Am. J. Hum. Genet. 52:643-649, 1993 The Survival of Eugenics in 20th-Century Germany HUMAN -MGENETICS Paul Weindling KEDUCATION Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxfor After the Second World War, a U.S. intelligence ser- genics. The process of the emancipation of human ge- vices officer investigating the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute netics from eugenics that Kevles (1985) dates as occur- for Anthropology and Human Heredity commented ring from the 1930s in Britain and the United States is that one German anthropologist was 1,000 times more much harder to date for Germany. Weingart sees its guilty than an ordinary SS man (Weindling 1989). Yet, origins as occurring in the early 1940s, but the comple- despite the Nuremberg medical trials and denazifica- tion of the breakthrough of a new discipline of human tion tribunals, there was remarkable continuity of eu- genetics in Germany as occurring only in the 1960s. genically minded geneticists, who, after 1945, were ap- The aim of this paper is to scrutinize this claim. I will pointed to newly founded chairs and to institutes of suggest that the history of human genetics in Germany human genetics (Koch 1985). At the same time certain did not begin in the 1960s, in 1945, or even in the late leading geneticists (notably, Hans Nachtsheim) were 1930s but that its origins were earlier-i.e., in the era of concerned that the reaction against Nazi racism should rediscovery of the Mendelian patterns of hereditary. not lead to the wholesale condemnation of eugenics, so Both before and after 1945 human geneticists were in- that eugenic prescriptions could continue to be derived volved in eugenics movements, and human genetics was from human genetics. a means for eugenicists to extend their powers into the Despite the condemnation of Nazi racism, the 1950s medical sphere. At the same time it is important to saw an exercise in historical revisionism; the attempt recognize that eugenics was not a monolithic move- was made to rehabilitate the eugenically based medical ment that culminated in the Holocaust but that there and welfare measures from the period before the Nazi were competing and evolving varieties of eugenics. takeover in 1933. There was also insistence that certain It would be comforting to heap all abuses of heredi- Nazi measures, notably compulsory sterilization, were tary science onto leading Nazis such as Hitler and medical, rather than radical, measures (Nachtsheim Himmler, because their demise would have removed an 1952). The distinction was drawn between Nazi racism oppressive burden from hereditary science. But this in- and a humane science of eugenics, which was consis- terpretation overlooks how complex problems con- tent with democracy. While these arguments contained cerning the supposed genetic inheritance of ethnicity much that was tactical and polemical, they also sug- and social behavior predated and survived nazism. gested that differentiating human genetics from eugen- These problems relate to the application of genetics to ics has been problematic, and here the German case clinical medicine, psychiatry, and sexology. While com- may be taken as providing insight more generally into pulsory sterilization and the killing of mental patients the difficulties of formulating programs of medical and came to a head under nazism, notions of a constitu- social action from human genetics research. tionally mentally and physically degenerate residuum or It has been argued, by Kevles (1985) for the United of a social problem group were present in the emerging States and Great Britain and by Weingart et al. (1988) welfare and medical systems of imperial and Weimar for Germany, that the emergence of the discipline of Germany. Many geneticists initially had a disdainful at- human genetics marked a fundamental break with eu- titude toward nazism, as being a vulgar rabble-rousing movement, and supported schemes for a scientifically Received April 29, 1992; revision received September 4, 1992. planned and administered state in which eugenicists Address for correspondence: Paul Weindling, University of Ox- would dictate social policies. Here parallels may be ford, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 45-47 Banbury drawn to the concerns of American and British eugeni- Road, Oxford OX2 6PE, England. T 1993 by The American Society of Human Genetics. All rights reserved. cists during the 1930s, to take a lead in medical, demo- 0002-9297/93/5203-0028$02.00 graphic, and welfare policies and to insist on immigra- 643 644 Weindling tion controls, medical screening prior to marriage, and During the 1890s schemes arose for annual medical eugenic sterilization for mental defectives and other so- checks by a doctor trained in the science of heredity. cial misfits (Garver and Garver 1991). Each citizen was to carry a health passport, and the That biologists and doctors were the dominant doctor was to be a state official (Schallmayer 1892; group in the German Racial Hygiene Society was indica- Weiss 1988). The anthropologist Eugen Fischer (an au- tive of the search for scientific solutions to the social thority on the white-Hottentot interbreeding in Nam- problems of crime, poverty, and disease. The leading bia) called for a national network of clinics for biologi- role of doctors and biologists in eugenics found paral- cal screening of the population (Fischer 1913). Wilhelm lels in the eugenics movements in North America, Brit- Weinberg, a physician in Stuttgart, recommended that ain, and France. The German eugenics movement sup- there be correlation of family genealogies with infor- ported the authoritarian notions of the doctor as a mation on cause of death and on military and school medical dictator: the notion that hereditary germs de- medical examinations (Weinberg 1913). When the termined physical and psychological characteristics was young doctor Alfred Ploetz returned from the United reinforced by the notion of the scientifically trained States in 1895 to publish a treatise on racial hygiene, he doctor who could guide the nation toward better planned a second volume on the laws of human repro- health on the basis of scientifically proved laws. The duction, believing that a humane form of eugenics doctor, expert in hereditary biology, was to be a Fiihrer would be based on screening for chromosomal abnor- of the Volk. malities (Ploetz 1895; Weindling 1989). I would suggest that despite the political upheavals as My contention that human genetics has historical Germany changed from empire to republic in 1918 and roots reaching back to the origins of the science of then from nazism to democracy in 1945, human genet- genetics can be supported by early reference to the hu- icists were less slavish servants of any of these regimes man implications of genetics. Eugenics has often been but demanded positions of authority in order to con- seen as an offshoot of Mendelism, although the reverse duct research and influence social affairs. Human genet- was the case: medical thinking about preventing the icists developed a cohesive professional identity and hereditary germs of disease predated the actual discov- networks of control over research and clinical facilities. ery of the Mendelian laws and looked to human history Professional rivalries and scientific disagreements re- for genealogical models. This borrowing from history sulted in competition to secure support from external and politics followed from cell biologists and embryo- funding and governmental agencies. An example of this logists, who conceived of the organism as a complex is the funding of the German Psychiatric Institute in body like a state. Although much 19th-century cell biol- Munich by the SS and the Ministry for the Occupied ogy and embryology was focused on simple marine or- Eastern Territories (Weindling 1985). Mendelian genet- ganisms and amphibia, these were taken as models for ics with its emphasis on hereditary units was often diffi- more complex processes in humans and for the func- cult to reconcile with the Nazi ideology of Germanic tioning of societies (Weindling 1991a). During the racial purity of blood and character. Yet competition in 1890s zoologists were constructing genealogies of the the search for sources of financial and institutional sup- inheritance of characteristics, by tracing both maternal port meant that concepts, research methods, and prac- and paternal lines. August Weismann suggested that tices could have authoritarian implications, as the Nazis continuous selection and competition were necessary recognized that the population survey techniques devel- to prevent degeneration, as he drew an analogy be- oped by human geneticists were useful in the construc- tween domestic animals and civilized races. In speculat- tion of their racial utopia. ing on the immutable germ plasm, regardless of whether Not only were there competing groups of eugenicists the totality of the cell, the nucleus, the chromosomes, under the Nazis, but it is also necessary to see how or, indeed, the genes were interpreted as determining certain groups in the Nazi party and state were inter- growth and form, what seems important is the underly- ested in using eugenics for a biological restructuring of ing scientific quest for physical causal factors: medical German society. The Nazis were aware of the long his- scientists could then sift through the hereditary quali- torical pedigree of eugenics, and they conducted re- ties of the total population. The supposed concentra- search into the history of