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Erich Weise (4 September 1895 – April 1972) was a German historian and archivist. He was member of the Nazi party and during World War II he oversaw Polish archives taken over by Nazi Germany. During those activities he was responsible for plunder and was involved in war crimes.

Early life

Weise was born in Krefeld in the Rhineland in western Germany as the son of the grammar-school master Julius Weise and grew up in Königsberg (Kaliningrad) in Prussia. Since his mother's family stemmed from the Baltic region, his father had chosen to become transferred from Krefeld to a school in Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia. After his scholastic education Erich Weise took up academic studies at the Albertina in Königsberg. The outbreak of World War I cought him by surprise in Mitau, the former capital of Courland (today Jelgava in Latvia), where he had to spent three years in Russian internment. This internment brought about that he begun to suffer from defective hearing, and later on it even caused his deafness. After he had returned and the war had ended, he proceeded with his studies.

Interwar years

In 1921 he passed the exam for the profession of a grammar-school teacher. Because of his illness, however, he was unable to carry out this profession. In the same year he delivered his Ph. D. thesis and graduated as an historian.

He begun his career as an archivist, first in Berlin (1922–1927), in Düsseldorf (1927–1930) and then in Königsberg in Prussia (1930–1935).

In 1933 he joined NSDAP. Before the war he published articles together with the Nazi historian Erich Maschke, who supported Nazi racist and nationalist views. He took part in conference on 3rd and 4t September 1939 in Konigsberg where duties of archivists and the role of Ostforschung-an aggressively anti-Polish nationalist ideology whose publications were of questionable value were discussed. Weise speaking for German archivists declared loyalty to the Third Reich and its ideas, stating: The initial aversion of the German archivist against engaging in political matters has waned. As the keeper of the legal codes of the state and the nation, ha has become the herald of the national cause...Because Germandom (Volkstum) and the the spirit of the state and the decisive will for ethnic (Völkisch) survival have to be kept alive, the German archivists are fully behind the new Germany of January 30, 1933. In the spirit of the Third Reich, they work with the Volk for the Volk.

In 1935 the civil servant type of title of a Staatsarchivrat was awarded to Weise. Later on he worked at several locations in succession as division head, so in Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin (1935–1939)

Second World War

After Nazi Germany occupied Poland he became responsible for overseeing the Polish archives that Germans took over. In this function he purged the staff of all workers that were deemed "non-Aryan" and politically unwanted, reducing it by 50%. He viewed this action with pride. At the same time he used Jewish forced labor for works involving transport.

Around Easter 1940 he informed remaining Polish archivists that all records from territories Nazi Germany annexed from Poland will be confiscated. Warsaw (1939–1942). 1942 he became head of the new archival institution founded by Nazis called Reichsarchiv Posen and located in Nazi occupied Greater Poland.

In 2008 Polish authorities documented that he was personally involved, together with Kurt Forstreuter, in December 1940 with the theft of 74 antique documents from thirteenth and fifteenth centuries from an archive in Warsaw, which constituted a war crime.

Post-war career

Historian Astrid Eckert writes that Weise after the war "managed to get through the denazification process by fabricating lies and suppressing information about his past, eventually successfully painting himself as Nazi opponent." He was listed as a looter by Allied authorities in Monuments Fine Arts and Archives Section of Military Government (MFA&A) that was responsible for overseeing the process of early denazification.

During the post-war era, Weise belonged to Germany's leading historians in the specialty of German Order.

In West Germany he served as honorary coworker and helped to build up the archives of state in Stade (Staatsarchiv Stade). In 1948 he joined Staatsarchiv Hannover. From 1959 until 1960, when he became a pensioner, he was head of Staatsarchiv Stade, with the title of a Staatsarchivdirektor.

Historian Michael Burleigh notes that during the Cold War Weise's publications belonged to a genre that aimed to internationalize traditional German chauvinism by presenting a western community of interests against "the East", and portraying Germans as bringers of order and development in Eastern Europe. In his 1955 monograph on the right of resistance in later medieval Prussia Weise wrote that the Teutonic Knights were the finest example of German destiny interweaving with the destiny of Eastern Europe and claimed that the defeat of the Knights to Poles and Lithuanians at the Battle of Grunwald "badly affected solidarity of Europe". Weise claimed that western knights didn't go to Prussia for festivals or thrills but on political missions to "inspect the level of culture of pagan Lithuanians". Weise's main interests as were focused around the history of Prussia and the history of the Teutonic Order. His views on historical regarding Teutonic Knights are now considered outdated by modern historians.

His work has been criticized in Poland for neglecting political and social aspects of the territories he described while focusing on their German character.

Publications (selection)

As author or compiler

• Findbuch zum Bestand 27 Reichskammergericht (1500–1648) (= Veröffentlichungen der Niedersächsischen Archivverwaltung, Inventare und kleinere Schriften des Staatsarchivs in Stade, H. 1). Edited by Heinz-Joachim Schulze. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1981, ISBN 3-525-85960-0.
• Die Amtsgewalt von Papst und Kaiser und die Ostmission besonders in der 1. Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts (= Marburger Ostforschungen, Band 31). J. G. Herder-Institut, Marburg (Lahn) 1971.
• Die Staatsverträge des deutschen Ordens in Preußen im 15. Jahrhundert. Edited in commission ofHistorischen Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesforschung. Three volumes:
  • Vol. 3: 1467–1497. Gräfe und Unzer, Munich 1966.
  • Vol. 2: 1438–1467. Elwert, Marburg (Lahn) 1955.
  • Vol. 1: 1398–1437. Gräfe und Unzer, Königsberg 1939.
• Geschichte des Niedersächsischen Staatsarchivs in Stade nebst Übersicht seiner Bestände (= Veröffentlichungen der Niedersächsischen Archivverwaltung, H. 18). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1964.
• Die Schwabensiedlungen im Posener Kammerdepartement 1799–1804 (= Marburger Ostforschungen, Band 13). Holzner, Würzburg 1961.
• Das Widerstandsrecht im Ordenslande Preussen und das mittelalterliche Europa (= Veröffentlichungen der Niedersächsischen Archivverwaltung, H. 6). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1955.

As editor

• Ernst Bahr, Wolfgang La Baume, Kurt Forstreuter et al.: Ost- und Westpreußen (Udo Arnold, ed.), scientific book series Handbuch der historischen Stätten (= Kröners Taschenausgabe, Band 317). Alfred Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1981 (unaltered reprint of the 1st edition of 1966 edited by Erich Weise), ISBN 3-520-31701-X.

See also

• Nazi Plunder
• World War II looting of Poland

Literature

• Template:De icon Fritz Gause: Weise, Ercih. In: Altpreußische Biographie, Vol. III, Elwert, Marburg/Lahn 1975, ISBN 3 7708 0504 6, p. 1072.

References

1. Altpreußische Forschungen (AltprF) Bd. 1/1, 1924 – Bd. 20, 1943
2. The Shaping of German Identity: Authority and Crisis, 1245–1414, page 29
3. Karin Friedrich (2006), The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772. Cambridge University Press, page 5, page 13
4. Musial, T.: „Staatsarchive im Dritten Reich“, 1996, page 31, 67-68
5. The Struggle for the Files. The Western Allies and the Return of German Archives after the Second World War. Astrid M. Eckert, Emory University, Atlanta, p. 101 (restricted preview).
6. The Struggle for the Files. The Western Allies and the Return of German Archives after the Second World War. Astrid M. Eckert, Emory University, Atlanta, p. 115, footnote no. 68 (restricted preview)
8. Staatsarchive im Dritten Reich, p. 130, Torsten Musial - 1996.
9. Sztuka Zagrabiona
10. Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
11. The Struggle for the Files. The Western Allies and the Return of German Archives after the Second World War. Astrid M. Eckert, Emory University, Atlanta page 118 (restricted preview)
12. When in early 1945 Allied authorities in the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives Section of Military Government (MFA&A), that was responsible for overseeing the process of early denazification, tried to establish the political leanings of German archival and museum experts by grouping them in rough categories such as "party member", "100% Nazi", "reported unreliable politically", "doubtful" and "reported as looter", Erich Weise's name had been listed up under the category "reported as looter". The Struggle for the Files. The Western Allies and the Return of German Archives after the Second World War. Astrid M. Eckert, Emory University, Atlanta, p. 108, footnote no. 40 "See also the case of Erich Weise(...)For his denazification he suppressed several facts about his career, lied about others, finally challenged the verdict and after revision emerged as a Nazi opponent." (restricted preview).
13. http://kulturportal-west-ost.eu/biographies/weise-erich-2/
14. Information on Erich Weise from Zentrale Datenbank Nachlässe (ZDN) of Deutsches Bundesarchiv (4 April 2013).
15. ^ Michael Burleigh Cambridge University Press, Germany turns eastwards: a study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich, Volume 8, Part 1991 page 315
16. Information on Erich Weise on the Website of the publisher Alfred Kröner Verlag (4. April 2013).
17. Rezension: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17.10.2000, S. L48. Biskup, Marian; Labuda, Gerard: Die Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens in Preußen
18. Okiem historyka: Warzawa - Berlin - Bonn, 1918–1981, Marian Wojciechowski - Page 212 - 1989: "Erich Weise, zajmujac sie Poznaniem w okresie wczesnego feudalizmu, traktuje po macoszemu i z niezrozumieniem zagadnienia spoleczne i gospodarcze historii miasta. Mówiac o cechach, zwraca uwage tylko na ich niemiecki charakter"

• Nazis
• German historians