The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945 - (Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science)

Book Synopsis

From its founding in 1927 until its dissolution in 1945, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics (KWI-A) in Berlin-Dahlem transgressed many a boundary; indeed, the transgression of boundaries was in a sense its raison d'être from the outset. Initially this applied to the boundaries within the disciplinary canon of the human sciences. Even from its basic conception, the institute, centered around the person of its founding director Eugen Fischer (1874- 1967), was to unify anthropology, genetics, and eugenics under one roof. In ke- ing with the understanding predominant in Germany between the wars, anthropology went beyond the scope of the framework of the ascendant "race theory" to cover not only physical anthropology, including paleoanthropology, but also elements of what we today would call cultural and social anthropology. Thus, this anthropology extended far into the fields of archeology, paleontology, prehistory and early h- tory, history and sociology, and especially into ethnology and folklore. Human genetics, in turn, was more than the attempt to apply to humans the genetics dev- oped by Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) and his school in the USA on the model of drosophila. In Germany, Morgan's genetics, which concentrated on investigating the dissemination of genetic traits on the chromosomes and their morphological structure, was received with skepticism for two reasons.

From the Back Cover

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.

Review Quotes

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)