Oswald Menghin

Oswald Menghin (19 April 1888 – 29 November 1973) was an Austrian Prehistorian and University professor. He established an international reputation before the War, while he was professor at the University of Vienna. His work on race and culture was serviceable to the German nationalist movement of the 1930s. At the time of the Anschluss he served as Minister of Education in the cabinet formed by Arthur Seyß-Inquart. He avoided indictment as a war criminal and resumed his career in Argentina after the war.

Menghin was born in Meran, Tyrol. He qualified for inauguration as an academic lecturer in 1913, for his work Urgeschichte des Menschen (The Proto-History of Mankind). After the death of Moritz Hoernes he emerged as university professor of the Protohistorical Institute of the University of Vienna from 1917 until 1945, and furthermore he was from 1930 to 1933 professor at the University of Cairo.

From 1919 to 1926 Menghin was a member of Secret Nazi Society Deutsche Gemeinschaft (the German Fellowship), in which he got to know Arthur Seyß-Inquart.

In 1932 he participated in the First International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences in London in 1932 with Hugo Obermaier and others. In 1934 he published Geist und Blut.

For the academic year of 1935/36 he was appointed Rector of the University of Vienna. After numerous unsuccessful attempts there followed in 1936 his election as a regular Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. From July 1936 to June 1937 he was a member of the governing council of the Viennese National (Vaterländische) Front.

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