Eberhard Kranzmayer’s dovetailing with Nazism: His fascist years and the ‘One Standard German Axiom (OSGA)’

Abstract

Eberhard Kranzmayer is arguably Austria’s most influential German dialectologist. The present article traces Kranzmayer’s Nazi years (NSDAP member number 8.061.495) in archival sources in Vienna, Graz, Munich, Klagenfurt and Berlin. This account reconstructs Kranzmayer’s role in the Nazi machine, especially his directorship of the ‘Institut für Kärntner Landesforschung’ [Institute for Carinthian Provincial Research]. Kranzmayer’s pan-German and völkisch orientations long predate his Nazi years; his studies under the Nazis are congruent with the positions he held pre- and, significantly, post-World War II. The new data presented here show that Kranzmayer’s second denazification proceedings was disingenuous. On the disciplinary level, Kranzmayer’s pan-German stance has had profound influence on the modelling of Austrian German, which today has caused many controversies; indeed, today, it seems tied inter alia to a ‘One Standard German Axiom’ (OSGA). It is argued that any materials that Kranzmayer collected, edited and published would need to be vetted by period historians for pan-German bias and mitigated before use.