Volkstum
Sign in to saveVolkstum (lit. "folkdom" or "folklore", though the meaning is wider than the common usage of the term folklore) is the entirety of utterances of a Volk or of an ethnic minority over its lifetime, expressing a "" which the people of such an ethnicity allegedly have in common.Various definitions of Volkstum exist; see for example:
~10 min read
Encyclopedic overview
8 sectionsContents
- History
- Origins
- German Empire
- Weimar Republic
- Third Reich
- Since 1945
- See also
- References
Volkstum (lit. "folkdom" or "folklore", though the meaning is wider than the common usage of the term folklore) is the entirety of utterances of a Volk or of an ethnic minority over its lifetime, expressing a "" which the people of such an ethnicity allegedly have in common. It was the defining idea of the Völkisch movement.
German nationalists coined the term in the context of Germany's "Freedom Wars" of 1813 to 1814, in marked and conscious opposition to ideals of the French Revolution such as universal human rights. This sense of the word is now criticised in academia, though it is still in use in the protection of ethnic minorities and is a legal standard in Austria.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Volkstum” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.