Summary: Richard Thurnwald to Ernst Harms, 15 June 1931

Richard Thurnwald’s letter to Dr. Ernst Harms is a compact exercise in editorial boundary-setting. Written from Zehlendorf on behalf of the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Soziologie, it responds to Harms’s requests concerning participation in a symposium, reviews, a proposed research contribution, and a lecture manuscript. Its main thesis is practical but also disciplinary: the journal is not closed to Harms, but every form of participation must pass through limits of space, documentation, and scientific adequacy. Thurnwald’s core move is to distinguish “openness in principle” from acceptance in fact.

The letter first closes the door on the symposium. Thurnwald frames the refusal not as a personal rejection but as an administrative necessity caused by excessive prior intake:

die Zahl der ohnedies schon zu sehr angeschwollenen Beiträge für das Symposion endgültig abgeschlossen werden musste.

English translation: the number of contributions to the symposium, already excessively swollen in any case, had to be definitively closed.

This establishes the tone of the whole document. The editor presents himself as constrained by institutional conditions and by standards external to the correspondent’s wishes. The symposium has become too full; therefore even newly clarified requests cannot be accommodated. The emphasis on “endgültig” gives the decision finality.

The second section turns to review work and is more evaluative. Thurnwald allows that participation in review reports is possible in principle, but immediately qualifies this by judging Harms’s submitted review of Halfdan Bryn’s book inadequate. The decisive phrase is blunt:

nicht den wissenschaftlichen Anforderungen entspricht

English translation: does not meet scientific requirements

Here the letter becomes more than logistical correspondence. It articulates a disciplinary threshold: publication depends not simply on interest, effort, or personal connection, but on conformity to what the editor regards as scientific requirements. Thurnwald reinforces this by reserving editorial discretion case by case:

in jedem Einzelfall besonders zu entscheiden

English translation: to be decided separately in each individual case

This formulation shows the journal as a gatekeeping institution. No general promise of acceptance can be inferred from willingness to receive material; each review must be separately assessed. Even Harms’s list of books is rejected in part for practical bibliographic reasons, because publishers or addresses are missing. Scientific communication appears here as dependent on exact scholarly apparatus and usable publishing information.

The third movement concerns a proposed work mentioned in an earlier letter. Thurnwald refuses to evaluate or enter it into planning before seeing the text itself:

so lange ich sie nicht in der Hand habe

English translation: so long as I do not have it in hand

This is the letter’s central editorial principle in its most concise form. A project, title, or intention is insufficient; only the manuscript permits judgment. Thurnwald’s refusal to include the work “vorläufig” in the journal’s research plans underscores his resistance to speculative commitments.

The next paragraph reopens the possibility of publication outside the symposium. If Harms wishes to submit a work on the theory of experimental Völkerpsychologie, the journal remains receptive:

steht Ihnen grundsätzlich unsere Zeitschrift gerne offen.

English translation: our journal is in principle gladly open to you.

Yet this openness is immediately bounded by the same requirement of inspection and decision:

bis ich selbst Einsicht in das Manuskript genommen habe.

English translation: until I have myself examined the manuscript.

The conceptual structure is thus symmetrical: exclusion from the symposium, conditional access to reviews, refusal to judge unseen work, and provisional openness to a manuscript all depend on the same editorial logic. Thurnwald separates collegial courtesy from publication commitment.

Finally, regarding Harms’s lecture “Volkscharakter und Kulturfortschritt,” Thurnwald redirects him to the publisher C. L. Hirschfeld. This closing gesture shifts responsibility from editorial judgment to publishing procedure, suggesting that different genres—symposium contribution, review, theoretical article, lecture—belong to different channels of decision. The relevance of the letter lies in its glimpse of early twentieth-century academic publishing as a field of personal correspondence governed by emerging professional norms: standards, documentation, manuscript review, and publisher coordination. Its significance is not in an elaborate argument but in the precision with which Thurnwald maintains the journal’s authority while preserving formal politeness.