Deutsch als Weltsprache? Franz Thierfelder, the Deutsche Akademie in Munich and the Promotion of the German Language Abroad, 1923-1945

The Deutsche Akademie (DA) in Munich was founded in the contextof a general upsurge in cultural diplomacy in Germany afterthe First World War and it was the precursor of today's GoetheInstitute. After a difficult start, by the early 1930s the DAhad become the leading institution in the promotion of the Germanlanguage abroad. The emergence of the DA's language policy wasclosely intertwined with the general development of German culturaldiplomacy, which was largely financed by the AuswärtigesAmt but executed by private associations. It was also influencedby the discussions in the 1920s about the role of language inshaping German national identity, by contemporary developmentsin German linguistics and language teaching, and by the discourseof the socalled ‘conservative revolution’. FranzThierfelder, secretary-general of the DA, managed to forge thesedevelopments into a coherent argument as to why Germany shouldintensify its language policy, centre it around the DA, anddirect it mainly towards the Balkan countries. The languagepolicy of the DA remained largely undisturbed by the Nazi seizureof power until the outbreak of war, even though the emphasiswas now on race rather than language as the determining factorin German national identity. The reason for this was, firstly,that the cultural diplomacy of the Auswärtiges Amt andits private institutions such as the DA continued to be dominatedfor some time by non-Nazis and, secondly, that Germany's culturaldiplomacy was dictated more by the constraints and dynamicsof international politics and by economic necessities than byideology. It was only after the outbreak of war that the expansionof the DA's language programme became closely linked to theracially motivated ‘new order’ for a Europe underNazi rule.