[Propaganda map] Deutsches Volkstum in aller Welt. Bearbeitet von Dr. Friedrich Lange.

Description

This striking world map, titled Deutsches Volkstum in aller Welt (German Folkdom Throughout the World), is a compelling example of ideological cartography produced in Nazi Germany during the late 1930s. Published in Berlin by the Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland (League for Germandom Abroad) and conceptually derived from the writings of the nationalist publicist Friedrich Lange, the map seeks to portray the German people as a vast transnational community united by a singular language, ancestry, and culture.

Through a sophisticated combination of statistical annotation, symbolic overlays, and vivid cartographic emphasis, the sheet visualizes German populations scattered across Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, asserting that nearly one hundred million individuals worldwide belong to Germany’s linguistic sphere. In doing so, it uses geography for political argumentation. The map presents the global German diaspora not as a collection of migrant communities, but as fragments of a single ethnic nation whose natural center lies is the “Reich.”

Geographic Distribution of German Populations

At the center of the map lies Central Europe, represented as the heartland of German ethnic territory. The German Reich and its adjacent regions are shown in solid red, emphasizing their status as the core of the global German people. Moving outward, the map identifies extensive minority populations in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Large clusters of German communities are shown in Poland, Czechoslovakia (particularly the Sudetenland), Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states. The ethnic Germans living outside the Reich were collectively described in Nazi terminology as Volksdeutsche. Their depiction in close visual association with Germany implicitly supports the regime’s claim that these communities belonged within a broader German national sphere.

Beyond Europe, one finds the global German diaspora represented. The Americas receive particular emphasis. In the United States, large regions of red stippling cover the Midwest and parts of the Great Plains, reflecting the historically significant German immigrant communities established there in the nineteenth century. Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay likewise display clusters of German settlement. Africa is represented both through colonial history and ethnic settlement. Former German colonies, such as German Southwest Africa (Namibia) and German East Africa (Tanzania), are prominently noted, while additional communities are noted in South Africa and other regions.

Particularly revealing is the inclusion of Dutch, Flemish, and Afrikaner populations as Germanic groups, reflecting the racial and linguistic paradigms that dominated German nationalist thought at the time. And finally, in Asia and the Pacific, we find smaller enclaves in China, the Pacific islands, and Australia. Each location is accompanied by numerical estimates of German populations, underscoring the diaspora’s global scale.

Insets

Two insets in the upper corners provide additional ideological and statistical context for this sheet. The upper-left inset bears the title Schriftsprachen und Mundarten im europäischen Nordwesten (Written languages and dialects in Northwestern Europe) and is intended to illustrate the linguistic relationships between German dialects and related Germanic languages in the Netherlands, Belgium, and adjacent regions. By depicting Dutch and Flemish dialects within a broader Germanic continuum, the inset supports the claim that, in cultural terms, these populations belong to the German world.

The upper-right inset presents a circular chart titled “Zahl der Deutschen in Mitteleuropa” (Number of Germans in Central Europe), which lists population estimates for German minorities in neighboring states in a diagrammatic format. Among the independent Central European nations listed here, we find Poland with 1,200,000; Czechoslovakia with 3,200,000; Hungary with 500,000; Romania with 800,000; and Yugoslavia with 500,000 Germanic peoples. The presentation of these figures reinforces the central thesis that millions of Germans lived beyond the Reich’s political borders.

Along the right margin, a numbered list appears under the headline Deutsche Übersee-Kolonisationen (German Overseas Colonizations). The numbers correspond to circled references scattered across the map, identifying historical German colonial ventures and settlement zones, including the Baltic region, Volga German settlements in Russia, Brandenburg-Prussian colonial projects, and territories once held by the German Empire overseas.

Ideological Text Panel

At the bottom of the map, a large text panel makes the map’s purpose explicit. Under the headline Rund 100 Millionen Menschen auf der Erde sprechen Deutsch als Muttersprache, an English translation of the text reads:

“Approximately one hundred million people on earth speak German as their mother tongue. We are a nation of one hundred million people. Of these, more than sixty-seven million live in the German Reich, while the rest live in other states. Although citizenship creates different obligations, all Germans, at home and abroad, are united by bonds of blood, character, and language. Germans are found everywhere. There is no continent where Germans have not settled, scarcely a country whose prosperity Germans have not helped to build. German labor has enriched the world not only within our Central European core but also in overseas agricultural settlements and in foreign-speaking cities. For decades, Germans emigrated abroad, often without a unified and powerful motherland behind them, and many were therefore lost. All the more valuable is what remains of German folkdom and which, through the renewed self-awareness of our people, now finds its way back toward unity.”

Census

The map was published in Berlin by the Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland, most likely in 1937 or 1938. Bibliographic records generally date the work to 1938, though some library catalogues list 1937 as the year of issue. The scale indicated on the sheet is approximately 1:45,000,000, and the map measures roughly 86 × 70 cm, suggesting it was meant for display and education.

No confirmed variant states or revised editions are currently known, and surviving examples appear to represent a single printing. Institutional holdings are limited, with examples recorded primarily in major German libraries and a small number of international collections (OCLC no. 166000023).

Large-format propaganda sheets of this kind often had relatively low survival rates. After the Second World War, many such items were discarded or destroyed due to their political associations. As a result, examples appear infrequently on the antiquarian market and are typically encountered only in specialized catalogues dealing with twentieth-century propaganda or historical political cartography.

Context is Everything

The map was produced during the late 1930s, a period in which the Nazi regime aggressively promoted the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, or “people’s community.” Central to this ideology was the notion that all individuals of German ancestry formed a single historical nation, regardless of political borders. The idea drew heavily on the intellectual legacy of the völkisch movement, a late-nineteenth-century nationalist current emphasizing racial identity, cultural purity, and historical destiny. Among the writers associated with this movement was Friedrich Lange, whose work promoted the concept of a unified German ethnic community extending beyond the borders of the German state.

During the Nazi period, these ideas were transformed into policy. German minorities living in neighboring countries were increasingly described as members of the German nation who required protection and eventual political incorporation into the Reich. Cartographic propaganda played an important role in this narrative, as maps could visually demonstrate the supposed extent of the German ethnic sphere. This map embodies the intersection of ethnographic cartography, migration history, and ideological propaganda characteristic of the late interwar period.