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Himmler and 10th Century England
I am currently working on a monograph on the modern historiography of Anglo-Saxon charter studies. Several very important articles arguing for the existence of a tenth-century royal writing office were authored by Dr. Richard Drögereit in the 1930s. I have found evidence that Professor Albert Brackmann, editor of the series Deutschland und der Osten wrote letters of recommendation to Reichsführer-SS Himmler and the SS-Ahnenerbe in hope of Drögereit's receiving a subvention to continue his manuscript studies of Anglo-Saxon charters at the British Museum.
While I occasionally teach modern German history to undergraduates, my research expertise is in 10th-11th century England and Germany and I am somewhat at a loss as to where I might find any extant correspondence in the files of the RFSS or the Ahnenerbe on Drögereit's application. With your unparallelled familiarity with archival materials of the National Socialist period in mind, I hope that you might be able to give me some guidance for this research on possible SS funding of Drögereit's research. You have my thanks for your kind attention.
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David
Irving replies:
Dear GregoryThe files of Himmler and of the Ahnenerbe were extensively microfilmed by the Americans after WW2, and these microfilms, the T175 series, can be obtained from the National Archives. First you should consult the Guides to these microfilms, which were published originally as oblong foolscap (or legal-) sized catalogues and are well worth reading; most University Libraries will have a set of the Guides; I had a set but all my files were seized in May and I am now lacking them. The National Archives have put them online as pdf files since then. ("Guides to the Captured German Records" prepared by the American Historical association for the National Archives.)
Secondly, when I used to research in the Berlin Document Center controlled by the US Mission in Berlin, I saw that they had very extensive files of the Ahnenerbe there. These were organised by name.
The BDC files were subsequently taken over after a long battle by the Bundesarchiv, after the entire series had been microfilmed by the Americans; so those films will also be available in Washington, and the original files can be viewed at the Bundesarchiv.
Their address is: Bundesarchiv, Finckensteinallee 63, 12205 Berlin Germany
It will certainly also be worth writing to them direct with your query.
David Irving