"Some short business trips": Kurt Forstreuter and the Looting of Archives in Poland and Lithuania, 1939-1942
ENRegarding the control of historical research and the registration of Jewish and Polish populations, the Prussian archival administration embraced Nazi ideology relatively early on. When the German-occupied territories of northern Poland were incorporated into the East Prussian administration, these principles were expanded towards the creation of a colonial administration consisting mainly of Germans and Volksdeutsche; the looting and use of the region’s cultural goods for the purposes of the colonialists; and the employment of the local non-German population as slave laborers. The archivists implementing these principles were often also active in Ostforschung (research of the East), thereby shaping the ideological framework for their own daily work. This article seeks access to this topic via a limited biographical study of one Königsberg archivist, Dr. Kurt Forstreuter. While Forstreuter was not responsible for any of the major archival policies in the East, he nevertheless loyally followed given instructions, and used his expertise to further reflect Nazi ideology in his archival work. His work itinerary sheds light upon the archives’ responsibility for the comprehensive looting of cultural goods, as well as the archivists’ participation in the administration of the Holocaust.
