Breyer the Researcher

Research for victory?

During his time at Poznań Albert Breyer also worked on the big 'Map of German Settlements in Central Poland - 1:500 000'. In his talk on the occasion of post­humously granting the Copernicus award to Albert Breyer in 1940, Walter Kuhn said: 'This map gave for the first time, village by village, a detailed presentation of Germandom in an area that had not yet been recognized by the mother country. Therefore the map was politically significant and came ready to lead the German army as they invaded Poland.'[1] Walter Kuhn certainly overestimated the military significance of the map. Would military divisions have expected to be welcomed in all the villages marked as German settlements? What military importance can be expected from the information, that in 1919 there was a German school in a special village?

The posthumous overrating of the military significance of the map as well as the Copernicus award, the inauguration of an Albert-Breyer Haus at Warszawa and the renaming of a street at Sompolno was part of the advantage the propaganda machine took of Albert Breyer's tragic death.

The true political significance of the map was the fact that it documented German settlements for an area that - except for some short episodes - never really had been under German government. This documentation of German settlements gave the reason for claiming the area to be German Kulturboden and thereby German Volksboden, the scientific basis for occupation.

Other maps of ethnic structures, which might have been based on Albert Breyer's map, were used since 1940 as planning material for the expulsion and resettlement activities of the German occupation regime in Poland.

Jutta Dennerlein - April 2007