Neue Freie Presse
- Progress of World Peace.
- Chamberlain on the Meeting with Mussolini.
- New Ethnology.
The Neue Freie Presse of 4 October 1926 greeted the previous day's opening of the Paneuropean Congress in Vienna as a historic event. Its editorial described organ music and a blue silk banner whose sun had twenty-eight rays for the nations of Europe. It found the strongest impression in Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi's personality, praised former chancellor Ignaz Seipel for opening the congress, and pointed to Italy's absence as a sign of Europe's divisions. A news report gave Austen Chamberlain's account of his cordial talks with Mussolini at Livorno and with Briand in Paris: he said he and Mussolini were determined to continue the Locarno policy, denied that any new agreements had been made, and declined to comment on Italian domestic affairs. In a signed feature, the geographer Eugen Oberhummer traced how ethnology developed from Peschel, Müller and Ratzel, and how expeditions, including those in the German colonies, had filled the great ethnographic museums.
Translation
Progress of World Peace.
Vienna, October 4. Yesterday will have to be recorded as a historic day. No one present at the opening of the Paneuropean Congress could escape the enthusiasm over this tremendous success of a movement created out of nothing. It was a good idea not to hold this congress in the usual style, but to give it heightened solemnity and ceremony through the sound of the organ and the unfurling of a flag, a banner of blue silk bearing at its center a sun with twenty-eight rays, which embody the twenty-eight nations of Europe. The strongest impression was made by the personality of Coudenhove-Kalergi, and if there were nothing in this movement but the fact that an extraordinary man stands at its head, capable of stirring minds, of attracting intellectually outstanding people and of shutting out all banality, all intrigue, all dishonesty and all lust for power, that alone would suffice to lift the Paneuropean current above all other slogans. We saw the pennants of twenty-eight nations on the presidential table of the congress, and it was a magnificent procession of delegates, who all, one after another, proclaimed the shared conviction of the new Paneuropeanism. The session began with the opening by former Federal Chancellor Dr. Seipel. It was an act of political shrewdness on his part to place himself at the head of this current in Austria and to be the spokesman of peace and unification at a moment when such deep hatreds still divide the world. It must be regarded as an example of this division that Italy has so far in no way taken part in this movement. Dr. Seipel rightly declared that it would be utopian to dream of a united Europe if in doing so one …
Chamberlain on the Meeting with Mussolini.
Policy of England and Italy. I have had a cordial exchange of views with Mussolini, which enabled me to discuss with him those questions that interest England and Italy." Chamberlain then stated that, besides the Anglo-Italian problems, he had also discussed the larger European problems with Mussolini and had been able to note, with great satisfaction, a community of views. They were determined, he said, to continue the Locarno policy. The policy of England and Italy was directed toward preserving peace and developing trade in the interest of the economic reconstruction of the world. In Paris he (Chamberlain) had had a conversation with Briand, and Briand had reported to him on his conversation with Dr. Stresemann. Chamberlain then declared: "I need not emphasize that no new agreements were concluded or planned. What took place in the new conversations in Paris and Livorno was a frank, friendly discussion of the problems that interest us all. I wish to emphasize that I am on just as friendly a footing with Dr. Stresemann. In answer to a question, Chamberlain declared that he could not comment on Italy's internal affairs. Fascism was not suitable for England, but for Mussolini he felt great …
New Ethnology.
New Ethnology. By Professor Eugen Oberhummer. More than half a century ago, Oskar Peschel and the Viennese linguist Friedrich Müller, each in his own way, gave a concise overview of ethnology and for decades to come shaped the prevailing notions of this still young branch of knowledge. Then Friedrich Ratzel entered the field with a large work in three volumes, reduced to two volumes in its second edition, an astonishing achievement of comprehensive erudition and mastery of an immense body of material. Since then, research expeditions in every part of the world, and not least in the German colonies, have piled up an ever less surveyable mass of material in the great ethnographic museums of Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, Dresden, Vienna, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Cologne, etc. The authors of older ethnographic works, as well as the meritorious Theodor Waitz, who depended essentially on literary reports, had as yet scarcely made use of it; only in Ratzel do we already find it …
Context
Coudenhove-Kalergi and the young Paneuropean movement
The editorial called Paneuropa a movement "created out of nothing" and found its greatest strength in Coudenhove-Kalergi's personality. The movement was indeed very young: it had begun only three years earlier, with Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi's 1923 manifesto Paneuropa, which proposed a unified European state. In 1926, the year of this Vienna congress, he was elected the organisation's first international president. The ceremony the paper described, with organ music and a blue silk banner whose sun bore twenty-eight rays for Europe's nations, presented that young organisation as a cause spanning the whole continent. The editorial set Paneuropa apart from mere slogans, and within a few years the idea did reach the top of European diplomacy: on 5 September 1929 Aristide Briand, a follower of the movement and by then French prime minister, spoke at the League of Nations in Geneva in favour of a federal Europe.
Seipel between his two chancellorships
The paper called Ignaz Seipel "Altbundeskanzler" (former federal chancellor) and praised his political shrewdness in placing himself at the head of the Paneuropean current in Austria. Seipel had been chancellor from 1922 to 1924. His first government stabilised Austria's finances with a League of Nations loan, which was obtained when Austria officially renounced annexation to Germany and which placed the state's economic policy under League supervision. He resigned in November 1924 after fierce criticism from his own party and an assassination attempt that June. When he opened the congress he was out of office, but not for long: he returned as chancellor on 20 October 1926, just over two weeks after this editorial appeared. The paper's image of him as a spokesman for peace and unification sits uneasily with what followed: by 1927 he was advocating replacing democracy with a clerical authoritarian system.
Chamberlain, Mussolini and the Locarno framework
In the report, Chamberlain presented his talks with Mussolini as a continuation of "Locarno policy" and denied that any new agreements had been concluded or planned. That framing fitted the Locarno system itself: Italy was one of the partners with whom Stresemann had negotiated the treaties, alongside Britain, France and Belgium, and Chamberlain had negotiated the 1925 pacts meant to prevent war between France and Germany, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. The conversations in Paris and Livorno came in the weeks after the settlement reached a milestone: in September 1926, as planned during the Locarno negotiations, Germany was admitted to the League of Nations. Briand, who briefed Chamberlain on his meeting with Stresemann, was the most notable of Stresemann's close personal friends abroad, so Chamberlain's assurance that he was on equally friendly terms with Stresemann addressed a partnership in which Germany's foreign minister was already closely tied to France's. Chamberlain's refusal to comment on Italy's internal affairs, and his remark that fascism did not suit England even as he expressed great personal feeling for Mussolini, fit his better-known remark that Mussolini was "a man with whom business could be done."
Eugen Oberhummer: a Vienna geographer in Ratzel's tradition
The author of the feature was full professor of historical and political geography at the University of Vienna from 1902 to 1930, and a representative of political geography in the tradition of Friedrich Ratzel. That background shows in the excerpt, where Ratzel's multi-volume work is singled out as an astonishing achievement and as the only older synthesis that already drew on the museum material. According to a July 2013 research report on Vienna's street names, Oberhummer is said to have integrated and propagated the "Lebensraum" concept, associated with his colleague Albrecht Penck, in his re-edition of Ratzel's Politische Geographie; the concept was later taken up by National Socialism. In Vienna he also promoted a German-national orientation for his faculty, on the grounds that Vienna had "at all times been a German city." None of this appears in the 1926 excerpt, but it describes the scholarly milieu from which he wrote about expeditions to the German colonies as a source of ethnographic material.
How colonial expeditions filled Germany's ethnographic museums
Oberhummer wrote that expeditions, "not least in the German colonies," had piled up an ever less surveyable mass of material in museums from Berlin to Cologne. The history of the Berlin museum, the first on his list, bears this out. It was founded in 1873 and opened in 1886 as the Royal Museum for Ethnology. Its building on Königgrätzer Straße was already too small for the collections when it opened, and the situation worsened in the last years of the nineteenth century, as the collections expanded rapidly with greater institutional support for ethnology and the growth of Germany's overseas colonial empire after the Berlin Conference. The consequences of that colonial collecting are still being addressed: in 2022, 23 objects from the museum's collection, including jewellery and pottery, were returned to Namibia; they had been taken between 1884 and 1915, when the territory was the German colony of German South West Africa.
Original
Fortschritte des Weltfriedens.
Wien, 4. Oktober. Der gestrige Tag wird als ein historischer vermerkt werden müssen. Niemand von den Anwesenden bei der Eröffnung des Paneuropakongresses konnte sich der Begeisterung entziehen über diesen gewaltigen Erfolg einer aus dem Nichts heraus geschaffenen Bewegung. Es war ein guter Gedanke, diesen Kongreß nicht im üblichen Stile abzuhalten, sondern ihm erhöhte Weihe und Feierlichkeit zu geben durch Orgelklänge und durch Entfaltung einer Fahne, eines blauseidenen Banners, das in seiner Mitte eine Sonne trägt mit achtundzwanzig Strahlen, welche die achtundzwanzig Nationen von Europa verkörpern. Am stärksten wirkte die Persönlichkeit Coudenhove-Kalergis, und wenn nichts in dieser Bewegung vorhanden wäre als die Tatsache, daß hier ein ungewöhnlicher Mensch an der Spitze steht, befähigt, die Gemüter zu bewegen, geistig Hervorragende anzuziehen und alle Banalität, alle Intrige, alle Unehrlichkeit und alle Herrschsucht auszuschließen, so würde das genügen, um die paneuropäische Strömung herauszuheben von allen anderen Schlagworten. Wir sahen die Wimpel von achtundzwanzig Nationen auf dem Präsidententisch des Kongresses und es war ein großartiger Aufmarsch der Delegierten, die alle, einer nach dem anderen, die Gesinnungsgemeinschaft des neuen Paneuropäertums verkündeten. Die Tagung begann mit der Eröffnung durch den Altbundeskanzler Dr. Seipel. Es war ein Akt der politischen Klugheit von ihm, sich an die Spitze dieser Strömung in Oesterreich zu stellen und Wortführer zu sein des Friedens und der Vereinigung in einem Augenblick, da noch immer so tiefe Gehässigkeiten die Welt zerklüften. Als Beispiel dieser Zerklüftung muß es gelten, daß Italien sich bisher in keiner Weise an dieser Bewegung beteiligt. Dr. Seipel hat mit Recht erklärt, es wäre utopisch, von einem geeinigten Europa zu träumen, wenn man dabei den
Chamberlain über die Zusammenkunft mit Mussolini.
Politik Englands und Italiens. Ich habe eine herzliche Aussprache mit Mussolini gehabt, die es mir ermöglichte, mit ihm diejenigen Fragen, die England und Italien interessieren, zu erörtern. " Dann teilte Chamberlain mit, daß er mit Mussolini nebst den englisch-italienischen Problemen auch die größeren europäischen Probleme besprochen habe und dabei mit großer Genugtuung eine Gemeinsamkeit der Ansichten feststellen konnte. Sie seien entschlossen, die Locarnopolitik fortzusetzen. Die Politik Englands und Italiens sei darauf gerichtet, im Interesse der wirtschaftlichen Wiederherstellung der Welt den Frieden zu erhalten und den Handel zu entwickeln. In Paris habe er (Chamberlain) mit Briand eine Unterredung gehabt und Briand habe ihm über die Unterredung mit Dr. Stresemann berichtet. Chamberlain erklärte dann: " Ich brauche nicht zu betonen, daß keine neuen Abkommen abgeschlossen oder projektiert wurden. Was in den neuen Unterredungen in Paris und Livorno vor sich gegangen ist, war eine offenherzige, freundschaftliche Unterhaltung über die Probleme, die uns alle interessieren. Ich möchte betonen, daß ich auf ebenso freundschaftlichem Fuße mit Dr. Stresemann stehe. Auf eine Frage erklärte Chamberlain, er könne sich nicht über die inneren Angelegenheiten Italiens äußern. Für England sei der Fascismus nicht geeignet, aber für Mussolini empfinde er große
Neue Völkerkunde.
Neue Völkerkunde. Von Professor Eugen Oberhummer. Vor mehr als einem halben Jahrhundert haben Oskar Peschel und der Wiener Sprachforscher Friedrich Müller, jeder in anderer Art, eine gedrängte Uebersicht der Völkerkunde gegeben und auf Jahrzehnte hinaus die landläufigen Vorstellungen von diesem noch jungen Wissenszweig beeinflußt. Dann trat Friedrich Ratzel auf den Plan mit einem großen, dreibändigen, in der zweiten Bearbeitung auf zwei Bände verringerten Werk, einer erstaunlichen Leistung umfassender. Belesenheit und Bewältigung eines ungeheuren Stoffes. Seither haben Forschungsreisen in allen Erdteilen und nicht zum wenigsten in den deutschen Kolonien ein immer schwerer übersehbares Material in den großen ethnographischen Museen von Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, Dresden, Wien, München, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Köln usw. angehäuft. Die Verfasser älterer ethnographischer Werke wie auch der verdienstvolle Theodor Waitz, die wesentlich auf literarische Nachrichten angewiesen waren, hatten davon noch kaum Gebrauch gemacht; nur bei Ratzel finden wir es schon