Racial Hygiene (Rassenhygiene)

The German concept of “racial hygiene” was the predominant term for eugenics until the end of the [Page 1344]Third Reich (1933–1945). It comes from physician Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940), who founded the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (German Society for Racial Hygiene) in 1910, the main organization of the racial hygiene movement. It committed itself to the introduction of eugenic measures such as marriage bans, forced institutionalization, and sterilization of the supposedly hereditarily ill, alcoholics, and criminals. German racial hygiene, which presents a specifically radical variant of eugenics in comparison to international development, is rooted in racial anthropology. This approach influenced German eugenics/racial hygiene considerably. The French aristocrat Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882) formulated the basic ideas of racial anthropology. He started from the assumption that only white, Aryan, Germanic, or “Nordic” races are culturally constructive; all other races are culturally destructive. Racial anthropologists were convinced that racial differences are objective facts. Skull measurements and the diagnosis of other bodily characteristics established so-called racial types, such as the white, black, red, or yellow race. Specific cognitive and spiritual qualities were attributed to individual races. Racial anthropologists believed that miscegenation would lead to the inevitable downfall of the Volk. A strongly hierarchically organized social model was therefore designed in which the upper strata of society dominated as the noblest race. Selection, the battle for existence, and measures against degeneration promoted the “Nordification” (Aufnordung) of the race. Racial anthropological approaches pushed forward nationalist thinking and were connected with an extreme anti-Semitism. Main representatives of this extreme line of thinking were engineer Otto Ammon (1842–1915) and doctor and philosopher, Ludwig Woltmann (1871–1907).

Racial anthropology gained influence in Germany before and during World War I in nationalist circles and also determined the eugenic/racial hygiene movement of the Weimar Republic. With their seizure of power in 1933, the National Socialists fell back on a multitude of already existing eugenic, racial hygienic, and racial anthropological proposals for the improvement of the Volkskörper (“body of the Volk”). In 1931, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) (National Socialist German Labor Party) became the first party in Germany that incorporated racial hygienic thinking into its political program. It strove for a rapidly growing population that consisted of “racially pure,” “hereditarily healthy,” “Aryan,” and productive individuals. To achieve this, the carriers of “foreign” blood should be eradicated. “Foreign” for the National Socialists included those who carried either “hereditarily” or “racially” so-called inferior blood. Many laws were enacted to fulfill these objectives. Already in July 1933, the Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses (“Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring”) was passed, which, in contrast to the drafted sterilization law of the Preußische Ministerialverwaltung (Prussian Ministry of Administration) from 1932, provided for compulsory sterilization. In November 1933 came the Gesetz gegen gefährliche Gewohnheitsverbrecher (“Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals”), which allowed not only the sterilization of repeat offenders but also the castration of sex offenders. In total, about 400,000 people were forcefully sterilized by 1945, more than in any other country in which a sterilization law existed. In addition, from the beginning, National Socialist politics were focused especially against Jews and gypsies. The first measures taken were the systematic destruction of the economic existence of the Jewish population and the racially biological registration of the Sinti and Roma (gypsies), who were confined in work camps as so-called asocial people and often also sterilized. In 1935, various laws followed that forbade marriage between Deutschblütigen (those of “pure” German blood) and Jews, as well as between the “hereditarily diseased” and “hereditarily healthy.” In Beratungsstellen für Erb- und Rassenfragen (advice centers for heredity and race questions), hereditary and racial “inferiors” were identified. In this way, essential preconditions were put into play, leading to the Holocaust of the Jews and the “euthanasia” action on disabled people.

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