic, economic, social, and cultural peculiarities of the occupied territories, especially the Eastern regions and the Balkans. Not only Nazi scholars, but also local scholars and intellectuals took part in this work; their names are indicated in the documents of the archive.
Research projects form a significant part of the material in the ERR archive and are of historical and scholarly interest for understanding not only the methods of Nazi ideology and propaganda, but also many other aspects of the activity of the ERR.
A certain group of documents reveal the inner workings of the ERR itself, both its Staff Directorate and its departments. There are orders and decrees of the Directorate, methodological materials, correspondence, plans and reports, instructions to work groups, minutes of meetings, etc. There are also documents seeking to ensure compliance with legal norms; official instructions and rules of conduct for workers; information on staffing and changes therein; efforts to foster a favourable psychological climate within the workforce; the provision of needed material resources, etc. The personal files of ERR workers, both permanent and temporary (hired as needed), are very rich in content for biographical research.
The archive contains information on well-known figures and German scholars in various fields of knowledge. Among these are such noted archivists as Georg Winter, Wolfgang Mommsen, and Martin Granzin; bibliologists and librarians Johannes Pohl and Josef Benzing; musicologist Herbert Gerigk; and many others.
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