Das Deutsche Führerlexikon 1934/1935

The German leader lexicon is a biographical and organizational reference book on the German Empire from 1934.

The work was published at the publishing house Stollberg and is divided into two sections, each with its own pagination. The first part ( " Biographical part " ) extends over 552 pages and includes more than 1,500 biographical entries, some with photographs of the persons described. The majority of people are biographisierten ministers and senior ministry officials and functionaries of the Nazi Party, the SA, the SS and other party structures, to a lesser extent other public figures, such as business leaders and bishops. All registered persons are men, women are completely absent. The second part ( " building in motion, the state and the people" ) is 156 pages long and provides an overview of the organizational structure of ministries and other state authorities, of party offices and agencies of the Nazi Party and of other more or less important public bodies.

The book was published in a first edition in June 1934, and reflects the state from April / May 1934 resist. This issue was withdrawn due to the events of the Rohm affair in July 1934. A revised reprint (which is not marked as such ) was published in August. The foreword is the 2nd of August as prior information. In the reprint were some individuals who were included in the original edition, blotted out. The register their names were pasted over with small white stripes. The articles about them in the article were in part the artwork replaced by white spots, so are apparently meaningless, longer white breaks between some articles on various points of the second edition.

In addition to the pragmatic function of the leader lexicon as a kind of handbook of public life, it also fulfilled propagandische purposes by contributing it to a glorification of the portrayed individuals and organizations. However, the political tendency is more important in the preface as in, usually quite sober outer biographical stages and functions together in ranks, short biographies to bear. The biographical sketches are largely based on self-reports of persons shown to the publisher. Accordingly, there is the possibility that the people depicted their Vita to their personal interests or in accordance with their wishes, as they wanted to be perceived, according to " nicely colored ." In addition, the work of a party official examination board of the NSDAP was submitted.

In scientific research, the leader lexicon, is used as a source for Eruierung innocuous biographical basic data, which can be assumed in general that it provides correct information, as a falsification of this data is extremely unlikely due to their lack of propaganda effectiveness. Frequently, but not always, is mentioned commenting on the end is based on the work of researchers in their use that the information of the book can be seen with caution. To the type of information that are often taken from the leader lexicon includes, for example, what training a certain person went through in their youth, or which official function she held at a given time. Furthermore, the work has been used for statements on meta-level. So Joachim Fest came in his sketch of Joachim von Ribbentrop in his book The Face of the Third Reich to the conclusion that Ribbentrop, despite his position as head of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the party in 1934 still a fairly meaningless, or at least in the circles of the party leadership of the NSDAP not particularly was worth an estimated personality, as the leader lexicon of 1934, no entry would have had him still while bein even consider numerous lower functionaries (such as district leader ).

Daniel Lerner, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and George K. Schueller submitted as part of the Stanford Elite studies in the 1950s, an analysis of the Nazi elite ago, based on the leader lexicon. It was one-tenth (159 people) of the detailed biographies contained in this work selected by a random process as a sample and analyzed in detail in order to obtain general conclusions about the leadership of the regime as a social group as part of the induction process. Michael Rademacher criticized this approach because it due to the fact that " major groups " as the government president missing in the work, assumes that " not based on objective criteria, the most important to the Nazi state figures are presented, but that the choice was rather arbitrary is ". He believes that the book is only suitable for the investigation of self-representation of the NSDAP as an elite, but not for an investigation "of the actual composition of the elite of the Third Reich. " He uses it in his work on the district leader of the NSDAP only reconstruction of individual biographies, but not for general statements about the he examined group as a social unit. David Schoenbaum also points out that the book is not a definitive picture of who was a leading figure in the Nazi state, but only presents those people whose idea was retained as an important personality is appropriate and desirable ( [it] what no guaranteed guide to who was who, to who was a leader, but only to what it thought expedient Those Desirable or to call a leader ). So noted on the basis of learners, in particular, the military, such as Erwin Rommel, Heinz Guderian Alfred Jodl or have not been included.

Reviews of the book from the postwar period are mostly critical, but at the same time recognizing its usefulness as a source: Oron James Hale calls the book about " revealing in particular regarding Nazi figures of the second set ."

Expenditure

• The German leader Encyclopedia, published by Otto Stollberg, Berlin, 1934.

Research literature

• Harold Dwight Lasswell, Daniel Lerner: World Revolutionary Elites: Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements. Westport 1980.