Honorary Aryan
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Honorary Aryan (German: Ehrenarier) is a term from Nazi Germany; it was a status granted by the Nazi Bureau of Race Research to people who were not considered to be biologically part of the Aryan race as conceived by the Nazis (or enemy nationals who joined Hitler or the Nazis' side), but were granted an "honorary" status of being part of that race, for example because their services were deemed valuable to the German economy.[1]
For example, this status was offered to (and declined by) composer Emmerich Kálmán, who was a Hungarian national, but ethnically Jewish.[2] Film director Fritz Lang claimed that Joseph Goebbels had made a similar offer to him, saying, "Mr. Lang, we decide who is Jewish and who is not," and prompting his departure for Paris; at least one biographer views the story as apocryphal.[3]
Following the Anti-Comintern Pact on Communism, signed in 1936 Hitler bestowed the title on the Japanese people. The Japanese, though of a different ethnicity, were considered by Nazi ideologists, such as Heinrich Himmler, who possessed an interest in anthropology of Asian peoples and pantheist religions, which the Japanese shared with east Indians and pre-Christian Europeans (see Germanic Neopaganism and Ariosophy), to have similar enough qualities to German-Nordic blood in order to warrant an alliance with them. [1]
With obvious exceptions to the rules, any eastern Asian, Middle Eastern or Latin American who participated in the Nazi death camp program and/or fought in the German armed forces was qualified for the Honorary Aryan title. However, the title was denied to black Africans, especially the "Rhineland Bastards", children of Senegalese (French West African) soldiers who married white German women while stationed in the Rhine area after World War I. The title was also denied to the majority of "non-Aryan" Slavs, "mulatto" looking Mediterranean and Finno-Ugric peoples, but not to "Nordic" Finns, who were normally classified by the Nazis as members of the Aryan race.
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ "In the Wind", The Nation Vol. 147, Issue 7. August 13, 1938.
- ^ Emmerich Kálmán on the site of Lyric Opera San Diego, October 2005, accessed 16 January 2006. The site appears generally accurate on Kalman, although it does misspell the name of Miklós Horthy as "Nicolas Harthy".
- ^ Review of Lang's Metropolis on moviediva.com, accessed 16 January 2006.
Compare: Righteous_Among_the_Nations
