Fritz Fink

Fritz Fink was born in Römhild, Germany, on 10th September 1893. He studied Protestant theology at the University of Jena. After the First World War he established a bookshop Weimar. Fink also had several volumes of poetry published.

Fink became a supporter of the Nazi Party. Inspired by the writings of Julius Streicher he developed extreme anti-Semitic views. In 1937 he published The Jewish Question in Education, which contained guidelines for the "identification" of Jews. It urged teachers to incorporate anti-Semitism into every part of the curriculum. (1)

Fink argued that he wanted "German teachers to plant the knowledge of the Jew deep in the hearts of our youth from their childhood on. No one among our people should or may grow up without learning the true depravity and danger of the Jew. That requires that the German teacher himself master the racial and Jewish Question. Valuable work is done in educational camps and in the groups of the National Socialist Teachers’ Federation. Experience shows, however, that many teachers are not able to present and explain their knowledge of the racial and Jewish Question in a way that profits our youth for their whole lives. He who devotes an hour a week in his school to the racial and Jewish Question, making it into something of an independent subject, approaches it in an unnatural way. The knowledge of the racial and Jewish Question must grow organically from the whole curriculum of our schools."

Jewish Children in the Nazi Classroom
Illustrations from The Jewish Question in Education (1937)

Fritz Fink criticised teachers who had not joined the propaganda campaign against the Jews. "A dislike of the Jews is innate in uncorrupted German youth. Today the child encounters the name Jew everywhere: in the newspapers, in conversations, in the songs of the S.A. and the Hitler Youth. The disgust with which they hear this name steadily increases, as does their dislike when they meet a representative of the Jewish race. However young he may be, a child asks himself the reasons for this dislike and disgust and wants an explanation from his teacher. That provides the foundation for successful education. But some teachers still lack the courage to address the Jewish question with enthusiasm. Nervously and shyly they avoid it.... These are the teachers who at the behest of the churches display pity and brotherly love to the deadly enemy, even when they sense and see that their own people is being destroyed by this deadly enemy. They are the weaklings, the cowards, those German teachers ruined by foreign powers. They avoid the Jewish question in education but rather than meeting the desire of the child for education and at the same time fulfilling one of their most important tasks." (2)

Tomi Ungerer was a student at a school in Colmar. In his autobiography, A Childhood under the Nazis (1998), he pointed out that The Jewish Question in Education, was used in his school. He remembers reading passages such as the "Jews have different noses, ears, lips, chins and different faces than Germans" and "they walk differently, have flat feet... their arms are longer and they speak differently." (3)

During the Second World War Fritz Fink served in the German Army. He was killed on 9th May 1945 fighting against the Red Army at Kurland-Kessel.

Primary Sources

(1) Fritz Fink, The Jewish Question in Education (1937)

The racial and Jewish Question is the central problem of the National Socialist worldview. Solving this problem will ensure the survival of National Socialism and thereby the survival of our people for all time. The enormous significance of the Jewish Question is recognized today by nearly every member of the German people. This knowledge cost our people a long period of misery. To spare coming generations this misery, we want German teachers to plant the knowledge of the Jew deep in the hearts of our youth from their childhood on. No one among our people should or may grow up without learning the true depravity and danger of the Jew.

That requires that the German teacher himself master the racial and Jewish Question. Valuable work is done in educational camps and in the groups of the National Socialist Teachers’ Federation. Experience shows, however, that many teachers are not able to present and explain their knowledge of the racial and Jewish Question in a way that profits our youth for their whole lives. He who devotes an hour a week in his school to the racial and Jewish Question, making it into something of an independent subject, approaches it in an unnatural way. The knowledge of the racial and Jewish Question must grow organically from the whole curriculum of our schools. Racial science and the Jewish question must run like a red thread through education at every level. There is no subject in our schools from which valuable knowledge of the Jewish Question cannot be drawn in unexpected fullness. This small pamphlet, The Jewish Question in Education, will explore several of these opportunities. It does not pretend to be a pedagogic text in the usual sense. It contains none of the familiar sample class sessions which have ruined the style and instincts of some teachers. The pamphlet The Jewish Question in Education wants to show German teachers simple ways in which the Jewish Question can be incorporated naturally into the curriculum. He who has mastered the highway will himself discover a thousand side streets and find new ways himself.

(2) Fritz Fink, The Jewish Question in Education (1937)

A dislike of the Jews is innate in uncorrupted German youth. Today the child encounters the name Jew everywhere: in the newspapers, in conversations, in the songs of the S.A. and the Hitler Youth. The disgust with which they hear this name steadily increases, as does their dislike when they meet a representative of the Jewish race. However young he may be, a child asks himself the reasons for this dislike and disgust and wants an explanation from his teacher. That provides the foundation for successful education. But some teachers still lack the courage to address the Jewish question with enthusiasm. Nervously and shyly they avoid it. To be prepared for inspections, they briefly touch on the Jewish Question now and again. These are the teachers who have in their bones the ideas the Jews propagate of “objectivity, decency and humanity.” These are the teachers who at the behest of the churches display pity and brotherly love to the deadly enemy, even when they sense and see that their own people is being destroyed by this deadly enemy. They are the weaklings, the cowards, those German teachers ruined by foreign powers. They avoid the Jewish question in education but rather than meeting the desire of the child for education and at the same time fulfilling one of their most important tasks.

(3) Fritz Fink, The Jewish Question in Education (1937)

I have not yet discussed the most important and dreadful side of the Jewish Question. It especially concerns those teachers in vocational and upper-level schools who care for our female youth. It also demands steady attention and deepening from the BDM [League of German Girls], the German Labor Front, and all the organizations outside the schools that work with our female youth. All of us parents and teachers bear the guilt that countless of our girls and women have been ruined by the Jews. We may not and do not want to judge them. Neither parents, teachers, nor clergy educated or warned them. No one introduced them to the god-given secrets and laws of blood and race. They were fed all sorts of things in school and church. Yet no one gave them the deepest knowledge that would have protected them from physical and spiritual destruction. Thus the poison of Jewish blood entered our people’s bloodstream thousands upon thousands of times. Many decades will pass before our people eliminates it. No German teacher today can avoid the problem of “The Jew and the German woman.” It would be criminal neglect. Why should we from stupid sinful embarrassment conceal from our more mature girls in school what they can learn five minutes later in all its brutality on the street, in shops, or in offices, or what will perhaps be revealed to them the same evening in the most awful way by a criminal Jew?

The new approach to education has the goal to lead our female youth to motherhood, to womanhood. Mother and child, with all their related questions, are now more the center of education. Thank god, eugenics and a concern with healthy offspring has also entered our schoolrooms. It is easy to build the bridge from them to the Jewish Question. The Nuremberg Laws also provide a starting point. They forbid Jews to have female servants under 45 years of age. The forbid marriage between Jews and Germans. They provide lengthy prison terms for sexual relations between Jews and Germans, even if it does not lead to motherhood. Why is this?

We recall the knowledge gained earlier in the sciences. We extend it. We learn from the animal breeder. We study the ancestors of his animals. He tells us that he breeds only pairs of the same race. Only that ensures that the valuable characteristics of the various races remain intact and improve. Each animal breeder can affirm that crossing the races always results in a bastard, and that such a degenerate animal is worthless. That is clear from thousands of examples.

We then turn to people. Why should they be exempt from these laws? We use pictures as an aid: pictures of children of German-blooded parents, pictures of Jewish children, both of whose parents are full-blooded Jews, and pictures of children who are a mixture of Jew and German. We make the comparisons. We are most interested in the last group of children, those of mixed race. We look to see from which race most of the characteristics come. We see the Jew in his face, his body, his appearance and manner, his thinking, feeling and behavior. We do not need to investigate deeply. Everything about him speaks of the Jew, of discord, of degenerate blood. The person of mixed race is a lamentable creature, tossed back and forth by the blood of his two races. We establish that the bastard is a burden to a people. He weakens it. His offspring carry on the racial degeneration. I urge each teacher to encourage the reading of Dr. Dinter’s book The Sin Against the Blood. It speaks in a stronger way to our more mature girls than the lovely sweet stuff that one still finds here and there. In schools where girls are trained to be teachers, I think that introducing the racial and Jewish Question in this way is the most important task. I know from experience how helpless, inexperienced, and ignorant some young female teachers are about this problem.

The sin against the blood passes its curse not only to the mixed race offspring, but rather the curse also sticks to the defiled mother, never leaving her for the rest of her life. Racial defilement is racial death. Racial defilement is bloodless murder. A woman defiled by the Jew can never rid her body of the foreign poison she has absorbed. She is lost to her people. What we have learned from animal breeders is just as true here. Our ancestors knew this. We forgot it. Only one guarded it through the millennia as a valuable treasure: the Jew!


Student Activities

Adolf Hitler's Early Life (Answer Commentary)

Heinrich Himmler and the SS (Answer Commentary)

Trade Unions in Nazi Germany (Answer Commentary)

Adolf Hitler v John Heartfield (Answer Commentary)

Hitler's Volkswagen (The People's Car) (Answer Commentary)

Women in Nazi Germany (Answer Commentary)

The Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (Answer Commentary)

The Last Days of Adolf Hitler (Answer Commentary)

References

(1) Randall Bytwerk, German Propaganda Archive (2001)

(2) Fritz Fink, The Jewish Question in Education (1937)

(3) Tomi Ungerer, Tomi: A Childhood under the Nazis (1998) page 46