Erich Keyser

Erich Keyser (12 October 1893 – 21 February 1968) was a Nazi activist and far-right nationalist historian connected with the anti-Polish ideology of Ostforschung and the racist Volkisch movement. He supported German expansion in Central and Eastern Europe and was involved with the planning of ethnic cleansing by the Third Reich during the Second World War. After 1945 he exploited the Cold War to promote the interests of German nationalism and chauvinism in his historical writing.

Early life Keyser studied history in Freiburg, Halle and Berlin.

In 1926 he created the State Regional Museum of Danzig History in Danzig-Oliva which he led until 1945. It was responsible for pursuing studies on direct requests from SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler.

Keyser also took part in writing the 1926 German Settlement Land in the East collection, which aimed to justify German claims to Eastern Europe and was part of "emotional" narrative writing that idealized the concept of Drang nach Osten.

Among Keyser's key views was the desire to classify the historical nature of the populations "according to physiological and psychological characteristics of racial make up of the population and its groups". Keyser imagined a racial and biological "essence" uniting Germans throughout history that supported irredentism of German nationalists. In his view the German "volk" needed to expand or perish. Like other historians from the volkisch movement he expressed overt racism and anti-semitism.

In 1933 Erich Keyser joined the NSDAP and soon became a virulent Nazi, active in supporting the Nuremberg racial laws.

In 1938, Keyser openly placed the history of the area along the Vistula river at the service of political ideology. and contemplated ways in which Poles unsuitable for Germanization could be efficiently removed in a quick manner.

Keyser was directly involved in Germanization attempts aimed at the Polish population in territories Nazi Germany annexed from Poland and formed in the so-called Danzig-West Prussia region.

By April 1944 Keyser started working together with the Institute for Racial Studies of the Danzig Medical Academy where he carried out "ethnic and racial investigations" on German colonists located in camps near the city and started working on studies regarding Kashubians.

Cold War Like other racist and nationalist ideologues of the Nazi era, Keyser managed to enter the post-war academic scene in West Germany without serious obstacles, and like others he adopted his views from the Nazi period into a rhetoric fitting the Cold War. The traces and influence of volkisch thinking are still evident in his post-war work.

He became responsible for the Herder Institute placing its work into the context of Ostforschung and openly declaring that its mission was to change the map of Europe and Germany, stating "Germany does not end at the Elbe, Oder or at the Vistula"; the Institute openly and proudly demonstrated its continuity with past research under Nazi regime. Only after his death did the Herder institute gradually begin to escape from ethnocentric study of history and started studying ethnic groups in the region on a more equal basis.