The National-Socialist Mirage. The relationship between two Professors of Prehistory, Oswald Menghin and Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla (1935-1952)

Abstract

Oswald Menghin, Professor of Prehistoric Man at the University of Vienna from 1922-45, supported the unity of Austria with Germany, and a sympathizer about the NSDAP ideas on the need to avoid racial mixing between Aryans and Jews. During his time as Professor at the University of Fouad in Cairo from 1930-33 he came into contact with Hermann Junker. This radicalized Menghin’s views and, as a result, he wrote his book, Spirit and Blood. The Basic Principles of Race, Language, Culture and Nation. His time as Rector of the University of Viena from 1936 to 1937 catapulted him into politics: he was a board member of the Austrian fascist party, Vaterländische Front from 1936 to 1937 and was appointed Minister of Education between March and May 1938, just after Hitler’s invasion of Austria. As Minister, he applied for membership in the NSDAP, but because his prior membership in secret Catholic organizations, it was not accepted until June 1940. Menghin was in contact with Martinez Santa-Olalla, after the celebration of the Jubilee of the Institute for Cultural Morphology at Frankfurt in June and July 1938. After Almagro Basch’s research period in Germany and Austria in January and February 1942 and his own visit to Barcelona in June 1942, however, Menghin chose to distance from Martinez Santa-Olalla, not visiting Madrid, cutting the epistolary relationship and reporting negatively about him to the SS-Ahnenerbe. After being imprisoned in two American concentration camps between May 1945 and February 1947, Menghin fled to Argentina in 1948, followed shortly afterwards by his wife and daughter. In Argentina Menghin was supported by Jose Imbelloni, director of the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Buenos Aires since 1947, who hired him as a researcher without teaching. He also received support from Martinez Santa-Olalla through the Spanish Ambassador, Jose Maria de Areilza, and from the Professor of History at the University of Buenos Aires, Claudio Sanchez-Albornoz. Menghin was not permitted to give lectures until 1953, and only consolidated his position when his criminal trial was cancelled in December 1956. In 1957 at the age of 69, he obtained the position of Acting Professor of Prehistory at the National University of La Plata. In 1958, Menghin was appointed Professor in General and Old World Prehistory at the University of Buenos Aires, where he retired in 1968, aged 80.