The Wellborn Science

The Wellborn Science Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia Edited by MARK B. ADAMS New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1990 Contents Contributors, xi 1. Eugenics in the History of Science, 3 Mark B. Adams 2. The Race Hygiene Movement in Germany, 1904-1945, 8 Sheila Faith Weiss The Origins of German Eugenics, 1890-1903, 11 The Wilhelmine Race Hygiene Movement, 1904-1918, 21 Eugenics in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933, 29 Eugenics under the Swastika, 1933-1945, 40 Bibliography, SO 3. The Eugenics Movement in France, 1890-1940, 69 William H. Schneider The French Setting, 70 The French Eugenics Society, 73 The Twenties, 76 Opposition to Eugenics, 79 The Thirties and the Population Question, 84 Sicard de Plauzoles, 87 Immigration and Sterilization, 92 Eugenics and the French Left, 97 Conclusion, 103 Bibliography, 10:5 x CONTENTS 4. Eugenics in Brazil, 1 91 7-1 940, 110 Nancy Leys Stepan Structural and Social Origins, 111 The Eugenics Movement, 1917-1929, 115 Sancar c Eugenizar: To Sanitize Is to Eugenize, 119 Race and the Eugenics Movement in the 1920s, 126 Lamarck versus Mendel: A Scientific Divide, 130 Lamarck, Mendel, and Race: An Ideological Divide, 134 Eugenics in the Estado Novo, 138 Conclusion, 144 Bibliography, 145 5. Eugenics in Russia, 1900-1940, 153 Mark B. Adams The Origins of Russian Eugenics, 1900-1920, 155 The Structure of Russian Eugenics, 1920-1930, 164 Bolshevik Eugenics, 17! "Eugenics" and the Cultural Revolution, 1929-1932, 182 "Medical Genetics," Eugenics, and Lysenkoism, 1932-1940, 188 Conclusion, 200 Bibliography, 201 6. Towards a Comparative History of Eugenics, 217 Mark B. Adams Myths and Realities, 217 Issues and Agendas, 221 Prospects, 225 Bibliography, 227 Name Index, 2,33 Subject Index, 239 Contributors Mark B. Adams Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. William H. Schneider Department of History, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, N.C. Nancy Leys Stepan Department of History, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. Sheila Faith Weiss Liberal Studies Center, Clarkson University, Potsdam, N.Y. Preface In the early part of this century, eugenics (from the Greek eugenes, "wellborn") arose as a science of human hereditary improvement in more than thirty countries. Until very recently, however, almost all published research on its history has dealt with the United States or Britain. The present volume challenges common stereotypes by presenting histories of eugenics in four countries outside of the Anglo-Saxon world—Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia—where events unfolded very differently. In addition to providing a new perspective on the social dimensions of biology and medicine in continental Europe, Latin America, and the Soviet Union, these studies revise our picture of eugenics as a whole and sug- gest an agenda for international comparative research. This book was a long time in the making. I first became interested in the history of eugenics in 1963, as a Harvard undergraduate, while taking Everett Men- delsohn's courses on "The History of Biology" and "The Social Context of Sci- ence." Fascinated by science, and stirred by the Sixties, I found his lectures a revelation. Looking back, they were years ahead of their time in focussing on the subtle and complex interactions between science and society. I was particularly taken with the material on evolution, genetics, and eugenics. The courses stimu- lated me to major in the history of science, to pursue graduate work, and, ulti- mately, to take up the field professionally. Soon I became involved in other research, on the history of science in Russia, the history of evolutionary theory and genetics, the rise of molecular biology, and the problem of Lysenkoism. But eugenics kept coming up. During a summer NSF workshop in 1966, I roomed with an undergraduate, Kenneth Ludmerer, and enjoyed discussing his research on Madison Grant's book, The Passing of the Great Race (New York, 1916). I still remember the day he returned from a research trip to Philadelphia, full of enthu- siasm at what he had found in the Davenport papers of the Library of the Amer- vr PREFACE ican Philosophical Society. Soon his research led to a summa undergraduate the- sis (written under Yehuda Elkana) and a pathbreaking book, Genetics and American Society (Baltimore, 1972). Then, in 1969,1 was offered a job at the University of Pennsylvania and, while visiting, met Lyndsay Farrall. He was returning to Australia, and I was to replace him as Penn's historian of biology. I still remember a pleasant dinner at his Hav- erford home where we talked about his research. At the time, he had just completed his dissertation at Indiana University on the British eugenics movement. He kindly provided me with a copy, and upon reading it I was struck not only by the differences between the American and British movements, but also by the analytical approaches employed: while Ludmerer had looked at American eugenics as science (and pseudoscience), focussing on the founding role of American geneticists and their subsequent disenchantment, Farrall had looked at British eugenics as a social movement, constructing a "collective biography" (prosopog- raphy) of members and patrons by analyzing their professional, class, and family backgrounds and interconnections. From studying Russian science, and especially Russian biology, I had become convinced that national differences can be significant. Soviet Russia had had a eugenics movement in the 1920s, I knew, and so too did dozens of other countries. If eugenics differed in Britain and the United States—two countries with a common language and closely related political, scientific, and cultural tradi- tions—what might eugenics look like when its full international diversity was studied? Furthermore, as an area on the interface of science and society, eugenics looked like a good place to examine the interactions of the "internal" and "exter- nal" history of science (a distinction then in vogue). Eugenics seemed an especially promising area for research in yet another respect. In 1967, as a result of taking concurrent graduate seminars given by Ernst Mayr (on evolutionary theory) and Everett Mendelsohn (on the social context of science), I had become convinced that an evolutionary approach to the history of science would prove illuminating. I set forth its outlines in a hundred-page draft, but did not move to publication: resistance among historians to such an approach was (and continues to be) deep-seated. (Only a decade later did I summon enough nerve to publish something on it.) But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I was hunting for some way to "test" the evolutionary model against the historical record. In this con- nection, the breadth and diversity of international eugencis was attractive. Unfor- tunately, I did not know thirty languages. As the number of graduate students in the history of science at Penn began to increase, I decided on a modest project: a seminar, given in fall 1973, on the comparative history of eugenics. We would begin by reading the available literature on America and Britain, then move on to broader methodological and comparative analysis. Finally, working in a foreign language, each student would do orig- inal research on the history of eugenics in some country other than Britain and the United States, producing a seminar-length paper (roughly 60-75 pages). The result, I hoped, would be a volume covering the history of eugenics in fifteen or twenty countries and setting forth a methodological framework that was gener- alizable beyond eugenics. What I was aiming for, at least according to what the PREFACE vii course syllabus said, was to use eugenics as a strategic research site in order to understand "the 'ecology' of ideas and their evolution, how they are picked up by different groups and become adapted to different intellectual and social environ- ments." Remarkably, fifteen students took the course, eight of them undergraduates. In retrospect, the plan was a bit over-optimistic: in my innocence, I struggled to extract from each student a definitive case study, making the seminar trying for teacher and student alike. Alas, not all of their papers were publishable. None- theless, I am astonished in retrospect at what was produced: a remarkable set of studies on the eugenics movements in Argentina (Marc Machiz), Austria-Hun- gary (Eric Lipman), Canada (Joseph Maline and Daniel P. Todes), China and Japan (John Lorwin), France (Nancy Mautner and William Schneider), Germany (Bonnie Blustein, Stephen Perloff, and John Pitts), Italy (George MacPherson), Norway (Eric Rosenbaum), Spain (Dolores Maria Avalos), and Sweden (P. Thomas Carroll). Two seminar members (Mautner and Rosenbaum) presented their research at the Joint Atlantic Seminar on the History of Biology, held at the University of Pennsylvania in spring 1974. I had hoped to press forward with a volume at that time, but soon the students dispersed and other pressing matters diverted attention. During the following decade, the seminar papers were made available to those with a serious research interest in the subject. They were perused by scholars visiting our department, notably Dan Kevles and Donald MacKenzie, and also by graduate students who were encouraged to take up where their predecessors had left off. A number did, notably Martha Bettes, who completed a pioneering study of women in the Amer- ican eugenics movement; David van Keuren, who studied eugenics and British anthropology; Donna Houck, who wrote a paper on Paul Kammerer's eugenic ideas; Christine Hoepfner, who studied the Pan-American eugenics congress; Eva Artschwager, who investigated Viennese eugenics; and Barbara Kimmelman, who studied the relationship between eugenics and Mendelism in American agricul- tural settings. In the meantime, I assumed that the comparative international history of eugenics would soon attract increasing scholarly attention from historians who had the requisite language skills.

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