Hans-Walter Schmuhl

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945 (eBook, PDF)

Crossing Boundaries

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

When the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics opened its doors in 1927, it could rely on wide political approval, ranging from the Social Democrats over the Catholic Centre to the far rightwing of the party spectrum. In 1933 the institute and its founding director Eugen Fischer came under pressure to adjust, which they were able to ward off through Selbstgleichschaltung (auto-coordination). The Third Reich brought about a mutual beneficial servicing of science and politics. With their research into hereditary health and racial policies the institute's employees provided the Brownshirt rulers with legitimating grounds. At international meetings they used their scientific standing and authority to defend the abundance of forced sterilizations performed in Nazi Germany. Their expertise was instrumental in registering and selecting/eliminating Jews, Sinti and Roma, "Rhineland bastards", Erbkranke and Fremdvölkische. In return, hereditary health and racial policies proved to be beneficial for the institute, which beginning in 1942, directed by Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, performed a conceptual change from the traditional study of races and eugenics into apparently modern phenogenetics - not least owing to the entgrenzte (unrestricted) accessibility of people in concentration camps or POW camps, in the ghetto, in homes and asylums. In 1943/44 Josef Mengele, a student of Verschuer, supplied Dahlem with human blood samples and eye pairs from Auschwitz, while vice versa seizing issues and methods of the institute in his criminal researches.

The volume at hand traces the history of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics between democracy and dictatorship. Special attention is turned to the transformation of the research program, the institute's integration into the national and international science panorama, and its relationship to the ruling power as well as its interconnection to thepolitical crimes of Nazi Germany.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Springer Netherlands
• Seitenzahl: 468
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. Januar 2008
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781402066009
• Artikelnr.: 37356766

Autorenporträt

Hans-Walter Schmuhl, geb. 1957, Studium der Geschichte und Germanistik an den Universitäten Bochum und Bielefeld, 1986 Promotion, 1995 Habilitation, Privatdozent an der Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft, Philosophie und Theologie der Universität Bielefeld.

Inhaltsangabe

A "Purely Theoretical Institute for the Study of the Nature of Man": The Founding of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, 1920-1927.- "The Human of the Future Under the Scrutiny of Research": The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in the Weimar Republic, 1927-1933.- The "Faustian Bargain": The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in the National Socialist Era, 1933-1938/1942.- In the Realm of Opportunity: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics during World War II, 1938/42-1945.- Boundary Transgressions.

Rezensionen

From the reviews:
"Schmuhl demonstrates how carefully and completely Fischer's institute came to be integrated into the Nazi racial hygiene policies ... . Schmuhl and other historians have scrutinized carefully the basic research carried out at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology. ... this was both high-quality work by the standards of the day, and well-integrated into the racial hygiene policies of the regime. ... make significant contributions to a more subtle and deeper understanding of how science and Nazism interacted." (Mark Walker, Metascience, Vol. 19, 2010)

Das Buch "leistet nicht nur eine glänzende Analyse des KWI für Anthropologie, die über die bisherigen Kenntnisse hinausgeht. Es kommt auch in der Einschätzung und seinem Urteil hinsichtlich der Beteiligten auf eine überzeugende und höchst differenzierte Charakterisierung." (Notker Hammerstein, Historische Zeitschrift 282 (2006)