(1932–2002) (Pentikäinen 2005). His disciple Juha Pentikäinen became the
first professor of comparative religion at the University of Helsinki in 1970.
In 2000, a second chair was created in the Faculty of Arts. Among the latest
newcomers to the Western European scene is Spain, where the study of religion
has only developed since 1992, in the context of a political transition from
dictatorship to democratic constitutional monarchy (1975–1978). It is now
taught at several universities (Diez de Velasco 1995; Wiegers 2002).Fascism and National SocialismThe impact of various fascist ideologies and National Socialism on the study
of religion has in recent years attracted scholarly attention. Fresh original
research based on primary archival sources undertaken by some American (e.g.
Alles 2002) and younger German scholars (e.g. Heinrich 2002; Junginger
1999, in press) has unveiled complex relationships. When assessing the situa-
tion, one has to take into account several factors, including different generations
of scholars; ideological premises shared by people belonging to entirely different
political camps; differences and overlappings between anti-Semitism, nation-
alism, and National Socialism/Fascism; various strategies of adaptation, assimi-
lation, or distancing and alienation; different forms of commitment; and
political, institutional, administrative, religious, and personal dimensions.
In Italy the establishment of Pettazzoni’s chair at the University of Rome (1923)
followed closely the establishment of Mussolini’s rule (1922). While Pettazzoni
displayed a certain degree of commitment to the apparatus of the Fascist regime
(Stausberg forthcoming), his approach to the study of religion was hardly
overwhelmed by the non-rational, irrational, or antirational tendencies common
in the study of the religion at that time, especially in Germany.
Carl Clemen (1865–1940) at Bonn was a scholar whose philological and
source-critical approach led him to challenge the pseudo-scientific character of
the Germanic ideology propagated by the Nazis (Heinrich 2002: 267–268).
From early on the Faculty of Theology at Leipzig was disturbed by the German-
Christian sympathies of the regional church in Saxony. Walter Baetke (1884–
1974), a specialist in German religion committed to the Confessing Church,
courageously opposed neo-pagan reconstructions by unmasking the empirical,
methodological, and theoretical flaws of Germanizing pseudo-scholarship
(Heinrich 2002: 272–287; Vollmer 2001; cf. Rudolph and Heinrich 2001).
Baetke’s appointment was opposed by the Tübingen Indologist and religious
historian Jakob Hauer (1882–1963), who (rightly) regarded this appointment
as part of an ecclesiastical plot against the Third Reich (Heinrich 2002: 274).
Hauer himself was actively involved in propagating the German Faith
movement as the new religion of the state. He redesigned the study of religion
into a völkischsubject and was dismissed after the war (Junginger 1999).22
MICHAEL STAUSBERG