Hans Keller, the “parlor Nazi” and founder of the Nationalist International

On initial consideration, the German jurist Hans Keller (1908-1970, see figure 1) appears to be an unlikely holder of a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship. During the interwar period, the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) provided financial assistance and expertise to the League of Nations and affiliated organizations, such as the Graduate Institute of International Studies, with the objective of preserving the United States’ presence in Europe and, more broadly, advancing liberal internationalism. Keller, in stark contrast, was a proud German nationalist and self-proclaimed “anti-internationalist”, who based his legal theories on racism and völkisch ideology. He became one of the “most tireless agents of Nazi internationalism in the interwar period”1. As a scholar of international law, Keller sought to establish a novel legal system, designated as the “law of nations” (Recht der Völker), which provided a framework for German revisionism to the post-1919 liberal order established by the Treaty of Versailles2.

Figure 1: Portrait of Hans Keller circa 1934-1935, founder and leader of the so-called “Nationalist International”

Source: Hans Keller, Das Dritte Europa, Berlin, Batschari, 1935, p. 2.

In order to disseminate “Organic (Volk) Nationalism” in Europe, Keller formed the so-called Nationalist International (Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Nationalisten, IAdN, 1934-1941) as a counterreaction to both the Communist International and the League of Nations3. The organization, secretly financed by Joseph Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, represented an endeavour to spread Nazi ideology and foster international cooperation between nationalists from across Europe and beyond, by means of shared publications and events. These events included three large “nationalist congresses” with delegates from more than 20 countries, which were hosted annually in Berlin in 1934, in London in 1935, and in Oslo in 1936. Hence, particularly in the mid-1930s, the Nationalist International fulfilled an important propaganda function for Nazi Germany by presenting the Third Reich as a ‘peaceful’ and reliable partner on the international stage4. The following research note demonstrates that the RF provided both financial support for IAdN founder Keller and access to an international network of “nationalists”.


Figure 2: Group picture of the delegates at the London congress of the Nationalist International in June 1935.
Hans Keller (standing, arms folded) is the fifth person in the third row from the right. To his right is the Danish fascist leader Frits Clausen.

Source: Archiv für Zeitgeschichte, ETH Zürich: NL Rolf Henne / 168.
Photograph reproduced with permission of the Archiv für Zeitgeschichte.

Hans Keller was born in 1908 and grew up in Speyer in the Rhineland during the period of the Weimar Republic. His early interest in international law was prompted by the French and Belgian occupation of the German Ruhr region. After completing his studies in Munich, Keller obtained three different doctoral titles between 1930 and 1932: Dr. oec. publ. (Economics) in Munich, Doctor en droit in Bordeaux and Dr. jur. in Kiel (both Law). Keller had the ambitious goal of establishing a new scientific discipline, which he called “Comparative International Law Ideology”. To this end, he applied for a Rockefeller fellowship that would enable him to conduct research on “the history of political and legal ideology” in the United States, Italy, and Britain5. In his application, Keller used the fact that he had briefly worked at the Trade and Economic Department of the German Embassy in Paris during a semester break in 1928, which the RF falsely noted as his present position in 19316. Due to his impressive academic background, the RF staff pondered that Keller “had good prospects for a university positions” and granted him a fellowship in September 1932 to study “Natural Law and Positivism in the Methodology of the Science of International Law” in the United States (see Figure 3, Hans Keller fellowship recorder card).


Figure 3: Hans Keller’s fellowship recorder card

Source: Fellowship recorder card for Hans Keller. Rockefeller Foundation records, R.G.10.2.
© Courtesy of Rockefeller Archive Center.

Over the course of a year, Keller conducted research in a number of locations, including New York City, the Harvard University, the Library of Congress in Washington DC and Chicago. His second year was to begin in September 1933, but he asked for a two-month suspension in order “to renew connections in Germany” (see Figure 3). It was only six months later, in April 1934, that Keller resumed his fellowship. During that year, he travelled to Zurich, Geneva, Torino, Rome, Naples and Palermo to study “Fascist world ideology”. In 1935, he moved on to London and Oxford “to investigate into the reasons of the British enthusiasm for the League of Nations”7.

From the outset, Keller combined his interest in legal matters with a political, pro-German and increasingly national socialist agenda. In his own words, in a letter to his Rockefeller Foundation officer in 1933, he developed a “Germanic world-ideology”, defined as a “concept of supranationalism as opposite to the internationalism of the Western world”8. From 22 January 1934 to 31 March 1934, he was even employed at the newly established German Ministry of Propaganda in department VII, which was responsible or propaganda abroad, as a referent working on Switzerland, France and Northern Africa9. More generally, his sympathy for the new regime were likely known by Rockefeller Foundation officers in charge of the social sciences from their correspondence and meetings with Keller, or from conversation with his mentoring professors in the US. Later in 1936, RF officer Stacey May would write that Keller was “conformist to the Nazi regime”, well before an investigation of the US Military Government in Bavaria 1946 entry described Keller as a “kind of parlor Nazi”10.

In fact, Keller was one of several young German Nazi sympathisers who travelled to the U.S. as RF fellows in the early 1930s, as Judith Syga-Dubois addresses in her important study on the activities of the Rockefeller Foundation in interwar Germany11. The group included the agricultural scientist Hellmut Wollenweber and the jurist Georg Leibbrandt, who would become a leading member of the Foreign Policy Office of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and a participant at the infamous Wannsee Conference. As Stacey May complained in February 1935 to another RF associate, in the years of the so-called Nazi “seizure of power” in Germany, these German scholarship holders “were too occupied with the gruelling task of reconciling their early academic background with Nazi ideology to devote themselves seriously to their fellowship work”12.

Although he never was a member of NSDAP, Keller’s fellowship work was quite aligned with Nazi views about international relations: the reconciliation was likely not too difficult in his case. But at the time, support for the Third Reich was not a cause for the Rockefeller Foundation to interrupt an individual fellowship or a grant to an institution in Germany, and the Rockefeller Foundation fellowship money provided the financial means for Hans Keller to continue his research in Italy in 1934. This trip was crucial: it gave him the final impetus to create the pro-German Nationalist International due to the discovery of a pro-Italian counterproject, which was based on the idea that Italian fascism was superior to German Nazism13. The RF representative in Germany, August Wilhelm Fehling, assisted Keller in mobilising a network of scholarship holders. Fehling wrote to German former Rockefeller Foundation or Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial fellows and asked them to suggest suitable “personalities” for Keller’s project, apparently without informing his RF partners. Fellows such as the sociologist Karl Heinz Pfeffer willingly made available their academic contacts and personal connections. Harri Meier, a philologist and specialist in romance studies with ties to the Iberian peninsula, recommended that Keller should contact José Antonio Primo de Rivera from the Spanish fascist party Falange14. In consequence, another Falange member joined the IAdN15. As Syga-Dubois justifiably asserted: “This incident shows that the network of former fellows could certainly be mobilised for political causes in the sense of extreme nationalism.”16


Figure 4: “20 Nations in Berlin”. Cover of the conference proceedings from the Berlin congress of the “Nationalist International” in December 1934

Source: Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Nationalisten, 20 Nationen in Berlin, Zürich, Batschari, 1935.

In his final RF report in August 1935, Keller stated to be “very indebted to the Rockefeller Foundation for the enrichment both through scientific research and personal acquaintances”. He confirmed that “a number of the professors and politicians, whom I met during my research under Foundation’s auspices” formed the basis of the Nationalist International17. Nevertheless, the paths of the philanthropic foundation and the Nazi agent diverged in 1935, when RF officers acknowledged that Keller’s ambition was “to provide the present regime in Germany with a new program and doctrine based on ‘nationalistic theories’”18. In June 1935, they do not seem to have followed up on a request by Keller to help him find an academic position in the US.

In conclusion, the relationship between Hans Keller and the Rockefeller Foundation represents a significant convergence between liberal (in this case, US-American philanthropic) and fascist internationalism, emphasizing the latter’s “infiltration of liberal internationalist networks” despite ideological antagonism19. As a result, funding provided by the Rockefeller Foundation was used to propagate extreme nationalism and an antiliberal agenda in support of Nazi Germany.


This research note is based on my dissertation on “Notions and Activities of Fascist Internationalism in the 1930s”, Freie Universität Berlin, 2024 (supervisor: Margrit Pernau, co-supervisor: Sebastian Conrad). I wish to thank Judith Syga-Dubois for sharing her source material from the Rockefeller Archive Center.

Further reading:

  • Judith Syga-Dubois, Wissenschaftliche Philanthropie und transatlantischer Austausch in der Zwischenkriegszeit: Die sozialwissenschaftlichen Förderprogramme der Rockefeller Stiftungen in Deutschland, Wien, Böhlau Verlag, 2019
  • Martin Kristoffer Hamre “‘Nationalists of All Countries, Unite!’: Hans Keller and Nazi Internationalism in the 1930s”, Contemporary European History, 33 (2024); pp. 477-496, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777322000455
  • Martin Kristoffer Hamre (January 12, 2023). Promoting German Nazism in the Heart of the British Empire: The London Congress of the ‘Nationalist International’ in July 1935, German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved October 14, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/p1r1
  • Hans Werner Neulen, Europa und das 3. Reich: Einigungsbestrebungen im deutschen Machtbereich 1939 – 45, Munich, Universitas-Verlag, 1987

1. Martin Kristoffer Hamre “‘Nationalists of All Countries, Unite!’: Hans Keller and Nazi Internationalism in the 1930s” Contemporary European History, 33 (2024), pp. 477-496, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777322000455.

2. On Keller’s legal theory, see Hans Keller, Abschied vom Völkerrecht, Berlin, Vahlen, 1938.

3. See Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Nationalisten (ed.), Organic Nationalism: What the “Nationalist International” means to the Anglo-Saxon World, Zürich, Self-published by Hans Keller, 1935.

4. Martin Kristoffer Hamre (January 12, 2023). “Promoting German Nazism in the Heart of the British Empire: The London Congress of the ‘Nationalist International’ in July 1935” German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved October 14, 2024 from https://doi.org/10.58079/p1r1.

5. Letter from Hans Keller to A. W. Fehling, 15 April 1933: Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde [in the following BArch], N 1106/58.

6. See Hans Keller’s autobiographical sketch in his job application sent to the German Propaganda Ministry, 15 December 1933: Barch, R 55/24256.

7. Letter from Hans Keller to T. B. Kittredge, 20 August 1935: BArch, N 1106/58.

8. Letter from Hans Keller to Stacy May, 1 October 1933, BArch, N 1106/58.

9. See BArch, R55/24256, Personalakte Keller, Hans Karl Ernst Ludwig.

10. Hans Keller fellowship recorder card, Rockefeller Archive Center, RF, RG 10, F/S Recorder Cards, Social Sciences Germany.

11. See Judith Syga-Dubois, Wissenschaftliche Philanthropie und transatlantischer Austausch in der Zwischenkriegszeit: Die sozialwissenschaftlichen Förderprogramme der Rockefeller Stiftungen in Deutschland, Wien, Böhlau Verlag, 2019.

12. Letter from S. May to T. B. Kittredge, 4 February1935, RAC-RF, RG 1.2, Series 100 ES, box 49, folder 377, p. 1.

13. On this Italo-German rivalry, see Hamre, Nationalists of All Countries, pp. 482–483.

14. Cf. Syga-Dubois, Wissenschaftliche Philanthropie, pp. 616-619.

15. According to Keller, the Falange member Ernesto Giménez Caballero joined the IAdN in 1934. Cf. Hans Keller, Der Kampf um die Völkerordnung, Berlin, Verlag Franz Vahlen, 1939, p. 196.

16. Syga-Dubois, Wissenschaftliche Philanthropie, p. 617.

17. Letter from Hans Keller to T. B. Kittredge, 20 August 1935: BArch, N 1106/58.

18. T.B Kittredge to Stacy May, 13 September 1935, transcribed onto Hans Keller fellowship recorder card, Rockefeller Archive Center, RF, RG 10, F/S Recorder Cards, Social Sciences Germany.

19. Madeleine Herren, Fascist Internationalism, in: Glenda Sluga u. Patricia Clavin (Hg.), Internationalisms, Cambridge 2016, pp. 191–212, p. 192. See also Philippa Hetherington u. Glenda Sluga, Liberal and Illiberal Internationalisms, in: Journal of World History 31. 2020, pp. 1–9.

Martin Kristoffer Hamre

Dr. Martin Kristoffer Hamre is a postdoctoral researcher and historian of modern European history in transnational and global perspectives based at the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge, University of Lund. His research interests include the history of European fascism and the far right, the history of internationalism and Europeanization, and the history of German reunification. He has published among others in Contemporary European History, the Journal of Contemporary History and Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies.

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Martin Kristoffer Hamre (January 15, 2025). Hans Keller, the “parlor Nazi” and founder of the Nationalist International. Rockefeller fellows. Retrieved April 27, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/1337h


About Martin Kristoffer Hamre

Dr. Martin Kristoffer Hamre is a postdoctoral researcher and historian of modern European history in transnational and global perspectives based at the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge, University of Lund. His research interests include the history of European fascism and the far right, the history of internationalism and Europeanization, and the history of German reunification. He has published among others in Contemporary European History, the Journal of Contemporary History and Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies.