Colonial Education in the Third Reich: The Witzenhausen Colonial School and the Rendsburg Colonial School for Women

Abstract

AbstractIn 1926, the Women's League of the German Colonial Society opened the Rendsburg Colonial School for Women to train young women to go abroad to the former German colonies. This school joined the Witzenhausen Colonial School (for men), founded in 1899, as institutions of colonial education in a Germany now without an overseas empire. After 1933, the schools entered a new phase of their histories. This article examines the Rendsburg and Witzenhausen Colonial Schools in tandem in order to explore the place of colonial education in the Third Reich. Through their curricula, the schools sought to negotiate the value of this education to the ideological and territorial goals of the Third Reich, a negotiation that was not always smooth, as demonstrated by debates about the political and pedagogical suitability of the directors of the schools. World War II heightened the gendered differences between the schools and led to different wartime experiences, in particular the Rendsburg school's participation in Germanization projects in eastern Europe. The trajectory of both schools in the Third Reich demonstrates that the cultural/national/racial importance of colonial work retained relevance and indeed obtained increased value in a Germany without overseas colonies.