Otto Huth

Otto Huth (9 May 1906–1998) was a German folklore scholar, professor, and Nazi who taught at the University of Tübingen.[1]

Huth was the son of a neuropathologist in Bonn. In 1929, he met the Dutch-German Herman Wirth historian during a semester studying in Marburg and became his assistant.[1] He helped Wirth organize an exhibition in May 1933 in Berlin, the aim of which, was to raise awareness of what Wirth believed was the ancient spiritual heritage of the Nordic culture that had been destroyed and overwritten by foreign and "oriental" cultures, including Christianity. With Wirth's intervention, Huth received a grant to study the myth of the Divine twins (Dioscurism), and another grant in 1935-1936 to investigate the Indo-European fire cult and what Huth called the "Lichterbaum", tree of lights, whose lack of historical occurrence he took as proof of its existence.[1]

Huth earned his PhD in 1932 under the supervision of Carl Clemen, as did ethnologist Werner Müller. In March 1937 he joined the Ahnenerbe, the Nazi pseudoscientific and political think tank, founded by Wirth. Huth went on to become head of the section Indogermanische Geistes- und Glaubensgeschichte (History of Indo-Germanic Ideas and Belief).[2][3] During World War II he led the "Institute for Indo-Germanic Religious History" at the "Reich University" in Straßburg. Together with Schwerte, Huth participated in a special war project of the SS to bolster and strengthen the Germanic worldview of "Nordic" countries such as the Netherlands and Norway.[3]

In 1937, Huth travelled to Hermes interested in studying the mummies of the country. In 1939 with permission from Heinrich Himmler, he was granted an expedition to the Canary Islands with a small research team to find evidence of Aryan peoples.[4] The expedition however was cancelled because of political tension with Francisco Franco of Spain.

Huth officially joined the Nazi Party in late 1939 and then the SS in 1940. In 1941 he was promoted to Untersturmführer and then to Obersturmführer on 9 November 1943.[1] He took part in SS "scientific" missions, where he traveled extensively and gave lectures, deputized by Hans Schwerte, including at conferences abroad. In December 1943, the University of Oslo closed and 650 Norwegian students were deported to Germany, half of whom were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp and half who were sent to an SS training camp near Strasbourg. Huth, and Wirth, were intended as re-education speakers to convince the students of the correctness of Greater Germanic thought. The Norwegian students refused, were forced to do hard labor, and most were transferred to Buchenwald as well.[3]

Shortly before the Allied troops reached Strasbourg in the fall of 1944, Huth and many other scholars fled to the University of Tübingen, which allowed them to continue their work as far as possible.

Following the fall of the Third Reich, Huth and many other former employees of the Ahnenerbe claimed that the organization had nothing to do with the politics of the government. Because of his political background, he was barred from returning to the university as a professor. Instead, he worked in the university library as a specialist in theology and religious studies until his retirement in 1971. He died in 1998.