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My review is written in respectful memory of Hermann Bausinger (17 September 1926 – 24 November 2021), who uniquely inspired this book more than half a century before it was written.

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This book, Detmold 1969, is nothing less than a Geburtsschein (birth certificate), documenting not a rebirth, not a reorganization as I called it in German Volkskunde in 1986, but a new discipline. Section One is devoted exclusively to the 1969 meeting. Section Two includes an assessment of tape recordings made at the plenary session; a paper by one of the few female students who participated; a panel discussion with two Zeitzeugen (witnesses = who attended the 1969 and/or 2019 meeting); and, finally, the subsequent effect of the meeting on the open-air museum in Detmold. Section Three includes a response to the meeting by the Austrian folklorist Richard Wolfram (who did not attend), and five pieces documenting changes elsewhere, similar to or reflecting the 1969 gathering in Detmold: Switzerland, Slovenia, Holland, Israel, and the USA. My review will be primarily descriptive and less critical.

Section One - A Discipline in Change, a Conference with Consequences:

Silke Göttsch-Elten began her study of Volkskunde in 1972 and thus offers four approaches to understanding the conference, first, by looking at later assessments. Leading directly to the origins of the meeting, Utz Jeggle had pointed to the Munich School, which emphasized a contextual history for research and good riddance to the “mythischen Kram” (mythical rubbish), i.e., a more meaningful understanding of the relationship between culture and society. Second was the importance of students. Third was the so-called “march through the institutions,” meaning a revamping of the traditional hierarchy of an elite professorial rank. Fourth , name change. During this writing, fall of 2021, the DGV (German Folklore Society) changed its name to Deutsch Gesellschaft für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft (German Society for Empirical Cultural Studies).

Elisabeth Timm describes her approach to Detmold 1969 as a kind of reverse archaeology. She sees intense student involvement as a trending Vergemeinschaftung (communitarianism). DGV Chairman Gerhard Heilfurth pointed out that he had welcomed them, accepted their desire to make the discipline more social scientific, and expressed sympathy for their participation in the leadership of the society. Then, however, he switched his role to that of a pedagogical-authoritarian Ordinarius (full professor), angrily condemning their sweeping statements.

In one of the most significant sections of the book, Timm traces Gerhard Heilfurth’s early academic career, in which he devoted most of his research energy to Bergmannslieder (miners’ songs), and his political association with National Socialism (NS). In his response to a caustic flyer distributed by Tübingen students, he wrote of a “German collapse,” suggesting that he had lost his national and ideal world. The goals of the students, however, became ever clearer: who could participate, time for discussion, theoretical procedures, and place and voice in the discipline, meaning the journal and meetings preparation. Male members dominated even though about one-fourth were women and one-third of those were students. On the first day, Tuesday, September 23, the students who had been offered a side table for their discussion on the last day of the meeting, objected and now ascended the podium, with the professors. Personal academic titles of presenters were no longer included, only first and last names. Professors faced criticism, not of individuals—though the NS past of many could have been addressed—but of the discipline.

The two excursions planned for September 26 were devoted to settlement and economic history and the ongoing development of a regional open-air museum. Critics saw these excursions as tainted by the racial orientation of pre- and ancient history, common during NS, resulting in a division between museum and academic Volkskunde (more below). Film programs were to be presented while some were participating in the excursions. Nineteen films were actually shown; student reaction was sardonic.

Elisabeth Timm concludes with a series of thoughts about the results of Detmold: “Thinking is more rational [especially] if such insights do not result in a petrification of solutions, but changes them again and again as a tool, discusses and employs them....Perhaps it is appropriate to view all this in a more catholic way—not a return to mass in Latin—but to see scholarship not as some kind of earthly proof of a social utopia, but practicing individual truthfulness” (103).

Heinrich Stiewe describes in some detail both the origins of a working group for house (AHF) research and the four papers presented in parallel sessions to the DGV. He says that the confrontations with the students played little role in the program devoted to vernacular architecture. Two excursions were offered, and one or the other was attended by most of the AHF participants. In conclusion, Stiewe describes how the membership of the AHF decided to conduct their own annual gatherings and no longer participate with the DGV. Whether this had to do with the confrontations and debates with the Tübingen students is not found in the reports of the Detmold meeting.

Section Two - “Documentation and Reality”: Discussions and Experiences 1969 in Tradition and Retrospection:

The second part of the book is devoted primarily to Rückblicke (retrospection) and includes both a tape recording made at the plenary session, commentary by Zeitzeugen (witnesses), and an update on the open-air museum in Detmold.

Karen Bürkert summarizes six hours of recordings—the plenary session—where discussions and debates were clearly in reference to the proposals made by Tübingen students. Some of the recordings have been placed on the homepage of the Forum Alltagskultur in Baden-Württemberg (132, note 25). Bürkert describes “wild verbal encounters” that displaced the planned program as the day progressed, and which in later years were often described as Krach (din or racket).

Bärbel Kerkhoff-Hader was among the (very) few female students attending the workshop in Detmold. In a casual meeting with her Bonn Doktorvater, Matthias Zender, she found him “friendly, somewhat amused, but presumably irritated,” when he asked, “What are you doing here?” After all, students did not attend professional meetings, and especially not female students. Points made by Kerkhoff-Hader: the role of the discipline and its representatives during National Socialism; discussion of categories in the canon; widespread absence of social questioning; and the lack of social links to differentiations in society. She summarizes: “Criticism was hard and sweeping, since in the preceding two decades after the end of World War II war nicht Nichts geschehen (not nothing had happened).”

Friedemann Schmoll conducted a panel discussion with Wolfgang Emmerich and Konrad Köstlin. Wolfgang Emmerich was in the USA in 1969 on a guest professorship in Indiana, but was clearly part of the agenda, as was his 1968 dissertation. Leopold Schmidt of Vienna, in a review, accused Emmerich of behaving “presumptuously in dealing with matters which do not concern him,” his version of a repeated sentiment in Germany: “you are too young, you were not there during National Socialism, you have no right to judge.” Emmerich’s response summarizes to a large extent the feelings of the students: “We felt that we were part of a social upheaval” (168).

Konrad Köstlin begins with his statement, “In Detmold it was actually quite nice,” by which I can only presume that he was describing the developments and results of the confrontations. More important in Köstlin’s talk is a description of the divide that developed between academic and museum Volkskunde, which he describes as still today subcutaneously there; after all, it is more noble to be a professor than a museum director. On page 172 two important points are made. To be a member of the DGV you needed to be nominated and then voted in (!). Second, Akademisierung (formalizing) the membership covered over a hidden fear of coming too close to so-called “lay folklorists” and their NS background. Formalizing meant keeping your distance, but among the academics this was not easy, and most (including myself) in the 1950-60s were naive when speaking with such individuals.

Jan Carstensen describes the Detmold open-air museum and its development since the 1969 meeting, particularly the long and difficult task of removing the name Volkskunde, replacing it with Altagskultur. He describes exhibitions that attempted to offer closer looks at ZimmerWelten (room worlds), i.e., decorations of children’s rooms, and the translocation of a Jewish household to the museum. In a lengthy quotation from a press release, Carstensen indicates that even the name change indicates social self-image, and that Volkskunde and museum studies might once again be reconciled.

Section Three – International and Comparative Perspectives:

In a facsimile of a personal letter on November 9, 1969, to his friend Carl Lipp (Linz), Richard Wolfram (Vienna) described the Detmold meeting as a Sturmbö (wind squall), which he viewed as an Ansteckung (infection) coming from Germany.

Konrad J. Kuhn distinguishes between the Swiss traditional philological-historical approach (Hans Trümpy) and a contemporary social approach in both teaching and research, one that concentrated on actual problems and societal issues (Arnold Niederer). Ingrid Slavec Gradishnik describes historical developments of folklore in Slovenia, whose primary institutional promoter was Slavko Kremenshek at the university in Ljubljana. Kremenshek’s work ran counter to a “permanent aversion to theoretical endeavors, where ethnology remained largely a ‘collect and salvage’ project; ‘theorizing’ was considered a waste of energy and superfluous” (215). Rob van Ginkel begins with a bold clarification that prior to and during World War II in Holland “several folklorists had colluded or collaborated with the Nazi regime” (229). Early folklore studies in the Netherlands viewed regional and local survivals as “ancient traditions with pagan origins,” pointing out “Germanic roots” in folklife and folk dance. He cites Jan de Vries, who cherished anti-democratic ideas and became a renowned expert in Germanic mythology and religion.

Dani Schrire offers a history of Jewish folklore studies in Germany. In 1819, exactly 200 years before Detmold 2019, an association for Jewish culture and scholarship was founded, and a major contributor was Leopold Zunz, born in 1794 in Detmold. Folklore scholarship continued throughout the century and was further developed in 1898 by Max Grunwald and his journal Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für jüdische Volkskunde. Schrire then explores Walter Anderson’s collecting of Jewish folklore, 100 years before Detmold 2019. Schrire includes a personal handwritten letter from Walter Anderson to Israeli folklorist Dov Noy, who had invited him to speak at the First International Congress for Scholars of Jewish Folklore in the fall of 1959 in Tel Aviv. Anderson declined, his reasons were two, age 74, and his inability to understand lectures and discussions in Hebrew, saying that his knowledge of the language was limited to reading the Old Testament, but that he could have easily followed them in Yiddish.

John Holmes McDowell looks in considerable detail at some of the same difficulties surrounding the words Volk and folk in Germany and the United States. The term folkloristics has established itself as an inoffensive device for isolating the “study from the stuff” (267). McDowell describes potential drawbacks to such terminology as “the folklorization of others” and “alienation” that has a “trait of colonialism” and “primitivization” that leads to “falsification and kitcherization” and has historical associations with “exploitation and abuse.”

Detmold 1969 is unique in presenting both the beginnings and the consequences of disciplinary discussion and debate in Germany, changing it from the humanities to a social science, from Volkskunde to its new name—Deutsche Gesellschaft für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft—with new research methods and goals. It is well written, though there are some deficiencies in the editing, particularly in Section Three, the wording often reflects a variety known as World English, resulting in a lack of clarity. The confrontations, both generational and theoretical, are presented honestly, including caustic, taunting, sardonic, and mocking outbursts at the meeting. Scholars and students in the German-speaking world will refer to and cite this book repeatedly over the next years, and will be quite astounded to read about the behavior of professors many have come to know and respect in their own academic careers. Readers of German journals have been for some time now reading research on the Alltag(everyday life), some of which is interesting, but some not so very much. One must ask, is this what the Neutöner envisioned in 1969?

Editors' Note:

Please see the following link for an extended essay review of this work by James Dow:

https://jfr.sitehost.iu.edu/review.php?id=2711

[Review length:2048 words • Review posted on February 14, 2022]