Published on 8 September 2016
During the Nazi occupation, Prague became an important centre of racial research (Rassenforschung). At the Deutsche Karls-Universität (German Charles University – GCU), three university institutes were established focusing on racial issues to which the Nazis attached great significance. Racial policy was closely related to the efforts of Germanization. The territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was to be completely Germanized, so it comes as no surprise that racial studies came to the foreground. One of the three "racial institutes" at NKI was the Institut für Sozialanthropologie und Volksbiologie (the Institute for Social Anthropology and National Biology). The institute was originally founded as a department of the Philosophical Faculty in 1941. It was headed by a native of Podmokel u Děčína, Karl Valentin Müller (1896–1963), who had advanced to the forefront of racial research in previous years. The institute was housed in the university building at Celetná 16, Praha 1 (Zeltnergasse 16/III), which to this day serves the needs of the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University.
Müller’s institute, or rather his department, commenced its activities as the second institute of its kind in Prague. The first institute was established in 1940 at the Medical Faculty of GCU as the Department of Racial Hygiene (Rassenhygiene) under Karl Thumse, and in 1942 the Institute for Racial Biology (Institut für Rassenbiologie) was opened at the Faculty of Natural Sciences under the famous “expert on race” Bruno K. Schultz. The existence of three similar racial studies disciplines at one university did not escape the attention of the Reich Ministry of Education. In March 1941, the historian Ernst Schwarz provided an explanation on behalf of GCU in which he distinguishes between the three subjects. While racial hygiene was understood to be a medical science, the essence of Rassenkunde or racial biology was seen to lie in comparative anatomy and the biology of the healthy man. The last of the subjects, social anthropology, was considered by Schwarz to be an entirely new discipline, which was apparently exceptional for its interdisciplinary character – it bordered on biological anthropology and the social sciences. This was indeed the reason why social anthropology belonged under the Philosophical Faculty. Schwarz pointed out that this was an ideal discipline for the solution of the issues around “the change of nationality” (Umvolkung), meaning Germanization.
The German social anthropology (Sozialanthropologie) pursued from the 1920s to the 1940s is conceptually quite different from the social anthropology conducted in the spirit of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which is nowadays pursued in continental Europe and the Czech Republic, too. Unlike this tradition, the German social anthropology was based on the synthesis of racial hygiene, racial doctrine and political anthropology, according to the approach of the early 20th century racial theoretician Ludwig Woltmann. It examined the relationship between behaviour, mental abilities and race. It was a borderline discipline standing between the social and natural sciences. The social anthropology conceived in this way was not far from the ideology of the superiority of the Nordic race, whose major proponent in Germany was Hans. F. K. Günther.
Müller was the only one of the three “racial researchers” in Prague that came directly from the historical Czech lands, although he had not spent much time here. After he was born, his whole family moved to the then-German province of Posen (Poznań). After grammar school in Dresden. After World War I, in which he was briefly involved as a volunteer, he continued to study Germanistics and the political and social sciences in Liepzig, and in 1922 he became a doctor of philosophy. For some time he worked as a teacher and served at the Saxon Ministry of Education. His membership in the social democratic party most likely helped him gain this post. From the mid-1920s he concentrated on racial hygiene and population policy. Among other, he met the aforementioned Hans F. K. Günther and the racial hygienist Fritz Lenz. As one of a few social democrats, he became an advocate of the “the Nordic doctrine”. Soon afterwards he started to write actively and contributed articles to various professional journals. In 1927, the first of his books, Arbeiterbewegung und Bevölkerungsfrage, was published. In it, he deals with the eugenic aspects of the labour movement. After the Nazis came to power, Müller was sidelined for being a social democrat. Later, he left the party and approached closer to the Nazis (later he even joined NSDAP). In the mid-1930s he published his key work, Der Aufstieg des Arbeiters durch Rasse und Meisterschaft, in which he returned to his theories about the possibilities for the racial improvement of the workforce. Between 1936 and 1937 he was awarded the title of docent in the field of sociology and demography. A year later he became an associate professor at the Technical University in Dresden, where he stayed until the official start of the post in Prague. At that time he started to cooperate with the SD, which was a significant step for his future career.
From the end of the 1930s Müller studied the situation in the Czech lands, in particular the penetration of "German blood" into the Czech nation and its potential for the purposes of Germanization. He promoted the concept of a change of nationality (Umvolkung) for those groups of Czechs among whom he believed the majority had German roots. At the time of the Sudeten Crisis he wrote a text about the German-Czech question, which he sent to the SD. In it, he stressed that the actual cultural maturity of the Czechs depends on the quotient of “German blood”. According to his theories, the higher social classes in the Czech nation had a greater ratio of German blood than the lower ones. In 1939, he came up with another study on this topic called Die Bedeutung des deutschen Blutes im Tschechentum. Müller even proposed that the “desired” part of the Czech nation should be Germanized and used to rid the German nation of "racially inferior" individuals, who were to become Czech. His focus on the racial issue concerning the Czechs heralded Müller’s later career at GCU in Prague.
Soon after the annexation of Czechoslovakia his works aroused the interest of K. H. Frank. In 1940, the establishment of a university department focusing on socioanthropological research into the Czechs was suggested. At the beginning of October of the same year, the dean of the Philosophical Faculty suggested offering Müller a post at GCU. However, at that time the plan did not work out, because Müller was working at the Technical University in Dresden and also serving as an army psychologist. Thanks to this, however, he could come to Prague regularly. In the autumn he asked to be released from military service in order to conduct socioanthropological research in the Protectorate. Frank did not hesitate to support this request. According to him, the results of the research were key "for the fate of the Czech-Moravian territory". The Wehrmacht approved Müller’s request, and so his research was able to begin. He was given access to archives and church documents, including registers. In the summer of 1941, Müller went for an “excursion” across central Bohemia with a group of his Dresden students. They visited industrial and agricultural enterprises in and around Prague, the region along the Berounka and Sázava rivers, Kolín and Kutná Hora. In this field research, 6,000 Czechs were apparently studied. The research allegedly demonstrated that the higher and more qualified social strata of the Czech population corresponded with the "German average".
Müller took up his position at GCU in the autumn of 1941, when he was appointed as associate professor and head of the Department of Social Anthropology and National Biology at the Philosophical Faculty. He became a full professor only in 1943, when the department was transformed into the Institute for Social Anthropology and National Biology. During the whole existence of the department, and later the institute, Müller’s assistant was Iwan Jarema. Müller’s department cooperated with the other two institutes of "racial science" in the realization of education. Müller himself prepared such subjects as “Selection and counter-selection in the German nation”, “Practical national biology” and “Population policy”. The Institute for Social Anthropology also organized some courses at the medical faculty in cooperation with Karl Thums (for example, “Race and alcohol”). Müller also gave lectures on sociology (although this was really social anthropology), including at the faculty of law. Besides teaching, Müller gave lectures to wider audiences consisting of representatives of the occupation administration. Even prior to his appointment as a professor at GCU, he gave a lecture in Poděbrady on “the German-Czech question as a racial issue”. He repeated this lecture at the meeting of the Bohemia and Moravia branch of the SS Main Office for Race and Settlement (RuSHA) in 1942, where he gave a speech on "the stream of German life" in the Czech nation. Müller had very strong ties to K. H. Frank, who appointed him as his special envoy for racial issues.
During his first year in the post the subject matter of this new department was being formed. From 1943 on, his research was supported by the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation. Although Müller's institute was not directly connected with the foundation (as was the case with some of the departments at the Philosophical Faculty of GCU), it participated in financing its research. Müller cooperated on some of the projects with his colleague at the faculty, Rudolf Hippius, a researcher in the field of social psychology.
In 1943, Müller’s deparment implemented extensive research into the Protectorate's police, gendarmerie and fire brigade, which numbered around 18 thousand men. Its purpose was to determine the socioanthropological characteristics, race, physical constitution, nationality and social origin of three generations. The outcome was to be an assessment of the impact of "German bloodlines" in the Czech nation. One of the key methods was the investigation into the origin of names, which was then used for further research. Müller studied the occurrence of German surnames among the living generations and their ancestors. For example, he found that 17% of Sokol officials had a German surname, which fact he probably intended to use as justification for his deduction that the leaders of the Czech patriots were actually of German origin. Further, he found out that Berní rula (a ledger) from 1654 lists 500,000 persons (62.5%) with German names. He was of the opinion that Czech surnames like Němec (German) and also Novák, Novotný and Nový (the new one – referring to a newcomer to a settlement) may indicate the German origin of a person. According to Müller, the grander and better quality grave stones bore German names more often than the Czech ones. For the purposes of genealogical research, Müller obtained a research assistant, the former Czech teacher and museum curator from Rokycany, Ladislav Meissner. Meissner was a former member of the Czechoslovak Legion, and so Müller attempted to achieve his rehabilitation and requested “free employment”, which was denied to him. In the end he was allowed to cooperate with the Institute for Social Anthropology, but K. H. Frank recommended that he be paid from the resources of the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation.
Regarding the distinctive racial origin of the Czechs, Müller upheld quite a positive view, as he believed that the Czech nation is literally imbued with "German blood". He challenged the theories of some of the racial anthropologists about biological differences between Czechs and Germans. According to his findings, Czechs were even taller than Germans of the Sudetenland. In one of his studies he dealt with issues of the “racial history” of the Czech lands. Among other things, he speculated about the German origin of the Przemyslid dynasty. Apparently, the racial make-up of Czechs was affected adversely by the Avars, who transferred their non-European racial features. According to Müller, it was typical that the higher social strata of Czechs largely maintained the “Nordic features”, while in the lower classes the mixing of East-Baltic, Sudeten, Alpine and Mongoloid races were prevalent. He tries to demonstrate this claim with the example of Prague, where, apparently, the "racially foreign” phenotype appears mostly among workers, while the middle and upper classes are almost indistinguishable from Germans. In another of his articles Müller deals with "contraselection" in the Czech nations, and warns against a low birth rate among the educated classes and a surplus of offspring among the lower classes. Müller's research continued until at least 1944. In August of the same year he made a trip to Slovakia, where at that time the Slovak National Uprising broke out. He was apparently captured by insurgents but managed to escape, for which he received the War Merit Cross 2nd class with two swords. After his return to Prague he continued his pedagogical work at GCU. Even for the winter semester of 1944/1945 he had lectures ready, with the topics like “The racial and bloodline history of the Czech nation” and “Talent and racial heritage in the nation and society".
Müller’s approach differed markedly from the “raceologists” of Günther’s type. He concentrated much more on terms like “nation” or “German blood”, while viewing "nation” as a biological term. His studies cannot be considered as typical of German racial science of the 1930s and 1940s. Nevertheless, special attention was paid to his research due to the fact that K. H. Frank was enthusiastic about it, intending to use its results in planning the Germanization of the Czech lands.
During the last month of the war, the activities of the Institute for Social Anthropology became attenuated, like those of all the other departments of GCU. In early 1945, the university library in the Clementinum was cleared out, the books transported to several places in the vicinity of Prague. Each department or institute was to keep only fifty volumes for current scientific work. Müller was involved as a commander of air defence of the university building in Celetná street. As far as possible, it was desirable to create the impression of “normality” until the last moment. Müller left Prague on 3 May 1945, but he was captured and deported to Germany soon afterwards. After the war, he was not prosecuted or punished in any way for his activities in Prague. As early as 1946, he was appointed head of the Institute for Research into Talent, and three years later he founded the Institute for Empirical Sociology in Hannover. He even became secretary general for the German section of the International Institute of Sociology. From 1952 he worked briefly in Bamberg, and was later appointed Professor in Nuremberg. His professional profile did not change much. In the early 1950s he wrote the book Die Deutschen in Böhmen und Mähren: Ein historischer Rückblick (The Germans in Bohemia and Moravia: A Historical Review), in which he dealt with the Czech-German relationship. Müller also became involved in the Sudeten German movement. Müller died in Nuremberg in 1963 at the age of 67.