For the Betterment of the Race

The Rise and Fall of the International Movement for Eugenics and Racial Hygiene

S. Kühl

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137286123
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

Racism, race hygiene, eugenics, and their histories have for a long time been studied in terms of individual countries, whether genocidal ideology in Nazi Germany or scientific racial theories in the United States. As this study demonstrates, however, eugenic racial policy and scientific racism alike had a strongly international dimension. Concepts such as a 'Racial Confederation of European Peoples' or a 'blonde internationalism' marked the thinking and the actions of many eugenicists, undergirding transnational networks that persist even today. Author Stefan Kühl provides here a historical foundation for this phenomenon, contextualizing the international eugenics movement in relation to National Socialist race policies and showing how intensively eugenicists worked to disseminate their beliefs throughout the world.

NOTES

Introduction

1. In accordance with the custom in the international eugenics movement, in this book, “eugenics” and “race hygiene” will be used synonymously. Although at various times there were discussions in some national eugenics organizations as to whether the two concepts were identical, in the realm of international cooperation of eugenicists, both were generally accepted as having the same meaning. On this, see Turda 2007: 1997 and 2010b: 64ff.

2. For this perspective in the early historical studies of eugenics, see Mosse 1964, 1978; Altner 1968; Gasman 1971; Mühlen 1977. Splitting eugenics away from National Socialism has in the meantime become the established standard in historical writing. On this, see most recently Stern 2005: 2 and Turda 2010b: 1.

3. See the early studies by Adams (1990a) on the Soviet Union, Dikötter (1989) on China, Stepan (1991) on Brazil and other South American countries, and Suzuki (1975) on Japan.

4. See for example the early studies by Schwartz (1995a, 1995b) and Weindling (1987) on socialist and liberal eugenicists, the book by Cleminson (2000) on anarchist eugenicists, and the works by Allen (1988, 1991) on feminist eugenicists.

5. See, for example, Rosen (2004), particularly for the eugenics policies of the Protestants and Catholics in the United States; Leon (2004) in the American Eugenics Society; Richter (2001) on Catholicism and eugenics in Germany; Löscher (2009) on “Catholic eugenics” in Austria; and Falk (2006 and 2010), and Lipphardt (2009) on “Jewish eugenics.” John Glad’s book (2011: 112ff), which should be read not as an historical monograph but as a contemporary plea for a “Jewish eugenics,” has a collection of positive statements by Jews about eugenics.

6. See, for example, the presentation of scientifically important eugenicists in Kevles 1985; Weingart et al. 1988; Weindling 1989a; Mazumdar 1992.

7. This point of view has in the meantime been reinforced. One need only look at the comprehensive History of Eugenics (Levine and Bashford 2010), which attempts to show the variety of expressions of eugenics.

8. The concentration on the international forms of cooperation that came about in the twentieth century among eugenicists, race hygienists, demographers, and human geneticists necessarily carries certain limitations with it. From my perspective of the history of international organizations and meetings, I stand in a tradition that presents the organizational history of eugenics and the history of ideas. I cannot add very much to the very praiseworthy attempts to write a political and social history of eugenics, attempts that are being made particularly in Germany and the United States. While it is relatively easy to delineate the scientific, political, economic, and social background conditions of national eugenics movements, the international context is extraordinarily complex. In my focus on the international movement, I must limit myself to the general political and scientific context (world wars, world economic crisis, worldwide migration, National Socialism, Stalinism, the movement for citizens rights for blacks, the student movement, correlation calculations, Mendelianism, Weismannism, molecular biology).

9. Cf. for example, Semmel 1958: 113; Marten 1983: 174; Kevles 1985: 23; Weiss 1987: 82; Niemann-Findeisen 2004, 12ff. Weindling (1989a: 64) calls attention to the connection between the internationalist outlook and the German expansionist fixation of the race hygienist Alfred Ploetz.

10. Cf. for example, Ludmerer 1972: 148; Kevles 1985: 164–175; Roll-Hansen 1989a, and recent...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• One  The Dream of the Genetic Improvement of Mankind–The Formation of the International Eugenics Movement
• Two  The First World War and Its Effect on International Eugenics
• Three  Racism, Internationalism, and Eugenics
• Four  The Crisis of Orthodox Eugenics and the Rise of Human Genetics and Population Science
• Five  National Socialist Germany and the National Eugenics Movement
• Six  The Second World War and the Mass Murder of the Sick and Handicapped
• Seven  On “Good” and “Bad” Eugenics: Refocusing on Human Genetic Counseling and the Struggle against “Overpopulation”
• Eight  The Renaissance of Racist Eugenics
• Nine  The Dissolution of the Eugenics Movement: Will There Be Eugenics without Eugenicists?
• Afterword
• Notes
• Sources and Bibliography
• Index of Persons