Fascist and Fortean.
Heinz Kloss was born 30 October 1904 in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. I know nothing about his early or personal life. He graduated from the department of economics at the University of Halle in 1926, with an interest in the role of language in the cohering of German folk communities. He joined the German Academy—which was a proto-Fascist group focused on the role of (German) ethnic groups in the taking of land. In 1927 he went to work at the German Foreign Institute (DAI), which sent him to the United States for none-months of research in 1930; returned, he became librarian at the DAI. He wrote a book on historical linguistics in 1935, which served as his dissertation in 1939.
Kloss’s research helped to solve a problem that had become central to German civilization in the wake of World War I: how to make a coherent civilization. He was especially concerned with bringing back into the national fold Germans who had emigrated to other countries; indeed, that was the DAI’s mission. Kloss’s part was to focus on America, tying its German community to Germany, and then spreading Nazi ideology through it. There were some in German’s fascist community that saw America as a natural ally—it was the Zionists, they said, who tried to forged a special connection between America and Britian, when, in fact, German’s contribution to American society was equally robust. Kloss was concerned that a new race might be emerging out of America’s great melting pot, with miscegenation weakening the stock. He was intent to strengthen the German community and, in tune with Nazi ideology, keeping it pure.
Heinz Kloss was born 30 October 1904 in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. I know nothing about his early or personal life. He graduated from the department of economics at the University of Halle in 1926, with an interest in the role of language in the cohering of German folk communities. He joined the German Academy—which was a proto-Fascist group focused on the role of (German) ethnic groups in the taking of land. In 1927 he went to work at the German Foreign Institute (DAI), which sent him to the United States for none-months of research in 1930; returned, he became librarian at the DAI. He wrote a book on historical linguistics in 1935, which served as his dissertation in 1939.
Kloss’s research helped to solve a problem that had become central to German civilization in the wake of World War I: how to make a coherent civilization. He was especially concerned with bringing back into the national fold Germans who had emigrated to other countries; indeed, that was the DAI’s mission. Kloss’s part was to focus on America, tying its German community to Germany, and then spreading Nazi ideology through it. There were some in German’s fascist community that saw America as a natural ally—it was the Zionists, they said, who tried to forged a special connection between America and Britian, when, in fact, German’s contribution to American society was equally robust. Kloss was concerned that a new race might be emerging out of America’s great melting pot, with miscegenation weakening the stock. He was intent to strengthen the German community and, in tune with Nazi ideology, keeping it pure.