This article analyses knowledge production about itinerant groups such as Nightmen, Roma and Travellers in Den-mark between 1800 and 1950. It puts forward the thesis of a Danish Sonderweg in this regard, not only compared with Germany, but also the Scandinavian neighbours. This Sonderweg was characterized by an underdeveloped interest of science and state authorities for respective groups and culminated into a rejection of forced eugenic measures. The analysis is based on key texts from three periods: a national romantic one from approximately 1800 onwards, one shaped by the Danish Gypsy LoristJohan Miskow at the beginning of the 20th century, and one eugenic from 1938. Special interest is given to continuities and fractions in narratives of purity vs. mixture.?

This dissertation examines the implementation of the SS’s Greater Germanic idea in the Danish border region of South Jutland. Its focus is on how Danish and ethnic German (volksdeutsche) national socialists, organised in their respective Nazi parties, dealt with the SS’s crusade on behalf of a supranational racial vision. The study traces why the two groups reacted so negatively to the SS’s ideology - despite the SS’s power, despite the Greater Germanic promise of high racial prestige, and despite shared service in “Germanic” units of the Waffen-SS.

The SS’s attempts to use a race-based ideology to overcome the disputes that divided South Jutland’s two Nazi parties ran aground on fundamentally nationalist identities. For most members of the German minority, the Greater Germanic ideology was a threat. The German minority hoped for border revision; to acknowledge Danes as racial equals would endanger their political goals. Nor were Danish Nazis more enthusiastic. To be sure, the SS’s vision did provide an ideological weapon in the fight against demands for border vision. But the potential imperialism of the Greater Germanic idea worried those who prized continued Danish sovereignty. After all, the first hope of the Danish Nazis was to rule an independent national-socialist Danish state.

The study makes it clear, however, that the fate of the Greater Germanic idea cannot be understood simply in terms of Realpolitik. Rather, the conflicts between the SS and its collaboration partners must also be understood as a clash between racial and völkisch concepts of community. The SS's vision of a Greater Germanic Reich based on ideologies of race clashed with the German-minority and Danish national-socialist commitment to Volk-based nationalism. Despite their strong commitment to Nazi ideologies, both collaboration partners found the SS’s racial community “unimaginable”.