Germany’s Universities and Colleges

Indoctrinating Germany’s youth during the 1930s.

This somewhat insidious pictorial map was designed by Max Teschemacher and published in Berlin in 1937 by the Reichsbahnzentrale fur den Deutschen Reiseverkehr, or Reichsbahn Headquarters for German Travel. It presents a dignified overview of Germany’s colleges and universities shortly before the borders of the Third Reich would greatly expand with the Anschluss and annexation of the Sudetenland.

Small shields located beneath each city denotes the type of educational facilities therein. Photographs around the border showcase the venerable educational environment, with rapt students, modern facilities, and more. Text on the verso, listing the various educational facilities across Germany, hints at the anti-Catholic stance of the Third Reich, noting (only 2) approved academies are “not ordinary colleges, but intended for the training of Catholic theologians.”

Despite being in power for only a few years, Hitler had already begun to drastically change the educational curriculum at all levels of German society. School systems were purged of ‘unreliable’ teachers, but, according to the U.S. Holocaust Museum, 97% of German public school teachers had pledged allegiance to the Nazi Party by 1936.

Source: United States Holocaust Museum; UCLA Library