India Institute of the Deutsche Akademie (1928–45)

Table of Con­tents
Back­ground | India Insti­tute 1928–1933 | India Insti­tute 1933–1945 | Archival Sources | (Bun­de­sarchiv) Fed­er­al Archives, Koblenz | State Archives of Bavaria (Bay­erisches Haupt­staat­sarchiv or BayH­s­tA) | Jour­nal of the DA | Leib­niz Insti­tute for Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ry (Insti­tut für Zeit­geschichte München-Berlin) | Fed­er­al Archives, Berlin-Lichter­felde | Thierfelder’s writ­ings | Con­clu­sion | End­notes | Bib­li­og­ra­phy

Background

The India Insti­tute (Indis­ch­er Auss­chuß) came into exis­tence in 1928 as a part of the Munich based Deutsche Akademie or “Ger­man Acad­e­my” (hence­forth DA). The lat­ter had been found­ed as a pri­vate cul­tur­al organ­i­sa­tion in 1925 by a group of aca­d­e­mics affil­i­at­ed to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich. The aim was to dis­sem­i­nate Ger­man lan­guage and cul­ture in the world. India Insti­tute was the first of a num­ber of com­mit­tees with­in the Deutsche Akademie that were estab­lished for spe­cif­ic nations.

The India Insti­tute was set up through the efforts of Tarak­nath Das, an Indi­an nation­al­ist liv­ing in Europe and Karl Haushofer, pro­fes­sor of Geog­ra­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich who was involved with the DA from the start. Haushofer had vis­it­ed India in 1908–1909 and had devel­oped a sym­pa­thet­ic inter­est towards the British colony (Spang, 2013: 336). The organ­isan­tion­al part of the India Insti­tute was entrust­ed to the young jour­nal­ist Franz Thier­felder. He was the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of DA from 1929–37 (Michels, 2005: 3).

After the First World War, Ger­many tried to com­pen­sate its lack of polit­i­cal clout in the inter­na­tion­al are­na with “soft pow­er,” exert­ed through sup­pos­ed­ly non-polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions like the DA which offi­cial­ly engaged in the spread of Ger­man cul­ture. In real­i­ty, the sep­a­ra­tion of polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al spheres was often only cos­met­ic (Scholten, 2000: 41–42). From its mod­est begin­nings dur­ing the Weimar Repub­lic, the DA rose to become the most impor­tant organ­i­sa­tion rep­re­sent­ing Nazi cul­tur­al pol­i­cy. It was banned by the occu­py­ing Amer­i­can forces in 1945. This also sig­ni­fied the end of the India Institute.

As part of the DA, the Insti­tute also claimed to be a non-polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion with the sole aim of pro­mot­ing cul­tur­al ties with India. This was to be done by pro­vid­ing stipends to Indi­an stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als to study and work in Ger­many, by invit­ing dis­tin­guished Indi­ans to Munich, and by spread­ing Ger­man lan­guage and cul­ture in India.

While there are sev­er­al schol­ar­ly stud­ies that crit­i­cal­ly exam­ine DA’s past (Har­volk, 1990, Kathe, 2005 and Michels, 2005), the tra­jec­to­ry of the India Insti­tute remains unchart­ed, except for a rel­a­tive­ly short study (Framke, 2013: 66–79). My present research (as part of the DFG project “Indol­o­gy in Nazi Ger­many”), indi­cates that from its very begin­ning, India Insti­tute espoused the inter­ests of the Ger­man state.

The “pure­ly cul­tur­al” image of the DA and its affil­i­at­ed insti­tutes ren­dered them an aura of polit­i­cal innocu­ous­ness and cred­i­bil­i­ty. Hence, pro­pa­gan­da under­tak­en by them was par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive. Their non-polit­i­cal façade also pro­vid­ed good cov­er for espi­onage. The NS regime increas­ing­ly took advan­tage of these con­di­tions. In exchange, the DA received much need­ed finan­cial assis­tance and esteem. Despite British sur­veil­lance, India Insti­tute could car­ry on pro­pa­gan­da and espi­onage in India till the out­break of the Sec­ond World War.

In the fol­low­ing sec­tions, I first pro­vide a brief overview of the Institute’s his­to­ry till 1945, based on my own archival research as well as sec­ondary sources, before dis­cussing rel­e­vant archival sources on the subject.

India Institute 1928–1933

Dur­ing the years of Weimar Repub­lic, Germany’s approach towards India entailed pro­ject­ing itself as a covert sym­pa­this­er of India’s strife towards eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and polit­i­cal auton­o­my. Fol­low­ing this course, the India Insti­tute col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Alexan­der von Hum­boldt Foun­da­tion, which was a front for the schol­ar­ship pro­gram of the For­eign Min­istry. The Insti­tute and the Foun­da­tion joint­ly pro­vid­ed schol­ar­ships to Indi­ans with the aim of attract­ing sym­pa­thy for Ger­many (Impekoven, 2013:20).  

Ger­many, which had com­mer­cial inter­ests in India, could not afford to antag­o­nise the British colo­nial author­i­ties since the lat­ter con­trolled access to the Indi­an mar­ket and pro­duc­tion (Barooah, 2018). Hence, India Institute’s pol­i­cy was to encour­age mod­er­ate Indi­an nation­al­ists and hon­our Indi­an icons who were accept­able to the British colo­nial estab­lish­ment. The Insti­tute also realised that these elite Indi­ans were like­ly to be the best con­duits for prop­a­gat­ing Germany’s views and inter­ests in India.

A num­ber of Ger­man Uni­ver­si­ties (Munich being the fore­most), Tech­ni­cal Acad­e­mies as well as com­mer­cial firms like Siemens and Allianz co-oper­at­ed with the Insti­tute in pro­vid­ing schol­ar­ships and trainee­ships to Indi­ans. These firms had branch­es in India and sought to use the Insti­tute to pro­mote their com­mer­cial interests.

The Insti­tute, in turn, need­ed aca­d­e­mics with dis­cur­sive knowl­edge of India for deal­ing with the coun­try as well as to famil­iar­ize Ger­man opin­ion-mak­ing class­es with India, in order to rein­force its own sta­tus as a medi­a­tor of Indo-Ger­man cul­tur­al rela­tions. This demand was ful­filled by a num­ber of schol­ars from var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, includ­ing indol­o­gists.[i]

India Institute 1933–1945

After the Nazis came to pow­er in 1933, the DA mobi­lized itself to con­form to the new regime’s expec­ta­tions, in the hope of get­ting nec­es­sary finan­cial help. Trans­for­ma­tions in the DA after 1933 includ­ed expelling the “polit­i­cal­ly and racial­ly unde­sir­able” mem­bers from its gov­ern­ing units. In 1934, Karl Haushofer was made Pres­i­dent of both the DA as well as the India Insti­tute. Haushofer was not a mem­ber of the Nazi par­ty but his geopo­lit­i­cal the­o­ries enjoyed some respect in Nazi cir­cles. He was expect­ed to bring in funds from the regime with­out tar­nish­ing DA’s apo­lit­i­cal image. Haushofer’s stu­dent and friend Rudolf Heß, now deputy to Hitler, was wel­comed in the DA´s Exec­u­tive Coun­cil (Michels, 2005:105–111).

One of the “tasks” that the India Insti­tute took upon itself after 1933 was to defend the Nazi regime against indict­ments of ris­ing racism towards Indi­ans, reports of which appeared fre­quent­ly in Indi­an press. The result of such neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty was a tem­po­rary decrease in the num­ber of Indi­ans apply­ing to pur­sue aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies or pro­fes­sion­al train­ing in Ger­many. On behalf of the India Insti­tute, Thier­felder and Das embarked on a counter pro­pa­gan­da which insist­ed that ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the Insti­tute were “safe” in Ger­many if they desist­ed from “polit­i­cal activ­i­ties,” a euphemism for left-wing pol­i­tics includ­ing rad­i­cal anti-colo­nial­ism. Instead, stipend hold­ers were to acquire “the best of Ger­man cul­ture,” which stood for the Nation­al Social­ist worldview.

Das left for the US in 1934, though he con­tin­ued to be a cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber of the Insti­tute. His wife Mary Keat­ing Das financed a schol­ar­ship for med­i­cine from 1936 and was made a life mem­ber. Anoth­er Indi­an spokesman for the Insti­tute was the “Ger­manophil” Benoy Kumar Sarkar, a poly­math and pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­cut­ta. Sarkar had trav­elled exten­sive­ly in Europe, in the course of which he had devel­oped friend­ly rela­tions with Karl Haushofer. Through him, the India insti­tute arranged for Sarkar’s appoint­ment as a guest pro­fes­sor at the Tech­ni­cal Acad­e­my in Munich in 1930–31. While Das did not approve of Nazi Germany’s ris­ing anti-Semi­tism, Sarkar was will­ing to defend it. He saw in the “Third Reich” a reju­ve­nat­ed Ger­many and an inspi­ra­tion for India. Sarkar con­sis­tent­ly pro­mot­ed the inter­ests of the Insti­tute and Nazi Ger­many in India.

An aspect of the Insti­tute was its par­tial­i­ty towards schol­ars and mys­tics asso­ci­at­ed with Hin­du revival­ist move­ments. A com­mon goal shared by these dis­parate move­ments was to revi­tal­ize Hin­duism by tak­ing it back to its pur­port­ed­ly glo­ri­ous Vedic Aryan roots. After 1933, the India Insti­tute offered pro­pa­gan­da plat­forms and schol­ar­ships to indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with such Hin­du revival­ists. The inten­tion was to use these “agents” to spread Nazi pro­pa­gan­da among Hin­dus through analo­gies based on Aryanism.

The Insti­tute was par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to a Hin­du reform move­ment called the Arya Samaj or the “Soci­ety of Aryans” which imag­ined India as a Hin­du “Aryan” nation where oth­er reli­gious groups had no right­ful place. The “Aryan con­tent,” along with the majori­tar­i­an and author­i­tar­i­an char­ac­ter of this move­ment, made it com­pat­i­ble with some racial and dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an aspects of Nazism, includ­ing a eugeni­cist dimen­sion (Gould, 2004: 157–158). Though appar­ent­ly non-polit­i­cal, Arya Samaj also had an under­cur­rent of anti-colo­nial activism (Fis­ch­er-Tine, 2013).

The India Insti­tute col­lab­o­rat­ed with the depart­ment of “Aryan Stud­ies” at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich, offer­ing schol­ar­ships to Indi­ans to study at the Uni­ver­si­ty and teach Indi­an lan­guages. Can­di­dates asso­ci­at­ed with the Arya Samaj were unof­fi­cial­ly giv­en pref­er­ence. The Indol­o­gist Walther Wüst, mem­ber of the India Insti­tute and pro­fes­sor of “Aryan Stud­ies” at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich, arranged to set up this posi­tion. Wüst was a mem­ber of both the Nazi par­ty and the SS. After 1933, Wüst‘s schol­ar­ship often tried to con­nect “Aryan India” with Nazi Ger­many (Jungin­ger, 2008).

Notably, the India Insti­tute also encour­aged “racial anthro­pol­o­gy” based on Aryan dis­course. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er Ger­man insti­tu­tions, it invit­ed Indi­an “race sci­en­tists” as aca­d­e­m­ic guests and stu­dents in Germany.

By 1936, despite Haushofer’s efforts, DA’s eco­nom­ic posi­tion became pre­car­i­ous. In order to attract funds, DA increas­ing­ly turned towards the gov­ern­ment, which on its part start­ed to use it more inten­sive­ly. The amount of influ­ence that the regime was to exer­cise in the DA became a con­tentious issue, lead­ing to the res­ig­na­tion of both Thier­felder and Haushofer. Thier­felder left the DA but con­tin­ued to con­duct pro­pa­gan­da for Nazi Ger­many. Haushofer remained in DA’s exec­u­tive coun­cil and suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing his pro­tégé Walther Wüst the Pres­i­dent of the Insti­tute in 1937 (Michels, 2005: 102–119). In the same year, Wüst also became the Pres­i­dent of the SS-Ahnenerbe, Hein­rich Himmler’s orga­ni­za­tion for pseu­do-sci­en­tif­ic “ances­tral research.” Wüst tried to inte­grate India Insti­tute into the net­work of SS and the Ahnenerbe in dif­fer­ent ways.

In June 1938, the DA was placed under the For­eign Ministry’s “cul­tur­al polit­i­cal sec­tion” which, along with oth­er func­tions, also con­duct­ed anti-British and pro-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da in India. Thus, both DA and the India Insti­tute became ful­ly inte­grat­ed in Nazi Germany’s exter­nal pol­i­tics (Kathe, 2005:75).  The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of DA was com­plete when Lud­wig Siebert, a com­mit­ted Nation­al Social­ist and chief min­is­ter of Bavaria, became its pres­i­dent in 1939.

With the start of the war, “cul­tur­al ties” with India became impos­si­ble to main­tain. The India Insti­tute now open­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­pa­gan­dis­tic ven­ture to present Nazi Ger­many as a cham­pi­on of India’s inde­pen­dence by pro­mot­ing books that were strong­ly anti-British in tone. After Siebert’s death in Novem­ber 1942, Walther Wüst became the work­ing head of DA in addi­tion to being the head of the India Insti­tute. He con­tin­ued in this role till Arthur Seyß-Inquart, “Reichsmin­is­ter” and Com­mis­sion­er for occu­pied Hol­land, became the Pres­i­dent of DA on 10^th Feb­ru­ary, 1944, under­scor­ing the DA’s pres­ti­gious position.

The con­cur­rence of inter­ests of the DA/India Insti­tute and the Nazi regime was best reflect­ed in the pro­files and activ­i­ties of the three lec­tors who were sent to India by DA to teach Ger­man. Apart from this offi­cial task, they were semi-offi­cial­ly required to engage in “cul­tur­al polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” which denot­ed espi­onage and pro­pa­gan­da for the NS regime. The first of these lec­tors was Dr. Heinz Nitzschke, who had fin­ished his doc­tor­al stud­ies at the Leipzig Uni­ver­sität, arrived in Cal­cut­ta in Novem­ber 1933. Nitzschke was a mem­ber of the Nazi par­ty, who lost lit­tle time in pro­mot­ing the “Third Reich” in India. He was suc­ceed­ed by Horst Pohle, a mem­ber of the Nazi par­ty as well as the Nazi Teach­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion (NSLB), in 1934.  Pohle´s jour­ney to India was paid by Ger­man For­eign Min­istry. The third lec­tor was Alfred Wür­fel, trained as a Volkss­chule teacher who spe­cial­ized in Eng­lish, also a mem­ber of the NSLB, who arrived in Banaras in Octo­ber 1935. Both the lec­tors were interned by the British author­i­ties as “ene­my aliens” after the Sec­ond World War started.

Archival Sources

Impor­tant archival mate­ri­als on the India Insti­tute are at the India Office Records, Lon­don, the Nation­al Archives of India, New Del­hi and the West Ben­gal State Archives, Kolkata. The archives in Ger­many that have mate­ri­als on the India Insti­tute are: (i) Fed­er­al Archives (Bun­de­sarchiv), Koblenz (ii) State Archive of Bavaria (Bay­erisches Haupt­staat­sarchiv, hence­forth BayH­s­tA) Munich (iii) The Leib­niz-Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ry (Insti­tut für Zeit­geschichte München-Berlin), Munich, and (iv) (Bun­de­sarchiv) Fed­er­al Archives, Berlin-Lichter­felde. Sum­maries of the rel­e­vant hold­ings in each of these archives are pro­vid­ed below.

(Bundesarchiv) Federal Archives, Koblenz

The Nach­lass or papers of Karl Hauhofer (sig­na­ture NL 1122) pro­vide sub­stan­tial infor­ma­tion about the India Insti­tute. Glimpses of the Institute‘s begin­ning can be found in Haushofer’s cor­re­spon­dence with Tarak­nath Das (NL1122/6). The cor­re­spon­dence, which start­ed in July, 1925, shows that an under­ly­ing anti-British sen­ti­ment shared by the two formed the back­drop to the foun­da­tion of India Insti­tute. The idea of such an Insti­tute came from Das. Haushofer man­aged to con­vince the DA of its neces­si­ty. The let­ters show that India Insti­tute start­ed actu­al work from 1929.

Haushofer’s inter­est in India’s anti-colo­nial pol­i­tics is record­ed through his exchange with the rad­i­cal activist Viren­dranath Chat­topad­hyaya, who then lived in Berlin (NL1122/5). Chat­topad­hyaya and Das were part of the Berlin-based India Inde­pen­dence Com­mit­tee formed dur­ing the First World War (Liebau, 2019).[ii] Haushofer’s cor­re­spon­dence with Benoy Kumar Sarkar (NL 1122/28) pro­vides an idea of the latter’s engage­ments for Ger­many before and after 1933.

The cor­re­spon­dence of Das and Thier­felder, pre­served under the sig­na­ture NL1122/6, bear tes­ti­mo­ny to their untir­ing efforts to induce the gov­ern­ment of Bavaria, dif­fer­ent aca­d­e­m­ic and tech­ni­cal insti­tu­tions, as well as indus­tri­al firms in Ger­many to assist the India Institute.

State Archives of Bavaria (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv or BayHstA)

Pri­ma­ry mate­ri­als pre­served at the BayH­s­tA in Munich (under the sig­na­tures MK 40443–40445) are indis­pens­able for any study on the India Insti­tute. Among the hold­ings here are lists of mem­bers of the India Insti­tute and “cor­re­spond­ing hon­orary mem­bers” from India. The lat­ter includ­ed Indi­an lumi­nar­ies like the Nobel Lau­re­ates C.V. Raman and Rabindra Nath Tagore, who were hon­oured by the Insti­tute as they toured Ger­many (MK 40444). The annu­al reports of the Insti­tute acces­si­ble under the sig­na­tures MK40443-40444, pro­vide details of the institute’s activ­i­ties from 1929–1933. 

Under the sig­na­ture MK 40443, there is a record of an inter­est­ing lec­ture series orga­nized by the India Insti­tute and held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich in the win­ter of 1932/33. Some of the lec­tures had polit­i­cal under­tones which would assume greater sig­nif­i­cance in the Third Reich. For instance, Karl Haushofer spoke on the geopo­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of India. Sim­i­lar­ly, Indol­o­gist Jakob Wil­helm Hauer, Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tübin­gen and a mem­ber of the India Insti­tute who would go on to offer dif­fer­ent ser­vices to the NS regime, spoke on Yoga as a part of the glo­ri­ous spir­i­tu­al his­to­ry of Nordic Indo-Aryans, whom he pro­ject­ed as ances­tors of mod­ern Germans.

Journal of the DA

An invalu­able source for the his­to­ry of the India Insti­tute is the jour­nal of the DA, titled Mit­teilun­gen or “Announce­ments” avail­able at BayH­s­tA (sig­na­ture Z236). Among the sig­nif­i­cant entries is one from the first issue of March 1936, doc­u­ment­ing the expul­sion of two “Jew­ish Indol­o­gists,” Lucian Scher­man and Otto Strauß from the Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee of the India Insti­tute (Mit­teilun­gen: 165). This announce­ment con­tra­dicts Thierfelder’s post war claim that he man­aged to avoid imple­ment­ing the noto­ri­ous “Aryan para­graph” of 1933 in the DA (Scholten, 2000:100).

The jour­nal records instances of the India Institute’s attempts to defend the inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion of Nazi Ger­many. The third issue from Novem­ber 1934 men­tions, for exam­ple, that M.S.Khanna, an erst­while stipend hold­er of the Insti­tute, pub­lished a “mis­lead­ing and par­tial­ly made up account” of the harass­ments faced by Indi­an stu­dents in Ger­many. The Insti­tute respond­ed by mobi­liz­ing its asso­ciates and erst­while ben­e­fi­cia­ries in India to write arti­cles coun­ter­ing this report (Mit­teilun­gen: 398).

Mit­teilun­gen reg­u­lar­ly report­ed on Benoy Kumar Sarkar’s attempts to pro­mote aspects of Nazi Ger­many through var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions as well as through a “Ben­gali Ger­many Knowl­edge Soci­ety” that he had estab­lished in Cal­cut­ta in 1932. From these reports it tran­spires that erst­while stipend-hold­ers of the India Insti­tute were involved in this Soci­ety as orga­niz­ers and speak­ers. After 1933, the Soci­ety arranged lec­tures on sub­jects asso­ci­at­ed with Nation­al Social­ism — like nation­al com­mu­ni­ty (Volks­ge­mein­schaft), mil­i­tari­sa­tion, and genet­ic selec­tion. The Insti­tute rec­og­nized Sarkar’s con­tri­bu­tion by elect­ing him as one of its hon­orary life mem­bers in 1933 (Mit­teilun­gen: Octo­ber 1933: 392).

The con­nec­tions between the India Insti­tute and Hin­du revival­ism as well as racial anthro­pol­o­gy can also be traced from dif­fer­ent issues of Mit­teilun­gen. For exam­ple, a lec­ture deliv­ered by a guest of India Insti­tute, Pro­fes­sor B.S. Guha, titled “The racial foun­da­tion of the Indo-Aryans and racial mis­ce­gena­tion in India” was pub­lished in 1935 (Sec­ond Issue July 1935: 488–496).

From 1937, the jour­nal changed its name to Deutsche Kul­tur im Leben der Völk­er or DKLV (“Ger­man cul­ture in the lives of the peo­ple”). Hence­forth it rou­tine­ly pub­lished Walther Wüst’s writ­ings glo­ri­fy­ing Germany’s “Aryan past” as well as reviews of books cham­pi­oning Indi­an anti-colo­nial strug­gle. A notable exam­ple is Wüst’s sym­pa­thet­ic review of the Ger­man trans­la­tion of the polem­i­cal book, “The Indi­an war of inde­pen­dence” writ­ten anony­mous­ly by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the anti-colo­nial activist turned cham­pi­on of politi­cized Hin­duism (DKLV, Decem­ber 1941: 122). 

Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin)

The archive of the Leib­niz Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary His­to­ry (Insti­tut für Zeit­geschichte München-Berlin), in Munich has pro­to­cols of some of the meet­ings of India Insti­tute from 1934–1938 (Sig­na­ture: MA 1190 and MA241). The pro­to­col of a meet­ing held on 23^rd Octo­ber, 1934 for exam­ple, reveals that the India Insti­tute blamed Mus­soli­ni and his gov­ern­ment for insti­gat­ing Indi­an stu­dents against Ger­many (MA1190). Anoth­er meet­ing held on 1^st Feb­ru­ary, 1937 (MA 241) records the relief expressed by the Exec­u­tive com­mit­tee about the depar­ture from Europe of “cer­tain peo­ple” who foment­ed dis­tur­bance among Indi­an stu­dents in Berlin and Munich (allud­ing to the nation­al­ist leader Sub­has Chan­dra Bose who insti­gat­ed Indi­an stu­dents to protest against racism dur­ing his vis­it in 1934). The pro­to­col of the meet­ing of the Insti­tute on 27^th Octo­ber, 1938 (MA1190) indi­cates that Benoy Sarkar post­poned accept­ing the Institute’s invi­ta­tion to vis­it Ger­many because the “neg­a­tive pro­pa­gan­da” about Nazi Ger­many actu­al­ly scared him.

Federal Archives, Berlin-Lichterfelde

A hold­ing at Fed­er­al Archives, Berlin (Sig­na­ture R51) pro­vides insights into the “cul­tur­al polit­i­cal activ­i­ties” under­tak­en by Horst Pohle and Alfred Wür­fel, the two lec­tors sent to India. The hold­ing con­tains the cor­re­spon­dence of the two lec­tors with var­i­ous func­tionar­ies of the DA. “Reports” sent in 1938–1939 were some­times part of this cor­re­spon­dence though more “sen­si­tive” infor­ma­tion were sent through diplo­mat­ic chan­nels of the Ger­man Con­sulate in Cal­cut­ta, as the let­ters claim.

Würfel’s “activ­i­ties” (sig­na­ture R51\10128) includ­ed the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pub­li­ca­tions pro­mot­ing the “New Ger­many” among his stu­dents, some of whom were pro­fes­sors at the Banaras Hin­du Uni­ver­si­ty. Pohle’s let­ters (sig­na­ture R51\144) are more explic­it. They reveal that he kept a tab on the Euro­pean Jews who sought refuge in Cal­cut­ta after flee­ing the Nazis. He also report­ed on India’s polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion and not­ed the country’s respons­es to hap­pen­ings in Ger­many. As a Nazi par­ty mem­ber, Pohle kept in touch with the Nazi exter­nal cell (Aus­land­sor­gan­i­sa­tion) based in Bom­bay. Both the lec­tors were aware of being spied on by British sur­veil­lance, as is clear from their correspondence.

Thierfelder’s writings

A brochure titled “India Insti­tute of the Deutsche Akademie,” com­posed by Thier­felder and pub­lished in 1937, pro­vides a detailed “first-hand account” of the Insti­tute. The brochure sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly names the Institute’s office bear­ers, dif­fer­ent kinds of mem­bers, stipend hold­ers and guests. India Institute’s polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion is man­i­fest in the state­ment that “For­eign anti-Ger­man pro­pa­gan­dists under the guise of stu­dents are not wel­come” (Thier­felder, 1937: 7–8). The brochure also pro­vides visu­al records of the Institute’s past in the form of a num­ber of photographs.

In 1959, Thier­felder pub­lished anoth­er arti­cle on the India Insti­tute com­mem­o­rat­ing thir­ty years of its exis­tence. In this essay, he pre­sent­ed the Insti­tute as a polit­i­cal­ly neu­tral orga­ni­za­tion which kept its dis­tance from the Indi­an anti-colo­nial move­ment as well as Nazi pol­i­tics (Thier­felder 1959: 92–102). This arti­cle is a per­fect exam­ple of a ret­ro­spec­tive­ly manip­u­lat­ed account of the past, as this brief review of the Institute’s his­to­ry demonstrates.

Conclusion

The sources from dif­fer­ent Ger­man archives make it clear that the India Insti­tute, much like its par­ent organ­i­sa­tion, the DA, iden­ti­fied with the con­cerns of suc­ces­sive Ger­man regimes. After 1933, the Insti­tute became increas­ing­ly involved in a cul­tur­al pol­i­cy that was com­pat­i­ble with the inter­ests of the NS regime, which grant­ed it finan­cial secu­ri­ty and pres­tige in return. Fol­low­ing the out­break of the Sec­ond World War, the India Insti­tute open­ly and com­plete­ly iden­ti­fied with Nazi Germany.

Endnotes

[i] Apart from those men­tioned in this arti­cle, the indol­o­gists at the Insti­tute also includ­ed Hel­muth von Glase­napp and Wil­helm Geiger.

[ii] See also Heike Liebau’s entry on the India Inde­pen­dence Com­mit­tee: Liebau, Heike, “‚Unternehmungen und Aufwiegelun­gen‘: Das Berlin­er Indis­che Unab­hängigkeit­skomi­tee in den Akten des Poli­tis­chen Archivs des Auswär­ti­gen Amts (1914–1920)”. MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con (2019): 11 pp, https://www.projekt-mida.de/rechercheportal/reflexicon/.

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Bai­jayan­ti Roy, Goethe-Uni­ver­sität Frank­furt am Main