Eugenics

Concept

The term eugenics was coined by Sir Francis Galton in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty (1883). The term is taken from two Greek words: eu, which is the Greek word for the adverb “well,” and gen, which has its roots in the verb gignesthai, meaning “to become.” Galton described with this word the program of improving the human stock by giving the “more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.”

It was the Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 BC) who first developed the idea, which Galton later labeled eugenics. Plato wrote about improving the human stock. He took this idea directly from the successes of animal breeders, especially breeders of hounds and noble poultry. Already in his times, they increased desirable features in livestock by selectively mating only those specimens with the desired trait. In his classical work Republic (Book V), Plato proposed measures enforced by the state to foster the procreation of the “best” and to prevent the “worst” becoming parents. Thereby, he did not hesitate to recommend that the philosophical kings, as the leaders of the state, should use lies and deception to convince the people in following their proposals.

Eugenicists at the beginning of the 20th century, following Galton's terminology, used the term “positive eugenics” for the idea of fostering the procreation of the “best” by measures of the state and “negative eugenics” for the idea of preventing the “worst” becoming parents.

Toward Realization and the Discreditation of the Idea

In 1900, three scientists, Correns, Tschermak, and de Vries, independently rediscovered Mendel's “laws of inheritance,” written in 1866. They recognized its implications for the study of heredity and the theory of evolution. With this rediscovery, the idea of eugenics became so powerful that a number of leading scientists all over the world started advocating eugenics. New steps were to be taken.

To identify “good” and “bad” genes, research programs were first pursued in both state-supported and private laboratories. Concerning “positive eugenics,” the United States enacted the Immigration Act of 1924, reducing the immigration of eastern and southern Europeans to the United States. Britain and Germany changed their family allowance policies in the1930s. The true topic of the political agenda was “negative eugenics.” People with certain forms of diseases, handicaps, or criminal attitudes were sterilized by force. Laws of this kind were declared constitutional in the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Buck v. Bell. By the late 1920s, some two-dozen American states had enacted sterilization laws.

The political agenda of the German National Socialist government included a mixture of racist, ideological, and eugenic ideas. Laws discriminating against handicapped people were introduced as early as 1933. Laws discriminating against Jews were introduced in 1935,and millions of Jews were killed in the gas chambers during World War II. A similar attempt was made against Sinti and Roma. The T4program (1939–1941 officially, afterwards unofficially) led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of people labeled “unworthy to live,” especially those who were mentally handicapped. To foster “positive eugenics” in the Nazi sense, programs like Lebensborn (“spring of life”), in which SS officers mated with selected Aryan women, were undertaken. With the end of the Nazi regime in 1945, eugenics as a term and idea was discredited.

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