Friedrich Rudolf Lehmann from Leipzig to Potchefstroom University: scholarly committed, ethically ambivalent

Abstract

While Friedrich Rudolf Lehmann, Potchefstroom's first volkekunde [ethnology] professor, worked and associated with well-known and ardent supporters of the Nazi government in Germany, his German colleagues critiqued his lukewarm commitment to Nazism. Later, this political ambivalence also marked his time in apartheid South Africa. This paper is an examination of how one ethnologist, caught between the two regimes of National Socialism and apartheid, managed to negotiate his way through them. Lehmann's political choices exemplify a person who does not oppose regimes head-on, but uses the opportunities they present to further his own academic career.