The History of East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945: Sources and Commentaries 9781472531759, 9781474219464, 9781472533562

Citation preview

The History of East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The History of East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945 Sources and Commentaries

Edited by Marius Turda

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2017 © Marius Turda and Contributors, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN:



HB: PB: ePDF: ePub:

978-1-4725-3175-9 978-1-3500-3880-6 978-1-4725-3356-2 978-1-4725-3136-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Contents List of Maps Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction (Marius Turda) Note on Selection of Authors and Texts Maps

viii ix x xi xxiii xxiv

Part I State-­orientated Eugenic Movements 1 Austria Overview (Thomas Mayer) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

3 4 19 62 63 65

2

Poland Overview (Kamila Uzarczyk) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

73 74 91 119 120 122

3

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia) Overview (Michal V. Šimůnek) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

127 128 146 183 184 185

4

Hungary Overview (Marius Turda) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

191 192 214 259 260 261

Contents

5 Romania Overview (Marius Turda) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

271 272 295 344 345 347

6

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia) Overview (Ana Cergol Paradiž) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

363 364 376 411 412 414

7

Yugoslavia II (Croatia) Overview (Vjera Duić) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

421 422 436 466 467 468

8

Yugoslavia III (Serbia) Overview (Vladimir Petrović) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

473 474 484 510 511 512

Part II Minority Eugenic Movements 9

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina Overview (Filip Krčmar) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography

10 Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania Overview (Tudor Georgescu) Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Glossary Notes Bibliography vi

517 518 527 545 546 547 549 550 560 588 589 590

Contents

Appendices 1  Eugenics Societies in East-Central Europe 2  ‘Marshal Ion Antonescu’ Institute of Ethnoracial Biology (Bucharest)

595 595 599

Index

603

vii

List of Maps 1. East-Central Europe, 1910 2. East-Central Europe, 1923 3. East-Central Europe, 1942

xxiv xxv xxvi

Acknowledgements To Sorin Antohi and the Berendel Foundation for a grant that made possible the research and translations included in this book. To the Wellcome Trust (Grant no.082802) and the AHRC (Grant no. AH/J00507X/1) for providing essential financial assistance during the last stage of writing this book. To Carol Beadle, Simon Wilson, Mark Galt, Patrick Merricks and Tudor Georgescu for their friendship. Simon and Mark also deserve my warm thanks for having read some of the draft chapters and for suggesting ways to improve them. To Victoria Shmidt, Jakub Drábik and Bernadette Baumgarten, who have helped me with information and material when they were most needed. To Thomas Loughlin for his wonderful editing skills, critical spirit and sense of humour. To Christian Promitzer and Philippa Levine for their comments and fruitful suggestions. To Paul King for his careful copy-editing. To Rhodri Mogford for his understanding and patience. To Merv Honeywood for his careful supervision of the final version of this book.

Marius Turda London, 30 March 2015

List of Contributors Ana Cergol Paradiž, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Vjera Duić, University of Zagreb, Croatia Tudor Georgescu, Oxford Brookes University, UK Filip Krčmar, University of Novi Sad, Serbia Thomas Mayer, University of Vienna, Austria Vladimir Petrović, Institute for Contemporary History, Belgrade, Serbia Michal V. Šimůnek, Institute for Contemporary History, Prague, Czech Republic Marius Turda, Oxford Brookes University, UK Kamila Uzarczyk, Wroclaw Medical University, Poland

Introduction Marius Turda

I Until relatively recently the history of East-Central European eugenics was virtually unknown to the wider academic community. The few existing studies allow us, however, to glimpse what was, after all, a genuinely synoptic and truly remarkable story. It is clear, for instance, that there was already a flourishing eugenic literature in the region by the early 1900s and that influential promoters of eugenic theories of human improvement, such as Francis Galton (1822–1911), Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940) and Charles Davenport (1866–1944) were read not only in the main university centres and national capitals, such as Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Bucharest, but also in provincial towns across the region including Bohemia, Transylvania and the Banat (see Map 1). Eugenic research had been institutionalized in Prague as early as July 1913 and by December that year a Section of Social Biology and Eugenics was established in Vienna within the Sociological Society. In the 1910s, with their two eugenic societies and a host of other institutions promoting research to improve the health of the population, the Hungarians were at the forefront of eugenics in East-Central Europe. The Czechs and, to some extent, the Poles, occupied a similarly prominent role during the 1920s. By the mid-1930s, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia were members of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO), while the Romanians took a leading role in the International Federation of Latin Eugenic Societies, established in Mexico City in October 1935 (see Appendix 1). This book seeks to understand the originality of East-Central European eugenics as much as its intellectual debt to the cluster of ideas and practices developed elsewhere. Not surprisingly perhaps, considering its geographical proximity, German racial hygiene is often described as dominant in the region, although this is not always reflected by the institutional connections, personal trajectories and common interests of East-Central European eugenicists. Certainly, German racial hygiene had attracted the interest of prominent East-Central European eugenicists, such as the Austrian dermatologist Rudolf Polland (1876–1952), the Hungarian diplomat Géza Hoffmann (1885–1921), the Saxon physician Heinrich Siegmund (1867–1937) and the Romanian neurologist Gheorghe Marinescu (1863–1938), but British, American and French eugenics were equally influential, particularly among the Slovenes, the Czechs, the Hungarians and the Romanians. During the early 1920s, moreover, many eugenicists from East-Central Europe, including the Czech Arthur Brožek (1882–1934), the Romanian Sabin Manuilӑ (1894– 1964), the Slovene Bojan Pirc (1901–91) and Friedrich Breinl (1880–1936), a Sudeten German, to name but a few, benefitted from scholarships from the Rockefeller

Introduction

Foundation to study and visit medical and eugenic centres in the USA. There were others, such as the Romanian Iordache Fӑcӑoaru (1897–1984), the Austrian Karl Thums (1904–76) and the Hungarians Mihály Malán (1900–68) and Adél Jankovich (1900– 58), who studied with German (and Swiss) racial hygienists, such as Fritz Lenz (1887– 1976), Eugen Fischer (1874–1967), Ernst Rüdin (1874–1952) and Otmar von Verschuer (1896–1969). Finally, others, such as the Czech Bohumil Krajník (1895–1966) and the Romanian Petru Râmneanţu (1902–81), were attracted to Italian and French models of biotypology. And yet, contrary to the widespread support biotypology enjoyed among the Romanian eugenicists, it was not them but the Czechs who in 1936 established the only society of biotypology in East-Central Europe. It would, in fact, be convenient if East-Central European eugenics would straightforwardly fit these existing historiographic models but, alas, it does not. Eugenics, as defined by Galton in the 1880s, had a widely accepted meaning and served as a broad term for a wide variety of theories of social and biological improvement. East-Central Europe does have its distinct eugenic traditions, developed between 1900 and 1945, but whose personalities, arguments and directions, as well as their reception and long-­term impact, however, continue to be unknown. East-Central European eugenicists, moreover, did not lack conceptual inventiveness. This book, therefore, aims to redefine the current scholarship on eugenics by taking into account the multiplicity of scientific, cultural, linguistic and political contexts that served the complex ideological transmission and application of eugenic ideas and practices in East-Central Europe. This requires substantial comparative research, analytical effort and extensive archival research so that new intellectual foundations are provided upon which a solid and refreshing approach to the history of European and international eugenics is then built. This book is concerned with the fascinating, if widely unknown, history of eugenics in East-Central Europe between 1900 and 1945. During this period, and similar to their counterparts in Britain, Germany, France and the USA, East-Central European eugenicists had already published substantially on this new science of human improvement, organized themselves in societies, organized public meetings and gave public lectures. The selection of authors and texts presented here exemplify the profound importance that the professionalization of medicine, and evolutionary sciences more generally, had for the credibility and widespread circulation of eugenics in East-Central Europe. Moreover, this collection of long-­forgotten authors and eugenic texts is contextualized for the benefit of both the broader field of medical and historical studies, as well as contemporary debates on cultural memory and legacy. The general aim is to present examples of both state-­oriented and minority eugenic movements. To this effect, this book retraces the scientific careers of leading East-Central European eugenicists and the scientific rationalization of their particular eugenic theories. It thus attempts to demonstrate the growing preoccupation with heredity and evolution among medical and social scientists in East-Central Europe, while at the same time charting the eugenic programmes developed in this region between 1900 and 1945.

xii

Introduction

II Chronologically, this book offers multi-­layered investigations and cross-­cultural comparisons of the history of eugenics in East-Central Europe between 1900 and 1945. It focuses specifically on the following countries: Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia), Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia). During this troubled period in European history these countries experienced two world wars, underwent profound territorial, social and national transformations, and experienced a wide range of political systems: from imperial to republican in Austria; democratic-­populist government in Czechoslovakia; federalist in Yugoslavia; as well as authoritarian in Poland and Hungary. This process culminated, in some cases, such as Romania and Croatia, in outspokenly fascist regimes during the 1940s. More tragically, between 1938 and 1944, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland ceased to exist as independent countries, with parts of Yugoslavia (Slovenia), also fully annexed by Nazi Germany. These countries in East-Central Europe were also religiously and ethnically heterogeneous; therefore, it is unsurprising that the idea of a homogeneous national community figured prominently in political and religious discourse. Under these circumstances, eugenics became part of a larger biomedical and biopolitical agenda, an international discourse as diverse ideologically as it was geographically. Yet, this book neither exaggerates nor privileges these localized eugenic experiences but retrieves them from local archives to make them more accessible to scholars who are not familiar with the languages and historical traditions of East-Central Europe. Following the end of World War I, the imperial order in East-Central Europe disintegrated. A new form of state had emerged in the successor countries, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Romania, defined by the pre-­eminence of the nation (see Map 2). The newly established national states began policing not only the boundaries of their polity but also the body of their citizens and their families. The centrality of the nation and family in various eugenic theories put forward in East-Central Europe offers a clue to the extensive use of rhetoric and practices to idealize and memorialize these social institutions. The eugenic fixation with fertility and marriage and the depiction of the nation as an extension of the family were intertwined and overlapped, producing a synthesis specific to East-Central Europe; one that, on one hand, biologized national belonging while, on the other, presented eugenics as a progressive and modern project aimed at improving and protecting the health of the population. This was the core argument put forward by the Hungarian István Apáthy (1863–1922), the Slovene Franc Derganc (1877–1939) and the Romanian Iuliu Moldovan (1882–1966), in their attempts to formulate a definition of eugenics specific to Hungarian, Slovene and Romanian contexts. It was, also, the message transmitted by the prominent Czech eugenicist Vladislav Růžička (1870–1934) at the Second International Eugenics Congress, held in New York in 1921 and re-­affirmed whenever East-Central European eugenicists met and discussed their ideas at international conferences during the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Second Session of the International xiii

Introduction

Institute of Anthropology, held in Prague in September 1924, and the Second All-Slav Paedological Congress, which took place in Ljubljana in 1937. The countries of East-Central Europe offer an apt insight into how the thinking, researching and writing about the nation had a significant impact upon eugenics as a modernizing project. Between 1900 and 1945, these countries were predominantly rural and, as a result, their eugenic intellectual tradition was often based on rural idealism. Eugenicists in East-Central Europe valued the peasantry as the embodiment of racial fertility and national strength. They endorsed a form of eugenic pastoralism, praising rural communities while simultaneously building a defence against their wearing down by modernity. In these eugenic narratives, rural communities were often portrayed as timeless and ahistorical entities, while states were portrayed as active promoters of change. Tellingly, and somehow conflictingly, in East-Central Europe, eugenics appropriated this longing for the past and the preservation of tradition changed into an astonishing array of national programmes for social and biological improvement. Yet, this glorification of the traditional rural community was widely disseminated through a specifically modern form of scientific knowledge. It is, therefore, no accident that the history of eugenics and the history of nation-­state building in East-Central Europe were closely interlinked. For both eugenics and nationalism, a clearly motivating force was that of the identification and belonging, of individuals, communities, nations, races and so on. This book reveals the extent to which the eugenic biologization of national belonging was influential in each chosen country, based on the modern biological knowledge of heredity and evolution. By doing so, it sheds light on what influences specific eugenic views, advocated by significant individuals from both dominant nations and minority groups, exerted on the practice of national and local politics and sense of ethnic identity. During the inter-­war period, a wide range of social and medical diseases was held responsible for the nation’s pathologies, and demands for regulation and control intensified. Old and new problems facing East-Central Europe were reconfigured in terms of social and national health, and the eugenicists were foremost in this process of redefinition. As elsewhere, eugenics provided professionals and officials with a strong scientific foundation on which to erect programmes of social and biological homogenization. Crucially, among the ideological and cultural consequences of the biologization of national belonging was the strengthening of the public image of eugenics. The Romanian eugenicist Ovidiu Comşia (1903–44) spoke of the emergence of a new group of individuals, the ‘ethnic elite’ (‘elita etnicӑ’) that valued the nation above the state and the individual. In language charged with nationalist idioms, the eugenicists in EastCentral Europe urged the population to reproduce responsibly while putting pressure on the state to intervene to prevent the process of social and biological degeneration. As established scientists, public officials and members of the government, the eugenicists publicly stressed the imperative for the state to take an active role in the maintenance and improvement of its population’s physical and mental qualities. Often they were at once neo-Lamarckists and Mendelians in their outlook, emphasizing as much the improvement of the nation’s social environment as its hereditary constitution. xiv

Introduction

III With new countries emerging in East-Central Europe after 1918 came new institutional ambitions, expressed not only politically, but also culturally and socially. This institutional context strongly predisposed the eugenicists to think in terms of state patronage and state intervention. Most of them were at the epicentre of important developments in social hygiene, child welfare and public health in their respective governments. Personal relationships were as important as the circulation of ideas within one country and across the region. Some eugenicists, such as Pál Teleki (1879–1941) and Michael Hainisch (1858–1940) held high political office, the former as Prime Minister of Hungary (1920– 1 and 1939–41), the latter as the second President of Austria (1920–8), while others, such as Tomasz Janiszewski (1867–1939) and Gheorghe Banu (1889–1957), were ministers of health in Poland and Romania, respectively. Tellingly, one of the founding members of the Czech Eugenics Society, established in 1915 in Prague, was Edvard Beneš (1884– 1948), the second President of Czechoslovakia (1935–8 and 1940–8). These very different individuals (in terms of their political views, social origin and scientific background) nevertheless viewed eugenics as part of a wider programme of health reform and themselves as a group of experts committed to identifying social problems and proposing measures for their amelioration. They were dedicated equally to tackling problems of disease and poverty at a national level. In turn, other professionals, in particular anthropologists, demographers and sociologists, saw in eugenics an opportunity to raise the prestige of their profession by exhibiting its social utility and potential for guiding government policy. They founded a new range of periodicals that dealt with eugenics, from the short-­lived Fajegészségügy in Budapest to the resilient Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic published, with a short intermission, in Cluj between 1927 and 1947. Some were unambiguous about their name, such as Eugenika in Ljubljana and Eugenika Polska in Warsaw, others used eugenics to reflect the spirit of nationalism and ethnic preparedness with which journals, such as Nemzetvédelem and Nemzeti Családvédelem in Budapest, were imbued. Finally, some journals pointed out eugenics’ relationship to other disciplines, such as Revue neuropsychopathologie and Anthropologie in Prague, Revista de igienӑ socialӑ in Bucharest and Medizinische Zeitschrift in Sibiu. Book series devoted to eugenics, the so-­called ‘eugenic libraries’, were established in Czechoslovakia (‘Eugenická knihovna’), Romania (‘Biblioteca eugenicӑ şi biopoliticӑ’) and Poland (‘Biblioteka Eugeniczna’) during the early 1920s. The geneticist Jaroslav Kříženecký (1896–1964) launched the Czechoslovak ‘eugenic library’ in 1919 with his book on consanguineous marriages, Příbuzenské sňatky, while in Romania it was Iuliu Moldovan with his 1925 Igiena naţiunii: Eugenia (The Hygiene of the Nation: Eugenics). Suffusing these journals, and the entire collection of articles, books, public lectures and radio broadcasts on eugenics and related themes was a confident faith in progress and science, a readiness to believe that a modern nation-­state required a healthy and numerous population. By the early 1930s, across East-Central Europe, eugenics became socially relevant and politically important, and as such it was becoming better equipped intellectually to support xv

Introduction

and encourage the formulation of nation-­wide projects of social and biological improvement. A series of eugenic measures was proposed across the region, from sterilization to the introduction of pre-­marital medical certificates. For instance, the introduction of the latter eugenic measure had preoccupied the Czech eugenicist Ladislav Haškovec (1886–1944) since the early 1900s. He promoted it at the 15th International Congress of Medicine, which took place in Lisbon in April 1906, at the Interallied Congress of Social Hygiene, held at the Sorbonne in Paris in April 1919 and at the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, convened in New York in March 1925. Compulsory sterilization was arguably the most divisive topic among the eugenicists in East-Central Europe, ranging from complete rejection (on religious, moral and legal grounds) to enthusiastic endorsement. In fact, as elsewhere, political affinities did not matter much. Sterilization was endorsed equally by eugenicists on the left such as the Hungarian József Madzsar (1876–1940) and the Austrian Julius Tandler (1869–1936), and those on the right such as the Romanian Iordache Fӑcӑoaru, the Pole Karol Stojanowski (1895–1947) and the Austrian Karl Thums (1904–76). At their national conference in 1931 the Women’s Section of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party proposed the introduction of sterilization and so did the Romanian eugenicists at the 17th International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology held in Bucharest in 1937. It was also promoted by Jewish eugenicists, such as the Hungarians Márk Goldberger (1879–?) and Lajos Naményi (1892–1957), the Pole Zewi Parnass and the Romanian Eugen Relgis (1895–1987). Tellingly, opposition to eugenic sterilization came not only from Catholic eugenicists in East-Central Europe, such as Ema Deisinger (1901–90), Albert Niedermeyer (1888– 1957), Andrija Živkovič (1886–1957), Alojz J. Chura (1899–1979), Paweł Gantkowski (1869–1938) and Tihamér Tóth (1889–1939), but also from socialist physicians such as the Hungarian Ferenc Jahn (1902–45). Together with another Hungarian Béla Totis (1895–1943), Jahn voiced his criticism of negative eugenics in the Internationales Ärztliches Bulletin, published in Prague between 1934 and 1938. The Czech eugenicist Jan Bělehrádek (1896–1980) was another contributor, similarly voicing opposition to the appropriation of eugenics by racism and Nazism. Jewish eugenicists also challenged the growing importance of Nazi theories of racial domination as illustrated by Ignaz Zollschan (1877–1948) and Theodor Gruschka (1888–1967) in Prague and Iosif Glicsman (1871–1938) in Bucharest. Arguably the most articulated East-Central European critique of Nazi ideas of racial superiority came in the form of a conference organized in Prague in 1934 and then published in a volume edited by the anatomist Karel Weigner (1874–1937) under the title Rovnocennost evropských plemen a cesty k jejich zušlecht‘ování (On the Equality of European Races and Ways for Their Betterment). It included contributions from leading Czech eugenicists, such as Jindřich Matiegka (1862–1941), Jiří Malý (1899–1950), Vladislav Růžička and Arthur Brožek. The ideal of a healthy nation dominated culture and politics in East-Central Europe, irrespective of how different various eugenic movements appeared in practice. In the xvi

Introduction

1920s, eugenicists in East-Central Europe had intended that eugenics would contribute to national progress and the establishment of a new social, cultural and political order. From this climate came the special achievements of Galton’s long-­prophesied national eugenics. Only a generation later maintaining the nation’s racial potential had become of prime political importance alongside the turn to ‘negative eugenics’ and its deployment of instruments for eliminating ‘dysgenic groups’. As it became clear only too painfully during World War II (see Map 3), particularly among the German minorities in EastCentral Europe, maintaining and improving the ethnic community’s health demanded the creation of a supra-­state organized by, and for, the chosen members of one race. This was the implication of Eugen Fischer’s lectures in Transylvania in late October to early November 1941. He returned, in February 1942, to Budapest at the invitation of Gyula Darányi (1888–1958), Director of the Institute of Public Health at Péter Pázmány University, and then visited Zagreb in April 1942, enticed by the Ustasha government’s promise to establish a chair in anthropology at the University of Zagreb. Fischer’s was an aspiration to achieve a complete congruence between an increasingly problematic racial interpretation of history and the ambitions of eugenicists in East-Central Europe to formulate an ethnic ontology suitable to their respective nations.

IV The popularity of eugenics in East-Central Europe also drew prestige from another source: intra-­regional collaboration. For instance, the Austrian eugenicist Max von Gruber (1853–1927) attended the 16th International Congress of Medicine in Budapest in 1909. In turn, Pál Teleki attended the meeting of the International Society for Racial Hygiene, which took place in August 1911 in Dresden during the first International Hygiene Exhibition. Then, in September 1918, the first conference of the Hungarian, Austrian and German eugenicists took place in Budapest. Speakers included Pál Teleki, Géza Hoffmann, Max von Gruber, the Austrian statistician Wilhelm Hecke (1869–1945) and the German eugenicist Wilhelm Weinberg (1862–1937). Among those who attended the latter conference was the Romanian eugenicist Iuliu Moldovan, at the time a military physician in the Austro-Hungarian army. It was Moldovan’s first and only encounter with leading Hungarian eugenicists such as Teleki and Hoffmann. After 1920, with Transylvania now part of Romania, there was a constant tension between eugenicists from the two countries, reflecting a more general political antagonism. Some collaboration did, however, materialize, particularly during the 1930s. For instance, the Romanian eugenicist Gheorghe Banu (1889–1957) was reviewed in Hungarian and when the short-­lived journal Rassen in Donauraum, edited by the Hungarian anthropologist and eugenicist János Gáspár (1899–1989), was published, Banu was one of the contributors along with two eugenicists from Yugoslavia, Božo Škerlj (1904–61) and Svetislav Stefanović (1877–1944). Another form of close collaboration emerged between the Slavic eugenicists in East-Central Europe. Leading Slovene eugenicists, such as Božo Škerlj and Ivo Pirc xvii

Introduction

(1891–1967), were educated in Prague and worked closely with Czech eugenicists such as Vladislav Růžička. During the early 1920s after the disintegration of the Russian Empire, Ukrainian eugenicists Boris Matjuschenko and Aleksander Maklecov (1884–1948) also resided in Prague. Matjuschenko remained in Prague and after 1923 worked at the Czechoslovak Institute of National Eugenics, while Maklecov moved to Ljubljana. In 1937 he was among the founders of the Section for Anthropology, Genealogy and Eugenics. Linguistic and cultural solidarity dovetailed with proposals for a common eugenic agenda among the Slavic eugenicists, such as the one proposed by the Serb psychologist Paja Radosavljević (1879–1958) at the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in New York in September 1921 and by Franc Derganc in his 1932 Borba zapada in vzhoda (The Conflict between the West and the East). Dedicating the book to the centenary of the birth of Miroslav Tyrš (1832–1884), Czech art historian and founder of the Sokol movement, Derganc highlighted a Slavic eugenic standard against which all other models of eugenics, particularly the German and the Anglo-American, were measured. Most fundamentally, this celebration of ideas of social and biological improvement allowed for broader participation in the transformative potential of eugenics among the Slavic nations, as illustrated by the Second Balkan Congress for the Protection of Childhood, held in Belgrade in 1938. ‘Slavic’ eugenics, thus defined, was devoted to fostering Slavic cultural and political ideals, alongside the nourishment and the care of the national body. Seen from this perspective, ‘Slavic’ eugenics was not only anti-­racist but, equally important, transcended racial categories. In this, and other respects, it resembled the ‘Latin’ eugenics that Romanians promoted successfully during the mid-1930s. These and other developments, most notably the gradual progress of bacterial pathology and genetics during the late 1930s and early 1940s, prompted eugenicists in East-Central Europe, as elsewhere, to formulate a more rigorous and objective interpretation of heredity and its relationship to human improvement. Although eugenics was not abandoned, genetics was gradually embraced by a growing number of scientists in East-Central Europe, biologists as well as physiologists and endocrinologists, such as those who participated in the 7th International Congress of Genetics held in Edinburgh in August 1939. Hungary, for instance, was represented by geneticist Lajos Csík (1902–62), plant biologist Zoltán Szabó (1882–1944) and anthropologist Mihály Malán, while Romania was represented by endocrinologist Constantin I. Parhon (1874–1969) and pathologist Francisc Rainer (1874–1944). While remaining advocates of various schemes to improve the hereditary health of the population, these eugenicists unified genetics with other branches of medical knowledge, to some extent anticipating the decline of eugenic reductionism after 1945.

V Apart from offering a new perspective on the transmission and adaptation of eugenic knowledge between international and national spheres, this book addresses a second, currently entirely neglected, field of study by pioneering the analysis of eugenic xviii

Introduction

discourses produced by ethnic minorities. Considering that large parts of East-Central Europe were anything but ethnically homogeneous, and that numerous ethnic minorities resisted their integration into the successor states established after World War I, it is important to also investigate the counter-­narratives to the national state’s perception of its ethnic minorities. Eugenics, as this book shows, shaped the discussion about the relationship between the state and its ethnic minorities in a number of ways. To begin with, eugenics aimed to protect the ethnic minority from a number of challenges posed by the post-Versailles world and its new political environment. More fundamentally, eugenics helped create the physical and cultural differences that underpinned the categories of majority and minority in EastCentral Europe. This book, while not pretending to offer a comprehensive synopsis, addresses the manner in which individual ethnic minorities themselves interacted with the national and international eugenic discourse to advance their own aims and ambitions. Between 1900 and 1945, ethnic minorities across East-Central Europe developed their own eugenic subcultures, articulated in a wide range of books and journals. Notable minority eugenic works include Heinrich Siegmund’s Zur sächsischen Rassenhygiene (On Saxon Racial Hygiene, 1901), Oskar Bail’s (1869–1927) Der Krieg in seiner rassen-­ hygienischen Bedeutung (The Racial Hygienic Meaning of War, 1916), Gerszon Gabriel Lewin’s (1868–1939) Ochrona zdrowia i eugenika w Biblii i Talmudzie (Health Protection and Eugenics in the Talmud and the Bible, 1934), Lajos Küttel’s Az átörökléstan és eugenia kérdések (Heredity and Eugenic Questions, 1936) and Otto Muntendorf ’s (?–1943) Volkstod droht! Die biologische Gefahrlage des Sudetendeutschtums in Bildern und Zahlen (The Death of the Nation is Imminent! The Dire Biological Situation of the Sudeten Germans in Images and Numbers, 1937). These examples demonstrate not only how eugenic reasoning influenced minority health politics in East-Central Europe but also, when adopted and institutionalized by various minority organizations, how they recast and extended the dissemination of eugenic knowledge in society. Minority eugenic subcultures in East-Central Europe, that is to say those clusters of ideas, agendas and programmes devised to ensure the biological survival of the ethnic minority community, often developed in parallel with the nationally dominant projects of cultural and identity politics. Ethnic diversity created cultural settings for elaborating and testing eugenic ideas, which explains how fertile those ideas proved at the time. Among the Hungarians of Transylvania, for instance, eugenics was part of a broader cultural and scientific debate on social and biological improvement carried out by medical, cultural and religious journals, such as Pásztortűz, Korunk and Unitárius Közlöny. Similarly, Volksgesundheit, the journal founded in 1902 by Heinrich Siegmund in Mediasch (Rom.: Mediaş; Hung.: Medgyes) and Magyar Népegészségügyi Szemle edited by Béla Schmidt (1881–1943) in Marosvásárhely (Rom.: Târgu Mureş) during the 1930s attempted to reconcile the regenerative ideology of modern hygiene and eugenics with traditional morality in the Saxon and Hungarian communities of Transylvania. Among the German minorities (Volksdeutsche) of East-Central Europe eugenics was, first and foremost, a defensive strategy of ethnic protectionism. It also involved the xix

Introduction

preservation of a distinctive racial identity, as argued by Gustav Rösler, the CityPhysician (Stadtarzt) in Reichenberg (Cz.: Liberec), in the pages of Neues Leben, the journal established in 1906 to promote German interests in Austria, or by the journals Woge-Blatt and Volk und Heimat in Yugoslavia and Hungary, respectively. This identity was delineated by the boundaries that separated those who belonged to the ethnic community from foreigners and outsiders who were often seen as ‘racial’ enemies. As such, ethnic minorities (similar to ethnic majorities) engaged directly with the basic notion that the nation can and must be eugenically improved. This proliferation of eugenic ideas and practices resulted in a number of welfare and family initiatives designed to control, govern and protect the social and economic welfare of the ethnic minority. These included, for example, the Land Preservation Society, established in 1906 in Mediasch and the Central Cooperative for Welfare, created in 1930 in Novi Sad (Yugoslavia). While reworking the eugenic ideals, Saxon and Sudeten German eugenicists also appealed to the image of a never-­ending struggle for survival between their ethnic community and the nation-­state in which they resided. The emerging ethnic eugenic subcultures were thus defined by a nationalist mentality connecting family, fertility and reproduction with racial survival. This was the eugenic programme promoted by Saxon and Sudeten German societies, such as the Society of Child Enthusiasts and the Office for Hereditary Biology in Romania and the Central Office for Sudeten German Family Research, the German Society for Family Study and Eugenics and the Sudeten German Institute for Land and Ethnic Research in Czechoslovakia. Through economic incentives, the ethnic minority was encouraged to increase efforts to strengthen its social basis and economic prosperity; demographic growth was planned through measures to oppose birth control; finally, through eugenic screening and social medicine it hoped to create a healthy population. Minority eugenic programmes formulated in East-Central Europe between 1900 and 1945 were thus based on a cluster of principles centred upon protecting the hereditary qualities of the ethnic community, while simultaneously preventing it from miscegenation and assimilation. The preservation of racial individuality was one of the defining elements of the minority eugenic cultures, whether we consider Jews in Poland, Germans in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania or Hungarians in Romania. It was voiced as early as 1911 by Heinrich Sigmund in Transylvania and as late as 1940 by Franz Anton Basch (1901–46), Chairman of the Volksbund in Hungary. In promoting the vision of a healthy national community regulated by scientific norms of health and hygiene, minority eugenics offered more than just a scientific remedy for the decline of the ethnic community’s health; it also provided a defensive biological strategy for that particular ethnic community. According to the Austrian anthropologist Eberhard Geyer (1899–1943), ethnic German communities in East-Central Europe were not only the guardians of lost Germanic traditions but also the promoters of a racial worldview that underpinned Germany’s new empire in East-Central Europe. What this meant, in fact, as shown during the 1940s, was a complete refashioning of the ethnic minority’s relationship with the host-­nation based on principles of racial homogeneity and protectionism. xx

Introduction

VI The question of how eugenics was used not only by states and ethnic minorities but also by various groups and social movements in East-Central Europe, such as the feminists, for instance, is currently under-­researched. As elsewhere, feminists were active in the eugenic movements in East-Central Europe from the early 1900s onwards. Vilma Glücklich (1872–1927), for example, was one of the participants in the ‘Debate on Eugenics’ organized in 1911 in Budapest and the National Federation of Women’s Associations was one of the societies represented in the first Committee on Eugenics created in Hungary in 1914. To empower women as citizens was as important as the eugenic transformation of society itself, Hungarian feminists argued. Indeed, many feminist eugenicists were active as much socially as they were politically. Zofia Daszyńska-Golińska (1866–1934), for instance, was a Polish socialist politician, who in 1927 published Zagadnienia polityki populacyjnej (Population Policy Issues), a persuasive analysis of the relationship between eugenics and social demography. Another notable example is provided by Medea Niculescu (1889–?), one of the vice-­presidents of the Romanian Royal Society of Eugenics and Heredity, who was also one of the founders of the Union of the Anti-Fascist Romanian Women, created in 1945. In many cases, the social and political emancipation women experienced in EastCentral Europe, particularly after 1920, was reflected in their professional mobility and scientific careers. Having studied with Otmar von Verschuer, Adél Jankovich returned to Hungary in the early 1930s to become an established eugenicist and geneticist. The Romanian Mӑrioara Perţia, on the other hand, studied biometry and eugenics with Karl Pearson (1857–1936) in London. Female eugenicists were strongly committed to ideas of education, emancipation and social progress as well as women’s rights and scientific respectability. A preoccupation with motherhood remained, however, central to the eugenic activities of many leading women activists in East-Central Europe. Some of them, such as Ema Deisinger and Ida Kremling (1871–1937) in Yugoslavia, and Sarolta Geőcze (1862–1928) in Hungary, highlighted the importance of a eugenic education for prospective mothers. Motherhood and education were portrayed as a means of advancing Christian and family values, seen as the foundation upon which the eugenic transformation of the nation was predicated. Other female eugenicists such as the Romanian Maria B. Bӑiulescu (1860–1941), President of ASTRA’s Feminist and Biopolitical Section, deployed a nationalist rhetoric of racial responsibility and eugenic health to defend her ideas of motherhood. This is not to say that feminists in East-Central Europe did not argue in favour of more drastic eugenic measures, as in the above-­mentioned exemple of the Women’s Section of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party. Almost two decades earlier, the Hungarian feminist Rózsa Bédy-Schwimmer (1877–1948) endorsed sterilization, and situated it within a larger eugenic goal of creating a healthy Hungarian nation. Furthermore, in 1916, the Hungarian Feminist Association submitted a petition xxi

Introduction

to the government in which the introduction of medical certification before marriage was requested. The natural strength of the bond between women and the nation’s fertility remained, however, essential to all eugenic narratives about motherhood in East-Central Europe between 1900 and 1945. By paying closer attention to the ways in which men exerted personal control over women’s health and reproduction, these female authors pointed to the limitations of the various eugenic programmes, which mostly argued for a closer supervision by the state of female reproduction. As both women and eugenicists they, too, were concerned about maternal and infant mortality and therefore argued for the introduction of public health and welfare programmes.

VII A closer examination of the history of eugenics in East-Central Europe between 1900 and 1945, such as the one undertaken in this book, therefore, is revealing of the ways in which it became caught up with the dominant social, political and scientific ideas of the age. It is particularly clear that the trajectory of eugenics in East-Central Europe during this period mirrored that of social and cultural progress as well as political developments in the countries in the region. The ideal of a healthy national community grounded in the inter-­war period remained the dominant feature of social policy and public health programmes as the century wore on. Practices and solutions established in one area of expertise influenced modes of interpretation of the national body in the other, so that we can see the fascination with eugenics moulding strategies and methodologies of health as well as approaches to the social pathology of various groups and minorities (ethnic, sexual and social) across East-Central Europe. Eugenicists aimed to not only identify degenerate bodies and deviant individuals but also to understand, sort out and ultimately control the general health of the population. As this book hopefully demonstrates, East-Central European eugenics does have, then, its distinct history and its individual traditions and there is great benefit to current historical scholarship and wider debate on the role of biological sciences in society in trying to relate to and reconcile them with the better known histories of eugenics elsewhere.

xxii

Note on Selection of Authors and Texts A book such as this was faced from the outset with multiple challenges, from the practical task of unearthing biographies of long-­forgotten individuals to the theoretical endeavour of providing a unifying structure and conceptual coherence to varied historical and linguistic traditions. Not surprisingly, then, both the vast range of case-­studies and the number of languages involved in shaping the history of eugenics in East-Central Europe have so far deterred historical synthesis; attempts, however, have been made, most notably by Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900– 1940 (2007) and Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945 (2011). The authors and texts presented here have been selected not only because of their intrinsic contribution to the history of eugenics in East-Central Europe but also to illustrate a much broader circulation of scientific ideas and transfer of knowledge during the first half of the twentieth century. This is particularly important, as one of this book’s central aims is to place eugenics at the centre of European history and, thus, to challenge the views that have repeatedly denied its importance. However, to exaggerate the potency of the history of eugenics in East-Central Europe would be as problematic as to assign complete authority to German, British, Scandinavian and North American models that so far have monopolized the scholarship. It is important to stress, therefore, that this book’s conceptual perspective is by definition both regional and comparative. But the formulation of such a comprehensive overview must necessarily be grounded in a wide range of primary sources, and this book hence addresses the need to drastically expand our knowledge of, and accessibility to, forgotten primary sources in the history of eugenics, not only in EastCentral Europe, but across the world from north to south and from west to east. No anthology can claim to be exhaustive in its selection of authors and texts. To my regret some minority eugenic traditions, most notably those among the Sudeten Germans, the Hungarians in Transylvania and the Jews in Poland (apart from one author), were not included. The ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) in Yugoslavia and the Saxons in Romania selected here provide, however, a good synopsis of the cultural and political engagement with ideas of social and biological selection and improvement among the eugenically most active ethnic minority in East-Central Europe, from economic to racial protectionism, from the castigation of inter-­ethnic marriages to the endorsement of Nazi racism. Finally, feminist and socialist eugenic texts in East-Central Europe deserve more recognition and analysis than this volume could provide. However, to include all varieties of eugenics (as initially planned) would have made an already lengthy book even lengthier. It is my hope that the size restriction imposed on this book would not be seen as limitations but as opportunities for other scholars to spur further scholarly analysis about the authors and the themes included here. Marius Turda

Maps

1  Map of East-Central Europe, 1910

2  Map of East-Central Europe, 1923

3  Map of East-Central Europe, 1942

Part I State-­orientated Eugenic Movements

1 Austria

Overview Thomas Mayer

I Depending on one’s perspective, the history of eugenics in Austria began either comparatively early or rather late; the veracity of each assessment is dependent on the aspect of the eugenic project under consideration. Take for example, the introduction of marriage counselling in Vienna in 1922, which represented the first eugenic institution of its kind in Europe. Other developments also put Austria at the forefront of eugenics in East-Central Europe, including lectures on eugenic topics delivered at universities in the early twentieth century, the use of biological family research methods for the collection of scientific data and the attempt to establish a eugenic department around 1920. On the other hand, the institutionalization of eugenics occurred relatively late, as functional eugenic societies were established in Austria only after 1923. As for negative eugenics, compulsory sterilization was introduced in 1940 after the Anschluss. At the turn of the twentieth century, many scientists and intellectuals perceived eugenics as a modern project of human improvement. In Austria groups as diverse as the Youth Movement (Jugendbewegung), anti-­alcohol campaigners and social and academic elites were fascinated by the idea of social reform through the application of medical and biological knowledge to such social problems as gender equality, industrialization and urbanization. Most early advocates of eugenics in Austria, such as hygienist Max von Gruber (1853–1927), physiologist Rudolf Wlassak (1865–1930) and anthropologist Rudolf Pöch (1870–1921), were influenced by the German racial hygienist Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940). Pöch and Wlassak, in fact, belonged to the Ploetz circle in Zürich in the late 1890s. The Social Democrat Wlassak was a leading member of the Abstinence Society (Arbeiterabstintentenbund), and Pöch later became a leading advocate of physical anthropology and human heredity in Vienna. Moreover, Ploetz convinced agrarian economist Michael Hainisch (1858–1940), later President of Austria (1920–9), and Anton Weichselbaum (1845–1920), a professor of pathology at the University of Vienna to embrace racial hygiene in 1909. The bacteriologist Max von Gruber (1853–1927), who in 1903 transferred from Vienna to the University of Munich, had much influence on Austrian hygienists and racial hygienists; two of his students, Ignaz Kaup (1870–1944) and Heinrich Reichel (1876–1943) were among Austria’s most influential eugenicists. Eugenic activities were noted in Vienna in late 1913: a short commentary on race hygiene (‘Über Rassenhygiene’) published by Heinrich Reichel and Julius Tandler’s lecture to the German Society for Racial Hygiene (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene). Efforts to institutionalize eugenics were also taken by the German-Austrian Counselling Service for National Welfare (Deutsch-Österreichische

Austria

Beratungsstelle für Volkwohlfahrt), which was founded in spring 1913, and modelled on the Centre for National Welfare (Zentralstelle für Volkswohlfahrt) in Berlin. Ignaz Kaup was the head of the German institution and encouraged the foundation of its Viennese counterpart. In spring 1913 a group of German-­nationalists called for the establishment of a society, where national welfare was connected with the physical and moral fitness of every ‘citizen’ (‘Volksgenosse’). The idea was to strengthen the influence of German-­ speaking Austrians by raising the quality and quantity of the German-­speaking population in the Habsburg Monarchy and to try to ‘germanize all non-Germans’ (‘fremdvölkischen Elemente einzudeutschen’). Racial hygiene was mentioned as one of the active fields of the Counselling Service (‘Eine deutsch-österreichische Beratungsstelle für Volkswohlfahrt’, Der Bund 1913: 9–11). The conferences organized by the GermanAustrian Counselling Service for National Welfare did not directly focus on eugenics and racial hygiene although some participants were clearly interested in such topics. For example, at the first conference held in 1916, the leading official for public health, Theodor Altschul (1850–1918) demanded that ‘asocial’ (‘Asozialen’) and degenerate people be confined to asylums. The main concerns were mostly with issues of social hygiene, social and population policy, such as the declining birth rate, childcare and infectious diseases (Ullmann 1916: 7–10; see also ‘Die zweite Deutsch-Österreichische Tagung für Volkswohlfahrt’, Der Bund 1917: 4–8). In 1907, the sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid (1870–1931) founded the Sociological Society (Soziologische Gesellschaft) of Vienna. He was also a member of the German Society for Racial Hygiene. In November 1913, he established a Section of Social Biology and Eugenics (Sektion für Sozialbiologie und Eugenik) with Tandler as president and the biologist Paul Kammerer (1880–1926) as secretary (‘Eugenics in Austria’, The Eugenics Review 1913–14: 387). It is important to note that contrary to most German racial hygienists at this time some Austrian eugenicists, such as Goldscheid, Tandler and Kammerer, were convinced neo-Lamarckists, insisting on programmes for the improvement of social conditions (Kammerer 1913). Moreover, Goldscheid’s concept of ‘Human Economy’ (‘Menschenökonomie’), in which individuals became a resource for the state (Goldscheid 1912) influenced Tandler who in the 1920s based his re-­organization of Vienna’s health administration (Stadtrat für das Wohlfahrtswesen der Stadt Wien) on such ideas.

II In Austria eugenics became more important after 1918. The defeat suffered in World War I, the collapse of the empire, the loss of territory, the economic and hygienic crisis produced a national crisis. During and after World War I, Austria’s population was already a topic of interest for medical scientists, statisticians, state officials and politicians. Austria’s low birth rate and the death toll of the war emphasized the need to increase the population which was increasingly seen as a material resource for the state. The 1917 establishment of the Austrian Society for Population Policy (Österreichische 5

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Gesellschaft für Bevölkerungspolitik) fulfilled this need by demanding state measures to secure population growth. At various conferences on welfare, members of this society, most of them medical experts, state officials and statisticians, discussed various issues of the so-­called ‘public health’ (‘Volksgesundheit’). Measures to decrease the rate of high infant mortality were proposed, together with tax reductions for families with many children. Alongside arguments for the importance of enhancing the ‘quality’ and ‘quantity’ of population by environmental means, eugenic ideas were also discussed within this society. The family had renewed eugenic significance bestowed upon it. In this context of the regulation of human reproduction within the framework of the family, several eugenic initiatives were undertaken between 1918 and 1922. In Graz one of the first widely discussed eugenic initiatives was that of Catholic theologian Johann Ude (1874–1965), who published small popular booklets on racial hygiene during the last years of the war (Ude 1917). Ude’s eugenic proposals reinforced Catholic sexual morality, while at the same time used hereditary arguments against liberalism, feminism and urbanization. In 1917 he founded the Austrian People’s Watch League (Österreichs Völkerwacht), which promoted ‘racial hygiene and population policy’, both seen as ‘authentic patriotic work’ (Ude 1918: 37). Along the same lines, in 1918 the physician and racial physiologist Robert Stigler (1878–1975) suggested the creation of a state marriage bureau based on eugenic principles (Stigler 1918: 1683–7). Equally important, in June 1921, Vienna’s Committee of Medical Experts (Wiener Landessanitätsrat) discussed a legal bill that proposed making medical certificates obligatory before marriage. Three groups were to be examined and be given advice by medical experts: sufferers of tuberculosis, venereal diseases and incurable mental and physical diseases. Resembling this bill – perhaps as a result of it – was a federal legal initiative by the German-Nationalist Party (Großdeutsche Volkspartei) in November 1921 aimed at introducing social hygienic and eugenic measures. The proposed bill prohibited persons with hereditary or infectious diseases or ‘repulsive handicaps’ from marriage, in order to reverse the alleged effects of World War I, such as liberal sexual morality, alcoholism and the declining birth rate. Its supporters demanded that medical officers were to issue obligatory health certificates for marriage candidates which could prohibit a marriage. Neither legal initiative for the prohibition of marriage on eugenic and racial hygienic grounds was, however, implemented. Unlike these proposals which sought obligatory marriage certification and prohibition, the Marriage Counselling Centre (Gesundheitliche Beratungsstelle für Ehewerber) in Vienna provided advice on a voluntary basis for marriage candidates and married couples. The centre was established in 1922 under a Social Democrat city government and implemented at community level by Julius Tandler, at the time Vienna’s councillor for Public Welfare (Wohlfahrtswesen). It became, in fact, the first practical eugenic institution that functioned in Austria before 1938. Tandler intended to determine a person’s probability of bringing forth mentally and physically healthy offspring. From its location at the community health centre in Vienna, the service provided people with advice as to whether or not they should procreate. Attendance at the clinic was voluntary and, as records show, people primarily wanted sexual advice. This emphasis on sexuality 6

Austria

drew heavy criticism from the conservatives and the Catholic Church. Up to 1934, when the new Catholic totalitarian government closed the Centre, some 5,000 individuals benefitted from its services. The Vienna counselling service became a model institution in Austria and abroad almost immediately. In July 1922, again after an initiative from the Social Democrats, a communal marriage counselling centre at the local medical office was proposed in Graz. The aims of this initiative were to raise public health standards and to protect the community budget from the expense of ill health. Although attendance at the Graz centre was also voluntary, its proponents regretted having missed the possibility to make examinations mandatory. The service started in 1923 and was headed by Hans Schöfer, the city’s medical officer and co-­founder of the local society of racial hygiene. In reality the centre’s attendance was rather low: in 1923 only 14 people requested advice, mainly for infectious and venereal diseases; in 1924 this figure rose to 24. The discussion on abortion as a eugenic measure gained momentum when the Social Democrats argued for the legalization of abortion during the reform of the penal law in the 1920s. Not surprisingly, Catholic and conservative eugenicists argued against it. In 1925, for example, during a debate on abortion initiated by the medical association in Graz, Rudolf Polland (1876–1952), chairman of the Graz Society for Racial Hygiene (Grazer Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene), argued for forced abortion on eugenic grounds only for prostitutes, the mentally ill, hardened criminals and rape victims, denying consensual abortion for women in general. Although Polland’s was a radical suggestion, most eugenicists in Austria agreed that abortion should not be left to choice, but to the state’s programmes of birth control. Thus, in 1924 at a meeting of Social Democrat physicians, Tandler argued in favour of the medical, the social and the eugenic motives for abortion and for the creation of a commission of physicians to decide on abortion. Although his proposed medical commission was not approved, the Social Democrat Party adopted Tandler’s suggestion of three indicators for abortion in 1926. In 1927 the bill for the new penal law proposed by the Catholic and German-­nationalist coalition only opted for medical indicators. Interestingly, half a century later, in 1974, Tandler’s suggestion was eventually considered, when the penal law was revised by the Social Democrat government, resulting in the legalization of the eugenic indicators for abortion. As was the case elsewhere in Europe, eugenic sterilization was much discussed in Austria by the end of the 1920s. This was partly due to the economic crisis but also because the marriage counselling service was perceived as a failed eugenic experiment. German-­nationalist medical professionals, such as psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1940), used the low rate of attendance of the counselling centres in Vienna and Graz to highlight their failure. As President of the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies (Österreichische Bund für Volksaufartung und Erbkunde), Wagner-Jauregg promoted eugenic sterilization. In 1929, the Union sent a Sterilization Bill to the Austrian parliament. Akin to debates in Germany occasioned by a similar bill put forward on 4 July 1929, the validity of voluntary sterilization was discussed in the Austrian parliament in terms of whether or not it was justified by 7

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

scientific research into the ‘hereditary prognosis’ (‘Erbprognose’). In the end, the bill was rejected. Between 1933 and 1938, during the conservative and authoritarian Catholic regime, Austrian eugenicists could not promote sterilization in government circles due to Pope Pius XI’s encyclical on marriage, Casti Connubii (1930), which only permitted eugenic counselling but forbade invasive contraceptive measures, such as sterilization. Unlike other European countries, where laws on eugenic sterilization had been passed in the 1930s, in Austria this procedure was only legalized under the Nazi regime after 1938. Thus, from 1940 to 1945 approximately 6,000 persons were forcibly sterilized under the Nazi Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) of 1933. Compared with the number of sterilizations performed in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1938, this number seems rather low. A number of explanations are provided. First, the start of the programme coincided with the outbreak of World War II and sterilization was only permitted when the ‘danger’ of reproduction seemed high for a given individual. Second, at the start of the Nazi euthanasia programme, Austrians who could have been within the groups targeted by the sterilization law were murdered. In addition, other eugenic measures including coercive abortion, marriage counselling, marriage prohibition and the hereditary biological inventory of the population only became legal during the Nazi occupation of Austria when eugenic and racial policies were part of the health and welfare agenda of the state. Vienna’s Public Health Office and its Department for Hereditary and Racial Care (Abteilung für Erb- und Rassenpflege) were particularly thorough, collecting over 700,000 records for the ‘Erbbiologische Bestandsaufnahme’ (‘Hereditary Biological Inventory’) of the population since 1939, one of the Reich’s biggest collections. Several health and welfare institutions, such as the largest Viennese psychiatric facility, the hospital Steinhof and the Youth Office (Jugendamt), as well as the police, contributed information on mentally ill persons, psychopaths, alcoholics, prostitutes and children from ‘asocial’ families. Other eugenic developments in Austria between 1900 and 1945 worth mentioning are those in relation to physical education in schools. Karl Gaulhofer (1885–1941), the reformer of physical education in Austria, widely promoted and introduced eugenic measures. The concept of ‘natural gymnastics’ (‘Natürliches Turnen’) pioneered by Gaulhofer and Margarethe Streicher (1891–1985) was appreciated internationally. The Austrian gymnastic movement was closely connected with national eugenic societies. From 1919 to 1932 Gaulhofer was an official in charge of physical education in Vienna working for the Ministry of Education. In this capacity he was of some importance to the spread of eugenic ideas within the country. First, Gaulhofer created the curriculum for physical education at universities that included lectures on racial hygiene. Heinrich Reichel lectured on three occasions after 1923/4. Secondly and equally important, in 1928 Gaulhofer included racial hygiene in the curriculum for physical education in high schools. As far as it is known, this was the first and only time that eugenics was included in the school curriculum in Austria. Finally, he provided financial assistance to the Viennese Society for Racial Care/Racial Hygiene (Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege 8

Austria

[Rassenhygiene]) for three years. As a German-­nationalist Gaulhofer carried out these activities within a Ministry that was actually dominated by the conservative, Catholic Christian Socialists. Gaulhofer also became a leading member of the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies.

III The establishment of Austrian eugenic societies happened rather late, when compared to Czech and Hungarian eugenic movements. One reason is that prior to 1918 the main Austrian eugenicists were associated with the German Society of Racial Hygiene, mostly its nationalist Munich branch. In 1913, for instance, this society had five Austrian members. As seen above, other Austrian eugenicists tried to establish their own organization within the Sociological Society in Vienna. In September 1918 a first meeting of Hungarian, German and Austrian eugenicists was organized in Budapest by the Hungarian Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy (Magyar Fajegészségtani és Népesedéspolitikai Társaság). Austrian participants included statistician and chairman of the Austrian Society for Population Policy, Wilhelm Hecke (1869–1945), and Robert Stigler (1878–1975), a race physiologist (‘Tagung für Rassenhygiene und Bevölkerungspolitik’, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 1919: 355–7). The need for distinct Austrian societies of eugenics and racial hygiene did not emerge until after World War I, when the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire raised questions of national identity, precipitated the loss of territory and threatened the decline of Austria’s higher social classes because the economic crises had raised demands for a socio-­biological solution to the social question. Between 1923 and 1928 six societies were established that were dedicated to eugenic issues, although eugenics was also discussed by other professional societies dealing with medicine, anthropology, population policy, sociology and pedagogy. The four biggest eugenic societies were located in Austria’s three major cities: Linz, Graz and Vienna. As elsewhere, the eugenic movement in Austria was largely an urban phenomenon. Moreover, the main societies for racial hygiene had a clearly German-­nationalist, antiSemitic and racist orientation, reinforced by their connection with the Munich branch of the German Society for Racial Hygiene. These were the: • Society for Racial Hygiene in Upper Austria (Oberösterreichische Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene), established in Linz in 1923 • Graz Society for Racial Hygiene (Grazer Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene), established in Graz in 1923 • Viennese Society for Racial Care/ Racial Hygiene (Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege [Rassenhygiene]), established in Vienna in 1924. Other, smaller, societies included: the German Society for Racial Hygiene (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege), active in Vienna between 1924 and 1937, run by students with a clearly anti-Semitic agenda and almost no public profile; and the Society for 9

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Racial Hygiene (Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene), functioning in Freistadt, Upper Austria, between 1926 and 1935, which was rather single-­handedly run by the local medical officer Leopold Haider, an early Nazi supporter, and who after 1938 oversaw the Nazi health system in Upper Austria. The popularization of hereditary and eugenic knowledge based on lectures and exhibitions, especially for teachers and physicians, was the principle task of the main eugenic societies (Hesch 1926: 236–7). In 1927 their common agenda included the protection of the family and the forced sterilization of the so-­called feeble-­minded. Although original publications by Austrian eugenicists were rare, the zenith of the eugenic movement’s popularity came in 1930 when it published a radio talk hosted by Radio-Wien between Heinrich Reichel and the German Catholic eugenicist Hermann Muckermann (1877–1962). The talk was published under the title Grundlagen der Vererbungswissenschaft und Eugenik (Basic Principles of Heredity Science and Eugenics), which sold more than 3,000 copies (Reichel and Muckermann 1930). Membership remained small: the Graz Society for Racial Hygiene had around 60 members in 1929; the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene had 137 members in 1925 and about 170 in 1930. In addition, some members also held important public office. For example, the chairman and vice-­chairman of the Society for Racial Hygiene in Linz, Richard Chiari (1882–1929) and Franz Ertl (1872–1933), were members of Upper Austria’s medical expert committee (Oberösterreichische Landessanitätsrat). Although physicians constituted the majority of members, there were also anthropologists, particularly in the Viennese Society of Racial Hygiene, such as its president and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Vienna, Otto Reche (1879–1966). In 1926 Reche introduced tests of paternity based on the heredity of morphological traits, a procedure that in the Nazi period was used as proof of racial descent. In Vienna, that same year, together with the German naval officer Paul Steffan, Reche founded the German Society for Blood Group Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Blutgruppenforschung). During the Hygiene Exhibition (Hygiene-Ausstellung) organized in Vienna between May and June 1925, Reche cooperated with Reichel to organize a section devoted to racial hygiene. Soon after, in 1928, at the meeting in Munich, the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene became Austria’s first member of the International Federation of Eugenic Organisations, with Reichel as its representative. Biological family research was the main scientific method promoted by Austrian eugenicists. In Graz, Rudolf Polland and hygienist Heinrich Reichel created their own questionnaires and tables for public use as well as for scientific purposes. Anthropologists in Vienna were also interested in biological family research and eugenics in a similar manner to German anthropologists, where genealogical-­hereditarian research became a central method in the 1920s. Since all eugenic societies advocated a fiercely deterministic view of heredity, thereby opposing neo-Lamarckian views, one can speak of a shift in the approach to heredity in the eugenic discourse in Austria around 1925. The neo-Lamarckian view of the inheritance of acquired characters, advocated until the mid-1920s by Tandler and others, was gradually marginalized. 10

Austria

Moreover, by the end of the 1920s, political tension between the Social Democrats and the conservative Christian Socialists had grown stronger, and the organized eugenic movement had become firmly established and diversified. Similar to developments in Germany, new eugenic societies were created in Austria with the intention of providing eugenic policies with a broader base of public support and to gain greater influence with political decision makers on bio-­political issues by advocating eugenics as a non-­ racial priority. Notable among these newly formed societies was the Workgroup for Austrian Family Research (Arbeitsbund für österreichische Familienforschung) founded in Graz in 1927. The new organization not only symbolized the alliance between eugenics and genealogy on a broader public basis, but ultimately it also absorbed the Graz Society for Racial Hygiene in 1929. Polland, as president of this society, sought to expand the influence of eugenics within the Arbeitsbund, particularly with respect to marriage counselling. The Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies, established in 1928 in Vienna, included medical experts grouped around the President of Austria, the aforementioned Michael Hainisch; president of the new eugenic society was the recent Nobel prizewinner, psychiatrist Wagner–Jauregg, while paediatrician Felix Tietze (1883–1960) was elected secretary (‘Österreichischer Bund für Volksaufartung und Erbkunde’, Volksaufartung, Erbkunde, Eheberatung 1929: 10–11). Unlike the earlier German-­nationalist eugenic societies in Austria, the Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies can be described as an alliance between Social Democratic Jewish and German-­nationalist physicians, medical professionals and community and state officials. The Union had links with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, and attracted prominent Austrian scientists, such as lawyer and author of the Austrian constitution, Hans Kelsen (1881–1973), Julius Tandler, Heinrich Reichel and Karl Kautsky, Jr (1892–1978). Reichel made it possible for the Union to join the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO) in 1929 with Felix Tietze as representative (‘The Meeting of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations’, Eugenical News 1929: 155). By the time the IFEO held its 12th meeting in Scheveningen (the Netherlands) in 1936 Reichel and Tietze were joined by the anthropologist Josef Weninger (1886–1959) and Alois Scholz (1875–1947). The Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies aimed to raise public responsibility about reproduction and to garner support for eugenics. Similar to other eugenic societies in Austria, it focused on family pedigree and family research, and was with other eugenic societies public support was crucial. Therefore, to finance its public activities the Union applied to the Public Health Office (Volksgesundheitsamt) for subsidies. By this time, the Public Health Office was officially in favour of eugenics. The highest committee of medical experts, the Oberste Sanitätsrat, included population policy and eugenics on its agenda by 1924, followed a year later by the Public Health Office’s decision to appoint hygienist Ernst Brezina (1874–1961) as the official in charge of racial hygiene and population policy. More significantly, Brezina and the head of the Public Health Office, Thomas Scherrer (1878–1951), were members of the Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies. Eventually, the Union became the 11

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

first eugenic society in Austria to be subsidized by the state with an annual grant of 400 Schilling from 1929 to 1931. The Union also used its connections with the Ministry of Education in its proposal to offer eugenic lectures to high school teachers. This proposal was discussed in 1932 between senior officials at the Ministry of Education and the Volksgesundheitsamt. The representatives of the Ministry of Education agreed in principle, but their final decision was postponed. A lecture to be held by Reichel on racial hygiene for all high school graduates in Vienna was also discussed and eventually held in spring 1933 (Reichel 1936: 554–6). Although leading Austrian eugenicists were members of the academic and politic elites – including Nobel prizewinners, university professors in the fields of medicine, biology, anthropology, law and pedagogy; even the vice-­mayor of Austria’s second biggest city Graz, and the president of the republic – eugenics was not widely accepted in major parts of Austrian society or even by the medical community. Reichel and Polland, for example, complained of the limited support of physicians and politicians for eugenics (Reichel 1931: 284–7; Polland 1931a: 35–8; 1931b: 48–50 and 1931c: 111–12). As the 1930s progressed, tensions grew stronger between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ eugenic societies, as well as between ‘racial hygienists’ and ‘eugenicists’. For instance, Karl Kautsky, Jr, a Social Democrat and leading member of the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies, drew a political line between racist and conservative racial hygiene and progressive eugenics (Kautsky, Jr 1930: 132–4). As elsewhere in East-Central Europe, the usage of the term ‘eugenics’ instead of ‘racial hygiene’ indicated a preference for the non-­racial interpretation of human improvement. It became a popular term in Austria by the late 1920s and was used even by ‘racial hygienists’, such as Polland, from an explicit racial perspective. After the Papal encyclical Casti Connubii, which accepted eugenic counselling, the new Catholic authoritarian government disapproved of eugenic sterilization and abortion. During the Catholic dictatorship in Austria, between 1933 and 1938, eugenic issues were framed mainly within discussions of qualitative population policy. Eugenic measures were never implemented, although negative eugenic measures, such as the confinement of specific groups in asylums, were considered a possibility. Yet there was no official denouncement of eugenics by the Catholic organizations in Austria. In fact, most members of the Society of Catholic physicians (St Lukas Gilde) advocated eugenics alongside Catholic sexual ethics during the early 1930s, albeit with little effect on the government’s policies (‘Eugenics in Austria’, The Eugenics Review 1935: 260–1). The Austrian Association for the Protection of the Family (Österreichischer Verband ‘Familienschutz’), which was founded in 1934 by ethnologist and priest Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954) and Catholic physician Albert Niedermeyer (1888–1957), hoped to be more successful by promoting the introduction of eugenic policies for Christian families with many children. The Association was affiliated to the Cultural Office of the Patriotic Front (Kulturamt der Vaterländische Front), the only legal political party in Austria at the time. Along with Niedermeyer’s Catholic marriage counselling centre, the Association’s other 12

Austria

eugenic accomplishments consisted of two conferences and exhibitions in 1934 and 1935. The conferences focused on the position of the family in the new state and were visited by high ranking state officials, politicians and clerics. Both conferences ended with proposals to the government that included eugenic demands, such as the ‘introduction of eugenic instruction in the popular and the secondary schools and of a compulsory course in eugenics in the medical curriculum’; the ‘establishment of “maternity schools”, where the knowledge necessary for the housewife and mother should be imparted by specially trained teachers’; the creation of Catholic ‘marriage consultation centres’, alongside the ‘introduction of compulsory health certificates before engagement or at any rate before marriage’ and the ‘prohibition of consanguineous marriages according to canonical law’. Equally important, these conference resolutions rejected methods of birth control, the legalization of abortion and eugenic sterilization (‘Eugenics in Austria’, The Eugenics Review 1935: 260). The Catholic government, however, took no political action to implement these proposals. The second activity of the Association was the organization of two exhibitions on the biology, hygiene and protection of the family in cooperation with Vienna’s Museum of Natural History in 1934 and 1935 respectively. Anthropologist Viktor Lebzelter (1889– 1936), director of the Museum’s Department of Anthropology and the person in charge of those exhibitions, had promoted eugenics since the early 1920s when he introduced eugenics to the Public Health Office. Openly rejecting the racist anthropology promoted by Otto Reche, Lebzelter advocated marriage prohibition between relatives, rejected sterilization and agreed to the introduction of ‘marriage loans’ (‘Ehestandsdarlehen’) and health certificates before marriage (Lebzelter 1937: 19–24). In May 1936 the Second International Congress of Catholic Physicians (II. Internationalen Kongress Katholischer Ärzte) convened in Vienna. The congress ended with a proposal for each national government to oppose sterilization, but also to introduce marriage counselling services and health certificates before marriage as well as eugenic and heredity lectures for priests. In Austria, members of the St Lukas Gilde had already provided private marriage counselling and lectures for priests, but no other measures were implemented before 1938. By early 1930 the Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies became the most influential eugenic society in Austria, but its influence was short lived. The marginalization of Social Democrats and Jews by the new Catholic government had a significant impact on the Union. Its Social Democrat members were dismissed and some leading members died. For example, Karl Gaulhofer (1885–1941) left the Ministry of Education in 1932 and moved to Amsterdam; the director of the marriage counselling centre in Vienna, Karl Kautsky, Jr was dismissed in 1934 and the centre was closed down; Niedermeyer reopened it under Catholic direction in 1935. Tandler left Austria and died in the USSR in 1936. Reflecting the new political realities, the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies changed its name to the Association for Human Heredity and Endocrinology (Verein für Menschliche Vererbungslehre und Endokrinologie), and began to focus mainly on genetic research; in fact becoming the first society of human genetics in Austria. 13

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Julius Bauer (1897–1979), another prominent member of the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies, was one of the main critics of the Nazi Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, for which, in turn, he was attacked by German-­nationalist physicians from the Society of German Physicians in Austria (Verein Deutscher Ärzte in Österreich). For these physicians an alliance between the Social Democrats and German-­nationalists in the new organization was no longer possible. In late 1937 the Association for Human Heredity and Endocrinology shifted further to the right. Bauer and Tietze were replaced by German-­nationalist physicians, such as the internist Hans Eppinger (1879–1946), who later conducted human experiments on inmates at Dachau, and Eduard Pernkopf, who after 1938 was Dean of the Medical Faculty and from 1942 Rector of the University of Vienna. In 1939 the Association was renamed again, this time as the Society for Human Hereditary Biology (Gesellschaft für Menschliche Erbbiologie) and became a branch of the Viennese Medical Society (Wiener Medizinische Gesellschaft). By mid-1930 Graz emerged as Austria’s most active centre for eugenics, due in part to the marginalization of the Viennese eugenic societies and the increased activities of the local eugenic societies. It was also important that Heinrich Reichel had moved to the Department of Hygiene in Graz. As in Vienna, the eugenic societies in Graz considered the adoption of Nazi eugenic measures. Contrary to Vienna, however, there were no opponents of compulsory sterilization in Graz. Generally, however, eugenicists in Graz promoted eugenic solutions to the problem of differential birth rate and the genetic survey of the population rather than negative eugenics. Moreover, the eugenic movement in Vienna was more diverse than in Graz, and while there were supporters of Nazi eugenics, such as Wagner-Jauregg, there were also many critics, including Julius Bauer, who questioned the Nazi eugenic law on legal grounds, and Catholic physician Albert Niedermeyer, who rejected sterilization as an inhumane practice. Tellingly Niedermeyer also suggested the confinement of the hereditarily sick in asylums, thus prompting the German-­nationalist psychiatrist Heinrich von Kogerer (1887–1958) to describe his solution as even more inhumane than the Nazi Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. After 1933 most eugenic societies in Austria were less active because of their Nazi connections, but after 1935 the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene, in particular, enjoyed more attention due to the application of eugenic and race measures in Nazi Germany. The society supported the Nazi regime, and some of its leading figures were also members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). Since the Nazi party was forbidden in Austria in 1933, the society had to be careful in how it expressed its political views in order to avoid closure. Therefore, it concentrated mostly on the distribution of eugenic knowledge and insisted on its scientific and thereby apolitical character. Its main activities continued to be public lectures in academic institutions and the publication of eugenic literature. Before 1938, the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene had around 250 members but the Anschluss boosted its popularity and within two years the number of members increased to 1,000, such that by the end of 1939 the society became the biggest and one 14

Austria

of the most active branches of the German Society for Racial Hygiene. By then, one of the main tasks was to hold public lectures as a way to gauge support for the implementation in Austria of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. The Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene also benefitted from endorsing the new regime by gaining considerable funding from the Ministry of Education. The introduction of this law in Austria also enabled Austrian eugenicists, such as the chairman of the Graz Society for Racial Hygiene, Rudolf Polland, to function as medical experts.

IV In Austria the transformation of eugenics into a science was strongly connected with the work of German-­nationalist physicians and anthropologists. After 1918, eugenics became more integrated into the academic discourse as it became a distinct topic of study in universities. Beginning with 1920, eugenic lectures were given at the University of Graz by hygienists Wilhelm Prausnitz (1861–1933) and Johann Hammerschmidt (1876–1946), and at the University of Vienna by Reichel (‘Eugenics in Austria’, The Eugenics Review 1935: 259–60). All the time, Reichel provided an institutional basis for eugenics in his Department of Social Hygiene at the Hygiene Department of the University of Vienna, where students and experts, such as Ernst Brezina and Felix Tietze, gathered to discuss eugenic subjects. Reichel’s students also worked on biological family research using bio-­statistics. The department discontinued its activities in 1933 when Reichel left Vienna for Graz. There were no doctoral dissertations dealing with eugenics prior to 1938, although Reichel’s student, Alfred Schinzel (1904–81), received his Habilitation in 1935 in the field of population policy. Tietze also tried unsuccessfully to obtain a promotion to professorship from Reichel but was rejected on account of his Jewish ethnicity and socialist political convictions. In 1923 the first doctoral dissertation – and perhaps the only one prior to 1938 in Austria – on a specific eugenic topic was written by pedagogue Hans Friedl (1895–?) at the philosophical faculty of the University of Graz. In his study, Friedl used Wilhelm Schallmayer’s term ‘Rassehygiene’ and distanced himself from those who stressed the superiority of the Nordic race. Yet Friedl advocated eugenic measures, such as health certificates, and suggested that the genetic recording of the population be integrated into youth welfare programmes. From 1924 to 1927, he worked as director of the Youth Welfare Education Institution (Landesfürsorgeerziehungsanstalt) Lichtenhof in Graz. His appointment indicated the new orientation in Austrian public health towards eugenics and population issues. Eugenic research institutions were only established in Austria after 1938. There were attempts to create such institutions, albeit unsuccessfully, in Vienna and Graz in 1923, 1927 and 1933. As early as 1923, a meeting of a group of biologists, anthropologists and medical scientists, including Tandler and Reichel, considered the establishment of an interdisciplinary research institute for racial and constitutional anthropology at the Museum for Natural History in Vienna, but this proposal was rejected by the Ministry of 15

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Education (‘Anthrop. Abteilung, Korrespondenz’, 1923). This institute – named the Institute for Racial Biology in one draft – was inspired by the recently opened Swedish model of Herman Lundborg’s institute in Uppsala, and was to provide human and animal constitutional and hereditary research serving racial hygienic and racial biological aims. It is evident, then, that Austrian eugenicists aimed to provide an institutional basis for animal genetics, human genetics and eugenics. The initiative failed due to the Austrian economic crisis and the lack of support from the Ministry of Education. Four years later in 1927 anthropologist Otto Reche proposed to add a division for human heredity and eugenics to his anthropological-­ethnographical department at the University of Vienna, however, without the support of the Viennese anthropologists at the university and of the Anthropological Society in Vienna (Wiener Anthropologische Gesellschaft) Reche’s plan failed. In 1931 Polland also requested that heredity and eugenics be considered a distinct scientific discipline (Polland 1931c: 108). This view, however, did not go unchallenged; Kautsky objected to Polland’s need for the ‘scientification’ of eugenics, denying racial hygiene or eugenics scientific status, suggesting that the social technology of eugenics be employed as a political tool instead. It took another two years, and political changes in Germany and Austria, before another attempt was made to create a chair of eugenics and facilities for eugenic research. In 1933 the Arbeitsbund and Polland sent a proposal to the Austrian Ministry of Education requesting the establishment of eugenic chairs at medical faculties in Austria, which was rejected by the Ministry due to the lack of funding. At the same time the nationalist Society of German Physicians in Austria (Verein Deutscher Ärzte in Österreich) sent a similar request to the medical faculty in Graz, accompanied by a report written by Reichel, who recently had been appointed as professor of hygiene there. Reichel agreed in principle with the need for institutionalization, but argued for a section to be established within his hygiene department and for the introduction of lectures on eugenics and human heredity. On the one hand, this was an attempt to reject the establishment of eugenics as a distinct scientific discipline and to secure the unity of the discipline of hygiene that was questioned by anthropologists, who claimed eugenics and human heredity for themselves. On the other hand, Reichel had intended to gain control over the teaching of eugenics in Graz and to hinder the creation of an independent institute run by Polland, a proposal which was also eventually rejected by the Ministry of Education. The effort to transform eugenics into an academic discipline at university level seemed more promising after the Nazification of Austrian academic institutions in March 1938. In the spring and summer of 1938, Catholics and especially Jews were dismissed in great numbers from Austrian universities and other research facilities. Austrian supporters of Nazi science policy announced plans to establish chairs in eugenics at the three faculties of medicine in Austria: Graz, Innsbruck and Vienna. An Institute of Racial Biology (Rassenbiologisches Institut) was established at the University of Vienna after 1938, and in 1939 became the biggest institution of this type in Greater Germany. A similar institute was established in 1939 in Innsbruck, but on a much smaller scale, while the University of Graz never established its own institute for 16

Austria

eugenic research. It was also difficult to determine which scientific disciplines should constitute a university department of racial hygiene or racial biology. While in Prague in 1940 two departments were founded within separate faculties, racial hygiene and racial biology, at the University of Vienna it was the ambitious plan put forward by the German anthropologist Lothar Loeffler (1901–83) that was preferred. Loeffler envisioned an institute with six well-­staffed and well-­funded subdivisions. The institute was eventually established in 1942 under his directorship at the University of Vienna (Rassenbiologischen Institut der Universität Wien). Loeffler’s definition of ‘racial biology’ included eugenics, human heredity, racial research, bio-­statistics and experimental genetics, and promised to solve the disagreement between racial hygiene and anthropology by incorporating both. Some German racial scientists, however, disagreed with Loeffler’s all-­encompassing vision of racial biology; Karl Thums in Prague, for instance, preferred the term ‘racial hygiene’ for his institute. At the University of Graz, the competition between Polland and Reichel continued after 1939. It was Polland who eventually succeeded, in 1941, in establishing an Institute for Heredity and Racial Hygiene (Universitätsinstitut für Erblehre und Rassenhygiene), albeit with himself as the only member of staff. By providing expert opinions on eugenic and racial matters, all three medical faculties in Graz, Innsbruck and Vienna participated in the Nazi programme of hereditary and racial care (NS-Erb und Rassenpflege). From their perspective, however, such participation produced valuable scientific data and thus legitimized the research agendas of their respective departments. The institutionalization of eugenics at Austrian universities after the Anschluss was supported by a change in the medical curriculum of spring 1939, when university lectures on racial hygiene, population policy and heredity became obligatory. In Innsbruck, the lectures were provided by the head of the Racial Biology Department, psychiatrist Friedrich Stumpfl (1902–94). In Vienna, these lectures were given by Eberhard Geyer (1899–1943), an anthropologist and the vice-­chairman of the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene, Robert Stigler and, after the inauguration of the Institute of Racial Biology in 1942, by Loeffler and his assistant, geneticist Georg Gottschewski (1906–75). At the medical faculty of the University in Graz, Polland lectured on racial hygiene, Reichel on population policy.

V Immediately after World War II the Institute of Racial Biology in Vienna was closed down, although other departments at the University of Vienna that were established under the Nazi regime were not. Stumpfl, for instance, remained in his post in Innsbruck. He enjoyed the support of influential colleagues and could proceed with his research by renaming his department ‘Anthropology’, although he still favoured eugenics. By 1947 he was forced to quit by the Ministry of Education who classified his department as a Nazi creation. After 1945, the re-­established Ministry of Education deployed a strategy whereby racial biology was, at least in theory, separated from anthropology. A similar 17

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

development could be observed with eugenics, which Austrian medical discourse conveniently disconnected from racial hygiene. The Viennese Society of Racial Hygiene was officially dismantled in 1948, apparently due to its inactivity rather than its political past. In 1961 a new eugenic society, the Society for Voluntary Hereditary Care/Human Genetics (Verein für freiwillige Erbpflege/ Humangenetik) was established in Vienna, and included a number of German-­nationalist and Nazi eugenicists from the pre-1945 period, including physician Hermann Fieber (1908–74?), gynaecologist Robert Hofstätter (1883–1970), and psychiatrist Hans Ganner (1905–95). In Austria, as in other countries during the 1960s, the appropriation of eugenics, seen as the social application of human genetics, was devoid of racial connotations, and thus deemed unproblematic for the post-­war supporters of medical genetics, family planning and population control.

18

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Thomas Mayer Translations by Tudor Georgescu

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Julius Tandler

(1869, Iglau, Moravia–1936, Moscow)

Julius Tandler was born in 1869 in Iglau (Cz.: Jihlava) in Moravia in rather poor conditions. When Tandler was still a child his parents moved to Vienna. He studied medicine at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1895. His mentor was the renowned anatomist Emil Zuckerkandl (1849–1910). Upon graduation, Tandler became Zuckerkandl’s assistant and received his Habilitation in 1899. Around the same time, Tandler converted from Judaism to Catholicism. His connections with the Social Democrats strengthened, although he did not join the party before the end of World War I. In 1903 Tandler became Associate Professor in the medical faculty of the University of Vienna. In 1910, he succeeded Zuckerkandl as Professor of Anatomy. Tandler remained in this post until 1933. After 1923 he began to experience recurrent anti-Semitic abuse, as did his students and department. In 1913 Tandler founded and edited the Zeitschrift für Angewandte Anatomie und Konstitutionslehre (Journal of Applied Anatomy and Constitution), which was, at first, dedicated to physical constitution. By the 1920s it started publishing on heredity and racial hygiene. During World War I, Tandler was Dean of the medical faculty of the University of Vienna. It was at his suggestion that on 1 June 1917 Kaiser Karl, the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (1916–18), established a Public Health Office (Volksgesundheitsamt), which in December 1917 became the Ministry of Social Welfare (Ministerium für Soziale Fürsorge). The office survived the political changes following the collapse of the empire and became part of the new Ministry of Social Administration and the highest federal office for public health administration. From May 1919 until September 1920 Tandler was director of the Public Health Office. In this position, he succeeded in introducing a hospital law in 1920 (Krankenanstaltengesetz), which secured public funding for hospitals. At the end of the 1920s, Tandler became Councillor for the Public Welfare for Vienna (Amtsführender Stadtrat für das Wohlfahrts- und Gesundheitswesen). Based on the effort to guide and control the whole life span of an individual’s health, Tandler created a network of health and welfare institutions, including kindergartens, school dental clinics, childcare services (Kinderübernahmestelle), and counselling services for mothers. The eugenically motivated marriage counselling service (Eheberatungsstelle), established in 1922, was part of Tandler’s attempt to transform Austrian public health. Tandler was influenced by Goldscheid’s concept of ‘human economy’ (‘Menschenökonomie’), which means the management of human capital for the purposes of the state. He was convinced that social welfare was to serve the productive members of the population who, in turn, were to reduce the welfare costs of the state. Besides preventative strategies, Tandler was also interested in instilling an ethic of responsibility for an individual’s health. He thus

20

Austria

distinguished between productive costs (youth welfare) and unproductive costs (those for old and ‘insane’ individuals). Tandler’s main medical achievement was the publication of the Lehrbuch der Systematischen Anatomie (Textbook on Systematic Anatomy, 1919–29), but he also focused on issues relating to physical constitution. His early publications were dedicated to the influence of castration on the human organism. In March 1913 at the invitation of the hygienist Max von Gruber (1853–1927), Tandler gave a lecture to the German Society for Racial Hygiene entitled ‘Konstitution und Rassenhygiene’ (‘Constitution and Racial Hygiene’) (Tandler 1914: 11–26). Also in 1913 Tandler, together with the biologist Paul Kammerer, established a Section on Social Biology and Eugenics at the Sociological Society of Vienna. In 1916 Tandler gave a lecture on population policy and eugenics entitled ‘Krieg und Bevölkerung’ (‘War and Population Policy’). In it, Tandler discussed the dysgenic effects of war on the population’s ‘organic capital’, while at the same time emphasizing the need for qualitative and quantitative population policies, including the promotion of large families and the control of immigration (Tandler 1916). Tandler’s eugenics was largely based on a neo-Lamarckian understanding of heredity, even when this perspective became disputed in Austria in the late 1920s. Tandler was convinced that eugenics would be most effective when people developed a sense of responsibility, a generative ethics, oriented towards the recognition of their genetic value (Tandler 1918: 15–17 and 1920: 5–16). In his 1924 Ehe und Bevölkerungspolitik (Marital and Population Policy), he argued for the ‘elimination’ (‘Vernichtung’) of those individuals ‘unworthy of living’ (‘lebensunwerten Lebens’), a view that brought him close to the German euthanasia discourse promoted by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding in their 1920 Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens (Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life). The main argument propounded here concentrated, however, on the regulation of marriage and by it implicitly the control of reproduction. He empowered the welfare state to act strongly in accordance to the principle of eugenics and population policy (Tandler 1924: 3–22; 1927: 208–12 and 1932: 8). The growing international approval for sterilization, the difficult economic situation in Austria and a certain disappointment with the low attendance at the Vienna marriage counselling service might have been responsible for Tandler’s support for sterilization. In 1929 he emphasized the importance of sterilization to the Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies only shortly before the eugenic society launched an attempt to legalize eugenic sterilization in the Austrian parliament. Tandler argued for forced sterilization, if certain groups, such as criminals, sexual criminals, ‘idiots’ and epileptics, would not refrain from reproducing on a voluntary basis (Tandler 1929: 3–22). In 1934, the Catholic conservative government expelled Tandler from the University of Vienna. He was also briefly imprisoned before he went China, as a representative of the Hygiene Section of the League of Nations. In 1936 Tandler received a two-­year contract in the Soviet Union, which he did not complete, dying in Moscow in August of that year.

21

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Marital and Population Policy1 Children have a basic right to health, with society as their natural custodian. However, this must be done correctly. The mandatory marriage-­permission [. . .] is currently not working. [. . .] Sterilization as a social rule too is not new; it has already been undertaken on criminals. But all of this cannot lead to the end goal, because laws cannot be decreed by individuals, they have to be the true manifestations of a nation’s sense of right and wrong if they are to be followed. Only when the conscience of mankind is disgusted by the conception of sick children, only then will obligatory marriage-­permission have purpose. Until then, in my opinion, there is only one thing that will enlighten mankind, an appeal to the individual’s sense of duty, the awakening of generative ethics. Marriage counselling can, first and foremost, serve that end. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

The Psychology of the Fall in the Birth Rate2 Human reproduction rests primarily on instinct which like other phenomena originally have no connection with rational reflection. This purely emotional point of view doubtless gained its first intelligent direction when the leaders of any State became aware that the defence of the nation, its power and very existence was secured by a greater number of individuals. Thus with increasing human organization natality and mortality became a question of State and a political problem, and the attempt was made to ascertain the causes underlying natality and mortality from which to deduce a constructive national policy. States began to work out the causes of rising, and, above all, of falling birth rates in order to apply Governmental and social stimuli to raise or if necessary to lower natality. [. . .] It is [. . .] to be deduced that the mass psychology of the State, the nation and even of religion, are not sufficient to alter the point of view of the masses towards the problem of natality. The influence of these factors is rarely deep-­rooted in the soul of the mass[es]; they are not born with it and cannot really be influenced by it. The only way to encourage the reproductive intention of the mass[es] here is through the psychology of the family. Of course it is true that we cannot influence a group by these means in those cultural circles in which ancestor worship does not exist, but we can through the sense of responsibility. We must add to that great inventory of ethnical presuppositions that of personal rights and of human values; the sanctity of human life, the ethnical responsibility of the next generation, and thus the generative impulses are reinforced when this potent psychological influence forces into the background all other ideas. We shall only be in a position (if this might be necessary) to influence natality, when we can convince one generation that its greatest task is the creation of the next, and it is this which will overcome all egoism, whether of individual or of family, or of the good of the whole extant generation, which will give way to the aim of creating a worthy human life for the future. It will be more possible to achieve this when the totality of a generation not 22

Austria

only desires to create the next, but makes possible for it a better world for human existence. The whole meaning and object of life is its reproduction, so that in creating this generation, the individuals of the next follow.

The Dangers of Inferiority3 The task of every population policy is the management of the organic capital, which is the people living within a community. In realizing this managerial duty, its responsibility is not only the preservation and support of the capital entrusted to it, but also to raise the quality of individual people and that of the whole [population]. People therefore, quite rightly, speak of quantitative and qualitative population policy. Quantitative population policy is always intent on a reckless propagation of people in a community; especially of a state with imperialist tendencies, whose interest is power, particularly military prowess. For it the guard, the destroyer, is the centre of attention, the human dignity of its existence was questioned only in a very limited way. Qualitative population policy, of course, also postulates a certain number of people, for selective reasons alone but, demands above all, the qualitative improvement of the individual and the whole in the interest of human dignity and of culture. [. . .] The endeavour of eugenics to stand against the degeneration of mankind through the preferential treatment of the industrious in reproduction, and through the prevention of the reproduction of regressive-­varieties (Minusvarianten), indeed to put regeneration in the place of degeneration, is not utopian, as is frequently opined. [. . .] It must be said, however, that our current understanding of the inheritability of specific characteristics is not particularly great, our knowledge of hereditary succession (Erbgang) and its immutability are not yet sufficient. Nonetheless, it must also be said that we already have enough examples which compel us to ensure selection with unrelenting severity where inferior or wayward [specimens], which are paired with the same, can only conceive the same. The entire ambition of eugenics can only amount to two achievements: to favour the healthy, those that can be fully encouraged to reproduce, and to exclude the inferior. [. . .] The options for selection are many. The most natural one is undoubtedly to eliminate the unfit (Untauglichen) from reproduction. That raises, first of all, the question of who these unfit are? Those that are lumbered with defects and whose hereditary transmission is, according to our current knowledge, certain or highly likely. The reality is that not only the ancestor’s physiological characteristics constitute the descendant’s hereditary make-­up, but also that ancestral deviations (Abwegigkeiten) are inherited particularly easily. [. . .] Many talk about the hereditary burden, but are all too happy to recklessly lumber their children with their own burden. Research to date on hereditary theory provides enough of a foundation for moderate eugenic observations. The likelihood of success, though, is modest. Eugenic radicalism, as preached by some damages eugenics and the adherence to indicators without scientific justification compromises it. There is 23

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

today a modest set of diseases and anomalies, whose inevitable inheritance we know of. Prudence here demands, above all, the avoidance of further inheritance. To this can be added a set of mental illnesses with substantial incapacitations. Preventing the carriers of these defects from reproducing is, above all, the aim of eugenics. To achieve it is difficult because today civilization and humanitarianism demands nurturing of the offspring of the pairing of such individuals, including: the inferior, the imbeciles, the idiots; in short those born with psychological problems and/or disabilities, [which] through the use of our entire medical knowledge and the sacrifice of enormous resources to keep them alive and allow them to grow as old as possible. [As a result] industrious people perish; geniuses die; but we save the inferior. The prevention of their birth not only means a saving but increases the value of the current generation, and the breeding potential of the next. [. . .] If one considers that it is the norm for parents with a sense of duty to have small families, while [at the same time] the inconsiderate, such as alcoholics, imbeciles and criminals, unencumbered by any sense of duty bring many children into this world. Then one realizes the magnitude of the threat. We are threatened by an inundation of inferior beings. This biological deterioration of our nation is further accelerated by the incredible expenditure necessary for the maintenance of the regressive-­varieties. They prevent us in many ways from caring for the industrious. Because the inferior are excluded from the ranks of working people, they do not create values (Werte), but consume them. [. . .] Society, therefore, has a right – if it can and wants to survive – to prevent the ongoing proliferation of the inferior. If it is eugenics’ [ultimate] aim, then the routes that lead there must be considered. The next aim is the prevention of the conception of inferiors. This is, first of all, about gaining influence over those parents, which copulate with each other in accordance with law and tradition and enter into marriage; in essence guiding marriages (Eheschliessung). [. . .] The nation needs to realize that it is a crime to conceive children that are sick from the very beginning. A crime against the conceived, which are the objects of parental love and a crime against humanity. If counselling, education and instilling a sense of duty are appropriate, then society will avoid resorting to self-­defence against those inferiors that have damaged it. Where dangerous criminals, sexual criminals, idiots, serious epileptics begin to endanger human society with their reproduction, there is no room for discussion, action is necessary. Sterilization, in some circumstances, castration, becomes the dictate of self-­defence. [. . .] The various methods of sterilization are sufficient to eliminate an individual from reproduction, with the advantage of not causing bodily or psychological damage to them. Sterilization is, therefore, the method of choice for the purposes of eugenics. [. . .] But here too extremism can be dangerous. Boeters’ recommendations undoubtedly go too far when he, for example, demands that women, who have given birth to two or more children, with dubious paternity, out of wedlock should be sterilized. Some of Boeters’ demands, such as the sterilization of children born idiotic, institutionalized epileptics and the incurable mentally-­ill prior to release, should be 24

Austria

considered. Boeters demands quite rightly the consent of the parents and the Guardian Court (Vormundschaftsgericht) before intervention.4 [. . .] The sterilization (Unfruchtbarmachung) of inferiors, obviously with all the provisos of science and humanity, and with the full security of the law, is in my opinion, a demand that cannot be refused. It is my view that many inferiors, if educated about the prospective destiny of their children, would voluntarily submit themselves to the inhibition of the spermatic cord or fallopian tubes respectively. Here too education, and not the law, is the primary concern. Much more controversial than eugenic sterilization is eugenic abortion. [. . .] It is almost certain that the children of severely mentally-­ill, those of the intensely imbecilic, provide, in my opinion, medical grounds for abortion. Marriage counselling, sterilization and abortion are, for now, the modest means of selection. [. . .] We humans, who have in some limited way learned to master the forces of nature, do not want to – and cannot – believe that that which we have acquired has not also been acquired for our germ plasm. We cannot, with resignation, deliver our children’s destiny to the combinatory possibilities of chromosomes alone. We must have an influence on these forces of nature too. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

25

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Rudolf Polland

(1876, Vienna–1952, Graz)

Rudolf Polland was born in 1876 to a protestant family in Vienna. In 1895 he began his medical studies in Vienna, graduating in 1901. It is probable that he and his future adversary, Heinrich Reichel, were colleagues. Beginning in 1902 Polland worked at the clinic for dermatology and syphilis (Klinik für Dermatologie und Syphilis) at the University of Vienna. From 1904 he worked as an assistant at the University of Graz, where in 1908 he completed his Habilitation in dermatology. During World War I, Polland continued his work at the clinic, and was acknowledged for his ‘light therapy’ (‘Lichttherapie’). In 1919 Polland received an unpaid assistant professorship in Graz. In 1920 he was elected to the Styrian Medical Association (Steirische Ärztekammer). From 1920 to December 1922 he worked as head physician at the Department for Dermatology at a former military clinic – the hospital of Graz-West. Polland lost his job when the regional government in Styria closed the hospital due to the financial crisis. From 1923 Polland made a living mainly from his private practice in Graz. He also occasionally gave lectures on dermatology and from 1921 on human sexuality at the University of Graz and at the Technical University in Graz. He was never promoted to full professor. Before 1933, Polland earned himself a leading position in the eugenic movement in Graz due to his activities in eugenic and genealogical societies dominated by German-­ nationalists, but also through his lectures and publications. Polland’s eugenic activities started in the early 1920s, when he wished to cure and perfect ‘our race’, but felt helpless as a physician dealing with the suffering of people (Polland 1924a: 181–3; 1924b: 191–4 and 1924c: 203–4). At the time, Polland also experienced a personal crisis due to the economic and political situation in Austria. His considerable wealth was lost due to post-­war inflation and he also lost his job at the end of 1922. As a result, in 1923, Polland joined the Styrian Nazi movement (Steirische Nationalsozialisten) while at the same time establishing the second eugenic society in Austria: the Graz Society for Racial Hygiene. By 1927 Polland was also the leading eugenicist in the genealogical and eugenic society, the Workgroup for Austrian Family Research. Polland often gave lectures to medical, German-­nationalist and Nazi societies and published on genetics, family research, population policy, anthropology and eugenics (Polland 1927: 11–14 and 1931a: 169–208). Equally important, Polland also co-­initiated the establishment of the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene in 1924 when his lecture to the anti-Semitic medical society (Verein Deutscher Ärzte in Österreich) in Graz led to a similar lecture in Vienna. On this occasion, Polland met the German anthropologist and the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene’s first chairman, Otto Reche, with whom he

26

Austria

continued to collaborate in the German Society for Blood Groups Research. He also assisted Reche on his genetic-­morphological based paternity proofs. Polland’s translation of Madison Grant’s Passing of the Great Race into German in 1925 further demonstrates his growing interest in race, as does his article published in 1929 in the German journal Volk und Rasse (Nation and Race), which dealt with racial conditions in Styria (Polland 1929: 16–24). He joined the NSDAP in 1929. Some of Polland’s ideas can be considered radical in the Austrian context of the inter-­war period. Already in 1924 he accepted euthanasia as a viable eugenic measure, which was a minority view among Austrian eugenicists at the time. He also explicitly advocated the improvement of the Nordic race by selective breeding. Polland even wanted to revoke the civil rights for those benefitting from public welfare. Other ideas, such as the opposition to racial mixing and immigration, or coercive measures, such as marriage prohibitions, sterilization, abortion, imprisonment in asylums and the genetic screening of the whole population were shared by other eugenicists, although abortion remained a contested issue. Like other nationalist eugenicists, Polland believed that the Austrian family should be considered the core concept of both eugenic ideology and science. After 1927, he repeatedly advocated biological family research and genealogical examination as eugenic methodologies. Polland also argued for the professionalization of eugenics as a distinct discipline (Polland 1931b: 35–8; 1931c: 48–50 and 1931d: 107–112). However, this attempt was just as unsuccessful as his attempt to create a eugenic department in Graz in 1933/34. Moreover, Polland’s work on heredity and eugenics had a negative effect on his career as a dermatologist: he was not considered for the position of full professor in 1934, as the faculty wanted to provide him with a chair in eugenics – but this initiative also failed. Polland connected the Graz eugenic society to the international eugenics movement by participating in the 1934 conference of the IFEO in Zurich (Bericht 1935). However, contrary to the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene, the Graz society did not become a member of the IFEO. This failure may have to do with Polland’s prestige among Austrian eugenicists and within the eugenic movement in Germany more broadly. Polland’s reception in Germany is hard to judge as his work was rarely quoted and his activities were rarely recognized. Reichel, on the other hand, was by far the most internationally recognized Austrian eugenicist, not least due to his strong connections with Ploetz. Polland’s situation changed during the Nazi regime. In 1938, he received a teaching position in hereditary biology and eugenics, and was given an assistant professorship in 1939. In October 1938 he became head of the clinic of dermatology at Graz. During this period, he also revived the Graz Society for Racial Hygiene, and separated it from the Arbeitsbund. Its leading members were university teachers (Polland, Reichel, and histologist and embryologist Alfred Pischinger (1899–1983), SS physicians and Austrian race politicians, such as Walter Walluschek-Wallfeld (?–1944) and the head of the Race Policy Office of the NSDAP in Graz (Rassenpolitisches Amt).

27

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

In the summer of 1939 Polland began lecturing on racial hygiene at the University of Graz, in addition to offering his expertise to the Hereditary Healthcare Court in Graz. In 1941, in reference to his teaching, Polland adopted the title of director of the Department for Heredity and Racial Hygiene at the University of Graz. He was dismissed from the university in 1945 and died in Graz in 1952.

28

Austria

Heredity, Constitution and Race in their Relationship with Medical Sciences5 Such ideas are, today, not utopian anymore: The future of medical science can to a greater extent ground itself in new natural scientific insights that root particularly in heredity and constitution theory (Vererbungs und Konstitutionslehre). We must refrain from viewing a person as a rigidly defined individual as, like all life forms, a person is just a link in a long ancestral chain of consecutive generations; his biological fate – and hence also the rest of his life’s destiny – is unavoidably determined by the hereditary legacy passed down by ancestors, determined through its inbuilt constitution. Here we also see the limits of our ambitions to heal; we cannot go beyond inherited defects. In addition, it is not only we ourselves that need to be clear about this, it is also inherently in the physicians’ interest that their patients are informed about it because only then will we be able to expect a credible appraisal of our work and be protected from the expectation of the impossible. But only then will arise, among the wider population, an understanding of how important adhering to the tenets of national and racial hygiene are for the individual as for the community. It follows that the purpose of medicine in the future, insofar as it strives for further credible development, lies within the field of eugenics. Eugenics, which is quite inadequately translated as ‘racial hygiene’, and which might better be called blood-­ refinement (Blutveredlung) or breeding-­refinement (Edelzüchtung). Eugenics could specify: the type of care [necessary] for the rearing of healthy generations, measures for the prevention of all factors which can cause deterioration, work towards improving the physicality of future generations by reproductive selection (Fortpflanzungsauslese) and breeding (Zuchtwahl). In addition eugenics argues against false humanitarianism which views its task solely in supporting and maintaining inferiors of all kinds at the expense of the industrious and which so righteously helps ensure that disease, misery and crime do not decline. This has to be linked to proper knowledge of the values of racial fitness (Rassentüchtigkeit) racial purity and of the only real natural nobility – that of blood from a pure family tree in the biological sense. [. . .] Back then the conditions for the creation of races seem to have been particularly favourable and the original races (Stammrassen) constitute, to this day, the foundations of the seemingly colourful collection of nations. But in appraising such matters one must not forget the immense periods of time such changes took. Of course the creation of races is biologically possible, that is shown, after all, by the breeding of animals and plants, though fully affixing newly created characteristics takes a long succession of generations, which explains the strengths of ancient inherited racial characteristics. The relative indestructibility of hereditary characteristics implies that no amount of interbreeding can create a mixed-­race with entirely new characteristics but only a racial mixture that allows the recognition of individual hereditary elements of the main races, even if in ever multiple new combinations. It follows that the essence of the ancient races has remained unchanged, and what seemingly speaks against this only relates to negligible phenotype features, so-­called modifications. Nature demonstrates a spirited 29

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

effort to maintain the sub-­type once it is formed and hereditarily consolidated, and to quickly expunge occasional foreign admixtures. This circumstance benefits the breeding of pure races. To clarify a few oft-­misunderstood terms I would like to quickly say that ‘nation/ people’ (‘Volk’) and ‘race’ (‘Rasse’) are certainly to be separated. ‘Nation/people’ means a historically formed unity, is hence man-­made, while ‘race’ spans that which belongs together biologically and through its hereditary framework (Zusammengehörige), and is hence a term in the natural sciences. Nation and race may most certainly have been the same at one time, however, these days this is unlikely to be the case anywhere, such that to speak of ‘national-­race’ is pointless and confusing. A third [misunderstood term] is ‘ethnicity’ (‘Nation’), namely a group of people held together by the communal sharing of certain concepts, such as religion, language, economic structure, customs and traditions. As such these concepts play a critically important role, and are useful in bridging some contradictions in other areas, where ‘ethnicity’ is a very noteworthy term; under circumstances it can clearly constitute a precursor of a new race developing, in the United States, for example. [. . .] That we cannot find any pure races in the strictest sense anywhere in Europe, is understandable given the passage of history, according to the principles of inheritance and blending theory, although the original racial characteristics are still recognizable. In-­depth and meticulous studies by German researchers allow us to discern essentially the following races in the ethnicities of Europe: 1. the Nordic, 2. the Western or Mediterranean race, 3. the Alpine, 4. the Eastern, 5. the Dinaric race and 6. the Jews. [. . .] Nature provided the hereditary framework of the main races of our nation, as well as its characteristics and many combinations, as raw material. The job is the maintenance and blossoming of the valuable and the destruction of unfavourable racial characteristics. With the word ‘race’, the ‘racial’ one normally uses in everyday speech is an expansion of this term in the sense of ‘pure race’, ‘thoroughbred-­race’ and is intended to thereby denote something particularly valuable, as for example with pets and farm animals. So it is from experience that a race’s purity indicates a valuable feature; purity in this case means the sum of industrious characteristics that were solidified and refined through a long ancestry, the pedigree, which has been ‘ennobled’ in the biological sense. It is our responsibility to assess the racial characteristic’s value, first from a medical, national health perspective and second, from the perspective of the Aryan-German. Regarding the first, we must see our ultimate aim not so much in the attempts to heal an oft inherently sickly individual, which can never entirely have satisfactory results, but much more so in our striving to prevent the inferior individuals predisposed to diseases from coming into being. We should not try to extinguish bacteria, but to increase man’s resistance. The wine-­grower does not battle the grape vine louse with chemical treatments, but through the breeding of more resilient vines. Due to external reasons the purposeful breeding of healthy individuals will long remain an honourable desire, but here too a negative process can be very successful, namely the prevention of the reproduction of inferiors through marriage counselling, marriage prohibition and through the sterilization of the mentally ill, genetically deficient and criminals. [. . .] 30

Austria

One branch of racial hygiene, genealogical research (Familienforschung), is indispensable for the medical profession. Apart from the significant ethical value of the revived study of genealogy – a respect for the family tree, yes, if one so wants, a certain ancestor worship (Ahnenkult) – so it were also highly important for the appraisal of family constitution to have a reliable record of the medical history of a family with all its roots and branches. Nonetheless, in future the physician should always bear in mind that, when in doubt, racial hygiene always should take precedence over individual hygiene. The German physician should not, however, just be a mechanic for badly functioning bodily organs, he should in his sphere of influence also be a leader in many other aspects. The physician has the right, but also the duty, to fall into line with his nation’s spiritual leaders because he, in the countryside for example, subconsciously and without clear purpose, leads by example, his way of life, his attitude towards the party and his character. The German physician, however, should be aware of his role and thereby act in a planned way; because therein lies the second part of his race-­hygienic purpose: his influence on national, social, and political life. [. . .] In racial matters one does not need to be objective though, indeed, one is not even allowed to without damaging the cause, as they say: blood is thicker than water! This means for the German, to defend the valuable racial elements (Rassenteile) within the German nation, and we will not let objective international science take this right away from us. It is anyway easy to find the right yardstick for concrete cases: For every nation the race – or races – are valuable, to which thanks are owed for the nation’s cultural achievements and development because, as follows from that said above, only these [race/races] can account for the protection and advancement of the national culture. [. . .] Briefly summarized, I see the following tasks for the German medical profession: 1. Prevention of the emergence of hereditarily inferior constitutions, welfare for the healthy and industrious, monitoring of reproduction and prevention of unfavourable racial-­ mixes. 2. Instruction of the nation on the value of blood, of genealogy and the pure race, striving to sustain pure German nationhood (Volkstum), a clean divorce from all that is foreign. Instead, the unification of all Germanic-Aryan elements in the world to create a new leader-­caste (Führerschicht) of man, towards the maintenance and further development of Germanic culture, so that the saying may come true: ‘Only through the German culture can the world heal’ (‘Nur durch deutschem Wesen kann die Welt genesen’)!6 Translation by Tudor Georgescu

Racial Hygiene in Medical Education7 Dear Comrades! That I may stand before you today to begin the first mandatory lecture on racial hygiene at our university, means to me the realization of a desire held for almost two decades. I very much appreciate the honour of being entrusted with this lecture and direct my sincere thanks to our Dean Professor Hafferl8 for entrusting me 31

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

with this task. I may see, therein, recognition of my long pursued ambition to, despite many obstacles, awaken and deepen an appreciation for the nature and meaning of racial ­hygiene in all of our region’s population groups, especially among our university students. When I myself, many years ago, in the past century, came to choose a career, there was no such thing as racial hygiene. That I, even as a young boy, had already decided [to become a physician] sprang chiefly from the desire to be able to help the sick regain their health. During my childhood several grievous illnesses taught me to appreciate the value of medical help and to myself be able to earn that gratitude that I felt for my physicians back then, I too wanted to take up this beautiful and beneficent profession. [. . .] That is why medical practice, as it is commonly understood, can never be entirely satisfying. The core of this troubling reality lies precisely therein that most people already come into the world with inherited deficiencies and all the later efforts to rectify these almost always remain a patchwork. Because when we follow the fates of people afflicted with hereditary flaws, the bottom line is consistently a rather sad one: A person cannot escape his hereditary destiny (Erbschicksal) and frequently enough the malady even reproduces itself from generation to generation. Considering these circumstances one does, after all, have to ask oneself: does it always have to remain this way? Also, where do the predispositions to diseases come from and where do the hereditary characteristics come from? If we pursue these questions, we here see a path opening up for the physician to also, just as with other craftsmen, assume an at least partially equal, creative influence over his material – the individual! [. . .] The journey from the theoretical realization of the importance and nature of heredity and the necessity of a racial hygiene augmenting individual hygiene, unto the application of the practical measures demanded by scientific proponents, was still a long one. Like all new ideas, so this one also met with widespread lack of appreciation and immense passive resistance. I have to admit that, for a long time, I had no hope of witnessing the execution of eugenic measures on a grand scale – which, it seemed, was indispensable for it to achieve success – and have frequently expressed this at meetings of the Graz Society for Racial Hygiene I had founded as early as 1924. I had to console my impatient colleagues with the notion that it was work for the future but that one had to simply begin it, even without the hope of seeing its fruits ripen. With us in the old Austria the Democratic Party system was an insurmountable obstacle, because I knew from the beginning that racial hygiene would never be granted a substantive success if one had to convince each and every one through lectures and publications of the matter’s importance. This was mainly because the average intelligence, strength-­of-will and character of by far the most inhabitants of even the so-­called civilized nations is far too low. A success was only conceivable if an insightful government were to, from the top down and through an appropriate legal framework, create the indispensable foundation for the general execution of race-­hygienic measures. Only a miracle could have helped given the confused condition of our party-­political state. Now, we were allowed to witness that miracle: a man arose from within the German nation who not only recognized the importance of life’s laws but, more importantly, had 32

Austria

the vigour to make it the foundation of the German Empire’s reconstruction, and precisely so in the manner that we had always had in mind, through integration into law. Now its implementation is assured; it no longer depends upon the discretion of the individual, the majority or party-­politics of a parliamentary body, whether we want to live race-­hygienically; no, it is from above by a consciously guiding hand that the road to living in adherence to life’s laws are shown to us, the only road that can make us strong and keep us strong. And for this great pioneering achievement we owe thanks to our Führer, Adolf Hitler! He created the legal foundations that allow the German nation a life in harmony with the demands of natural laws. For that we are obliged to thank the Führer from the bottom of our hearts! Through his deed, through his mandate there arises an imperative commitment for universities, in particular, to secure and further expand these foundations of the state through research and teaching. Even if the medical profession, in the first instance, seems called upon to tirelessly work towards this task, so the realization of the nature and meaning of racial hygiene is of importance to many, indeed to most, other professional groups too, and there is still a lot of developmental work to be done here. So what are the aims and ambitions of racial hygiene in the National Socialist state? National Socialism should be the worldview which best guarantees the German nation’s preservation, proliferation, and increased dominance. [. . .] Because race is by no means something absolutely rigid, immutable, race has become and is constantly changing, thereby invariably striving towards equilibrium and adaption to its environment. Only where complete harmony is achieved and the environment always remains the same, there the organisms remain unchanged. Because it is by no way law that life forms must, and from within, inevitably evolve higher. [. . .] We can, therefore, presume that mankind had a relative racial-­stability (Rassenkonstanz) since the prehistoric periods, which is conditioned by a racial-­fixity (Rassenfestigkeit) of the elemental racial characteristics as acquired over a long period of development. Seen within the wider picture, we consider the white, yellow and black races to be such permanent races. The characteristics of these races at first appeared to be so very different that one would hope to assume that they had not emerged from the same core stem (Stammform); indeed, some anthropologists have until recently championed the assumption, that the type ‘Human’ had to have arisen repeatedly, in different places, and likely also at different times. Today, this position cannot be maintained anymore, as decisive evidence suggests that the emergence of man happened only once and from the same original type (Urform). We too want to hold that all humans despite the many differences between its individual groups constitute only one type; the races being simply its subgroups. The criterion therefore is, among others, the reality that all humans can reproduce among each other and hybrids of the different races are possible. [. . .] How can the hereditary constitution be damaged? First, through the mixing of different races, the existing harmony of characteristics in every pure race is disturbed, and even more so the more different the original races (Ausgangsrassen) are. Second, through an insufficient reproduction of the carriers of the characteristics, so that the 33

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

racial heritage eventually dies out. Many races have already disappeared in this way, others are currently threatened with extinction, and we too ought to keep an eye on this danger. Thirdly, environmental influences can also damage the hereditary mass, by not offering suitable conditions for the characteristics’ development, as well as anti-­selection (verkehrte Auslese) that allows valuable characteristics to wither away. Finally, changes to the hereditary structure itself can also manifest themselves, which frequently mean damaging the hereditary constitution. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

34

Austria

Heinrich Reichel

(1876, Wels–1943, Vienna)

Reichel was born in Wels, Upper Austria. His mother’s family were known physicians in the region. In the 1890s, Reichel studied medicine in Vienna, Prague with his uncle, anatomist Carl Rabl (1853–1917), and Heidelberg with psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926), graduating in Vienna 1901. It was through the anti-­alcohol movement that Reichel first made contact with German racial hygienist Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940), and with Austrian anthropologist Rudolf Pöch (1870–1921). Reichel’s early interest in psychiatry, genetics and degeneration was motivated by his father’s death from hereditary schizophrenia in a mental institution. In 1905, after several traineeships in Vienna, Leipzig and Strasbourg, Reichel became an assistant at the Institute of Hygiene (Institut für Hygiene) at the University of Vienna. He married in 1906 and, in the spirit of pro-­natalist eugenics, the couple had nine children. At first, Reichel worked on bacteriology, chemistry and disinfection. He received his Habilitation in 1910, and became associate professor in 1914. At this time Reichel became interested in issues of anthropology, medical statistics and racial hygiene. In 1913 Reichel’s lecture on racial hygiene was one of the first in Austria (Reichel 1914: 30–6), although it took until the end of World War I for Reichel to engage with wider eugenic issues. As with other Austrian eugenicists, the war represented a turning point in Reichel’s career. As a medical officer in Galicia he established contacts with internist Richard Chiari (1882–1929), who would become the president of the first eugenic society in Austria, the Society for Racial Hygiene in Upper Austria, which was established in Linz in 1923. The lost war bolstered the faith of many Austrian eugenicists in their mission, and this was certainly true for Reichel. He was primarily concerned with family and marriage (Reichel 1922a: 274–6), as well as with eugenic responsibility (Reichel 1922b). He began giving lectures on racial hygiene at the University of Vienna in 1920 – the only courses on the subject taught there until 1938. Reichel was aware that the scientification of eugenics represented an opportunity for his own professionalization, especially after Ludwig Teleky (1872–1957), founder of social medicine in Vienna, was expelled from the university. There was an opportunity for Reichel to replace Teleky and establish his own new seminar on social hygiene, medical statistics and eugenics. At the same time, in winter 1923/24, Reichel became the head of the Department of Social Hygiene and Educational Training of Medical Officers (Sozialhygiene und Unterricht für Physikatskandidaten) at the Institute of Hygiene. Some of his students, such as Karl Thums (1904–76) and Friedrich Stumpfl (1902–94), became established racial hygienists in their own right after 1938. In 1940, another of Reichel’s former students, Herwigh Rieger (1898–1986), was appointed Chair for Ophthalmology at the German University of Prague, and assisted Thums in his racial work. Rieger’s work also 35

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

aptly demonstrates that human genetics and eugenics were, in fact, closely linked at the time. Rieger began his career by publishing on inherited eye diseases based on methods of family research that he had studied under Heinrich Reichel, and like many others he was also a member of the nationalist youth movement, the Wandervogel, just as other students of Reichel had been. In the 1920s Reichel considered biological family research as the main method in the study of human heredity that in turn could provide a scientific foundation for the legitimization of eugenics as a scientific discipline, alongside wider acceptance of eugenic measures (Reichel 1925b-­d: 1095–7; 2384–92; 2757–67). In 1919, Reichel began accumulating documentation needed for genetic research, and publicizing his methodology. He did so in a lecture ‘On the Method of Pedigree Presentation’ (‘Zur Methodik der Stammbaumbeschreibung’), delivered to the second annual meeting of the German Society of Hereditary Science (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Vererbungswissenschaften), held in Vienna in 1922; in 1925, in a lecture to the Viennese eugenic society on the ‘Method and Importance of the Family Research’ (‘Methode und Bedeutung der Familienforschung’); and during the international hygiene exhibition, organized in Vienna in 1925, when he prepared a section on ‘Family and Hereditary Research’ (‘Familien und Erbforschung’) (Reichel 1925a: 15–16). Reichel was one of the most influential Austrian eugenicists of the inter-­war period. In 1919 he became an active member of the Austrian Society for Population Policy, which was founded in 1917, and in 1924 he was the founder and vice-­chairman of the Viennese Society for Racial Care/Racial Hygiene. Within the latter society Reichel worked closely with Viennese anthropologists. Reichel was already a member of the Anthropological Society in Vienna, when he was promoted to the board of the scientific society and founded a section for heredity and racial hygiene (Vererbungslehre und Rassenhygiene) together with the Moravian-­born zoologist Leopold Adametz (1861– 1941) in 1927. Furthermore, Reichel cooperated with the anthropologist Otto Reche not only during the hygiene exhibition of 1925 but also in research on paternity proofs, which Reichel issued from 1927. From 1939 Reichel was also authorized to use the same method for racial proofs, but it is not known whether he had issued one or not. When the second eugenic society in Vienna, the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies, was established in 1928, Reichel was one of its leading members. He did not see the new society in competition with the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene, but as an extension of the existing eugenic movement in Austria. Although Alfred Ploetz favoured one of the other German-­nationalist eugenic societies in Graz and Linz, Reichel succeeded in including both Viennese eugenic societies in the IFEO. He used the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies to gain political influence over the federal science and public health administration, which he used for the popularization of eugenics. At this time, Reichel was also influential in various medical commissions. From 1921 to 1933 Reichel belonged to Vienna’s medical commission, the Wiener Landessanitätsrat. In the same year a legal bill was put forward requiring the introduction of obligatory health certificates before marriage. From 1927 36

Austria

to 1938 Reichel took part in the meetings of Austria’s highest medical commission, the Oberste Sanitätsrat (Supreme Sanitary Council), where eugenics had been discussed since 1924. However, in practical terms the only eugenic initiative that the Sanitary Council endorsed was to support families with many children in 1932. Although Reichel was not against forced sterilization and the confinement of ‘psychopaths’ in asylums, he advocated mainly positive eugenic policies, especially support of families with many children. Caring for the family was central to his eugenic programme. However, this preference did not exclude the introduction of coercive measures, such as marriage prohibitions and the requirement of health certificates for marrying couples (Reichel 1934a: 705–8 and 1934b: 740–3). Reichel considered the Nazi sterilization law to be useful for improving sexual morality rather than to prevent the reproduction of ‘dysgenic’ individuals. Although Reichel’s political attitude can be described as ‘Großdeutsch’ (German-­nationalist, favouring the union with Germany) he was on good terms with Austrian Catholics, Social Democrats and National Socialists. Reichel’s career prospects improved when he was appointed Professor of Hygiene in Graz in 1933. The Ministry of Education clearly appreciated his eugenic studies. Reichel considered racial hygiene to be part of hygiene and, therefore, tried to prevent attempts to establish eugenics as a separate chair in 1934 and again in 1938. Between 1935 and 1938 Reichel gave several university lectures on racial hygiene, and established a working group of population science in his department. His assistant Alfred Schinzel received his Habilitation in the field of population science in 1935. The group published some results in late 1938. In 1936 Reichel was proposed as president of the IFEO, but he declined. In the same year Reichel’s review of the book Sendung und Gewissen (Mission and Conscience) by the German physician Hellmuth Unger (1891–1953), which he submitted to the journal Ethik (Ethics), and in which he argued against euthanasia, claiming that physicians should treat and not kill, was refused publication by the controversial Swiss physiologist Emil Abderhalden (1877–1950). In 1941 Unger’s book was used in the Nazi propaganda movie promoting euthanasia Ich klage an (I Accuse). A year earlier, Reichel had suggested to spare socially valuable people afflicted with the condition from sterilization on the condition that they abstained from reproduction (Reichel 1935b: 2–5). During the Nazi period Reichel continued with his university lectures on population policy, but he never became a member of the NSDAP. He was not involved in carrying out sterilizations, but served the regime probably by issuing racial proof of ancestry. When the Graz eugenic society was reactivated in 1938 Reichel was a member of the board. Moreover, during the early 1940s Reichel focused more on the ‘problem’ of racial mixing, and in 1942 Reichel and his assistant Heinz Kurzweil (1909–59) published on the racial and population issues of south-­eastern Europe in a book, entitled Deutschland und Südosteuropa (Germany and Southeastern Europe), edited by the South-­eastern German Institute (Südostdeutsches Institut) in Graz. In 1938 Reichel tried to find alternative sources to fund his research on population, race and heredity by unsuccessfully demanding 12,000 RM for recording anthropological and genealogical data on parts of the Styrian population for eugenic purposes alongside eugenically motivated research on 37

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

tobacco, alcohol, fertility and families with many children (Reichel to Dadieu, 27 November 1938). After the start of World War II Reichel became a hygienist in the Wehrmacht. In 1941 he was responsible for the hygienic conditions of prisoner of war camps in Styria and Slovenia, and also dealt with Croatian civilians and probably also with camps that served the forced migration of ethnic Germans from Slovenia to Germany. In August 1941 Reichel was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder and interned in the psychiatric clinic of the University of Vienna, where he died from tuberculosis in 1943.

38

Austria

The Main Tasks of Racial Hygiene in the Present9 Guidelines 1. The racial or eternal existence of the nation is threatened on the one hand by external damage, that is, through such that cause extinction and those that lead to degeneration and, on the other hand, through a lack of selection due to which degeneration runs rampant. 2. The current most serious racial threats are venereal diseases and alcohol; the former primarily by distorting fertility and both due to their damaging effects on hereditary seed, which will frequently and in the least damage the next generations of alcoholics and syphilitics. 3. Venereal diseases need to be combated both through more concerted use of the tried and tested means of plague control, as well as education on moral self-­control, and through the removal of the economic and social hindrances to early marriage more particularly. 4. The very widespread, alcohol induced, corruption of the hereditary seed demands, if the affected are not to be entirely lost to the race, their complete abstinence from that poison, which is also for the whole nation probably the best measure – perhaps the only safeguard – against both continuously advancing racial damage as well as the tremendous harm to health, economic and moral well-­being that this poison inflicts on the individual. 5. A distortion of selection is unavoidable with any change in the environmental conditions of life, so too with mankind’s cultural development; it is necessary to fashion social institutions in such a way that they, as such, favour the selection of the hereditarily industrious for reproduction. 6. Above all the family, as the cradle for rearing and educating children, [must] be protected and strengthened, which can be achieved primarily by continuing to allow single-­marriage, by encouraging domestic pursuits for women as well as by strengthening morality and the healthy sense of shame regarding sexual matters. 7. Education both at home and in school should aim for the quintessence of achievable physical and spiritual industriousness. Education also has a duty to decisively direct the choice of a spouse for which excessive incest as well as international-­hybridization should be seen as racially dangerous. Economic and social factors must be considered because they do not stringently limit choice and do not emerge in isolation. 8. The elimination of those whose health makes them unfit for marriage through premarital health checks can only be fully successfully employed when a reliable general description of the individual is presented and with the special training of physicians for the task of premarital health checks. Mandatory examinations do, after all, already today seem possible and useful for couples 39

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

(Ehewerber) where each part is informed of the results of the other, perhaps even with the elimination (Ausschlatung) of particularly grave cases; the elimination of individual people from reproduction through the mandatory measures of confinement and sterilization is urgently desired in certain special cases of spiritual degeneration (seelischer Entartung). 9. The greatest threat to the race’s life is the extraordinarily widespread abstinence of healthy and industrious people from reproducing. Celibacy, late marriage and the limitation of marital fertility are practised in favour of individual advantages or social obligations voluntarily, partially forced by economic hardship and predominantly chosen by members of such social castes within which an above-­average mental talent and moral industriousness can be assumed. The factors that will be decisive in the prevention of such racial suicide include; legal and economic conditions, the relationship of the family to the state, the possibility of healthy national growth, the prevention of damaging domestic migrations, and the type of settlement, but, more importantly the nation’s mental attitude (geistige Einstellung). Translation by Tudor Georgescu

Racial Hygiene’s Attitude towards Hygiene and Medicine10 Many still see the state’s goal, at best, in welfare of all or at least as many as possible, instead of the entirety [of the population]. This last perspective, however, means that a politician cannot be indifferent as to which elements will form the nation’s future generations. It will, therefore, not only be his duty to gradually fend off and – insofar as possible – eliminate the diseased, with a tendency towards damaging industriousness through the creation of appropriate laws and institutions, as well as nurturing normal or even extraordinary industriousness of all. [The politician must] maintain the nation’s given composition of hereditary abilities unchanged, which can be achieved through maintaining sufficient fertility and through the prevention of foreign, especially racially differently admixtures as well as random mixing of the present racially different national stock. In other words, racial policy too is necessary and it cannot just be political because race matters [as much as inheritability], but it must unavoidably and simultaneously also become politically relevant for race to be under consideration. [. . .] In the concrete case of the mixing of Jews with non-Jews in the German parts of Central Europe. The danger lies, in my opinion, not really with the breadth of racial difference, let alone in the inferiority of one of the two national stocks, but rather in the reality that there is an enormous stock of German-­speaking Jews in nearby Eastern Europe. These Jews, in many ways developed distinctly and act differently to the German nation and having come closer due to the increased mobility of the past decades have blended with the German national body [to such an extent that it] would lead not only to the disappearance of that old and unique nation, but to tangible changes in the hereditary constitution of the greater German nation. It, therefore, seems, without any 40

Austria

malevolence towards the Jewish race, scientifically acceptable to warn against mixing on the grounds of preserving the given hereditary stocks of both nations. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

The Methods of Fertility Limitations from a Medical, Ethical and Population Policy Perspective11 Above all, it must be noted here that killing humans can never be the eugenic path. Upholding that human life is sacrosanct is of such decisive importance to a thriving eternal existence of the nation in its totality, that it may never ever be shaken for this reason alone. [. . .] Those who should hence not be considered for sterilization: of course those who are infertile, but also all those whose circumstances do not give rise to the worry that they would conceive, such as singletons with a lifestyle that is beyond reproach, people that, having been instructed to, assume the duty to remain single and conduct themselves beyond reproach, furthermore married individuals and their spouses who want to dedicate themselves to a lifestyle which would involve the preclusion of conception. Of course this would only be possible with those people, which one can assume would keep their promises; especially morally valuable and enlightened people, whose reproduction might be undesirable for whatever reason and would have to feel that the alternative – sterilization or confinement – would be insulting and degrading. For them there must be a third option of taking up a commitment. [. . .] If we only could consider the eugenically motivated sterilization desirable in certain cases, [someone] whose behaviour rules out counselling and whose detention cannot be enforced, we could forgo it due to higher ethical considerations concerning their consequences for others, but the question is not that simple. [. . .] But a physician acting in such a manner cannot be lumped together with another who acts correctly within the framework of his professional moral obligations. One may, to prevent abuse, place such measures alongside abortions – as it should after all be – under stringent public oversight, as was done by the German law through the creation of pertinent legal procedure. Nevertheless, if one places them – as has been repeatedly suggested among us – on a par with delinquency and crime one would open the doors to every abuse of a potential sterilization ban. The physician who sterilizes in secret would try, in case he were discovered and sued, to justify himself by feigning a eugenic motive, which he could not do if there existed a protocol for it. Due to these reasons, in my opinion, every physician with a correct understanding of the real circumstances must also support the legal admissibility of a eugenic reason for sterilization. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

41

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857, Wels–1940, Vienna)

Julius Wagner-Jauregg was born in 1857 in Wels, Upper Austria. He studied medicine in Vienna graduating in 1880. Until 1882 he worked as assistant at the Department of General and Experimental Pathology (Institut für Allgemeine und Experimentelle Pathologie). From 1883 until 1889 he was an assistant at Maximilian Leidesdorf’s psychiatric clinic at the University of Vienna, where he also received his Habilitation in 1885. In 1889 he succeeded the psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebbing (1840–1902) at the University of Graz, where he stayed until 1893. During this time, Wagner-Jauregg discovered a prophylaxis against cretinism by adding iodine to water and salt. In 1893 Wagner-Jauregg was appointed Professor of the first Psychiatric Chair at the University of Vienna, a positioned renewed in 1902 by the creation of a second Psychiatric Chair. During World War I neurotic persons were treated in Wagner-Jauregg’s clinic with electric shock therapies. A commission examined this controversial practice after the war and some Austrian physicians, such as Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), were quite critical of it. This controversy, however, did not preclude Wagner-Jauregg from continuing his research. In 1917, he discovered the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of ‘dementia paralytica’, for which he was award the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1927. The ethically problematic therapy – curing a disease by inducing another – was perceived as progressive at the time, as it offered the possibility to cure certain mental illnesses. In 1928 Wagner-Jauregg retired from the university, and became a public spokesman for Austrian eugenics by co-­founding and chairing Vienna’s second eugenic society, the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies. As chair of this society, between 1928 and 1935, Wagner-Jauregg was responsible for a proposal for voluntary sterilization put forward in 1929 and an attempt to introduce eugenics to universities and schools in 1932. Although these initiatives were unsuccessful, WagnerJauregg was, however, successful in obtaining state funding for his eugenic society. Wagner-Jauregg was also one of the experts working for the highest committee of medical experts in Austria, the Oberste Sanitätsrat. In 1924 this body of experts included population policy and racial hygiene on their agenda. The highest health office in Austria, the Volksgesundheitsamt, adopted a similar agenda in 1925. Moreover, in the early 1920s, Wagner-Jauregg was one of the medical experts grouped around Michael Hainisch, the President of Austria. Some of these experts established the Austrian Society for Public Health (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Volksgesundheit) in 1926, and Wagner-Jauregg chaired it from 1929 until 1931. Some eugenicists, such as Reichel and Tandler, also used this society and its journal to popularize eugenics to the wider medical profession. Wagner-Jauregg only published two articles on eugenics in 1931 and 1935, respectively – both in Austria’s most renowned medical periodical, Wiener Klinische 42

Austria

Wochenschrift (Viennese Medical Weekly) (Wagner-Jauregg 1931: 1–6 and 1935: 1–2). Wagner-Jauregg can be seen as representative of German-­nationalist eugenics, although his focus was rather on the ‘deutsche Volk’ (‘German people’) than the Nordic race. He also used the term eugenics instead of racial hygiene due to the more popular variant of eugenics in Germany by the end of the 1920s. Similar to other eugenicists in Austria he was concerned by the low birth rate, especially of those deemed ‘fit’ to reproduce. He, therefore, argued against contraception and consensual abortion. However, he did not exclude eugenic abortion. Wagner-Jauregg advocated family-­oriented eugenics, centred on family research. He argued for the introduction of teaching of heredity and eugenics at the school level. In his 1931 article, entitled ‘Über Eugenik’ (‘On Eugenics’), he advocated the voluntary sterilization of the mentally ill and criminals by referring to the successful instances in the US (Wagner-Jauregg 1931: 1–6). In his 1935 article, entitled ‘Zeitgemäße Eugenik’ (‘Contemporary Eugenics’), dealing with current trends in eugenics, Wagner-Jauregg approved of the Nazi law on forced sterilization, but remained cautious about its effects on the genetic make-­up of the population. He pointed out that a law on eugenic sterilization had no chance in Austria under the Catholic authoritarian government (Wagner-Jauregg 1935: 1–2). Wagner-Jauregg rejected Tandler’s eugenic marriage counselling as it was proven that only ‘fit’ couples used it. The failure of this eugenic experiment prompted WagnerJauregg to re-­evaluate the importance of sterilization. He also wanted to introduce health certificates on a voluntary basis, and advocated reduction of taxes for families with many children. But in 1935 he was pessimistic about the acceptance of eugenics by the population. His political background was clearly German-­nationalist and in the late 1930s he favoured National Socialism. He applied to the NSDAP in 1938, but died before his application was rejected in 1940, because of his marriage to the first wife, Balbine Frumkin, who was Jewish. Wagner-Jauregg’s anti-Semitism was not openly aggressive, but it existed nevertheless. His last eugenic work, Über die Menschliche Lebensdauer (On Human Life Span), was published after his death in 1941 (Wagner-Jauregg 1941). In it he again approved of the Nazi sterilization law and of the Nazi racial laws.

43

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Contemporary Eugenics12 Eugenics, the endeavour to improve mankind, is – as science – entirely international and apolitical. Eugenics as the aspiration to make the knowledge of science effective, immediately becomes national and political. [. . .] The two main duties of eugenics are the prevention of the hereditarily damaged and the fostering of hereditarily healthy offspring. Several countries attempted to achieve the first goal through the sterilization of individuals that are bearers of diseased hereditary traits. But this method has, until recently, not found a considerable proliferation anywhere, not even in California that until now had a considerable advantage over other countries. In recent times though, the German state has been very interested in eugenic endeavours and has, in particular, legally framed the sterilization of the hereditarily ill and, increasingly, also carried it out. There is no doubt that the idea underlying this measure is correct from a theoretical scientific point of view. Whether it will prove itself in practice only experience can tell. It will have to be demonstrable that, influenced by sterilization laws, there is a significant decrease in the number of idiots, feeble-­minded and mentally-­ill, epileptics, alcoholics, and habitual criminals. One will not be able to sidestep this demand by pointing out that the procedure was justified theoretically, as that would be an unscientific treatment of the question. It could, namely, turn out that one had overestimated the hereditary influence and underestimated the environmental influence. One can, therefore, only arrive at a conclusive verdict after a number of years, and only if the sterilizations have been widespread. A not entirely unwanted success will certainly then arise: A change in the birth rate, presuming that compensating for the shortfall through furthering hereditarily healthy offspring will not succeed. Our state’s current position on these ambitions is that of an observer as we live in a state with a predominantly Catholic population, and as the current government strives to maintain adherence to Catholic teachings by national institutions. The Papal encyclical Casti Connubii of 31 December 1930 dismisses eugenic sterilization in principle, and with regards to the exception which allows the withdrawal of reproductive ability as a punishment for past crimes is declared permissible, it remains questionable whether it means crimes in general or only sexual crimes. But one cannot believe that the rejection of sterilization for eugenic purposes is solely the reserve of the Catholic worldview; one finds several positions among the protestant clergy that, at their core, hardly deviate from that of the Papal encyclical. So if the prevention of unwanted offspring through sterilization is currently not possible in Austria, then one will have to consider whether its purpose can be realized, at least partially, through other means. The Papal encyclical even hints at such a route by predicating its rejection of eugenic sterilization with the comment: ‘Even if they frequently ought to be advised against marriage’. Reading between the lines, one can deduce the acceptance of marriage counselling in a eugenic sense. Now, simple voluntary marriage counselling, as it has been introduced in several places, for example Vienna, is pretty worthless from a eugenic perspective. The number 44

Austria

of cases, in which counsel is sought for eugenic reasons is negligibly small in relation to subsequent marriages and, which is worse, it did not grow over the course of this year. So this voluntary marital counselling also has no prospect of being widely used. So it will require a certain pressure to bring the importance of eugenic considerations in the choice of spouse into the populations’ consciousness. This demand would be facilitated if, following the suggestions of several eugenicists, the two marriage-­ candidates were to be legally obliged to exchange report cards on their marital suitability according to eugenic and hygienic perspectives prior to marriage. Even if, for example, the reservations noted in these report cards do not gain an obligatory character, such a rule would awaken the wider groups’ interests in eugenic and hygienic matters. This institution could be even more effective if purposefully providing false information were to be made punishable by law. To go further and introduce, say, a general marital consensus that would depend upon fulfilling eugenic demands, will hardly be seen as currently appropriate. On the other hand, there would be no reservations about the expansion of already existing marriage prohibitions from ethical or religious points of view, such as tightening the prohibition of marriage among blood-­relatives. Furthermore, the repeal of the provision in the civil law code – which [was] also merged into the order on incapacitation from 28 June 1916 – according to which some of those partially disenfranchised due to mental-­disease or mental-­weakness may enter into marriage with the guardian’s or court’s permission. The justification given for this legal policy is, from a eugenic perspective, maddening. The licence is, namely, to be granted if entering into marriage would be of benefit to the incapacitated. So, a mentally healthy person suited to conceiving hereditarily healthy offspring is sacrificed to the personal gain of a mentally-­ill or mentally-­weak person. Eugenics’ second main duty is the promotion of hereditarily healthy offspring. That can be achieved by channelling advantages toward families that have hereditarily healthy offspring in order to increase the number of offspring to as high as possible. But from where should the state take the resources to direct benefits at these hereditarily healthy families? Translation by Tudor Georgescu

45

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Felix Tietze (1883, Prague–1962, London)

Felix Tietze was born in Prague in 1883 into a Jewish family. The art historian Hans Tietze (1880–1954) was his brother. Tietze studied law in Vienna, graduating in 1907. He also studied medicine in Vienna, graduating in 1919. From 1919 until 1929 he was assistant in the Children’s Clinic (Kinderklinik) run by the renowned paediatrician Clemens von Pirquet (1874–1929) in Vienna. He was married to the paediatrician Hertha Tietze, who worked at the same children’s clinic in the 1920s. From 1922 until 1928 he was assistant to the medical director of the ‘Child Social Aid’ (‘Kinderhilfswerk’) in Austria, later transferred to the Austrian Ministry of Health. In 1924 Tietze was involved in the preparations of the international hygiene exhibition in Vienna in 1925. Also in 1924 Tietze was active on the executive committee of the infant welfare campaign in Austria (Sammelakt zur Hygienische Austellung, Zl. 29185–24; Zl. 3745–25). In the 1920s and early 1930s Tietze was a regular participant in Reichel’s seminar on social hygiene. Tietze’s interest in eugenics was manifest publicly for the first time at a conference organized by the Austrian Society for Population Policy in May 1926. Shortly after, in June, he gave a lecture on infant welfare and racial hygiene at the Society of Internal Medicine and Paediatrics (Gesellschaft für innere Medizin und Kinderheilkunde) and afterwards published two articles on the topic (Tietze 1926: 1014–16 and 1927: 4–6). Tietze was a genetic determinist and rejected neo-Lamarckism. As such, he considered education to be conditioned by hereditary heritage. Following Pirquet’s death in 1929, Tietze left the child clinic and until 1938 was director of the Infant Welfare Centre (Kinderhilfe der ‘Volkspatenschaft’) in Vienna. He also worked as a school physician and in his private practice. In 1926, Tietze became a member of the American Eugenics Society, and in 1932 a member of the British Eugenics Society, where he was even elected to the Consultative Council in 1936 (SA/EUG/C.332, 1927–1939). In 1928 Tietze became secretary of the newly created Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies, which became the most influential eugenic society in Austria during the 1930s. At the time, Tietze demanded the organization of separate conferences on eugenics in Austria (‘4. Tagung der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Volksgesundheit’, Volksgesundheit 1930: 88–9). He expressed his views on eugenic sterilization first in a talk given to the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies, and then published in the journal Volksaufartung, Erbkunde und Eheberatung (National Improvement, Hereditary Studies and Marriage Counselling) in 1929 (Tietze 1929a: 169–212). Tietze was against confinement in asylums and other health institutions due to high financial cost (Tietze 1929a: 170). Instead, he advocated the sterilization of the ‘feeble-­ minded’, schizophrenics and psychopaths. At the same time, he demanded the need for 46

Austria

more genetic research to supplement arguments for eugenic sterilization (Tietze 1929a: 200–2). In contrast to other Austrian eugenicists, such as Tandler and WagnerJauregg, Tietze did not argue for the sterilization of criminals, as he did not believe that criminality was genetically determined. Tietze also advocated positive eugenics, especially in those cases in which selective breeding could be precisely determined. He explained his preference for negative eugenics, however, in relation to immediate and active intervention for improving the population’s genetic health (Tietze 1929b: 264–6). Around the same time, the Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies proposed the bill for voluntary sterilization to the Austrian parliament. Tietze was considered the Austrian expert on sterilization in the early 1930s, and he also planned to specialize further (Habilitation) in social and racial hygiene at the University of Vienna; however, Heinrich Reichel did not sanction Tietze’s plan, arguing that he lacked any experimental research. It may also be that Reichel considered Tietze a competitor, while remaining committed to his view that racial hygiene was a sub-­discipline of hygiene. Moreover, Tietze was Jewish and had joined the Austrian Social Democrat Party at the beginning of the 1930s. Tietze built strong links with British and American eugenicists, including Leonard Darwin (1850–1943), Cora B. S. Hodson (1875–1953), Ezra S. Gosney (1855–1942) and Paul Popenoe (1888–1979). He translated some of their books and articles into German and reviewed English eugenic literature in the main German eugenic journals prior to 1933. At Reichel’s proposal he attended the IEFO’s meeting in Farnham, Dorset, representing the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies. Tietze was the only Austrian who attended the Third International Congress of Eugenics held in New York in 1932, as the other eugenic society in Vienna, the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene, could not afford to send a delegate. Next to Reichel, Tietze was the other Austrian participant in the IFEO meeting in Zurich in 1934, where he again endorsed the sterilization of imbeciles (Bericht 1935: 19). Not surprisingly, in 1934, Tietze was prosecuted in the so-­called Graz Sterilization trial for his advocacy of sterilization (Tietze 1929a: 169–212 and 1929b: 264–66). Although the trial did not concern eugenically motivated sterilizations, but contraception, the Austrian Supreme Court, dominated by Catholics, prohibited sterilization as a bodily invasive method (Tietze 1934a: 259–60 and 1934b: 213–15). In 1934 the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies became the Association for Human Heredity and Endocrinology but Tietze left the new society in 1935. Within international eugenics, too, the growing presence of Nazi racial hygienists meant that eugenicists of Jewish origin like Tietze were gradually marginalized. For example, he appeared on the list of Austria’s representatives to the IFEO (next to H. Reichel, J. Weninger and A. Scholz) at the meeting in Scheveningen, but by 1937 Tietze’s name was crossed out, and the word ‘Jude’ (Jew) added (GDA 34, IFEO, Internationaler Verband Rassenhygienischer Organisationen, 1937). In March 1938 Tietze emigrated to England. On 17 January 1939 he gave a lecture to the Eugenics Society, which was then published in The Eugenics Review under the title ‘Eugenics Measures in the Third Reich’. In it Tietze clearly distinguished 47

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

between non-­racial eugenics and the racial hygiene practised in Nazi Germany (Tietze 1939: 105–7). In so doing, he tried to protect eugenics from Nordic racism and Nazi ideological contamination – a strategy that was used by other eugenicists after 1945. In 1942, Tietze became a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Royal College of Physicians. After 1943 he worked as Assistant Medical Officer at the Plymouth Mental Hospital. In 1957 he became Medical Officer of Health and School Medical Officer of Health Jarrow. Tietze died in London in 1962.

48

Austria

The Graz Sterilization Trial13 During the latter months of 1932 the police of Graz in Steiermark, Austria, discovered that a relatively large number of men of this town and of Vienna had been sterilized by physicians and medical students who had either carried out on them a double vasectomy or had ligated both their vasa deferentia. [. . .] In actual fact eugenic aims had no part in the Graz sterilizations. The operating physicians took not the least interest in the genetical constitution of their patients – they were interested in hardly anything but the operation fee; nor were the patients themselves interested in eugenics. Some of these were married men with small incomes who already had one or two children and were desperate at the prospect of having to bring up more; some had no children, and wanted none; and some were unmarried. The idea that they might be carriers of transmissible defects did not even occur to them. It may be recalled that [Fritz] Lenz, discussing a similar case, expressed the view that men who asked to be sterilized were hardly worthy to continue their race, and it was quite proper to sterilize them. The sentiment of an important part of the Austrian population and Government, however, determined by their adherence to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, is strongly against eugenic or (except for very strictly therapeutic purposes) any other sterilization; and it was for this reason that action was taken against one physician and two medical students who had carried out on a number of men (at least 100) operations that had the effect of making them sterile. [. . .] The court was thus obliged to acquit the defendants, basing its verdict on the fact that the Austrian Criminal Law contains no section forbidding the operation of sterilization. In other countries such legal prescriptions do exist, for instance in Germany [. . .] In the new German Sterilization Law which came into force on January 1st, 1934, section 14 reads thus: Sterilization, not carried out according to the terms of this law, as well as removal of the genital glands, are only permissible if performed by a physician according to the rules of medical science, to avoid serious danger to the life of the health of the person on whom the operation is undertaken, and with his consent. The judgement of the Graz court is not final. An appeal against it has been lodged in the Supreme Court, but it is very unlikely that it will be changed in any fundamental sense. There exist in Austria people who want a Sterilization Bill more for the purpose of forbidding sterilization for other than eugenic reasons than for facilitating sterilization having this purpose.

Eugenic Measures in the Third Reich14 Before entering into the details of recent German legislation, I want to explain what to me seems to be the fundamental difference between the German and the English conception of eugenics. You know Galton’s definition, that ‘Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences which improve the inborn qualities of a race, also those that develop them to the utmost advantage’. Before the Third Reich it was also clear in 49

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Germany that ‘race’ here was not used in the anthropological sense. Thus, Fritz Lenz, a pioneer of eugenics in Germany (and now Professor of Eugenics at the Berlin University), said: ‘To influence in a favourable sense the hereditary character of a population is the task of racial hygiene in the stricter sense, being a hygiene of the hereditary characters’ (1931). Still clearer is the formulation by Grotjahn: ‘Eugenics is an objective science, i.e. applicable to each group of individuals connected with each other by procreation, without any dependence on race in the anthropological sense of the word to which this group belongs’ (1926). Now, let me quote Adolf Hitler: ‘The national state has to put race into the centre of life and to care for its purity’.15 And ‘The state is only the means to an end, this end being the preservation of the racial existence of men’.16 And: ‘The quality of a state cannot be valued according to the civilisatory height or the power of this state within the rest of the world, but only according to how its organization works in favour for its own nation’.17 And: ‘Who speaks of a mission of the German nation on the earth must know that it can only consist in the formation of a state which sees its highest task in the preservation and the promotion of the most noble portions of our nation, even of the whole of mankind, which are still intact’.18 When this bible of present day Germany speaks so, the sense of race and the sense of eugenics therefore are totally altered. Race is the Nordic race in the anthropological sense, or at least the ‘German race’, although such a thing does not exist; and eugenics – or as it is exclusively called in the Third Reich, ‘racial hygiene’ – is only the science concerned with the promotion of the German nation or the Nordic race. By this restriction the German ‘Rassenhygiene’ excludes itself totally from what is called, internationally, eugenics. Among the legal measures introduced by the Third Reich in connection with eugenics the first, and one of the most conspicuous, was the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease of July 14th, 1933. As you know – for a translation of this law was published in The Eugenics Review – the essential items ask the following: Anyone who is hereditarily ailing may be made barren (sterilized) by surgical operation, if in the experience of medical science it is with great probability to be expected that his progeny will suffer from severe bodily or mental hereditary disorders. Hereditarily ailing in the sense of this law is anyone who suffers from one of the following diseases: (1) congenital feeble-­ mindedness, (2) schizophrenia, (3) periodic (manic-­depressive) insanity, (4) inherited epilepsy, (5) inherited St. Vitus’ dance and Huntington’s chorea, (6) inherited blindness, (7) inherited deafness, (8) severe inherited physical malformation. Further, anyone suffering from severe alcoholism may be sterilized. Competent to make the proposal is the person who is to be sterilized, but in the case of irresponsibility or incapacity of this person the proposer is the legal representative, further the medical officer of health, and for the inmates of a hospital, institution or prison, its director. So the sterilization is a compulsory, not a voluntary measure. Before the Third Reich all the experts were agreed about the fact that the experiences of science were still not sufficient to grant such a measure; it was the political issue which made them change their mind. Another step which to the German legislation seems to be a eugenic measure, which indeed, is such a one from the standpoint which I explained in the beginning of my 50

Austria

paper but would not be considered so in this country, was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour of September 15th, 1935, forbidding marriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and citizens of German or related blood and containing the famous regulation that Jews are forbidden to employ in their households female citizens of German or related blood under the age of 45 years. Every German author on eugenics considers this a eugenic law. Very important is the Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German Nation (Marriage Health Law) of October 18th, 1935. It states that a marriage must not be contracted if either of the partners: (a) is suffering from a transmissible disease, or (b) has been declared incapable of managing his or her affairs and placed under the provisional care of a guardian, or (c) is suffering from mental trouble which makes the marriage undesirable in the interests of the community, or (d) is suffering from a ‘hereditary disease’ in the sense in which the term is used in the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease. Before a marriage is contracted the engaged persons have to produce a certificate from the health office to the effect that they are not subject to any of these disabilities. Such a pre-­nuptial health certificate was always a demand of many eugenists and seems to be a very important measure in the interests of eugenics, if applied in the right sense. Rightly, a semi-­official article in the Völkische Beobachter (the official party paper) stated: ‘Before the enactment of this law persons who on account of their weak-­mindedness, prodigality or alcoholism had been declared incapable of managing their affairs were allowed to marry with the consent of their legal guardian. However, it is against the interests of the national community that such persons should marry. Further, there are persons who suffer from mental troubles but who for some reason or other have not yet been declared incapable of managing their own affairs, and others who in consequence of pathological heredity have become criminals. It is obvious that the state must not leave to them the responsibility for the foundation of a family. The present law is a necessary complement to the previous law for the prevention of hereditary disease. The purpose of marriage being the production of healthy children, it is morally unjust to bind a healthy, reproductive individual to a sterilized one. On the other hand, there is no objection against two barren individuals entering into a life-­community.’ But as the certificate to be produced before the marriage is contracted is granted by the health office (advisory office for hereditary and racial problems) there is a certain danger as to the proper use of the law. Again here the fundamental difference between eugenics and ‘racial hygiene’ might produce the denial of such a certificate in cases in which from the genuine eugenic standpoint no objection could be raised. The two laws for the prevention of hereditary disease and for the protection of the hereditary health of the German nation are the most important measures of negative eugenics in the Third Reich, i.e., such measures as should prevent the production of undesirable descendants. The most important measure to increase the number of children of parents whose constitutional health seems to guarantee healthy descendants is the Law for the Promotion of Marriages (Section V of the Law for the diminution of unemployment of June 1st, 1933, altered by the Law of March 28th, 1934). [. . .] 51

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

After having explained the importance of these three measures – the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease, the Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German Nation, and the Law for the Promotion of Marriages, to give you an idea of the German conception of racial hygiene and to justify my argument at the beginning of this paper, I want to quote from an article written by two of the most prominent German eugenists, Alfred Ploetz and Ernst Rüdin, on what seem to them to be some of the eugenic consequences attained in Germany since the Führer took power on January 30th, 1933.19 They summarize these as follows: Education of Germany’s young people. Repression of the Jewish portion of the population. Decrease of unemployment. Safeguarding of the nation in its racial climbing-­up by withdrawal from the League of Nations, declaring null and void the treaties of Versailles and St. Germain, by occupation of the Rhine District, by the German-Japanese-Italian agreement against communism, by the creation of the German-Italian axis, by the re-­union of Austria with Germany, and so creating Greater Germany. I leave it entirely to you to decide how far these measures may justly be called eugenic.

52

Austria

Albert Niedermeyer

(1888, Vienna–1957, Vienna)

Albert Niedermeyer was born 1888 in Vienna. At first, he studied philosophy and the sciences in Vienna, graduating in 1910. He also studied medicine in Breclav (Cz.: Břeclav) and then in Greifswald (Germany), graduating in 1918. Afterwards, he worked as a country physician in Schönberg (Pol.: Sulików). His interest in medical-­ethical issues drew him to the study of law, which he pursued in Breslau. He completed his studies in 1924 having submitted a dissertation on ‘abortion as criminal offence’ (‘Die Fruchtabtreibung als strafbare Handlung’). After 1927, he worked as a gynaecologist in Görlitz (Germany). Niedermeyer was one of the leading Catholic eugenicists in East-Central Europe and Germany. In the 1920s and early 1930s he published on the subjects of eugenics, social hygiene, sexual morality and population policy (Niedermeyer 1931a). Niedermeyer was a pro-­natalist, arguing against all methods of artificial contraception (Niedermeyer 1926a: 371–2; 1926b and 1931b). Although Niedermeyer opposed sterilization and abortion, he advocated the imprisonment of specific groups in mental institutions. He was one of the very few eugenicists in Germany who warned of the fatal consequences of negative eugenics, because such measures were seen to lead ultimately to euthanasia. Not surprisingly, his opposition to sterilization brought him into conflict with the Nazi regime after 1933. The 1930 Papal encyclical Casti Connubii left a strong impression on Niedermeyer, and he converted to Catholicism. In October 1934 he moved to Austria, after having lost his medical licence in Germany due to his criticism of Nazi sterilization law, and his refusal to perform sterilizations. In Vienna he became the director of the municipal Family Office (Familienamt), and also the director of the newly established municipal marriage counselling service. He became a leading member of the Catholic society St Lukas Gilde. Yet his views on eugenics were not entirely commensurate with those of other members, who preferred a more ambiguous attitude towards negative eugenic measures. In 1935 Niedermeyer contributed an important article to the medical discussion of eugenic sterilization in Austria. In it, he argued for institutional confinement instead, as such a practice would not only prevent people from reproduction but also curb anti-­ social behaviour, thereby reducing the cost of public welfare. He advocated forced work settlements for those afflicted by incurable hereditary diseases (Niedermeyer 1935: 1578–83). Other Austrian eugenicists opposed Niedermeyer’s proposals, considering them to be ‘inhumane’ and excessively expensive. In 1935 Niedermeyer established the communal marriage counselling service in Vienna. The goals of the new institution were based on Catholic teachings and the ideal of the family, and were accordingly oriented more towards Catholic pastoral aspirations 53

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

than eugenic goals. Positive eugenics was pursued through the education of ‘dysgenic’ individuals about reproduction and its consequences. Niedermeyer argued that pro-­ natalism was more important to eugenics in Austria than negative measures, such as sterilization. He presented a summary of his views at the Second International Congress of Catholic Physicians held in Vienna in 1936 (Niedermeyer 1936: 97–120). Also in 1936 Niedermeyer proposed a legal bill in support of one of his favourite positive eugenic measures, the Family Compensation Office (Familienausgleichskasse) which was intended to support families with many children financially by levying a tax from people with few or no children. The proposal was heavily criticized by the general public and never adopted. Niedermeyer also considered himself as the initiator of new additions to the Austrian abortion law, enacted in 1937, even though the law was not eugenic in nature. It allowed for abortion to be performed if it was meant to prevent an imminent danger to the life of the pregnant woman or a lasting damage to her health. In March 1938 Niedermeyer was arrested by the Gestapo and transferred to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg. Following interventions from his friends he was allowed to return to Vienna. From 1939 until 1945 he was a physician at a military hospital. In 1945 Niedermeyer completed his Habilitation in pastoral medicine. From 1948 until 1955 he was Professor of Pastoral Medicine in Vienna. He also continued to publish and promote eugenic ideas within the marriage counselling services provided by the Catholic Church (Niedermeyer 1955: 165–201). Niedermeyer died in Vienna in 1957.

54

Austria

Madness, Science and Truth20 One of the most difficult disputes of our times is caused by the problems of eugenics and racial hygiene. This controversy, now, is particularly difficult because these ambitions’ positive aspects contain so much that is right and proper that it becomes hard to recognize the erroneous and dangerous in its negative elimination programme. Hence, the apprehension about these ambitions also starts at this junction, where they begin to deviate from the teachings of the Catholic Church. Now, race-­hygienists have unfortunately turned this precise point into a crucial demand, and have planned to mobilize public opinion so insistently that, eventually, the dominant view became that eugenics were simply synonymous with the extermination of the inferior. Although leading eugenicists had to admit that the scientific foundations of heredity diagnosis (Erbprognose) still leave several questions unanswered. They repeatedly, almost stereotypically, resort to the phrase: ‘Regardless, we cannot move ahead without sterilization!’ It needs to be said that: the question of sterilization assumes the same keystone role in the ideology of National Socialism, as abortion does in the Marxist socialist programme. Both measures are, by their nature, incompatible with Christian views on society. Much more important than the negative selective measures, are the positive welfare, demographic and political measures of the eugenic programme. They do not require an explicit internalization (‘assimilation’, [according to] H. Muckermann) by the Catholic worldview as they have always been Christian ideals. They are, after all, most effectively tended to through the realization of the Christian principles of marriage and family, the purest expression of which are found in the encyclical Casti Connubii. That is eugenics in its noblest form – and as such it does not require exterminatory measures. It has to be possible to achieve eugenics without sterilization. However, that will require, first of all, the removal of social needs, which again are expressed at its clearest in the inherent connectivity of the encyclicals Quadragesimo Anno and Casti Connubii. When it was declared that ‘[t]here can be no solution to the social question without eugenics’, then the reply was ‘[t]here can be no true eugenics without a solution to the social question!’ The natural conditions to allow people to lead norm-­conforming sexual and marital lives must be created again first. But nothing about the eternal norms can be changed. It was, at times, not an easy struggle whether one might not after all find an answer to the question of sterilization that could be supported by the Catholic disposition. It was, as expected, in vain. [. . .] The racial anti-Semitism, which emerged in my youth, had taught that the Jewish question was not at all a question of religion but solely a racial question. That it is such cannot be doubted based on the scientific principles of racial research; but it cannot be just a racial question. The differences in race as such cannot be a sufficient explanation for why this specific racial question is so deeply tragic for not only the Jews themselves, but for all their host-­nations around the world too. It is inadequate,

55

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

with this question, to only recognize its biological dimension but to remain blind towards its deeply metaphysical dimension. At its core the Jewish question is, after all, a religious question. To only see the racial angle makes the question hopelessly insoluble. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

56

Austria

Alois Scholz

(1875, Jauernig, Silesia–1947, Graz)

Alois Scholz was born in Jauernig (Cz.: Javorník) in Silesia in 1875. From 1895 to 1897 Scholz studied at the technical military academy in Vienna. Afterwards, he served as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army stationed in Krakow until 1901. From 1901 to 1911 he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1911. During this time, he taught at different military schools across the Austrian empire, including Eisenstadt (Hung.: Kismarton) and Mödling, south of Vienna. In 1919 technical school replaced the K.u.K (Imperial and Royal) military academy in Mödling, but Scholz remained in post until 1934, when he was dismissed because of his illegal membership in the NSDAP. He was reinstated the day after the Anschluss, on 13 March 1938. Scholz became influential in the Austrian eugenic movement after succeeding Otto Reche as President of the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene in 1927. A year later, he joined the board of the other eugenic society in Vienna, the Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies, where he remained until 1934. Scholz developed close ties with the Viennese anthropologists. In 1926 he became a member of the Vienna Anthropological Society and in 1941 he joined its scientific board. Also in 1926 Scholz became the second secretary and the Austrian director of the German Society for Blood Groups Research. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene cooperated closely with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Vienna and the Vienna Anthropological Society; Scholz chaired common scientific meetings organized by these societies, and shared the conviction of the superiority of the Nordic race with other Viennese anthropologists who were German-­ nationalists. Scholz believed that eugenic education had to instruct the youth about their eugenic responsibility. He suggested that the school and university system in Austria had to be reorganized to reflect the growing importance of eugenics, race, sport and heredity, with more importance placed on the latter than on the study of mathematics or foreign languages. Scholz favoured the separate teaching of talented pupils as a form of methodical breeding. In the early 1930s Scholz also included school physicians and public health officers in his eugenic education. According to his suggestion, public health offices had to be tasked with issuing health certificates, administering marriage counselling; eugenically based marriage bureaux were to be established, alongside the introduction of compulsory sterilization. Equally important, Scholz emphasized the importance of family research and anthropological measurements for scientific as well as educational eugenic aims. In 1926, he himself carried out examinations of pupils (Scholz 1926: 19). Scholz supervised 480 pupils each year, whom he considered to be the perfect material for research. Over 57

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

the course of ten years, from 1924 until 1934, he examined pupils and students between 14 and 19 years of age for eugenic and anthropological purposes. On the one hand, the pupils were encouraged to collect genealogical data on their families, at least as far back as their grandparents. On the other, Scholz measured morphological-­anthropological (shape of head and face), intellectual, mental and psychological features three times during the pupils’ enrolment in the school. He emphasized the aspect of race, in particular physical racial differences but also wanted to distinguish between ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ pupils. Scholz considered it desirable for social learning as well as for social control that pupils observed each other during these exercises. Finally, Scholz issued the pupil a certificate of conduct, where notes and marks on accomplishments, intellect and, especially, the development of ‘character and temperament’ (‘Gesinnung und Lebensschwung’) were recorded. When the pupils left school, they received copies of Scholz’s notes to remind them of their eugenic responsibility. Scholz did not consider any ethical issues in his research on pupils and students. Neither did he reflect on methodological and epistemological problems that arose from missing information or the different usage of the forms by the pupils. Scholz also taught a class in heredity, race and eugenics to the final year students. Eugenics was never taught before in Austria over such a prolonged period of time, and with so many students involved. In this respect, Scholz was unique among Austrian eugenicists prior to 1938. Quite early in the Austrian eugenic discourse, Scholz had demanded forced eugenic sterilization in 1926 for a broad range of people: alcoholics, criminals, the physically handicapped and ‘inefficient’ people. Scholz emphasized race strongly, especially the dominance of the Nordic race. He argued against inter-­racial breeding, and thereby against racial mixing with Jews. In his 1932 publication he called the NSDAP the only political movement that supported eugenics. This commitment to the Nazi party is similar to the statement of Fritz Lenz in 1931. Scholz presented his research in August 1935 at a session on racial hygiene at the International Congress on Population Science (Internationaler Kongress für Bevölkerungswissenschaft) in Berlin (Scholz 1936b: 641–6). He was the only Austrian to speak on a eugenic topic at this congress and his research attracted attention. Karl Thums recommended Scholz’s paper to Ernst Rüdin in Munich. It is possible that Scholz supplied other Austrian and German researchers with data from his school, including teacher Heinz Bouterwek, who worked on twins, and whom Scholz knew from their common participation in the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene. Scholz became a member of the NSDAP in December 1931, and by 1938 he was already a member of the National Socialist Teachers Organization (Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund). At the time of his admittance to the Nazi party, Scholz established a section on ‘Race and Racial Hygiene’ (Rasse und Rassenhygiene’) within the Vienna ‘Gauleitung’ of the NSDAP, which was the precursor to the Race Policy Office (Rassenpolitisches Amt) established in Vienna in 1938. In 1935 Scholz supported the Nazification of the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene by affiliating the society to the German Society for Racial Hygiene during a visit to Munich. Officially, however, such an affiliation was only recognized after 1938. Scholz 58

Austria

also represented Austria at the IFEO conference in Scheveningen in 1936. After 1938 Scholz also lectured public health officers, and in autumn 1939 he also gave antiSemitic lectures. The Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene participated in the effort to popularize Nazi eugenic and racial measures, and Scholz’s son, physician Lothar Scholz, participated in the Vienna Hereditary Health Court. However, the society did not gain much influence on the Nazi policymakers. For instance, Scholz and other members of the Viennese Society for Racial Hygiene were not involved during the planning stages of the international congress on racial hygiene to be organized in Vienna in 1940, but which never took place. In May 1944, Scholz became a correspondent member of the Academy of Sciences in Prague, an impressive achievement since only renowned scientists were elected to this institution (Mentzel to President of the German Academy of Sciences in Prague, 20 November 1944). It is rather likely the racial scientists Karl Thums and Bruno K. Schulz may have persuaded the Academy to bestow this honour on Scholz. After the war ended, Scholz resided in Graz, where he died in 1947.

59

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Basics about Racial Care and Education21 Quite a few feel intuitively that people had to be purposefully brought up to strive towards harmonious offspring (harmonischer Nachkommenschaft); very many though do not consider the matter important and do not even think about it. Among these frequently, strangely, are those people that appear racially pure and valuable in body and spirit. [. . .] A mandatory marital counselling has to prepare young people for such a choice in this sense, in the sense that the precondition of a happy marriage is the choice of a spouse with the purpose of a harmonization in physical and spiritual respects. So this is not about a marriage counselling at a time when a specific choice is already being considered, but about counselling at an earlier point in time, towards a later, eventually possible marriage, so at a time when the young people are not yet thinking about making a choice. In the wish or demand for the creation of mandatory courses on hereditary theory and racial-­hygiene; the counselling desired above comes first in the framework of material to be discussed. [. . .] A legal regulation should, in my opinion, be sought first, namely the introduction of mandatory classes on race and an education in hereditary health, not only for university students, but also mandatory courses for secondary and primary school pupils. Because we need the youth. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

Racial Care: Our Duties towards Our Ancestors22 1. Educational duties Racial care has to raise the youth to think race-­hygienically, to thereby choose their spouses and, ultimately, be parents living race-­hygienically. Strangely, to this day [that] there is no conscious education for parenthood. The initial means for this education are genealogy, family trees, stewardship towards a natural lifestyle, keeping social-­poisons (alcohol and tobacco) at a distance, and so on. Furthermore, we need corresponding curricula that place hereditary theory, evolutionary theory (Abstammungslehre) and racial-­hygiene at the fore and integrate them into linguistics, history, natural sciences – in all types of schools. [. . .] 2. Medical duties Following the race-­hygienic training of all physicians at universities, special medical officers (Amtsärzte) will have to be appointed to conduct the examination enabling marriage, to undertake marriage counselling, to establish and advise the eugenic marriage bureau (Ehevermittlung), and to authorize race-­hygienic rules (e.g. sterilizations). Families can choose general practitioners; if they do not, then general practitioners will be assigned to them and these must become mandatory advisors to the families in all eugenic matters. 60

Austria

3. Legislative duties This must establish matrimony as a reproductive contract (Fortpflanzungsvertrag) that affects the entire nation, the impossibility of separation, and special conditions that alone can be considered grounds for separation; furthermore, [this must establish] the legal status of mixed marriages, the compensatory load-­sharing (Lastenausgleich) for eugenically valuable, large families. Laws against over-­industrialization, for rural colonization and land reform, are a matter of administrative law; the provision of funds for these purposes is a matter of tax law; criminal law has to deal with preventing and punishing breaches of all these regulations. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

61

Glossary Asozialen: asocial Blutveredlung: blood-­refinement Edelzüchtung: breeding-­refinement Eheberatungsstelle: marriage counselling service Erbbiologie: hereditary biology Erbpflege: hereditary care Erbkunde: hereditary studies Erbprognose: hereditary diagnosis Erbschicksal: hereditary destiny Eugenik: eugenics Familienschutz: protection of the family Fortpflanzungsauslese: reproductive selection Menschenökonomie: human economy Minusvarianten: regressive-­varieties Rassentüchtigkeit: racial fitness Rassenhygiene: racial hygiene Rassenpflege: racial welfare Rassenkonstanz: racial-­stability Sozialbiologie: social biology Sozialhygiene: social hygiene verkehrte Auslese: anti-­selection Wohlfahrtswesen: public welfare Volksaufartung: national improvement Volksgesundheit: public health Volkswohlfahrt: national welfare

Notes 1 Tandler, J. (1924), Ehe und Bevölkerungspolitik, Vienna: Verlag von Mortiz Perles [Excerpts translated from pp. 21–2]. 2 Tandler, J. (1927), ‘The Psychology of the Fall of the Birth Rate’, in Sanger, M. (ed.), Proceedings of the World Population Conference, London: Edward Arnold, 208–12 [Excerpts included from pp. 208 and 211–12]. 3 Tandler, J. (1929), ‘Gefahren der Minderwertigkeit’, in Breunlich, F. (ed.), Das Wiener Jugendhilfswerk. Jahrbuch 1928, Vienna: Verlag des Jugendamtes der Stadt Wien, 1929, 3–22 [Excerpts translated from pp. 3, 6–9, 11–12; 14–17 and 22]. 4 Emil Boeters (1869–1942) was a German physician from Saxony Gustav who in his Lex Zwickau from 1923 proposed the compulsory sterilization of ‘inferiors’ as the most efficient practical measure of racial hygiene [note TM]. 5 Polland, R. (1924a-­c), ‘Vererbung, Konstitution und Rasse in ihren Beziehungen zur Heilkunde’, Ärztliche Reform-Zeitung, 26: 181–3; 191–4 and 203–4 [Excerpts translated from pp. 182; 192–3 and 203–4]. 6 An adaptation from a poem by the German poet Emmanuel Geibel (1815–84). The original reads thus: Macht und Freiheit, Recht und Sitte, Klarer Geist und scharfer Hieb, Zügeln dann aus starker Mitte, Jeder Selbstsucht wilden Trieb, und es mag am deutschen Wesen, Einmal noch die Welt genesen [note TM]. 7 Polland, R. (1939), ‘Die Rassenhygiene im medizinischen Unterricht’, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 89: 875–8 [Excerpts translated from pp. 875–7]. 8 Anton Hafferl (1886–1959): Austrian anatomist [note TM]. 9 Reichel, H. (1922b), Die Hauptaufgaben der Rassenhygiene in der Gegenwart, Vienna: Veröffentlichungen des Volksgesundheitsamtes im Bundesministerium für soziale Verwaltung, 1922 [Excerpts translated from p. 16]. 10 Reichel, H. (1935b), ‘Die Stellung der Rassenhygiene zur Hygiene und Medizin’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 48: 2–5 [Excerpts translated from pp. 4–5]. 11 Reichel, H. (1935a), ‘Die Methoden der Fruchtbarkeitsbeschränkung vom ärztlichen, ethischen und bevölkerungspolitischen Standpunkt’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 48: 1081–8 [Excerpts translated from pp. 1083; 1086 and 1088]. 12 Wagner-Jauregg, J. (1935), ‘Zeitgemäße Eugenik’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 48: 1–2 [Excerpts translated from pp. 1–2]. 13 Tietze, F. (1934a), ‘The Graz Sterilization Trial’, The Eugenics Review, 25: 259–60 [Excerpts included from pp. 259–60]. 14 Tietze, F. (1939), ‘Eugenic Measures in the Third Reich’, The Eugenics Review, 31: 105–7 [Excerpts included from pp. 105–7]. 15 Mein Kampf, 16th ed. 1932, p. 446 [note FT]. 16 Ibid, p. 433. 17 Ibid., p. 435. 18 Ibid., p. 439. 19 Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 32 (1938): 185 [note FT]. 20 Niedermeyer, A. (1934), Wahn, Wissenschaft und Wahrheit, Salzburg: Verlag Anton Pustet [Excerpts translated from pp. 184–6 and 196].

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

21 Scholz, A. (1928), ‘Grundlegende über Rassenpflege und Erziehung’, Volk und Rasse 3: 235– 47 [Excerpts translated from pp. 237–8 and 246]. 22 Scholz, A. (1932), Rassenpflege. Über unsere Pflichten gegen unsere Nachkommen, Vienna: ‘Kampfruf’ Verlag, 1932 [Excerpts translated from pp. 16–17].

64

Bibliography Archives Universitätsarchiv Wien (Archives of the University of Vienna) Medizinische Fakultät (Medical Faculty) Personal Files Heinrich Reichel, Julius Tandler and Rudolf Polland Philosophische Fakultät (Faculty of Philosophy) Rassenbiologische Institut (Institute of Racial Biology) Naturhistorisches Museum (Museum of Natural History), Vienna  Anthrop. Abteilung, Korrespondenz, 1923 Universitätsarchiv Graz (Archive of the University of Graz) Medizinische Fakultät   No. 371. Ex. 1938/39, Reichel to Dadieu, 27 November 1938 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (Austrian State Archive), Vienna AdR, BM für soziale Verwaltung, Volksgesundheitsamt, Karton 1847, 1924 (Hygiene), Sammelakt zur Hygienische Austellung, Zl. 29185–24; Zl. 3745–25 Universitätsarchiv Innsbruck (Archives of the University of Innsbruck) Institut für Erb- un Rassenbiologie (Institute of Hereditary and Racial Biology) Archive of the Max-Planck-Institute München, GDA 34, IFEO, Internationaler Verband rassenhygienischer Organisationen [from 1937] Bundesarchiv Berlin R 4901/13.166, REM, Mentzel to President of the German Academy of Sciences in Prague, 20 November 1944 The Eugenics Society Archive, the Wellcome Library, London   SA/EUG/C.332, 1927–1939

Primary Sources (1913), ‘Eine deutsch-österreichische Beratungsstelle für Volkswohlfahrt’, Der Bund, 8: 9–11. (1913–14), ‘Eugenics in Austria’, The Eugenics Review, 5: 387. (1917), ‘Die zweite Deutsch-österreichische Tagung für Volkswohlfahrt’, Der Bund, 12: 4–8. (1919), ‘Tagung für Rassenhygiene und Bevölkerungspolitik’, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 69: 355–7. (1929), ‘Österreichischer Bund für Volksaufartung und Erbkunde’, Volksaufartung, Erbkunde, Eheberatung, 4: 10–11. (1930), ‘4. Tagung der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Volksgesundheit’, Volksgesundheit: Zeitschrift für soziale Hygiene, 4: 88–9.

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

(1929), ‘The Meeting of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations’, Eugenical News 14: 153–7. (1935), Bericht über die 11. Versammlung der Internationalen Föderation Eugenischer Organisationen, Konferenzsitzungen vom 18. bis 21. Juli 1934 im Waldhaus Dolder, Zürich, Schweiz, Zürich: Orell Füssli. (1935), ‘Eugenics in Austria’, The Eugenics Review, 26: 258–61. Goldscheid, R. (1912), Friedensbewegung und Menschenokonomie, Berlin: ‘Friedenswarte’. Hesch, M. (1926), ‘Die Tätigkeit der Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege (Rassenhygiene) im Jahre 1925’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 18: 236–7. Kammerer, P. (1913), Sind wir Sklaven der Vergangenheit oder Werkmeister der Zukunft? Anpassung, Vererbung, Rassenhygiene in dualistischer und monistischer Betrachtungsweise, Vienna: Anzengruber-Verlag. Kautsky, K. Jr. (1930), ‘Eugenik in Österreich’, Archiv für Soziale Hygiene und Demographie, 5: 132–4. Kurzweil, H. (1942), ‘Die Volkskraft der Südostvölker’, in Reitz, A. (ed.), Deutschland und Südosteuropa. Die natürlichen, völkischen, kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen des Deutschtums mit den Völkern im Südosten, Graz: Steirische Verlagsanstalt, 53–59. Lebzelter, V. (1937), ‘Unsere rassenhygienische Aufgabe’, Kultur und Politik 2: 19–24. Niedermeyer, A. (1926a), ‘Zur Frage der Eheberatung’, Ärztliches Vereinsblatt für Deutschland, 55: 371–2. Niedermeyer, A. (1926b), Geburtenrückgang und Sozialgesetzgebung in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses. Niedermeyer, A. (1931a), Sozialhygiene, Moralhygiene, Kulturhygiene: Ein Beitrag begrifflichen Klärung, Karlsruhe: C. F. Müller. Niedermeyer, A. (1931b), Die Eugenik und die Ehe- und Familien-Gesetzgebung in Sowjetrussland, Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmlers Verlag. Niedermeyer, A. (1934), Wahn, Wissenschaft und Wahrheit, Salzburg: Verlag Anton Pustet Niedermeyer, A. (1935), ‘Ist Sterilisierung das wirksamste Mittel zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses?’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 48: 1578–83. Niedermeyer, A. (1936), ‘Die Sterilisierung vor dem Forum der Wissenschaft und der Moral’, St Lukas, 4: 97–120. Niedermeyer, A. (1955), ‘Die Psychische Hygiene in ihren Beziehungen zur Sozialhygiene, Pastoralmedizin, Eugenetik (Eubiotik), Sexualhygiene und zur Eheberatung’, in Brezina, E., Stransky, E. (eds.), Psychische Hygiene, Vienna: Verlag für Medizinische Wissenschaften, 1955, 165–201. Polland, R. (1924a), ‘Vererbung, Konstitution und Rasse in ihren Beziehungen zur Heilkunde’, Ärztliche Reform-Zeitung, 26: 181–3. Polland, R. (1924b), ‘Vererbung, Konstitution und Rasse in ihren Beziehungen zur Heilkunde’, Ärztliche Reform-Zeitung, 26: 191–4. Polland, R. (1924c), ‘Vererbung, Konstitution und Rasse in ihren Beziehungen zur Heilkunde’, Ärztliche Reform-Zeitung, 26: 203–4. Polland, R. (1927), ‘Familienforschung und Erbgesundheitslehre’, Blätter für Österreichische Familienkunde, 1: 11–14. Polland, R. (1929), ‘Die rassische Zusammensetzung der Bevölkerung Steiermarks’, Volk und Rasse, 4: 16–24. Polland, R. (1931a), ‘Psychische Hygiene, Eugenik (Rassenhygiene) und Soziologie’, in Stransky, E. (ed.), Leitfaden der psychischen Hygiene, Vienna: Urban und Schwarzenberg, 169–208. Polland, R. (1931b), ‘Erweiterung und Ausbau der Heilkunde durch die Eugenik’, Mitteilungen des Vereines der Ärzte in Steiermark, 68: 35–8. Polland, R. (1931c), ‘Erweiterung und Ausbau der Heilkunde durch die Eugenik’, Mitteilungen des Vereines der Ärzte in Steiermark, 68: 48–50. 66

Austria

Polland, R. (1931d), ‘Erweiterung und Ausbau der Heilkunde durch die Eugenik’, Mitteilungen des Vereines der Ärzte in Steiermark, 68: 107–12. Polland, R. (1939), ‘Die Rassenhygiene im medizinischen Unterricht’, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 89: 875–8. Reichel, H. (1914), ‘Vorträge. Über Rassenhygiene’, Mitteilungen des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins an der Universität Wien, 12: 30–6. Reichel, H. (1922a), ‘Zur Frage des gesundheitlichen Ehekonsenses’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 35: 274–6. Reichel, H. (1922b), Die Hauptaufgaben der Rassenhygiene in der Gegenwart, Vienna: Deuticke. Reichel, H. (1925a), ‘Die Stellung der Rassenhygiene zur Hygiene und Medizin’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 38: 15–16. Reichel, H. (1925b), ‘Familien- und Erbforschung am Beispiel von Goethes Blutsverwandtschaft’, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 75: 1095–7. Reichel, H. (1925c), ‘Familien- und Erbforschung am Beispiel von Goethes Blutsverwandtschaft‘, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 75: 2384–92. Reichel, H. (1925d), ‘Familien- und Erbforschung am Beispiel von Goethes Blutsverwandtschaft’, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 75: 2757–67. Reichel, H. (1931), ‘Alfred Ploetz und die rassenhygienische Bewegung der Gegenwart’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 44: 284–7. Reichel, H. (1934a), ‘Welches sind heute die dringlichsten Forderungen der Rassenhygiene?’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 47: 705–8. Reichel, H. (1934b), ‘Welches sind heute die dringlichsten Forderungen der Rassenhygiene?’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 47: 740–3. Reichel, H. (1935a), ‘Die Methoden der Fruchtbarkeitsbeschränkung vom ärztlichen, ethischen und bevölkerungspolitischen Standpunkt’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 48: 1081–8. Reichel, H. (1935b), ‘Die Stellung der Rassenhygiene zu Hygiene und Medizin’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 48: 2–5. Reichel, H. (1936), ‘Meine lieben jungen Freunde. Ein Vortrag für Mittelschulabgänger über Rassenhygiene (Eugenik)’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift 49: 554–6. Reichel, H. (1942), ‘Das Rassengefüge des europäischen Südostens’, in Reitz, A. (ed.) (1942), Deutschland und Südosteuropa. Die natürlichen, völkischen, kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen des Deutschtums mit den Völkern im Südosten, Graz: Steirische Verlagsanstalt, 44–52. Reichel, H. and Muckermann, H. (1930), Grundlagen der Vererbungswissenschaft und Eugenik. Vienna: Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege (Rassenhygiene). Scholz, A. (1926), Rassenpflege und Erziehung, Vienna: Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege (Rassenhygiene). Scholz, A. (1928), ‘Grundlegendes über Rassenpflege und Erziehung’, Volk und Rasse, 3: 235–47. Scholz, A. (1931), ‘Eugenische Erziehung’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 25: 296–300. Scholz, A. (1932), Rassenpflege. Über unsere Pflichten gegen unseren Nachkommen, Vienna: ‘Kampfruf’ Verlag. Scholz, A. (1934), ‘Zehn Jahre Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege (Rassenhygiene)’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 28: 345–7. Scholz, A. (1936a), ‘Vom internationalen Kongreß für Bevölkerungswissenschaft in Berlin, 1935’, Zeitschrift für Kinderschutz, Familien- und Berufsfürsorge, 18: 3–6. Scholz, A. (1936b), ‘Ein rassenhygienischer Erziehungsversuch mit bevölkerungspolitischen Zielen’, in Harmsen, H. and Lohse, F. (eds), Bevölkerungsfragen. Bericht des 67

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Internationalen Kongresses für Bevölkerungswissenschaft, Berlin, 26. August – 1. September 1935, Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 641–6. Stigler, R. (1918), ‘Die volksgesundheitliche Bedeutung einer staatlichen Ehevermittlung’, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 68: 1683–7. Tandler, J. (1914), ‘Konstitution und Rassenhygiene’, Zeitschrift für Angewandte Anatomie und Konstitutionslehre, 1: 11–26. Tandler, J. (1916), ‘Krieg und Bevölkerung’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 29: 446–8. Tandler, J. (1918), ‘Probleme der Bevölkerungspolitik’, Mitteilungen der österreichischen Gesellschaft für Bevölkerungspolitik, 1: 15–17. Tandler, J. (1920), ‘Konstitution und Rassenhygiene’, Mitteilungen des Volksgesundheitsamtes, 2: 5–16. Tandler, J. (1924), Ehe und Bevölkerungspolitik, Vienna: Verlag von Moritz Perles. Tandler, J. (1927), ‘The Psychology of the Fall of the Birth Rate’, in Sanger, M. (ed.), Proceedings of the World Population Conference, London: Edward Arnold, 208–12. Tandler, J. (1929), ‘Gefahren der Minderwertigkeit’, in Breunlich, F. (ed.), Das Wiener Jugendhilfswerk. Jahrbuch 1928, Vienna: Verlag des Jugendamtes der Stadt Wien, 3–22. Tandler, J. (1932), ‘Arzt und Wirtschaft’, Volksgesundheit. Zeitschrift für Soziale Hygiene, 6: 8. Tietze, F. (1926), ‘Säuglingsfürsorge und Rassenhygiene’, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 76: 1014–16. Tietze, F. (1927), ‘Säuglingsfürsorge und Rassenhygiene’, Zeitschrift für Volksaufartung und Erbkunde, 2: 4–6. Tietze, F. (1929a), ‘Sterilisierung zu eugenischen Zwecken’, Volksaufartung, Erbkunde und Eheberatung, 4: 169–212. Tietze, F. (1929b), ‘Sterilisierung zur Verbesserung des Menschengeschlechts’, Volksaufartung, Erbkunde, Eheberatung, 4: 264–6. Tietze, F. (1934a), ‘The Graz Sterilization Trial’, The Eugenics Review, 25: 259–60. Tietze, F. (1934b), ‘The Graz Sterilization Trial: Judgement of the Supreme Court’, The Eugenics Review, 26: 213–15. Tietze, F. (1939), ‘Eugenic Measures in the Third Reich’, The Eugenics Review, 31: 105–7. Ude, U. (1917), Niedergang oder Aufstieg?: Eine Schicksalsfrage über die Zukunft unserer Rasse, Graz: Volksheil. Ude, J. (1918), Der moralischen Schwachsinn. Für Volkssittlichkeit, Graz: Oesterreichs Völkerwacht. Ullmann, R. (1916), ‘Die erste Deutsch-Österreichische Tagung für Volkswohlfahrt’, Der Bund, 11: 7–10. Wagner-Jauregg, J. (1931), ‘Über Eugenik’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 44: 1–6. Wagner-Jauregg, J. (1935), ‘Zeitgemäße Eugenik’, Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 48: 1–2. Wagner-Jauregg, J. (1941), Über die menschliche Lebensdauer. Eine populär-­wissenschaftliche Darstellung, Innsbruck: Deutscher Alpenverlag.

Secondary Sources Baader, G. (2007), ‘Eugenische Programme in der sozialistischen Parteienlandschaft in Deutschland und Österreich im Vergleich’, in Baader, G., Hofer, V. and Mayer, T. (eds), Eugenik in Österreich. Biopolitische Strukturen von 1900–1945, Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 66–139. Berner, M. (2007), ‘Die Bedeutung der biometrischen Erfassungsmethode in der Österreichischen Anthropologie in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts’, in Baader, Hofer, and Mayer (eds), Eugenik in Österreich, 236–56. 68

Austria

Byer, D. (1988), Rassenhygiene und Wohlfahrtspflege. Zur Entstehung eines sozialdemokratischen Machtdispositivs in Österreich bis 1934, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. Czarnowski, G. (2007), ‘Eheeignung und Ehetauglichkeit. Körpereinschreibungen im administrativen Geflecht positiver und negativer Rassenhygiene während des Nationalsozialismus’, in Baader, Hofer, and Mayer (eds) Eugenik in Österreich, 312–44. Czech, H. (2007), Ärzte am Volkskörper. Die Wiener Medizin und der Nationalsozialismus, Phil. Dipl., University of Vienna. Exner, G. (2013), Die Soziologische Gesellschaft in Wien (1907–1934) und die Bedeutung Rudolf Goldscheids für ihre Vereinstätigkeit, Vienna: New Academic Press. Exner, G., Kytir, J. and Pinwinkler, A. (2004), Bevölkerungswissenschaft in Österreich in der Zwischenkriegszeit (1918–1938). Personen, Institutionen, Diskurse, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. Fuchs, B. (2003), ‘Rasse’, ‘Volk’, Geschlecht. Anthropologische Diskurse in Österreich 1850–1960, Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Goldberger, J. (2004), NS-Gesundheitspolitik in Oberdonau. Die administrative Konstruktion des ‘Minderwertes’, Linz: Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv. Hofer, V. (2007), ‘Positionen und Posen eines Experten. Der Konstitutionsforscher Julius Bauer (1887–1973) und die Eugenik in der Zwischenkriegszeit’, in Baader, Hofer, and Mayer (eds) Eugenik in Österreich, 31–65. Hubenstorf, M. (2005), ‘Medizinhistorische Forschungsfragen zu Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1940)’, Jahrbuch des Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, 218–33. Lehner, K. (1989), Verpönte Eingriffe. Sozialdemokratische Reformbestrebungen zu den Abtreibungsbestimmungen in der Zwischenkriegszeit, Vienna: Picus. Löscher, M. (1999), Zur Rezeption eugenischen/rassenhygienischen Gedankengutes in Österreich bis 1934 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Wiens, Phil. Dipl., University of Vienna. Löscher, M. (2000), ‘Julius Tandler’, in Heindl, G. (ed.), Wissenschaft und Forschung in Österreich. Exemplarische Leistungen Österreichischer Naturforscher, Techniker und Mediziner, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 89–104. Löscher, M. (2009), ‘. . . der gesunden Vernunft nicht zuwider . . .’? Katholische Eugenik in Österreich vor 1938, Innsbruck: Studien Verlag. Mayer, T. (2004), Akademische Netzwerke um die ‘Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege (Rassenhygiene)’ von 1924 bis 1948, Phil. Dipl., University of Vienna. Mayer, T. (2005) “‘. . . daß die eigentliche Rassenhygiene in der Hauptsache das Werk Reichels ist” – Der (Rassen-) Hygieniker Heinrich Reichel (1876–1943) und seine Bedeutung für die eugenische Bewegung in Österreich’, in Heinz-Eberhard, G., and Neugebauer, W. (eds), Vorreiter der Vernichtung? Eugenik, Rassenhygiene und Euthanasie in der Österreichischen Diskussion vor 1938, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 65–98. Mayer, T. (2007), ‘Familie, Rasse und Genetik. Deutschnationale Eugeniken im Österreich der Zwischenkriegszeit’, in Baader, Hofer, and Mayer (eds), Eugenik in Österreich, 162–83. Mayer, T. (2008a), ‘Eugenik in Graz oder Grazer Eugenik? Versuche Über eine Standortbestimmung eugenischer Positionen und Aktivitäten in der Zwischenkriegszeit’, VIRUS, 7: 117–29. Mayer, T. (2008b), ‘Gesunde Gene im gesunden Körper? Die Kooperation von Eugenik und Turnreform am Beispiel des österreichischen Reformers des Turnunterrichts Karl Gaulhofer (1885–1941)’, in Krüger, M. (ed.), ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’. Gymnastik, Turnen, Spiel und Sport als Gegenstand der Bildungspolitik vom 18. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert. Jahrestagung der dvs-Sektion Sportgeschichte vom 7.-8. Juni 2007 in Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg: Czwalina, 115–26. Mayer, T. (2008c), ‘Rassehygiene und Jugendfürsorge ‘wärmstens’ empfohlen: Theorie und Praxis bei Hans Friedl als Zeichen für eine Neuorientierung öffentlicher Gesundheits- und 69

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Bevölkerungsagenden’, in Brandtstetter, T., Rupnow, D., and Wessely, C. (eds), Sachunterricht. Fundstücke aus der Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Vienna: Löcker, 229–33. Mayer, T. (2008d), ‘Ein “Mann von der Bedeutung Wagner-Jaureggs”. Wagner-Jauregg und eugenisch-­rassenhygienische Netzwerke in Österreich’, in Neugebauer, W., Scholz, K., and Schwarz, P. (eds), Julius Wagner-Jauregg im Spannungsfeld politischer Ideen und Interessen – eine Bestandsaufnahme. Beiträge des Workshops vom 6./7. November 2006 im Wiener Rathaus, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 15–30. Mayer, T. (2009a), ‘Family Matters. The Rise of Family Research as a Scientific Method and the Scientification of Eugenics in Vienna after World War I’, in Hunger, H., Seebacher, F., and Holzer, G. (eds), Styles of Thinking in Science and Technology. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Vienna, September 10–12, 2008, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1068–80. Mayer, T. (2009b), ‘Eugenische Forschung als “eine politische nationalsozialistische Tätigkeit”. Die akademische Verbindung von Eugenik, Anthropologie, Kriminalbiologie und Psychiatrie am Beispiel des Karriereverlaufs von Friedrich Stumpfl (1902–1997)’, Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Nervenheilkunde, 15: 239–65. Mayer, T. (2010), ‘Von der humangenetischen “Diagnose” zur eugenischen “Therapie”: Der Verein für freiwillige Erbpflege (Humangenetik) in Österreich in den 1960er Jahren’, in Böhler, I., Pfanzelter, E., Spielbüchler, T. and Steininger, R. (eds), 7. Österreichischer Zeitgeschichtetag 2008. 1968 – Vorgeschichten – Folgen. Bestandsaufnahme der Österreichischen Zeitgeschichte, Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 96–102. Mayer, T. (2013), ‘Eugenics into Science. The Nazi Period in Austria, 1938–1945’, in WeissWendt, A., and Yeomans, R. (eds), Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 1938–1945, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 150–74. Mayer. T. (2014), Das Rassenbiologische Institut der Universität Wien, 1938–1945, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Vienna. Neugebauer, W. (2008), ‘Julius Wagner-Jauregg und sein ambivalentes Verhältnis zum Antisemitismus (vor dem Hintergrund des antisemitisch orientierten akademisch-­ universitärem Milieus im Österreich der Zwischenkriegszeit)’, in Neugebauer, Scholz, and Schwarz (eds) Julius Wagner-Jauregg, 57–66. Ortner, E. (1998), Dermatologie und Venerologie an der Universität Graz, Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt. Promitzer, C. (2004), ‘Täterwissenschaft: das Südostdeutsche Institut in Graz’, in Beer, M., and Seewan, G. (eds), Südostforschung im Schatten des Dritten Reiches. Institutionen – Inhalte – Personen, Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 93–113. Ranzmaier, R. (2013), Die Anthropologische Gesellschaft in Wien und die akademische Etablierung anthropologischer Disziplinen an der Universität Wien 1870–1930, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. Sablik, K. (1983), Julius Tandler. Mediziner und Sozialreformer. Eine Biographie, Vienna: Verlag A. Schendl. Schwarz, P. (2008), ‘Die politische Sozialisation von Julius Wagner-Jauregg (seine Mitgliedschaft in einer deutschnationalen Burschenschaft und bei der Großdeutschen Volkspartei/GDVP)’, in Neugebauer, Scholz, and Schwarz (eds) Julius Wagner-Jauregg, 37–56. Spring, C. A. (2009), Zwischen Krieg und Euthanasie. Zwangssterilisationen in Wien 1940– 1945, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. Šimůnek, M. (2007), ‘Ein österreichischer Rassenhygieniker zwischen Wien, München und Prag: Karl Thums (1904–1976)’, in Baader, Hofer and Mayer (eds), Eugenik in Österreich, 393–417. Teschler-Nicola, M. (2005), ‘Aspekte der Erbbiologie und die Entwicklung des rassenkundlichen Gutachtens in Österreich bis 1938’, in Gabriel and Neugebauer (eds), Vorreiter der Vernichtung?, 99–138. 70

Austria

Volek, R. (1994), ‘Geschichte des Schülerheimes der HTL Mödling’, 75 Jahre Höhere Technische Bunds-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt Mödling, 1919–1994, 232–53. Weindling, P. (1989), Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Weindling, P. (2009), ‘A City Regenerated: Eugenics, Race and Welfare in Interwar Vienna’, in Holmes, D. and Silverman, L. (eds), Interwar Vienna: Culture between Tradition and Modernity, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 81–113. Whitrow, M. (1993), Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1940), London: Smith-Gordon.

71

2 Poland

Overview Kamila Uzarczyk

I At the end of the nineteenth century, the rising prominence of Darwinism and fears of degeneration were widely discussed by Polish intellectual elites – as elsewhere. Numerous commentaries from across the medical and scientific press as well as literature informed the general reader of the idea of social decline by providing veristic descriptions of the social misery and degenerative influence of the urban environment, seen as a breeding ground for alcoholism, prostitution and criminal inclinations, and being riddled with a vast array of diseases. Novelists too were increasingly seduced by fashionable biologism and all-­explaining theories of inheritance, and so tended to portray their dramatis personae as the tragic results of circumstances, both environmental and inherited. The fallen woman, eaten away by creeping syphilis and alcohol, became a symbolic representation of degeneration and the central figure of medical attention. Fictional and medical literature at the turn of the twentieth century debated the dysgenic effects of alcoholism, prostitution and venereal disease. In the early years of the twentieth century the term ‘eugenics’ was essentially a euphemism for sexual regulation and control of venereal diseases. In fact, the very roots of the Polish eugenic movement can be traced back to the Abolitionist Society (Towarzystwo Abolicjonistyczne) founded in 1900 in Warsaw by physician Leon Wernic (1870–1953). At the time, ‘purity’ was the key word in most campaigns to prevent social and biological degeneration. The eugenic programme echoed these campaigns, as an increasing number of social workers and physicians emphasized the dysgenic effects of uncontrolled sexuality and alcoholism. According to Wernic: The fate of humanity cannot be governed by an impulse, ephemeral feelings or sexual desire of some individual, but by the best interest of [the] human species, which must eliminate [biologically] stunted types and aim at the breeding of generations [who are] physically and mentally strong [. . .] since the ultimate goal of any relationship is to maintain and improve the quality of the species. (Wernic 1907: 85 and 89) At the beginning of the twentieth century periodicals, such as Zdrowie (Health) and Czystość (Purity), became important platforms for public debate among Polish physicians, social workers and educators concerned with various aspects of hygiene and sexuality, and therefore, became arenas for the incubation of eugenic ideas. The dysgenic effects of prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases were the primary concerns of Poland’s

Poland

eugenic movement in its early years, remaining important in the following decades when the eugenic programme broadened to include harsher negative eugenic measures. Thus Dr Tomasz Welfle argued that the ‘devastating consequences of syphilis affects not just one generation, but they are passed on to the future generations and, therefore, damage caused [by the disease] are far more grievous than the rate of its spreading’ (Welfle 1933: 240). According to his research, carried out in the early 1930s, 3 per cent of the new-­ borns in Poland, ‘that is 15,000, suffered from congenital syphilis and [a] good majority of them died prematurely, before their first year’. Moreover, Welfle claimed, ‘around 10 per cent of feeble-­minded children were infected with syphilis’ (Welfle 1933: 240). Polish physicians were continuously alarmed that the number of individuals infected with sexually transmitted diseases was increasing dangerously: ‘from 26,375 in 1925 to 41,935 in 1933’ (Wernic 1936a: 10), affecting both the quality and quantity of future generations. Gonorrhoea worried medical circles no less than syphilis, ‘since it caused infertility in 70 per cent of the infected individuals’ (Wernic 1936a: 10). The impact of sexually transmitted diseases on the health of the nation, and the process of biological selection, demanded that all possible measures be taken to prevent further deterioration. The campaign against this social problem, alongside alcoholism and prostitution, formed a bridge between the nascent eugenic and the more established social hygiene movement. In fact, the Polish eugenic programme eventually came to embrace most of the tenets of the latter, including the importance of mother and infant care, campaigns against venereal diseases, health counselling for pregnant women, the circulation of hygiene methods and technologies and so on. To some extent, this model of preventive eugenics resembled the so-­called ‘Latin eugenics’ and seems to have been particularly popular in countries with a high level of poverty, high infant mortality, increased frequency of venereal diseases and, generally, very poor health conditions. This ‘Latin’ model of eugenics reflected the dominant Catholic religion in the country. Defined in this way, eugenics encouraged the belief that the possibility of improving human nature through the betterment of living standards and efforts taken by an individual was in harmony with Catholic doctrine. Not surprisingly then, for anthropologist Karol Stojanowski (1895–1947), the Polish Eugenic Society popularized ideas of social hygiene rather than eugenics (Stojanowski 1927a: 6). Indeed, although Leon Wernic often criticized social hygiene campaigners for over-­emphasizing the role of environment, he himself did not underestimate the impact of a healthy lifestyle and hygienic living conditions for the breeding of healthy future generations. The line between eugenics and social hygiene was often blurred and in Poland, in fact, eugenics was seen by many as a sub-­discipline within the older science of social hygiene. ‘Social eugenics’, Wernic wrote in 1922, was ‘often wrongly considered as equivalent to racial hygiene, although the first derived from social hygiene. Similarly, we should not equate eugenics and genetics, since the latter is a branch of science studying inheritance in plants and animals, whereas eugenics deals with improvement of human inheritance (‘Streszczenie wykładu L. Wernica’, Zagadnienia Rasy 1922: 37). Kazimierz Karaffa-Korbut (1878–1935), Professor of Hygiene at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius similarly described eugenics ‘as a branch of social 75

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

hygiene’ – although he admitted that there existed no ‘precise, commonly accepted, definition of social hygiene and the term eugenics is even more unclear’ (KaraffaKorbut 1926: 3). The Polish eugenic programme, as it developed during the 1920s, existed in a conceptual quagmire, seen as a conglomerate of diverse tasks concerned with social hygiene, filtered through by eugenic postulates. The link between the two movements came from the importance of inheritance and concern with the biological condition of future generations. Social hygiene was clearly an outgrowth of the popular neoLamarckist theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics. Mutatis mutandis, neoLamarckism served both as a scientific explanation of degeneration and as a justification for the improvement of the living conditions of the poor members of society – a precondition for the bringing forth of healthy future generations. The concern with the health of the individual and of his/her descendants was a factor distinguishing social from public hygiene, which, as social hygienists claimed, was aimed at the general health of individuals and the collective. The neo-Lamarckian foundations of Polish eugenics on the one hand, and constant references in the eugenic literature to Nordic and Anglo-Saxon eugenics and Mendelian genetics on the other, illustrate the ambiguous character of this movement. In Polish eugenic literature, just as in Yugoslavia, Romania and other countries influenced by the ‘Latin’ model of eugenics, the two theories of inheritance were somehow intertwined. Alcohol and poisonous substances (such as mercury and lead), congenital diseases (such as syphilis), ill health and malnutrition during pregnancy, congenital injuries, malformations and different environmental influences causing hormonal imbalance and nervous diseases were all seen as potential dangers to the health of the nation (Pieńkowski 1936a: 16–20). Additionally, the concept of social inheritance remained popular among Polish eugenicists; even the prominent geneticist Stanisław Skowron (1900–76) retained this idea when he wrote: ‘Genes determine what might, not what must become of an individual’. And further, Skowron explained, ‘not only a set of hereditary features but also environmental conditions play a formative role in the development of an individual. Apart from their biological heredity, humans were also characterized by social inheritance (Skowron 1934a: 2). Certainly, Skowron maintained a clear anti-Lamarckian stance, but he did agree that certain external factors may affect embryonic development or cause damage to reproductive cells (Skowron 1935c: 241–54); therefore all preventive measures were justified. As in Romania during the early 1920s, Jewish physicians in Poland were also responsive to the spread of eugenic ideas. They too voiced concerns about the deterioration of the general health of the Jewish communities. Additionally, Jewish eugenicists warned against intermarriages and late marriages, birth control as well as alcohol abuse and venereal diseases, seen as indicators of the inevitable decline of the Jewish race. The eugenic protection of the Jewish community was fundamental to the survival of that community within the new Polish state. One such eugenicist, Zewi Parnass, made this connection clear when he declared: 76

Poland

Not before long, racial hygiene laws will be introduced to Europe, especially Eastern Europe, where the core of [European] Jewry lives, and we cannot stand to wait that long because of the worrisome phenomena threatening our racial existence. We also do not have to wait so long because it should not be so difficult to instil race hygienic ideas among Jews, for our religious commandments contain hygienic regulations, particularly racial hygienic ones. [. . .] Let us revive them and apply them in accordance with the most recent scientific achievements and we will get the weapon against all ills, a weapon that is an ideal for European eugenicists today. (Parnass 1921: 78) The notion that the Eastern European Jews had preserved their racial individuality in contrast to those in Western Europe was one of the defining elements of the Jewish eugenic subculture in Poland. Assimilation was articulated in the widespread language of biological determinism. The more they assimilated into the dominant culture the more the Jews were exposed to the perceived generalized degeneration characterizing the Western nations. Tellingly, Parnass went further and suggested that the ‘racial existence’ of the Western European Jews was under threat because they usually married late in life – and when they did they often married Gentiles – they had two or even fewer children, not to mention their ‘alcoholism, venereal diseases and a large number of mental and nervous diseases’. Parnass reversed Orientalism and used its binary categories (traditional Eastern Jews versus emancipated Western Jews) to articulate his interpretation of Jewish eugenics. According to Parnass, Jewish traditions, both religious and racial, provided the parameters within which the ethnic community had survived and will survive. For the assimilated Jews in the West, however, ‘the threat of their extinction seems to be far greater’, Parnass believed, for ‘while in the East we already have had tools to make people aware [of the importance of eugenics], and these are our religious regulations relating to racial and social life, in the West this will not be very useful, for religion has lost much of its influence’ (Parnass 1921: 79). Like many Jewish eugenicists in East-Central Europe at the time, Parnass was also a Zionist. For Parnass, the symbol of national rebirth and the rebirth of undisturbed development of national life was Palestine, the country that ‘played an important role in the development of the specific character of the Jewish race and society, and as such should become the cradle of the Renaissance of the racial and social life of the Jews’ (Parnass 1921: 65–6). Ultimately, he believed, the project of Jewish racial regeneration was international in scope. ‘Eugenic principles’, he noted, ‘must play [a] role in immigration to Palestine and in the selection of individuals who should be allowed to immigrate. The fate of the Jewish race and society depends on this very selection. Who is to be entitled to supervise this selection? The only competent institution could be a National Eugenic Office in Palestine (Urząd dla Eugeniki Narodowej w Palestine), formed by physicians familiar with race hygiene’ (Parnass 1921: 80). Eugenic ideas were thus brought under religious conceptions and made the basis for new arguments about social and biological improvement. A good example is provided 77

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

by Gerszon Gabriel Lewin (1868–1939), Chairman of the Society for the Protection of Jewish Health in Poland (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydwskiej w Polsce). In his 1934 book Ochrona zdrowia i eugenika w Biblii i Talmudzie (Health Protection and Eugenics in the Talmud and the Bible), Lewin defined the eugenic transformation of the Jewish community within the religious confines of Judaism. As he put it ‘biblical regulations regarding spiritual and moral purity served eugenic goals’. More importantly perhaps, Lewin did not simply highlight the eugenic values of the hygienic and marital teachings included in the Talmud and the Bible, but insisted on formulating a defensive strategy of ethnic survival that connected current Jewish communities in the diasporas, and those in Poland in particular, with the Jewish communities of the biblical times, through an unmitigated transmission of religious and hygienic laws. Referring to Hans von Pezold’s (1870–1935) inspiringly entitled article, ‘Moses als Eugeniker’ (‘Moses as Eugenicist’) (Pezold 1932: 1370–1), Lewin did not hesitate to proclaim Moses the ‘hero [. . .] with a great willpower [who] could, within forty years, morally elevate and militarily train the nation degenerated by hundreds of years of slavery and serfdom and instil in it hygienic laws that enabled maintenance of its characteristics and vital forces for thousands of years, despite all obstacles and catastrophes’ (Lewin 1934: 39). Lewin’s insistence on religious individuality in relation to eugenics was partly because, in one form or another, the desire to protect the health of the Jewish communities found itself struggling for recognition within the general ambition to modernize the Polish society. Therefore, whether explicitly or implicitly, in appealing to the Bible and the Talmud, Jewish eugenicists in Poland were compelled to articulate the eugenic politics that they believed should determine the racial rejuvenation of their communities. As Parnass and Lewin were troubled to recognize, there was no easy way to formulate a Jewish eugenics in Poland, or indeed elsewhere in East-Central Europe during the 1930s.

II In 1907, the Abolitionist Society of Warsaw was renamed the Society for Promoting Abolitionist Ideas and Combating Venereal Diseases (Towarzystwo Szerzenia Zasad Abolicjonizmu i Walki z Chorobami Wenerycznymi). The Russian authorities banned the Society after three years (Męczkowska et  al. 1935: 92), but soon after, in 1915, Leon Wernic founded the Association to Combat Prostitution and Venereal Diseases – a division of the Practical Hygiene Society, Bolesław Prus (Towarzystwo Higieny Praktycznej im Boleslawa Prusa) of Warsaw. In 1916 it was established as the distinct Society to Combat Venereal Diseases and Prostitution (Towarzystwo Walki z Chorobami Wenerycznymi i Nierządem). During the First National Congress on the Country’s Depopulation (I. Zjazd w Sprawie Wyludnienia Kraju), held in Warsaw in 1918, the society was transformed into the Society to Combat Race Degeneration (Towarzystwo Walki ze Zwyrodnieniem Rasy), which established its own eugenics section in 1920 (Nisot 1929: 418–20). The society was renamed again in 1921 during the Second National Congress on Depopulation, and 78

Poland

finally became the Polish Eugenic Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Eugeniczne), with Leon Wernic appointed as its president, a position that he held until 1939. The new Society was officially registered on 12 October 1923, as the Polish Eugenic Society (to Combat Race Degeneration) (Polskie Towarzystwo Eugeniczne [Walki ze Zwyrodnieniem Rasy]). Its declared aim was to ‘to enhance physical, mental and moral strength of the Polish nation, to increase its resistance and creative power’. The Society endeavoured to: a. Conduct research on theoretical and practical problems related to the issues of heredity, pregnancy, maternity, childcare, assessment of skills, job preferences, marital selection, moral conduct, criminality, and so on. b. Investigate the factors which may diminish creative power of the nation, most of all spreading of degenerative diseases and other degenerative influences (venereal diseases, tuberculosis, alcoholism, nicotine addiction, various chronic conditions) and prevent it from happening. c. Develop and popularize measures to combat prostitution and other social ills. d. Seek to raise ethical standards, especially in relation to the sexual conduct of both sexes. e. Popularize the society’s aims to its members through readings, lectures, discussions, leaflets, periodicals, exhibitions and [public] performances. Furthermore, the Society aimed to: a. Establish eugenic clinics, laboratories and institutes, shelters and work houses for women rescued from prostitution. b. Cooperate with similar societies and institutions in providing health care and establishing hospitals, ambulatories and clinics, especially for venereal patients. c. Actively participate in the activities and lend a hand to various state institutions, local and self-­governmental organizations and societal associations aiming at similar objectives, such as scouting and youth sports organizations. d. Submit relevant memoranda, petitions, proposals, drafts of the law to Polish authorities at all levels, including state, autonomous, municipal, and district authorities. e. Organize lectures, performances, evening discussions and displays to promote the Society’s goals. f. Issue calls for public competitions, and publish papers and studies on eugenics. g. Organize conferences and meetings. h. Establish local branches, sections and committees to advance works in particular fields across its activities as outlined in the second point of this Statute. (Statut. Polskiego Towarzystwa Eugenicznego 1923: 1–2) 79

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

In the 1920s, the eugenic movement in Poland embraced mostly positive and preventive measures, with the exception of anti-­immigration legislation (Nisot 1929: 422). Eugenicists like Karol Stojanowski, who in 1927 called for the prevention of an on-­going influx of immigrants regarded as inferior and also recommended measures to prevent the assimilation of Polish Jews (Stojanowski 1927b: 67), were rather on the fringes of the Polish eugenic movement. Initially, the Polish Eugenic Society was mostly concerned with the dysgenic effects of prostitution, and it was only in 1926 that the Society to Combat Trafficking in Women and Children (Towarzystwo Walki z Handlem Kobietami i Dziećmi) – an offshoot of the Eugenic Society – officially took over the campaign against venereal diseases (‘Najważniejsze daty rozwoju Polskiego Towarzystwo Eugenicznego w Polsce powstającej i niepodległejo’, Eugenika Polska 1938: 231). Popularizing eugenics campaigns were organized in Warsaw and other university centres, such as Łódź (1920), Cracow (1921), Lviv (1921), Poznań (1921) and Vilnius (1922). Moreover, local branches were opened in other important towns, such as Gdynia and Katowice. According to the 1935 annual report the Eugenic Society had twenty branches in total1; however, some of them were short-­lived (Wernic 1931: 66; ‘Sprawozdanie za rok 1935’, Zagadnienia Rasy 1936: 363). By 1939, the Eugenic Society had almost ten thousand members, making it the largest eugenic society in the world. The Eugenics Society was mainly composed of physicians, anthropologists, lawyers and teachers who often were experienced social workers; some of them, such as Odo Bujwid (1857–1942), Stefan Kramsztyk (1877–1943), Marcin Kacprzak (1888– 1968) and Tomasz Janiszewski (1867–1939), had devoted themselves previously to the social hygiene movement. Conditions were most conducive to the success of the Polish eugenics movement between 1918 and 1924, when Witold Chodźko (1875–1954), Tomasz Janiszewski and Leon Wernic (all self-­proclaimed zealous eugenicists) held important positions in governmental institutions. Thus, on 4 April 1918, Witold Chodźko was appointed as the first Chief Minister in the newly created Ministry of Public Health, Social Welfare and Protection of Labour (Ministerstwo Zdrowia Publicznego, Opieki Społecznej i Ochrony Pracy), and Tomasz Janiszewski became Minister of Health on 16 January 1919, while Leon Wernic took charge of the ministerial Department II to Combat Venereal Diseases and Prostitution (Wydział II Walki z Chorobami Wenerycznymi i Nierządem). For advocates of eugenics, those years presented an excellent opportunity to promote eugenic ideas and to campaign for the introduction of eugenic legislation, particularly legal instruments which would control the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Eugenic support at the ministerial and governmental level was not, however, duplicated within the medical profession. Tomasz Janiszewski, while hoping to introduce population policies to reflect the management of Poland’s human resources, nationalized the country’s health care system and stressed the significance of preventive medicine and the necessity of providing medical care for all citizens coupled with the monitoring of the population’s health. These ideas were widely criticized within medical circles; not only did physicians feel that their private practices would be financially 80

Poland

threatened, but also many of them opposed the interference by the state in private matters. In 1924, as a result of these internal tensions and conflicting interests within the medical profession, the Ministry of Health ceased to exist and supporters of eugenics were marginalized. Due to the scarcity of financial resources, the range of eugenic activities became quite limited. Attempts to convince the Polish government to create independent eugenic institutes within universities or research institutions based on the model provided by the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Anthropologie, Menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics) in Berlin (Wernic 1936b: 146) also proved futile. In the first decade of its existence the Polish Eugenic Society clearly focused on an agenda of social and medical prevention of diseases. However, it should not be forgotten that Polish eugenics also developed in the context of a nationalist environment, initially linked to pro-­independence aspirations and after 1918 to newly regained independence, which was mirrored in the adopted motto: ‘physical regeneration of the nation and the struggle against the degenerative remains from the period of slavery [‘niewoli’]’ (Wernic 1929: 18). In their work, eugenicists repeatedly pointed out that the devastating policies of former ‘invaders’ (Austrians, Germans and Russians) resulted in poor levels of health and education among the Polish population. The vital forces of the Polish nation were thus weakened, in turn affecting the overall position of the state on the international scene. According to Wernic: Years of servitude, martyrdom and the deaths of the most valuable individuals, those who gave their lives to defend national dignity, degraded the quality of human resources and reduced the number of individuals needed for the rebirth of a noble type of independent man. (Wernic 1929: 18) Therefore the eugenic movement’s priority was to develop a population policy that would provide ‘numerous and worthy human resources capable of governing the state [. . .], which for the young state is a conditio sine qua non’ (Wernic 1929: 17). Race regeneration was another method to be used for building a healthy nation that could successfully compete in the international struggle for existence. For this reason, concerns for the birth rate and quantitative population policies more generally were also present in the Polish eugenic discourse in the movement’s formative years. The threat of depopulation, albeit not justified, became the leitmotif of recurrent debates on the declining birth rate; female fertility, particularly the deleterious impact of higher education on reproduction; motherhood and child rearing. The position of women as mothers in a strictly physiological sense was clearly defined by their biological function. In the climate of rising nationalistic tensions, particularly during the 1930s, quantitative policies were seen as equally important as qualitative ones. As a result, by the beginning of the 1930s, advocates of eugenics began to campaign for eugenic laws that would enhance the national improvement process through the compulsory sterilization of individuals defined as undesirable elements of the society, and the provision of financial incentives for healthy couples. 81

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

III In 1938, Wernic proposed the creation of a eugenic institute (Instytut Eugeniczny) to pursue research in genetics; physical constitution and racial-­anthropological research; the inheritance of normal and pathological features; studies on twins, endocrinology and blood groups, as well as socio-­legal issues arising in the field of population policies, sexual education and the elimination of dysgenic factors, across its five departments (Wernic 1938: 253–65). The State Supreme Health Council (Państwowa Naczelna Rada Zdrowia) discussed the proposal in March 1938, but did not approve it (MOS, sygn 12, k. 10). Without an institution devoted to eugenics, the main method for the popularization of eugenics in the medical and popular press remained the journal Zagadnienia Rasy (Race Issues). The Eugenics Society also organized ‘eugenic weeks’ (‘tygodnie eugeniczne’), as well as public lectures and exhibitions. The first eugenic exhibition was organized in 1927 in Warsaw, followed by Poznań in 1930 and 1932. On 6 May 1934, a permanent exhibition was opened at the Eugenics Society’s main office in Warsaw (Wernic 1934: 202). Other activities included the eugenic training of educators2 and physicians,3 especially in matters related to ‘marital health’, as well as eugenic counselling for pregnancy and childcare, venereal disease prevention, counteracting senility and drug addiction. Above all, eugenic ideas were promoted in numerous commentaries in the popular press and professional publications, as well as through the regular publication of eugenic literature in a series titled Biblioteka Eugeniczna (Eugenic Library), which was first published in 1922. As early as 1918 the Society published its quarterly, entitled Zagadnienia Rasy z punktu widzenia Zdrowia Społecznego (Race Issues from the Point of View of Public Health), better known by its shortened title: Zagadnienia Rasy. In 1937 in response to the rise of German racism, its title was changed to Eugenika Polska (Polish Eugenics). The journal published original articles by Polish authors and translations or abstracts, in addition to reviews of influential works by well-­known foreign eugenicists. A large proportion of the articles discussed the dysgenic influence of prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases, the threat of neo-Malthusianism, and the need to counteract the influence of the birth control movement in addition to mother and child care, premarital health certificates, the study of psychological predilection towards particular professions and sexual education among the youth, etc. The journal did not publish anti-Semitic or openly racist articles. It is, however, true that during the 1930s interest in race issues increased, resulting in the publication of articles discussing race psychology, correlations between race and intelligence, racially conditioned susceptibility to certain diseases, race-­dependant criminal inclinations, and the racial structure of Poland. Also, as German racial hygiene loomed large in the vicinity, eugenic sterilization became a more frequently discussed issue. In addition, Nazi eugenic legislation, although looked upon with suspicion, was often seen as a successful example of the rational engineering of society (Lucius 1934: 215–35 and Szumski 1937: 243–69). 82

Poland

IV As eugenics grew in importance during the 1920s the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare was entrusted with the task of combating prostitution and venereal diseases, and initiating the necessary accompanying legislation. The first actions of the Ministry were as follows: 1 January 1919: Departments of Decency Police transformed into SanitaryDecency Commissions. July 1919: The systematic medical control of potential carriers of venereal infection was introduced, and free anti-VD [venereal disease] clinics for all infected individuals offered. 6 September 1922: Brothels were banned. (Woytowicz-Grabińska and Ostrowski 1938: 46) The Ministry relied on statistics provided by a ‘national census’ of infected individuals, conducted in June 1918 and June 1919 under Wernic’s leadership. Wernic was also one of the most fervent campaigners for the introduction of the Law to Combat Prostitution and Venereal Diseases (Ustawa o Zwalczaniu Nierządu i chorób Wenerycznych). During the inter-­war years several drafts of the law were submitted for further deliberation, but none of them were passed. The draft sterilization law had a similar fate. Wernic had promoted eugenic sterilization since the early years of the movement. For instance, in 1921 he called for the implementation of a law allowing for: 1. Castration or sterilization of all habitual criminals, degenerates and incurably mentally ill, who were inmates of the state and municipal correctional or medical facilities. 2. Castration or sterilization of all individuals who were hereditarily burdened and whose offspring could potentially be hereditarily burdened. 3. The prohibition of marriage between seriously ill individuals. (Zakrzewski 1921: 8–9) At the time, the proposal had no legal consequences, and the wider eugenic community did not endorse it. The necessity of negative eugenic solutions was discussed again, and with increasing momentum during the 1930s. The first draft of the eugenic law (Projekt Ustawy Eugenicznej) was presented to the Department of Health in the Supreme Council of Physicians in 1934. In 1935, an amended version of the law was submitted to the newly created Eugenic Section of the State Supreme Health Council (Sekcja Eugeniczna przy Państwowej Naczelnej Radzie Zdrowia) for further examination. The draft, prepared by Wernic, consisted of four separate acts, which were to be legalized in succession, in order to gradually convince Polish society of the eugenic 83

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

law’s importance, but also to prepare the ground for more radical measures, such as sterilization. The first was the ‘Act to Introduce Premarital Counselling’, stipulating ‘that premarital health clinics would be opened in public health dispensaries and that candidates for marriage would have to present health certificates issued at a premarital health clinic two weeks before the planned ceremony’. Should the registrar have any suspicions that infection occurred after the certificate had been produced, he was in a position to ‘forbid marriage and demand re-­examination’. According to the draft, in the first five years registrars should only encourage prospective spouses to undergo medical counselling. After this preparatory period of time they would be obliged to ‘demand a health certificate in all cases’. The second law was the ‘Act to Introduce Financial Support for Newlyweds’, according to which ‘impoverished but physically and mentally valuable individuals, persons from socially distinguished and creative families’ could apply for financial support from public funds when marrying. This group included ‘young persons in need, known to be outstanding students, distinguished employees, social workers, scientists, artists, and finally, psychologically and morally valuable individuals, those highly credited in physical education, specialists in all fields of manual and intellectual work’. Newlyweds meeting these criteria would be granted: ‘exemption from marriage fees; a five-­years tax exemption; privileges in housing policy; child insurance and child allowances; and special insurance, as a form of dowry’. Furthermore, taxes were to be levied on ‘wealthy childless couples (five years after marriage), on those limiting their family to just one child and on bachelors above 30 years of age’. However, individuals categorized as ‘unfit for marriage on eugenic grounds’ were to be exempted from paying extra taxes. The third law, entitled ‘The Health Card-File Act’, stipulated that communities and town/city offices were entitled to create health card-­files including health certificates for the potential ‘candidates for marriage’. Each health certificate should contain detailed genealogical data as well as medical history of the whole family, ‘including data on special gifts and afflictions passed on via heredity (mental illnesses and various sensory dysfunctions) or infections (venereal diseases, tuberculosis)’. Those individuals ‘whose health condition did not allow for marriage were not provided with a health certificate’. Finally, the ‘Act to Lessen the Burdens of Social Care’ proposed ‘strict isolation and segregation of male and female inmates of various penitentiary and care institutions’, alongside ‘the application of methods preventing reproduction of undesirable types and the sterilization of hereditarily burdened individuals’. The list of medical conditions included ‘mental retardation, schizophrenia, hereditary epilepsy, maniac-­depressive psychosis, hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness, severe physical deformations and severe alcoholism’. Sterilization on medical, social or eugenic grounds was to be performed exclusively in public health institutions. Individuals who voluntarily applied for sterilization and those referred to by their legal guardians or directors of medical and care institutions were ‘to undergo medical examination by special commission,

84

Poland

consisting of two physicians specialized in eugenics and psychiatry and a representative of [the] health service’. The commission was to be the only body competent to decide on voluntary sterilization. Whoever performed sterilization without permission to do so, was to be sentenced for up to five years of imprisonment. In the case of compulsory sterilization, those competent to take decisions were to be the ‘Hereditary Health Court and Higher Hereditary Health Courts in cases of appeal’. These would consist of ‘two judges, one physician familiar with the science of inheritance and eugenics, a prosecutor and barrister’. All sessions of the Hereditary Health Court would be held januis clausis,4 and all decision taken by the Higher Hereditary Health Court was ‘to be final and irrevocable, unless previously unknown circumstances required re-­opening of proceedings’. Should a person recommended for ‘sterilization oppose the procedure, the public health institution in question would be entitled to request the assistance of the security services’ (Wernic 1935: 45–52). This draft of the eugenic law was circulated to district medical chambers, directors of asylums and other care institutions, physicians and lawyers, with the aim of garnering professional support. It was, however, met with disapproval, although most of those involved, including the Catholic Church, had no strong reservations regarding the introduction of preventive measures (Podoleński 1934: 389) and financial incentives for the newlyweds. Admittedly, there were critical remarks voiced as to the understanding of ‘valuable and creative individuals and the whole concept of selectively protective pro-­natalist policies was questioned by commentators at the ministerial level as unjust and socially dangerous’ (MOS, sygn. 532, pp. 22–4), but the main focus of the debate was the proposal of negative eugenics: the introduction of prohibitive marriage legislation and sterilization. Sterilization was unacceptable to right wing political circles for two reasons: a striking similarity existed between the Polish draft and the existing German legislation, in addition to the clear opposition of the Catholic Church on this matter (Dąbrowski 1935 and Świrski 1933: 433–50). Indeed, the Polish draft seems to have been modelled on the German law, particularly its clause regarding sterilization, and it was thus criticized as a blind imitation of Nazi legislation. In a climate of rising political tensions, the German sterilization law was also seen as a potential threat to the biological existence of the Polish minority in the Eastern provinces of the Third Reich; also the Polish draft’s similarities with the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring of 14 July 1933 must have worried Polish nationalists. Even within this political setting, however, the reception of eugenic ideas was not unanimous. An opinion poll initiated in 1935 by the daily magazine ABC revealed that the majority of its readers would vote for the implementation of eugenic legislation, as they understood it as a component of a larger programme of national rejuvenation. In general, however, a majority of right wing participants in this debate were critical of negative eugenic policies because of their incompatibility with Catholicism (especially since the promulgation of Casti Connubii in December 1930), and due to the dangerous proximity of eugenics to Nazi racial hygiene.

85

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

V The Papal encyclical Casti Connubii mobilized Catholic groups in Poland to engage with eugenics. Paweł Gantkowski, Professor of Pastoral Medicine in Poznań, was one Catholic eugenicist who promoted the view that positive methods of human improvement were consistent with Christian morality. The Franciscan theologian Konstancja Kulejewska (1890–1982) equally believed that ‘the goals of eugenics should be praised not only because of social, but also religious reasons’. Kulejewska also argued that a ‘healthy, normal organism [was] better equipped to realize Christian ideals than one burdened with various diseases and moral defects. The concern with the health of future generations can certainly be applauded. Unfortunately this good idea, as so many others, could not avoid misinterpretation’ (Kulejewska 1936: 138). While rejecting negative eugenics some Catholic authors accepted positive and preventive measures as being in accordance with Catholic teaching. ‘Eugenics’, Kulejewska further wrote, ‘should be endorsed from a moral point of view as much as from a medical one, and even more, because of its preventive character’ (Kulejewska 1936: 143). An even more supportive approach was voiced by Zygmunt Kozubski (1886–1952), Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Warsaw, who argued that eugenics created a natural platform for Christian morality, because its laws could not be different from those given by God in order to preserve or regenerate nature in the case of degeneration. Therefore Catholic ethics do not condemn eugenics and accepts all regulations and methods that serve the improvement of human race as long as they are not immoral. (Quoted in Lucius 1936: 106) A similar opinion was offered by Alojzy Poszwa (1901–79), Professor at the Seminary in Płock (in central Poland), who claimed that some of the eugenic measures may be seen as legitimate, such as sex-­segregation in institutions for mentally ill, advice against marriage for less valuable individuals, and voluntary marriage counselling (Poszwa 1935: 170–88 and 1936: 138–56). Catholic writers were, however, unequivocally critical about negative eugenics. The following statement from Zygmunt Kozubski was quite exceptional: [T]he question of offspring is not personal but lies within the sphere of interest of Church and State. Individual freedom must be subordinate to collective interests; in other words an individual has [the] right to have offspring as long as it is not against vital interests of the society. If such a risk existed, both Church and State are obliged to limit or temporarily suppress individual rights referring to sexual life. (Quoted in Lucius 1936: 112) Even more surprising was the publication in 1932 of Alexander Zajdlicz’s Odkrycie doktora Ogino. Rozwiązanie zagadnienia regulacji urodzin ze stanowiska katolickiego (Dr Ogino’s Discovery: Solution to the Problem of Birth-Control from a Catholic Point of View), which stated that: 86

Poland

God’s injunction to multiply does not mean that we are supposed to multiply regardless [of] living conditions. The one who cannot support his offspring, who is hereditarily burdened and could produce physically and mentally sick offspring, he does not contribute to God’s Kingdom and the interest of his homeland when he populates the world with candidates for prisons, hospitals and mental institutions. Not the quantity but the quality of the offspring decides the future of the nation. (Quoted in Lucius 1936: 119) Alojzy Poszwa shared this view when he wrote that ‘God’s command to multiply does not mean that God separated [reproduction] from reason. Why should an individual multiply when reason suggests that his economic situation or his house is already “exhausted” ’? (Poszwa 1935: 186). Such views were, however, in the minority; the overwhelming majority of Polish Catholic writers were critical of negative eugenic measures, such as sterilization – described as being at ‘war not with the disease but with the diseased’ (Świrski 1933: 445).

VI The Catholic Church’s official position, therefore, may well explain the failure of Polish eugenicists to introduce a sterilization law during the mid-1930s. Whereas the Catholic Church in Poland had, without a doubt, a tremendous impact on the reception of negative eugenic policies, this perspective overlooks other factors, namely the rather moderate enthusiasm for eugenic sterilization within the medical profession and the lack of support given by prominent intellectuals. Many participants in the sterilization debate argued that it would less likely succeed in reducing the number of hereditarily ill individuals. It is noteworthy that Stanisław Skowron, who was actually in favour of eugenics and sterilization (Skowron 1935a: 60–70 and 1935b: 97–105), did not engage with the eugenic movement, nor did he participate in the discussions organized by the Eugenic Section of the Supreme State Health Council. Accounts of the meetings of the Council reveal the diverse positions of the participants in the debate. The most zealous campaigner for eugenic sterilization was Leon Wernic. His allies on the Council included the specialist in forensic medicine Wiktor GrzywoDąbrowski (1885–1968), the specialist in public health and social medicine Marcin Kacprzak (1888–1968) and venereologist and Secretary of the Main Council of Polish Eugenic Society, Tadeusz Welfle. In the 1930s, however, physicians, biologists and geneticists were aware that the elimination of hereditarily recessive diseases, carried by seemingly healthy heterozygote individuals, would take several generations. ‘As we know’, wrote paediatrician Hanna Hirszfeldowa (1884–1964) in 1937, ‘the lower the frequency of occurrence of a recessive disease, the higher the number of heterozygote individuals. Thus, if we sought to reduce the number of sick individuals from 0.04 per cent to 0.01 per cent, we would have to sterilize all sick persons for fifty generations; that is for 1250 years’ (Hirszfeldowa 1937: 62). 87

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

It was also argued that the science of human heredity did not justify such a drastic measure. For these reasons the immunologist Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884–1954), who was otherwise sympathetic towards sterilization on social grounds, criticized sterilization on eugenic grounds. Similar was the position of the psychiatrist Witold Łuniewski (1881– 1943), who pointed out that with few exceptions, such as Huntington’s chorea, too little was known about the mechanism of inheritance of many diseases to justify compulsory eugenic sterilization. ‘Compulsory sterilization’, he continued, ‘would only be justified if benefits for social health were immediate and certain’ (‘XVI zjazd Psychiatrów Polskich 6–8.12.1936’, Zagadnienia Rasy 1936: 387). Psychiatrists Kazimierz Dąbrowski (1902–80) and Jan Nelken (1878–1940) articulated similar criticism. This line of argumentation prevailed in the debates on medical aspects of eugenic sterilization. Also across the medical press, physicians argued for the sterilization of ‘asocial individuals’, while pointing out that the eugenicist’s hopes were based on fragile scientific grounds, and that sterilization as a eugenic method would be ineffective (Nelken 1936: 822). According to psychiatrist Stanisław Pieńkowski (1895–1940), insufficient knowledge of human inheritance and uncertainties, as to which traits were in fact hereditary and which were shaped by the environment, all pointed towards an erroneous diagnosis. Moreover, he continued, severe cases of mental dysfunction constituted only a small percentage of the mentally ill and posed no threat to the race; overall the offspring of mentally ill parents exhibited reduced cases of mental illness themselves (Pieńkowski 1936b: 98). It is important to note, however, that none of the above mentioned authors expressed moral or religious reservations against eugenics and against cataloguing individuals as more or less valuable. There seems to have been a certain consensus about the sterilization of ‘asocial individuals’, who were unable to understand their parental obligations and did not know how to raise their children. What was, in fact, questioned was the efficacy of sterilization as a method by which the betterment of the human species could in fact be achieved. As the result of the debates in March 1936 four projects of the law were submitted to the Council for further scrutiny. It is not entirely clear whether the members of the Council finally reached a compromise, but the question of sterilization was repeatedly discussed as late as 1939. The outbreak of World War II put an end to this debate and to all other activities of the Polish Eugenic Society. However, the direct experience of Nazi racial hygiene did not discredit eugenic ideas on the whole among Polish physicians. The eugenicists, who survived the war, sought to revive the idea of the eugenic improvement of society in the immediate post-­war years.

VII In 1945 Leon Wernic resumed his eugenic work and initiated steps to re-­activate the Eugenic Society. His crowning success came in 1947 when the Polish Eugenic Society met in the assembly hall of the Ministry of Health. Wernic enjoyed the support of important figures in governmental structures, including the Minister of 88

Poland

Health, Chief of the Health Division in the Ministry of National Defence and Chief of the Health Division in the Ministry of Public Security. Owing to their interest in eugenics a network of voluntary premarital counselling clinics for military men was set in motion. The archives of the Ministry of Science and Education, and the Ministry of Health, contain information on the Polish Eugenic Society’s post-­war activities: lectures, training in premarital counselling, campaigns against prostitution and alcoholism, and so on up to 1949. At the start of the new decade, Poland, similar to other countries in Eastern Europe, was forced to adopt Lysenkoism and Soviet science. What followed was a generalized criticism of biological determinism and its horrific personification in Nazi Germany and in ‘imperialist’ countries elsewhere. The new political regime gradually created an atmosphere hostile to the Polish Eugenic Society, and most likely it ceased to exist in 1952. As late as 1962, however, the Civil Status Register (Książeczka Stanu Cywilnego) contained the following instruction: Information on eugenics (Wiadomości z eugeniki) According to the marriage law, couples are ineligible for marriage when at least one of them is suffering from mental illness – even in a lucid state of mind, from mental retardation, tuberculosis or a venereal disease in its infectious phase.  It should be remembered that every human being has a right to live, but to give life only [to] those who are not burdened with physical or mental illness which could be passed on to their offspring.   Marriage, as the foundation of a family, is an institution of great social significance. Therefore it should be concluded mindfully and with due consideration. [. . .] The condition of [a] spouse’s health plays a significant role in married life; therefore the engaged couple should undergo medical examination before the wedding. The main goal of a marriage is to raise healthy offspring. There are many physical and mental illnesses, which when not cured before marriage has been concluded become the cause for unhappy life together and a burden for the children. These include three main categories. [. . .]   The first category consists of deviations or under-­development in a structure or function of the sexual organs and indispositions, such as infertility, impotence and venereal diseases. The latter may now be treated much more effectively than previously due to new curative measures.   The second category comprises of heart, lung and kidney indispositions. A woman suffering from heart disease, swellings of the legs, dyspnoea, active tuberculosis or kidney problems would be at risk of death during both pregnancy and labour. Children of tubercular parents constantly live under the threat of infection with this terrifying disease.   The third category includes feeble-­mindedness and mental illness as well as dysfunctions of the sensory organs. Hereditary deaf-­muteness and grievous eyesight indisposition of one or two parties are counter-­indicators for marriage. 89

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Epilepsy, haemophilia, mental illnesses and many others are passed on to offspring; therefore, persons suffering from these afflictions should not get married. Similarly damaging are addictions, such as alcoholism and drug addiction (use of morphine or cocaine) (Książeczka Stanu Cywilnego 1962: 31–2). The official distribution of eugenic instructions among married couples such as these clearly indicates that the ideas propagated by supporters of eugenics survived in post-­ war Poland. In this sense Polish eugenicists achieved some of their goals, even though during the inter-­war years they did not succeed in introducing eugenic legislation. The development of genetics after 1945 opened the door to a host of new diagnostic techniques. However, in the case of many genetic diseases medicine continued to remain ineffectual. The discrepancy between diagnostic possibilities and available treatment contributed to the emergence of the so-­called ‘new eugenics’ (pre-­natal and pre-­ implantation diagnostic, genetic counselling). Admittedly, the state does not control the decision, but couples facing the risk of having a child suffering from an incurable genetic disease may prefer an abortion instead. Thus eugenically informed medical decisions became private. At the moment in Poland, voluntary abortion is legally forbidden but the law nevertheless allows for abortion on eugenic grounds.

90

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Kamila Uzarczyk Translations by Kamila Uzarczyk and Tudor Georgescu

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Leon Wernic

(1870, Warsaw–1953, Warsaw)

Leon Wernic, the most important of Polish eugenicists, was born in 1870 in Warsaw, in the Kingdom of Poland (Królestwo Polskie) at the time of the Russian Empire. Wernic studied medicine in Warsaw, where he obtained his medical degree in 1895. He completed his studies in Paris, Berlin, and St Petersburg. In 1922 he obtained his PhD from the Medical Faculty of the Jagiellonian University (Wydział Lekarski Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego). In 1901 Wernic moved to Kalisch (Pol.: Kalisz), in central Poland, where he worked as the director of the prison hospital. He founded the Hygienic Society of Kalisch (Kaliskie Towarzystwo Higieniczne), and campaigned for the improvement of sanitary conditions in the city and the improvement of health services for its inhabitants. In order to popularize hygiene and public health issues he organized exhibitions and lectures for the public. In 1904 he returned to Warsaw and worked at St Lazarus Hospital, where in 1913 he became the chief physician of its Venereal Disease and Dermatology Ward. In Warsaw, Wernic also lectured in hygiene, dermatology and venereal diseases at the dentistry school; edited or co-­edited professional and popular magazines, such as Zdrowie (1906–8), Medycyna (Medicine) (1909–18) and Zagadnienia Rasy (1917–28), which after 1937 became Eugenika Polska. In his articles, devoted mainly to eugenics and venereal diseases, he often referred to the significance of early diagnosis in cases of congenital syphilis for the sake of successful treatment and the minimization of the disease’s degenerative effects (Wernic 1907: 85–9). Wernic also introduced modern diagnostic techniques to his ward, coupled with therapeutic methods for syphilis and gonorrhoea, based on a concentrated solution of neosalvarsan. In 1925 he was elected to the board of the International Anti-Venereal Disease Association and between 1929 and 1932 he served as President of the Warsaw Dermatological Society (Warszawskie Towarzystwo Dermatologiczne). In 1906 Wernic founded the Abolitionist Movement (Towarzystwo Abolicjonistyczne), a society whose aim was the propagation of social reform ideas, the promotion of healthy life styles and combating venereal disease and prostitution. This society gradually evolved into the Polish Eugenic Society in 1923. Leon Wernic was appointed as its first president, a position he would hold until 1939, and then again between 1945 and 1952. In 1925 the Polish Eugenic Society joined the International Federation of Eugenic Organisations with Wernic as representative. He was also one of the vice-­ presidents of the Third International Congress of Eugenics held in New York in 1932 and a Board Member of the International Union Against Venereal Diseases, established in 1923. For Wernic eugenics was the foundation of the modern state (Wernic 1925: 37–42). He claimed that the state had a right to intervene in the personal matters of its citizens, including procreation. According to him since the state provided the living costs for 92

Poland

children until the age of 16, every citizen was in debt to the state, and as a result, it was everyone’s duty to work and fight for the state. He viewed eugenics as a branch of science, which aimed at the ‘reduction of multiplication of this part of humanity which constitutes a burden for a society and increasing resources of people who would creatively work for the state and humanity’. Furthermore, eugenics combined the science of genetics and sociology and could be defined as the biology of social types. The goal of eugenicists was to define socially valuable constitutional types (anthropological, physiological) and create conditions for their reproduction. Thus, the scope of eugenics, Wernic explained, was broader than that of medicine, which only provided care for the sick. Eugenics’ mission was to fight various ‘social deviations’ through sterilization and prohibitive marriage legislation (negative eugenics), as well as to conduct studies in order to determine to what extent external factors may influence the revealing of certain hereditary features. The role of eugenics was to create such conditions as to ensure that future generations will inherit the highest possible number of positive traits (Wernic 1933: 199–211). Wernic was rather ambivalent about the role of the environment in human development (Wernic 1936a: 3–15). On the one hand, he described social hygiene as a movement ‘based on different assumptions’ rather than on eugenics, and one that overestimated ‘the influences of the environment, while underestimating the innate qualities of a man and his value’. Yet Wernic did not question the role of the environment, claiming that ‘eugenics as a science has to discover the developmental line of various talents in individuals and populations in various environmental conditions’ (Wernic 1933: 208). For most of his career, Wernic was a prominent campaigner in the fight against venereal diseases, prostitution and alcoholism, which he saw as the main ‘racial poisons’ at the root of decay and the deterioration of Poland’s health. As director of the Department II (to Combat Venereal Diseases) in the Ministry of Public Health, Social Welfare and Protection of Labour, he organized campaigns against these social and medical threats. He was also a zealous supporter of eugenic sterilization, and only in 1938 did he adopt a more moderate position, calling for isolation and segregation of degenerated individuals. During World War II Wernic worked in one of Warsaw’s outpatient clinics. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising and after the war lived and worked for a short time in Grójec, a small town situated south of Warsaw. He did not, however, abandon his eugenic ideas and sought to revive the Polish Eugenic Society. In 1948/49 he gave lectures on eugenics at the Medical Faculty of the University of Warsaw. He died in Warsaw in 1953.

93

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Eugenics: Its Social Goals in Poland and Relationship to Medicine and Other Sciences5 The intention of annihilating the Polish nation, to turn it into some kind of sub-­soil for occupying nations, found its expression in anti-­eugenic dysgenic policies. It was all about the elimination of gifted and outstanding individuals who could not live in the cage, so they sought a way out by trying to shake off the yoke lest they have to live in a country where their souls and minds could not thrive. This is why invaders cultivated the art of tendentious provocation – intended to entrap patriotic elements of society [and undertook] mass deportation or execution of thousands of people after numerous uprisings. Obviously, the most preferred victims of our oppressors were individuals with independent spirit, the best citizens of an independent nation. Recruitment of those individuals, their forced emigration to Russia and Germany triggered by limited opportunities to work, explains why German and Russian art and science flourish thanks to hundreds of genius minds born of Polish blood and bone. Increasing [political] pressure created conditions to which only a special breed of individuals, [those] deprived of any desire for independence and in the name of ‘common sense’, resigning even the possibility of autonomy and renouncing all issues of national existence, could adapt. For these individuals the only remaining goal was [to maintain] their own survival and their most egotistic indulgence in the joys of life. Servitude and cowardice were valued and the wish of independence came to be seen by many as a criterion which would qualify one for the asylum. Common were prevarication, double-­ dealing and a lack of courage to express one’s own beliefs, all so typical of the enslaved. Such a wretched picture of the Polish citizen has survived; but not before long we shall see a renaissance. This thoroughly eugenic goal should primarily concern biologists, physicians, lawyers and pedagogues. To be sure, each nation has its own eugenicists. But we can assume that there are some common goals for eugenics all over the world, and mutatis mutandis we can accept the statement of the president of the Belgian Eugenic Society, Dr Boulanger, who said that eugenics aims at the realization of two fundamental tasks: 1: To create as far as possible the most normal and gifted type of man, and 2: To oppose the proliferation of anomalous and diseased types. Having replaced the term ‘anomalous’ with ‘degenerate’, we can agree with this formulation. It goes without saying that a eugenicist must be familiar with biology and medicine. He should certainly know the laws of heredity, the physiology of secretive glands, the physiology and pathology of reproductive organs, embryology, anatomy, anthropology and pathology. [. . .] Eugenics is a social science both in its goals – the improvement of the human race, and in the measures leading to this goal – the exertion of influence on society. The eugenicist must know social phenomena, which may have negative or positive influence on hereditary traits. Therefore nowadays, in this post-­war period, he is engaged strongly in the fight against sexual and venereal diseases, and various poisons influencing the quantitative and qualitative development of humankind. Eugenics refers to and discusses the impact of customary, moral and economic factors, and similarly, as in the case of 94

Poland

marriage and legislation for the care of the mother and her child, demands the cooperation of lawyers, economists and sociologists. Environmental conditions have a formative influence on the growing human being and this is where eugenics meets pedagogy and attracts more dedicated teachers. Therefore Polish eugenicists are also concerned with issues, such as job selection and testing of specific skills and talents. Do we have to mention that issues, such as rejuvenation, ageing, death (euthanasia/ capital punishment), prohibitive marriage legislation, sterilization of criminals and the eugenic control of procreation, are also subjects of eugenics? The latter two subjects, promoted strongly by North Americans, did not gain popularity among Polish eugenicists who argued that both the quantity of the Polish population and the knowledge of mechanisms of hereditary transmission were too limited to form the basis of a sterilization law. These are many tasks, but we must decide which ones should be of primary concern in Poland. If we aim at the renaissance of the Polish nation, and its elevation to the status of a Golden Age, we must know which path to follow. First of all we have to study the eugenic value of the country’s population and compare it with the conditions of the most advanced nations, namely the French and the English. Blessed in memory is Jan Boguszewski, who suggested a collaboration between priests and registrars, and rightly pointed out (Zagadnienia Rasy, July 1920) that the issues not too difficult to study are: 1. Life expectancy and mortality rate; 2. The fertility factor of various districts of the country; 3. The nation’s predilection for certain jobs in various parts of the country; 4. With direct connection to the latter, eugenic genealogy (physiological and mental) of the especially gifted individuals in various towns and villages and of essential importance; 5. Frequency of occurrence of degenerative diseases, such as sexual and venereal diseases, idiocy, consumption, fevers [and] poisoning with alcohol, morphine or cocaine. Let us repeat: Polish eugenicists must aim at the physical, moral and mental rebirth of the nation. For a eugenicist (convinced that 1. A human being is born with complete genetic endowment and 2. Environment may enhance or accelerate formation of positive traits) physical regeneration will rely first of all on a desirable marriage selection. Undesirable selection is not to be tolerated. Eugenicists should pay special attention to the pregnant mother and her foetus, if necessary by introducing treatment at the earliest stage of foetal development (mainly in cases of syphilis). Physical regeneration requires possibly long periods of sexual abstinence; physical exercises and sports should be zealously propagated by eugenicists, for they attract attention and turn it away from sexuality thus somehow balancing sexual activities. A completely new eugenic discipline, dealing with the moral rebirth of the nation, must combat [mental traits] from our period of slavery,6 such as cowardice, double-­dealing, lying. The USA and England should provide a pattern for eugenicists, and eugenic associations should be founded in youth organizations, such as the scouts or the YMCA and so on, to develop courage and honesty – characteristics fitting of a free citizen. This is the goal for a good eugenicist and pedagogue. Unfortunately, as long as the generation of pedagogues imbued with the vices of slavery is still active, this goal will be very difficult to achieve. Translation by Kamila Uzarczyk 95

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Role of Venereal Diseases in Biological Selection7 Already the renowned founder of scientific eugenics, Francis Galton, both a biologist and a sociologist, was a living testament that eugenics would combine two fields: a. social sciences and b. biological sciences. Eugenics connects these two fields and comprises of socio-­economic, medico-­biological and genetic issues in the discussion of heredity. Obviously we talk here about the main eugenic goal, which is the enhancement of Homo sapiens. [. . .] After this long introduction let us discuss the impact of venereal diseases on biological selection. Without doubt, in the field of pathology, wild selection resulting from fleeting emotions, especially in the youthful years, often takes place; thus, due to infection those of high eugenic quality are being excluded from reproduction. On the other hand, the venereal plague contributes to discriminating selection, which works to exclude prostitutes and pimps from reproduction. [. . .] What is the impact of venereal diseases on biological selection? Obviously, in a great majority of cases, they attack physically fit individuals, ranging from pre-­pubescent to pubescent years. Most of the victims of the venereal plague are under 20, and this is due to the fact that in these years genital skin sheathing remains vulnerable to injury. This reduces reproductive potential since both syphilis, with its damaging effect on both embryo and foetus, and gonorrhoea attack the reproductive tracts, trigger miscarriages and lead to infertility. For individuals characterized by strong sexual drive it is not an easy task to refrain from sexual activities. On the other hand, those with a low sexual drive, the asthenic and anchoritic individuals, usually abstain from sexual activities without difficulty. Secretive glands (sex glands, thyroid gland, pituitary gland, adrenal glands and pineal gland) play an important role in sexual life and also affect the functioning of the central and autonomic nervous systems, which are of primary importance in human life. Exclusion from reproduction due to infection of otherwise healthy and valuable types aggravate the prognosis regarding the endowment of future generations, because less worthy individuals remain mainly responsible for human reproduction. Among the negative consequences of the venereal epidemic one should count an increased fear syndrome, even in healthy or completely cured individuals of more sensitive nature. In general, more often pyknic than leptosomic types,8 who are according to Kretschmer’s typology prone to schizophrenia, fall victim to venereal diseases. The latter, as has been indicated by Popenoe’s study, [which compared them] to sociable and active pyknics who [are] known to be predisposed to cyclothymia, exhibit low level of sexual drive and low reproductive potential. Nevertheless, if we try hard, we may find some indirectly positive effects [of the venereal plague]. The most important in this category is that psychologically the least valuable female type, prostitutes, for example, becomes quickly sterile since they usually fall victims to venereal diseases within the first three years. Prostitutes usually succumb to all three types of venereal diseases. Pimps face a similar fate. 96

Poland

Fear of infection with venereal disease, which increases together with increased awareness [of health problems] triggers sexual abstinence among young people. More and more frequently young people come to the premarital counselling office requesting advice on hygiene and the technique for the first sexual intercourse, still embarrassed as to whether they will be able to have sexual lives. [. . .] Thus, fear of infection, triggering sexual abstinence, indirectly supports monogamy, the most reliable but not ideal preventive measure against venereal diseases. [. . .] Individuals characterized by low sexual drive, ascetic by nature, most frequently schizophrenics, will abstain not only from adulterous acts with a woman, but also from a marriage all the more. [. . .] The exclusion from reproduction of those individuals who exhibit low sexual drive actually brings positive effects, because it gives preference to sexually strong types, usually endowed with properly functioning secretive glands (if they previously had not become infected). Translation by Kamila Uzarcyzk

97

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Karol Stojanowski

(1895, Kobyłowłoki–1947, Wrocław)

Stojanowski was born into a peasant family in the West Ukrainian county of Trembowla (Ukr.: Теребовᴫя) in 1895. He was a gifted student. In 1907, with the village teacher’s help, Stojanowski was admitted to the State Middle School in Trembowla, and later to the gymnasium in Lviv (Pol.: Lwów; Ger.: Lemberg). After finishing school, he made a living by giving private lessons. Early in his career he was an active member of the scouting movement and in 1914 he signed up with the Polish Legions. After World War I he studied anthropology in Lviv, under the guidance of the renowned Polish anthropologist Jan Czekanowski (1882–1965) and archaeology with Leon Kozłowski (1892–1944). In May 1922 he was appointed assistant to the Chair of Prehistory at Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. His research focused on the anthropological form of skulls and he distinguished various craniological types that corresponded to anthropological types of humans, as described by Czekanowski. He published the results of this studies in 1924 (Stojanowski 1924); in the same year he obtained his PhD in anthropology under Jan Czekanowski’s supervision. Stojanowski’s other field of interest was the differentiation between levels of physical fitness and its correspondence to various constitutional types of Polish youth. These studies were then collected in a book entitled Przyczynki do zróżnicowania rasowego młodzieży polskiej (Contribution to the Racial Differentiation of Polish Youth), published in 1925. In 1926 he moved to Poznań, where, until 1928, he held a position as a senior research fellow in the Anatomical Institute (Zakład Anatomii). Until 1939 he was also Director of the Laboratory of Applied Anthropometrics (Laboratorium Antropometrii Stosowanej) at the Physical Education Institute of the Medical Faculty (Studium Wychowania Fizycznego przy Wydziale Lekarskim) in Poznań. There, he continued his studies on racial differentiation and physical strength and fitness, which resulted in his Habilitation dissertation entitled Szkice do prehistorycznej antropologii Europy Północnej (Outlines of Prehistoric Anthropology of Northern Europe), which he defended in 1927 at the Faculty of Humanities of Poznań University (Wydział Humanistyczny Uniwersytetu Poznańskiego). From 1934 he directed the Anthropological Division (Oddział Antropologiczny) of the Chair of Prehistory and continued his craniological studies and anthropological studies of various social and occupational groups in Poland’s different regions (Stojanowski 1937). Also in 1937 he gave lectures on anatomopathology at the Medical Faculty and criminal anthropology at the Faculty of Law and Economy. Stojanowski actively participated in the Polish scouting movement. He published leaflets and instructions and edited the movement’s quarterly publication, Strażnica Harcerska (Scouts’ Bastion). In 1931 he left the movement, protesting against the political domination of the so-­called ‘sanacja camp’ (‘sanitation camp’; namely 98

Poland

supporters of Józef Piłsudski) within the Association of Polish Scouts (Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego). After the 1926 coup, Stojanowski became politically connected to the radically nationalistic movement, Great Poland’s Camp (Obóz Wielkiej Polski), and after it had been dissolved in 1933, he gravitated towards the National Party (Stronnictwo Narodowe). While in Poznań, Stojanowski widely promoted eugenic ideas, urging scientific research in this field and the familiarization with eugenic programmes from other countries. He was also critical of the Polish eugenic movement, which he deemed as insufficiently based on the science of heredity and heading towards social hygiene in its campaigns against prostitution and alcoholism. While being quite radical in his views, he supported mainly positive eugenics and the concept of the breeding of a new man through health-­based matching of prospective spouses and the appropriate education for women. Negative measures, such as elimination by enforced emigration or limitation of birth rate, he only applied to the Polish Jews. He believed that the implementation of eugenic ideas was to improve the vitality of the Polish nation and strengthen Poland’s position as a powerful state, unified by an even distribution of Polish racial elements. In his view, racial anthropology contributed significantly to eugenics, as it helped to establish specific racial features and psychological predispositions and their value for the society. In order to achieve eugenic goals Stojanowski proposed to launch a eugenic study of the whole population and, based on the criterion of work achievement, to select around ten thousand citizens, eminent representatives of science, art and military officers, who would thus become the elite of the nation. The members of this elite were to be distinguished by a title analogous to nobility, which they would lose in the case of committing an offence against morality. These individuals were to be provided with financial aid enabling them to raise numerous offspring – a precondition to build a powerful nation. Like many other eugenicists at the time, Stojanowski was worried that the system of education for women and the widely practised birth control by the higher strata of society posed serious threats for the further biological existence of the nation. He warned, moreover, that by diminishing their number the Polish intelligentsia would gradually be replaced by the Jews who, in effect, would take over Polish national life. According to Stojanowski Jews were either physically unfit for, or simulated various indispositions to avoid, military service and thus took advantage of the fact that the Polish youth were killed in the war (Stojanowski 1927b: 29). Furthermore, he portrayed the Jews as dysgenic elements of society wanting to take over Polish scientific, cultural and political institutions, and ultimately destroy Polish national life (Stojanowski 1927b: 69). Stojanowski’s anti-Semitic views were rather at odds with the view of other Polish eugenicists and his involvement with the Polish Eugenic Society was very limited. After the outbreak of World War II Stojanowski left Poznań as the Gestapo had issued a warrant for his arrest, and moved to Warsaw where he continued his political activities, such as editing the periodical Państwo Narodowe (National State), in which he published under the pseudonym L. Podolski vel J. Kaliski. He envisioned the 99

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

post-­war political constellation in Central Europe based on the hegemony of a strong Polish nation-­state, able to face both Germany and the USSR. Stojanowski argued for the incorporation of the Eastern German territories into Poland. After the war, he carried out an anthropological study of the settlers in Lower Silesia, which he published in 1946 as O reslawizację wschodnich Niemiec (Re-Slavisation of Eastern Germany) (Stojanowski 1946). Eventually, he settled in Wrocław, where he was nominated extraordinary Professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Wrocław, and where he held the chair in Anthropology (Katedra Antropologii). He died in Wrocław in 1947.

100

Poland

Racial Foundations of Eugenics9 Eugenics is a science and a movement concerned exclusively with the interest of the nation as a whole. It pursues its goals through the thorough examination of the nation’s eugenic values, aiming for the best possible formula. Generally speaking, eugenics seeks to work out the theory and practical solutions which enable the nation’s further growth, expansion and happiness. For only a nation that achieved desirable conditions for development can provide an individual with the optimal conditions for improvement and advancement. From this assumption there follow certain practical consequences, for example that eugenic policies must be oriented to support racially valuable Polish elements. Eugenics must not become just one more variation of international propaganda. Most important here is the question of our population policy. [. . .] At any cost we have to maintain a high birth rate, for in the current political climate it defines our political and even national existence. We are too few in number to count as a great nation and too many to be considered insignificant. In effect we enjoy neither the profits of the former nor advantages of the latter, for instance a lesser number of enemies. In present times, probably as never before, Poland has to face a decision as to whether we are to become a great or a small nation. And there is only one answer: Poland must join the family of the great nations. Without a doubt, one of the means leading to greatness lies in the increase of the number of Poles, and we can easily afford it, since we can still use resources both in the country and abroad. After all, in Polish cities, three million of our people could replace Jews, whose emigration to Palestine, and other countries with lesser Jewish population, should be facilitated. [. . .] Writing about substitution processes, which transform the quality of the nation, we cannot ignore the assimilation processes. [. . .] Is assimilation, from the eugenic point of view, advantageous for the nation? Generally speaking, if positive elements are concerned, [then] yes – otherwise it has to be considered disadvantageous. Hence it would be highly desirable to Polonize the German element in Poland for it is a mostly valuable type. The possible assimilation of the Russian type, unless it comes about by the re-Polonization of previously Russianized Poles, should be thoroughly discussed. In Russians, the [anthropological] type ∂ is dominant, [but is] known as the physically weakest one. For instance, it has been frequently repeated that the Russian peasant is lazy and does not want to work. In anthropological terms it should rather be regarded as a constitutional incapability for exhausting and long work. It goes without saying that an increase in the influx of that element by no means elevates the quality of the nation. Insofar as Russian assimilation is concerned, I have only expressed some doubts; however, I strongly oppose any attempts at Jewish assimilation. First of all, it would be detrimental because it would introduce into the Polish population two completely alien racial elements. This is pernicious for the consolidation and efficient organization of the nation as a whole. With Jewish fertility and their inclination to dominate the centres of cultural life, converted Jews may thoroughly transform the physiognomy of the Polish nation, most notably its higher strata. With a great number of converted [Jews], they would have increasing influence on public life and through close spiritual relationship 101

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

with the Jewry it would completely paralyze Polish national life. Besides, we should keep in mind that Jews are not as important an asset as generally assumed. There is no doubt that in all countries Jewish military recruits are the worst ones. [. . .] The study conducted on the soldiers of the Polish army provides very interesting data. Jewish soldiers were the shortest ones in the army (162.8 cm) [. . .] The same results were obtained for body weight, which for Jews amounted to 57.93 kg whereas for Polish soldiers between 62–64 kg. Identical bodily disadvantages were indicated in all other measurements, such as those of the chest, waist, abdomen, limbs, etc. A military anthropological survey published by Mydlarski constitutes firm evidence of the physical degeneration of the Jewish population.10 Without doubt the conditions of urban life are to be blamed. The second cause of [the] situation is Jewish mastery of advanced medical care, which enables not only survival for even the weakest children but also their mass breeding. Let us [also] mention a great number of nervous diseases of all kinds among Jews and we will have a clear picture of the physical value of Jewish assimilation. Moreover, it should be noted that their intellectual superiority is, to a great extent, a myth built on self-­ promotion of this, a more cunning than skilled, nation. The large number of Jewish scientists, journalists and writers, who by the way lack creativity and are typical plagiarists in these disciplines, is only a result of their economically privileged situation and their rarely observed national-­racial solidarity. This particular solidarity explains why every Jewish professor is surrounded by Jewish disciples, no matter whether they are gifted or not. One Jewish teacher in a middle school immediately increases the number of Jewish students. To sum up: the assimilation of Jews is undesirable from the eugenic point of view. They must either emigrate or limit their birth rate and simply die out. Translation by Kamila Uzarczyk

102

Poland

Tomasz W. Janiszewski

(1867, Warsaw–1939, Brok, Ostrów Mazowiecki)

Tomasz Janiszewski was born in 1867 in Warsaw. In 1886 he enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine of the Warsaw University (Uniwersytet Warszawski). After three years he moved and continued his studies at the University of Moscow, where in 1889 he was arrested and imprisoned for illegal political activities. Following his release a few weeks later, he was forbidden to study at any Russian university. In 1890 he left the country and continued his studies of medicine at various European universities, specializing in physiological chemistry in Bern, followed by bacteriology in Fribourg, internal medicine and chemistry in Zurich and, finally, anatomy and embryology in Vienna. In 1894 Janiszewski moved to Cracow, where he was appointed Assistant Researcher in the Anatomopathological Institute (Zakład Anatomii Patologicznej), and in 1896 obtained his title of ‘doctor of all medical sciences’ (‘doktor wszechnauk lekarskich’). Also in 1896, due to his deteriorating health, he moved to the mountain resort of Zakopane, in the south of Poland, where he was appointed community physician, and soon earned a reputation as a specialist in pulmonary diseases. He was highly engaged in sanitation projects in the city, initiated and partially financed works on the sewage system in Zakopane, organized disinfection services and systematized and unified regulations regarding the treatment of tuberculosis in Polish sanatoria. In 1908 Janiszewski moved to Lviv, where he organized the first anti-­tuberculosis dispensary. In 1909 he moved back to Cracow, where he was appointed the city’s chief physician and held this position for seventeen years. During his stay in Cracow he reorganized the local public health office, striving to increase the number of physicians. He organized a municipal bacteriological laboratory (Miejska Pracownia Bakteriologiczna) in Cracow; improved medical statistics; organized disinfection and disinfestation services, thus providing new unified rules regulating control of infectious diseases. He also initiated the establishment of a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in Cracow. Finally, he supported initiatives, such as the creation of city gardens for the workers and the introduction of dental inspections for school children. In January 1919 he was appointed Minister of Public Health (Minister Zdrowia Publicznego) in the newly established Ministry of Public Health, Social Welfare and Protection of Labour (Ministerstwo Zdrowia Publicznego, Opieki Społecznej i Ochrony Pracy). On his initiative several research institutes were founded in Warsaw (epidemiological, pharmaceutical, water inspection, production of serum and vaccines, and control of food products), all of which in 1923 were incorporated into the State Hygiene Institute (Państwowy Instytut Higieny). Janiszewski took charge of the programme of mass feeding of children in Poland (1,300,000 children benefited from this). Janiszewski returned to Cracow in the late 1920s, and resumed his responsibilities as a city chief physician and lecturer in hygiene at several schools of higher education. In 1930 he was 103

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

nominated ordinary Professor and Director of the Chair of Hygiene at the Warsaw University. He was also appointed as a delegate of the Faculty to the State Supreme Health Council. Janiszewski published over one hundred scientific works in the field of bacteriology, hygiene, social disease and public health. His first scientific paper, entitled ‘Übergang der Typhusbacillen von der Mutter auf den Fötus’ (‘Transmission of Typhus Bacilli from Mother to Foetus’) was published in 1893 in the prestigious Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift. His other works in these fields include Zwalczanie tyfusu plamistego i masowe oczyszczanie ludności (Fighting Typhus and Mass Cleaning of the People, 1919) and Do czego dażyć powinien ruch ludowy (What People’s Movement Should Strive For, 1923). He also contributed to various magazines and professional journals, such as Medycyna, Nowiny Lekarskie (Medical News), Przegląd Polityczny (Political Overview), and Zagadnienia Rasy. Janiszewski was one of the early members of the Polish Eugenic Society and his views on eugenics exemplify the pre-­eminence afforded to social hygiene by Polish eugenicists. While involved in campaigns to improve communal hygiene, and the general living and the health condition of the population, he also demanded state intervention in the construction of a modern healthcare system and the introduction of preventive measures, arguing that the aim of modern health policies should not be the protection of those weak and sick, but of those healthy and fit. In order to achieve this goal the state should implement a population policy that would encourage intelligent and outstanding individuals to have numerous offspring and protect the society against degenerative factors (Janiszewski 1933: 117–65). Janiszewski also greatly admired the Nazi selective pro-­natalist policies and sterilization laws. In his view the health and life of an individual could not be left unsupervised because, in order to maintain its newly regained independence, Poland required healthy and productive citizens. The nation’s biological life needed to be controlled by the state in order to reclaim costs incurred for education, health services, and so on. In his Wojnna obronna z punktu widzenia eugeniki (Defensive War from the Eugenic Point of View), Janiszewski criticized the war as a dysgenic factor, arguing that it costs the lives of the most valuable individuals of the society, who fight in the first line on the front. He proposed reform of the military recruitment system in a way that all men, regardless of their health condition and age, would be drafted and replace the healthy and fit ones whenever possible. Only the mentally ill were to be exempted from military duties. Eugenic war would thus protect healthy individuals and help to eliminate unhealthy ones in a much more efficient way than sterilization (Janiszewski 1932: 204). Janiszewski died in the resort town of Brok, in the district of Ostrów Mazowiecki, in 1939.

104

Poland

Polish State Interest and Population Policy11 As I have already mentioned, the most important element of Polish state interest from the social hygienic perspective is that attention and care be given about this most valuable organic resource; that is the people, both in their quantity and quality. Therefore the state must implement a rational population policy. It is clear to everyone that, as far as it is about quality, the concern with health issues plays a primary role because it has an impact on people’s valour and vigour, their diligence, efficacy, energy, creativity and strength of will. For the state and society it is not unimportant whether, say, per thousand citizens there will be six or twenty who, due to their illnesses or weakness, cannot work for a certain period of time within a year. A hundred physically and morally healthy people, educated and tough, vigorous and modest is of higher value than a hundred sick, morally inferior, lazy, dull, improvident, immoderate and disturbed. The question remains if and how we could, through rational population policy, influence the quantity and quality of the population. First of all, with regard to quantity, the state health service system plays a primary role. Besides this we may exert influence indirectly by annulling laws and circulars which could have dysgenic effects, that is which could create conditions which discourage the bearing of offspring. [. . .] Parents fit for reproduction, endowed with numerous positive physical and mental hereditary traits, whose social responsibility and patriotism go beyond empty platitudes and who, somehow against their own economic interests, give the state and society a higher number of healthy and tough citizens should have, in my opinion, the right to demand allowances and abatements to ease their efforts to support and raise their children. This should be financed by those who do not contribute to the development of the state. Economic hardships experienced by large families cause a psychological climate unfavourable to the desire to raise numerous offspring and help to promote contraceptive measures among our intelligentsia. As long as contraceptive measures are being used almost exclusively by the intelligentsia, it does not have any significant impact on our birth rate; once the masses, who in all matters try to imitate higher strata of the society, will start using them without rational indications, then it will have a tremendous influence on our birth rate, leading to a swift and significant decline, as was the case in Germany, France and other Western European countries alike. [. . .] As for the second part of the question, namely whether it is possible to influence the quality of the population, we can respond to that indirectly; indeed it is. Admittedly, according to the science of genetics the traits acquired within an individual’s lifetime under the influence of training, physical or mental education and, in general, any characteristics acquired under environmental influence as a result of adaptation, unless they relate to some alterations in the reproductive cells, cannot be inherited. At least we do not possess any firm evidence from our studies and observations to date. Thus we cannot create positive or negative hereditary traits that would be passed to the next generation. We could, however, reduce the number of negative and increase the number of positive characteristics by preventing the reproduction of individuals burdened with 105

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

manifest disabilities, which in all likelihood, are inherited as dominant traits, and by encouraging early marriage and multiple offspring among fit individuals endowed with positive traits. We can also influence the quality of our offspring via considerate marriage selection and by taking into consideration eugenic indicators. Translation by Kamila Uzarczyk

106

Poland

Hanna Hirszfeldowa

(1884, Wilczkowice–1964, Wrocław)

Hanna Hirszfeldowa (neé Kassmann) was born in Wilczkowice, a village near Warsaw, in 1884. She studied medicine in Montpellier, Paris and Berlin where, in 1908, she obtained her medical degree. After completing her studies she gained experience in paediatrics in children’s clinics in Heidelberg (1908–11) and Zurich (1911–15). Between 1915 and 1919, together with her husband, prominent microbiologist and immunologist Ludwik Hirszfeld (1884–1954), she worked in a POW camp in Serbia where she fought typhus and cholera epidemics and also conducted research in the newly emerging field of sero-­anthropology. By examining the blood groups of soldiers of various ethnic groups, the Hirszfelds concluded that the geographical distribution of blood groups differed in various populations and, they assumed, corresponded to the migration tracks of humans over the centuries (Hirszfeld and Hirszfeldowa 1919: 675–9). After World War I the Hirszfelds settled in Warsaw, where Hanna worked as a paediatrician in Warsaw Health Insurance Funds (Warszawska Kasa Chorych) and in the Children’s Clinic of the Warsaw Medical University (Klinika Chorób Dzieci Uniwersytetu Medycznego). In 1932 she was appointed chief physician of this clinic. Between 1935 and 1939 she was also the president of the Warsaw Branch of the Polish Paediatric Society (Warszawski Odział Polskiego Towarzystwa Pediatrycznego). After the outbreak of World War II for nearly two years the Hirszfeld family lived on the so-­called ‘Aryan side’ of the city. In 1941 they were forced into the ghetto, where Hanna Hirszfeldowa managed an infant’s ward at Berson and Bauman’s Hospital. During her days in the ghetto she conducted scientific observations on hunger-­related diseases. In the summer of 1942 the Hirszfelds managed to escape from the ghetto, and until the end of the war lived in hiding, first with Maria Wierzbowska, a friend of Hanna, then with the Aldona Lipszycowa and Popowski families. Due to the intolerable living conditions and general exhaustion, in February 1943 the Hirszfelds’ only daughter Maria died of pneumonia. In October 1944 they moved to Lublin, where Hanna Hirszfeldowa was appointed as Chief Physician in the Children’s Hospital and director of the first Paediatric Clinic (I Klinika Pediatryczna). Hanna Hirszfeldowa was also a member of scientific societies abroad, including the International Paediatric Society, the Paris Paediatric Society and the International Haematological Society. She wrote over a hundred scientific publications, including Stany głodowe u dzieci i młodzieży podczas okupacji niemieckiej (Hunger Disease in Children and Youth During the German Occupation) in 1946 and Grupy krwi (Blood Groups) in 1958. Among her numerous publications, less known is her 1937 book on eugenics entitled Z zagadnień dziedziczności i eugeniki (Issues of Heredity and Eugenics), published in 1937. 107

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

In her view the main goal of eugenic policies was the prevention of prostitution and venereal diseases as well as the fight against alcoholism, both seen as the most important dysgenic factors. Therefore she endorsed the introduction of premarital certificates and the compulsory treatment of patients infected with venereal diseases, arguing that societies should be aware of their responsibility for the health of future generations. However, she was quite critical of positive eugenics, in particular of selective breeding. Artificial selection, she argued, was long practised by upper classes but did not play an important role in more general human development. The biological and social improvement of society, she continued, demanded a variety of human types, and it was erroneous to assume that only healthy and strong individuals were socially valuable. Thus, positive eugenics could only be applied to society if the laws of inheritance in the case of ‘outstanding types’ were fully known. For the same reason she criticized eugenic sterilization in general, while accepting sterilization on social grounds, particularly for those ‘not so valuable individuals [who] produced children who [would then] become a burden for the community, populate prisons and hospitals and [would] be unhappy themselves’ (Hirszfeldowa 1937: 58). After the war ended the Hirszfelds moved to Wrocław, where in October 1945 Hanna organized and directed a Paediatric Clinic. From 1954 she headed the Diagnostic Chair of Paediatric Ward and continued her research in paediatrics, haematology, immunology, serological conflict and the causes of miscarriage, for which she was awarded the state prize in 1955, and congenital defects. She died in Wrocław in 1964.

108

Poland

Issues of Heredity and Eugenics12 Thus, we realize that the questions of eugenics: free love, trial marriage, venereal diseases, and so on, cannot be solved if the society will be concerned only with immediate needs and the fate of just one generation. In order to understand eugenic questions, the questions [which discuss] the type of [man we will have in the] future, society must [benefit from] a certain power, [and] experience a certain comfort in dealing with the problems of present times. Therefore economic-­social issues and overcoming economic crises are linked to eugenics in practical and psychological terms. It is not a subject of this paper to discuss the ways of dealing with crises, increasing production and just division of goods, but let me express my hope that, in the future, these discrepancies between biological and economic maturity, will cease to exist together with palliative measures, such as young childless marriage. [. . .] In a society that will manage to solve problems of poverty and eradicate feebleness caused by hunger, positive genotype traits will be more efficiently exposed. But what can we do now in order to improve the race if we do not want to wait for the days of common happiness? First of all, we need to stay away from any harmful factors, most of all venereal diseases. There are two ways of achieving this: [First], anti-VD [venereal disease] legislation which would introduce compulsory treatment of the infected individual and also make them just as responsible for spreading infection as for causing any other bodily injury; second, premarital counselling. In Poland, on the initiative of the Polish Eugenic Society, eugenic legislation including premarital counselling is being discussed. It is not easy to convince people to forswear marriage for the sake of future generations. [. . .] It is all about making each and every member of the society aware of their responsibility for the health of future generations. [. . .] Is it possible to eradicate hereditary diseases by sterilizing individuals afflicted by them? [. . .] Without doubt society might have an interest in stopping the reproduction of sick individuals. How often do unworthy creatures, the feeble-­minded and morally insane, breed children who fall as a burden on community budgets or [cause] overflows [in] hospitals and prisons? How miserable is the fate of the mentally retarded, the blind, epileptics, etc.? It therefore seems logical to demand sterilization for these individuals in order to prevent their reproduction. Unfortunately, such a solution is only superficially easy and not in all cases justified. To answer whether sterilization could lead to eradication of hereditary diseases it is necessary to distinguish dominant and recessive diseases. Dominant traits cannot be hidden in the genotype, thus healthy parents cannot have children burdened with the dominant disease, except for rare occasions when mutations occur. If we were able to prevent the reproduction of all individuals endowed with dominant genetic diseases, we could indeed free humanity from hereditary disease. Nature does this all the time via [natural] selection processes, for sick individuals die prematurely. Therefore severe dominant diseases are generally met only infrequently. Quite a different process takes place in the case of recessive traits. Heterozygous parents may remain apparently healthy, however, their genetic endowment contains genes of disease, and therefore if 109

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

they breed they will produce sick offspring. Thus, the efficacy of a sterilization programme depends on the frequency of occurrence of seemingly healthy heterozygous individuals endowed with gene-­coding for certain diseases. [. . .] It is possible to calculate how long it would take to eradicate recessive hereditary diseases if we prevented the reproduction of all burdened individuals. [. . .] To reduce the frequency of occurrence of the particular disease from 25 per cent to 1 per cent it would take nine generations – some 225 years. After sterilization of the first generation the frequency of occurrence diminishes almost by half – from 25 per cent to 11 per cent. However, this does not mean that a sterilization law will reduce the number of sick individuals by half in the first generation. As we know, the less frequent a disease, the higher the number of heterozygotes. Thus, if we wished to diminish the number of patients fourfold, from 0.04 per cent to 0.01 per cent, we would have to sterilize all the sick in fifty generations, for some 1,250 years! Therefore, even some supporters of the sterilization law are well aware of its actual inefficacy in the eradication of hereditary diseases. In Poland, medical circles did not support the draft of the radical sterilization law as it was introduced in Germany, where as many as 80,000 people have been sterilized by now. On the other hand, it is not without consequence when sick, degenerate, miserable individuals, who become a burden for the society, are born. An excellent solution seems to be the draft of our sterilization law that comprises eugenic and social indicators. If a degenerated or diseased individual breeds degenerate and diseased children, as he is himself, society will have the right to demand his sterilization for the sake of current, as well as future, generations. There is no reason, however, to sterilize a person confined to a hospital or those who, for different reasons, do not want or cannot have children. Translation by Kamila Uzarczyk

110

Poland

Paweł Gantkowski

(1869, Gniezno–1938, Poznań) Paweł Gantkowski was born in 1869 in Gniezno (Ger.: Gnessen), a city in centralwestern Poland. He studied medicine in Breslau, Munich and Würzburg, where by his fourth year, he was an assistant in the Physiology Institute (Physiologischen Institut), directed by Adolf Fick (1829–1901). Fick was also the supervisor of his doctoral dissertation on Beiträge zur Lehre vom Tetanus (Contribution to the Science of Tetanus) submitted in 1895. Having graduated in 1896 Gantkowski moved to the provincial town of Witków, near Poznań, where he began his career as a popularizer of hygiene – a cause that he devoted his entire life to. In 1901 Gantkowski was appointed Reader of Pastoral Medicine at the Seminary (Seminarium Duchowne) in Poznań (Ger.: Posen), the city where he spent the rest of his life. The same year he took a lead in the newly established Care Station for Alcoholics (Stacja Opiekuńcza dla Alkoholików) in Poznań, a position that he held until World War I. In 1907 he also became the president of the Polish Abstinence Associations in Germany (Związek Polskich Stowarzyszeń Abstynenckich w Niemczech). He was an active member of the Poznań Social Hygiene Society (Poznańskie Towarzystwo Higieniczno-Społeczne) and the Poznań Branch of the Polish Eugenic Society, organizing training and lectures for nurses and publishing numerous articles on hygiene in the local press. He also worked as a physician in the municipal administration, providing free health care for the poor, and as a director of a local smallpox vaccine station. In 1918 Gantkowski was entrusted with organizing local sanitary services as Director of the Health Department (Dyrektor Departamentu Zdrowia) in the Ministry of the Former Prussian District (Ministerstwo Byłej Dzielnicy Pruskiej). In 1921 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Social Hygiene, and in 1922 extraordinary Professor of Public Hygiene at Poznań University. He was a co-­founder of the Association of Physicians of the Polish State (Związku Lekarzy Państwa Polskiego), a member of the Supreme Health Council, Dean of the Medical Faculty of Poznań University, President of the Greater Poland Division of the Red Cross, president of a number of abstinence societies, president of the Catholic League (Liga Katolicka) and the editor of Nowiny Lekarskie (Physician’s News). Gantkowski earned his reputation principally as a gifted popularizer of hygiene and campaigner against alcoholism and tuberculosis (Gantkowski 1927a). Like his Austrian counterpart, Albert Niedermeyer, he also combined his interest in eugenics with pastoral medicine and hygiene (Gantkowski 1927b). Gantkowski was also one of the Catholic physicians who attended their Second International Congress in Vienna in 1936. In his contribution he promoted positive eugenics within the confines of Catholic morality and condemned sterilization (Gantkowski 1936: 154–9). For his multiple services to public health and medicine Gantkowski was awarded the Polonia Restituta (Cross of Merit) and honorary membership of numerous scientific societies in inter-­war Poland. He died in Poznań in 1938. 111

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Views of Polish Doctors on Catholic Ideas in Contemporary Eugenics and Social Hygiene and the Appropriate Catholic Countermeasures13 Both the scientific, theoretical, as well as the every-­day practical medicine endorse the guiding principle: No social hygiene without eugenics, no eugenics without education and enlightenment. There are four groups of factors used when describing modern eugenics, namely: negative, positive, preventative and instinctive factors. While the relevant pieces of legislation in individual countries regarding the first group of factors have until now, generally contravened Catholic principles, and cannot be adhered to by Catholics, all the other groups of eugenic factors, albeit in a somewhat re-­worded form, can be integrated into the Catholic worldview. The latter anyway freely admits that the social milieu, the environment and inheritance, ‘in their intimate interaction determine the development of man and the destiny of human groups’ (O. von Verschuer);14 furthermore, the very same Catholic worldview, despite the rejection of such procedures that can never be admissible from its standpoint, still provides many expedient measures that can ‘influence the biological events in the lives of people and nations’. It follows that we must, as the most important of these our Catholic measures, found and develop advice centres that, in time, will be led by Catholic doctors, and that are of an entirely eugenic character, in that they introduce advisory programmes for engaged and married couples, for mothers, and by working directly with all other medical welfare offices and charitable organizations. Given that, from a Catholic perspective, voluntary abstinence in married life is the only permissible way to, under [usual] circumstances, regulate birth rates, these advisory offices must not only frown upon all neo-Malthusian procedures, but categorically prohibit them. This voluntary abstinence in marriage relations encompasses the Schmulders’ contraceptive method – a practical reformation of the suggestions made by Ogino and Knaus),15 which I, following a theoretical exposition of the nature of ‘progenies’, would like to explain. New life can only be created out of existing life which is, after all, the basic principle of biology; and this is also the reason why until now it has been impossible to give a unified, clear definition of the nature of life, because the first life-­form could only be created by the Creator and this secret of nature will always be a riddle to man, even as biological research may shed light on many natural wonders, within limits, through useful experimentation. The Creator has, first of all, also given man the means of reproduction, so that he may pass on the germ of life (‘Lebenskeim’) handed across previous generations on to the future ones, to the coming generations. It should therefore not be surprising that Christ made marriage sacred. Hence nothing may happen in a Catholic marriage (including the natural sexual drive) that would contravene Catholic rules and principles directly or indirectly. Our ancestors, which lived under entirely different economic conditions, could take upon themselves the consequences of marriage regardless of the large number 112

Poland

of children, but for us contemporary people the difficult economic situation has made the assiduously contemplated and thereby determined reduction in family size almost a necessity for the majority. It is clear, and needs no further explanation, that the Catholic religion could under no circumstances permit – nor in cases with so-­called medical indicators (Ärztlichen Indikation) – an abortion of life or its prevention through neo-Malthusian decrees. However, from a Catholic perspective, a periodic, arbitrary abstinence in marital relations is certainly permitted, and which is anyway often kept instinctively by many married people (for example, during pregnancy, during the wife’s monthly cleansing, or during illnesses of any kind). As the physiological discoveries of recent years have now clarified many things that offer positive applications in married life, some good eugenic guidelines from these research areas, which are acceptable from a Catholic point of view, can be recommended for married life. [. . .] Finally every Catholic advice centre can and must simultaneously also become a eugenic one, as it directly influences both the qualitative as well as the quantitative characteristics of a married couple’s offspring. If we Catholic doctors follow the principles of the Casti Connubii, then we will certainly have to advise against marriage in selected cases, of course when there are scientific positive (not almost positive or presumptive) reasons that could force the advising Catholic priest to do so. Regarding the methods of controlling birth rates that do not violate Catholic principles, I have already mentioned above that which is necessary and important about it in my discussion of the Schmulders’ method. The Catholic advice centres should also reflect eugenic interests (eugenischen Interesse) and direct the mother’s attention towards the children’s sexual education. It is beyond doubt that the nature of a person’s first contact with their erotic instinct shapes the trajectory of their life’s path, having a good or bad influence on their character; Catholic morality, after all, postulates the ideal as striving towards maintaining mutual premarital abstinence as it offers both genders the best foundation for a eugenically and morally healthy marriage. The logical conclusion derived from these considerations is that Catholic advice centres should also create special departments for mothers in which they are taught to see how their children’s sexual awareness and sexual drives develop, as well as how to educate them on the nature of their sexual desires and their consequences in daily life. In this way, much could be done for the eugenics of future generations. Furthermore, one must, when referral of the interested to an alcohol advisory centre is impossible, integrate the question of alcohol in the lives of engaged and married spouses into the programme of Catholic advice centres, as well as the guidance on the eugenic importance of abstinence for their children (since alcoholism is most effectively combated through prevention). Based on the above discussions, I derive the following resolutions: Catholic Action (Katholische Aktion) cannot just watch the, at times often, antiCatholic eugenic ambitions passively, but must actively and energetically intervene in these matters, namely: 113

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

1. Through initiative and support in establishing numerous Catholic medical advice centres for engaged couples, marital spouses and mothers. These advisory centres should seek contact with other, existing government or communal charitable and welfare organizations. 2. Through supporting the organization of medical-Catholic supplementary studies in the areas of social hygiene and eugenics. 3. Through the general introduction of teaching pastoral medicine to theology students. 4. Through supporting the state and community ambitions relating to the practical application of selection (Auslese), isolation, social organizations and combating of social ills (addiction, alcoholism, venereal diseases and others). Translation by Tudor Georgescu

114

Poland

Gerszon Gabriel Lewin (1868, Lublin–1939, Warsaw)

Gerszon Gabriel Lewin was born in Lublin (Ukr.: Люблін; Yiddish: ‫ )ןילבול‬in 1895, into the family of the local synagogue cantor. He graduated with a degree in medicine from the Medical Faculty of the Imperial University of Warsaw (Uniwersytet Warszawski). Between 1896 and 1900 he engaged in general practice and from 1901 he was employed as an assistant physician in the Old Order (Jewish) Hospital (Szpitala Żydowskiego) in Warsaw, where he specialized in internal medicine. In 1918 he became Head Physician at the Department of Medicine at the same hospital. He was a prominent and popular physician, a specialist in lung diseases, especially tuberculosis, and transformed his ward into a centre for diagnosis and pulmonary tuberculosis therapy. He published numerous articles in medical journals in Warsaw; his major works included Jak uchronić się od powtórnego zapadnięcia na gruźlicę płuc? (How to Protect Yourself from the Relapse of Tuberculosis, 1911), Hygiena u Żydów w przeszłości i obecnie (Hygiene among Jews in the Past and Present, 1924) and Gruźlica jest uleczalna (Tuberculosis is Curable, 1925). In his own field, phthisiology, Lewin paid great attention to the fight against tuberculosis and for this purpose in 1915 he organized the anti-TB Society ‘Brijus’ (‘Health’). In the same year he was appointed Chairman of the Warsaw Branch of the Society for the Protection of Jewish Health (Obshchestvo Zdravookhraneniia Evreev), whose main office was in St Petersburg. Lewin was also one of the founders of the Society for the Protection of Jewish Health in Poland (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydwskiej w Polsce), established in 1918. A Section for Social Hygiene and Eugenics (Sekcja Higieny Spolecznej i Eugeniki) was also established within this Society. Its goal was ‘the transformation of the physical fitness and the biological value of Jewish masses in Poland’, through health campaigns against sexually transmitted diseases and social diseases, such as tuberculosis (Księga Pamiątkowa I Krajowego Zjazdu Lekarskiego ‘TOZ-U’ 1929: 42). Preventive medical measures were given priority, which is indicative of the direct relationship between eugenics and social hygiene in the Jewish interpretation of eugenics in Poland. The Section for Social Hygiene and Eugenics also endeavoured to implement a programme of genetic research, which aimed to identify and establish the rules of inheritance regarding positive and negative characteristics, the impact of environmental factors on the biological and psychological constitution of Jews, and varied fertility rates in social classes. An anthropological study of the racial characteristics of a ‘healthy Jew’ in Poland was also envisioned (Księga Pamiątkowa I Krajowego Zjazdu Lekarskiego ‘TOZ-U’ 1929: 335–6). Although established in 1918 it was only in 1923 that the Polish Ministry of the Interior recognized its statute, and the Society for the Protection of Jewish Health was officially registered. The Polish authorities were keen to support the Society’s campaign 115

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

against tuberculosis and Jewish welfare initiatives promoting maternal and child care only (Ministerstwo Opieki Społecznej, sig. 15 I/665, 2–5). While the founders of the Society for the Protection of Jewish Health such as Lewin, admitted that the enforcement of public health was the task of the Polish state, they also stressed that in order to improve the condition of the Jews in Poland, it was necessary to raise awareness of the dangers to health and persuade them of the necessity to follow eugenic guidelines in private life. As a chairman of both these societies Lewin campaigned for the creation of public institutions to deal practically with problems of public health and for the implementation of preventive and prophylactic measures. Being a zealous advocate of preventive medicine, he campaigned for the public dissemination of medical knowledge, hygiene and public health among the Jewish population through propaganda. As a gifted writer and publicist he wrote a weekly column in the Jewish newspaper Haint (Today), which discussed problems of public health and the fight against ignorance. A number of social initiatives regarding Jewish life in Poland originated from his practice at Miodowa 1 in Warsaw, where he organized popular evening meetings devoted to problems of health and hygiene. His other works included In Velt Krieg (In The World War, 1923), In di Alte Gute Tsaytn (In Old Good Times, 1925) and Das Bukh fun Mayn Lebn (The Book of My Life, 1937). In 1934 Lewin published Ochrona zdrowia i eugenika w Biblii i Talmudzie (Health Protection and Eugenics in the Talmud and the Bible), a thematically organized collection of regulations regarding health and hygiene, infectious and social diseases, diet, and so on, based on eugenic recommendations taken from the Bible and the Talmud. Until his last days Lewin remained devoted to his faith and culture, being active in Jewish cultural organizations such as the Cultural Society ‘Hasomir’ in Warsaw. He also collaborated with the Zionist movement, publishing and financially supporting the Zionist press. He died in 1939 in Warsaw in unknown circumstances.

116

Poland

Health Protection and Eugenics in the Bible and Talmud16 As we’ve already pointed out, biblical regulations regarding spiritual and moral purity were to serve eugenic goals. Among the most important ones there should be mentioned the prohibition of any kind of unnatural sexual intercourse, in those days commonly practised by other nations. In the chapter setting rules on sexual life Moses says explicitly: ‘Do neither as in Abel-­mizraim,17 where you lived, nor as in Canaan,18 where I lead you to, but according to the laws that I teach you, for one only lives when he/she fulfils them and [gives] thanks to them’. Sexual offences were severely punished, sometimes by capital punishment. Adultery and prostitution were also prohibited: ‘Neither daughters nor sons of Israel will be or will give birth to harlots.’ ‘Do not disgrace your daughter by harlotry so that the soil will turn neither lewd nor overwhelmed by harlotry’. Since adultery was punished by execution, the above mentioned regulation certainly refers to spinsters, even though there is no direct indication of this. Besides, it becomes clear in the following biblical injunction: ‘If, however, it would turn out, that that girl would not be a virgin, then she will be taken out in front of her father’s house and stoned to death for she committed a disgraceful act of harlotry in Israel, in her father’s home’. The Talmud recommended early marriages as preventive measure against debauchery: ‘If your daughter has reached the age of puberty, (and you do not find an appropriate husband for her), free one of your slaves and marry her off to him’. According to Rabbi Akiva,19 he who would not marry off a pubescent daughter commits the offence of breaking the biblical command: ‘do not disgrace your daughter by harlotry’; according to Rabbi Eliezer,20 it is he who marries her off to an old man that commits the offence. In order to avoid laziness and luxury, which both lead to debauchery, the Talmud recommended farm work. Rabbi Yochanan21 asked the following: ‘If someone has a son and has him bathed and oiled, provides for him good food and beverages, gives him a pouch full of money and leaves him in front of a prostitute’s door – how would this young man not commit a sin?’ The eugenic character of all these regulations seems to be unquestioned. [. . .] The above quoted material convinces us that to the ancient Jews health protection and eugenics were at a relatively high level and it is simply admirable that a few thousand years ago there were regulations regarding isolation of the sick or even those suspected to be afflicted with communicable diseases, disinfection procedures, diet, sexual hygiene, prostitution, etc., regulations which today are being postulated by modern social hygiene. Let me finish this work with a quote from the article by Dr Pezold: ‘Moses als Eugeniker’ (Moses as Eugenicist)’,22 written before Hitlerism: ‘This wandering of Jewish people (after they had left from Egypt) is a phenomenon peculiar in human history – a eugenic experience on a large scale. Only a hero bestowed with great willpower could, within forty years, morally elevate and militarily train a nation 117

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

degenerated by hundreds of years of slavery and serfdom and instil in it hygienic laws that enabled the maintenance of its characteristics and vitality for thousands of years, despite obstacles and catastrophes. Thus, Moses seems to have been not only a man of great willpower, a leader and administrator, but also deserving of a laurel as a physician, hygienist and eugenicist’. Translation by Kamila Uzarczyk

118

Glossary Badania przedślubne: premarital counselling Degeneracja rasy: race degeneration Dziedziczność socjalna: social inheritance Eugenika: eugenics Choroby zwyradniające: degenerative diseases Choroby weneryczne: venereal diseases Higiena społeczna: social hygiene Książeczka Stanu Cywilnego: Civil Status Register Ilościowa polityka ludnościowa: quantitative population policy Jakościowa polityka ludnościowa: qualitative population policy Opieka społeczna: social welfare Polityka ludnościowa: population policy Prostytucja/nierząd: prostitution Sterylizacja/wyjałowienie/obezpłodnienie: sterilization Syfilis wrodzony: congenital syphilis Teoria dziedziczenia cech nabytych: theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics Trucizna rasowa: racial poison Typ aspołeczy: asocial type Zwyrodnieniem Rasy: race degeneration

Notes 1 In the following cities: Białystok (1919), Częstochowa (1919), Kielce (1919), Włocławek (1919), Radom (1920), Piotrków (1920), Płock (1920), Łomża (1920), Grudziądz (1922), Katowice, Sosnowiec, Pabianice (1933), Łuck (1934), Gdynia (1936), Brześć on Bug. 2 According to the annual report of 1936 the first training for educators was organized between 24 January and 26 February 1934 (37 participants); the second beween 17 November and 16 December 1934 (76 participants); the third from 16 November 1935 to 15 December 1935 (33 participants); and the fourth from 18 November 1936 to 16 December 1936 (82 participants). See ‘Sprawozdanie za rok 1935’, Zagadnienia Rasy 1936: 363. 3 According to annual report of 1936 the first training for physicians took place between 2 and 4 February 1934; the second between 1 and 3 Feburary 1935; the third in November 1935; and the fourth training was organized between 6 and 9 January 1938. Lecturers included prominent scientists, such as Ludwik Hirszfeld, Maria Skalińska and Władysław Melanowski. See ‘Sprawozdanie za rok 1935’, Zagadnienia Rasy 1936: 363. 4 ‘Behind closed doors’ (Latin) [note KU]. 5 Wernic, L. (1925), ‘Eugenika: jej zadania społęczne w Polsce i stosunek do medycyny i innych nauk’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 7: 37–42 [Excerpts translated from pp. 38–41]. 6 The period before 1918 [note KU]. 7 Wernic, L. (1936), ‘Rola chorób wenerycznych w selekcji biologicznej’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 18: 3–15 [Excerpts translated from pp. 7 and 11–12]. 8 According to the German psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer there are three main constitutional groups: 1. the tall, thin asthenic type; 2. the more muscular athletic type; and, finally, 3. the rotund pyknic type [note KU]. 9 Stojanowski, K. (1927), Rasowe podstawy eugeniki, Poznań: M. Arcta, 1927 [Excerpts translated from pp. 50–2 and 67–9]. 10 Polish anthropologist Jan Mydlarski, under whose supervision the first major anthropological survey of the Polish population was conducted (1921–3) on over 80,000 soldiers [note KU]. 11 Janiszewski, T. (1933), ‘Polska idea państwowa a polityka populacyjna’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 15: 117–65 [Excerpts translated from pp. 143–6 and 149]. 12 Hirszfeldowa, H. (1937), Z zagadnień dziedziczności i eugeniki, Warsaw: Nasza Księgarni [Excerpts translated from pp. 56–9 and 61–3]. 13 Gantkowski, P. (1936), ‘Die Meinungen der polnischen Ärzte über die katholischen Gedankengänge in der neuzeitlichen Eugenik und Sozialhygiene und die zu treffenden katholischen Gegenmaßregeln’, St Lukas, 4: 154–9 [Excerpts translated from pp. 154–9]. 14 Otmar von Verschuer (1896–1969): German racial biologist and geneticist [note KU]. 15 In the 1920s, Kyusaku Ogino, a Japanese gynaecologist, and Hermann Knaus, from Austria, working independently, each made the discovery that ovulation occurs about fourteen days before the next menstrual period. Ogino used his discovery to develop a formula for use in aiding infertile women to time intercourse to achieve pregnancy. In 1930, Johannes Schmulders, a Dutch Catholic physician used Knaus and Ogino’s discoveries to create a method for avoiding pregnancy. Schmulders published his work with the Dutch Roman Catholic Medical Association, and this was the official ‘rhythm method’ promoted by Catholic physicians over the next several decades [note KU]. 16 Lewin, G. (1934), Ochrona zdrowia i eugenika w Biblii i Talmudzie, Warsaw: Drukarnia Braci Wojcikiewicz [Excerpts translated from pp. 35–6 and 38–9].

Poland

17 Abel-­mizraim (the ‘meadow of Egypt’, or ‘mourning of Egypt’) is a place west of the Jordan River, at the ‘threshing-­floor of Atad’, where the Egyptians mourned seven days for Jacob (Genesis 50: 4–11) [note KU]. 18 A region in the Ancient Near East (modern-­day Lebanon, Israel, Palestinian Territories, the western part of Jordan and southwestern Syria). In the Bible it is described as the Promised Land of the Israelites [note KU]. 19 Akiva ben Joseph (c. 40–c. 137 CE), widely known as Rabbi Akiva, is referred to in the Talmud as ‘Rosh la-Chachamim’ (Head of all the Sages) [note KU]. 20 Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (c.40–120 CE) was one of the five most distinguished disciples of Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, later to become one of the leading rabbinic figures of his day and teacher of Rabbi Akiva [note KU]. 21 Rabbi Yochanan bar Nappacha (c. 200–c. 279 CE) [note KU]. 22 Pezold, H. (1932), ‘Moses als Eugeniker’, Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift, 58: 1370–1 [note KU].

121

Bibliography Archives Archiwum Akt Nowych (The Central Archives of Modern Records), Warsaw Ministerstwo Opieki Społecznej (MOS) Sprawozdanie z lustracji TOZ-u w dniu 20. 04. 1934 Sig. 12, k. 10 Sig. 15 I/665, 2–5. Sig. 532: 22–24 Archiwum Uniwersyteckie we Wrocławiu (Wroclaw University Archive) Akta Osobowe, Karol Stojanowski, RK-120 Główna Biblioteka Lekarska (The Main Medical Library), Warsaw

Primary Sources (1922), ‘Streszczenie wykładu L.Wernica’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 3: 37–8. (1923), Statut. Polskiego Towarzystwa Eugenicznego (Walki ze zwyrodnieniem Rasy), Warsaw: Druk Instytutu Gluchoniem. (1929), Księga Pamiątkowa I Krajowego Zjazdu Lekarskiego ‘TOZ-U’, Warsaw: Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydwskiej w Polsce. (1936), ‘XVI Zjazd Psychiatrów Polskich 6–8.12.1936’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 18: 387–8. (1936), ‘Sprawozdanie za rok 1935’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 18: 363. (1938), ‘Najważniejsze daty rozwoju Polskiego Towarzystwa Eugenicznego w Polsce powstającej i niepodległej’, Eugenika Polska, 20: 231–4. (1962), Książeczka Stanu Cywilnego, issued by Registry Office in Wołów, 1962 [duplicate dated 5 May 1962] (Author’s personal collection) Bielawski. O. (1935), ‘O zadaniach instruktorów i instruktorek eugenicznych’, Higiena Psychiczna, 6–7: 226–8. Dąbrowski, S. (1935), Eugenika ze stanowiska katolickiego, Poznań: Naczelny Instytut Akcji Katolickiej. Gantkowski, P. (1927a), Ogólna higiena chorych na gruźlicę i stosunek ich do otoczenia, Warsaw: n. p. Gantkowski, P. (1927b), Medycyna pastoralna oraz podstawy higieny codziennego Życia w stosunku do duszpasterstwa parafii, Poznań: Księgarnia Św. Wojciecha. Gantkowski, P. (1936), ‘Die Meinungen der polnischen Ärzte Über die katholischen Gedankengänge in der neuzeitlichen Eugenik und Sozialhygiene und die zu treffenden katholischen Gegenmaßregeln’, St Lukas, 4: 154–9. Hirszfeld, L. and Hirszfeldowa, H. (1919), ‘Serological Differences between the Blood of Different Races. The Results of Researches on the Macedonian Front’, The Lancet, 197: 675–9. Hirszfeldowa, H. (1937), Z zagadnieή dziedziczności i eugeniki, Warsaw: Nasza Księgarnia. Hirszfeldowa, H. (1946), Stany głodowe u dzieci i młodzieży podczas okupacji niemieckiej, Warsaw: Lekarski Instytut Naukowo-Wydawniczy.

Poland

Janiszewski, T. (1919), Zwalczanie tyfusu plamistego i masowe oczyszczanie ludności, Warsaw: Ministerstwo Zdrowia Publicznego i Opieki Społecznej. Janiszewski, T. (1923), Do czego dażyć powinien ruch ludowy, Krakow: ‘Prawda’. Janiszewski, T. (1932), ‘Wojnna obronna z punktu widzenia eugeniki’, Lekarz Wojskowy, 4: 204. Janiszewski, T. (1933), ‘Polska idea państwowa a polityka populacyjna’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 15: 117–65. Karaffa-Korbut, K. (1926), Eugenika a służba wojskowa i wojna, Warsaw: n.p. Kulejewska, K. (1936), ‘Stanowisko kościoła katolickiego wobec eugeniki’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 18: 138–44. Lewin, G. (1911), Jak uchronić się od powtórnego zapadnięcia na gruźlicę płuc? Warsaw, n. p. Lewin, G. (1934), Ochrona zdrowia i eugenika w Biblji i Talmudzie, Warsaw: Drukarnia Bracia Wójcikiewicz. Lucius, M. (1934), ‘Zagadnienia rasy a hitleryzm’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 16: 215–35. Lucius, M. (1936), ‘Eugenika i katolicyzm’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 18: 103–37. Męczkowska, T., Simon, G., Welfle, T., Zalewski, J. (1935), ‘Przemówienie z okazji jubileuszu dr Wernica’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 17: 92–101 Nelken, J. (1936), ‘Głosy krytyczne z dziedziny zagadnień eugeniki współczesnej’, Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie, 47: 820–2. Nisot, M.-T. (1929), La Question Eugénique dans les divers pays, vol. 2, Bruxelles: Librairie Falk Fils, 418–31. Parnass, Z. (1921), Kwestia żydowska w świetle nauki, Lwów: Beth-Israel. Pezold, H. (1932), ‘Moses als Eugeniker’, Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift 58: 1370–1. Pieńkowski, St K. (1936a), Dziedziczność i środowiska ze stanowiska lekarskiego, Cracow: n. p. Pieńkowski, St K. (1936b), ‘Uwagi ogólne biologiczno-­lekarskie w sprawie nowego projektu ustawy eugenicznej’, Polska Gazeta Lekarska, 6: 98–107. Podoleński, S. (1934), ‘Projekt polskiej Ustawy Eugenicznej’, Przegląd Powszechny, 201: 387–93. Poszwa, A. (1935), ‘Regulacja urodzeń a moralność katolicka’, Ateneum Kapłańskie, 36: 170–88. Poszwa, A. (1936), ‘Polski projekt ustawy o poradnictwie przedślubnym’, Ateneum Kapłańskie, 38: 138–56. Skowron, S. (1934a), Dziedziczność i wychowanie, Warsaw: n.p. Skowron, S. (1934b), ‘Czy cechy nabyte są dziedziczne?’, Chowanna, 5: 253–64. Skowron, S. (1935a), ‘Dziedziczność u człowieka a eugenika’, Chowanna, 6: 60–70. Skowron, S. (1935b), ‘Dziedziczność u człowieka a eugenika’, Chowanna, 6: 97–105. Skowron, S. (1935c), ‘Wpływ dziedziczności i środowiska na rozwój zarodkowy człowieka’, Chowanna, 6: 241–54. Stojanowski, K. (1924), ‘Typy kraniologiczne Polski’, Kosmos, 49: 660–766. Stojanowski, K. (1927a), ‘Eugenika’, Wychowanie Fizyczne, 1: 3–6. Stojanowski, K. (1927b), Rasowe podstawy eugeniki, Poznań: M. Arcta. Stojanowski, K. (1937), Z badań nad antropologią Śląska. Skład rasowy katowickiej młodzieży poborowej, Opole: Wydawn. Inst. Śląskiego. Stojanowski, K. (1946), O reslawizację wschodnich Niemiec, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Komitetu Słowiańskiego. Szumski, J. (1937), ‘Polityka zdrowotna i populacyjna oraz organizacja słuzby zdrowia w Trzeciej Rzeszy’, Eugenika Polska, 11: 243–69. Świrski, I. (1933), ‘Eugenika a moralność’, Ateneum Kapłańskie, 32: 433–50. Welfle, T. (1933), ‘Przymiot jako czynnik dysgeniczny w społeczeństwie’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 15: 235–43.

123

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Welfle, T. (1935), ‘Przemówienie z okazji jubileuszu dr Wernica’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 17: 92–101. Wernic, L. (1907), ‘Małżeństwo z punktu widzenia higieny społecznej i seksualnej’, Czystość, 6: 85–9. Wernic, L. (1925), ‘Eugenika – jej zadania społeczne w Polsce i stosunek do medycyny i innych nauk’ Zagadnienia Rasy, 7: 37–42. Wernic, L. (1929), ‘Aktualne zagadnienia ruchu eugenicznego w ogóle, a w Polsce w szczególności’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 11: 18–24. Wernic, L. (1931), ‘Najnowsze wiadomości o ruchu eugenicznym za granicą i w Polsce’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 13: 55–68 Wernic, L. (1933), ‘Eugenika jako nauka i jej granice, Zagadnienia Rasy, 15: 199–211. Wernic, L. (1934), ‘O zadaniach instruktorów i instruktorek eugenicznych’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 16: 199–216. Wernic, L. (1935), ‘O ustawach eugenicznych w Polsce’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 17: 45–52. Wernic, L. (1936a), ‘Rola chorób wenerycznych w selekcji biologicznej’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 18: 3–15. Wernic, L. (1936b), ‘Rola eugeniki w wychowaniu’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 18: 146–9. Wernic, L. (1938), ‘Instytut eugeniczny i program jego działalności’, Eugenika Polska, 20: 253–65. Woytowicz-Grabińska W. and Ostrowski S. (1938), Walka z nierządem i chorobami wenerycznymi, Warsaw: MOS. Zakrzewski, Z. (1921), ‘Walka ze zwyrodnieniem’, Zagadnienia Rasy, 3: 8–9.

Secondary Sources Polski Słownik Biograficzny, Warsaw-Cracow: PAN&PAU. ‘P. Gantkowski’, vol. VII (1948–58), 267–9. ‘T. Janiszewski’, vol. X (1962–64), 526–7. ‘K. Stojanowski’, vol. XLIV (2006–7), 19–21. Blach, O. (2010), ‘Eugenics – A Side Effect of Progressivism? Analysis of the Rise and Fall of Eugenics in Pre-War Poland’, Vesalius, 16: 10–5. DeJong-Lambert, W. (2010), ‘Przyczynek do myśli eugenicznej i łysenkizmu w polskiej biologii okresu międzywojennego i w latach powojennych’, in Gawin, M. and Uzarczyk, K. (eds), Eugenika–Biopolityka–Państwo. Z historii europejskich ruchów eugenicznych w pierwszej połowie XX w. Warsaw: Neriton, 187–204. DeJong-Lambert, W. (2012), ‘Lysenkoism in Poland’, Journal of the History of Biology, 45: 499–524. Gawin, M. (2003), Rasa i nowoczesność. Historia polskiego ruchu eugenicznego 1880–1952, Warsaw: Neriton. Gawin, M. (2004), ‘Seksualności prokreacja w polskiej publicystyce eugenicznej 1905–1939’, in Żarnowska, A. and Szwarc, A. (eds), Kobieta i małżeństwo. Społeczno-­kulturowe aspekty seksualności 19–20 wiek, vol. 8, Warsaw: DIG, 73–89 Gawin, M. (2007a), ‘Progressivism and Eugenic Thinking in Poland, 1905–1939’, in Turda, M. and Weindling, P. J. (eds), Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940, Budapest: CEU Press, 167–83. Gawin, M. (2007b), ‘Polish Psychiatrists and Eugenic Sterilization during the Interwar Period’, International Journal of Mental Health, 36: 67–78. Gawin, M. (2008), ‘The Sex Reform Movement and Eugenics in Interwar Poland’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 39: 181–6. Gutowski, W. (1970), ‘W 100-lecie urodzin dr med Leona Wernica – twórcy eugeniki i wenerologii społecznej’, Archiwum Historii Medycyny, 30: 463–6. 124

Poland

Kawalec, K. (2007), ‘Spór o eugenikę w Polsce w latach 1918–1939’, Medycyna Nowożytna. Studia nad kulturą medyczną, 7: 87–102. Kujawski, R. (2014), ‘Polskie środowisko neuropsychiatryczne wobec ustaw sterylizacyjnych w latach trzydziestych XX wieku’, Psychiatria Polska, 48: 205–20. Marek, A. (2010), ‘Wybitni pediatrzy warszawscy XIX i XX w. – twórcy dziecięcego szpitala Bersohnów i Baumanów (1873–1943)’, in Podgórska-Klawe, Z., (ed.) Polscy lekarze Żydzi w XIX i XX w., Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN& ŻIH, 113–27. Musielak, M. (2008), Sterylizacja ludzi ze względów eugenicznychw Stanach Zjednoczonych, Niemczech i w Polsce, 1899–1945, Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. Marcus, J. (1983), Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939, New York: Mouton. Rzepa, T. and Żaba, R. (2013), ‘Leon Wernic jako zwolennik i propagator eugeniki’, Postępy Psychiatrii i Neurologii, 22: 67–74. Stauter-Halsted, K. (2011), ‘The Physician and the Fallen Woman: Medicalizing Prostitution in the Polish Lands’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 20: 270–90. Strządała, A. (2010), Od Galtona do Watsona. Przemiany pojmowania eugeniki w XIX i XX w., Opole: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego. Ubysz, J. (2003), Życie i działalnośc prof. Hanny Hirszfeldowej jako organizatora pediatrii akademickiej na Dolnym śląsku, unpublished PhD dissertation, Wrocław Medical University. Uzarczyk, K. (1998), ‘W trosce o zdrowie narodu: Polskie Towarzystwo Eugeniczne w latach międzywojennych’, Przełomy w historii. Pamiętnik XVI Krajowego Zjazdu Historyków Polskich, vol. 3, part 4, Toruń: Adam Marszałek: 165–72. Uzarczyk, K. (2002), ‘Główne nurty rozwoju międzynarodowego ruchu eugenicznego’, in Płonka-Syroka, B. (ed.), Studia z dziejów kultury medycznej, t. 5, Społeczno – ideowe aspekty medycyny i nauk przyrodniczych XVIII – XX w., Wrocław: Arboretum, 430–46. Uzarczyk, K. (2009/2010), ‘ “Sonjas Töchter”: die Darstellung der Prostitution in der polnischen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts’, Historie. Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 3: 166–81. Zabłotniak, R. (1970), ‘Antivenereal Activity of the Polish Eugenics Society in Warsaw, 1916–1939’, Przegląd Dermatologiczny, 57: 785–91. Zabłotniak, R. (1971), ‘Dzieje Polskiego Towarzystwa Eugenicznego’, Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki, 16: 769–87. Zaremba-Bielawski, M. (2011), Higieniści. Z dziejów eugeniki, transl. by W. Chudoba, Wołowiec: Czarne. Ziółkowska, T. (2002), ‘The Origins of the Poznań Eugenic Society and its Significance for the Development of Physical Education in Poland’, Studies in Physical Culture and Tourism, 9: 65–79.

125

3 Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Overview Michal V. Šimůnek

I In the Czech lands, eugenic ideas spread through intellectual circles from 1900 onwards, motivated largely by efforts to avoid the negative effects of ‘degeneration’ caused by a modern industrialized society (Foustka 1904). Eugenics was closely linked to other scientific fields, such as medicine and sociology, popularized mainly by academically active scholars. From the beginning, both Mendelian and Lamarckian concepts of heredity played a significant role in the development of eugenics in the Czech lands, particularly in Bohemia – considered to be ‘the true birthplace of eugenics’ (Nisot 1929: 526). Yet, the early acceptance of Mendelian principles of heredity in Bohemia was not a necessary requirement for those Czech scientists concerned with what was considered human improvement. As elsewhere, World War I was an important turning point in the evolution of Czech eugenics; human losses, fears of depopulation, and changes in social structures contributed significantly to the popularity of eugenics among the Czechs. After the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, eugenics was connected to a broad range of medical and health reform programmes. Between 1918 and 1925, a broad concept of Czechoslovak ‘national eugenics’ developed. Following Francis Galton and Karl Pearson (1857–1936), eugenics was viewed as a national programme, distinct from the German concept of ‘racial hygiene’ (‘Rassenhygiene’), which often identified the Nordic race as the superior one. The rejection of German racial hygiene was also one of the reasons why the Czech eugenicists participated in early attempts to refute Nazi racial concepts after 1933. Although they tried to draw clear lines between the unscientific racial theories of Hans F. K. Günther (1891–1968) and eugenics (seen as applied genetic knowledge in medicine), the position of Czech eugenicists toward the eugenic measures of the Nazi state, such as forced sterilization, remained ambivalent (Herfort 1933: 102). This became clear especially during discussions on the introduction of eugenically motivated sterilizations in Czechoslovakia between 1935 and 1937. The Nazi occupation and establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia under German control in 1939 resulted in the introduction of official Nazi doctrines of ‘hereditary health’ (‘Erbgesundheitspflege’) and ‘racial care’ (‘Rassenpflege’). New institutions, following the German model, were established and hereditary and racial hygiene became an official medical discipline until May 1945.

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

II Early eugenic efforts in the Czech lands were characterized by pessimistic deliberations and debates concerning degeneration, its forms, manifestations, and consequences. Like elsewhere, Czech intellectuals and scientists wanted to create a ‘healthier’ society. This issue was mostly understood to be a consequence of certain long-­term processes that had led to deviations from the optimal mental and physical fitness of individuals, peoples and larger populations (races). During this period, it was perceived that ‘degeneration’ could take two forms: mental and physical. ‘Diagnoses’ were proposed, and specific ‘symptoms’ were then attached to them. These ‘symptoms’ were confirmed by extensive statistical research, which provided arguments for the necessity of collective ‘therapy’, largely by means of governmental regulations. That is also the reason why the first generation of Czech eugenicists included mainly professional physicians and public health administrators. The first attempts to establish Czech eugenics as a body of knowledge occurred in Bohemia at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1900, Ladislav Haškovec (1866–1944), the future Professor of Neuropathology at the Czech Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague (Univerzita Karlova v Praze; Ger.: Karls-Universität zu Prag), addressed the subject of practical proto-­eugenic measures (Haškovec 1925a: 3). He gave several popular lectures in which he drew attention to the importance of medical examinations before marriage. These measures became known in Czech literature as ‘the eugenic revision of marriage’ (‘eugenická sňatková revise’). In 1901, Haškovec proposed to local Bohemian authorities a bill for the introduction of obligatory health certificates; although unsuccessful he remained a constant advocate of this measure both at home and abroad (Haškovec 1902 and 1912). For instance, in 1902, he proposed to the Société de Neurologie (Society of Neurology) in Paris to create an international committee composed of physicians, lawyers, and sociologists, in order to ‘fight human degeneration [and] pathological heredity’ (Haškovec 1923: 438). After preliminary debates, the Society declined to discuss his suggestion further. Haškovec spoke again about the significance of marriage certificates at the 15th International Congress of Medicine (XV Congrès International de Médicine), which took place in Lisbon between 19 and 26 April 1906. In short, Haškovec deemed existing public health measures inadequate to deal with ‘the physical health of man’, as they neglected the role played by heredity in influencing the general health of the population. ‘The laws of pathological heredity and of the heredity of the morbid disposition, as well as of infantile diseases proceeding from poisoning or infection through the parents’, he urged, ‘should command the immediate attention of hygienists’ (Haškovec 1923: 436). The introduction of health certificates before marriage, Haškovec believed, could prevent the ‘enfeebling of the race’, while serving a social purpose, that of making the ‘ignorant society’ aware of its biological responsibility for future generations (Haškovec 1923: 437). Haškovec’s eugenic views were not unique among Czech physicians at the time, as exemplified by the practical physician and local politician from Eastern Bohemia, František Lašek (1898–1947), who in the 1910s published two books on eugenics 129

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

(Lašek 1910 and 1916). Lašek similarly provided an uncompromising hereditarian explanation for a host of mental and physical diseases, arguing for restrictive eugenic measures to control them (Lašek 1916: 4–5). The theory of heredity used by Haškovec, Lašek and other physicians of this generation was based on older views and experiences rooted in psychiatric practice. ‘Pathological heredity’ (‘patologická dědičnost’) was one of the issues seen as most pressing by Czech physicians and biologists. In 1912, Haškovec connected the latest discoveries in human heredity to the following questions: ‘what lessons should humanity learn from them and how could they be used by public health authorities for the well-­being of humanity? Another question is whether it is possible to protect humanity from hereditary weaknesses, and what role should public health play in doing so. Today humanity rightly demands answers to these questions’ (Haškovec 1912: 12). The exploration of heredity encompassed different types of methodological approaches as well as research strategies. At least three scientific disciplines contributed to the systematic research of heredity in the Czech context: a) cytology, b) plant breeding, and, after 1900, c) Mendelian genetics (so-­called ‘Higher Mendelism’). Around 1914, Czech readers became familiar with British and American interpretations of eugenics based on Mendelian principles of heredity (Davenport 1912a: 8–10; 1912b: 44–7 and 1912c: 78–80). In 1910, Artur Brožek (1882–1934), another pioneer of Czech eugenics, a botanist and future Czechoslovak professor of genetics, began his experiments on plant hybridization. In 1912, he published a short commentary on Charles Davenport’s research on eugenics and cross-­breeding (Brožek 1912: 173–9), followed in 1914 by a comprehensive overview of American eugenic thinking entitled Zušlechtění lidstva (Eugenika) (Improving Humanity [Eugenics]) (Brožek 1914). Brožek highlighted the ‘instructive’ role of eugenically prophylactic measures including sterilization, seen as one of the ‘measures that the state or the society in general could apply everywhere, where the self-­love of ill or degenerate individuals stood in the way of improving the health of the population’. Furthermore he did not hesitate to suggest that: If society has the right to punish its members by death, it certainly has the right to isolate those members who are the ailing parts of its body for the period of their fertility, or to forbid marriages of congenitally sick people, such as lunatics and idiots; or to introduce compulsory medical check-­ups of engaged couples by a doctor paid by the state, or to establish state genealogical registrar offices and other similar eugenic measures. (Brožek 1912: 177) British and American eugenics became an important source of inspiration for Czech eugenicists. The first step towards a practical application of eugenics in Bohemia before World War I took place on 12 June 1913, when a eugenic office (or ‘central eugenic bureau’) was established as part of a psychiatric asylum, the so-­called ‘Ernestinum’, in Prague-Hradčany (Herfort 1919: 140–51). This was a result of an initiative by four leading Czech eugenicists: Artur Brožek, Karel Herfort (1871–1940), a biologist and 130

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

later physician, Jindřich Matiegka (1862–1941), the first Czech Professor of Physical Anthropology at Charles University in Prague, and František Čáda (1855–1918), Professor of Pedagogy at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at the same university in Prague. The office focused on the compilation of detailed family trees and statistical processing of data based on the Family Record Questionnaire (‘rodopisný dotazník’) of individual patients (Růžička 1923a: 258–62). Taking Mendelian rules of heredity as a starting point, the Czech eugenicists documented the incidence and inheritance of mental defects as well as disorders, such as epilepsy, dementia praecox and so on. They also published a special eugenic supplement to the Revue neuropsychopathologie, lékařství sociální, dědičnost a eugenika, therapie (Review of Neuropsychopathology, Social Medicine, Heredity and Eugenics, Therapy), which remained the leading journal of the Czech eugenic movement until 1924. Czech scholars working within the emerging Mendelian tradition now focused on pathological manifestations of heredity. While Haškovec was a eugenicist interested in mental diseases and their causes, Vladislav Růžička (1872–1934), the other leading figure of the Czech eugenics movement and the first Professor of General Biology at the Medical Faculty at Charles University in Prague, engaged with pathological heredity at a more theoretical level (Růžička 1920: 249–51). For instance, the list of ‘hereditary diseases’, which he included in his 1923 book, contained no less than 190 entries (Růžička 1923a: 387–91).

III During World War I, the need to protect the ‘quality’ and the ‘quantity’ of the Czech population was seen as more pressing than ever before. Comparing the situation of Bohemia and Moravia in 1918 to that which followed the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, Czech eugenicists declared that the effects of the recent war were disproportionally dysgenic for the Czech social elites. František Kulhavý (1863–1942), a physician and provincial health administrator, for example, wrote that there was ‘a huge difference between these two disasters. The disaster of the Mountain occurred when the nation was fully, primitively healthy. The disaster of today is influencing the nation, whose organism was being destroyed for a long time by diseases’ (Kulhavý 1919: 20). To this effect, on 2 May 1915, the Czech Eugenic Society (Česká Eugenická Společnost) was established in Prague under the auspices of the Czech Provincial Commission for Protection of Children and Youth Care (Česká Zemská Komise pro Péči o Mládež). The creation of the Society was as much due to Haškovec’s resourcefulness, in cooperation with the Association for the Establishment of a People’s Mental Sanatorium of the Kingdom of Bohemia (Sdružení pro Ustanovení Lidového Sanatoria pro Duševně Choré v Království Českém), as to the generous funding from ‘an intelligent lady’, who ‘having been infected with syphilis by her old husband demanded, in her will in urgent and persuasive language, the propagation of eugenic ideas and the foundation of a eugenics society’ (Haškovec 1923: 439). 131

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The programme of the Society was outlined in an introductory lecture delivered to the founding meeting by František Čáda (Čáda 1915: 177–85). Haškovec was elected the Society’s first president, with Vladislav Růžička as vice-­president and Artur Brožek as secretary, while one of Růžička’s students, Jaroslav Kříženecký (1896–1964) took the first minutes of the meeting. Among its first members, the Czech Eugenic Society also included important politicians, intellectuals and public figures, such as Edvard Beneš (1884–1948), future President of Czechoslovakia (1935–8, 1939–45 in exile, and 1945–8), Jiří Guth (1861–1943), first president of the Czechoslovak Olympic Committee, Antonín Benjamin Svojsík (1876–1938), founder of the Czech Boy Scouts movement (Junák) and Břetislav Foustka (1862–1947), Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at Charles University in Prague (Statutes of the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society, 1922, ‘Pražské Policejní Ředitelství – Spolkový Katastr’, IX/287–357). The Czech Eugenic Society’s aims ranged from educational, including ‘the dissemination of knowledge of the conditions of physical and psychic health among all classes of the population, together with the conviction of responsibility toward future generations’, to preventive measures, such as ‘the fight against hereditary diseases’ and ‘the battle against alcoholism and tuberculosis, [and] against venereal diseases’ (Haškovec 1923: 440; Nisot 1929: 531–2). Eugenics was also closely connected to population issues, or the so-­called ‘population question’, which was understood as an integral part of the ‘national question’. As in other European countries since the beginning of the twentieth century birth-­rates in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia declined progressively. Prior to World War I, Czech eugenicists interpreted this trend in the context of ‘social degeneration’ but during the war this demographic decline led to an intensified and much politicized discussion of population planning as a central policy. The Czech Eugenic Society promoted these aims through public lectures and various publications and spread eugenic propaganda materials in schools. It was decided that a special museum of hygiene should be established in Prague as a centre of hygienic study and instruction. Czech eugenicists openly and enthusiastically advocated eugenic principles in the public domain since this campaign was necessary to promote the adoption of special eugenic legislation and governmental regulations, which would enable prophylactic measures in the name of eugenic concerns for the ‘protection of future generations’. The Czech Eugenic Society was connected to a network of other national organizations such as the Czech Heart (České Srdce), established in 1915, and the Republican League for the Moral Revival of the Nation (Republikánská Liga pro Mravní Obrodu Národa), founded in 1919. On a scientific level, the Society closely cooperated with Růžička’s Institute of General Biology at the Czech Faculty of Medicine in Prague. In 1917, the first (and last) Austrian Ministry for Public Health (Ministerium für Volksgesundheit) was established in Vienna under the direction of Jan Horbaczewski (1854–1942) Professor of Medical Chemistry in Prague. In 1917, Czech eugenicists prepared a resolution covering various eugenic issues according to the principles 132

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

adopted earlier by the Eugenic Society (‘Memorandum České Eugenické Společnosti o základních potřebách eugeniky c. k. Ministru Veřejného Zdravotnictví dr. Janu Horbaczewskému’, Revue 1917: 434–7). On 28 October 1918, the Czechoslovak state came into existence, and members of the Eugenic Society submitted a similar proposal to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937), the newly elected President of the Republic, and to the Czechoslovak government in Prague. This resolution called for: (1) the creation of a national institute of eugenic research, (2) the adoption of records for registering the health of the population, (3) the foundation of central eugenic stations, (4) an institute for the study of man’s psychological development, (5) a national institute of psychology, (6) a museum of comparative genetics, (7) the protection of infants [. . .], (8) the reformation of the profession of the midwife, (9) the reorganization, in all of the schools, of training in the teaching of modern hygiene, especially in so far as it concerns sexual education, (10) aid in the eugenic education of the people in general by means of publishing discussions, theatrical and cinematograph performances, and particularly by means of a hygienic museum as the centre of the popular health instruction, (11) finally, [. . .] the requirement of a certificate of health before marriage. (‘Zpráva o činnosti České Eugenické Společnosti za rok 1918’, Revue 1919: 143; Haškovec 1923: 440; see also Rǔžička 1919a: 17–18) The Czech eugenic movement actively pursued these aims during the 1920s, as reiterated by Vladislav Rǔžička in his paper to the Second International Eugenics Congress entitled ‘A Motion for the Organization of Eugenical Research’, in effect a conceptual endorsement of the need for practical eugenic research and institutions (Rǔžička 1923b: 452–5).

IV In the newly formed Czechoslovakia many eugenic ideals and projects envisaged during the early 1900s could be realized. Eugenics was presented both as a demand of everyday life and an important scientific strategy (Kříženecký 1919a: 209–12 and 1919b: 3–28). During the period of major socio-­political transformations, it was not surprising that eugenic thinking rose in importance, scientifically and politically. Strong hereditary arguments were repeatedly used against the ruling, mostly German- and Hungarian-­ speaking aristocracy. Best known were the arguments about hereditary disorders of members of the Habsburg dynasty, which included allegations of endogamy, exogamy, and inbreeding (Kříženecký 1918: 325–31). In the new Czechoslovak state, practical eugenics was presented as a conglomerate of several ‘democratic’ and ‘progressive’ social strategies. According to Haškovec: ‘in Bohemia, we are always in touch with new, progressive ideas, with humanitarianism, and with new social and scientific ideas, and that is why we were well prepared for new eugenic ideas, even before the war’ (Haškovec 1923: 435). Eugenics soon became an 133

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

important part of the new republican ideology of a ‘young’, ‘healthy’ and ‘plebeian’ nation (Foustka 1925: 121–9). At the same time, most Czech eugenicists strongly and repeatedly opposed German racial hygiene or, as they called it, ‘selective national eugenics’ (Růžička 1923a: 724). They viewed the German application of the principles of selection as aristocratic and undemocratic. There were Czech eugenicists, however, who offered a more nuanced interpretation of German racial hygiene (Šebek 1919: 290–4 and Foustka 1921: 2). In general, the Czech eugenicists bestowed greater importance on the improvement of ‘external conditions’ than the biological selection of the ‘carriers’ of hereditary factors. Another argument levelled against German racial hygiene was that it focused exclusively on selection, thus dealing with ‘complete racial traits’ and not the question of their origin, which was seen as a limited task (Růžička 1919b: 32–5 and 1923a: 673). As mentioned previously, Czech eugenicists had been working on their own definition of ‘national eugenics’ since 1917. This largely emulated the notion of national eugenics developed particularly by British eugenicists during the early 1910s. According to Růžička, ‘national eugenics’ was concerned with the preservation and promotion of the ‘biological individuality of a nation’ and with the prevention of the ‘decline of its biological organization in whatever respect’ (Růžička 1923a: 12 and 1923b: 452). The concept of the ‘biological individuality of a nation’ was important to Czech eugenicists, who viewed ‘their’ eugenics as a contrast to the contemporary German school of racial hygiene. Růžička defined ‘biological individuality’ as the ‘harmony between its hereditary constitution and influences of its external conditions’ (Růžička 1923a: 12 and 1923b: 452). In 1923 Růžička published his most important theoretical work on eugenics entitled Biologické základy eugeniky (The Biological Foundations of Eugenics). It was divided into three sections: ‘On Genetics in General’, ‘Questions of Genetics in Man’ and finally, ‘Social Genetics and National Eugenics’. The book became a standard text for Czech eugenicists throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Růžička viewed the mechanism of heredity as part of genetics conceived of as a science dealing not only with ‘internal factors’ transmitted by heredity, but also with ‘external’ factors, such as social environment, education, and so on. According to Růžička, the main aim of eugenics was to improve the ‘social and biological strength’ of humankind and increase the sense of ‘responsibility towards the community and future generations’ (Růžička 1923a: 707). Eugenics thus aimed at regulating factors that determined the health of a population and influenced reproduction and the development of the embryo. Růžička emphasized that the principal demands of eugenics should be a harmonic development of all social and biological qualities. From this perspective, he again discussed the German concept of racial hygiene, eugenically determined instinctive sexual selection and decreasing birth-­rates. As soon as external factors of development were recognized as having the same significance in shaping heredity as internal factors, however, ‘adaptive, altruistic, eugenics’ became possible. Růžička argued that the main principles of genetics, heredity and adaptation, should become the principal means of eugenics; also that ‘selective’ and ‘adaptive eugenics’ (‘adaptivní eugeniky’) should be distinguished from each other (Růžička 1923a: 742–3). 134

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Despite the diversity of definitions, heredity and inheritance were seen as biological phenomena that should be not only systematically studied but also taken into account in various practical measures. In 1925 Haškovec, for example, described this ‘eugenic necessity’ as follows: The research on heredity is of enormous importance in all spheres of life, family, society, nation, and state. The research of heredity and prophylaxis, both of inherited and inborn disorders, concerns not only the physician but also the educator, teacher, lawyer, sociologist, and politician, and is today also of great importance for lawmakers. (Haškovec 1925a: 2) As eugenics began to influence discussions on social policy in Czechoslovakia, the focus was now on the necessity for demographic reform, especially the need for marital regulations, and also on the question of eugenically motivated sterilization and abortion. The latter were seen as negative eugenic measures. Positive eugenic measures, on the other hand, were proposed in the area of family and childcare policy and in population planning. Yet it was ‘national eugenics’ that was to be applied to society by a new specialized institution, an Institute of National Eugenics. The work of this Institute was to be guided by principles formulated in 1917, when its foundation was first discussed. After 1918, it was argued that it should consist of three specialized departments and one museum. In particular, the institute was to include a Department for the Research of Genetics in Man, a Department for the Research of the Ecology of Human Ontogenesis, a Department of National Psychology, and a Museum of Comparative Genetics (Růžička 1923a: 737– 9). An ambitious research programme was outlined, which was to include biometry, hybridization, vital statistics, family pedigrees, and so on, in order to study the hereditary and biological constitution of the Czechoslovak population. The intention was to prepare specialized genealogies, special health certificates, and to collect various additional information of statistical nature about the hereditary status of the population. As Růžička put it in 1923: ‘By furnishing statistical returns on a population, its health, genius, talents, inferior elements, genealogies of physical, spiritual, normal and pathological types, and by investigating their geographical distribution, this institution would prepare material which in the eugenic practice of future days might furnish a base for eugenic progress’ (Růžička 1923b: 453). The first attempt to establish such an institute in 1919 did not succeed. At the Second International Congress of Eugenics, organized by the American Museum of Natural History in New York in September 1921, it was agreed that the next eugenics congress would be held in Prague. It was also on this occasion that the Czech Eugenic Society (now renamed Czechoslovak) became a member of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, with Vladislav Růžička as its representative. Upon their return home, leading Czech eugenicists suggested that an establishment of a specialized institute was needed to demonstrate the efficiency of the Czechoslovak eugenic movement to the international community (Růžička 1922: 1–2. See also Růžička’s letter to the Ministry of Education, 4 October 1924, Personal File, Box 44). In 1923, the 135

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Czechoslovak Institute of National Eugenics (Československý Ústav pro Národní Eugeniku) was successfully established in Prague with the support and participation of both Charles University in Prague and the Ministry of Public Health and Physical Education (Nisot 1929: 535–6; Sekla 1935b: 101–3). Despite earlier proposals the Institute of National Eugenics was neither large nor independent, functioning as an affiliated branch of Růžička’s Institute of Biology at the Faculty of Medicine in Prague (‘Pražské Policejní Ředitelství – Spolkový Katastr, IX/287–357, AMP). Moreover, since the early 1920s some Czech eugenicists also worked in the newly established Masaryk Academy of Labour (Masarykova Akademie Práce), where they established a Commission on Eugenics (Eugenická Komise) in 1919 (Růžička 1919c: 319–20; Nisot 1929: 536). Although Czech (and Czechoslovak) eugenics was intended and developed as a ‘national’ programme, the eugenicists viewed themselves as contributors to a ‘eugenic universalism’, whereby an ‘improvement of mankind’ was possible only through an improvement of smaller, nationally organized entities (Čáda František, ‘Poznámky o Eugenice’, 1916, Box 17/no. 155 and Růžička 1923a: 599). During the 1920s, Czech eugenicists also became part of an international eugenic network and frequently contributed to international debates and congresses. In 1919, for example, Haškovec participated in the Allied Congress of Social Hygiene for the Reconstruction of Regions Devastated by the War (Congrès Interallié d’Hygiène Sociale pour la Reconstitution des Régions Dévastées par la Guerre), on behalf of the Czechoslovak Ministry for Health and Physical Education. The congress focused on post-­war reconstruction of public health and hygiene. German racial hygienists were not invited, thus giving the Czech eugenicists an excellent opportunity to declare their antiGerman and pro-French stance (Haškovec 1919: 116–7). During these years, moreover, Czech eugenicists followed and supported official Czechoslovak foreign policy. With official support, Haškovec, Brožek and Růžička also participated in the above-­ mentioned Second International Congress of Eugenics (Scientific Papers of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, vol. 1, 1923: 21–2). Haškovec presented a paper on the history of eugenics in Czechoslovakia (Haškovec 1923: 435–42), while Růžička gave two papers on the importance and organization of eugenic research (Růžička 1923a: 449– 51 and 1923b: 452–5). In New York, the Czech eugenicists met American racial theorists, such as Madison Grant, leading eugenicists including Charles B. Davenport, Jon A. Mjöen, Harry H. Laughlin, Henry F. Osborn, and prominent biologists, such as Thomas H. Morgan, Jacques Loeb, Alfred H. Sturtevant, the psychologist Robert M. Yerkes, and Aleš Hrdlička (1869–1943), an American anthropologist of Czech origin, and curator of the National Museum of Natural History, whose pro-­eugenic positions were articulated at that time and represented a fusion of the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ world at the Congress. In addition to their participation in the international eugenic movement, Czech eugenicists also contributed to the development of scientific cooperation in genetic research. For the centenary of the birth of Gregor J. Mendel (1822–84) in 1922, the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society, with assistance from the Czechoslovak Ministry of Public Instructions, arranged two separate meetings in Brno and Prague to mark the occasion. Foreign biologists, including Reginald R. Gates, Raymond Pearl, L. Löhner, 136

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

and the most important Czech eugenicists and geneticists, convened in the Augustinian Monastery in Brno and at the Charles University in Prague to celebrate the ‘person and the spirit of the father of genetics’ (Haškovec 1925a: 1). The biologist Bohumil Němec (1873–1966), noted triumphantly: The Czechoslovak Eugenic Society has a good reason to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Mendel’s birth, for it has its object in the science of heredity of which Mendel is the coryphaeus. The Eugenical [sic] Movement might well adopt for its maxim Horace’s words: ‘Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis!’1 Even in Eugenics it is necessary to start with a genetic analysis in order to find the ‘fortes et boni’, and then take adequate measures to secure a generation of the strong and the good. (Němec 1925: 27) The increasing influence of Mendelian genetics within the Czechoslovak eugenic movement was evident during the mid-1920s (Růžička 1925: 31–49). This predisposition was also strengthened during research trips abroad. For example, in 1924 Němec, the contact person of the Life Science Division of the Rockefeller Foundation in Czechoslovakia, proposed Brožek for a six-­month fellowship in the USA. During this period, Brožek intended to study the ‘methodology of genetics and eugenics’ with the geneticist Thomas H. Morgan (1866–1945) at Columbia University in New York, and eugenics with Charles Davenport (1866–1944), particularly the ‘correlations between feeble-­mindedness and other physical as well as psychological traits’, and ‘correlations between different physical states, both normal and abnormal, which accompany and characterize families with one or more suicides’ (Rose’s Letter to Morgan, 30 April 1924 and Rose’s Letter to Davenport, 7 May 1924). In June 1924, Brožek was granted a fellowship for six months, commencing on 1 September 1924. Fascinated by his American experience and having acquired a first-­hand acquaintance with the chromosome theory of heredity, Brožek stated upon his return: ‘I am sure I have brought home many new ideas, methods, and plans for scientific work from America, all of which might be well adapted and conformed to methods used in Europe and especially in my country’ (Brožek’s Letter to the International Education Board, 16 April 1925). In the same year, he proposed the most ambitious eugenic project to be undertaken by the Czech eugenicists: the genetic screening (‘vlohový soupis’) of all Czechoslovak citizens, known as a Registry of Traits of the Czechoslovak Population. The screening was to be carried out under the auspices of the Eugenic Commission of the Masaryk Academy of Labour.

V The seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany in early 1933 accelerated the adoption of already previously existing eugenics proposals in Czechoslovakia. The turning point was, however, the adoption of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased 137

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Offspring, which legalized compulsory sterilizations and abortions. In Czechoslovakia, much like in other Central European countries, the implementation of the Nazi sterilization law was widely discussed by the medical, legal and eugenic communities. Officially, however, as documented by a report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the matter of sterilization measures, dated 8 September 1932, it was stated that ‘there is no indication that the issue of [eugenic] sterilization was being considered in the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic or that there started any official investigation into this matter’ (‘Ministerstvo veřejného zdravotnictví a tělesné výchovy’, Box 482). And yet, discussions on eugenic sterilization were carried out in the Czechoslovak medical press. One of the first eugenicists to present general information on sterilization measures was Bohumil Sekla (1901–87), an assistant at the Institute of National Eugenics and Secretary of the Czech Eugenic Society. Sekla discussed eugenic sterilization at the 23rd Meeting of the Association of Czech Physicians (23. Schůze Spolku Českých Lékařů) held on 11 December 1933 in Prague. For him the justification of adoption of sterilization measures was based on three interconnected factors: depopulation, differential fecundity (namely, the difference in birth-­rates of various social groups) and the lack of impact of natural selection – or rather insufficient counter-­selection (Sekla 1933: 1780 and 1934a: 48). According to Sekla, the desired outcome of eugenic measures was to preserve ‘the hygiene of the genes’, and their ‘regulation in population’; that is, for the state to offer a guaranteed ‘care’ of the genetic health of the population (Sekla 1934a: 47). As far as the Nazi sterilization law was concerned, Sekla praised mainly its ‘perfect’ formal (juristic) aspect and repeatedly expressed a conviction that one needs to strictly distinguish between eugenics and racial theories, which he unequivocally and repeatedly opposed (Sekla 1934a: 47). On 24 October 1935, the issue of eugenic sterilizations was again raised and debated at an extraordinary meeting of the Czechoslovak Society for Criminal Law (Československá Společnost pro Právo Trestní) in Prague. In addition to leading experts in criminal law, the session was also attended by Jan Bělehrádek (1896–1980), who represented the Czech Eugenic Society (Veselá 1938: 124). Except for critical remarks on the subject of castration, the meeting concluded generally in favour of adopting eugenic sterilizations in Czechoslovakia. The following year (1936) occasioned further debates on sterilization among Czech eugenicists (Sekla 1936a: 1–24 and 1936b: 142), alongside public commentaries on the situation in Germany (‘Zkušenosti se sterilizací žen’, Praktický Lékař 1936: 346–7 and ‘Základové principy operativní metodiky zákonné sterilisace dědičně nemocných žen’, Praktický Lékař 1936: 371–2). On 5 May 1936 the Czech Eugenic Society, presided over by Josef Drachovský (1876–1961), an economist and long-­term member, organized in Prague an extraordinary meeting devoted to the adoption of eugenic sterilization in Czechoslovakia (Sekla 1936a: 15). The meeting was attended by, among others, Jan Bělehrádek, biologist Bohumil Krajník (1895–1966), the Austrian physiologist Armin Tschermak-Seysenegg (1870–1952), and Vojta Beneš (1878–1951), brother of the President of Czechoslovakia, Edvard Beneš. The meeting was preceded by a survey of opinion on this matter of 138

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

various physicians, lawyers, and economists affiliated both at universities and various governmental positions (Veselá 1938: 124–5). It was concluded that in cases of certain particular diagnoses, sterilization would be ‘useful’ and its adoption ‘desirable’ (Sekla 1936b: 1–24). Subsequently, the experts unanimously called for legalization, that is, the establishment of a special commission, within the Czech Eugenic Society, of ‘experts who would critically investigate the currently valid eugenic legislature in various countries and, taking into account our situation, propose a law that would be presented to the relevant ministries and political circles’ (Sekla 1936c: 142. See also Hellmer Wullen 1937: 274). The committee included two physicians, namely Vladimír Bergauer (1898–1942) and Bohumil Sekla, and one lawyer, Jarmila Veselá (1899–1972). The motto of their activity is aptly summarized by a 1938 quotation from Veselá’s book: ‘The protection of defectives must not go as far as to permit the procreation of defectives’ (Veselá 1938: 35). Based on surviving archival documents, it is not possible to fully reconstruct the progress of the law’s preparation and the relevant debates which took place in the remaining months of 1936 and in early 1937. Evidence suggests, however, that the basic principles and outlines of the law in question were spelled out, in the name of the Czech Eugenic Society, in the ‘Memorandum on the Issue of Eugenic Sterilization’ dated 5 March 1937 (MAP/58, Reference No. Pres 5, 433, II7a). It is interesting to note that the memorandum coincided with the publication of the first Czech book on medical genetics, Sekla’s Dědičnost v přírodě a ve společnosti (Heredity in Nature and Society), in which the author repeated his support for the adoption of eugenic sterilization in Czechoslovakia (Sekla 1937: 295–309). The memorandum was presented to the Ministry of Public Health and Physical Education (Ministerstvo Veřejného Zdravotnictví a Tělesné Výchovy) on 21 June 1937 (Veselá 1938: 126–7). The memorandum noted the need for legislation that would enable the implementation of sterilization based on eugenic indicators. The adoption of a separate law to that effect was seen as the most feasible option (Veselá 1938: 126–7). It was foreseen that proposals for sterilization would be submitted by either the affected persons themselves or by their legal guardians, but also by the relevant ‘official institutions which would come in contact with persons of that kind’; that is, nursing, social, healthcare institutes and so on (MAP/58, Reference No. Pres 5, 433, II7a). The execution of a sterilization procedure was supposed to be conditional on the consent of the person in question or his or her legal guardian, or rather upon the medical, genetic/eugenic and official analysis of the case in question which would be reviewed by a special committee (MAP/58, Reference No. Pres 5, 433, II7a). The proposal, thus, did not recommend forced sterilization (Veselá 1938: 125). The memorandum identified a total of four diagnostic groups which, if the recommended measures were adopted, would be affected by eugenic sterilization. According to the original proposal, the relevant diagnoses included: hereditary feeble-­ mindedness, severe hereditary nervous and mental diseases, severe hereditary sensory deficiencies, and some other severe hereditary physical defects. The establishment of several committees was proposed, which would be centralized and attached to the health 139

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

departments of the provincial authorities (Veselá 1938: 125). The decision of these committees could be appealed, whereby the final authority would rest with the Ministry of Public Health in Prague. On the basis of earlier discussions, the memorandum spoke of the genetic determination of certain medical diagnoses where the ‘collective interest in the quality of future generations’ combined with qualitative considerations pertaining to ‘differential fertility’ (MAP/58, Ref. No. Pres 5, 433, II7a). Eugenic sterilization was seen as the ‘most effective means’ to achieve this goal. Sterilization was thus viewed as ‘the only safe barrier to further procreation’ since other ways of controlling fertility were not seen as irreversible. Vasectomy (in men) and salpingectomy (in women) were recommended as the surgical procedures by which infertility would be achieved; sterilization by X-rays was found to be inappropriate. The 1937 ‘Memorandum on the Issue of Eugenic Sterilization’ represented the most detailed proposal for the implementation of eugenic sterilization in Czechoslovakia. Most likely and for reasons unknown, it was never further elaborated on to become an actual draft bill. Quite possibly, one should not underestimate the negative attitude of representatives from the Ministry of Public Health, who stated that an introduction of forced eugenic sterilizations ‘would constitute an interference in personal freedom, which is clearly granted by the Constitution’ (Dr Žofka, August 1936, NA Praha, MVZd, box  482). The publication of Veselá’s comprehensive work, Sterilisace. Problém populační, sociální a kriminální politiky (Sterilization. An Issue of Population, Social and Criminal Policy), in 1938, although clearly in support of sterilization did not change the official political attitude. On the contrary, the authorities prepared new proposals aimed at legal protection of the feeble-­minded (Nečas: 1937: 229–30 and Šonka 1937: 230–7), alongside continuous criticism of sterilization (Šonka 1938: 101–5). Parallel to these debates on forced sterilizations Czech eugenicists also considered the criticism of Nazi racial theories and German racial eugenics. Both its ideological background and scientific foundations were challenged. The first articulated critique was by Ignaz Zollschan (1877–1948), a radiologist. Prior to World War I, Zollschan, together with other Jewish physicians, biologists and anthropologists, set out to establish a Jewish racial science. During the 1930s Zollschan understood the main core of the Nazi racism, the so-­called ‘racial doctrine’ (‘Rassenlehre’), in both scientific and ideological terms. Later he also used the denominations ‘racial ideology’ and/or ‘racial philosophy’ (Zollschan 1933). Nazi racial theory was understood as a ‘specific intellectual conception’, one used to re-­interpret the ‘origins of culture’ (‘Kulturgenese’) as well as fundamentally transform the ‘system of values’ (‘Umwertung’), concerning not only individuals, but whole populations and races. Zollschan’s emphasis on the scientific aspect was, however, clear (Zollschan 1933: 12–13). What he suggested from the very beginning was actually an interdisciplinary thorough analysis from the perspective of several scientific disciplines: sociology, biology, psychology, prehistory, comparative linguistics, ethnology, history and, especially, anthropology. Such an analysis, he inferred, should answer the question whether or not ‘racial philosophy is a scientifically relevant or just a pseudo-­science’ (Zollschan 1935: 1). 140

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

In 1933 Zollschan suggested the establishment of a new Institute for Anthropological and Sociological Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He hoped to secure funding from public associations as well as from American foundations. He further relied on the involvement of several established Jewish organizations (Zollschan 1933: 22–3). At the same time he asked Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937), President of Czechoslovakia whom he knew personally, to support an international coalition of notable intellectuals and scientists to oppose the destructive implications of Nazi racial concepts. Although unofficially, Masaryk did endorse Zollschan’s plan, as did his successor, Edvard Beneš, who lobbied the League of Nations to this effect. After 1933 most Czech eugenicists, including Jan Bělehrádek, Bohumil Sekla and Vladimír Bergauer, sharply objected to linking eugenic efforts and Nazi racial theories, pointing to the dangers of ‘racial eugenics’. But it should also be noted that many Czech geneticists did not abandon eugenics, as such. Consequently, they also did not reject the possibility of implementing biology for the purpose of social engineering, although as far as implementation of eugenic measures was concerned they required further progress in the working methods of genetics in medicine. It needs to be emphasized, however, that in Czechoslovakia until 1938 a wide range of eugenic views co-­existed, including socialist ones. The opposition to Nazi racial science was forcefully expressed in 1935 by the publication of a volume edited by the anatomist Karel Weigner (1874–1937) and entitled Rovnocennost evropských plemen a cesty k jejich zušlechťování (On the Equality of European Races and Ways for Their Betterment). The volume appeared on Zollschan’s initiative at Masaryk’s suggestion and under the auspices of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts (Česká Akademie Věd a Umění) in Prague (Weigner 1935). It was based on a session organized at the Academy on 2 March 1934 by two anthropologists and professors at Charles University in Prague, Lubor Niederle (1865–1944) and Jindřich Matiegka (1862–1941). In the same year, special features by anthropologists dealing with descriptions of the racial situation in Central Europe appeared in the official pro-­governmental daily Prager Presse (Prague’s Newspaper). Also, Josef Meisner (1904–78), at that time an assistant at the Czechoslovak Institute for National Eugenics, published another significant book, Rasismus hrozí kultuře: rasové teorie a eugenika (Racism Is Threatening Culture: Racial Theory and Eugenics), in which he denounced Nazi racial science (Meisner 1934).

VI After the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Czech eugenicists were confronted directly with the reality of the Nazi racial state. Especially during the initial period (1939–41), the eugenic agenda pertaining to the Czech population remained under the control of the authorities and institutions of the established Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia with a population of about 7.7 million inhabitants. German racial hygiene was, nonetheless, systematically expanded. It focused primarily on the German population in 141

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

the Protectorate but gradually its institutions also provided expert support to the local authorities of the Reich District of Sudetenland (Reichsgau Sudetenland), former Bohemian and Moravian border territories with a population of over 3 million inhabitants. After the closure of Czech universities on 17 November 1939, the former Institute of National Eugenics that was part of the University’s Institute of Biology of the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University was also forced to close. In subsequent negotiations regarding a renewal of its scientific activity, even the plea of the Institute’s director, Jan Bělehrádek, from January 1940 did not help. Somewhat ironically, Bělehrádek in his letter to the German commissioner for the defunct Czech Faculty of Medicine, anatomist and keen supporter of racial hygiene, Professor Otto Grosser (1873–1951), emphasized that the Institute’s ‘most eugenic plans count on the relevant knowledge of experts in the Reich’ (Bělehrádek’s letter to Grosser, 19 January 1940, Lékařská Fakulta, Box 414). But these efforts were to no avail. The only scientific organization that was permitted to continue its activities was the Czech Eugenic Society. In the early 1940s, active efforts to influence the population policy in the Protectorate were closely linked with eugenics. To this effect, an independent Institute for National Biology and Eugenics (Ústav pro Národní Biologii a Eugeniku) was established under the auspices of the Protectorate Ministry of Social and Health Administration, with psychiatrist Jaroslav Stuchlík (1890–1967) as director. This institute managed to bring together the second generation of Czech eugenicists, such as Vladimír Bergauer, Jan Bělehrádek and Bohumil Sekla, who lost their jobs due to the closure of the Czech universities. Little documentation pertaining to its activity survives but one can infer that its activity focused on health and social care as well as on experimental research, especially in connection with psychiatry and pathopsychology. The Institute, however, did not survive long and its activities ended most probably at the latest in the spring of 1942. Its closure was undoubtedly linked to the participation of all three above-­ mentioned experts in anti-Nazi resistance. Bergauer, for example, was executed together with his wife at Mauthausen camp in October 1942. Until the war’s end Czech eugenics in the Protectorate endured, mainly in the form of lectures, publications, and popularization activities within a number of officially permitted associations. An example of this activity is Sekla’s 1940 Růst národa (The Growth of Nation), which repeated older claims from the early 1930s about the importance of quantitative and qualitative population policy (Sekla 1940); or Jaroslava Závadová and Jan Bělehrádek’s book on Šťastné dítě (Happy Child), published in 1941, which attempted to bring together eugenic argumentation rhetoric and the Czech humanistic tradition (Závadová and Bělehrádek 1941). Within this context, the Czech eugenics was in fact re-­assuming older, nationally defensive positions similar to those from the late imperial period. Scholarly debates pertaining particularly to medical genetics took place mainly within the officially permitted Czech Society for Biotypology (Česká Společnost Biotypologická), which was established in 1936 (Mentl 1936: 89–93). Parallel to these developments, German hereditary and racial hygiene consolidated its position. The most important institution (at least in the medical field) became the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague. Within this faculty a new Institute 142

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

for Hereditary and Racial Hygiene (Institut für Erb und Rassenhygiene) was established in 1941, under Karl Thums (1904–76), Ernst Rüdin’s student and a fervent Nazi (27 March 1941, Německá Univerzita, Box 3). The Institute was supposed to provide lectures in the area of hereditary and racial hygiene, in keeping with a valid medical curriculum, practical training and seminars in the same area, optional lectures on select subjects, such as experimental genetics, statistics of heredity (‘Erbstatistik’), ‘Higher Mendelism’ (applied Mendelian knowledge on man), psychiatric theory of heredity (‘psychiatrische Erblehre’), racial pathology (‘Rassenpathologie’), in addition to current and controversial issues from general research on heredity and racial hygiene (‘Zeitund Streitfragen aus dem Gesamtgebiet von Erbforschung und Rassenhygiene’). The Institute was also intended to contribute to continuing studies for physicians, participate in training physicians in the state-­sponsored ‘care of heredity’ (‘Erbpflege’) and ‘racial care’ (‘Rassenpflege’ – this pertained especially to doctors working in state administration), provide training and instruction of non-­medical professionals, such as expert witnesses and teachers, but also to help organize general educational courses and public lectures to various associations and corporations. With regard to research in racial hygiene proper in the Protectorate, Thums envisioned the following areas of interest: a) research in the general area of pathology of heredity in collaboration with various clinics, b) the development of documentation on population policy and genetics for the tasks of both supportive and eliminative racial hygiene, as well as establishment of or participation in a registry of hereditary biology for the area which the Prague university is responsible for, that is, the Sudetengau and German population in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, c) in the future, it shall be also necessary to research other subjects that may seem urgent, in particular those related to the mixing of different nations, but perhaps also the assessment of genetic value, genetic diseases, etc. in persons of mixed Czech-German origin (deutsch-­tschechische Mischlinge) and a comparison between the conclusion of this research with corresponding research in nationally pure populations. (R31/448, Karl Thums, 1939. See also Thums 1941: 27–8) It should, however, be emphasized that of all activities of the new Institute, the area of hereditary pathology was seen as most important and since the very beginning, Thums intended to follow in the footsteps of Ernst Rüdin (1874–1952) and Otmar von Verschuer (1896–1969). In addition to the Institute for Hereditary and Racial Hygiene, two other institutions were created: one in 1941 at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, the Institute for Racial Biology (Institut für Rassenbiologie), with SS Colonel Bruno K. Schultz (1901–98) as Director. Between 1942 and 1944, Schultz was also Director of the Race Office (Rassenamt), a sub-­division of the Main Race and Settlement Office of the SS (Rassenund Siedlungshauptamt der SS). The other institution, established in 1942 at the Faculty of Arts, was the Institute for Social Anthropology and National Biology (Institut für Sozialanthropologie und Volksbiologie), under Karl V. Müller’s (1896–1963) directorship. 143

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Moreover, a Prague section of the German Society for Racial Hygiene based in Munich (Ortsgesellschaft Prag der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene e. V. München) was ceremonially established early March 1941, though its statutes were officially registered only a year later (August 1942) (‘Statutes of the Local Prague Branch of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, Munich, 1942,’ 411, SK IX/ 1110). At the festive opening session, it was emphasized that this new society was to become part of an existing Reich infrastructure of institutions devoted to hereditary and racial hygiene. The first contribution, ‘Evaluation of National and Racial Policy under the State Leadership of Adolf Hitler’ (‘Die volks- und rassenpolitische Bilanz der Staatsführung Adolf Hitlers’) was given by Professor Karl Astel (1898–1945), Rector of the University in Jena, and a leading representative of Nazi academic racism (‘Notizen’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie 1941: 88 and ‘Tätigkeitsbericht des NSD-Dozentenbundes Prag für das Sommersemester 1941’, Prager Hochschulblätter 1942: 13). The close link to the Nazi Party was abundantly clear. Both the president and the secretary could assume their position only with the approval of the relevant regional head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the president headed up the local chapter according to the leadership principles, and the society’s activities were reported in the official daily of the Office of the Reichsprotector, Der Neue Tag (The New Day). Membership was selective, since only a German or someone of nationally related origin could join the Prague branch. Moreover, membership had to be approved by Ernst Rüdin. Not surprisingly, it was Thums who became the first and the last chair of the Prague branch. Up to the end of the war, the society probably did not open other branches in the Protectorate, but it managed to expand in the neighbouring Reichsgau Sudetenland. In June 1942, the Reichenberg (Cz.: Liberec) Branch of the German Society for Racial Hygiene registered in Munich (Ortsgesellschaft Reichenberg der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene e. V. München) (‘Ortsgesellschaften der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene in Prag und Reichenberg’, Volk und Rasse 1942: 200); the introductory lecture on ‘Twin Research as a Foundation of Racial Hygiene’ (‘Zwillingsforschung als Grundlage der Rassenhygiene’) was given by Otmar von Verschuer (Von Verschuer 1942: 345–50). In the first half of 1941 Thums, due to former disagreements and while wishing to use their resources, personally and repeatedly denounced Czech eugenicists to the German authorities. This led to a ban on the Czech Eugenic Society and the arrest of some of its representatives, including Sekla, by the Prague Gestapo, and to the confiscation of its property, which was given to the Institute for Hereditary and Racial Hygiene (Thums’ Letter to the Rector of Charles University, LF NU, Varia). In addition, a Counselling Centre for Hereditary and Racial Care (Beratungsstelle für Erb- und Rassenpflege) was established in Prague-Albertov on 1 April 1941. Later, the Central Hereditary Registry of the German Population in Bohemia and Moravia (Zentrallstelle für die Erbkartei der deutschen Bevölkerung in Böhmen und Mähren) was established as part of the so-­called German Health Office in Prague (Deutsches Gesundheitsamt Prag) (Thums 1942: 75–83). In the following year, these institutions 144

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

were joined by a Counselling and Research Centre of the Prague Branch of the German Society for Racial Hygiene (Beratungs- und Untersuchungsstelle der Ortsgesellschaft Prag der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene) (Thums 1942: 79–80). Through decisions in so-­called ‘paternity’ suites, which during the German occupation touched the lives of numerous Jewish inhabitants, the Institute for Hereditary and Racial Hygiene was also involved in the exclusion of the Jewish population of the Protectorate. Last but not least, between 1940 and 1945, the Institute was also involved in a programme of eugenic sterilization, which was introduced in the Protectorate based on the German model and motivated by racial hygiene. Based on available sources, the number of sterilizations in the Reichsgau Sudetenland probably did not exceed 3,000. This number would place Sudetenland, (in terms of number of individuals sterilized), behind the neighbouring Austria (Ostmark), with c. 6,000 sterilizations, and far behind Saxony with 25,000 sterilizations, where, however, the Nazi sterilization law had been in effect since 1934. When in need of expert opinion, the local and state health authorities, mainly from the Sudetenland, were explicitly required to turn to the specialists of the Faculty of Medicine in Prague. Applications from northern Moravia and Silesia were usually handled by the racial institutes at the Faculty of Medicine at Schlesische FriedrichWilhelms-Universität zu Breslau (now Wroclaw University). The number of sterilized persons from the Sudetenland, who in 1939–41 fell victim to the Action T4 (the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ programme) cannot be as yet determined with any degree of certainty. Most probably, one can suppose that, as in other parts of Germany, this fate befell those persons whose names were also noted in the registries of the Berlin headquarters of Action T4, where an important factor seems to have been the ability to work. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Czech eugenicists, like their counterparts in EastCentral Europe, attempted to rescue eugenics from its association with Nazi racism, while highlighting the ‘pseudo-­scientific’ nature of racial research under Nazism (Bělehrádek 1948: 284–90; Hrubý 1948; Sekla 1949). Some of them returned to academic life; Bohumil Sekla, for instance, was appointed Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Prague. By the early 1950s, however, with the creation of the new Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, based on the Soviet model, a new ideological ethos permeated Czech medicine, social and natural sciences that proscribed any explicit reference to eugenics. The adoption of Lysenkoism, ‘Mitchurian biology’ and the rejection of ‘Western genetics’ completed the gradual marginalization, and ultimately the elimination, of pre-­war Czech scientific traditions of genetics and eugenics.

145

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Michal V. Šimůnek Translations by Anna Pilátová and Tudor Georgescu

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Artur (Arthur) Brožek (1882, Třeboň–1934, Prague)

Artur (Arthur) Brožek was born in 1882 in Třeboň (Ger.: Wittingau), Bohemia, in the Austrian Empire. After finishing his primary and secondary education in his home town in 1900 Brožek moved to Prague. For the next four years, he studied biology at the Czech Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University (Karls Universität) in Prague. Among his teachers were two distinguished Czech zoologists: František Vejdovský (1849–1939) and Bohumil Němec (1873–1966). It was at their suggestion that Brožek engaged in hybridization experiments, working mainly with plants (Mimulus), which he complemented with a study of related issues of biometry, variation statistics, eugenics and Mendelian inheritance in humans. He received a doctorate in botany in 1907. After his university studies, Brožek became a teacher: at first he worked as a substitute teacher in Prague, Roudnice nad Labem and Čáslav. After 1911, he held a position as a full time teacher at several Czech high schools in Prague. His Habilitation was submitted in genetics as part of a study of physiology of plants (Brožek 1916), even though the venia legendi also included explicitly eugenics and variation statistics, two other areas in which Brožek also published extensively. In December 1927, he was awarded adjunct professorship at the newly established Faculty of Science of Charles University in Prague. In 1933, shortly before his death, Brožek officially became the first full professor of genetics in Czechoslovakia. In 1924, Brožek received a prestigious research scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation, and thus came in contact with the most up-­to-date genetic research carried out in the USA. During his research visit, he worked with two institutions: the Institute of Zoology at the University of Columbia in New York, in particular Thomas H. Morgan’s (1866– 1945) research team and the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, led by Charles Benedict Davenport (1866–1944). Prior to 1914 Brožek was one the first Czech authors to engage with British and American eugenics including all the ‘practical’ eugenic measurements. In a short article published in 1912 he defined eugenics as the ‘discipline concerned with bettering humanity and improving its health, based on the rules of heredity’ (Brožek 1912: 173). Together with the physician Karel Herfort (1871–1940), he was instrumental in establishing the Eugenic Office at Prague’s lunatic asylums (the so-­called ‘Ernestinum’) (Brožek and Herfort 1914: 1–13). In 1914 Brožek published his first major work on eugenics entitled Zušlechtění lidstva (Eugenika) (Improving Humanity [Eugenics]) (Brožek 1914), followed by two important books on Mendelism (Brožek 1916). In the early 1920s, Brožek translated Mendel’s seminal articles, ‘Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden’ (1865) and ‘Über einige aus künstlicher Befruchtung gewonnene Hieraciumbastarde’ (1869) into Czech, in addition to publishing his own work on eugenics (Brožek 1922) and genetics (Brožek 1923: 1–3). Next to Ladislav Haškovec 147

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

and Vladislav Růžička, Brožek was one of the main Czech eugenicists who attended the international conference commemorating the centenary of Gregor Mendel’s birth in 1922. Brožek remained interested in heredity in plants throughout the 1920s, publicizing his research equally in international journals, such as Zeitschrift für induktive Abstammungs- und Vererbungslehre (Journal for the Inductive Study of Evolution and Heredity) and The Journal of Heredity (Brožek 1926: 113–28), and by publishing books in English (Brožek 1929). In 1930, together with geneticist Rudolf Dostál (1885–1973), Brožek published Nauka o dědičnosti: Experimentální morfologie (The Science of Heredity: Experimental Morphology), a book of over three hundred pages, which offered a comprehensive synthesis of existing work on genetics and eugenics (Brožek and Dostál 1930). His last contribution to eugenics was also a condemnation of Nazi racial science (Brožek 1935: 29–48). He died in 1934 in Prague.

148

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Eugenics, the Science of Human Improvement and Sanitation based on the Principles of Heredity2 People must try to know themselves, and based on this knowledge start wanting self-­ improvement. [. . .] Only under these important conditions can eugenic efforts proceed to further work; namely, with public approval, [to] take action against individuals who would, with self-­interest at heart in general, and by their conduct stand in the way of improvement of the people, although they are – as a consequence of their illness – altogether dangerous. Because a society that has the right to isolate members who endanger it, or even the right to punish them by death, will surely also have the right to undertake various eugenic measures which would prevent sick, malignant and degenerate people from having offspring. There already exist numerous proposals, prohibitive in this sense, because it has been shown that despite the goodwill of most individuals, who have been informed of the basis and the great importance of the whole matter and who willingly and on their own meet the directives of eugenic movements; there are surely also many people who do not want to be advised. As do people of weak will who, despite all advice, enter into marriages with fit persons, although they are [themselves] nervously or mentally ill, chronic alcoholics or afflicted by pox. What is at stake here are facts that could be called downright criminal, whereby not only the family but also its offspring are thus drawn into poverty and misery, and that is the conviction nowadays, not only of many progressive individuals but of the entire progressive public. There is no doubt that even today, when it comes to marriage, too much emphasis is placed on social status and property, much less on health, which alone can bring peace and contentment even where there is no property to speak of. Unfortunately, it is all too often forgotten that property and status are in fact just the result of work, which can only be accomplished by a healthy body and a healthy soul! Among the most moderate of preventive eugenic measures that would not limit personal freedom, conform quite [well] to our civil code, and which could certainly and most easily be implemented in our social environment, are intimate consultations by engaged couples with their physicians prior to entering into marriage; such consultations are called for by state and civil authorities. [. . .] Also suitable, though requiring the hiring of state salaried physicians, are proposals regarding the establishment and administration of official, scientifically managed family registries [. . .] in which a physician would record not only pathological but also good traits and the physical state of individuals and their families. Such records would certainly be not only of scientific but also of practical importance if they were [made] accessible also to persons who might wish to enter into a relationship with a family. Where similar moderate measures would not suffice, the state surely would have the right to intervene with some stricter laws, eventually also with punishments and fines. Members of society who are dangerous from the perspective of racial hygiene, such as the mad, the deaf and dumb, idiots, and people generally morally degenerate, could be isolated for as long as their breeding ability persists and they could be deprived of the right to marry. In addition, even where such measures eventually would not suffice, as 149

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

is the case in various states in North America, there is no doubt that to protect itself society would have the right to artificially sterilize (so-­called ‘sterilization’) members who pose a threat to it even. Many North American states [. . .] have already introduced such measures. These laws concern the sterilization of criminals, idiots, the feeble-­ minded, the mad, epileptics, and persons morally and sexually degenerate, who after a thorough investigation of the condition of the sick individuals and especially after researching their family circumstances, must be undertaken by a committee elected for a set period of time by the legislative body of the individuals states. Although such intervention by the state in the personal freedom of individuals has many supporters, it is nonetheless also very cruel and has many opponents, even in America. Nonetheless objections are often voiced even against the most moderate eugenic measures and proposals, including those described here in more detail. Usually, it is claimed that these eugenic measures would limit personal freedom or even the laws of the state, thus exposing them to ridicule. It is also often argued that such measures would lead to an increase in prostitution, a rise in the numbers of illegitimate children, and to much disappointment, trouble and discord between engaged couples and their families. Further, it is also suggested that after all, the heredity of complex pathological traits is not certain (!) or that eugenic measures are not needed because, for example, the degenerate will die out on their own. Many such objections are either baseless or can easily be refuted, for example, by a simple reference to the much greater and more merciless limitation of personal freedom and the will of individuals by social status, property, and similar environmental influences. After all, one could refute such objections by simply pointing out the much greater benefit gained by society rather than the individual, who is just a tiny particle of society’s body. And finally, even the most diverse, the most cruel eugenic measures are nothing new. They are found both in cultural and wild nations, often in peculiar social, religious or folk customs and habits. The Indians, the Chinese, the Jews, and the Greeks had them, and they are still practised by some inferior tribes of Australia, South Africa, Sumatra, and others. Translation by Anna Pilátová

150

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Břetislav Foustka

(1862, Trpín u Poličky–1947, Poděbrady)

Břetislav Foustka was born in 1862 in Trpín u Poličky, a small village in East Bohemia, in the Austrian Empire. He received a doctorate in philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague in 1888. During his university studies, he also visited Berlin and Paris. After graduation, he worked as a secondary school teacher, first at a Gymnasium in Třeboň, later in the Prague quarter of Smíchov. In 1904, he received his Habilitation based on his extensive study on degeneration Slabí v lidské společnosti: ideály humanitní a degenerace národů (The Weak in Human Society: Humanitarian Ideals and the Degeneration of the Nation), which was also published as a book (Foustka 1904). In 1915, he was appointed as extraordinary professor, and in 1919 he became the first Czech Professor of Sociology. In his sociological work Foustka was significantly influenced by Franklin H. Giddins (1855–1931) whose Elements of Sociology (1898) he translated into Czech in 1900. After the creation of Czechoslovakia he continued to teach at the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University (Filozofické Fakulty Univerzity Karlovy v Praze) – where in 1928 he also served as a dean – until his retirement in 1932. In the late 1910s, Foustka published an influential study on child welfare and protection (Foustka 1916), but he was mostly interested in the effect of social and biological factors he viewed as ‘degenerative’, alcohol for instance. He was one of the founders and organizer of the anti-­alcohol movement in Bohemia, and between 1922 and 1938 he was President of the Czechoslovak Abstinent Society (Československý Abstinentní Svaz). During the inter-­war period, he published a number of studies on this subject, including Abstinence jako kulturní problém (Abstinence as a Cultural Problem) (Foustka 1919), Alkoholismus a tělesná výkonnost národa (Alcoholism and Physical Performance of the Nation) (Foustka 1922a), and Alkoholismus a ideály národa (Alcoholism and Ideals of the Nation) (Foustka 1922b), and finally Alkoholism a organism (Alcoholism and Organism) (Foustka 1923a). Foustka’s eugenics was based mainly on British and American sources and in particular, on Francis Galton’s work. His early articles dealt with the problem of marriage and depopulation (Foustka 1903: 321–37). By the 1920s, Foustka sought to provide eugenics with ethical foundations, a subject he broached in his contribution to the 1922 conference celebrating Mendel’s legacy (Foustka 1925: 121–9). Foustka’s 1923 study Sociologie a etika eugenizmu (Sociology and Ethics of Eugenics), first published as an article in the journal Česká Mysl (Czech Mind) in 1923, consitutes one of the most original Czech contributions to eugenics (Foustka 1923b: 1–12). The text is characterized by a rather keen nation-­building ethos and extensive social reform, quite typical of the first decade after the establishment of the new Czechoslovak state, which in some places reaches an almost religious tone. In the Czech context, however, no one 151

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

followed Foustka in this particular direction; in the 1930s, the biologist and philosopher Emanuel Rádl (1873–1942) wrote on ethics and eugenics, but in a rather critical manner (Rádl 1930). After his retirement from the Faculty of Philosophy, Foustka was no longer active in the Czech eugenic movement, although he remained involved with the abstinence movement. He died in Poděbrady in 1947.

152

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Ethics and Eugenics3 No destruction of life, no weakening of life, no enjoyment of life; these words certainly characterize the modern age. But if this were to mean a blind protection of life, it would not suffice: blindness is not good anywhere, and by acting on instinct, and instinct alone, we could hardly manage to protect life. The new age demands more: to care deliberately and not just care, but to multiply and augment life. A new ideal was then formulated. It is based on the conviction that organic fitness is the source of physical and mental fitness (many people have no more than a healthy hand or a healthy brain to earn their loaf of bread), is the foundation of mental and moral progress (and life is a harmony of body and spirit), and is the source of immense personal and social benefits. The enjoyment of life has, alongside other conditions, such as social, economic, and so on, also its somatic, physical foundation, just like dissatisfaction, irritability, pessimism, and despair, [which] are often grounded deep in the organism. This is not just a matter of individuals. Today, and in the future, care of the successful biological development of nations and all cultured mankind is a pertinent problem, not only scientific but a practical one as well. The beginnings of an organized battle against toxins, [which] endanger biological vitality; as well as modern efforts to establish a new physical culture and to create entire institutions previously unknown (consider in this context the importance of ministries of public health, and so on), testify to this. [. . .] A more determined and consistent approach has started to stop the ethnic death of nations and [prepare them] for a new organic blooming; new high ideals have been erected for the physical development of nations, ideals which are national and biological; new ideals versus medieval ascetic ideal! These should be used to value mankind’s physical aspects in a new way. Highest among them are the eugenic ideals. The entire struggle against death, all the work against degenerative elements seem too negative to many people: it protects only the present generations, it does not directly concern future generations, and it does not secure their improvement because such improvement depends on a cultivation of hereditary, degenerative values [sic!]. Nevertheless, those are the values which future generations most depend on. [. . .] It is necessary that people should be well-­born (ευ γίγνοµαι) and that they be born into a good environment. That can best be achieved, it was thought, if one deliberately passes excellent hereditary traits, physical and mental, onto their offspring. Instead of accidental (often ‘unbelievably reckless’) marriage [. . .], and marriages of material convenience. What is proposed is a notion of select marriage, which deliberately unites physically and morally outstanding individuals so that they could bring fit generations into the world, so that they could bequeath to their offspring the highest legacy of health, strength, vivacity, joie de vivre, and competitiveness. Consequently, modern developmental theories of natural science as well as the modern theory of evolution challenge medieval thinking with unparalleled positive ideals, [with] social and nationally biological ideas: to breed on purpose, and thus create a new, fit, and noble race. Spencer crowns his philosophy with ethics, ending with claims of a higher development of mankind and participation in the ‘creation of men’. 153

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

In addition, Nietzsche in his Zarathustra calls for a new, superior offspring. [. . .] This is how eugenic ideals were created; this is how the notion of eugenics as a theory of human improvement was born. Nowadays, alongside eugenics new fields of science are emerging, which are related to it: euthenics, endemics, biological policy and the like, a beautiful thought which many people find altogether stimulating. Galton, the famous founder of eugenics, places in it all his dreams and his life’s work, and believes that in the future, it could be sanctified as a national religion or perhaps even become the religion of the future. It is indeed a beautiful thought because let us just imagine what would it would mean if generations were born that would excel not only in health and physical fitness but would be well equipped, mentally and morally, in their very being, after all even intellectual and emotional traits as well [as] moral dispositions are hereditary. Imagine, for example, that people would be born into this world, who would be moral and chaste, not just because education and training taught them to suppress their evil inclinations but because they are innately, inherently moral and chaste. If in such a way a race emerged, in whose instinctive character there would be no evil inclinations, one that would more easily, pass through the vicissitudes of life. In this way, there may arise quite an angelic race. That would be the highest ideal, higher even perhaps than Christ envisioned. Let us, moreover, imagine the possible social and political, cultural and ethical consequences of this thought: people who would enter into this world would be healthy, fit, vigorous and ready to enjoy life and work. They would be people of fresh mind, blessed with outstanding mental abilities, gifted with good inclinations, repulsed by all wickedness, desiring everything good and beautiful. This would be a new nobility of body and spirit, a completely new noble aristocratism, which would be not just a rare exception but would be common. It would also be a new democratism for a new mankind. [. . .] At the same time, it would be the best way of ridding the world of weakness, illness, physical woes, of fighting death. [. . .] How much suffering would disappear from the world? How many social institutions, now needed to alleviate physical, mental, and material misery that is constantly, incessantly born, would not have to exist and could instead turn towards positive work for the highest cultural good, aiming at creating a new brotherly society of all mankind. [. . .] What are the real possibilities of reaching these ideals? Could they be achieved using the above-­mentioned method of heredity? Eugenics, in the more narrow sense, as a theory of new nobility, points mainly towards this direction, both in the negative sense of elimination of the unfit from the reproductive process of the nation, and in the positive sense of uniting individuals with certain qualities in a selective, select marriage [. . .] A closer examination of human heredity, however, reveals certain obstacles: [. . .] for example, there is no possibility of creating ‘pure lines’; it is not possible to breed brothers with sisters, it is not possible to conclusively determine the dominant and the recessive traits, and so on. In short, the ratios of heredity in humans are extraordinarily complex and a eugenic experiment based on a scientific basis of heredity in humans still faces great obstacles. Should we then reject this eugenic method? Not at all, never! After all, the theory of heredity is very young and despite that has already brought 154

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

uncommonly valuable results. We do not know what the future will bring. It will be necessary to continue research [with] patience. Here, truly divine patience is needed. [. . .] The philosophy of evolution bequeath to the future no higher thought than the ideal biological regeneration of the world, which should also be the way towards a higher spirituality. [. . .] In contrast with the medieval ideal, the modern age wilfully recognizes the care for the nation’s biological values. If in earlier times, the humanitarian ideal strove to implement those aspects of human nature that are perhaps connected with human spirituality, and its aim was, for example, to implement the natural laws of human reason and conscience, but also to defend civil liberties, political rights, linguistic and national rights, as well as social rights, which should bestow full human character on the people, workers, women and so on; now the aim is also to defend full humanity in its physical aspect. Moreover, here lies the ethical importance of eugenic ideals. It is carried out with the conviction that there exists a close link between the spirit and the body and that the body is no less sacred than the spirit, that physical perfection is the carrier and guarantor of the higher spirituality in the nation, and that a higher spirituality also consecrates noble physicality. Furthermore, organic decay also condemns spirituality to a downfall. This whole progress of ideas and practical measures, which should implement the biological ideal of the new age, are now only in its earliest beginnings. One cannot know what form its future development may take. Nonetheless, most certainly it shall be a development towards the highest of goals. Although already one can state that when one day this new idea is generally understood and when practice moves deliberately in this direction, the world shall witness a renewal and revival such that earlier renaissances did not even dream of. It shall also be a step towards the higher accomplishment of humanity, another stage on the way to a goal which mankind dimly anticipates but does not clearly know, although eternal laws predetermine it. Translation by Anna Pilátová

155

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Ladislav Haškovec

(1866, Bechyně–1944, Prague)

Ladislav Haškovec was born in 1866 in Bechyně (Ger.: Bechin), Bohemia. After completing his primary and secondary education in Jindřichův Hradec (Ger.: Neuhaus) in 1885, Haškovec studied medicine at the Czech Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague, graduating in 1891. Between 1892 and 1896, he worked as an assistant at the psychiatric clinic (Psychiatrická Klinika) in Prague. Between 1892 and 1893, Haškovec was in Paris, studying with the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93), whose work he then publicized in Central Europe (Haškovec 1895). In 1896, Haškovec received his Habilitation in neurology and opened a private practice in Prague. Ten years later, he was appointed an honorary extraordinary professor at Charles University and, until 1915, he was also the director of the Department of Nervous Diseases at the Na Františku Hospital in Prague. During this period, Haškovec also served as a regular expert witness for nervous and mental diseases with the Provincial Court in Prague. In 1919, he was appointed full professor. Between 1925 and 1926, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University and Director of the Neurological Institute until he retired in 1936. Haškovec was the founder of Czech neurology. He understood neurology in a rather broad sense; that is, including endocrinology, for example. He contributed significantly to the understanding of the aetiology of numerous diseases, such as acathisia.4 Also highly valued were his works on the thyroid gland and neurohistology. He studied the influence of alcohol on the heart and blood circulation (Haškovec 1900), but was also interested in morphology, anthropology, physiotherapy, and especially child neuropsychiatry (Haškovec 1899). Haškovec was an active teacher who educated a whole generation of Czech psychiatrists and neurologists. He summarized his views on the social aspects of nervous diseases in his Sociální význam chorob nervových (Social Impact of Nervous Diseases) (Haškovec 1930). No less important was his contribution to Czech scientific culture in general; for example, in 1904 he founded the journal Revue v Neurologii, Psychiatrii, Fyzikální a Dietetické Terapii (Review in Neurology, Psychiatry, Physical and Dietetic Therapy), which under a different name still exists today. This journal remained the official journal of the Czech eugenic movement until 1924. Haškovec also maintained an extensive international network and was member of numerous professional associations, including the Polish Society of Neurology (Polskiego Towarszystwa Neurolgiczne), Société de Psychiatrie de Paris and the Royal Medico-Psychological Society in London. Haškovec was a founding member and the first president of the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society; his younger son Vladimír (1903–70), also a neurologist, was the last president of that society. Haškovec viewed eugenics mainly as an organized effort to 156

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

implement various prophylactic measures he had been trying to promote on his own prior to 1915, when the Society was founded. These measures related mainly to the effort to establish mandatory premarital medical examinations, a subject he popularized extensively at international conferences after 1900. He first presented his views in 1902, entitled Snahy veřejného zdravotnictví v otázce smlouvy manželské (The Aims of Public Healthcare Regarding a Marriage Contract), and then again in 1912 in a book entitled Snahy eugenické (Eugenic Efforts) (Haškovec 1912). In both works Haškovec propounded a hereditarian view of biological degeneration and advocated the creation of a system of public health based on preventive measures to protect the general health of the population. He re-­stated the importance of heredity for medicine and eugenics at the international conference organized by the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Gregor Mendel’s birth (Haškovec 1925b: 107–20). In 1919, however, the draft bill for the introduction of marriage certificates he prepared was not adopted by the newly formed Czechoslovak parliament. Undeterred, Haškovec continued to advocate the introduction of marriage certificates during the 1920s, both at home and abroad (Haškovec 1928). Another area Haškovec was active in, especially during the early times of the Czech (Czechoslovak) eugenic movement, was the protection of youth and child welfare. During the 1920s Haškovec was also one of the most active Czech eugenicists in the international eugenic movement. He participated in the Second International Eugenic Congress held in New York in 1921 (Haškovec 1923: 435–42), and was instrumental in the organization of the Second Session of the International Institute of Anthropology, held in Prague in September 1924, chairing the session devoted to eugenics (Institut International d’Anthropologie: IIe Session Prague 1926: 453–539). Towards the end of his life, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he worked mostly on his own family’s genealogy. Haškovec died in Prague in 1944.

157

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Eugenics Movement in the Czechoslovak Republic5 The study of medicine and of public health has for a long time been highly developed in Bohemia. The public health movement, both through the stringency of the laws and through public instruction, through executive organs, and through the doctors and the great number of earnest volunteers and humanitarian societies, has rendered great service, not only to the Czech nation but also to the nations of Western Europe. Here is a splendidly attested example: It was only by reason of the great enterprise of the Czech doctors, and thanks to the high degree of enlightenment of the Czech population, that the contagious diseases which inevitably accompany war did not spread over a wide area throughout our land and subsequently continue their march from the East to the West. For a long time past, in Bohemia, war has been waged against tuberculosis, efforts have been made to restrain drunkenness in so far as this factor demoralizes the individual and generations by rendering them unfit to sustain the struggle for existence. For a long time, in our country, we have tried to control prostitution and to protect [our citizens] from venereal infections, and have exercised supervision over the physical and moral health of children. Popular medical literature in Bohemia is very rich and very much in demand among all classes of the population. Furthermore, we are, in Bohemia, always in touch with the new, progressive ideas, with humanitarianism and with the new social and scientific ideas, so we were all prepared for new eugenic ideas, even before the war. The first efforts along the line of eugenics, in Bohemia, date independently of American and English efforts, from the year 1900. In my capacity [as a] neuropathologist, realizing to the full the sad consequences of pathological heredity and of congenital diseases, and believing that all our clinical researches should have a practical purpose from the social point of view, and that through them we should seek to bring relief to suffering humanity everywhere, I have been occupied by eugenic problems since as early as 1896; and I treated this subject for the first time in popular lectures in the month of January in 1900. As long ago as then, I called attention to the need of a physical examination before marriage. The following year (1901), I proposed, in the Academy of Medicine in Prague, the submission to the Government of a bill seeking the requirement, [for] prospective husbands and wives, of health certificates. In 1902, in the article ‘Public Health Efforts and the Question of the Marriage Contract’ [. . .] I made public the motives which had led me to make this proposition to the Academy of Medicine; and I referred again to these arguments on the occasion of the International Congress [in] Lisbon, in 1906 [. . .] I summarize these arguments: The public health movement of our day is concerned almost solely with the physical health of the man, and deals especially with our contemporaries. But man does not fall sick solely from external influences. There are thousands of people who become incapable of sustaining the life struggle because they have come into the world sick and weak as a result of the infirmities of their parents; or who are born with such frail constitutions that the least shock – trifling to a healthy person – renders them ill. The laws of pathological heredity and of the heredity of the morbid disposition, as well as of 158

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

infantile diseases proceeding from poisoning or infection through the parents, should command the immediate attention of the hygienist. [. . .] I consider it an established fact that the union of two individuals proceeding from families in which any of the above-­named diseases has become a family attribute and has appeared, either in its complete development or in different modifications, in several generations and even in the most distant relatives – such a union produces diseased offspring. It is from this enfeebling of the race that ignorant society must be defended. [. . .] It is necessary to protect, in so far as possible, the woman, or the man, against the transmission of syphilis, of gonorrhoea, of pulmonary tuberculosis, and against the effects of alcoholism. It is necessary, likewise, to protect posterity from dangerous hereditary diseases, such as syphilis and tuberculosis, in so far as possible. In order to even partly attain this end, it would be necessary to require that everyone consult a physician before marriage. This consultation might remain absolutely secret. The certificate issued by the physician would simply indicate that there was no obstacle prohibiting marriage. [. . .] In the same year (1902) [. . .], I requested the Society of Neurology of Paris to create an international committee to be composed of physicians, consulting jurists and sociologists, to organize the fight against human degeneration due to pathological heredity – a committee which should undertake the preparation of drafts of laws prohibiting marriages from which only seriously diseased offspring, incapable of sustaining the struggle for existence, could proceed. The Society did not wish to take the initiative in this matter. I set forth the necessity and the value of the eugenic movement in Bohemia not only from the physical point of view, but in a higher sense, from the point of view especially of moral, national and human welfare. I was and I am convinced that through well-­ conducted and developed eugenic efforts, we may strengthen and increase in power the life of our nation, both internally and externally. Furthermore, the very complex problems which face the eugenicists and which have so important a bearing on family, social and economic life, and all the juridical and pedagogical points of eugenics [. . .] are familiar to me. Eugenics is concerned with the health, not only of the individual, but of the entire nation. A healthy nation, as healthy as possible from the psychical and moral point of view, and with well-­developed altruistic sentiments, holds in check perverse and anti-­social instincts and works for the fraternity of the nations, for peace and for true liberty. Even of this high importance do I consider eugenic efforts, and I am certain that eugenic progress among the civilized peoples of the world can alone prepare for the future the way to a permanent society of nations. That is why my efforts have been unceasing. Both in magazine articles and by word of mouth in my popular university lectures I have been trying to spread eugenic ideas in Bohemia. I have not been alone. [. . .] In 1908, there was founded in Bohemia a Czech Infants’ Protective Commission which has succeeded in developing all our eugenic ideas. Through it we have obtained some good results. A great humanitarian movement, the foundation of an asylum for unfortunate children, a bureau dispensing free eugenic and medico-­social advice – that 159

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

is what the commission accomplished at the beginning of its career. [. . .] At the same time, Dr Herfort devoted himself to eugenic research in the asylum for idiot children, at Ernestinum, and worked in collaboration with Dr Brožek. They brought about the foundation in Bohemia of the first central eugenics bureau. [. . .] In 1914, I founded, with the eminent colleague and distinguished professor of biology, Vladislav Růžička, a supplement, in my Review of Neurology, dealing with Heredity and Eugenics, which, through the original articles of Professor Růžička of the Biological Institute and through analyses of all the modern literature, seeks to inform its readers of the eugenic movement in all countries. In 1915, we founded, through the assistance of the above-­mentioned Infants’ Protective Commission of Bohemia, a Czech Eugenic Society of Prague. In the year 1915 began systematic work in Bohemia. Professor Růžička’s Biological Institute became a centre of earnest theoretical work. The Eugenic Society, in so far as was possible during the war, continued to propagate eugenic ideas among the people, and there was at hand a number of devoted collaborators both at the Biological Institute and in the Society itself. [. . .] We have defined the aim of the Society in these terms: (1) the special study of biology; (2) the dissemination of knowledge of the conditions of physical and psychic health among all classes of the population, together with the conviction of responsibility toward the future generations; (3) the fight against hereditary diseases and those of early infancy; (4) the encouragement of care for women in confinement, of the new born, and of nursing women; (5) the battle against alcoholism and tuberculosis, against venereal diseases and against all the other factors which destroy the roots of the nation. The Society pursues this aim by means of popular lectures and publications, and it has tried to circulate its propaganda from the elementary school on. It is fostering the idea of creating [in] Prague a hygienic museum as a centre of hygienic study and education for the people, and it has persistently developed the idea of founding a ministry of public hygiene. This ministry having been established in 1917 still under the Austrian regime, the Society hastened to address to it a resolution covering the whole matter of eugenics, and when we again secure our liberty the Society submitted the same resolution to the Czechoslovak government. [. . .] The Society has contributed to the founding of the Czech Society against Venereal Diseases, and is making every effort toward the creation of a society for a hygienic museum of Prague. We pursued all these large aims before the war. They are still more urgent today, when all the civilized nations have lost so heavily in men on the field of battle, and when the dreadful consequences of the Great War threaten future generations. All these desiderata are now, under the Republic, receiving attention and earnest efforts of our young Ministry of Public Health, as well of our Red Cross. In the Ministry of Public Health have been elaborated laws working against venereal diseases, and efforts are being made to reorganize the teaching of hygiene in schools; a law is being prepared governing the physical education of the people and projecting a high school of physical education at Tyrš. The Red Cross is making every effort to organize toward a common purpose all the sanitary and humanitarian societies of the Republic, which are very common. 160

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

I can with pleasure affirm the favourable welcome and the effective support which the diffusion of eugenic ideas has met with among the Czech people. It is especially with the big gymnastic society of the Sokols, the largest association of Czech women [. . .], with the high school students, the working men’s societies and the military authorities that eugenic ideas have found the heartiest welcome.

161

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Vladislav Růžička

(1870, Brno–1934, Prague)

After completing his primary and secondary education in his native town of Brno (Ger.: Brünn) in 1888, Růžička went on to study at the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague (Medizinischen Fakultät der Karls-Universität), graduating in July 1901. Towards the end of his studies, he worked first as a demonstrator at the Institute for General and Experimental Pathology (Institut für Allgemeine und Experimentelle Pathologie) and the Institute for Embryology (Embryologischen Institut), then, between 1900 and 1901 at the Institute for Hygiene (Hygiene-Institut). In March 1907, Růžička received his Habilitation in general biology and experimental morphology. In the same year, he visited Munich for the purpose of further study. In 1911, he became a de facto head of the new biological institute at the Faculty of Medicine, which was after 1915–16 known as the Institute for General Biology and Experimental Morphology in Prague (Institut für Allgemeine Biologie und Experimentelle Morphologie an der Medizinischen Fakultät der Böhmischen Universität in Prag). In terms of his research, Růžička focused mainly on issues of morphological metabolism, which motivated his interest in heredity. He was influenced mainly by the school of developmental mechanics created by the German biologist Wilhelm Roux (1850–1924), whose views he advocated (Růžička 1910), and whom he eventually also personally befriended. Růžička systematically studied the relationship between medicine and heredity, summarizing his views on this subject in two books published during World War I (Růžička 1917a and 1917b). Most of Růžička’s research on heredity was based mainly on experimental research of chemical processes in living organisms (Růžička 1919d). As a result, until the early 1930s, his views on Mendelism were rather reserved. As he put it in 1923: ‘It does not suffice only to draw attention to the Mendelian explanation of human pedigrees, it is imperative to also point out the most principal difficulties which must be borne in mind, especially so when we have to read pedigrees of a pathological character’ (Růžička 1923b: 449). Růžička was one of the founders of the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society and throughout the 1920s represented it in the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations. He was also active in the Eugenic Commission within the Masaryk Academy of Labour established in 1919 (Růžička 1919c: 319–20). In 1920, Růžička published an important article on eugenics entitled ‘Diagnostika a eugenika’ (‘Diagnostics and Eugenics’), in which he outlined the importance of theories of human improvement for the nascent Czechoslovak state (Růžička 1920: 249–51), a perspective he refined in 1921 in his ‘Motion for the Organization of Eugenic Research’ presented to the Second International Congress of Eugenics. After a devastating world war, Růžička argued, ‘the necessity of eugenic research made itself felt very appreciably. As the world is undergoing a 162

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

regeneration and everything is being organized or reorganized it is imperative to also improve the organization of eugenics’ (Růžička 1923b: 452). Not surprisingly, then, when the Czechoslovak Institute of National Eugenics was established in 1923, Růžička became its director (Sekla 1935b: 101–2). It allowed him to pursue eugenic research in relation to demography and sociology. For example, in the late 1920s, the Institute focused on ‘(a) physical bases of heredity, (b) differential fertility of social classes, (c) movement of population in the Carpatho-Russian district of the Republic, and (d) heritage and ecology of longevity’ (Růžička 1930: 70). During the 1920s, Růžička formulated his own theory of heredity, which was based largely on the notion of so-­called ‘progenic constitution’; that is, the idea that genes always develop de novo (from the beginning), largely in reaction to the external environment. He presented this theory in his opening speech to the 1922 Mendel conference (Růžička 1925: 31–49), and then developed it in his most known book entitled Biologické základy eugeniky (Biological Foundations of Eugenics), published in 1923 (Růžička 1923a). Experimental research inspired his lasting interest in the causes of ageing and the causality of senescence, which he summarized in a theory of ‘hysteresis of plasma’. This subject also formed the core of his research at the Institute for General Biology and Experimental Morphology, and he presented his theory of the ‘gene of a life-­span’ at the 5th International Congress of Genetics (V. Internationalen Kongress für Vererbungswissenschaft) held in 1927 in Berlin. In 1925, together with the American biologist Raymond Pearl (1879–1940), Růžička was one of the founders of the Biologia Generalis: International Journal of General Biology, published in Vienna. He died in Prague in 1934.

163

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Biological Foundations of Eugenics6 If we are to judge eugenics rightly, we should always have in mind its noble goal: to prevent pathological phenomena, to support the physically and mentally fit by arranging the marriage of suitable individuals and by preventing the marriage of those unsuitable, and thus ultimately achieving a physically and mentally healthy society. Let us, therefore, keep in mind that the most beautiful racial legacy which parents can give their children is their own healthy body and healthy spirit. Most happy will then be the offspring who can say of themselves with racial pride that they were born well because they inherited from their parents excellent physical and mental traits. [. . .] It is obvious that if eugenics is to be successful, restricting the principle of selection by the principle of adaptation must be practised. In this way the principle of altruism, the other side of nature, will also have a say. It should not be the case that only mutual destruction and mutual competition prevail but also, as always emphasized by modern culture, mutual aid and joining together to achieve a shared goal. The highest goal of people is to be human. Regarding eugenic requirements, with respect to: I. Internal, constitutive elements of development, these are mainly the following: 1. The comprehensive care and preservation of fertility as well as adequate social and biological condition of the rural population, which is the very stem of the nation, from which it continuously renews itself. 2. The development of all talents and their appropriate multiplication by reform of education and of the social circumstances of the leading social classes. 3. The fight against alcoholism, which not only destroys sex cells (gametes) but also prevents and disturbs their development. 4. The fight against criminality and inferiority using eugenic weapons. On this point, I repeat that at the moment the issue of sterilization is, in my view, premature. It would only be justified if it did not harm important interests of the person who is to be sterilized and would bring adequate benefit to society. [. . .] [Harry H.] Laughlin’s proposal to permanently sterilize the bottom 10 per cent of the population in order to eliminate all inferior and asocial elements, I consider excessive. 5. Comprehensive care of pregnant women and women in labour, including an effective reform of midwifery in the sense of improving the general as well as specialized education of birth assistants; from the eugenic point of view, the purpose of these measures is to place expectant mothers in conditions which enable a normal development and nourishment of the embryo. 6. Laws on protecting the embryo and the normal birth rate. Expulsion of the embryo must not be allowed except for medical reasons, which however should take into account individual consideration as well as social circumstances and eugenic suitability. The eugenic importance of marriage, where natural fertility is best utilized, should be emphasized. 164

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

7. Comprehensive healthcare and cultural care of nursing infants and children, protection of youth with special consideration of normal sexual development in order to facilitate a normal development of body and mind, which is conducive to the development of sex cells. 8. The establishment of eugenic medical counselling where anyone could receive well-­founded advice regarding eugenic issues (choice of profession, issues of marriage, and so on). 9. The establishment of medical registers which would include a description of the state of health, traits, a list of talents, character features, etc. in order to provide an overview of the quality and direction of functional physical and mental fitness of individuals starting from their birth.   Health registers, such as those briefly characterized above, are a prerequisite of a great number of very important eugenic measures. They are also a precondition of the proper functioning of psycho-­technical counselling regarding the choice of profession. Their management should be entrusted to physicians who would thereby gather reliable material for evaluating the eugenic value of each individual. Every healthcare or charitable institution (be it any kind of hospital, dispensary, institutions for the inferior, etc.) should be required to keep such registers regarding their inmates. That would, however, also require a sufficient number of auxiliary personnel, if only because statements of an inmate cannot be trusted regarding his/her family tree. It is necessary to verify statements by personal investigation and given the nature of the matter, that can be carried out only by a eugenically trained physician. It would be, after all, be most desirable that eugenic training be provided to all official physicians, including school physicians and those who hold offices in the Ministry of Health. 10. Introduction of health certificates for engaged couples as a precondition of marriage in order to implement the desired marriage health control, and that not only regarding immediate findings (current diseases or shortcomings) but also – and above all – regarding ancestry, that is, based on an analysis of heredity in the family tress. In our country, this requirement has been for many years (since 1901) promoted by Prof. Haškovec. Though it is still claimed that there is not enough material to enable qualified judgements of physicians regarding offspring, it is shown below that all substantial objections against the introduction of health certificates for the purpose of marriage can easily be refuted. [. . .]  It is necessary to insist on this basic eugenic requirement and again call for its implementation. Even if at first it met with limited success, its prospects will certainly improve, especially as soon as we establish auxiliary institutions which would enable a systematic utilization of health certificates for the eugenic purpose of marriage. What is at stake is 1. The introduction of health registers, and 2. The establishment of an institute for national eugenics. [. . .]   Nonetheless, it is also necessary to organize: 165

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

11. Eugenic research, which should be the foundation of practical measures in the area of legislation and administration. This requirement is even more justified when it is taken into account that it is the calling of eugenics to solve issues related to the very foundations of national existence. Each nation has a moral duty to secure, as well as possible, the freedom and status it had won among other nations. Having learned from the history of extinct nations, we realize that it is the task of national eugenics to keep a nation alive and capable of further development. This means that its task is to work towards the maintenance, if not multiplication, of the number of its members and towards a preservation of its biological characteristics. It should thus take care of both 1. The quantity and 2. The quality of offspring. Both can only be achieved through the protection of [the] normal national constitution, which by its very nature ensures the correct continuity of all functions, including fertility and the quality of the offspring. This can best be achieved by providing the necessary conditions under which a nation can achieve a full development of all its mental and physical abilities and follow its own course to achieve the highest goals in the world. This certainly implies that one should use all means to improve the social and biological fitness of the nation. [. . .]  If the proposal to establish an institute for national eugenics was adopted and carried out, I believe that its tendencies and purpose are in agreement with the aims of the current times, we could claim to have provided a scientific foundation of our national existence, a scientific guarantee of our future in the eugenic sense. This is because results delivered by the proposed institutions would enable a truly scientific justification of population policy, activities in biological education, and socially genetic measures. Now turning to: II. External causes of development. [. . .] Measures working in the sense of adaptive principles include the institutions created by individual and public hygiene as well as all social establishments which improve the economic situation of mankind and enable a life that is as close as possible to nature itself, though naturally using advantages and instruments offered by the high culture of our times. Eugenic requirements aimed in this direction are of two types: 12. Requirements identical with the demands of healthcare in general. In the sense of general biology, this concerns the application of knowledge regarding the external conditions of processes of life and the influence of equipment connected with the culture of our times; that is, application of knowledge in the area of human ecology. 13. Requirements concerning influences which one can suppose to influence internal factors. Here, it needs to be admitted, we move in an area as yet unexplored. Despite that, even here one can use various findings, as we have shown in previous considerations. It is mainly the external factors, which 166

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

influence the creation of sexual cells, thus mainly influencing fertility but also the quality of embryonic matter they contain. In humans, the most important of such influences is nourishment. [. . .]  All requirements I have spoken of seem obvious to any physician but it is necessary that they be self-­evident also to the common people.   That is why eugenics also expresses a wish of a general kind, namely, it requires: 14. State support of both scientific and popular eugenic literature by subsidizing such enterprises, establishing prizes, and so on. 15. Legislative establishment of youth education in matters of medicine and biology until the age of sexual maturity, whereby an important role could be assigned to school physicians. 16. General eugenic education of the population by introducing eugenic principles in health education starting from the very beginning of school education (readers!) up to university level; students of all university faculties should form an opinion on the fundamental importance of eugenics for the nation. This is connected with the requirement: 17. That eugenics should assume a position reflecting its importance in the education of physicians in general, which, however, presupposes the establishment of relevant chairs at medical faculties. In this respect, we have been preceded by other nations (America, Britain, Sweden, Germany and Russia). It would be, however, also useful to include eugenics among subjects tested during Rigorosum examinations and especially during state medical examinations. The core of a eugenic study would, of course, be formed by the theory of human heredity and genetics.   Finally, in desiring a eugenic education for the nation, eugenics demands: 18. Compulsory instruction of engaged couples, adult youth, military, and parents about the importance of eugenics.   First of all, one would wish that this instruction would lead to an increased sense of responsibility of an individual towards the collective, to an awareness of the need to take others into account if one wishes that he or she be taken into account; this would cultivate a sense of responsibility towards one’s descendants. It is necessary to cultivate a sense of solidarity both with one’s contemporaries and one’s descendants. If this altruistic stance is understood, it will lead to the disappearance of many an obstacle still standing in the way of eugenic efforts. It would then be understood that eugenics, in endeavouring to regulate reproduction and in reacting to natural circumstances, builds the very foundation of the state, the nation, and society in general, and deserves full appreciation from all participating parties. It opens the way to a new culture of brotherhood and peace. Translation by Anna Pilátová 167

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

A Motion for the Organization of Eugenical Research7 In the post-­war days the necessity of eugenical research made itself felt very appreciably. As the word is undergoing a regeneration and everything is being organized and reorganized, it is imperative to improve also the organization of eugenics. This demand is especially justifiable as eugenical research is not only concerned with the evils caused by the war, but also about the questions connected in general with the substance of national and racial being. It is a moral duty of every nation to ensure as best as possible the fullest liberty and progress amidst the rest of humanity. This can be best attained by ensuring the evolutional conditions which might enable a nation to reach the utmost development of its spiritual and physical abilities, and follow its own road to the highest goals of mankind. This, of course, means to employ all possible means leading to a socially-­biological improvement in the quality of a nation. In the first place, there are means which affect the very roots of a national being, i.e. the reproduction of individuals composing a nation, means that are offered to us by the genetical research which has experienced so wide a development. Eugenics having recourse to these means become national eugenics in the most literal sense of the word. Their aim is to maintain and develop the biological individuality of a nation and prevent the decline of its biological organization in whatever respect. The individuality of a nation and its socially-­biological efficiency rests in the harmony between its hereditary constitution and the influence of its external conditions. These two factors control its qualities which are determined and maintained by them. It is a still distant aim of eugenics to get acquainted with their action so as to understand the origin of all characters marking the individuals of a nation. If we find the causes of their origin it will be easy for us to control their development, and influence the same according to the requirements prompted by the object of eugenics, i.e. the improvement of the social-­biological efficiency of a nation.

168

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Jan Bělehrádek

(1896, Prague–1980, London)

After completing his primary and secondary education in Smíchov (Ger.: Smichow), a district of Prague, Jan Bělehrádek continued his education at the Faculty of Medicine, where he enrolled in 1916, and later also at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Charles University in Prague. He graduated on 3 June 1922. After a research fellowship in Leuven, Belgium (1922–3), Bělehrádek started working as an assistant at the newly established Institute of Biology (Biologický Ústav) of the Faculty of Medicine at Masaryk University in Brno. In 1925, he received his Habilitation in general biology. In 1927, he was appointed extraordinary professor and became Director of the Institute of Biology. After the death of Vladislav Růžička in 1934, Bělehrádek returned to Prague, where he was appointed head of the Institute for General Biology at the Faculty of Medicine (Ústav Obecné Biologie) at Charles University. In the same year, he was named full professor, and published his main study on eugenics entitled Dědičnost a eugenika (Heredity and Eugenics) (Bělehrádek 1934). An initial version appeared as an article published in the journal Hygiena (Hygiene) in 1931 (Bělehrádek 1931: 97–112). In the academic year 1937/8, Bělehrádek was elected Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University. As a social democrat, he was highly active in the anti-­fascist movement. After the rise of Nazism, he openly and actively protested against linking eugenics to the racial theories of Gobineau, Günther, or Rosenberg. On the other hand, however, he did not oppose the use of negative eugenic measures such as sterilization. During the 1930s, together with Ignaz Zollschan and other Czech scientists in Prague, he initiated the creation of an anti-Nazi Society for the Scientific Study of (Human) Races (Společnost pro Vědecké Studium Ras). The Society existed for two years only, between 1936 and 1938. Bělehrádek was mainly a representative of a holistic approach in modern biology, namely a comprehensive and analytic perspective, a view he tirelessly advocated. In line with the main tenets of Gestaltpsychologie, put forward by the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology, Bělehrádek proposed a holistic approach to viewing the cell, but applied this perspective also to other areas of life sciences. He studied, for example, the comparative physiology of the heart muscle and the influence of temperature on processes in living organisms and the structure of protoplasma. He discovered the influence of catabolites on anabolism and researched the importance of water for life and various cycles in living organisms. Bělehrádek summarized the most important results of his research in several monographs intended for the broader public, such as Moderní názory o povaze živé hmoty (Modern Views in the Nature of Living Matter, 1928), Nauka o člověku (The Theory of Humans, 1936), Zrakem biologa (Through the Eyes of a Biologist, 1942) and 169

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Člověk v Číslech (A Man in Numbers, 1945). Bělehrádek was also the founder of a popular-­scientific journal Věda a Život (Science and Life), and one of the authors of the influential textbook on Obecná biologie (General Biology), which was first published in 1940, and which in the post-­war period served as a most successful basic text for the study of biology in the medical faculties of Czechoslovakia. Bělehrádek was a proponent of reformed, socialist and socially oriented eugenics similar to the one proposed by John B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) or Hermann J. Müller (1890–1967), which he understood mainly in terms of the practical implementation of scientific findings (Bělehrádek 1937: 45–56). He especially advocated the incorporation of eugenics into the system of preventive medicine, as illustrated by the book Šťastné dítě (The Happy Child) he co-­authored in 1941 (Závadová and Bělehrádek 1941), and also promoted a close link between eugenics and population policy. Due to his socialist convictions, Bělehrádek had a difficult life during the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. The Gestapo in Prague arrested him first in 1939, and then at the very end of the war; he was also imprisoned in the Little Fortress prison in Theresienstadt. After the war, Bělehrádek returned to academic life, serving as Rector of Charles University for the academic year 1945/6. He was also politically active, as a Member of Parliament, and was even proposed as a candidate for the presidency. Following the Communist takeover, he left Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1949, settling first in Paris and later in London. Due to his close friendship with the English evolutionary biologist Julian S. Huxley (1887–1975) Bělehrádek was able to start working in 1949 for UNESCO. Following the political pressure of the Czechoslovak government, he left UNESCO in 1956 and settled in London, becoming a visiting scientist at the Middlesex Medical School. He died in London in 1980.

170

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

The Foundations and Perspectives of Eugenic Initiatives8 An equally difficult problem for genetics is the fact that even geneticists themselves do not yet agree on what type of a person should be improved: whether a type heavily endowed with a certain talent or a type gifted with a versatile mixture of smaller talents. Eugenicists are not even of the same mind as to whether in individuals who generally meet eugenic demands minor hereditary defects and diseases should be forgiven and if so, which ones. In families, welcome and unwelcome genes are mixed in such a way that by removing one kind, we would at the same time remove the other also. This factor is most important in cases where, alongside a particular talent, often a great one, an implicit or explicit inclination towards mental diseases, often grave ones, is inherited. American eugenicists and geneticists have calculated that hereditary feeble-­mindedness is present as a recessive gene in every fourteenth citizen. If, therefore, this hereditary inferiority were to be completely exterminated, one would have to forbid each fourteenth person of either sex from marrying, that is, one would have to ban approximately one-­ seventh of all marriages. According to German statistics, about 30 per cent of all the population have an apparent or hidden hereditary inclination towards mental disease. It is, therefore, clear that an extreme eugenic programme would probably prevent the majority of people from reproducing. If we add the large degree of uncertainty in the diagnostics of some hereditary diseases, especially mental ones, we find that biological obstacles to eugenics are considerable. Eugenics meets similarly large obstacles in the social area. An ideal eugenicist would have to impose on people the morals of a breeding farm if he wanted to be as successful as a real breeder. If we take into consideration that people are above all emotional and moral beings, that they are infused with various preconceptions as well as social and religious principles, and that they find it hard to shake off acquired habits, we have covered the main part of these obstacles. [Alexander Graham] Bell, who was a good sheep breeder and interested in human eugenics, contrasted the main technical difficulties of eugenics in humans and in cattle. He showed what sheep breeding would look like if the farmer had to respect human customs. First of all, he would have to have to let all sheep breed without selection and not be allowed to sterilize any of them. He would then have to pay special attention to the weaklings and the crippled and allow them to breed as well. He would have to prevent one ram mating with more than one ewe; he would have to allow each ewe full freedom in choosing a ram and vice versa, and he would have to ban the breeding of relatives. Under such conditions, it would of course be impossible to achieve any breeding improvement in a flock of sheep. Due to these difficulties, the real programme of contemporary eugenics is limited to the following demands, on which, however, no further concessions can be made: 1. The prevention of the worst hereditary defects by banning marriage or through sterilization. Sterilization of severe psychotics has been carried out first in Switzerland by the removal of the vas deferens or the fallopian tubes. Soon thereafter, this procedure was also legalized in America in the state of Indiana, where in the same year (1907) some 300 mentally ill [citizens] and criminals 171

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

were sterilized. In California, 3,000 mentally ill persons were legally sterilized by 1927. Many other American states ban immigration and marriage of persons afflicted by certain hereditary and other diseases. 2. [Acquiring] a medical certificate before marriage, which was introduced in many American states and which our eugenicists have also been demanding for a number of years, is in rare cases required also in some European countries. In other countries, the initiative was taken by women’s associations, which call for voluntary marital counselling at least. 3. The third point of this emergency programme includes all manners of care for increased fertility of the gifted strata [of society], which we have already discussed. This programme quite clearly takes note only of the extreme variants of the human race, that is, the extremely fit and the extremely worthless. That leaves aside the vast numbers of average humanity, giving them full freedom regarding reproduction and heredity. Some have tried to apply eugenic control here as well, focusing mainly on the purely quantitative aspect of regulating mankind’s reproduction. This issue, however, would demand a separate, more detailed explication. So far, therefore, the yield of eugenic initiatives is very meagre and the programme of eugenics is shrinking to a minimum under the pressure of social and other obstacles. It is a fateful feature of human spiritual development that people have managed to identify the rules for breeding useful organisms, which improve their material conditions, as well as those pertaining to organisms which are harmful to their health. There are but few areas of mental activity where people have achieved such triumphs of reason as in this area. Nevertheless, human morality and ingenuity still did not develop far enough to create similar rules for their own reproduction. It is certain, however, that one day people will have to think about these things more seriously under the pressure of external circumstances even if they do not resolve to do so earlier based on their moral dispositions. Translation by Anna Pilátová

Eugenics and Racism9 There is only one way to liberate society from the hereditary ills, namely to hinder such people that suffer from serious hereditary diseases from conceiving children. This is a demand of the modern eugenic programme. People have talked about the eugenic movement a lot in the past, both in favour and against it. In the meantime eugenics was threatened from another side, namely by the racist movement. The racist ideology does not stand directly opposite modern eugenics. On the contrary, it has hooked into older eugenics. However, in so doing, racism has discredited eugenics, so that it must today protect and defend itself against this alliance. Otherwise it could easily lose the position that it has already gained among wider circles, 172

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

and in the eyes of lay people. Like so many human creations, eugenics too has several variants. There is fantastical, exaggerated and ruthless eugenics that wants to breed man, as one would breed plants and farm animals. There is further a milder form of eugenics that hopes to improve mankind’s hereditary substance through the teaching of hereditary science alone. With all there are all sorts of overlap. The rational and suitably realizable eugenics lies somewhere in the middle. Its demands can be formulated as follows: 1. A mandatory premarital health certificate that does not seek [to] make betrothal impossible or delay it, but that plainly shows both partners what their responsibilities towards their descendants are. 2. Mandatory sterilization of people suffering from serious hereditary diseases, for example, feeble-­mindedness, amaurotic idiocy, severe hereditary nervous disorders that make it impossible for the person concerned to lead an independent life and so on, and of those people whose genetic characteristics [Anlagen] make them seriously and chronically criminal. 3. Material and moral support for the orderly family life and the motherhood of hereditarily healthy families. Such a limited eugenic programme, which alone is practicable, has very little to do with questions of race. There are, however, racial problems that touch upon the eugenic programme. Certain outcomes of human breeding can be more inferior to others, or the mixing with one or the other race could introduce new diseased hereditary traits into the population [. . .] We can summarize these discussions as follows: 1. Racial mixing among humans is eugenically harmless, in so far as it concerns closely related races, particularly within the borders of the white human branch. 2. In so far as certain products of mixing between two distant races appear to be inferior eugenically, such cases, apart from minor exceptions, are of little concern to European affairs. 3. If eugenics wants to extend its programme into the hereditary-­biological preconditions for cultural development, then it must speak out in favour of racial mixing and against the cult of pure blood. 4. The racist point of view and the eugenic programme cannot be reconciled scientifically. Quite the opposite: scientific eugenics should be mindful to avoid linkages with the racist theories of our time. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

173

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Bohumil Sekla

(1901, Kyjov, Moravia–1987, Prague)

After finishing his primary and secondary education in his native Kyjov (Ger.: Bohuslawitz), Bohumil Sekla went on to first study history and then the Czech language at the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague. Soon, however, he started focusing on psychology and, two years later, he transferred to the Faculty of Natural Science, where he studied biology and philosophy of natural science with the biologist and philosopher Emanuel Rádl (1873–1942). In 1928, Sekla became an assistant at Růžička’s Institute for General Biology and Experimental Morphology and at the Institute for National Eugenics. Soon after, he also started studying medicine; he completed these studies at the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University under Jan Bělehrádek’s supervision. At the end of the 1920s and in the early 1930s, Sekla began to work on the issue of human heredity, population policies and eugenics (Sekla 1934a: 47–8 and 1934b). His Dědičnost v přírodě a společnosti (Heredity in Nature and Society) was the first work in which he combined the results of experimental and applied genetics (Sekla 1937). In terms of eugenic research, he focused mainly on the study of depopulation and differential natality of various social groups. As a leftist intellectual, he viewed these issues as matters of expert knowledge applied to current social problems. His research and theories were based on classical genetics, especially Mendelism. He was an active member and long-­term secretary of the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society (between 1933 and 1941, and again between 1945 and 48). In this role he participated in the 11th Meeting of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations held in Zurich in 1934 (Sekla 1935a: 75–6), and contributed to the international eugenic journals, such as Eugenical News (1935b: 101–3) and The Eugenics Review (1936d: 115–17). After the rise of Nazism, he sharply and repeatedly criticized scientific racism, which he saw as distinct from the biology of heredity and, in particular, as different from eugenics. Yet he did agree with the German Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, accepting its eugenic importance (Sekla 1936a: 1–24). In the mid-1930s, Sekla conducted experimental research of both short-­lived and long-­lived Drosophila flies, focusing on the intensity of their metabolism. This interest was inspired mainly by his research visit to Edinburgh, where he worked with the animal geneticist F. A. E. Crew (1886–1973). After the closing of the Czech universities in 1939, Sekla worked as assistant physician and expert in paternity disputes. He was also active in the anti-Nazi resistance during the war and German occupation. In 1946, Sekla was appointed extraordinary professor, thus becoming the very first Professor of Genetics in Czechoslovakia. In 1948, and after Jan Bělehrádek had emigrated, Sekla was appointed full professor and Director of the Institute of Biology of the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague. During the late 1940s and early 174

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

1950s, he continued to publish on various subjects relating to heredity, from human genetics to eugenics. Also, his 1937 book on heredity was republished in 1948. In the 1960s, Sekla was active in the rehabilitation of classical genetics in Czechoslovakia. At the same time, he turned his attention towards cytogenetics. He was the author of important medical textbooks of general and medical biology (Sekla 1962). In the second half of the 1960s, he actively participated in the preparation of the Governmental Resolution on Basic and Applied Research in Genetics. He was also in charge of the management of the departmental plan of research of human and medical genetics and helped with the creation of a policy of medical genetics, adopted by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Health in 1969, which fully incorporated genetics in the practice of preventive care in Czechoslovakia. He retired in 1970 but remained active in public life until his death in 1987.

175

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

A Czech Eugenicist, Professor Dr. Vladislav Růžička, and the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society that He Founded10 There is at present no independent eugenic periodical in the Czech language; papers on eugenics and allied matters are published in the main medical periodicals and in the bulletins of several scientific associations, as in that of the National Academy of Sciences, or of the Masaryk Academy of Work. In the latter association, a Eugenic Committee was formed under the presidency of the late Professor Růžička; similarly, a Eugenic Section was formed at the Committee of Mental Hygiene, which was constituted under the auspices of the Ministry of Public Health. Besides the Institute [of National Eugenics], the [Eugenic] Society also created a premarital eugenic dispensary in Prague; similar dispensaries are also in two other greater towns of the country. The proper eugenical significance of these institutions is not too great, because it has been found impossible to obtain an official authorization for the medical examination before marriage. It was found, that for the most part, the visitors of the premarital dispensaries were persons of good actual and hereditary health, in whom the sense of responsibility for the progeny was awakened, e.g. by an article in the daily press or otherwise. At the occasion of a discussion on the reform of a paragraph of the criminal law, concerning the punishment of artificial abortion, the late President of the [Eugenics] Society proposed to introduce, besides the ‘social’ also a eugenical indication for the permission of the artificial abortion, namely, when with all probability a defective progeny could be expected. But the whole discussion on the reformatory proposition turned to the negative [eugenics] and the proposition was withdrawn. So the main activity of the [Eugenic] Society lies in the propaganda of eugenical principles in all classes of the people. Recently, naturally, the German Race Hygiene programme has aroused general attention. At the end of the last year, a discussion of eugenical sterilization took place in the Czech Medical Association in Prague, with a generally approved conclusion that for our country, also, the need of proper eugenic legislation becomes urgent. The evolution of the population of the country shows that the same contra-­selective agencies must be already at work here as they are in the western countries of Europe.

Eugenics in Czechoslovakia11 Population Trends The eugenics problem in Czechoslovakia is complicated by the somewhat exceptional position of this country in respect to its population development. For a long period of history the two branches of the Czechoslovak people were under the influence of rather different cultural environments; Czechs in the so-­called historical parts of the State, namely Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, which formed the ancient kingdom of Bohemia, and for the last 300 years belonged to the ‘Austrian’ part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy; and Slovaks (and Carpatho-Ruthenians), which were included in the 176

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire. There were always cultural relations between both national branches (the differentiation of the written Slovak language was effected only in the middle of the last century, and the non-Catholic confessions in Slovakia still use the Czech language in church); and a number of leaders in the movement for the revival of Czech national feeling in the beginning of the nineteenth century, as well several personalities prominent today in the political and cultural life of the Czechoslovak Republic, were born in Slovakia. In spite of these cultural relations and the essential spiritual and national unity of Czechs and Slovaks, the whole complex of the economical, cultural and mental environment was different for both parts; and the inhabitants of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia were earlier in following the downward trend in population numbers, which was manifested in all countries of the West-European cultural sphere. The inhabitants of Slovakia and Carpatho-Ruthenia on the contrary retained their more eastern population type, which corresponded also to their geographical position and above all their political inclusion into the eastern part of the old monarchy. The present effect of this difference in development is that while in Bohemia the birth-­rate curve is on almost the same level as in the great West-European countries (e.g. England and Germany), we find in the extreme east of Czechoslovakia birth-­rates which are among the highest in Europe. [. . .] From these figures it is evident that there is a marked differential fertility between different parts of the State, though of course it is far from having any qualitative meaning in the unfavourable sense of the term. On the contrary, all ethnological and anthropological evidence we possess favours the view that the population of Slovakia represents a relatively unselected group of normal and sound constitution; and the growing intimate interpenetration of both branches which is expected as a result of a new conditions in the common State, can have only a favourable effect on the constitution of the future population of the whole country. A few words may be said about the population problem of the minorities in the Czechoslovak Republic. There are about 22.3 per cent Germans12 for the most part in the western part of the State, and especially in the industrial districts in the north of Bohemia. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the Germans, considered, separately, have a lower mean birth-­rate than the Czechs (e.g. 18.2 for the Germans against 19.8 for the Czechs in 1930). The other great minority, the Magyars in Slovakia (about 4.8 per cent), follows on the whole the birth-­rates of the respective groups of the Slovak population in which its members are living. The figures quoted above not only indicate the existing differences in the birth-­rates of different constituents of the State, but from them we see also that the development continues in the same direction in all parts; the birth-­rates are falling in direct proportion to the penetration of modern ways of life and to the mental influences accompanying this process. The downward slope of the natality curve is even a little steeper in Slovakia than in the west of the State. This is perhaps explicable by the influence of two independent factors: first, in Slovakia there is a decline from a relatively high absolute birth-­rate; and secondly, the penetration of modern ways of life with the accompanying psychical atmosphere above referred to are taking place at an increasing rate. 177

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

This statement about the falling birth-­rates deals of course only with the quantitative aspect of Czechoslovakian population development. But as we know, it is behind this that the qualitative eugenic problem is hidden. We must assume that here, as in any country with a similar decline in population numbers, there is a differential fertility; whence it follows that this period of transition from the naïve to the rational type of population development brings with it, as studies from different countries suggest, increased dysgenic risks for future generations. In this period, the process is continuing on such a large scale that the impoverishment in the hereditary endowment of the population must result. Organization The Czechoslovak Eugenic Society was founded in 1915. [. . .] The activity of the Society was primarily directed to the propagation of eugenic ideas among the public. Soon after the war, the first attempts were also made to penetrate the legislature with eugenic principles. In 1919, on the initiative of Professor Haškovec, a proposal was put forward for compulsory medical examinations before marriage. Though not accepted then, this remains one of the first aims of eugenics in our country. Such examinations, it is recognized, can also serve as a valuable means of promoting general health and preventing contagious diseases, etc. and have, therefore, a general medical and hygienic, as well as eugenic, interest. So it is probable that in due time this proposal will be accepted. The Ministry of Public Health has lately become interested, and the matter has also been discussed in the Social-Hygiene Committee of Parliament. [. . .] A Eugenic Research Institute was founded by the Society [with] aid [from] the Ministry of Public Health. This Institute is now the centre of both eugenic research and propaganda. In spite of its limited means, it has produced a considerable series of papers on different aspects of eugenics, including the genetics of physical and mental defect in man, vital statistics, and differential fertility. It has also issued several propaganda pamphlets. [. . .] The Society also created a premarital eugenic bureau in Prague (now attached to the university polyclinic); and similar institutions have been established in two other large towns of the country. In Prague, the register offices draw the attention of candidates for marriage to the importance of health examination and the possibility of obtaining it in the eugenic bureau. [On] the whole, we can claim a growing public interest in eugenic matters. [. . .] Recently, under the influence of the German sterilization law, several discussions on this subject have taken place in the meeting of medical as well as juridical societies. It is satisfactory to note that these accept eugenic ideals with understanding; and [as] in the German law, it is only the compulsory clause that is opposed to the general feeling. Eugenic problems are discussed also in the Press, and members of the Society frequently speak at meetings of different organizations, which are calling for the propagation of eugenic ideas. Some distrust of negative eugenics and sterilization was aroused in the general public by the close association of German eugenics with the unpopular race theories and the idea of the inequality of European races. These misunderstandings are being dissipated by systematic instruction to the public. 178

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Hereditary Health13 The theory of heredity and eugenics, which is based on it, are the basic components of social biology. Everyone who wants to influence the development of society in some way needs to take into account the basic facts described by these relatively new but already very important biological disciplines. Practical policies and the management of public and state affairs must take into account not only an individual person as a physical, psychological and social unit, but also people as a biological category, a population, a nation in a generative sense. Nowadays, an economist cannot avoid taking into consideration that, for example, the decreasing mortality and birth rate (which leads to shifts in the age-­distribution of the population) will certainly lead to an increased ‘pension burden’ on future generations; he must think of ways of compensating for this consequence. Similarly, a statesman when thinking about a country’s defence takes into account a particular number of conscripts, even down to the numbers in particular years, thus far, however, only twenty years ahead at most. It is understandable that similar considerations, highly graphic and numeric, also easily influence public opinion, especially in a democracy, and decide the necessary public measures. Biological considerations pertaining to quality, however, have so far found much less general acceptance. Yet, it is absolutely necessary that concerning the issue of quality much more forward-­looking views spread and become generally known, views which go beyond mere counting of individuals or counting their age. To survive, every society needs a sufficiently strong core of individuals who are of a good average standard; to perform increasingly more complicated and specialized social functions, society also needs an increasing number of individuals who are above average. Nonetheless, anyone capable of a biological perspective on things must conclude that the current population development in civilized mankind is heading towards a decrease rather than increase of general average. This finding, however, should not lead to pessimism. Current genetics and eugenics provide sufficient proof that this unfortunate tendency in population development can be efficiently countered and they even imply concrete and feasible steps which would lead to that goal. In these efforts to limit [the] socially harmful consequences of reproduction, efforts to provide a decent and ultimately even best possible biological quality of future generations, eugenics is in full agreement with the aims of social progress. Contradictions, which are sometimes seen as arising between the goals of eugenics and aim of achieving a socially more just establishment, have no factual basis. Translation by Anna Pilátová

179

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Bohumil Krajník

(1895, Nepomuk–1966, Plzeň)

Bohumil Krajník was born in 1895 in Nepomuk (Ger.: Pomuk), Bohemia. After completing his primary and secondary education in his hometown, Krajník studied first biology and then medicine at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Faculty of Medicine at Masaryk University (Masarykova Univerzita) in Brno, graduating in 1923 and 1929, respectively. Afterwards he worked as a research assistant at several university departments in Brno and in Bratislava. In 1935, he received his Habilitation in general biology from the Faculty of Medicine of the Masaryk University in Brno. In the following year, he moved to Prague, where he started working at the Institute of General Biology of the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University under Jan Bělehrádek. Between 1938 and 1946, he served as a chief medical inspector at the National Institute of Public Health (Státní Zdravotní Ústav) in Prague. In his research, Krajník focused on issues of comparative physiology and human constitution. Since the mid-1930s, he adopted a biotypological approach closely linked to the French and Italian schools of biotypology (Krajník 1936, 1938a and 1938b). The aims of the Czechoslovak School of Biotypology were presented mainly in the anthology O lidské konstituci (On Human Constitution), published in 1939. Biotypology was at that time seen as one of the possible ways of combining anthropology, eugenics and genetics. It also offered an alternative to racial hygiene, as it centred on human biotypes and typologies, not on races. Krajník’s efforts in this area centred mainly on large comparative biotypological research of select population samples, such as children (Krajník 1937: 94–5). In 1936 Krajník was the founder and the secretary of the Czechoslovak Society for Biotypology (Československá Biotypologická Společnost), renamed Czech Society for Biotypologie (Česká Biotypologická Společnost) in the early 1940s. The Society cooperated closely with the French Society for Biotypology (Société Française de Biotypologie), created in 1932 (Mentl 1937: 89–93). Contrary to the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society, the Society for Biotypology was allowed to function during the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. Within the framework of biotypology, Krajník also studied various issues of genetics, in particular hybridization experiments and experiments with the Drosophila fruit fly. In 1946, Krajník was put in charge, first on a temporary and later on a permanent basis, of the newly created Department of Histology and Embryology (Ústav Histologie a Embryologie) of the Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Hradec Králové. He was appointed a full Professor of Biology in 1947 and from 1951 until his retirement in 1960 he headed the Institute of Biology in Plzeň. Krajník died in 1966.

180

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Biotypological Study and its Importance for National Defence14 The word ‘constitution’ (from Latin ‘Constitutio’) means composition, arrangement, the way something is put together. In biology, this term refers to the composition, the structure of an organism. The structure of an organism is determined mainly by heredity, by hereditary traits (features, genes), which are particles of special formations in the nuclei of cells known as chromosomes. However, a human being (just like any organism), [in] the way it appears to our vision, is an appearance, a phenotype (from Greek ‘phainomai’: I come to light, I show myself). This means that it has properties (traits), both physical and mental, which are also a result of the influence of environment on the living matter. An individual is created by the collaboration of a heredity-­based structure of an organism and the influences of [its] external environment. If we were to take into account only hereditary traits, which regularly appear in the offspring, we could speak of a genotype and genotypic constitution (from Greek ‘genos’: birth, origins, and ‘typos’: pattern, formation, image). Using hybridization and other experiments, zoological and botanical genetics [the theory of heredity] can show which traits are hereditary and how they are transmitted to the offspring. In humans, however, there are numerous traits where due to the impossibility of carrying out the experiment one cannot decide whether, and to what extent, they are determined by heredity. From a genetic point of view, human families are not sufficiently researched. In most cases, reliable records of physical and mental qualities are not available. Also, diseases and the cause of death of ancestors are often depicted inaccurately or altogether erroneously. In humans, the heredity of numerous traits follows the so-­ called ‘Higher Mendelism’. Alongside the basic rules, which were discovered by Mendel, one finds in human individuals various phenomena which point to the crossing over and alterations of chromosomes, to heredity linked to sexual chromosomes, to mutations, and other complex processes. That is why the study of heredity in humans is so difficult. A phenotype can, at first glance, look completely healthy and yet conceal various deviant traits, which can later manifest themselves either as some disease in that individual or as some deviation in his offspring. In such a case, the individual’s phenotype differs from his genotype. The most valuable object of study in this area of research are identical twins, because they have a fully identical hereditary foundation and one can thus use them to study the influences of the external world. Since in many cases it is hard to tell precisely whether something is a hereditary trait or just a deviation (modification), which will not transfer to the offspring, various researchers use different definitions of the term ‘constitution’. Nonetheless, regardless of the difficulties stemming from the impossibility of precisely distinguishing between a genotype and phenotype, the human constitution is something permanent, something that cannot be changed over a short period of time. A general definition could look as follows: Human constitution is a collection of enduring phenotypic traits, which external influences cannot alter at all or only with the utmost difficulty. Meanwhile, we must not forget that each organism is an indivisible whole and a dynamic formation where life processes of the individual parts, tissues and cells are maintained in unity by numerous regulating and consolidating mechanisms. 181

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Among these mechanisms, especially the hormones of glands of internal secretion are of great importance. A human individual is an indivisible unity, a personality that has its own distinct physical and mental features. [. . .] In recent decades, medical disciplines have studied people mainly in such a way that they neglected features which are in each person fully distinctive, individual, that is, the features which are not often repeated. Human constitution thus refers to a heredity-­based, distinctive structure of body and mind and their mutual law-­like dependence. Constitution is a powerful factor in creating each personality. By personality, we mean a distinct system of manifest ways an individual deploys when reacting to the demands of the external world, the manner in which he processes impressions from the external world, the way he acts in practical life and how he manages, within the sphere of his influence and profession, to independently create. Constitution itself is not, however, the only factor which forms a personality. Also relevant is the upbringing in the broadest sense of the word, that is, intellectual, emotional, and volitional. In this, moral and religious aspects also play an important role. On the other hand, however, upbringing must not neglect an individual’s particular constitution. On the contrary, it ought to respect it and facilitate an individual’s development according to his or her constitution. Early recognition of a constitution that is in some direction deviant, may in many cases, prevent, if appropriate treatment and education are used, the individual from straying from a normal way of life. [. . .] It is important now to not only determine a constitutional type as accurately as possible, whereby one needs to take into account also transitory states, but also to make sure that this determination be developed into a whole scientific system. Thorough research of constitution would have to include the following elements: 1. Determination of personal and family case history supported by information provided by relatives and by official records. 2. Systematic examination of the general state of health in accordance with generally accepted clinical principles. 3. A thorough anthropometric examination including several important constitution measurements. 4. A photographic image of the person examined, of the entire figure from the front and from the side, also a close-­up of the head. 5. Determination of character and temperament based on subjective testimonies of the persons examined. 6. A thorough, objective, psychological study of the character and temperament. 7. Specialized laboratory tests (including determination of the blood groups, microcapillaroscopy, blood-­sugar curve, hormonal tests, and so on). 8. Genealogic research. 9. Examination of some hereditary traits, both normal and pathological. Translation by Anna Pilátová

182

Glossary Adaptivní eugeniky: adaptive eugenics Eugenika: eugenics Eugenická sňatková revise: eugenic revision of marriage Dědičná hygiena: hereditary hygiene Dědičná zátěž: hereditary burden Genetika: genetics Dědičné zdraví: hereditary health Nauka o dědičnosti: teaching on heredity Méněcenný: inferior (individual) Mendelismus: Mendelism Národní zdraví: national health Populační politika: population policy Patologická dědičnost: pathological heredity Rasová hygiena: racial hygiene Rasová biologie racial biology Rodopisný dotazník: Family Record Questionnaire Sociální genetika: social genetics Sociální medicína: social medicine Veřejné zdravotnictví: public health care Vlohový soupis: genetic screening

Notes 1 ‘Brave sons spring from the steadfast and good’ (Lat.) [note MŠ]. 2 Brožek, A. (1912), ‘Eugenika, nauka o zušlechtění a ozdravění lidu, založená na pravidlech dědičnosti’, Pražská lidová Revue, 8: 173–9 [Excerpts translated from pp. 173–4]. 3 Foustka, B. (1925), ‘Etika a eugenika’, in Růžička, V. (ed.), Memorial-Volume in Honor of the 100th Birthday of J. G. Mendel, Prague: F. Borový, 121–9 [Excerpts translated from pp. 122; 124–6 and 129]. 4 The inability to remain seated [note MŠ]. 5 Haškovec, L. (1923), ‘The Eugenics Movement in the Czechoslovak Republic’, in Scientific Papers of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, vol. 2, Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 435–42 [Excerpts translated from pp. 435–7 and 438–41]. 6 Růžička, V. (1923), Biologické základy eugeniky, Prague: Fr. Borový, 1923 [Excerpts translated from pp. 724–6; 734 and 739–42]. 7 Růžička, V. (1923), ‘A Motion of the Organization of Eugenical Research’, in Scientific Papers of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, vol. 2, Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 452–5 [Excerpts included from p. 452]. 8 Bělehrádek, J. (1931) ‘Podklady a výhledy eugenických snah’, Hygiena: osobní, veřejná, sociální. Věstník Společnosti moravského hygienického musea, 4: 97–112 [Excerpts translated from pp. 110–12]. 9 Bělehrádek, J. (1937), ‘Eugenik und Rassismus’, Internationales Ärztliches Bulletin, 4: 45–56 [Excerpts translated from pp. 46–7 and 55–6]. 10 Sekla, B. (1935b), ‘A Czech Eugenicist, Professor Dr. Vladislav Růžička, and the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society that He Founded’, Eugenical News, 20: 101–3 [Excerpts included from p. 102]. 11 Sekla, B. (1936) ‘Eugenics in Czechoslovakia’, Eugenics Review, 28: 115–17 [Excerpts translated from pp. 115–17]. 12 1930 Census [note BS]. 13 Sekla, B. (1941), Dědičné zdraví, Prague: Čin [Excerpts translated from pp. 331–2]. 14 Krajník, B. (1938), Biotypologický výzkum a brannost státu, Prague: Vojenský ústav vědecký [Excerpts translated from pp. 22 and 24].

Bibliography Archives Národní Archiv (National Archives) Prague, Ministerstvo veřejného zdravotnictví a tělesné výchovy, Box 482 Report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Matter of Sterilization Measures, 8 September 1932 Document ‘German Law on the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring – Information for Mr. Minister’, prepared by Dr Žofka, August 1936 Pražské Policejní Ředitelství – Spolkový Katastr (Prague Police Headquarters – Registry of Associations), IX/287–357, AMP Statutes of the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society, 1922 Univerzity Karlovy v Praze, Filozofické Fakulty (Archive of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Charles University, Prague) Lékařská Fakulta, Box 414 Bělehrádek’s Letter to Grosser, 19 January 1940 Německá Univerzita, Box 3 Description of Tasks of thee Departments for Racial Theory, Social Anthropology, and Hereditary and Racial Hygiene Prepared by the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of the German University), 27 March 1941 Archiv Hlavního Města Prahy (Archives of the Capital City of Prague) Pražské Policejní Ředitelství – Spolkový Katastr, IX/287–357 411, SK IX/ 1110 Statutes of the Local Prague Branch of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, Munich, 1942 (§ 2, Purpose; § 4, President; § 5, Members) Archiv Národního Muzea (Archives of the National Museum) Prague Republikánská Liga pro Mravní Obrodu Národa, Box 4. Archiv Univerzity Karlovy (Archives of Charles University), Prague LF – Personal Files (Růžička Vladislav), Box 44 LF NU, varia Thums’ Letter to the Rector of German Charles University (Saure), 12 June 1941 Archiv Akademie Věd (Archives of the Academy of Sciences), Prague Čáda František, ‘Poznámky o eugenice’, (1916), Box 17/no. 155. MAP/58, Ref. No. Pres 5, 433, II7a. Memorandum on the Issue of Eugenic Sterilization, 5 March 1937. Rockefeller Archive Centre, Sleepy Hollow, New York, International Education Board. 9I-3 B46#665 (Artur Brožek)

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Rose’s Letter to Morgan, 30 April 1924 Rose’s Letter to Davenport, 7 May 1924 Brožek’s Letter to the International Education Board, 16 April 1925 Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive) Berlin, R31/448, Karl Thums Proposal of Tasks and the Establishment of an Institute for Racial Hygiene at the German Charles University, 1939

Primary Sources (1906), XV Congrès International de Médicine: Rapports et Comptes Rendus, Lisbon: Imprimerie A. de Mendonca. (1917), ‘Memorandum České Eugenické Společnosti o Základních Potřebách Eugeniky c. k. Ministru Veřejného Zdravotnictví dr. Janu Horbaczewskému’, Revue v Neurologii, Psychiatrii, Fysické a Diaetetické Therapii, 14: 434–7. (1919), ‘Zpráva o činnosti České Eugenické Společnosti za rok 1918’, Revue v Neurologii, Psychiatrii, Fysické a Diaetetické Therapii, 16: 143. (1923), Scientific Papers of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, 2 vols., Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins. (1936), ‘Zkušenosti se sterilizací žen’, Praktický Lékař, 16: 346–7. (1936), ‘Základové principy operativní metodiky zákonné sterilisace dědičně nemocných žen’, Praktický Lékař, 16: 371–2. (1941), ‘Notizen’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 35: 88. (1942), ‘Tätigkeitsbericht des NSD-Dozentenbundes Prag für das Sommersemester 1941’, Prager Hochschulblätter, 1: 13. (1942), ‘Ortsgesellschaften der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene in Prag und Reichenberg’, Volk und Rasse, 17: 200. Amerling, K., Aymonim, M., and Eisler, K. (1939), O llidské konstituci, Prague: Mladá generace Českých lékařů. Bělehrádek, J. (1931), ‘Podklady a výhledy eugenických snah’, Hygiena: osobní, veřejná, sociální. Věstník Společnosti moravského hygienického musea, 4: 97–112. Bělehrádek, J. (1934), Dědičnost a eugenika, Prague: Československá Obec Sokolská. Bělehrádek, J. (1937), ‘Eugenik und Rassismus’, Internationales Ärztliches Bulletin, 4: 45–56. Bělehrádek, J. (11 July 1948), ‘Německá věda se prohřešila’, Věda a Život, 284–90. Brožek, A. (1912), ‘Eugenika, nauka o zušlechťování a ozdravění lidu, založená na pravidlech o dědičnosti,’ Pražská Lidová Revue, 8: 173–9. Brožek, A. (1914), Zušlechtění lidstva (Eugenika). Prague: F. Topič. Brožek, A. (1916), K nauce o mendelismu, Třeboň: K. Brandejs. Brožek, A. (1922), Zušlechtění lidstva (Eugenika), Prague: F. Topič. Brožek, A. (1923) ‘A Case of non-Mendelian Inheritance of the White Striped Races (formae albomaculatae) of the Mimulus quinquevulnerus’, in Věstník I. Sjezdu Československých Botaniků v Praze, Prague: Československá Botanická Společnost, 1–3. Brožek, A. (1926), ‘Inheritance in the Monkey-Flower’, The Journal of Heredity 17: 113–28. Brožek, A. (1929), Remarks to Mendelian Formulas, Prague: N. Bydžov. Brožek, A. (1935), ‘Der biologischen Begriff der Rasse’, in Weigner, K. (ed.), Die Gleichwertigkeit der europäischen Rassen und die Wege zu ihrer Vervollkommnung, Prague: Verlag der Tschechischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste, 29–48. Brožek, A. and Dostál, R. (1930), Nauka o dědičnosti, Experimentální morfologie, Prague: Aventinum. Brožek, A. and Herfort, K. (1914), ‘Die eugenische Zentrale des Ernestiums’, EOS: Vierteljahrsschrift für die Erkenntnis und Behandlung jugendlicher Abnormer, 10: 1–13. 186

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Čáda, F. (1915), ‘Úkoly a význam České Eugenické Společnosti’, Revue v neuropsychopathologii therapii fysikální medicině veřejné hygieně a lékařství sociálním, 12: 177–85. Davenport, C. B. (1912a), ‘Eugenika, nauka o ušlechtění lidstva dokonalejším křížením’, Živa, 22: 8–10. Davenport, C. B. (1912b), ‘Eugenika, nauka o ušlechtění lidstva dokonalejším křížením’, Živa, 22: 44–7. Davenport, C. B. (1912c), ‘Eugenika, nauka o ušlechtění lidstva dokonalejším křížením’, Živa, 22: 78–80. Foustka, B. (1903), ‘Některé vztahy mezi populací a sňatečností po případě mezi organisací společenskou a rodinou’, Česká Mysl-časopis filosofický, 4: 321–37. Foustka, B. (1904), Slabí v lidské společnosti: ideály humanitní a degenerace národů, Prague: J. Laichter. Foustka, B. (1916), Péče o dítě: Sociální postavení evropské mládeže a její ochrana, Prague: J.R. Vilímek. Foustka, B. (1919), Abstinence jako kulturní problém, Prague: Grosman a Svoboda. Foustka, B. (1921), ‘Vyšší národ’, Vyšší Národ, 1: 2. Foustka, B. (1922a), Alkoholismus a tělesná výkonnost národa, Prague: Československý Abstinentní Svaz. Foustka, B. (1922b), Alkoholismus a ideály národa Prague: Československý Abstinentní Svaz. Foustka, B. (1923a), Alkoholismus a organism, Prague: Československý Abstinentní Svaz. Foustka, B. (1923b), ‘Sociologie a etika eugenizmu’, Česká Mysl-časopis filosofický, 19: 1–12. Foustka, B. (1925), ‘Etika a eugenika’, in Růžička, V. (ed.), Pamětní spis ku oslavě stých narozenin J. G. Mendela – Memorial-Volume in Honor of the 100th Birthday of J. G. Mendel. Prague: F. Borový, 1925, 121–9. Hajn, A. (1939), Ženská otázka v letech 1900–1920, Prague: Pokrok. Haškovec, L. (1895), Profesor Jan Martin Charcot. Zakladatel moderni nauky o nemocech nervovych (1825–1893), Prague: J. Otto. Haškovec, L. (1899), Spastické obrny dětské a choroby jim příbuzné, Prague: Dr. Remeš. Haškovec, L. (1900), Experimentalní studie o účinku alkoholu na srdce a oběh krevní, Prague: Česká akademie. Haškovec, L. (1902), Snahy veřejného zdravotnictví v otázce smlouvy manželské, Prague: J. Otto. Haškovec, L. (1912), Snahy eugenické, Třeboň: K. Brandejs. Haškovec, L. (1919), ‘Česká Účast a Mezispojeneckém Kongresu pro Sociální Hygienu’, Revue v Neurologii, Psychiatrii, Fysické a Diaetetické Therapii, 16: 116–17. Haškovec, L. (1923), ‘The Eugenics Movement in the Czechoslovak Republic’, in Scientific Papers of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, vol. 2, 435–42. Haškovec, L. (1925a), ‘Opening Speech of the Chairman’, in Rǔžička (ed.), Pamětní spis ku oslavě stých narozenin J.G. Mendela, 1–5. Haškovec, L. (1925b), ‘Význam mendelismu v lékařstvi a eugenice’, in Rǔžička (ed.), Pamětní spis ku oslavě stých narozenin J.G. Mendela, 107–120. Haškovec, L. (1928), Lékařské vysvědčení před sňatkem, Prague: Fr. Borový. Haškovec, L. (1930), Sociální význam chorob nervových, Prague: J. Otto. Hellmer Wullen, H. v. (1937), ‘Eugenics in Other Lands. A Survey of Recent Developments’, Journal of Heredity, 28: 269–75. Herfort, K. (1919), ‘Zpráva o Činnosti v Ernestinu’, Revue v Neurologii, Psychiatrii, Fysické a Diaetetické Ttherapii, 15: 140–51. Herfort, K. (1933), ‘Sterilisace dědičně zatížených a nenapravitelných opilců’, Úchylná Mládež, 9: 102. 187

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Hrubý, K. (1943), Tvoříme s přírodou, Prague: Čin. Hrubý, K. (1948), Eugenika. Člověk v zrcadle dědičnosti, Prague: J.R. Vilímek. Krajník, B. (1936), Úvod do nauky o dědičnosti, Zlín: Studijní Ústav. Krajník, B (1937), ‘Biotypologie a výzkum dítěte’, Úchylná Mládež, 13: 94–5. Krajník, B. (1938a), Biotypologický výzkum a brannost státu, Prague: Vojenský Ústav vědecký. Krajník, B. (1938b), Co je to biotypologický výzkum a jeho význam pro sociální práci, Prague: Organisace soc. pracovnic. Kříženecký, J. (1918), ‘Zákonná Úprava Příbuzenských Sňatků s Hlediska BiologickoLékařského’, Právník, 57: 325–31. Kříženecký, J. (1919a), ‘Organisace vědy – Česká eugenika’, Nové Atheneum, 1: 209–12. Kříženecký, J. (1919b), ‘Cíle a program snah eugenických’, Osvětová Škola Sokolských Žup Pražských, 1: 3–28. Kulhavý, F. (1919) ‘Aktuálnost a Význam Eugenických Problémů’, Revue v Neurologii, Psychiatrii, Fysické a Diaetetické Therapii, 16: 19–22. Lašek, F. (1910), O Dědičnosti a Jejím Významu pro Úpadek A Zachování Lidstva, Prague: J. Otto. Lašek, F. (1916), Zušlechtění lidstva (eugenika), Prague: J. R. Vilímek. Meisner, J. (1934), Rasismus hrozí kultuře: rasové teorie a eugenika, Prague: Volná Myšlenka. Mentl, S. (1937), ‘Poslání a Program Československé Společnosti Biotypologické’, Úchylná Mládež, 13: 89–93. Nečas, J. (1937), ‘Úkoly péče o slabomyslné’, Úchylná Mládež, 13: 229–30. Němec, B. (1925), ‘Official Speech’, in Rǔžička (ed.), Pamětní spis ku oslavě stých narozenin J. G. Mendela, 15–29. Nisot, M-T. (1929), La question eugénique dans les divers pays, vol. 2, Brussels: Libraire Falk Fils, 526–53. Rádl, E. (1930), The History of Biological Theories, London: Oxford University Press. Růžička, V. (1910), Wilhelm Roux und seine Bedeutung für die allgemeine Biologie, Prague: Bursik a Kohout. Růžička, V. (1917a), O dědičnosti, Prague: J. R. Vilímek. Růžička, V. (1917b), Dědičnost u člověka ve zdraví a nemoci, Prague: J. Otto. Růžička, V. (1919a), ‘Ústav pro národní eugeniku’, Národ 3: 17–18. Růžička, V. (1919b), ‘K Biologické Definici Pjmu Národa a “Národní Eugeniky” ’, Revue v Neurologii, Psychiatrii, Fysické a Diaetetické Ttherapii, 16: 32–5. Růžička, V. (1919c), ‘Proč potřebuje A žádá Česká Eugenika Samostatné Zastoupení v Masarykově Akademii prácě’, Národ 3: 319–20. Růžička, V. (1919d), Restitution und Vererbung; experimenteller, kritischer und synthetischer Beitrag zur Frage des Determinationsproblems, Berlin, J. Springer. Růžička, V. (1920), ‘Diagnostika a eugenika’, Časopis Lékařů Českých, 59: 249–51. Růžička, V. (1922), ‘Československý Ústav pro Národní Eugeniku’, Čas, 32: 1–2. Růžička, V. (1923a), Biologické základy eugeniky, Prague: F. Borový. Růžička, V. (1923b), ‘A Motion for the Organization of Eugenical Research’, in Scientific Papers of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, vol. 2, 452–4. Růžička, V. (1925), ‘Opening Speech’, in Rǔžička (ed.), Pamětní spis ku oslavě stých narozenin J.G. Mendela, 31–49. Růžička, V. (1930), ‘Czechoslovakia’, in Report of the Ninth Conference of the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations: Farnham, Dorset: September 11th to 15th 1930, London: IFEO, 70–1. Šebek, J. (1919), ‘Význam pohlavního výběru pro rasu v přírodě a u Člověka’, Revue v Neurologii, Psychiatrii, Fysické a Diaetetické Therapii, 16: 290–4. 188

Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia)

Sekla, B. (1933), ‘23. Schůze Spolku Českých Lékařů 11. prosince 1933 (Přednáška B. Sekly: Eugenické Sterilizační Zákony’, Časopis Lékařů Českých, 72: 1780. Sekla, B. (1934a), ‘Eugenické sterilisační zákony II’, Praktický Lékař, 14: 47–8. Sekla, B. (1934b), Potřeba Eugenické Populační Politiky, Prague: Československá Eugenická Společnost. Sekla, B. (1935a): ‘Czechoslovakia’, Report of the 11th Assembly of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, Zurich: O. Füssli, 75–6. Sekla, B. (1935b), ‘A Czech Eugenicist, Professor Dr. Vladislav Růžička, and the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society that He Founded’, Eugenical News, 20: 101–3. Sekla, B. (1936a), ‘Diskuze o eugenické sterilizaci’, Národní osvobození, 110 (10 May): 15. Sekla, B. (1936b), ‘Ubývání Duševního Nadání v Populaci Následkem Moderního Populačního Vývoje: příspěvek ke studiu diferenční plodnosti’, Sborník MAP, 10: 1–24. Sekla, B. (1936c), ‘Členská Přednášková Schůze Župy Čs. Lékařů v Ostravě (Sekla B., Může Sterilisace Regulovati Moderní Populační Vývoj?’, Praktický Lékař, 15: 142. Sekla, B. (1936d), ‘Eugenics in Czechoslovakia’, The Eugenics Review, 28: 115–17. Sekla, B. (1937), Dědičnost v přírodě a ve společnosti, Prague: Nakl. Volné myšlenky. Sekla, B. (1940), Růst národa. Úvaha populačně-­biologická, Prague: V. Petr. Sekla, B. (1941), Dědičné zdraví, Prague: Čin. Sekla, B. (1946). Dědičnost v přírodě a ve společnosti, Prague: Život a práce. Sekla, B. (1949), Dědičnost a eugenika, Prague: Spol. posl. vys. šk. polit. a soc. Sekla, B. (1962), Obecná biologie, Prague: Státní Zdravotnické Nakl. Šonka, J. (1937), ‘Zákonná Ochrana Slabomyslných’, Úchylná Mládež, 13: 230–7. Šonka, J. (1938), ‘Dědičné choroby a sterilisace’, Úchylná Mládež, 14: 101–5. Thums, K. (1941), ‘Das Institut für Erb- und Rassenhygiene der Deutschen Karls-Universität’, Ärzteblatt für das Sudetenland, 3: 27–8. Thums, K. (1942), ‘Das Institut für Erb- und Rassenhygiene der Deutschen Karls-Universität in Prag’, Der Erbarzt, 10: 75–83. Veselá, J. (1938), Sterilisace: problém populační, sociální a kriminální politiky, Prague: L. Mazáč. Von Verschuer, O. (1942), ‘Zwillingsforschung als Grundlage der Rassenhygiene’, BöhmischMährische Gesundheitsblätter, 1: 345–50. Weigner, K. (ed.) (1935), Die Gleichwertigkeit der europäischen Rassen und die Wege zu ihrer Vervollkommnung, Prague: Verlag der Tschechischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste. Zollschan, I. (1933), Denkschriften Über die Notwendigkeit der Stellungnahme zum Wissenschaftlichen Antisemitismus, Karlsbad: Im eigenen Verlag. Zollschan, I. (27 January 1935), ‘Wissenschaft zur Rassenfrage’, Prager Presse, 1. Závadová, J., and Bělehrádek, J. (1941) Šťastné dítě. Otázky zrodu a výchovy dítěte do šesti let, Prague: Ženská národní rada, Edvard Fastr.

Secondary Sources (1961), ‘Soubor prací k Šedesátým Narozeninám prof. RNDr. MUDr. Bohumila Sekly’, Časopis Lékařů Českých, 100: 602–3. Buchholz, K., Latocha, R., Peckmann, H., and Klaus Wolbert, K., (2001), Die Lebensreform. Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900. Darmstadt: Verlag Häusser. Cuřínová, L. (1999), ‘Ústav pro Národní Eugeniku’, in Cuřínová, L. (1999), ‘Ústav pro národní eugeniku’, in Janko, J., and Těšínská, E. (eds), Technokracie v Českých Zemích (1900–1950), Prague: Archiv Akademie Věd České Republiky, 151–7. Goetz, P. (2006) ‘Historie Lékařské Genetiky v České Republice’, Časopis Lékařů Českých, 145: 88–92. 189

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Goldberger, J. (2004), Die NS-Gesundheitspolitik in Oberdonau. Die administrative Konstruktion des ‘Minderwertigen’, Linz: OÖLA. Hlaváčková, L., and Petr Svobodný, P. (2004), Dějiny Lékařství V Českých Zemích, Prague: Triton. Janko, J. (1982), Vznik Experimentální Biologie v Čechách 1882–1918, Prague: Academia. Niklíček, L. (1989), Přehled Dějin Českého Lékařství a zdravotnictví, vol. 1. Brno: Institut pro Další Vzdělávání Stř. Zdrav. Pracovníků. Spring, C. (2009), Zwischen Krieg und Euthanasie. Zwangssterilisationen in Wien 1940–1945, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. Šimůnek, M. V. (2002), ‘Eugenika a Velká válka’, in Kostlán, A. (ed.), Inter arma . . . scientia, Prague: Výzkumné centrum pro dějiny vědy, 53–73. Šimůnek, M. V. (2004), ‘Ein neues Fach. Die Erb- und Rassenhygiene an der Medizinischen Fakultät der Deutschen Karls-Universität Prag 1939–1945’, in Kostlán, A. (ed.), Wissenschaft in den böhmischen Ländern 1939–1945, Prague: KLP, 178–90. Šimůnek, M. V. (2006a), ‘Vladimír Bergauer and Czech Eugenics’, in Svobodný, P., and Černý, K. (eds), Historia, Medicina, Cultura. Sborník k dějinám medicíny, Prague: Karolinum, 205–43. Šimůnek, M. V. (2006b), ‘ “Biotypologie”. Der tschechische Beitrag zur Konstitutionswissenschaft der 30er und 40er Jahre des 20. Jahrhunderts’, in Preuß, D., Hoßfeld, U. and Breidbach, O. (eds), Anthropologie nach Haeckel, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 195–220. Šimůnek, M. V. (2007a), ‘Eugenics, Social Genetics and Racial Hygiene: Plans for the Scientific Regulation of Human Heredity in the Czech Lands, 1900-1925’, in Turda, M., and Weindling, P. J. (eds), Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940, Budapest: CEU Press, 145–66. Šimůnek, M. V. (2007b), ‘Ein Österreichischer Rassenhygieniker Zwischen Wien, München und Prag: Karl Thums (1904–1976)’, in Baader, G., Hofer, V., Mayer, T., (eds), Eugenik in Österreich. Biopolitische Strukturen von 1900 bis 1945, Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 393–419. Šimůnek, M. V., and Hoßfeld, U. (2008), Die Kooperation der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena und Deutschen Karls-Universität Prag im Bereich der ‘Rassenlehre’, 1939–1945, Erfurt: LZPB. Šimůnek, M. V. (2012), ‘Pro et contra. Debaty o zavedení tzv. eugenické sterilizace v Československu, 1933–1938’, Speciální Pedagogika, 22: 224–40.

190

4 Hungary

Overview Marius Turda

I The first issue of the Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie (Journal of Racial and Social Biology) was reviewed in Hungary, as soon as it was published in 1904, by none other than Pál Teleki (1879–1941) (Teleki 1904: 318–23), future Prime Minister of Hungary (1920–1 and 1939–41) and president of two eugenic societies between 1914 and 1919. By then the work of German racial hygienists, such as Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940) and Wilhelm Schallmayer (1857–1919) had become known to Hungarian eugenicists. Addressing the Medical Association in Budapest (Budapesti Királyi Orvosegyesület) in 1906, the neuropathologist Gyula Donáth (1849–1944), likewise saluted the publication of the German journal devoted to racial hygiene, and sanctioned its aim to promote corrective eugenic measures for the improvement of the race (Donáth 1907). In the same year, the neo-Thomist philosopher Gyula Kozáry (1887–1925), began serializing his history of eugenics in the Hungarian Philosophical Society’s (Magyar Filozófiai Társaság) journal, Athenaeum. If Teleki and Donáth felt affinities with the German racial hygiene movement, Kozáry conversely promoted Francis Galton’s writings on eugenics, and his interpretation of human improvement (Kozáry 1906a: 242–8; 1906b: 351–7; 1906c: 458–64; and 1907: 59–69). Galtonian eugenics was also favoured by progressive and leftist intellectuals in Hungary, some of them grouped around the journal Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century), and the Society of Social Sciences (Társadalomtudományi Társaság), established in 1901. Illustrating this predisposition, in 1907, the sociologist Oszkár Jászi (1875–1957) obtained permission to and subsequently published a translation of Galton’s Herbert Spencer Lecture on ‘Probability, The Foundation of Eugenics’ in the Huszadik Század (Galton 1907: 1013–29). In 1902, the Social Museum (Társadalmi Muzeum) was established in Budapest, based on the models provided by the Social Museum (Musée Social) in Paris and the Museum of Industrial Hygiene (Gewerbehygienisches Museum) in Vienna; it became the Museum and Institute of Social Hygiene (Társadalomegészségügyi Intézet és Múzeum) in 1926 (‘Institute of Social Hygiene and Museum’ 1926). In 1909, the Social Museum established its own journal, A Társadalmi Muzeum Értesítője (Social Museum Bulletin), in order to publicize its wide-­ranging actitivies in the field of social hygiene, preventive medicine and public health. As such, the Social Museum collaborated with other scientific and public welfare societies, such as the National League for the Protection of Children (Országos Gyermekvédő Liga) and the Hungarian Society for Child Study (Magyar Gyermektanulmányi Társaság), both established in 1906, who similarly embraced a modern vision of national improvement based on public health, social hygiene and eugenics.

Hungary

The establishment of the Social Museum, and of these societies, constituted a significant addition to the practice of thinking about the relationship between individual health and social problems caused by Hungary’s rapid economic development and industrialization. In 1906, in recognition of these mounting concerns about urban poverty, infectious diseases, social welfare and housing, the periodical Fajegészségügy (Practical Eugenics) was published as a supplement to the prestigious Orvosok Lapja (Physicians’ Journal). Its editor, the social hygienist Henrik Pach (1844–1927), was a strong supporter of improving health conditions in the workplace through the provision of adequate social insurance and medical protection (Pach 1907). In the pages of Fajegészségügy, Pach defined Hungary’s social and biological improvement not in terms of race but in terms of health care and its provision. Specifically, practical eugenics related to preventive measures against: a) tuberculosis and infant mortality, b) sexually transmitted diseases and prostitution, and c) alcoholism and criminality (‘Az olvasóhoz!’ Fajegészségügy 1906: 1). Throughout its brief existence, having changed its title to the more appropriate Szociális Egészségügy (Social Hygiene) in 1908, Fajegészségügy championed the introduction of health reforms aimed, in particular, at tuberculosis and alcoholism, as well as modern ideas of social hygiene. The new science of eugenics reconciled social reform with health protectionism, both seen as instruments for the improvement of the population’s biological strength. The goal was, first and foremost, to construct at once a social and medical science which could be used as an instrument to facilitate national progress and health reform.

II Hungarian eugenicists gradually established a relationship between conventional medical preoccupations with health and hygiene on one hand, and the idea of new social politics on the other, which derived its potent vitality from the ostensibly regenerative ethos of modern theories of evolution (Thim 1905). To this synthesis social economist Károly Balás (1877–1961) added demography and population policy. In his 1905 A népesedés (Population), Balás argued that demographic growth, social dynamics and reproductive patterns should not be isolated from eugenic theories of national health (Balás 1905). Similar to other countries in Europe at the time, Hungarian eugenicists were worried about social and biological degeneration, which they imputed to precarious living conditions, poor hygiene, alocholism, widespread venereal diseases, compounded with the lack of sufficient medical assistance, all factors contributing to the proliferation of individuals of supposedly mediocre racial quality. According to the paediatrician Sándor Szana (1886–1926) this imbalance could, for instance, be remedied by sanitary improvements, appropriate child and family policies, as well as by encouraging modern welfare programmes (Szana 1903). This was also the strategy employed by Ferenc Torday (1871–1942), editor of Budapesti Orvosi Újság (Budapest Medical Journal), who insisted that the nurturing of healthy children was one of the best ways to ensure 193

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

the biological future of the nation (Torday 1908: 166–81). For these authors, eugenics was tied to ideas of public health, social hygiene and child welfare, one that nevertheless coexisted with a more biologized interpretation of national improvement. For example, Péter Buro, secretary of the branch of the National Association of Public Health (Országos Közegészségi Egyesület) in Versec (Sr.: Vršac; Rom.: Vârşet), a town in the Banat region, interpreted eugenics as a preventive health strategy dealing with both the individual and the race (Buro 1907: 195–9). In 1910 three seminal articles on eugenics were published in Huszadik Század. The first, authored by biologist Lajos Dienes (1885–1974), briefly introduced Francis Galton’s and Karl Pearson’s eugenic and biometrical studies, as well as the intimate relationship between social statistics and eugenics (Dienes 1910: 50–1). Physician József Madzsar (1876–1940) wrote the second article, in which he argued for the introduction of restrictive eugenic measures such as the control of reproduction (Madzsar 1910: 115–17). In the third article, Zsigmond Fülöp (1882–1948), a natural scientist, expanded upon some of the arguments outlined by Madzsar, placing eugenics within the scientific revolution brought about by Darwinism (Fülöp 1910: 161–76). These three articles collectively identified some of the difficulties of the practical application of eugenics in society and made clear that Hungarian eugenicists did not simply follow scientific trends elsewhere in Europe, but drew on their personal scientific and professional expertise. That this was the case became clear at the public debates on eugenics that followed, organized in Budapest by the Society of Social Sciences, and published by Huszadik Század between February and September 1911 under the title ‘A fajnemesítés (eugenika) problémái’ (The Question of Racial Improvement – Eugenics). The list of contributors included individuals from diverse professional groups, such as lawyers, psychologists, veterinary surgeons, physicians, sociologists, social hygienists, and natural scientists (‘A fajnemesítés (eugénika) problémái’, Huszadik Század 1911a–d: 694–709; 29–44; 157–70; and 322–36). A year later, in February 1912, the Hungarian Association for Social Sciences (Magyar Társadalomtudományi Egyesület), established in 1907, organized a conference on public health (‘Közegészségügyi értekezlet’). In his introductory remarks, Jenő Gaál (1846–1934), President of the Association, encouraged the participants to reflect on the recent Hygiene Exhibition (Internationale Hygiene-Ausstellung) in Dresden and to discuss how modern conceptions of public health, social hygiene, preventive medicine and eugenics could strengthen the Hungarian state. Gaál further insisted on the expansion of medical institutions, the adoption of modern legislation on social assistance and the protection of children and mothers, and considered these goals within the larger agenda of the nation’s biological protection. ‘Hygiene’, he pointed out, ‘can save the race from degeneration’ (‘Közegészségügyi értekezlet’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle 1912: 158). These two public events highlighted the importance eugenics had acquired within the Hungarian scientific community by the early 1910s. Attuned to developments elsewhere, particularly Britain and Germany, Hungarian eugenicists attempted to offer their own interpretation of national improvement through which they hoped they 194

Hungary

could solve the growing social and medical problems affecting Hungary at the time (Kertész 1912). Nowhere was this attempt more evident than in the writings of István Apáthy (1863–1922), a professor at the Ferenc József University (Királyi Ferenc József Tudományegyetem) of Kolozsvár (Rom.: Cluj; Ger.: Klausenburg) and an internationally renowned zoologist. Apáthy’s first major eugenic text, entitled ‘A faj egészségtana’ (‘Race Hygiene’), was published in 1911 (Apáthy 1911: 265–79). Apáthy portrayed eugenics as a biological project of national improvement and criticized those Hungarian eugenicists who placed too much emphasis on its social nature. Apáthy reasserted the need for a ‘national eugenics’ in Hungary in his 1912 book, A fejlődés törvényei és a társadalom (The Laws of Evolution and Society), while at the same time insisting on the indisputable role played by evolution and heredity in human history. Importantly, when compared with other eugenicists in Hungary, Apáthy was far less inclined to follow eugenic models developed elsewhere. In a period when British and German eugenic models dominated Hungarian debates on eugenics, Apáthy had the scientific confidence to suggest an autochthonist interpretation of eugenics that was commensurate with the collective interests of the Hungarian nation and race.

III The first attempt to establish a eugenic society in Hungary occurred in 1912, on the initiative of René Berkovits (1882–1944), a neurologist from Nagyvárad (Rom.: Oradea). In 1911 Berkovits visited the Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden, and in 1912 the USA, where he familiarized himself with German and North American developments in eugenics (Berkovits 1913). On his last visits, he also met the American eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin (1880–1943), and a brief correspondence ensued between the two. Tellingly, it was Laughlin who recorded Berkovits’s plan for a Hungarian eugenic society in Transylvania, in his first report for the Eugenics Record Office (Laughlin 1913: 24). Meanwhile, around the same time, another native of Nagyvárad, Géza Hoffmann (1885–1921), a diplomat and the Austro-Hungarian Consul in Chicago, began publishing on American eugenic sterilization in Hungarian and German journals (Hoffmann 1912: 730–61). In 1913 Hoffmann published his well-­known and oft-­cited Die Rassenhygiene in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika (Racial Hygiene in the USA), a book that established him as a specialist in American eugenics and revealed his preference for negative eugenics (Hoffmann 1913a). Hoffmann was equally passionate about establishing a vibrant eugenic movement in his own country, but he proposed an alternative model of eugenics to that advocated by Madzsar, Fülöp, Dienes, on one hand, and Apáthy, on the other. In contrast, Hoffmann drew his inspiration from the practical application of hereditary principles as illustrated by the American eugenic movement. His interpretation of eugenics also articulated concerns over the conservative, aristocratic milieu of his social background and education (Hoffmann 1913b: 161–2). 195

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

To this effect, in the autumn of 1913, Hoffmann hoped to persuade Apáthy to establish a eugenic society in Budapest (Hoffmann’s letter to Apáthy, 22 October 1913). He also suggested that a public lecture on eugenics be organized in November or December intended to serve as the society’s first public event. Hoffmann’s intention, as he assured Apáthy, was not to ‘lead [the proposed society], but to put forward [his] modest knowledge of eugenics, Hoffmann also proposed Pál Teleki, at the time also President of the Turanic Society (Turáni Társaság) and Secretary General of the Geographical Society (Magyar Földrajzi Társaság), as president of the future eugenic society (Hoffmann’s letter to Apáthy, 22 October 1913). Shortly after this exchange, on 2 December 1913, the Association for Social Sciences sent a letter to the Medical Association of Budapest, informing them of its intention to create a ‘eugenic section’ (‘fajegészségügyi [eugenikai] szakosztály’) at a forthcoming meeting, scheduled for early next year in Budapest (SOL, II6/913). The meeting took place on 24 January 1914, in the main hall of the Royal Hungarian Society for Natural Sciences (Királyi Magyar Természettudományi Társulat). Hoffmann prepared the opening lecture, which was also published in the February issue of Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle (Hungarian Review of Social Sciences) (Hoffmann 1914a: 91–106). In addition to offering an overview of existing international literature on eugenics, Hoffmann appealed to the Hungarian general public not to be frightened by eugenics. Eugenicists did not want, he insisted, ’a return to the cruel state of nature’, or to ‘ruthlessly eliminate the weak’. Furthermore, they were not contemptuous of ‘Christian brotherly love’ and of ‘the current conceptions of social protection’. According to Hoffmann, such ‘misunderstanding’ was perpetuated by well-­intentioned, but poorly informed supporters of eugenics, in Hungary and elsewhere (Hoffmann 1914a: 99–100). Next, Apáthy presented a practical eugenic programme, whose purpose was ‘[t]he breeding and preservation of a new Hungarian-Turanic type’ (‘A fajegészségügyi [eugenikai] szakosztály megalakulása’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle 1914: 168). He also suggested the creation of a Hungarian Committee on Eugenics (Magyar Fajegészségügyi Bizottság) that would function both as a liaison between various scientific societies with eugenic agendas and as a promoter of eugenics inside and outside the Hungarian scientific community. Then Apáthy identified the following ‘immediate tasks’: ‘eugenic propaganda, the dissemination of eugenic ideas throughout the country, and the enlightenment of the public through lectures, special conferences and debates about what eugenics is and what is practical eugenics (‘A fajegészségügyi [eugenikai] szakosztály megalakulása’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle 1914: 172). A subsequent meeting of the Committee was held on 7 April 1914 (Teleki’s letter to Apáthy, 24 March 1914). In addition to the founding scientific societies, public ministries, including the Municipality of Budapest, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence, the National Statistics Office and Budapest’s Statistical Office were invited to send one representative each. Regarding public engagement, two public lectures on eugenics were announced for April 1914, one to be organized by the National Society for Popularizing Science 196

Hungary

(Országos Ismeretterjesztő Társulat), the other by the Medical Association of Budapest (‘A fajegészségügyi bizottság értekezlete’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle 1914: 317). The Committee also undertook the education of the general public through a eugenic course consisting of twelve lectures, in advance of a national eugenic congress planned for the autumn of that year. Such was the institutional framework through which Hungarian eugenicists viewed their active role in the making of a modern state, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914), heir to the Habsburg throne, was assassinated in Bosnia on 28 June 1914.

IV Eugenic concerns with the health of future generations, the declining birth rate, infant mortality, the spread of contagious and venereal diseases, and the protection of mothers and infants, all figured prominently in public and political discourse in Hungary during World War I. In addition to the Committee on Eugenics new societies were established, reflecting these health concerns and the increased political interest in the eugenic management of the population. Of these new societies the most important was the Stefánia Association for the Protection of Mothers and Infants (Országos Stefánia Szövetség az Anyák és Csecsemők Védelmére), established on 13 June 1915. Albert Apponyi (1846–1933), chairman of the Lower House of Parliament and former Minister of Religion and Education (1906–10), was elected President. Other founding members included: József Madzsar, who became the Stefánia Association’s managing director, Ottokár Prohászka (1858–1927), the Bishop of Székesfehérvár, statistician Alajos Kovács (1877–1963) and obstetrician Vilmos Tauffer (1851–1934) (Stefánia Association to Alajos Kovács, 19 July 1915). As the war escalated, Hungarian eugenicists too demanded a more direct involvement of the state in the management of public health policies and social assistance. At first, however, it seemed that the war dealt a severe blow to the eugenic movement in Hungary, as the Committee on Eugenics found it difficult to continue its activities (Hoffmann 1916e: 105). The Committee did, however, succeed in preparing a memorandum on venereal diseases and submitting it to the Prime Minister, István Tisza (1861–1918), on 4 January 1916. It was recognized on this occasion that the Hungarian government was ‘familiar with the extraordinary urgency’ of the problems outlined by the Committee in its memorandum. Moreover, the Committee insisted that in order ‘to surmount these exceedingly great difficulties exceptional measures were needed’, alongside ‘the effective engagement of various governmental agencies’ (‘Körlevél az Egyesületközi Fajegészségügyi Bizottság’, 20 January 1916). Lajos Nékám (1868–1957), a dermatologist, was the main author of the memorandum on venereal diseases. A year earlier, in 1915, he had published an important study on the relationship between war and venereal diseases (Nékám 1915), which established him as an authority on the subject. On 7 July 1916, Nékám together with György Lukács (1865–1950), the former Minister of Religion and Education (1905–6) established the 197

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Association of National Protection against Venereal Diseases (Nemzetvédő Szövetség a Nemibajok Ellen). The Association also endeavoured to assist the authorities with medical expertise, as well as to encourage the population to lead a ‘healthy and virtuous life’ (A ‘Nemzetvédő Szövetség a Nemibajok Ellen’ alapszabályai 1916: 3–4). To this effect, between 12 April and 25 May 1917, the Association carried out a general study commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior on the subject of venereal diseases, pornography and prostitution. Various social, charitable, welfare and religious organizations in Hungary were asked to suggest ‘legal, regulatory and social measures in order to prevent the spread of venereal diseases and thus the further deterioration of the race’ (‘Ankét a nemi betegségek leküzdése tárgyában’, 1917: 75–8; ‘Ankét a nemi betegségek elleni küzdelemről’, 1917a: 94–6 and 1917b: 114–16). The establishment of the Stefánia Association and the Association of National Protection contributed to the consolidation of the eugenic movement in Hungary and simultaneously also offered its much-­needed reinforcement through the work of József Madzsar, Albert Apponyi, György Lukács and Lajos Nékám. These eugenicists became actively involved not only with their respective societies, but also contributed directly to the general dissemination of eugenics in official political circles (Nékám 1918). Moreover, the public pre-­eminence of leftist eugenicists such as Madzsar indicates that attempts were made to engage with eugenic questions of national importance across the political spectrum. Although the degree of actual involvement with practical politics varied from one individual to the other, and from one society to the other, the emergency of the war provided the overarching political context that could unite disparate trends within the Hungarian eugenic movement. The result was direct government intervention and a state-­sponsored eugenic welfare programme. A first step in this direction was taken in 1916, when the Hungarian government created the National Military Welfare Office (Országos Hadigondozó Hivatal), and entrusted Teleki with its leadership (Petri 1917: 5–11). Teleki’s appointment illustrates his growing involvement with issues of social protection, eugenics and population policy (Teleki 1918). He aspired to integrate eugenics within the overall framework of Hungary’s social and racial improvement through state assistance given to disabled soldiers, war widows and war orphans (‘Az Országos Hadigondozó Hivatal népesedéspolitikai és fajegészségügyi tevékenysége’, A Cél 1918: 441–4). Direct access to state funds also enabled Teleki to seek the placement of the Hungarian eugenic movement on more solid foundations. Thus, on 4 November 1917, Teleki informed Apáthy of his and Hoffmann’s intention to transform the Committee on Eugenics into a Hungarian Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy (Magyar Fajegészségtani és Népesedéspolitikai Társaság) devoted to the ‘regeneration of the Hungarian nation’s racial and numerical importance’ (Teleki’s letter to Apáthy and Teleki’s letter to Alajos Kovács, 4 November 1917). The inaugural meeting of the new eugenic society was scheduled for 24 November 1917 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia) in Budapest under the patronage of the Academy’s president, Albert Berzeviczy (1853–1936). 198

Hungary

Apáthy endorsed Teleki’s proposal, albeit reluctantly, as he was not convinced of the link between eugenics and population policy. As the person who devised the statutes of the new society, Hoffmann agreed with Apáthy that adding ‘population policy’ to the society’s name was perhaps ‘unnecessary’ and ‘even harmful’. It was, he explained, ‘the only way to stop the establishment of a rival Society of Population Policy’ (Hoffmann’s letter to Apáthy, 17 November 1917), which would have divided the eugenic movement in Hungary in ways similar to that which had happened in Germany and Austria. Hoffmann hoped that by establishing a society devoted to both racial hygiene and population policy, ‘the double movement which divided the efforts of race regeneration in Germany was united in Hungary from the beginning’ (Hoffmann 1921: 291). The general aim of the new eugenic society, as outlined in the draft of the statutes, was simply ‘to study the Hungarian nation’s racial hygiene and population policy’. Its work was defined as scientific ‘first and foremost. Party politics, religious and sectarian issues were excluded’. In terms of objectives, the following were proposed: a. The exploration and diagnosis, together with the scientific examination of the dangers that threaten the body of the Hungarian people – primarily in connection with the decline in the number of births. b. The use of those tools and methods of research, discussion, thematization, and expert knowledge with which to improve the quality of a population depleted and degenerated by the war and increase its numbers at the same time. c. The support of such objectives that are aimed at the protection of the existing human material; for example, by decreasing the death rate. (‘A Magyar Fajegészségtani és Népesedéspolitikai Társaság alapszabálytervezete’, 1917) In addition to providing ‘expert opinion’ on eugenics, the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy endeavoured to organize ‘field trips’ and ‘discussions with business associations’, as well as prepare ‘questionnaires and public debates of the more important issues’. A library containing the literature on racial hygiene and population policy was also envisaged, together with the creation of a new journal, the publication of books and the organization of exhibitions. The Social Museum in Budapest, for instance, offered to lend its collection of photographs and materials on eugenics for a national exhibition on war and welfare to be organized together with the Military Welfare Office (Hoffmann 1918a: 64). At the inaugural meeting, on 24 November 1917, Teleki delivered the opening address. He highlighted the crucial importance of racial hygiene and population policy. The war, he noted, was the nation’s sobering moment. It was their responsibility towards future generations to act immediately. To this end, this new eugenic society was established as a means by which specialists and government officials could work together towards the survival of the Hungarian race. The next speaker was Hoffmann, who offered a brief history of racial hygiene, eugenics and population policy. He distinguished between ‘Gobineau’s school of racial anthropology’, which was interested 199

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

only in the physical characteristics of human races, and ‘Galton’s school of eugenics’, which was mostly preoccupied with the improvement of the hereditary qualities of future generations. In Hungary, Hoffmann argued, a synthesis was attempted based on the similarities between population policy (qualitative and quantitative) and racial hygiene (positive and negative). Finally, the third speaker, Lajos Nékám, linked national protection with the prevention of venereal diseases and racial hygiene. He too highlighted the regenerative potential of eugenics and the eugenicists’ role as custodians of the Hungarian race (‘Magyar Fajegészségtani és Népesedéspolitikai Társaság alakulása’, Szociálpolitikai Szemle 1917: 212–14; ‘Magyar fajegészségtani és népességpolitikai társaság alakulása’, A Cél 1918: 103–6). The establishment of the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy in 1917 completed the long and convoluted process of nationalization that eugenic ideas of social and biological improvement had experienced since the beginning of the twentieth century in Hungary. As Hoffmann noted in the Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie in 1918, ‘In Hungary, racial hygiene [was] acknowledged and promoted by the state’. Hoffmann also proudly remarked that with the exception of Sweden, ‘no other European country [was] so determined to put racial-­hygienic demands into practice as Hungary [was]’ (Hoffmann 1918a: 56). By securing political support, the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy also subsumed its practical eugenic agenda within the parameters of a regenerative narrative of nation and state. As one prominent member of the Society, anthropologist Mihály Lenhossék (1863– 1937), put it: ‘Our national eugenics can have only one goal: to strengthen the nation, increase its numbers, heal its wounds, to support in its struggle, to favour the unity of this brave Hungarian nation (Lenhossék 1918: 241). Moreover, the Society’s journal, Nemzetvédelem (The Protection of the Nation), was launched in the summer of 1918. Such promising beginnings were, however, cut short following the military defeat of the Central Powers and the subsequent disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

V The change of political regime in October 1918 did not diminish the general preoccupation with the health of the population. In the newly established Hungarian Democratic Republic, eugenicists were among those who most actively promoted public health and education reforms. Eugenic and public health policies figured prominently on the medical and health agenda of the new democratic regime. To some extent, this was to be expected considering that leftist eugenicists such as József Madzsar played an important political role during this time. He and other progressive eugenicists and social hygienists attempted to implement many of the eugenic policies they had promoted before and during the war. Madzsar, in particular, was very active in shaping the public health doctrine of the new regime to reflect his eugenic and medical concerns. On 8 November 1918, the Association of Progressive Doctors 200

Hungary

(Progresszív Orvosok Szindikátusa) was created, with Madzsar as President. Other active eugenicists included Géza Lobmayer (1880–1940), László Detre (1874– 1939), Lajos Dienes, Zoltán Rónai (1880–1940) and Tibor Péterfi (1883–1953). Moreover, a newly reformed Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare (Munkaügyi és Népjóléti Minisztérium) was established on 8 December 1918. It was Madzsar, again, who was appointed as the secretary of state in charge of the Ministry’s Department of Health. New socialist programmes of medical care and health reform were devised to solve the recurrent social and biological problems afflicting Hungarian society (Flamm 1919: 91–4). Educational programmes and concrete eugenic proposals included, for example, the fight against venereal and contagious diseases, the protection of mothers and infants as well as the creation of medical agencies to assist the population with marriage and family planning advice (Pártos 1919: 9–11). To consolidate these efforts a Scientific Association of Social Hygiene (Szociálegészségügyi Tudományos Társaság) was eventually established in February 1919. Mihály Károly’s democratic regime was followed by Béla Kun’s Republic of Councils (Tanácsköztársaság). Their short time in power notwithstanding (21 March to 1 August 1919), the communists’ efforts to establish a new Hungarian society consisted of little more than rhetoric. Following the Soviet model, a Commissariat for Labour and Social Welfare (Munkaügyi és Népjóléti Népbiztosság) was created in March 1919, one whose aim was to supervise the social and medical reforms planned by the new regime (Barta 1919: 13–23). Moreover, all private hospitals and sanatoriums were nationalized, allowing state intervention in financing health and medical services. The Commissariat for Education (Közoktatásügyi Népbiztosság) also organized lectures on general topics related to eugenics, promoted as an antidote to the problems health experts associated with poor social and living conditions of the population. Working towards the same goal, the Social Museum and the Budapest District Workers’ Insurance Fund (Budapesti Kerületi Munkásbiztosító Pénztár) organized a Public Health Exhibition (Népegészségügyi Kiállítás), between 20 April and 5 July 1919. The aim was to promote health awareness and disease prevention, as well as to inculcate the values of personal hygiene. This educational element of health and the associated welfare ideology was certainly consistent with the eugenic goals formulated by the Committee on Eugenics, and later by the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy since the beginning of the war. Not surprisingly, then, when the most important medical authority in the country became the National Council of Health (Országos Egészségügyi Tanács), which was reorganized in April 1919, the eugenicists dominated it. Madzsar became President, while Léo Liebermann (1852–1926) and Dezső Hahn (1876–1921) were appointed vice-Presidents. Another eugenicist, Zoltán Rónai, became the People’s Commissar of Justice. Eugenic discourse and practices were adapted to the new political realities. With respect to the general health of the population, the Revolutionary Governing Council initiated an ambitious programme which included reform of the public 201

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

health administration, protection of mothers and children, hygiene in the workplace, urban health, physical education, health propaganda, sexual education and so on (Pongrácz 1919 and Kemény 1919: 121–44). Concerned eugenicists committed themselves to the elimination of social problems by concentrating on improving the moral character of the working classes. To this end, health exhibitions were organized to inform workers of health, social and medical issues, such as that held in Budapest in April-May 1919, which focused on child protection, contagious and venereal diseases, alcoholism, work protection and emigration (‘Kommunista hygiéne’, Egészség 1919: 73).

VI During the negotiations for the peace treaties in Versailles, prominent leaders of the Hungarian delegation, such as Albert Apponyi and Pál Teleki employed eugenic arguments to support their claims that Hungary was a well-­integrated territorial, social, economic and biological unit, and as such it would be unreasonable to divide it into smaller units. This view of a unitary Hungarian state was clearly expressed in a short pamphlet, entitled The Consequences of the Division of Hungary from the Standpoint of Eugenics, prepared by the Society of Racial Hygiene and Population Policy, and which was used as propaganda material (‘The Consequences of the Division of Hungary from the Standpoint of Eugenics’, Nemzetvédelem 1919: 162–4). Alas, no arguments, eugenic or otherwise, were successful, and the hopes of saving Hungary’s territorial integrity were completely dashed by the Treaty of Trianon on 4 June 1920. By 1921 the Hungarian Society of Racial Hygiene and Population Policy ceased to exist. Against this ill-­fated historical moment, the eugenic movement suffered additional losses. Géza Hoffmann died in 1921 from an infectious disease. István Apáthy followed in 1922, having suffered the humiliation of being imprisoned for one and a half years in Transylvania by the Romanian authorities. Moreover, the purges of Hungarian universities following the collapse of Kun’s communist regime significantly affected the eugenicists on the left of the political spectrum. József Madzsar, Tibor Péterfi and Lajos Dienes, for example, were fired from their individual professorships at the Faculty of Medicine in Budapest and eventually left the country. Initially, when reformed in the early 1920s, the Hungarian eugenic movement was not only bereft of some of its prominent eugenicists but also forced into a much narrower and dogmatic path due to the increased nationalism and anti-Semitism of the 1920s (Bársony 1922). The zoologist Lajos Méhely (1862–1953) perfectly illustrates this ideological transformation of eugenics in Hungary during the inter-­war period. Amidst a difficult domestic situation, Méhely invoked eugenics and racial hygiene as central to the country’s national reconstruction (Méhely 1925: 354–65). Moreover, inspired by the State Institute for Racial Biology (Statens Institut för Rasbiologi) 202

Hungary

established in Uppsala in 1922, Méhely advocated the creation of a similar one in Hungary. According to Méhely, the main purpose of such an institute was to study the ‘racial elements constituting the country’s population’ systematically and ultimately to collect the nation’s ‘racial biological inventory [. . .], one which could be used as a background for all sorts of decisions by the intellectual, national, and economic leaders of the country’ (Méhely 1927a: 12–13). Méhely invested his proposal with a sense of historical urgency. ‘For us, Hungarians’, he maintained, this institute had ‘a dual importance: it [was] not only about establishing the scientific anthropology of our race, which [was] dangerously declining, but also [. . .] about taking stock of those racial strengths and environmental influences, which we [could] use in order to prepare the way for the physical and spiritual renewal of the Hungarian race’ (Méhely 1927a: 13). In practical terms, Méhely proposed the following departments within the prospective institute: genealogy and medical demography; anthropology, including criminal biology; experimental biology; and pathology, along with a museum devoted to heredity and genetics (Méhely 1927a: 15). In 1923 Méhely tried unsuccessfully to convince Pázmány Péter University in Budapest to endorse his proposal. He continued, however, during the 1920s and 1930s to argue for the need for such an institute of racial biology, alongside the publication of a wide range of books and articles on racial protectionism (Méhely 1925; 1926a; 1927b; 1928). Such eugenic views on the Hungarian race were also promoted by political parties, such as the conservative Christian Social and Economic Party (Keresztény Szociális és Gazdasági Párt), which included eugenics in its programme as early as 1919, as well as by new scientific and religious associations established in the early 1920s, such as the Hungarian Scientific Society of Race Protection (Magyar Tudományos Fajvédő Egyesület) and the Mission for the Saving of the Hungarian Race (Magyar Fajmentés Misszió). Along with professional groups, such as the National Association of Hungarian Physicians (Magyar Orvosok Nemzeti Egyesülete) and St Luke’s Society of Catholic Physicians (Magyar Katolikus Orvosok Szent Lukács Egyesülete), these societies made a significant contribution to the dissemination of a growing eugenic discourse on social and biological improvement based on the protection of family, nation and race (Marosi 1924). Once again eugenics seemed to be able to provide solutions to the host of medical and social problems, following World War I’s devastating impact on the population’s health (Donáth 1920: 353–61), although the debate also continued over its political and scientific authority (Tomor 1920: 67–89 and Kadmos 1926). As the 1920s progressed, new areas of biological research such as serology and racial biology contributed to the new scientific foundations of eugenics (Jeney 1923: 546–7). Frigyes (Fritz) Verzár (1886–1979), professor of pathological physiology at the University of Debrecen, was one of the first Hungarian scientists to make use of the discoveries made by Karl Landsteiner (1868–1943) and Ludwig Hirszfeld (1884–1954) on ABO blood groups, and their application to racial groups (Verzár and Weszeczky 1921: 33–9 and 1922: 3–11). More importantly, perhaps, the eugenic 203

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

management of the population, alongside protectionist measures to ensure racial health, became part of a broader political and cultural programme of national reconstruction (Tuszkai 1924: 1–12 and 1928: 617–26 and Balás 1926). In this context, eugenics was often associated with social hygiene and public health. For instance, the National Association of Public Health (Országos Közegészségügyi Egyesület) and the Museum of Public Health (Népegészségügyi Múzeum), reorganized in 1926 into an Institute of Social Hygiene under the hygienist György Gortvay (1892–1966), actively promoted eugenic work, with assistance from the Ministry of Public Welfare (‘Hungarian Social Hygiene Institute’, Eugenical News 1928: 122 and Gortvay 1929: 545–7 and 1938: 3–4). Similarly, the Sanitary Reform Bureau, established in 1925 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and chaired by the Secretary of State for Health, Kornél Scholtz (1871–1962), integrated eugenics within its broad agenda of public health (‘Sanitary Reform Bureau, Hungary’, 1929). These state institutions shared a common vision of social and eugenic improvement, as illustrated by a number of public exhibitions organized during the 1920s and 1930s including: the international exhibition on human protection (Nemzetközi Embervédelmi Kiállitás), organized between May and August 1926 in Budapest; the Exhibition on Health Protection (Egészségvédelmi Kiállítás) held in 1932 at the Museum of Public Health (Népegészségügyi Múzeum); the Exhibition on Heredity and Eugenics (Eugenikai és Öröklődéstani Kiállítás), organized in 1934 by the Hungarian Psychological Society (Magyar Psychologiai Társaság), together with the Museum of Public Health; and, finally, the Health Exhibition (Egészségügyi Kiállítás) sponsored by the Turul Association (Turul Szövetség) in 1935. Moreover, new societies such as the National Association for Family Protection (Családvédő Országos Egyesület), established in 1928, and new medical journals such as Szociális Orvostudományi (Social Medicine), established in 1934, introduced the political establishment and the general public alike to new ideas of health and hygiene, which were seen as requirements not only for the eugenic regeneration of the national community but also for the establishment of a suitable social and economic environment that would enable future generations to prosper and expand numerically. An important source for this renewed eugenic interest in Hungary was the increased acceptance by government officials and seasoned politicians of a new set of beliefs about, and practices involving, the scientific planning of society (Mártonffy 1939). In this respect, the role played by the former president of the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy, Pál Teleki, was significant. During the 1920s and 1930s, Teleki continued to promote eugenic ideas of social and biological welfare, although he was critical of Méhely’s racial anti-Semitism and Nazi eugenic programmes (‘A fajnemesítés és sterilizáció magyar tudós társaságról beszél gróf Teleki Pál és Nékám professzor’, Az Est 1933: 11). Equally important, in 1933, Teleki, together with Lajos Nékám, also tried unsuccessfully to revive the defunct Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy (‘Fajkutató és fajegeszségi társaság alakul: gróf Teleki Pál lész az elnöke, Nékám Lajos az igazgatója’, Hétfői Napló 1933: 3). 204

Hungary

Méhely and Teleki were not the only eugenicists in Hungary to advocate the establishment of a eugenic institute and society. Psychiatrist László Benedek (1887– 1945), a professor at the University of Debrecen and Director of its Clinic of Psychiatry and Mental Pathology (Ideg- és Elmekórtani Klinika), also put forward similar plans. In 1931, for instance, he proposed the creation of a Central Institute of Hereditary Biology (Központi Öröklésbiológiai Intézet) (Benedek 1931a: 62), an institution aimed at centralizing various programmes of qualitative and quantitative racial improvement, alongside eugenic propaganda and eugenic research. A year earlier, following the German and Swedish examples, he also requested from the Ministry of Education the creation of ‘an extraordinary professorial chair for race hygiene’ (Benedek 1931b: 173). Ten years later, Benedek renewed his proposal, this time suggesting the creation of a Central Institute of Hereditary Biology and Population Policy (Központi Öröklésbiológiai és Népesedéspolitikai Intézet) (Benedek 1941b: 9). If such an institute was designed to coordinate nationwide research on heredity, then a new Society for Racial Hygiene was to be entrusted with the popularization of eugenics to the general public. These endeavours reflected both the increased eugenic activity in Hungary and the international recognition enjoyed by Hungarian eugenicists such as Benedek. In 1934, he and Gortvay became members of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, joined in 1935 by Gyula Darányi (1888–1958), Director of the Institute of Public Health (Közegészségtani Intézet) at Péter Pázmány University. Also worth mentioning in this context is the medical statistician Tivadar Szél (1893–1964), who, in the early 1930s, was a member of the Commission for the Study of the Eugenic or Dysgenic Effects of War, established by the IFEO in 1927. Szél presented his report on ‘The Genetic Effects of the War in Hungary’ at the Third International Congress of Eugenics held in New York in 1932 (Szél 1934: 249–54).

VII By the early 1930s, the eugenic movement in Hungary accommodated a wide range of ideas for social and biological improvement. If György Gortvay represented those physicians and health reformers who placed eugenics within the broad framework of social hygiene and public health, psychiatrists Lajos Naményi (1892–1957) and László Benedek, as well as biologists such as Gyula Darányi interpreted eugenics and race improvement mostly in relation to mental hygiene, hereditary diseases and genetics, whilst at the same time actively promoting the introduction of negative eugenic measures (Darányi 1934: 9–12). Darányi was also particularly interested in the fusion between genetics and eugenics (Darányi 1930: 305–13 and 1935: 1–14). To this effect, in 1935, he established a section for twin research at his institute in order to foster ‘investigations into race hygiene and the hygiene of inheritance’, and thus improve scientific understanding of the ‘whole field of eugenics’ (Jankovich 1935: 76–80; See also Jankovich 1936b: 737–41 and Bureau of Human Heredity, FD 1/1733). 205

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

During the 1920s, Naményi was a leading spokesman for voluntary eugenic sterilization and marriage counselling (Naményi 1926: 744–9; 1929: 1125–33; 1932a: 1042–50 and 1934). As Secretary of the Heredity Section (Örökléstani Szakosztály) of the Hungarian Psychological Society, established in 1936, he was also the only Hungarian eugenicist to become a member of the English Eugenics Society, in 1938. Naményi first recommended eugenic sterilization as a means to prevent the transmission of mental hereditary diseases in 1924, at the 8th Meeting of Hungarian Psychiatrists in Budapest (VIII. Magyar Elmeorvosok Értekezlet) (Naményi 1925: 152–6). Naményi was familiar with the British, German, American and Scandinavian eugenic movements (Naményi 1932b: 1125–30; 1936: 73–5 and 1939: 221–4), but he often based his arguments about eugenic sterilization on the wide range of health problems he encountered as physician at the Psychiatric Asylum of Angyalföld (Angyalföldi Elmegyógyintézet) and, after 1929, at the Family Centre (Családi Tanácsadó) in Budapest. It was, however, Benedek who became probably the most known advocate of eugenic sterilization in Hungary (Benedek 1931a). In 1931, at the request of the Society of Hungarian Psychiatrists, Benedek and Ferenc Finkey (1870–1949), the co-­chairman of the Hungarian Society of Criminology and Criminal Law (Magyar Büntetőjogi és Kriminológiai Társaság), prepared a lengthy study of the medical importance, practical details and legal particulars regarding the introduction of a sterilization law in Hungary (Benedek 1931c: 173). This study then served as the foundation for a Sterilization Bill (‘eugenikai törvényjavaslat’), which Benedek submitted to the Ministry for Public Welfare and Labour (Népjóléti és Munkaügyi Minisztérium) on 15 February 1932. Benedek recommended two categories of individuals for sterilisation: ‘those suffering from hereditary mental and nervous diseases’ and those suffering ‘from disorders resting on [a] somatical hereditary disposition’. The first category referred to the sterilization of schizophrenics and those suffering manic-­depressive insanity. The second category included those suffering from St Vitus’ dance (Sydenham’s chorea) and Huntington’s chorea. Sterilization was also ‘considered in regard to unconfined imbeciles and idiots, especially in erratic cases, or when sexual aggressiveness has been shown’, as well as ‘the relapsing impulsive criminal, especially the aggressive sexual criminals’ (Benedek 1935b: 28–34 and 1935c: 1–3). An ‘expert-­committee’, consisting of a ‘nerve specialist, an operator, and a chief district-­physician’, was to be instituted whose legal and medical expertise guaranteed that sterilization was conducted only when absolutely necessary, and in those cases mentioned in the report. The Minister for Public Welfare and Labour would appoint the committee for a ‘term of three years’. Any proposal for sterilization from local physicians would be brought before the ‘expert-­commission’, which ‘would in each case thoroughly investigate the family and the respective person, and by a majority vote bring their decision regarding sterilization’. Importantly, sterilizations were to be performed ‘only in a public hospital, yet always under medical discretion’ (Benedek 1935c: 3–4). The right to appeal against the decision of the ‘expert-­committee’ was permitted. The Hungarian High Court, which would deal with the cases of sterilization, 206

Hungary

would however, have to consult with the Royal Sanitary Council before reaching a conclusion. Benedek’s draft of the ‘Hungarian Sterilization Bill’ was discussed by the National Council of Public Health and rejected. It was deemed that the existing situation in Hungary required a less drastic eugenic programme. Moreover, the Council preferred another proposal put forward by another established Hungarian psychiatrist, Károly Schaffer (1884–1939). According to Schaffer ‘the preparation of legislation in connection with sterilization for the purpose of improving the race’ was premature in Hungary. After reviewing sterilization laws in the USA, Denmark and Germany, Schaffer argued that sterilization was: not yet practical, because: 1) the present stage of the study of hereditariness does not afford definite solutions in actual practice, 2) that frequently very elastic diagnosis of causes may occur, 3) the value of racial hygiene as regards public health and public economy cannot be accepted as definitely prov[en]. Accordingly he advised that before ‘eugenic legislation connected with sterilization is warranted, [. . .] a tremendous amount of preparatory, exhaustive, scientific work and collection of details and particulars must precede it’. Equally important, Schaffer was not convinced that ‘sterilization eugenics would be popular in Hungary’ (FP 370/419 Charles Schaffer 1933: 83–9). Schaffer voiced his opposition to eugenic sterilization in a number of articles published in the 1930s (Schaffer 1932: 689–90; 1934a: 161–6; 1934b: 201–5 and 1937: 57–8), but Benedek remained undeterred. He continued to lobby for the introduction of a sterilization law, both at home and abroad (Benedek 1935b: 4 and ‘Sterilization in Hungary, Eugenical News 1934: 142). Eugenic developments elsewhere, particularly in Germany after 1933, were also in his favour. The debate on eugenic sterilization widened in Hungary (‘A sterilizálás kérdése körül’, Egészségpolitikai szemle, 1934: 123–6; Lengyel 1934: 289–95; Donáth 1934: 284–6; Biró 1935; Angyal 1936). Moreover, younger eugenicists, such as anthropologist Mihály Malán (1900–68) and Adél Jankovich (1900–58), an assistant at the Institute of Public Health at the University of Budapest, adhered to a stricter hereditarianism than previous generations of Hungarian eugenicists. During the mid-1930s, Malán and Jankovich had studied with German racial hygienists, such as Eugen Fischer and Otmar von Verschuer, and became influenced by the growing research interest in racial biology, hereditary care and human genetics, which were popular in Germany at the time. In terms of practical application of hereditarian theories to society, these young scientists also considered the Nazi sterilization law a model to emulate in Hungary (Malán 1935: 303–18 and Jankovich 1936a). Catholic eugenicists in Hungary also commented on and extensively discussed the German sterilization law (Somogyi 1934a: 89–95). As elsewhere, they too embraced the 1930 Papal encyclical Casti Connubii, arguing that sterilization interfered with the fundamental right to enter matrimony and that the state did not have the legitimacy to punish (by sterilization) potential parents, whose susceptibility to ‘commit a crime’ 207

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

in the future (the production of defective children) could not be proven. Essentially, in such discussions, the family was deemed more sacred than the state, and negative eugenics was chastised for attempting to tamper with human bodies in order to alter their natural functions. In Hungary, these and similar arguments were voiced most compellingly by the Roman Catholic bishop Tihamér Tóth (1889–1939) and Mihály Marczell (1883–1962), a Catholic theologian, writer and educator (Marczell 1940: 67–75), as well as by Catholic journals, such as Katholikus Szemle (Hungarian Catholic Review) and Korunk Szava (Word of Our Time) (Maring 1937: 663–5). Another powerful critique of negative eugenics came from József Somogyi (1898– 1948), a philosopher and pedagogue from Szeged. In 1934 Somogyi published two books on eugenics: Eugenika és etika (Eugenics and Ethics) and Tehetség és eugenika (Talent and Eugenics) in which he discussed human improvement as conterminous, not distinct, from morality and education (Somogyi 1934a and 1934b). Indeed, Somogyi agreed that the most important aspect of eugenics was the control of reproduction, but he argued that the issue of reproduction should be dealt with from social, cultural, political and ethical perspectives. The first task of the eugenic movement should, therefore, be ‘education’ (‘eugenikai felvilágosítása’) of the population about the proper selection of partners (Somogyi 1934b: 360). Eugenicists ought to be vigilant, he warned, as excessive concern with the control of marriage and reproduction could easily lead to ‘eugenic hypochondria’ (‘eugenikai hipochondriára’) (Somogyi 1934b: 362). Somogyi opposed sterilization on moral and legal grounds. According to Somogyi, ‘[t]he health of the race, however, [did] not depend on the reproduction of a small minority, but of the valuable majority, and on the success not of the negative but positive eugenics’ (Somogyi 1934b: 364). While Hungarian eugenicists continued to argue in favour of sterilization during the late 1930s and early 1940s no supporting legislation was introduced in Hungary. In many ways, sterilization was seen as an extreme eugenic measure whose effectiveness to prevent further social and biological degeneration remained ‘scientifically unproven’; in other ways, it conflicted with religious (especially Catholic) morality.

VIII If sterilization remained the unfulfilled goal of the eugenic movement in Hungary, other negative eugenic measures such as compulsory medical examination before marriage did not (Dobák 1934: 232–41 and 1935; Boróczy 1938: 247–50). As elsewhere in EastCentral Europe, in Hungary the protection of the family was one of the most discussed eugenic topics during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Child allowances, marriage loans, and family protectionism were often promoted as positive eugenic measures. In addition to the Stefánia Association for the Protection of Mothers and Infants, whose work greatly expanded during the inter-­war period, one institution that played a significant role in disseminating eugenic propaganda was the Hungarian Union for Family Protection (Magyar Családvédelmi Szövetség), established in 1937. The Union established its 208

Hungary

own Marriage Counselling Institute (A Családvédelmi Szövetség Házassági Tanácsadó Intézete) in 1938 and a Section on Racial Improvement (Fajnemesítési Szakosztály) in 1939, led by Gyula Darányi. The latter promoted a wide range of activities, including nationwide biological studies to establish ‘the Hungarian race’s most valuable physical and spiritual elements’; research into ‘the biological consequences of inbreeding and miscegenation’, and into ‘the hereditary and constitutional diseases ruining the race’; and, finally, the campaign for the application of ‘practical eugenic methods’ (Doros 1940: 114). The Christian family ideal was one important quality that eugenicists working with the Union for Family Protection promoted widely. As Gyula Darányi noted at the Section on Racial Improvement’s first meeting, ‘the family is undoubtedly the place where we should strive to put the rules and principles of eugenics into practice’ (Darányi 1939: 3). Premarital health examinations were seen as essential for the protection of the family. ‘The reason’, according to Darányi, ‘was the opportunity provided by this method to identify, without employing any kind of coercion, the harmful genetic and infectious material in couples who plan to get married’ (Darányi 1939: 4). Health experts provided further endorsing arguments for the eugenic screening of the population, while at the same time targeting certain groups for sterilization (‘Ansiedlung von Zigeunern’, Volk und Rasse 1937: 211 and ‘Zur Zigeunerfrage in Ungarn’, Volkstum im Südosten 1939: 308–9). Ede Neuber (1882–1946), Director of the Clinic for Dermatological and Venereal Diseases at the University of Debrecen, for instance, was one such expert who suggested that the health of the family must be controlled and managed by the state. Neuber highlighted the prevalence of tuberculosis and venereal diseases in Hungary’s rural and urban areas, described existing medical problems and the demographic crisis in strikingly negative terms (Neuber 1938). During the early 1940s these eugenic anxieties gained political significance as the country regained some of the territories it lost after World War I, such as southern Slovakia and south-­western Ruthenia (or Carpatho-Ukraine) from Czechoslovakia and Northern Transylvania from Romania (Malán 1940: 187–92). Based on that perception, eugenicists urged the state to intervene and regulate the eugenic protection of the nation’s biological body (Szabó 1939: 1–7). Integral to this vision of a strong Hungarian state was the centralization of health and welfare programmes. As a result, the most important institutions devoted to urban and rural health care and to the protection of mothers and infants and nursing care in Hungary, the Stefánia Association and the Green Cross Health Services (Zöldkeresztes Egészségvédelmi Szolgálat), established in 1927, were unified, forming the National Association for Health Protection (Országos Egészségvédelmi Szövetség) under Béla Johan (1889–1983) in 1941 (Johan 1941: 308–17). Equally important, in 1940 the Institute for Anthropology and Racial Biology (Embertani és Fajbiológia Intézet) was established at the Horthy Miklós University in Szeged under the leadership of the renowned Hungarian anthropologist Lajos Bartucz (1885–1966). Moreover, when the Királyi Ferenc József University reopened 209

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

in Kolozsvár (Cluj) in 1940, it created one chair in anthropology for Mihály Malán and another in racial biology and heredity (‘fajbiológia és örökléstan’) for Lajos Csík (1902–62), a geneticist and former researcher at the Galton Laboratory, University College, London. Eugenics was deemed essential to the demographic, social, and welfare policies of the Hungarian state during the 1940s (Hézser 1940). Of crucial importance here is the Society for Biopolitics (Egészségpolitikai Társaság), established in 1935, and its Section on Large Families (Sokgyermekes Családok Osztálya) headed by the statistician Alajos Kovács (1877–1963). Various eugenic idioms were invoked by the Society for Biopolitics to justify the need to redefine the biological relationship of the individual and the state within a new health politics (Hézser 1936: 145–59). Its president, hygienist Lajos Antal (1902–73), offered his own interpretation of eugenics and biopolitics (Antal 1934), which he termed ‘biologism’ (‘biológizmus’). Correspondingly, Hungarian biopolitics was based on ‘the maintenance, care, and increase of the biological values of Hungarianness’, alongside the Hungarian race’s ‘vitality and biological breeding’ (Antal 1940a: 8). The goal was, ultimately, to create a national institute devoted to biological and eugenic research. This aim was achieved on 31 May 1940, with the creation of the Hungarian Institute of National Biology (Magyar Nemzetbiológiai Intézet). The aim of the new institution was to create a new Hungary that was ‘strong, biologically homogeneous and capable of expansion’ (A Magyar Nemzetbiológiai Intézet megalapítása 1940: 8–9), while one member of the institute, statistician András Korponay, added: ‘The foundation of our rebirth and our future is not a population policy based on the chimera of assimilation but one based on the demographic growth of racially pure Hungarians’ (Korponay 1941: 38). Heredity, racial biology and eugenics were underlined simultaneously as ‘the most nationalist [and] the most modern branches of biological sciences’ (A Magyar Nemzetbiológiai Intézet megalapítása 1940: 9–10). Hungary was to become a healthy nation, qualitatively and quantitatively; in short, a country of 20 million Hungarians (A húszmilliós magyarságért 1940). Underpinned by Antal’s concept of biologism, the Institute of National Biology endeavoured to restore Hungary’s former demographic and political position in the region by promoting hereditary, racial and serological research, population genetics and transfers, and natalist policies (Antal 1940b). The Institute of National Biology consisted of ten departments, each with its own director, dealing with particular areas of research: new perspectives on national life (Lajos Antal), statistics (Alajos Kovács), biology and Hungarian history (Miklós Asztalos), national education (Géza Féja), population growth (János Hidvégi), the biology of large families (János Néveri), heredity, racial biology and eugenics (János Gáspár), national nutrition (Harald Tangl), science of labour (György Gortvay), and national psychology and public opinion research (Ferenc Rajniss). By associating established experts, such as Kovács and Gortvay, with those who were politically active such as Antal and Rajniss, the Institute was able to maintain its privileged links with the government and other state-­sponsored institutes, universities and research centres. 210

Hungary

Like other similar institutions at the time, including the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (established in 1927) and the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems (founded in 1941), the Hungarian Institute of National Biology offered a holistic vision of society based on the correlation between social and racial sciences. The anthropologist János Gáspár (1899–1989), Director of the Department of Heredity, Racial Biology and Eugenics (Öröklési, Fajbiológiai és Eugenikai Osztály), expressed this vision clearly. While the Institute as a whole dealt with understanding the nation’s external conditions, be they social, economic, national, or cultural, his Department’s aim, Gáspár emphasized, was ‘to research and classify the anthropological (racial) composition and hereditary constitution of our nation, in order to be able, on the basis of this knowledge, to establish the methods and practical tools of Hungarian racial-­ improvement’. The strategic purpose of this activity was also highlighted: ‘[w]ithout the knowledge of these hereditary characteristics, it is impossible to conduct rational health and social politics’. To address the nation’s eugenic regeneration the Department also endeavoured to devote considerable attention to miscegenation (‘fajkeveredés’). There was a direct link, it was claimed, between ‘disharmonious constitutions’ and biological deterioration. Accordingly, it was imperative to understand ‘which interbreeding of [different racial elements] was not harmful, [and] moreover, [was] even beneficial and which ones were to be absolutely rejected [as detrimental] to the Hungarian nation’. Finally, Gáspár claimed, the hereditary inventory of the population was the prerequisite to a wider transformation, ‘the nation’s intellectual eugenization’ (‘nemzet szellemi eugenezisét’) (Gáspár 1940: 1–3). The establishment of the Department of Heredity, Racial Biology and Eugenics reflected the Hungarian state’s effort to maintain control over the nation’s social and biological health. Eugenics focused simultaneously on the individual’s genetic worth and the racial quality of the collective body, all predicated upon the eugenicists’ knowledge and expertise as well as their ability to undertake such a vast eugenic programme of national improvement (Ambrus 1937: 195–7; Farkas 1941; Doros 1942). Illustrating this commitment, a ‘Marriage Act’ (also known as the ‘Third Jewish Law’) was introduced in 1941, stipulating compulsory medical examinations before marriage (‘Házasságkötés előtt szükséges orvosi vizsgálat’), mandatory marriage counselling and prohibiting marriages between Jews and non-Jews (Csiky 1941: 1–6; Somogyi 1942: 20–2). A new eugenic movement was thus emerging in the early 1940s, one that preserved the idealized values and heritage of the Hungarian race, while simultaneously delivering the eugenic promise of scientific management of the population (Cserey-Pechány 1942; Doros 1944a and 1944b). Illustrating this trend, in December 1943 the Hungarian National Defence Association (Magyar Országos Véderő Egyesület) established the first university college (Fajvédelmi Főiskola) purposely devoted to the racial and eugenic education of the Hungarian youth. The new college offered public lectures on the history of race, population policy, eugenics, social politics, Turanism, and so on. Antal, for example, spoke about population biology (Antal 1944: 114–21), while the 211

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

president of the Section on Racial Improvement of the Hungarian Union for Family Protection, Gábor Doros (1892–1980), lectured on eugenics (Doros 1944c: 142–6). In fact, Hungarian eugenicists perceived the nation’s racial improvement as crucial to state social policy. Lajos Antal, for instance, endeavoured to assist the government by offering a conceptual synthesis whereby the emphasis was not on race but on population. He termed it ‘population biology’ (‘népesedésbiológia’), hoping thus to transcend the limitations of classical demography and eugenics. Population biology, in this view, combined biology, sociology and history with statistics, it aimed at researching and understanding the role of ‘the biological laws in determining the growth of the Hungarian population’ (Antal 1942: 4). Biology was not merely a scientific discipline, but an active agent in shaping the future of the nation. ‘Population policy was’, according to Antal, ‘applied population biology’ (Antal 1942: 6). The more Hungary gravitated towards Nazi Germany after 1942 the more Hungarian eugenicists relied on ideas of racial survival, while simultaneously targeting specific ethnic groups such as the Roma (Kormos 1943: 95–6). Similar to other places in East-Central Europe at the time, the Hungarian race needed to be protected and defended from internal and external enemies, particularly the Jews (Bosnyák 1941 and 1942a; Orsós 1943). This exclusivist definition of the nation reflected both an indigenous tradition of race and the pressure exercised by the Nazi political order and its supporters in Hungary.

IX The eugenic societies and the Institute of National Biology established during the 1930s and early 1940s did not survive World War II. Yet, those eugenicists who stayed away from scientific racism such as Naményi managed to reformulate their eugenic ideas during the early 1950s, particularly with respect to marriage counselling. Other eugenicists such as Malán continued, however, to publish in their own area of specialism (anthropology) until the 1960s. Moreover, the ‘Marriage Act’ of 1941 remained in force until 1952, although the anti-Semitic marriage restrictions were excised, while eugenic ideas about the protection of mothers and children were included in the first family policies instituted by the communist regime in 1953. During the 1950s, however, as Hungary underwent a troubled transition from an independent country to Soviet occupation and ultimately to a communist satellite state, the ‘bourgeois’ science of eugenics was deemed incompatible with the new scientific ideologies imported from the Soviet Union. After the collapse of communism eugenics re-­emerged publicly in the work of Endre Czeizel, one of the best-­known Hungarian medical historians and geneticists. In 2000, Czeizel published a study on the Genealogical Evaluation of the Greatest Hungarian Poets, in which he tried, following Galton’s Hereditary Genius, to demonstrate that ‘the origin of the Poetic Talent may have strong genetic components’, and that ‘Our hope is that the human genome programme will provide data for the explanation of different types of genius and eminence’ (Czeizel 2000: 271–3). Embedded in biomedical rhetoric the message of this book was simple: there is a biological basis to cultural and intellectual 212

Hungary

achievements. What was a normative eugenic discourse in the 1920s was reproduced without difficulties in the 1990s in Hungary. Partly such argumentation was possible because of the constant preoccupation with Hungarian national exceptionalism, partly however because there is no cultural memory of eugenics, both as practice and ideology, in Hungarian historiography.

213

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Marius Turda Translations by Marius Turda and Barnabás Kalina

Hungary

József Madzsar

(1876, Nagykároly–1940, Arkhangelsk, Soviet Union)

József Madzsar was the most prominent leftist eugenicist in Hungary. He was born in 1876 in a small town in northern Transylvania, Nagykároly (Rom.: Carei; Ger.: Großkarol). A physician by profession, he graduated from the Dental Clinic of the Medical Faculty at the University of Budapest (Budapesti Kir. M. Tud.-egyetem Fogászati Klinikájá) in 1899. Between 1902 and 1914, he was one of the editors of the main Hungarian journal devoted to dentistry, Stomatologiai Közlöny (Stomatology Bulletin). Initially a devout Catholic, Madzsar gradually became attracted to Darwinism, socialism and communism. He translated Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) into Hungarian in 1906. In his first writings on Darwinism, he attempted to reconcile scientific rationalism and Catholic morality, while at the same time endorsing Darwin’s scientific theories of evolution (Madzsar 1908 and 1909). His Darwinist interpretation of society and human progress was closely connected with his proclivity for social reform and eugenics. Between 1906 and 1907, he edited a newspaper in Budapest, Szabad Gondolat (Free Thought), promoting rationalism, empiricism and progressive socialist ideas. He joined radical intellectual movements such as that grouped around the journal Huszadik Század (Twentieth Century) and the Society of Social Sciences (Társadalomtudományi Társaság), established in 1901, as well as those associated with the Hungarian Association of Free Thinking (Szabadgondolkozás Magyarországi Egyesülete) and the Galileo Circle (Galilei Kör). In 1911, Madzsar abandoned his medical practice and became a librarian at the Municipal Library in Budapest, devoting himself solely to publicist and political activities. In 1914, he was one of the founders of the National Bourgeois Radical Party (Országos Polgári Radikális Párt). Madzsar was also in a personal relationship with one of the leaders of the new party, sociologist Oszkár Jászi (1875–1957), having married the latter’s sister, Alice. Madzsar was also an important activist in the anti-­alcohol movement in Hungary and a leading member of the Order of Good Templars. In 1905, together with physician József Hollós (1876–1947) he founded a journal devoted to the study of alcoholism and its social and biological consequences, Az Alkoholismus (Alcoholism). He also lectured extensively in Budapest and in provincial towns across Hungary on the degenerative effects of alcohol. In 1906, Madzsar offered a summary of Galton’s article ‘Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims’ (1904) for the readers of Huszadik Század. He described Galton’s eugenics as ‘reproductive hygiene’ (‘szaporodás higiénéje’), seen through the prism of individual improvement (Madzsar 1906: 366–7). In the early 1910s, Madzsar contributed to a series of public debates on eugenics organized by the Society of Social Sciences. His first lecture on ‘Gyakorlati eugenika’ 215

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

(‘Practical Eugenics’), echoed Karl Pearson’s The Problem of Practical Eugenics (1909). Specifically, Madzsar linked ‘practical eugenics’ to social control and political discipline, seen as a means of enabling ‘worthy’ individuals to flourish in a eugenically planned society (Madzsar 1910: 115–7). His second lecture, delivered in 1911, was more ambitious in scope. Entitled ‘Fajromlás és fajnemesítés’ (‘Racial Degeneration and Racial Improvement’), it outlined a comprehensive eugenic programme for Hungary. From the outset, Madzsar observed the increasing level of physical degeneration among the male population, as a result of conscription, illness, poor living and poor hygiene conditions. Madzsar was a supporter of the most rigorous form of eugenics, thoroughly disapproving of what he perceived to be public and official indulgence towards symptoms of social and biological deterioration. He pointedly remarked that degeneration was detrimental to both society at large and to the country’s military strength (Madzsar 1911: 145–60). Madzsar was also instrumental in preparing the debate on eugenics, the so-­called ‘Eugenika vita’, organized by the Society of Social Sciences in 1911. Published by the Huszadik Század between February and September 1911 under the title ‘A fajnemesítés (eugenika) problémái’ (The Question of Racial Improvement – Eugenics), this public debate had the clear aim of clarifying the scientific and social challenges associated with various interpretations of eugenics in Hungary. Although Madzsar was one of the most important eugenicists in Hungary at the time, he was not invited to join the Hungarian Committee on Eugenics, established in 1914 by Pál Teleki, István Apáthy and Géza Hoffmann, no doubt due to his socialist sympathies and political connections with other radical thinkers and societies. In terms of their eugenic ideas, however, there were no substantial differences between Madzsar and these prominent members of the Hungarian Committee on Eugenics. Both Teleki and Hoffmann commented positively on Madzsar’s eugenic work in Budapest. When World War I broke out, Madzsar was the executive vice-­president of the Section on the Protection of Mothers within the Budapest Central Relief Committee (Budapesti Központi Segítő Bizottság). From this position he argued in favour of eugenic natalist and protectionist policies for mothers and infants (Madzsar 1914: 726– 30). He then articulated and strengthened the relationship between eugenics and the protection of mothers and infants in two programmatic texts (Madzsar 1915 and 1916a), both serving as the practical programme for the Stefánia Association for the Protection of Mothers and Infants, established in 1915. According to Madzsar, the Association’s purpose was twofold: on one hand, to stimulate the activity of the state in the management of child welfare services; on the other, to increase public awareness of the eugenic role of motherhood. Madzsar’s principles were as much medical as they were economic and social, as they insisted both on the importance of biological protection of mothers during birth and protective measures afterwards. Practical solutions were urgently needed, and Madzsar provided some in a 1915 public lecture on ‘A jövő nemzedék védelme és a háború’ (‘The Protection of Future Generations and the War’) (Madzsar 1916b: 1–22), and in a

216

Hungary

book published in 1916, suggestively entitled A meddő Budapest (The Sterile Budapest) (Madzsar 1916c). In 1917, Hungary’s first Welfare Centre (Népjóléti Központ) was established in Budapest and Madzsar was in charge of its section on the Protection of Mothers and Infants (‘Az anya- és csecsemővédő szakosztály alakuló ülése’, Népjóléti Közlöny 1917: 98–100). This section was transformed into an Institute for the Protection of Mothers and Infants (Az Anya- és Csecsemővédő Központi Intézet) in July that year, and divided into three departments: protection of mothers, child protection and social hygiene. The latter section was under Madzsar’s directorship (‘Az anya- és Csecsemővédő Központi Intézet’, Népjóléti Közlöny 1: 105). Protecting the health of the population had finally become a national priority, and this was aptly illustrated by the first national congress on public health and eugenics (Népegészségi Országos Nagygyűlés), which convened in Budapest between 25 and 28 October 1917. Madzsar was one of the main speakers, together with hygienist Béla Fenyvessy (1873–1954), the editor of the congress’s proceedings (Fenyvessy and Madzsar 1918). On this occasion, Madzsar voiced his criticism of Teleki and Hoffmann’s imitation of German racial hygiene and population policy, preferring instead to rely on the British eugenic tradition of population selection and control of reproduction. At the same time, he continued to be active in the social hygiene movement, focusing, in particular, on maternal welfare (Madzsar 1918). The political changes following the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy pushed Madzsar to the centre of public life in Hungary. Brought to power by the democratic revolution of 1918, progressive health reformers and social hygienists attempted to implement many of the eugenic policies they had promoted during the war. In November 1918, the Association of Progressive Doctors was created, with Madzsar as President. When a newly reformed Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare was established in December 1918, it was Madzsar, again, who was appointed as the secretary of state in charge of the Ministry’s Department of Health. He used his new position to establish a short-­lived Council of Hygiene and Prophylaxis (Conseil d’hygiène et prophylaxie) in Budapest, under the presidency of French Colonel Ferdinand Vyx, the Entente representative in Hungary, which also included representatives from Serbia, Romania and Czechoslovakia (Madzsar 1920: 91). Finally, when the most important medical authority in the country, the National Council of Health, was reorganized in April 1919, Madzsar became its President. With the counter-­revolution of 1919 and the instauration of Admiral Miklós Horthy’s regency in 1920, Madzsar feared for his life. He left the country in 1921 and only returned in 1924. For the next decade, he continued to publish in socialist newspapers, and was also the editor of two important anthologies, one dealing with health, the other with society (Madzsar 1926 and 1928). As a member of the Hungarian Communist Party, he was arrested several times. In 1935 he left the country again, first going to Czechoslovakia then to the Soviet Union. He was arrested in 1938 during Stalin’s Great Purge and sent to the Gulag, where he died in 1940.

217

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Practical Eugenics1 Those who, until today, have either out of professional calling or out of personal interest, considered the ways in which they could make their race, nation or entire humanity mighty and powerful, the ways they could award better and greater parts of earthly happiness to each individual, have almost, without exception, tried to achieve their goal by envisaging the modification or improvement of external circumstances. They have expected evolution from the advance of technology, from better public health conditions, from proper education and from the change in the economic situation. They have attached to individuals, to the human stock [. . .], only [a] secondary importance. They have regarded infants as mere plastic material, which can easily be improved with proper breeding and good sanitary conditions, as [these], no doubt, will materialize from the development of a strong and healthy society. However, the recently discovered principles of heredity shed an entirely new light upon the matter. Infants are not at all simple plastic material, but they bring with them the programme of their entire life into this world, they inherit their bodily and mental features from their ancestors, features which are almost impossible to change by means of education. Employing the exact methods of biometrics it was possible to demonstrate how certain maladies, for instance, tuberculosis [and] deaf-­muteness, and mental disorders are hereditary, just as physicians have suspected for [a] long [time]. Nevertheless certain bodily features, such as eye colour, stature, and the dimensions of the skull are also hereditary. Mental features have the same pattern; from the observation of the behaviour of brothers at school or from the comparison of the school reports of parents and children it [has] emerged how intelligence, temperament, thoroughness [. . .] are also hereditary. Good and bad physical characteristics, inclination for certain maladies and for immunity, and mental features, are inherited to the same degree. According to Darwin’s theory, the struggle for life selects from among these favourable and unfavourable conditions, it destroys the weak and thus obstructs degeneration and assures evolution. Nevertheless natural selection is not strong enough in human society anymore. [. . .] Quite often even our social institutions function against the goals of selection. Physical and mental maladies can be cured in sanatoriums, sinners can ‘mend their ways’ in prison, yet all these will not hinder them from transmitting their illnesses and negative predispositions to their children; the trouble is seated in the plasma of the germ cell and neither proper education, nor fresh air will change that. The present form of charity is even more dangerous because in most cases it obstructs the perishing of elements that are most burdensome and dangerous for society and it furthers their proliferation. And, finally, consider alcohol, which even in the most reasonable quantities damages the otherwise healthy germ cell and contributes to the destruction of the most beautiful pedigrees. [. . .] Plato knew about the opposition between cultural evolution and racial purity, and using the example of stockbreeders he requested the removal and banishment of the disabled from the state. We should return to that practice. Our pseudo-­humanism protests 218

Hungary

against a modern Taygetos and against convict colonies, [but] if we will not restore the rights of natural selection in human society, we should at least pursue the goal of preventing the propagation of the unfit and promote the increase of the fit. Obviously these few words cover a complexity of various tasks. If the state has the right to deprive citizens of their freedom, of their life even, it undoubtedly has the right to sterilize as well, especially when this can be executed without any other unpleasant consequences to the individual. As pathological cases are much more frequent among the first-­ born, the maintenance of large families should be made possible. It is not at all an indifferent matter whether a greater or a smaller number of healthy individuals provide the [financial] means for proper prisons, asylums and hospitals for the unfit. Charity should be driven in the direction in which, indeed, it does good service to society. Even the institution of marriage needs to be severely modified and thus as soon as we look through the glass of eugenics we will spot a multitude of queuing tasks. Through the scientific organization of the research of heredity and through the establishment of eugenic laboratories we will create a scientific basis for all those tasks. As Galton says so beautifully, a eugenic religion (eugenika vallása) will eventually take shape in the realm of ideologies. The religion of eugenics expands the tasks of philanthropy to the coming generations and by treating society and family as a unit, by paying close attention to descendants it lends greater significance to its actions. This religion will forbid all forms of sentimental charity, which are damaging to the race; it will enhance kinship and increase the love for family and race. In brief: eugenics is a masculine, promising religion, which calls upon the noblest feelings of our nature. Translation by Marius Turda

Racial Degeneration and Racial Improvement2 I have to begin my summary of the science of eugenics by ascertaining that from the point of view of its welfare and development, the quality of the human material is a matter of utter importance to our society. Even if this seems to be a commonplace statement, facts reflect how this truth does not appear with the clarity it should to all of us. Only once a year we face the issue of the quality of human material, of the illness or health of people in general, and that centres around recruiting, when newspapers are full of complaints about the degeneration of the human material, about the fact that the military standards need to be lowered, that the number of ill and degenerate individuals is large. That which is valid for the military service is undeniably valid for the entire population as well. Healthy individuals are needed not only by the armed forces; to have as many healthy and as few ill individuals as possible is the basic condition of our entire population. This is a completely natural requirement. We only need to consider that the ill do not engage in culture, they produce nothing while they consume the results of the work of others and the scarce cultural surplus. [. . .] First of all we need to elaborate [on] the science of eugenics, to analyse the rules of heredity, to collect good and bad pedigrees, following the example set by the Galton 219

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Laboratory, and thus to create a proper theoretical foundation for later practical implementation. In order to discover and implement biological arguments in our practical social policy, we need to reformulate our entire thinking on the basis of the collected data. It is neither enough to deal with economic aspects and external circumstances, nor to enhance breeding and individual hygiene: we need to consider the future generations as well. We already have several institutions at whose foundation these biological aspects play no role at all. [. . .] Tax allowances and raises in wages according to the number of children is such a measure, for instance. Only healthy families should benefit from these allowances, because otherwise the measure only helps the propagation of degenerates: the number of children is greater in unfit families. By improving social conditions we should attempt to prevent the best from using the one-­child system. In childcare we should always provide for the protection of healthy children in the first place and build next to the palace for the disabled children a much taller one for the healthy ones. Philanthropy should also be corrected and given the right direction: those who give without selection and consideration actually endanger the welfare of society. [. . .] Due to its importance, the elimination of contaminated germ-­cells should as a matter of fact have been first on my list, because in this way we eliminate one of the strongest causes of degeneration. [. . .] If we reform the institution of marriage and introduce a series of self-­evident interventions, we will be able to take further measures by selecting the best and creating a new biological aristocracy of fit families. Nevertheless this already verges on the realm of utopia, where we should venture yet. Eugenics is still utopian today; that much is true, but it might not be as such for long, as all theories have been utopian at some moment. [. . .] Translation by Marius Turda

220

Hungary

István Apáthy

(1863, Pest–1922, Szeged)

István Apáthy was born in Pest in 1863. His father was a jurist, a professor at the Peter Pázmány University in Budapest and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia). Apáthy completed his medical studies in 1885, but as a student was attracted more to zoology than medicine. During his studies, he had already begun to work with the renowned Hungarian zoologist Tivadar Margó (1816–96) at the Institute for Zoology and Comparative Anatomy (Összehasonlító Bonctani és Zoológiai Intézet) in Budapest. Between 1886 and 1889 he was a guest researcher at the Zoological Station (Stazione Zoologica) in Naples. Apáthy returned to Hungary in 1890 and was appointed Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the Franz Joseph University in Kolozsvár. By the late 1890s, he was recognized as an authority on the structure of the nervous system (Apáthy 1896). In 1898, he became a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1903, he was elected Rector of Franz Joseph University, a position he held until 1905. Apáthy’s national and international scientific authority was further established in 1909 by the creation of the Zoological Institute (Állattani Intézet) in Kolozsvár alongside his appointment as its director. In parallel to his scientific research, Apáthy led a very active public life, in both Kolozsvár and Budapest. As he turned his attention to the impact of Darwinism on society and culture, he began to promote a vision of national eugenics that combined evolutionary biology, social Darwinism and Hungarian nationalism (Apáthy 1900). In 1907, he was one of the founders of the Hungarian Association for Social Sciences (Magyar Társadalomtudományi Egyesület). The Association soon founded its own journal, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, which consistently championed eugenic ideas of social and biological improvement. In distancing itself from the growing cosmopolitanism of the Hungarian cultural elites, the Association wanted to protect what it deemed Hungarian national values (Apáthy 1908a). In the first articles he published in the Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle and in a book published in 1910, Apáthy advocated the need for ‘national education’ predicated upon Darwinist notions of evolution and selection (Apáthy 1908b: 597–615; 1909: 309–39 and 1910). Apáthy participated in the 1911 public debate on eugenics organized by the Society of Social Science. He was one of the few participants to insist on the need for conceptual clarification, while at the same time promoting his own eugenic terminology. He thus employed the Hungarian term ‘fajegészségtan’ (‘race hygiene’) for eugenics rather than ‘eugenika’, the term most used by the other participants. Pointing to a widespread conceptual confusion, he observed that the scope of eugenics was not ‘human breeding’ 221

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

(as advocated by Galton and his Hungarian supporters) but ‘racial improvement’. If nothing else was achieved, he remarked sharply, this public debate on eugenics would still be remembered for providing ‘some knowledge of biology to our public and writers dealing with sociological issues’ (Apáthy 1911: 268). Well-­versed in hereditarian theories and a supporter of schemes of preventive hygiene, Apáthy adopted both as sources of inspiration for his theory of eugenics. Apáthy also realized that the main obstacle to applying eugenic principles was to be found in navigating between the interests of the individual and the powers of the state. He thus outlined a new set of priorities for eugenics upon which the Hungarian modern state was to be built. Connected to this, existing biological degeneration and deteriorating social conditions only strengthened Apáthy’s conviction that the private sphere ought not to succumb to excessive individualism and egoism. On the contrary, eugenic virtues were embedded in collective social morality, with the state overseeing the nation’s biological capital (Apáthy 1911: 265–79). What made Apáthy distinct from other eugenicists in Hungary was not only his expert knowledge of biology, but also his nationalism. The Hungarian nation’s regeneration, he believed, was to be achieved through the cultivation of Hungarian racial qualities. However, contrary to the extensive use of the word faj (race), Apáthy’s approach to eugenics was not informed by the views of German eugenicists, such as Alfred Ploetz and Wilhelm Schallmayer, whose work he had read but did not endorse. In 1912, Apáthy collected some of his lectures, delivered in Budapest and Kolozsvár in 1909 and 1910, together with the article on eugenics, published in Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle in 1911, in a book entitled A fejlődés törvényei és a társadalom (The Laws of Evolution and Society) (Apáthy 1912). This book contributed decisively to the emergence of a specifically Hungarian interpretation of eugenics, one that Apáthy further developed in his extensive review of Géza Hoffmann’s 1913 book Die Rassenhygiene in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika. Apáthy acknowledged Hoffmann’s empirical thoroughness, but found his interpretation of eugenics to be problematic. Hoffmann, it seemed to Apáthy, relied too much on models provided by German and North American eugenic movements, while marginalizing Hungarian literature on the subject. In insisting that the correct term for eugenics in Hungarian was the one he had proposed, namely ‘fajegészségtan’, together with ‘fajegészségügy’ (‘practical race hygiene’), Apáthy formulated an explicitly Hungarian eugenic vocabulary, one, he hoped, would be able to render the specific meanings of social and biological improvement for the Hungarian public (Apáthy 1914a: 52–65). It was also on this occasion that Apáthy proposed the establishment of a ‘committee on eugenics’ (‘fajegészségügyi bizottság’) in Hungary. This was eventually established in January 1914 in Budapest and named the Hungarian Committee on Eugenics. Pál Teleki was elected President, while Apáthy was appointed Secretary (‘A fajegészségügyi (eugenikai) szakosztály megalakulása’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle 1914: 165–72). In the lecture delivered on this occasion, Apáthy summarized the Committee’s immediate tasks thus: ‘eugenic propaganda, the dissemination of eugenic ideas throughout the country, and to enlighten the public through lectures, 222

Hungary

special conferences and debates’ (‘A fajegészségügyi (eugenikai) szakosztály megalakulása’, 1914: 172). During World War I, Apáthy remained officially affiliated to the Committee on Eugenics but his direct involvement in the Committee’s activities was almost non-­existent. He continued, however, to publish on eugenics (Apáthy 1914b: 1–3 and 1916: 1–14). The war, Apáthy argued, provided Hungarian eugenicists with a new ideological source of legitimacy and with it a new sense of collective responsibility (Apáthy 1917: 289–93). Moreover, in 1917 he opposed the transformation of the Committee into a Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy (Magyar Fajegészségtani és Népesedéspolitikai Társaság). In short, Apáthy did not agree with the proposed fusion of eugenics with population policy, notwithstanding Hoffmann’s assurance that such a decision was strategically important for the unity of the eugenic movement in Hungary. His last eugenic text, ‘A fajegészségtan köre és feladatai’ (‘The Scope and Tasks of Race Hygiene’) was published in the early months of 1918. In it, Apáthy discussed the relationship between war and eugenics and the dilemma faced by any Hungarian eugenicist preoccupied with ‘the future of our nation after the war’. Eugenicists, population policy experts and politicians were all determined to find the necessary means to encourage population growth, but this also entailed less restrictive eugenic measures. Apáthy accepted ‘the necessary demographic growth required the birth of many children; that is to say, it required many fathers and mothers’, but he was, however, apprehensive about encouraging any Hungarian man to father children. He, therefore, recommended the eugenic selection of those deemed unsuitable (Apáthy 1918a: 6–21 and 1918b: 81–101). During the democratic revolution of 1918, Apáthy was President of the local Transylvanian committee of the Hungarian National Council (Magyar Nemzeti Tanács Erdélyi Bizottsága), a position from which he defended historical Hungarian rights over Transylvania. He was arrested by the Romanian authorities in 1919 and spent a year and a half in various prisons in Transylvania. When released in 1920, he moved to Hungary and helped with the establishment of a new Hungarian university in Szeged. He died there in 1922.

223

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Race Hygiene3 In fact, race hygiene is the discipline, which Galton called eugenics. Some, with little accuracy, but much speculation, call it human breeding; others, with more accuracy, and especially with more seriousness, refer to it as race improvement (fajnemesítés), or the striving to improve the human race. However, if we take into consideration what may be the aims of this new discipline, and what results it may hope for, beside proper biological and sociological precision, we must call it the hygiene of the human race. The phenomenon called race degeneration (fajromlás) is in fact an illness of the race, and there are special ways to cure this illness. Public hygiene deals with the improvement of life conditions for the public, from hygienic aspects; the hygiene of the race, in turn, strives to protect against those illnesses that threaten not only the individuals, but also the survival of the race itself. Their aims overlap in many respects; what is more, the improvement of public health is one of the methods of race hygiene too. However, this latter one has other methods too, that come from sociology on one hand, and ethics on the other, and finally there is a very special biological method as well. This method is the conscious selection of those valuable to the race, and the prevention of reproduction of individuals who might be harmful for the next generation. However, this is not to be mistaken with the new Malthusian theory. [. . .] It would be a mistake to think that in the issues of race hygiene the interests of the individual clash with the interests of the state. [. . .] We cannot say that the single-­child policy would be in the interest of the individual, for assuring a better welfare for itself, while the reason of the state, which needs many soldiers, workers and tax-­payers, would be to ask for many children. A great number of children may become an interest of the individual, and only a few for the state. But under no circumstances would a small number of children be in the interest of the race. After all, the most important aim of the race is its survival, survival can only be assured by the health of the race, and the decreasing number of births would [eventually] lead to the decline of the race. If the exigency of everybody doing their best at work is a fundamental requirement of the public benefit, then an equally fundamental requirement for the race would be that every family produces the best possible offspring. This is achievable only if it produces the most progeny possible too. Nothing can assure the parents that their possible later children, whose birth they do not necessarily desire, would not be better than their first or first two. Some even consider that the first-­born are generally inferior compared to later children. Although this is not yet proven scientifically, it is a fact nonetheless, for example that, among 100 offspring originating from 20 couples [with many children] there will be much more excellent personalities than among 100 offspring originating from 100 couples with one child. Furthermore, and this is even sadder, a much larger number of children from the 100 couples with one child will survive, even if they are inferior, thanks to the greater parental care they receive, than from the 100 children from the 20 couples with many children. Thus the rate of excellent individuals is unavoidably shrinking. Every former great nation perished because it failed to produce excellent 224

Hungary

offspring in sufficient numbers: the excellence of some was rather the result of the inferiority of the rest [of the population]. [. . .] From the point of view of race hygiene, the individual who deems life [. . .] to be lived only for material purposes and only for the joys thus obtained, is worthless. Only that person who loves life for the life itself, for the opportunity to work and strive, is valuable from the point of view of the race. [. . .] Only if we entrust the best of every given generation with the procreation of the next generation’s individuals and if the individuals of the next generation will be the most possible numerous again, and one can select from among their numbers the best ones to propagate the next generation: only this could save societies from degeneration. But we have to understand it well. It is not this selection that produces further evolution: this assures only the possibility of it, because it assures survival and strength, because it avoids idleness and slow decay. The surplus of births, without any conscious human intervention, by itself makes the survival of the most viable ones and the elimination of the undesired somewhat probable; but this is not enough. The aim of race hygiene is to enlighten society that every custom, fashion or principle, which impedes the selection of the best, undermines the future of society [. . .], the salvation and the evolution of the future generations. Society impedes the selection of the best individuals, partly by reducing variety and partly by not selecting. The ultimate goal of race hygiene, in brief, is that in every generation only those individuals who are the most desirable from an evolutionary point of view should be the procreators of the next generation; and that in every generation there should be a sufficient number of such desirable individuals. [. . .] In the implementation of this goal neither the racial-­improving morals nor the state interventions suffice by themselves. Together they can only start the series of metamorphoses which, in a better social order, than ours, will create a happier, better, nobler humanity. Translation by Marius Turda

The Scope and Tasks of Race Hygiene4 If race hygiene (fajegészségtan) is the sum of those scientific findings, which point out how [it] would be possible to replace this generation with one better in body and spirit; then practical race hygiene (fajegészségügy) is the sum of those practical measures which indeed could achieve the goal of a generation better in body and spirit than that of today. But how could we hope for a better generation than today’s, when the war has already destroyed most of the best individuals of whom we could have expected excellent offspring and left in a greater number those inferior in body and spirit who will only diminish the physical and mental standard of the coming generations? And how may we dare to start to raise from the remaining good scions the finer crests of a new forest, when perhaps a new and more devastating war happens after two or three decades and [thus] wrecks the most stalwart trunks once again? Because the war, at least in its modern ways, is in every respect exactly the opposite of what we call natural 225

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

selection and consider as the main [factor] in the preservation of the health of the race. The natural selection sifts out the best, keeps them for life, and makes them the creators of the new generation. War too picks out the bests, the so-­called fit ones, but it throws them to the death and excludes them from taking part in the procreation of the next generation. [. . .] We can define race hygiene itself as the science that studies the criteria and conditions of the endurance and adaptiveness of the race, because the health of the race is conterminous with its endurance and adaptiveness. The race is resistant if it can cope with the hardship of survival, and it is adaptive if it manages to cope with the constant difficulties of living, which occur by changing conditions. The healthier and the less ill individuals live in a given generation of a race, the more it can deal with the difficulties of survival. The individuals constituting the race differ from one another not only in the fact that one is healthy, the other is ill, but equally healthy individuals differ too in their individual characteristics. All characteristics, both in quantity and quality, are the most frequent within certain limits, namely in the individuals showing the middle value. [. . .] By race hygiene, I understand the science that studies the physical structure of animals (the physical and mental structure in the case of humans) from the point of view of racial (human, respectively national) development and investigates the interconnectivity of creation and living conditions, which could best serve the further evolution of the given species of races (humans). Practical race hygiene, in turn, as applied to humans, is the sum of correlations, which affect [the] human physical and mental system from the point of view of evolution; respectively those principles, institutions and rules that practically utilize the scientific postulations of race hygiene in a practical way. Race hygiene and practical race hygiene are similarly paired terms in much the same way as pedagogics and pedagogy are. Pedagogics is the science of education and the education itself is pedagogy. [. . .] Thus, everything that may be studied rationally and with scientific accuracy by race hygiene, without any arrogant promises leads back to the health of the race. It is undoubtedly correct then to designate and, thus restrict, the real meaning of race hygiene with the Hungarian term fajegészségtan. This restriction does not, in turn, prevent practical race hygiene from taking a great number of factors into account. Race hygiene borrows its scientific subjects from the diverse fields of biology and sociology alike. The specificity of it, in other words, what assures eugenics a certain scientific distinctiveness, is nothing other than its subject: the physical structure of humans living in a social ligament, from the point of view of human evolution. Biology deals with the physical structure and development of the individual, race hygiene deals with the physical structure of the collective [. . .]; finally, sociology studies the psychological construction of the collective. Consequently, the enrichment of race hygiene knowledge depends on the development of biology and sociology. The prosperity of practical race hygiene, on the other hand, depends on the power of social ethics, on the rule of a socialist worldview, [namely] the question when and whether the socialist movement (socialism) can replace the individualistic movement (individualism). Socialism and individualism: this pair of terms designates two opposite movements. The two terms ‘democracy and aristocracy’ are independent from them. A third pair of terms is a compound of ‘absolutism and constitutionalism’. Each of them has multiple 226

Hungary

forms and multiple alternatives, more names designating the same thing. Democracy may go hand in hand with socialism and individualism alike. Aristocracy, rather, favours individualism, but does not exclude socialism. Absolutism may be democratic too, and may serve either individualism or socialism. Constitutionalism, in turn, might be aristocratic, but its worldview and institutions, rather, meet the exigencies of socialism [better] than those of individualism. Aristocracy or democracy, absolutism or constitutionalism, these movements by themselves do not matter from the point of view of human evolution. From this point of view, they become significant only through the question of which movement better serves the further development of a given nation in a certain period of its history; because general human evolution can be served only by the given nations and by their own national development. But this is not the case with socialism and individualism. They matter especially because the health of the race is the main condition of evolution, and only socialism will be [pre]disposed to realize the conditions of practical race hygiene without any objections and compromising half-­regulations. Individualism will always put the rights of the individual before the requirements of practical race hygiene; what it creates in one place under the fashion of new conceptions, it will destroy in the other, being a slave of individual egoism and alarmed by the affliction of individuals, or giving credit to the promises of individuals. Race hygiene measures often require strong heart and firm faith in human evolution, and this is nothing but self-­abnegation, which the cowards and the masses are always inclined to condemn as insensitive. [. . .] Finally, I would like to point to a tormenting problem that cannot be avoided by any reasonable Hungarian who sympathetically thinks about the future of our nation after the war, when we have to seriously consider the field of demography too, in order to somehow make up for the loss of our population during the war. The necessary demographic growth presupposes many children, that is, many fathers and mothers. Certainly, the war has made many prospective fathers eugenically inapt for the procreation of the future generation. We need many, but at the same time, we need to select the existing. This selection, however, would only further lessen their numbers, on the other hand, by not selecting, we would only get worse, and not just for now, but forever, and this would finally lead to dwindling again. How, then, could we break out from this vicious circle? I think, for the time being, we should heal with what we have, and we can only hope that science will find new and not yet expected cures for the work of peace. After all, we do not, yet, have ways to prevent those individuals who are inapt to be mothers and fathers from becoming parents. In my opinion, we are obliged to recommend these ways; but until then, we must instruct and educate, we must heal and cure, physically and spiritually alike. We must not forget this even for a second, if we want to remedy not only the harms of today but desire to serve the future as well. We must not forget that race hygiene requires not only physical health, but mental health too. If looking after physical health might satisfy [race] hygiene, practical race hygiene must look after mental health and public morality equally. Any given race can expect [to] live longer and experience further development only if its members are physically and mentally undamaged. Translation by Marius Turda 227

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Géza Hoffmann

(1885, Nagyvarád–1921, Budapest)

Géza Hoffmann is the only Hungarian eugenicist to have achieved widespread international recognition (Holmes 1924). He was born in 1885 in Nagyvarád (Rom.: Oradea; Ger.: Großwardein) in a family of local notables. His father, Hugó Hoffmann, was ennobled in 1908 for his military services, and Géza often signed his work as von Hoffmann. After completing his secondary education in 1903 in his native town, he enrolled at the Imperial and Royal Consular Academy in Vienna, in preparation for a career in the consular service. He graduated from the Academy in 1908, and began his career as a consular attaché at the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian General Consulate in New York. In 1910, he was promoted to vice-Consul and transferred to the Consulate in Chicago. In 1916, he became Consul and was transferred again, this time to Berlin. He became Consul General (first class) in 1919 (MOL Fond K59–7/d, 1921). Hoffmann published his first study, a sociological analysis of Hungarian-Americans in 1910 (Hoffmann 1910: 455–85), followed in 1911 by his first book, Csonka munkásosztály: az amerikai magyarság (A Mutilated Working Class: HungarianAmericans) (Hoffmann 1911). It was also in the USA that he became a devoted eugenicist. In 1912, he contributed his first article on American eugenics and marriage restrictions to the German journal Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie (Hoffmann 1912: 730–61), a subject he explored at length in his second book, Die Rassenhygiene in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika, published in 1913. The book brought him wide recognition; for instance, the celebrated German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) was among those who reviewed the book. The first part of the book outlined the main eugenic theories at the time, while the second part discussed the main achievements of American eugenics. According to Hoffmann, ‘Galton’s dream, that eugenics will [one day] become the religion of the future, [was] fulfilled in America’ (Hoffmann 1913a: 14). He further praised the broad dissemination of eugenic ideas in American schools and universities, the popularity of ‘Eugenics Clubs’, as well as the interest in eugenics of major cultural institutions across the country. Such a concerted national effort, Hoffmann argued, directly contributed to an increasing popularity of eugenics among the general public and this was reflected by a range of marriage restrictions and reproductive controls introduced in a number of states, as well as the growing number of eugenic organizations, alongside eugenically oriented medical and social institutions. Part three of the book was devoted to the control of marriage and its eugenic consequences in a number of states, including Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Utah and Washington. In part four Hoffmann discussed the ‘sterilization of inferiors’ and provided detailed description of leading categories of ‘inferior’ individuals targeted for sterilization resulting from a number of medical, 228

Hungary

juridical, social or racial criteria (Hoffmann 1913a: 75–95). Sterilization laws in various states were then described, beginning with Indiana (1907), continuing with California (1909) and New York (1912), before finishing with Oregon (1913). An equally detailed analysis was provided in Hoffmann’s final chapter, which addressed immigration and a variety of regulations pertaining to its restriction. A number of appendixes completed Hoffmann’s book, providing a German translation of various excerpts on marriage and sterilization laws. In addition, Hoffmann translated fragments from the Federal Immigration Law of 1907 into German, while providing a comprehensive bibliography of almost 1,000 titles on eugenics in the USA. Perhaps the single most important contribution by a Hungarian eugenicist to the history of international eugenics, Die Rassenhygiene in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika catapulted Hoffmann to the forefront of the European movement on eugenics and racial hygiene, while simultaneously confirming his status as a leading authority on American eugenics. For instance, in a lengthy review published in the Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, Fritz Lenz noted: ‘This is the first study that provides a reliable summary of the American eugenic laws’ (Lenz 1913: 252). Moreover, the publication of Hoffmann’s book also had a profound impact on the domestic development of the Hungarian eugenic movement (Hoffmann 1913b: 161–2). Hoffmann advanced an alternative model of eugenics to those advocated by Madzsar (Galtonian), on one hand, and Apáthy (autochthonist), on the other. In doing so, Hoffmann adapted foreign models of eugenics to the domestic Hungarian context, while also providing eugenics in Hungary with a degree of international visibility. In 1913 Hoffmann was transferred from his post in Chicago to the Austro-Hungarian Embassy in Berlin, making it easier for him to follow the progress of eugenics in Hungary and to become known to the other Hungarian eugenicists. He began a correspondence with István Apáthy and Pál Teleki, among others, urging for the creation of a eugenics society in Hungary (Hoffmann’s letter to Apáthy, 22 October 1913). The founding meeting was scheduled for January 1914 in Budapest (SOL, II6/913), resulting in the creation of the Hungarian Committee on Eugenics. Hoffmann was invited to deliver the opening lecture, but was unable to attend the meeting. The lecture was, however, published in the February issue of Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle under the title ‘Eugenika’ (‘Eugenics’) (Hoffmann 1914a: 91–106). Between 1914 and 1917, Hoffmann published extensively on eugenics, racial hygiene and population policy (Hoffmann 1914b: 174–83; 1914c: 221–4; 1914d: 373–5 and 1914e: 435–6), including two important articles published in the prestigious Természettudományi Közlöny (Natural History Bulletin) in 1916, entitled ‘Fajegészségtan és eugenika’ (‘Racial Hygiene and Eugenics’) (Hoffmann 1916a: 450–4) and ‘Fajegészségtan és népesedési politika’ (‘Racial Hygiene and Population Policy’) (Hoffmann 1916b: 617–21). Here Hoffmann proposed – following Apáthy – that the general science of race improvement be referred to as ‘fajegészségtan’, yet he did not translate it as ‘eugenics’ or ‘race hygiene’ but as ‘racial hygiene’. Like Apáthy, Hoffmann too offered a binary terminology: ‘fajegészségtan’ (‘racial hygiene’) and ‘fajegészségügy’ (‘practical racial hygiene’): ‘fajegészségügy is fajegészségtan’s practical application, praktische Rassenhygiene or 229

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Rassenpflege, in German’ (Hoffmann 1916a: 452). Racial hygiene and eugenics overlapped, Hoffmann admitted, but were not identical. These arguments resurfaced in Hoffmann’s 1916 book Krieg und Rassenhygiene (War and Racial Hygiene) and the article, with the same title, was published in the nationalist journal A Cél (The Target) (Hoffmann 1916c and 1916d: 428–37). According to Hoffmann, practical application of racial hygiene was needed during and, especially, after the war as part of a wider process of national recovery seconded by an equally well-­articulated population policy. During this period, Hoffmann was also a frequent participant in the meetings of the German Society for Racial Hygiene (the Berlin branch), having become a member in February 1914. In this capacity Hoffmann attended the Society’s Congress in Jena in June 1914 and its annual meetings in Munich in July 1916 and July 1917, respectively (Hoffmann 1914d: 373–5 and 1914e: 435–6). So active was Hoffmann in the German eugenic movement that Fritz Lenz described him as ‘the most active champion of practical racial hygiene in Europe’ (Lenz 1918: 510–11). At the height of his international career, Hoffmann was recalled from his diplomatic post in Berlin to assist the eugenic work initiated by the Military Welfare Office in Budapest. It was through this Office that Hoffmann promoted the introduction of a number of practical eugenic policies, including the distribution of land to wounded soldiers considered ‘racially valuable’, marriage counselling and financial assistance to public officials with many children (Hoffmann 1918a: 62–3 and 1918b: 610–19). Equally important, together with Pál Teleki, Hoffmann played a crucial role in the transformation of the Committee on Eugenics into the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy devoted to the ‘regeneration of the Hungarian nation’ (Teleki’s letter to Apáthy and Teleki’s letter to Alajos Kovács, 4 November 1917). The inaugural meeting took place on 24 November 1917 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences where Hoffmann was elected one of the vice-­presidents. The period between the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1919 was Hoffmann’s most active in the Hungarian eugenic movement. In addition to preparing official documents for the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy, he designed a six-­week course on racial hygiene and population policy for the officers of the Military Welfare Office, and started teaching it on 7 January 1918 (Hoffmann 1918c). In 1918, moreover, the Society finally succeeded in establishing Hungary’s first journal devoted to racial hygiene, aptly named Nemzetvédelem. Hoffmann was one of the editors, responsible for the section on racial hygiene and population policy. The first two issues, which were published together, ran to an impressive 100 pages. The creation of the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy on 24 November 1917 was fully documented, together with a complete description of its aims and activities. Reflecting the close collaboration with German racial-­hygienic and population movements, the journal also featured contributions by German eugenicists, such as Max Christian (1878–1931) and Wilhelm Schallmayer (1857–1919). Hoffmann also used his international connections to organize the first congress of Hungarian, Austrian and German eugenicists, which took place in Budapest on 230

Hungary

23 September 1918. The first speaker, the Austrian eugenicist Max von Gruber (1853– 1927), discussed the relationship between racial hygiene and population policy. He was followed by the German eugenicist Wilhelm Weinberg (1862–1937), who considered racial hygiene from the perspective of the science of heredity. The Austrian demographer Wilhelm Hecke (1869–1945) spoke on population policy in Austria. Finally, the last two speakers were two Hungarian eugenicists: Teleki, who examined the relationship between racial hygiene and population policy in Hungary, and Hoffmann, who discussed various conceptual differences between eugenics and racial hygiene (‘Magyar-­német-­ ostrák fajegészségtani nagygyűles’, Népjóléti Közlöny 1918: 153). This congress was the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy’s most important international activity and Hoffmann’s finest moment as a Hungarian eugenicist. The disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, following the military defeat of the Central Powers, prompted Hoffmann to reassess the social and political role of eugenics. Engaging with this issue, in an article written for the new voice of Catholic revival, Magyar Kultúra (Hungarian Culture) in October 1918, Hoffmann praised the Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy, not for its practical work in the field of race improvement, but for its attempts to impress upon Hungarian society the need for a new eugenic morality (Hoffmann 1918d: 257–62). The historical tragedy that befell his country notwithstanding, Hoffmann continued to hope ‘the time will come to continue the work of eugenics’ in Hungary (Hoffmann 1921: 294). He was not to witness the revival of eugenics after World War I, as he died prematurely from an infectious disease in Budapest in 1921. In the obituary published in the Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, Hoffmann was remembered as ‘the most enthusiastic, energetic and industrious supporter of the cause of racial hygiene’ among European eugenicists (‘Notizen’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie 1922: 99), a description he fully deserved.

231

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

War and Racial Hygiene5 There is a way or method to prevent, at least partially, the influences destroying the race. However, we also must find new methods, until all our institutions and even all our actions are based on the aim of guaranteeing the safe future of our race. Because, what is the point of building a wonderful culture and vast empires with sacrifice, if at the same time we do not make sure that we are followed by equally worthy descendants, who can preserve, enjoy and improve [on] our achievements. We believe the false assumption that our work is to last forever, when the sad history of all races tells us that after a couple of generations the degeneration of the descendants ruins all that we had achieved. We always talk about the future, but rarely remember that our nation, which we built with great difficulty, can only stand the test of time if it is defended in the future by generations that are numerous and live up to its standard. Looking after our future is an instinctive quality of our soul. If we only lived for the present and ourselves the fighter would not sacrifice his life, and the rich and mighty would stop working. It is part of the essence of men to work primarily for the future instead of just working for themselves; this instinct is the same as the one that forces the mother to sacrifice herself for her children. The instinct to struggle for the future is the mother of all great human notions and lasting cultural achievements can be achieved only through this. But the realization that cultural achievements are not enough for the survival of a race, if satisfactory numbers of worthy descendants are lacking, leads us to a new world concept, which would make us realize all those responsibilities which we owe to the coming generations. Racial hygiene (fajhygiéne) is the teaching method that is concerned with this task and with the conditions that are possibly the most ideal for the race. The idea that the unspeakably great effort of this war and in general of this era could be wasted, that everything we cherish, although we ended up victorious, could fall prey to foreign races, only because earlier or later generations of our descendants, quantitatively or qualitatively, were or will be less worthy than us; because this thought is so terrifying, and because of the results racial hygiene promises to offer, we have to make at least some serious attempts for the preservation of our race and for the remedy of our illnesses. The influence of war on racial development (fajfejlődés) is twofold, in so far as it singles out certain races on one hand and on the other [hand], within certain races, it leads to selection and elimination. The race that is less worthy loses out, the victorious one, however, is offered new possibilities for development. [. . .] To the effect that if the victorious race is to remain in power even after the victories in war, it has to make every effort to remedy the damage of war to the body of their nation. The devastation of war is gruesome, not exactly from the point of view of the cultural goods that can be replaced, but with regard to the human material, because it destroys its best, bravest and healthiest elements forever. With regard to the race, every single death means more than just the death of one individual; it is also the loss of the deceased’s breeding potential and [thus] it means that countless generations of descendants will not be born. [. . .] 232

Hungary

From the point of view of the survival of the race it is detrimental to replace a man’s work with that of a woman as a result of war, which would be unavoidable in almost every profession, even after the war. However, if this phenomenon were to be prolonged after the war, it would prove to be fatal from the point of view of the upbringing of a good and abundant generation. Furthermore, the war contributed greatly, particularly among soldiers, to the spreading of venereal diseases, which are the most dangerous to the good health of the race, because they reduce fertility or they lead to the birth of degenerate offspring. [. . .] The future of a race is connected in the tightest sense with its moral possessions. In this respect, the war has an ennobling effect, and to prove this it is enough just to reflect on patriotism, noble self-­sacrifice and [a] strict sense of duty of that boundless sea of people, whose numbers have increased day by day during this war. [. . .] However, the question now is for how long will the ennobling effects of the war last. [. . .] Culture really delays the development of a race. While in the natural environment the less worthy die in the struggle for life, culture saves him, [and] what [is] more, it even makes it possible for him to reproduce his own less worthy kind. The preservation of the sick, from the point of view of the future of the race, is just wrong because the tendency towards illness and feebleness are being passed on from generation to generation, by which, the number of the less worthy increases in such a way that the average strength of the race decreases. However, this statement should not lead to the conclusion that in the interest of the race we should turn to the use of ruthless methods in the struggle for life. It rather follows with enforced necessity, that by preserving all moral and humane achievements of culture, we could find ways and means to balance out its destructive effects on the race. The most important of all [methods] advancing the improvement of the race is the adoption of a race-­hygienic mentality (fajhygiénikus gondolkodásmód), which in almost every aspect of our actions asks the question, what effect would this action have on the future of the race. [. . .] For example, if we facilitate the reproduction indiscriminately in both healthy and sick families, we [would] spend our efforts partially on the reproduction of totally undesirable offspring. It can lead to similarly detrimental effects if we promote indiscriminate settlement or indiscriminate repatriation, because among the majority of the repatriates many disabled individuals get mixed in. [. . .] The racial-­ hygienic mentality must become apparent in the reform of almost all of our institutions, which, however, [and] by no means, should result in disturbance, because its aim is to preserve the existing status quo, and leave it in an even more strengthened position. What follows, however, in our account is to be treated only as theory. We are aware of the fact that our programme cannot yet be carried out in its entirety. First of all, every individual must recognize responsibilities he owes to future generations. In this regard, [scientific] societies and associations can achieve great results. The church can obtain even greater success, because our aspirations [. . .] to foster moral development, deepen family affection and patriotism, and [encourage the birth of] as many children as possible, are completely identical with the teachings of the church. A lot can be achieved in this matter by the press as well, which in our country, 233

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

as the result of [a] lack of adequate interest, has not yet dealt with the question [of racial hygiene]. The strengthening of family sentiment is one of the most effective means to awaken the pressing concern for future generations in the individual. [. . .] To that end the education of young girls should not focus on bookishness but on nurturing of the idea of motherhood. We have to add another demand, that it is not enough just to educate a young male to become a good citizen but we have to teach him this responsibility and that he must pass on his unimpaired good qualities, which he inherited from his predecessors, to his descendants. [. . .] Just as the right of the individual is subjected to the right of the community, so should today’s generations be subordinate to the needs of future ones. [. . .] The means of racial hygiene could be divided into two groups. Qualitative racial hygiene aims to improve the quality of the race, while quantitative racial hygiene aims to increase its fertility. Qualitative racial hygiene can, in turn, also be divided into two subgroups, positive, in as much as it is aimed at the reproduction of high value descendants, and negative, if it wishes to prevent the reproduction of those less worthy. Translation by Barnabás Kalina

Eugenics in the Central Empires since 19146 Besides [the] ‘population’ movement we have in Germany the eugenic movement, or, as the Germans call it after the word coined by Wilhelm Schallmayer, race-­hygiene. Eugenics and race-­hygiene are not quite identical, the second being a broader conception, but the explanation of the theoretical differences would lead us too far. Be it sufficient now to point out one practical difference. The motto of eugenics we may define as ‘Quality not quantity’. Race-­hygiene says: ‘Quality and quantity’. [. . .] The Hungarian people have always shown keen interest in measures aimed at race regeneration or similar ends. Eugenics was early discussed in Hungary [. . .] and in 1914 a commission was appointed to organize the movement. From the beginning the government has shown an active interest in the work and was represented on the commission. The outbreak of the war delayed preparations and it was only in 1917 that the Hungarian Society for Race-Hygiene and for the Study of the Science of Population was founded. [. . .] As the name of the society indicates, the double movement which divided the efforts of race regeneration in Germany was united in Hungary from the beginning. Students of social science and of biology worked together in the greatest harmony. As biological knowledge in the population was and is still very scarce, the popularization of information on heredity was the first task. Lectures were held, courses and public discussions on eugenics arranged, pamphlets issued in great numbers. [. . .] Hungary was the first country on the European continent which accepted eugenics as a government measure. Count Teleki, when in 1917 appointed head of the Welfare Office for War Sufferers, declared his intention of introducing practical eugenics. I was called from Berlin and had the honour of directing the necessary work. We thought the 234

Hungary

group of war sufferers mostly excellent stock from a hereditary point of view, best adapted for the first trial measures, which could later be extended to the population as a whole. [. . .] Lectures were held in all institutions where the mutilated and other victims of the war were treated or taught, pictures were posted everywhere, and leaflets distributed in great numbers. The army commandants also distributed these leaflets to the soldiers. Later we tried some practical measures. The most important was the distribution of land to the mutilated in such a way that the best men in the hereditary sense of the word received land enough to support a family and that the stipulations of the contract encouraged the rearing of children. Then we tried to direct the returning soldiers of good stock out of the large and overcrowded cities to the country, the latter being better adapted to a healthy family life. [. . .] Respective advices were given as to the duty of the healthy to rear many children and that of the defective to terminate his bad stock in his own interest. Of course, such steps were taken only after thorough investigation and medical examination. Much interest was shown by the men as to the advisability of their marriage and propagation. Efforts were made to convince the sick and the mutilated that their defects were not hereditary, and we were pleased to see how the advice given enlightened these poor victims of the war. All local authorities and the different government offices were asked to assist these efforts of race regeneration, to spread sound eugenical [sic] ideas among the population, and to act accordingly when fulfilling their official duties. Acquaintances were facilitated between men and women who wanted to marry and had no suitable partner. A questionary [sic] was filled out, and, accompanied by a picture of the person but without his name, it was shown to persons of the other sex, who applied for such information in the notary offices or in the state institutions where the wounded were treated, and soldiers taught. In case the wish was expressed to meet, the acquaintance was made possible and the outcome was left to the persons concerned. Precautionary measures were taken to exclude fraud. To persons wishing to marry, medical advice was given. After some propaganda, this work was to be thoroughly organized, and later the exchange of medical certificates according to the German plan already mentioned in this article, was to be established by law. The medical offices to be used for this purpose were already selected in different clinics and other public institutions. In one of them even the animals needed for blood examinations were bought. The medical rules to be followed by the examiners were worked out in detail by the most competent physicians. Then the revolution broke out in October 1919, and brought everything to a sudden end. [. . .] Of other government measures, we may mention first of all the assistance given to public officials and state employees after the birth of their children. Hungary was the first country to give this assistance. All public officials and state employees received according to a law of 1912, 200 kronen annually for each child. Since that time the amount given was several times raised; since 1918 the assistance amounts to 800 kronen for each child. I do not believe that any other country pays as much for family assistance [. . .] The fact that the amount is the same in all grades and does not vary with income, 235

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

is in a certain way contra-­selective, as it means for the lowest paid grades of officials the proportionately highest benefit and induces them therefore to propagate more than it does the higher grades. On the whole the system is of eugenical (sic) significance, as the men forming the staff of government officials in Hungary are a selected body. [. . .] In 1917 the income tax law was amended in such a way that persons with no children have to pay 15 per cent more, and persons with only one child 10 per cent more taxes than others. [. . .] Since Bolshevism was broken in August 1920, the whole country needs ‘race regeneration’, not so much in the sense of eugenics, but sound morals, order and law, healthy family life, and regard for future generations. Everybody’s whole time and energy is devoted to the reorganization of the country and to avert the consequences of a so-­called peace. Later when conditions change, the time will come to continue the work of eugenics.

236

Hungary

Lajos Méhely

(1862, Kisfalud-Szögi–1953, Budapest)

Méhely was born in 1862, in Kisfalud-Szögi (today Bodrogkisfalud), a village in Zemplén county, where his father worked as a steward for an old Hungarian family, the Dessewffys. He was a child prodigy, first educated at home and then in Košice (Hung.: Kassa) and Levoča (Hung.: Lőcsé). He studied zoology and botany at the Technical University of Budapest (Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem), where he came in contact with the Hungarian zoologist, János Kriesch (1834–88), whose student and disciple he became. It was Kriesch who introduced the young Méhely to Darwinism. After graduating in 1880, and until 1885, Méhely worked as an assistant professor at the Technical University of Budapest (József Nádor Műegyetem), followed by a decade-­ long career as a school-­teacher in Brassó (Rom.: Braşov; Ger.: Kronstadt) at the city’s prestigious state high school (Állami Főreáliskola). In 1896, he obtained a position at the Department of Zoology at the Hungarian National Museum (Nemzeti Múzeum Állattani Osztályá), eventually becoming its director in 1912 (Méhely 1914). After 1902, he was one of the editors of the Department’s Állattani Közlemények (Zoological Communications). In 1898, he received an honorary doctorate from the Ferenc József University in Kolozsvár. During this period Méhely published extensively on zoology and fauna, especially on the Hungarian meadow viper (Vipera ursinii rakosiensis), which brought him international recognition as a zoologist (Méhely 1912a). In 1898, Méhely became a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a full member in 1910. He was also President of the Zoological Section of the Natural Science Society (Természettudományi Társulat Állattani Szakosztálya). By then he had also formulated his own interpretation of racial typology and genealogy (Méhely 1905), social Darwinism (Méhely 1909) and hereditarianism (Méhely 1912b). In 1915, Méhely was appointed head of the recently established Department of Systematic Zoology (Állatrendszertani Tanszék) at the Pázmány Péter University in Budapest, a position he occupied until 1920, when he became Director of the Department of Anthropology (Embertani Tanszék). Méhely’s first major work on eugenics was published in 1915 under the title A háború biológiája (The Biology of War) (Méhely 1915). Appropriating Darwin’s view that ‘if man wishes to reach further, then the intensity of his struggle must not dwindle, or else he will sink into inert indifference and helplessness’ (Méhely 1915: 19), Méhely gave his own interpretation of the struggle for existence, and its role in shaping modern warfare. War, he believed, was not only a factor of progress more generally, but it also entailed biological rejuvenation and eugenic selection. Méhely described Hungary as a country overwhelmed by intellectualism, Jewish liberalism and contempt of discipline and self-­sacrifice. War, for him, represented the much-­needed historical moment for Hungary’s nationalist revival. War, in other words, was an opportunity for both a 237

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

spiritual and physical renewal, seen as the antidote to degeneration and the chance to increase the biological qualities of the Hungarian race. After World War I, Méhely emerged as Hungary’s most prominent racial hygienist and one of her ‘race protectors’ (‘fajvédők’). He published on a wide range of topics, including racial anthropology (Méhely 1929a), German minorities (Méhely 1929b), blood groups (Méhely 1930a and 1933a), Turanism (Méhely 1931), premarital health examination (Méhely 1938), racial protectionism and eugenics (Méhely 1926a; 1933b; 1936; 1937 and 1939a). To some extent, it is due to the impact of Méhely’s writings that idioms, such as ‘defence of the race’ (‘fajvedelem’), ‘racial biology’ and ‘racial theory’ (‘fajelmélet’) became widely used in the Hungarian nationalist narratives of the inter-­ war period. Francis Galton, too, was described as ‘the first apostle of the theory of race protectionism’ (‘a fajvédelmi eszme első apostola’) (Méhely 1927a: 14). In 1923, Méhely tried, unsuccessfully, to establish an Institute for Racial Biology at the Faculty of Humanities (Bölcsészettudományi Kar) at Péter Pázmány University in Budapest. Inspired by Herman Lundborg (1868–1943), Director of the Swedish Institute of Racial Biology, Méhely argued for the institutionalization of ‘human heredity research’ in Hungary, with the overall aim of providing ‘some insight into the all-­important questions of racial and national life’, alongside the creation of a museum devoted to ‘human hereditary and racial research’ (Méhely 1927a: 12). In 1926, he again proposed the creation of a Hungarian Eugenic Society (Magyar Fajegészségtani Társaság) (Méhely 1926c: 129–31), but other prominent Hungarian eugenicists, such as Pál Teleki, Lajos Nékám, Gyula Darányi and László Benedek were rather reluctant to collaborate with him. Nor were Méhely’s views on the Hungarian race accepted by other Hungarian anthropologists and conservative thinkers, such as Lajos Bartucz (1885–1966), József Somogyi and Gyula Szekfű (1883–1955), who often criticized him. Between 1927 and 1928, Méhely was Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Pázmány Péter University. His international recognition as a racial scientist also grew at the time and together with another Hungarian scientist, Frigyes Verzár, Méhely was one of the foreign founding members of the German Society for Blood Group Research (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Blutgruppenforschung), when it was established by the German anthropologist Otto Reche (1879–1966) in 1926. Moreover, in 1934, Méhely was one of the contributors to a special issue published by Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie (Journal for Morphology and Anthropology) to honour the German racial scientist Eugen Fischer on his sixtieth birthday (Méhely 1934a: 244–57). During the 1920s Méhely made a name for himself as the mentor of the post-­war generation of anti-Semites and racial nationalists (Gáspár 1931; Bosnyák 1942a: 257–87). This was a position he carefully cultivated in the numerous articles published in the journal, A Cél, whose editor he became in 1926, and in a number of writings (Méhely 1930b; 1932; and 1939b), in which he consistently argued for the complete exclusion of Jews from Hungarian political and cultural life. He also criticized other racial nationalists for offering Jews the opportunity to convert to Christianity and thus integrate into the Hungarian nation. Méhely fully embraced the racial notion of fixed hereditary differences between ethnic groups, all organized hierarchically. 238

Hungary

In his 1936 book, Fajvédelem és fajnemesítés (Race Protection and Race Improvement), for example, he offered a national programme based on racial anti-Semitism and eugenics, arguing against miscegenation and assimilation of both Jews and other ethnic minorities (Méhely 1936). He synthesized his views on racial biology, anthropology and eugenics in a book he published in 1940, entitled Vér és faj (Blood and Race). As in his previous writings, he emphasized the duty of the state to promote racial awareness, including ‘racial biology education’ and ‘early marriage’ among ‘racially pure Hungarians’. In order to strengthen Hungarian ‘racial values’ he proposed a number of eugenic reforms, including financial aid for the poor, yet racially valuable, members of the Hungarian national community so they could marry; state support for large families; the introduction of a bachelor tax, and the outlawing of celibacy (Méhely 1940: 45–6). Méhely was also close to and influenced Gyula Gömbös (1886–1936), Prime Minister of Hungary between 1932 and 1936, and his Party of Racial Defence (Fajvédő Párt). Other racist organizations during the inter-­war period, including the Hungarian National Defence Association (Magyar Országos Véderő Egylet), the Hungarian Scientific Society of Race Protection (Magyar Tudományos Fajvédő Egyesület), and the Association of Awakening Hungarians (Ébredő Magyarok Egyesülete), also claimed Méhely as one of their intellectual sources. Even the Regent of Hungary himself, Admiral Miklós Horthy (1868–1957), attended his public lectures. In one such lecture entitled ‘A fajkérdés élettudományi alapjai’ (‘The Biological Foundations of the Racial Question’) Méhely outlined the basic tenets of the new Hungarian racial ideology and eugenics (Méhely 1926b: 323–41). By the mid-1930s, his influence among the radical right was so widespread that a society bearing his name, ‘Méhely Bajtársi Egyesület’, was established in Debrecen within the nationalist organization ‘Turul’ (Méhely 1934b: 215–21). It was, however, in the early 1940s that Méhely’s ideas of racial protectionism became reality. In 1942, the Hungarian Institute for Research into the Jewish Question (Zsidókérdést Kutató Magyar Intézet) was established. Its director, Zoltán Bosnyák (1905–52), was one of Méhely’s disciples. The Institute’s structure and its focus on racial protectionism was, in fact, a modified version of Mehély’s 1923 proposal for the Institute of Racial Biology, but one tailored to reflect widespread official antiSemitism in Hungary (Bosnyák 1942b: 17–21). Although retired from scientific and public life by then, Méhely nevertheless remained a reference for Hungarian racism, characterizing the last two years of World War II and the period of Nazi occupation (October 1944–May 1945). Considering Méhely’s established reputation as a racial scientist, it comes as no surprise that immediately after the war, he was considered an ‘enemy’ by the new regime. In 1946 he was tried as a war criminal by the People’s Tribunal (Népbíróság) in Budapest. Méhely was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison. He died in a military hospital in Budapest in 1953.

239

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Let Us Set Up a Hungarian Institute of Racial Biology7 Since our terrible collapse, the best of our compatriots have been attempting to identify the reasons that led to our nation’s heart-­wrenching tragedy. Prominent scientists and writers and politicians of good standing seek, with almost feverish effort, the fateful entity, which threw our thousand-­year-­old nation on the mercy of the wrath of fate. However, there are as many opinions as there are men. As the majority of the investigators approach the painful question, according to their own personal view, their corresponding knowledge and spirit, it is not a surprise that opinions are also extremely diverse. Nevertheless, despite all differences, they agree upon one thing, namely, that the lost borders of our homeland can be recovered successfully only with the armoury of culture and the Magyar race can be saved from disaster only by preserving her cultural standards. I can agree with this opinion myself, but only, if we clearly state, what kind of civilization and culture we are thinking of. We must know this without any shadow of a doubt, because the old culture, namely the one before the war, went bankrupt, in so far as it could not prevent the collapse of the country so if we simply thought of continuing with it, we would only accelerate our ruin. [. . .] Racial biology (fajbiológia) aims for high and noble goals, for the prevention of the degeneration of ethnic groups, and for the nurturing of the good qualities of the race. Its range and its importance is growing by the day, because it stems from the consideration that a country has no greater resource than its population, especially if it has been of good quality for a long time. The main tasks of racial biological research (fajbiológiai kutatás) are to find and to explain those influences, which increase or decrease the internal quality of a people, and also this is the only way that the state authority can gain more solid guidelines with regards to its ambition to guide the development of the people and race onto a healthier path. Considering that a people consists not only of individuals, but also of families and ethnic groups, the most secure basis of the state is the solid family tie. Thus it is the primary interest of every well-­organized state, to sustain and strengthen this social system, which proved to be the correct one since the dawn of time. However, our knowledge of the laws of life, the biological quality of certain ethnic groups, and the factors that influence their evolution either in a favourable or an unfavourable way, continues to be imperfect, and the gaps can only be filled by racial biological research. Racial biology is not only medical genetics but also social hygiene. Moreover, it is intrinsically a branch of the social sciences, the assignment of which is to find the deeper reasons behind the decline of a people and the problems that follow on from there. Racial biology, apart from such a general task, requires co-­operative work by various specialists and has a special objective viz. hereditary conditions, and patterns of illnesses, together with the study of talents and genius. Physicians with an enquiring mind, who are used to clinical examinations of individual patients separated from their families, do not consider the influence of heredity enough, although the inherited blood is that red thread, which transcends 240

Hungary

every life, and which has critical importance from the point of view of both medical and social sciences. Researchers, who have medical and biological training thus not only should study individuals in clinics and hospitals, lunatic asylums and prisons but in real life as well; namely, the healthy and pathological inheritance of people, the body of families, ethnic groups and races, because if we can examine healthy and ill people, who are related, over several generations, then certain characteristics and symptoms, along [with] their causes, would open up in front of us much more clearly than during a laboratory examination. Thus, we must introduce, alongside the old method, this new version of research as well. However, it is only possible that we do these studies, which are aimed at the general questions of culture, with the joint effort of doctors, biologists, genealogists, anthropologists and statisticians. [. . .] The racial elements that constitute the population of the country, therefore, have to be studied systematically for both their internal and external racial characteristics, so that a racial biological inventory (fajbiológiai inventárium) could be compiled, which could be used as a benchmark for all sorts of decisions by the intellectual, national and economic leaders of the country. For us, Hungarians, the accomplishment of this objective is twice as important, not only because it is about the establishment of the scientific anthropology of our dangerously declining race, as well as it being the last chance to do so, but especially, because we have to take stock of those racial strengths and environmental influences, which we can use to prepare the way for the physical and spiritual renewal of the Hungarian race. [. . .] The Hungarians arrived at their current home as a pure-­blooded Mongoloid race. Although ever since their departure from the ancient Finno-Ugrian family, [and] by the time of the Etelköz,8 they had been inter-­bred with many other races [. . .] This interbreeding did not cause any harm, because all these races, stemmed from the Mongol race, and it can be safely stated [that they] did not have important differences between them in terms of their body type and bio-­chemical characteristics. However, the conquering Hungarians defeated different races of people in the Carpathian basin, some of which were in part, racially related to them, such as the Alpine and the Eastern-Baltic races. Some of them, however, were partially distant, or just very distantly related, for example, the Dinaric, the Nordic and the Mediterranean races; there were no Jews present in Hungary at that time. The absorption of these, some related, some entirely foreign, blood-­elements into the Hungarian racial body, and this absorption’s physiological and hereditary consequences, must be studied in a strictly scientific and unbiased way. This study and the practical use of the result for the benefit of our race is our utmost responsibility, which will be carried out, not by a well-­intended foreigner, but by ourselves. [. . .] Therefore, again, it would rest on the shoulders of the state, which has been overburdened in various ways, to establish institutions [devoted to] race protection. Many might think of it as an impossible task, that the state, or more correctly, the national community, could sacrifice more for this goal at the moment. But this is only an optical 241

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

illusion, because with a better utilization of the material resources available, with due and, in some instances, necessary screening of its cultural organizations [. . .], it would not be impossible for the state to lay the foundation for a Hungarian Institute of Racial Biology (Magyar Fajbiológiai Intézet). That was also the opinion of the Faculty of Humanities at Péter Pázmány University, following my proposal [submitted on] 16 June 1923. At its general meeting, on 23 June 1923, [members of the Faculty], with one opposing, unanimously decided to establish the Hungarian Institute of Racial Biology within our faculty and to entrust me with its organization. Unfortunately, this decision, which was made with great enthusiasm, was vetoed quickly by the University’s Council. The Council’s rapporteur, Dr Zoltán Vámossy, Professor of the Faculty of Medicine, stated: 1. the economic state of the country cannot bear the financial burden of the establishment of such a larger-­scale institute, 2. the faculty of medicine had already asked two years ago, for the foundation of an experimental biology faculty, but it was promptly rejected by the Minister of Education, 3. our university already has anatomical, zoological, anthropological and physiological institutes, which are dealing with hereditary and racial-­hygienic research, [and] thus they completely replace the need for the proposed institute of racial biology. [. . .] The Faculty of Humanities was very embarrassed by the decision of the Council, because Professor Vámossy’s claim that existing institutions could replace the need for an institute of racial biology, as I explained at the first general session of our faculty on 19 October 1923, does not stand at all. As existing institutes have completely different objectives, and although, by their very nature, in their research, details come to the surface in all of them that are relevant to the area of racial biology, nevertheless, only within the framework of an institute of racial biology can they become a coherent whole. It is completely different if a professor of zoology explains the basic laws of heredity compared to an expert from the Institute of Racial Biology, who continuously and systematically preoccupies himself with the observation of heredity. [. . .] [A] modern Institute of Racial Biology must include the following departments: 1. Genealogy and medical demography, 2. Anthropology, which would include criminal biology, that is the study of criminals, 3. Experimental biology and experimental pathology, 4. A museum of heredity. When, in our unfortunate situation, will it be possible to establish such a large-­scale institute? We can only dream about it for the time being, but we would be satisfied, temporarily at least, if the department of anthropology in our university could provide this plan with a solid backing. [. . .] There is no need to emphasize, that the creation of a chair in anthropology is important with regard not only to the Hungarian race but to the ideal of culture as well. The Hungarian Institute of Racial Biology, although, first and foremost responsible for 242

Hungary

the interests of the state-­founding Hungarian race, in its whole function would be at the service, with noteworthy lessons and with indispensable expertise of race-­knowledge and race-­protectionism, of all the other races that constitute the [Hungarian] nation. Thus, for example, it is without any doubt that the exclusion from public functions and reproduction of those with physical degeneration and those who suffer from moral defects, or the individuals and ethnic groups, who are burdened with the more serious forms of psychosis, is in the interest of every other race. Or in the case of industrialization, especially the paralysing effect of the influence of the manufacturing industry on the national body’s healthy development, which equally concerns all the races of the nation, [here] the enlightening work of the Institute of Racial Biology would have a general effect as well. It is self-­explanatory that the Institute of Racial Biology, apart from such questions of a general nature, should deal with special objectives that concern the Hungarian race, because while, for example, the establishment of the Hungarian anthropology is simply a question of national honour, keeping the Hungarian race clean and cleansing it of foreign blood-­elements would, again, benefit all other races, too. [. . .] Every race has its special life and value, the wholeness of which can only be expressed if it keeps its purity. The healthy principle of the division of labour, which prevail in the lives of the state and society, thus requires that every race, in its own purity, with its own ancient talents and value is to serve the interests of the community. [. . .] All over Europe, both in the victorious and the defeated states, a great stirring storms through the souls, which regards the cultivation of racial feelings and the developing of racial self-­awareness as its most sacred responsibilities! We would be foolish, if we did not understand the words of the time and did not act accordingly by trying to strengthen the basic pillars of our national existence and surrendering instead with languid spirit to the forces of decay. The belief is strong within me that we have not degenerated completely yet and we still feel the significance of this innate great truth: race is sacred, [and] to it we must erect an altar in our heart! Translation by Barnabás Kalina

243

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

László Benedek

(1887, Belényes–1945, Kitzbühel, Austria)

László Benedek was born in Belényes (Rom.: Beiuş; Ger.: Binsch), a small town in western Transylvania, in 1887. Elementary education was provided in his native town, followed by high school (gymnasium), first in Nagyszalonta (Rom.: Salonta Mare; Ger.: Großsalontha) and then in Békéscsaba (Ger.: Tschabe). In 1905 he began his medical studies at Ferenc József University in Kolozsvár, graduating in 1910. He was a student of psychiatrist Károly Lechner (1850–1922) and pathologist Kálmán Buday (1863–1937). In 1911, he toured Europe, meeting a number of renowned psychiatrists, including Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1940) in Vienna, Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) in Munich and Auguste Forel (1848–1931) in Zurich. He also visited the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Benedek’s first books, published in 1913, dealt with paralysis (Benedek 1913a and 1913b), a topic to which he returned frequently throughout his career (Benedek 1926). During World War I, he served first on the Eastern front, then in northern Italy. While recovering from an injury in Kolozsvár he was among those students and collaborators who contributed to a volume dedicated to Károly Lechner (Dolgozatok 1915). He remained in the capital of Transylvania until the end of the war, working as a chief-­ physician at one of the local hospitals. With the incorporation of Transylvania into Romania in 1918, most Hungarian professors from the University of Kolozsvár, including Benedek, moved to Hungary. In 1921, Benedek was appointed as professor at the Neurological Clinic of the University of Debrecen (Debreceni Tudományegyetem Elmegyógyászati Klinika), and it was here that he made a successful career as a neurologist. He published extensively, both in Hungarian and in German, on neurology and psychiatry, medical psychology, social psychology and the field of forensic psychiatry (Benedek 1931a; 1934a; 1938 and 1941a). He also designed new diagnostic equipment for brain tumours, enabling him to obtain one of the first three-­dimensional X-ray pictures of the brain. He was also an admirer and follower of the English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911), whose work he popularized in Hungary (Benedek 1935a). By the 1920s Benedek was already interested in the relationship between heredity and race improvement (Benedek 1923), and he believed psychiatry to be the scientific discipline most suitable for providing scientific expertise needed for human improvement. During the early 1930s, Benedek became one of the most active Hungarian eugenicists. Already in 1929, he succeeded in convincing the University of Debrecen to introduce the teaching of ‘hereditary biology and racial hygiene’, similar to medical curricula elsewhere in Europe and the USA at the time. Benedek’s interest in eugenics coincided with a growing debate among leading Hungarian physicians over the introduction of eugenic sterilization, both voluntary and compulsory. Benedek was a 244

Hungary

fervent supporter of sterilization, both as a medical procedure and as a eugenic method to prevent the reproduction of those with physical and mental hereditary illnesses (Benedek 1931b and 1934b: 98–101). He argued that Hungary too should be part of the international trend towards negative eugenics (Benedek 1931c: 172–3 and 1931d: 200–1). To this effect he requested the creation of ‘an extraordinary professorial chair for race hygiene’ from the Ministry of Education (Benedek 1931c: 173). Tellingly, although he viewed the German and Swedish models of negative eugenics very positively, it was British eugenics that provided Benedek with a model of sterilization. The campaign for voluntary sterilization in Britain, including the 1929 Report of the Mental Deficiency Committee, the activities of the Committee for Legalizing Eugenic Sterilization (established in 1929 with Sir Bernard Mallet as its chairman), and especially the Sterilization Bill, presented to the House of Commons in 1931 by Major A. G. Church, were widely discussed and consequently invoked by Benedek to support his commitment to legislating sterilization in Hungary. That such an influence was not one sided, is confirmed by the interests shown by the Foreign Office which had asked for the translation of the main articles pertaining to the debate on sterilization in Hungary (FO, L 6047/3718/405). Benedek’s support for eugenic sterilization was met, however, with stern opposition from the other leading Hungarian psychiatrist, Károly Schaffer (1864–1939), and from Károly Csörsz (1892–1935), one of the first Hungarian geneticists (Csörsz 1934). This campaign culminated in the elaboration of a Sterilization Bill in 1932, which László Benedek then submitted to the National Council of Public Health. The National Council rejected Benedek’s proposal, adopting instead the moderate eugenic arguments put forward by Károly Schaffer (Benedek 1935c: 1–7). Equally important, Benedek also proposed the creation of a Eugenic Society and suitably outlined a full-­fledged eugenic programme for Hungary, covering a wide range of measures, from research into the heredity of the population to eugenic propaganda, education and sterilization. Remarkably, he also believed that such a society should also engage with ‘the question of euthanasia’ (Benedek 1935d: 4). According to him, eugenics has become of central importance to the life of the individual and the national community (Benedek 1935b: 28–34). In 1931 Benedek became President of the Hungarian Psychological Society and between 1935 and 1936 he was Rector of the University of Debrecen. In 1932, he presented an exhibition of ‘Photographs and Charts showing Inheritance of Abnormalities’ at the Third International Congress of Eugenics, in New York, followed by subsequent membership in the International Federation of Eugenic Federations in 1934. He also participated in the Second International Neurological Congress held at University College London in 1935. In 1936, following the retirement of Károly Schaffer, Benedek became Director of the Neurological Clinic at the University of Budapest (Budapesti Tudományegyetem Ideg- és Elmegyógyászati Klinika). By then he was one of Hungary’s most noted psychiatrists and eugenicists, a status confirmed in 1939 when he became President of the Hungarian Association of Psychiatrists (Magyar Elmeorvosok Egyesülete). 245

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Benedek remained undeterred in his campaign for the introduction of eugenic sterilization and marriage restrictions (Szendi 1935: 137–8). Toward the end of the 1930s it seemed that his proposals for the introduction of marriage restrictions were finally taken seriously by the Hungarian political elite. In 1938 he proposed a ‘Marriage Bill’ intended to introduce compulsory medical examination before marriage for those suffering from hereditary mental illness. This measure was, however, seen only as partially efficient in preventing the reproduction of those ‘hereditarily ill’ compared to compulsory sterilization (‘Geplante ungarische Ehegesetzgebung’, Der Erbarzt 1939: 59–60). By the early 1940s, Benedek’s eugenic ideas, alongside a much broader biopolitical version of national welfare, became reality (Benedek 1940). Act VI on the Prevention of Tuberculosis and Venereal Diseases was introduced in 1940 followed by Act XV in 1941 making medical examination before marriage compulsory. Those suffering from tuberculosis, venereal diseases and various genetic diseases were refused permission to marry (‘Az 1940. évi VI. Törvénycikk’, Anya-és Csecsemővédelem 1940: 205–24). It seemed that the Hungarian political elites were finally embracing the eugenic programme of racial betterment, social protectionism and the modern welfare state, thus prompting Benedek to suggest the creation of a Central Institute of Hereditary Biology and Population Policy (Központi Öröklésbiológiai és Népesedéspolitikai Intézet) (Benedek 1941b) in his 1941 lecture to the Hungarian Institute of National Biology (Magyar Nemzetbiologiai Intézet). One of his last articles, published in 1943, dealt with the mental and physical effects of war and the need of disability benefits (Benedek 1943: 342–8). With the beginning of the Siege of Budapest (December 1944), however, Benedek decided to leave Hungary. His hope was to go to Sweden but he only succeeded in getting as far as Kitzbühel (Tirol), in Austria, where, beleaguered by depression, he committed suicide in March 1945.

246

Hungary

Regarding the Drafting of the Hungarian Sterilisation Bill9 On the ground of my expositions, the general meeting of the Association of Hungarian Psychiaters [sic], held on Feb. 14, 1932, commissioned me to intimate to the high governmental factors that the time has arrived when a committee of experts should be delegated to prepare a bill for sterilisation. According to my proposal, this committee would consist of representatives from the following bodies – the Hungarian Judicature, the Juridical Medical Council, the National Council for Hygiene, the Hygienic Reform Bureau, the National Institute for Social Hygiene, the Centre for Hygienic Propaganda, and the Association of Hungarian Psychiaters [sic]. The task of this committee would be – considering the mighty progress in Western countries of this movement which is of extraordinary importance for the culture of the white race – to investigate those conditions under which sterilisation would be possible in Hungary, especially of those suffering from hereditary mental and nervous diseases, and also from disorders resting on somatical hereditary disposition. We were and are fully aware that, owing to the present standing of the psychiatric doctrine and also the typological difficulties, any harsh restrictions would appear arbitrary, and on the other hand, the subjective standpoint, the severity of the form of appearance, the degree of the family affliction, and the social point of view, must all be taken into consideration. [. . .] The consent of the individuals capable of expressing their will, should be obtained before the operation. In the case of persons under guardianship and those incapable of giving their consent, the consent of the parents, the spouse, or the guardian, and the board of guardians should be had. In Hungary the legal decision could be put in the hands of a committee of experts. The whole land should be divided into four districts corresponding to the university cities, with the university city as the centre. The permanent expert-­commission would consist of a nerve specialist, an operator, and a chief district-­physician, which the Ministry of Public Health would appoint for a term of three years. The commission would in each case thoroughly investigate the family and the respective person, and by a majority vote bring their decision regarding sterilisation. It would be obligatory that the proposal for sterilisation be brought before the expert-­committee by two physicians, one of which should be a public health officer. Also in Hungary the sterilisation operation should be permitted only in a public hospital, yet always under medical discretion. Appeal against the judgement of the expert-­commission could be brought before the Hungarian High Court which would seek the opinion of the Royal Sanitary Council before considering the appeal. In the case of relapsing sexual criminals, the commission would be authorised to propose castration, which eliminates the pathologically increased sexual impulse. Those cases which deal with the dismissal of those suffering from hereditary mental disease or cured patients from asylums or observation institutions, would be deserving of special attention. With the mentally diseased who have recovered and with the mentally defective who do not require institute treatment, their dismissal could be conditional to whether they are willing to be sterilised or not. The shortening of punishment by confinement (conditional liberation) of the relapsing sexual criminals could also be 247

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

made dependent on whether the person is willing to be sterilised. The Hungarian sterilisation law could be embodied in one of the appendixes to § 303 of the Hungarian penal code. [. . .] Commissioned by the Central Committee of the Association of Hungarian Psychiaters [sic], I brought the above proposal before the Minister for Home Affairs and Justice, pointing out the most important national-­economical, population-­policy, and race-­hygienical [sic] standpoints, that a State expert-­commission might begin work in this regard. Minister President, Count Károly referred my memorandum to the Social Hygienic Council for its approval. The Council adopted the reserved attitude of Prof. Karl Schaffer with whom they conferred.

Eugenical and Race-Hygienical [sic] Programme for Hungary10 There is need of a Hungarian race-­hygienical [sic] society whose object would be to preserve the qualitative genetic value of the race; to claim by all legal means at our disposal a more active protection for the health of posterity; to eliminate the cacogen ‘minus-­variants’ from the propagation; to support race-­hygienical [sic] research; to organise the collecting of heredity-­biological and eugenical data respecting the Hungarian population, and also to make it accessible to greater masses; to inquire into the fertility of the various classes of society, their occupation, and the present geographical situation; to establish the required scientific equipment-­chamber for the fight against folk diseases; to investigate on a scientific, comparative, and casual basis, the conditions of natural increase in population and infant mortality; and to serve through science the propagative [sic] power of the population. In order approximately to reach this fixed aim, the following plan of work would have to be considered. 1. Investigation into the heredity-­biological regularity regarding man, with respect to spontaneous crossing and the gradual exchange of offspring through the most extensive and thorough ‘individual’ working out of characterised applications especially of ancestors – including charts and genealogical-­trees of collaterals, and by using the modern heredity-­biological statistical methods – the probability, correlation, variation, equalising, mistake-­calculation, of the so-­called brother and sister and ‘proband methods’. 2. For the application of the genetic [. . .], statistical methods, courses for independent researchers and assistants should be arranged in suitable home or foreign scientific institutes. 3. In the place of the projected new race-­hygienic institute, the Royal Hungarian Social-Hygienic Institute and Museum should be developed into a heredity-­biological and eugenetic [sic] central institute which would act as a leading organ for the scientific collecting of data, propaganda and the training of ‘field workers’. 248

Hungary

4. The society should make a proposal to the government according to which at least one extraordinary chair should be established at the universities for the science of race-­hygiene and the policy for the increase of the population, and also a corresponding annual subvention should be granted to a central institute for research in race-­hygiene, heredity-­biology, and a policy for the increase of the population. [. . .] 5. Since, according to the law, § XXXI, 1925, the conduction of the training of the sanitary personnel belongs to the duties of the Royal Hungarian Social-Hygienic National Institute established by the aid of the Rockefeller Foundation, the society should effect by the management that eugenetics [sic], which has been taken up as a regular subject in the courses for nurses, organised by the Hungarian Red Cross, should be taught as broadly and thoroughly as possible, and further, that the studies of the ‘health visitors’ abroad should also render possible the fullest adoption of heredity-­biological and eugenetical [sic] collaborative research work. 6. The Hungarian society for race-­hygiene and the policy for increasing the population should come in collaboration with the eugenical, that is the genealogical expert-­commission of the Association of Hungarian Psychiaters [sic], with the Hungarian Therapeutic Pedagogic Society, and the Hungarian Psychological Society; and besides, it should form connections with all those scientific institutions at home and abroad which develop, in the problem-­spheres and the bordering fields of genetics, race-­hygiene and the policy for the increase of the population. 7. It should pursue the work of the legislature and the government, and, under the given conditions, by its attitude towards the melioration of the race that is the Hungarian race, endeavour to find in all those questions connected with race-­hygiene the most favourable solution corresponding to the standing of science at the time. 8. It should seek connection with the International Federation of Eugenic Organisations which are founding a so-­called Central Clearing House, and possibly become a member of it in the form of a national research affiliated bureau. A national organ of this kind [. . .] would endeavour to unite in the work of the four research committee of the IFE[O]: a) Racial Psychiatry b) Human Heredity c) Race Crossing d) Standardisation of Measurements on the Living. [. . .] 11. Deep investigation into the descendency [sic] relations of those families which are strikingly afflicted by some hereditable affliction. The genealogical norms of these families would be compared with the heredity prognostic standard values of the average population. 249

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

12. The enlightenment of the masses regarding the significance of national eugenics. The organisation of propaganda through [a] series of lectures, through the press, and through the publication of propaganda pamphlets. The application of all means for the spreading of the spirit of eugenic perfectionism, in order to awaken the feeling of responsibility towards posterity. 13. The publication of a journal whose content would be derived from the problem-­sphere of eugenics, race-­hygiene, and the policy for the increase of the population, and from their bordering fields, and which would at the same time be an important propaganda organ and also a significant factor in the business and administration activities of the society. 14. The organisation of a marriage and family and procreation advisory bureau. This would have regard to the already existing organisations, – The National Family Protection Association, ‘Teleia’ Association, Social National Insurance Institute, and their advisory departments for marriage. 15. In the matter of birth-­control, a separate expert-­commission would be formed, which would occupy itself with race-­hygienic, technical, mechanical, and chemical literature on the question of contraceptive proceedings and their practical development. 16. Through scientific and propaganda activities, it would prepare the legal prohibition of marriage and obligatory medical examination before marriage. In this regard, not only those would come under consideration who are found to be ill, but also those apparently healthy transmitters, the heterozygote and homozygote pre-­morbid disposition-­carriers and finally also those persons who had suffered from constitutional mental illnesses and were dismissed as ‘cured’, who from the standpoint of the deterioration of the race are a greater danger than the pronounced hereditarily afflicted as these continue to propagate without restraint. 17. The preparation of the interruption of gravidity from eugenical [sic] indication. 18. The collecting of scientific data and propaganda for the introduction of eugenical [sic] sterilisation. 19. Proposal for interning the hereditarily afflicted before the introduction of eugenical [sic] sterilisation. [. . .] 21. It would do an enlightening and advisory work in the interest of positive constructive eugenics by supporting the large-­familied [sic] ‘normals’ and also those individuals who are prominent in mental and moral respects. 22. It would take up an attitude in the question of euthanasia, the destroying of worthless lives. [. . .] 25. Besides its part in the solution of the above enumerated scientific questions, it would follow all the contemporary eugenetic [sic] problems with special regard to the population of the country. [. . .] 250

Hungary

26. It would give special attention to the movements of the peoples and their influence on the genetic value of the Hungarian race. It would endeavour to determine the ecology of longevity and its hereditary relation. [. . .] 28. The society would collect and extend the bibliography of Hungarian eugenetics [sic], race-­biology, heredity-­biology, and the policy for the increase of the population.

251

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Tihamér Tóth

(1889, Szolnok–1939, Budapest)

Tihámer Tóth is one of Hungary’s most celebrated Catholic authors, still widely read in Poland, Spain and Portugal. Born in Szolnok in 1889, he studied at Catholic seminaries in Budapest and Vienna and was ordained priest in 1911. He obtained a doctorate in theology from the University of Vienna in 1912. Between 1913 and 1918 he taught at the Theological College in Eger (Egri Hittudományi Főiskolá) and afterwards at the Central Theological Seminary in Budapest (Központi Papnevelő Intézet). He also served during World War I as a military chaplain. In 1921, he became a Papal chamberlain (Marczell 1939: 352–4). Tóth engaged with the challenges of modernity and secularization early on in his career (Tóth 1914). Together with other progressive Catholic theologians at the time, such as Sándor Giesswein (1856–1923) and Ottokár Prohászka, Tóth insisted on the importance of Catholicism for youth education and national morality (Tóth 1919). During the 1920s and early 1930s, he also taught at the University of Budapest and was the first Catholic theologian in Europe to give a sermon on national radio on 31 January 1926. He contributed extensively to various Catholic journals in Hungary, including Egyházi Közlöny (Church Bulletin), Magyar Kultúra (Hungarian Culture) and Katholikus Szemle (Catholic Review), and attended a number of Eucharistic Congresses, including Chicago (1926) and Dublin (1932). He also began writing advice books for the youth on various topics, from alcoholism and smoking to chastity, in a collection entitled ‘Levelek Diákjaimhoz’ (‘Letter to My Students’), which brought him wider acclaim in Hungary. His collective works were published in 22 volumes between 1935 and 1938. During the 1930s, Tóth emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of eugenic sterilization in Hungary. In 1934 he lectured on the topic at the summer university in Esztergom and in 1935 he published two articles on the relationship between eugenics, Catholicism and negative eugenics (Tóth 1935a: 1–29 and 1935b: 17–30). These studies were then collected and subsequently published as a book, entitled Eugenika és katolicizmus (Eugenics and Catholicism) (Tóth 1935c). The book was translated into Polish in 1935, German in 1937, Spanish in 1940 and Portuguese as late as 1956. Next to the book published by the German Catholic eugenicist Hermann Muckermann (1877–1962) in 1933, also entitled Eugenik und Katholizismus (Eugenics and Catholicism), Tóth’s is arguably one of the most articulate Catholic critiques of negative eugenics to have been written. Tóth’s eugenic views echoed a wider Catholic involvement with positive eugenics, Christian marriage and the protection of the family (Zborovszky 1929; Kühár 1934: 2–3 and Bochkor 1934: 56–7), also manifest in the activities of Catholic Action (Akció Katolika) and the St Luke Association (Szent Lukács Egyesülete). For instance, the 252

Hungary

theme of the 26th National Catholic Congress (Országos Katolikus Kongresszus) held in Budapest in 1935 was ‘The Struggle for the Child’ (‘Harc a gyermekért’) (Albeker 1935: 659–61). In 1936, Tóth published A keresztény házasság (Christian Marriage), in which, again, he insisted that marriage existed primarily to provide conditions, under God’s control, which were appropriate for procreation. Therefore, eugenic marriage restrictions were described, not as measures to prevent further degeneration, but as incompatible with the main tenets of Catholicism: life and family (Tóth 1936). In line with the official position of the Catholic Church expressed in the Papal encyclical Casti Connubii, Tóth unequivocally condemned all eugenic interventions in the natural process of the creation of life. Moreover, he insisted that the Church and Catholicism more generally allowed for the ability to improve one’s life in the eyes of God. Therefore, the destitute or fallen might always find salvation through religion and reform. The sinner could be redeemed by leading a healthy and moral life. Well-­read in the eugenic and genetic literature of his time, Tóth reiterated his conviction that science and religion were compatible, as long as the former followed the latter’s moral principles. Abortion and sterilization, for various social, medical and eugenic reasons were seen as expressions of the excessive medicalization of modern life and of the state’s attempt to control the private spheres of individual and family, as well as methods to prevent from reproduction those individuals with hereditary diseases (Tóth 1937: 35–53). Tóth was equally categorical in his condemnation of euthanasia (Tóth 1937: 53–62). However, Tóth recognized eugenics’ appeal to modern society, and praised ‘positive eugenics’ as important for ensuring social and biological improvement. As long as eugenics promoted the importance of chastity, marriage and the protection of the family, it provided an important addition to Catholic teachings (Tóth 1937: 63–72). Ultimately, what Catholicism rejected was not eugenic ideas of motherhood, health and welfare but its ‘materialism’, and ‘collective ethos’ that placed the individual and the family in the service of the state. Tóth’s public and ecclesiastical career pivoted when he became auxiliary Bishop of Veszprém in 1938 and titular Bishop of Olbia (in Sardinia, Italy). Also in 1938 he was one of the main speakers at the Eucharistic Congress held in Budapest that year. The Congress attracted most Catholic elites from all over the world, including the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII (1939–58). He was confirmed Bishop of Veszprém in 1939, shortly before his death. By then Tóth’s reputation extended well beyond Hungary. His sermons and books on Catholic morality, marriage guidance, healthy physical living, youth education and eugenics were translated into a number of European languages, including German, French, Spanish, English, Polish, Croatian, Italian and Romanian.

253

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Eugenics and Catholicism11 Eugenics and the questions that surround it are of high interest for the modern man; one can almost claim that this is the most fashionable science of today. [Often] there are fashionable scientific ideas that sometimes dominate the public’s interest for years, sometimes even for decades, but then after a certain period, they disappear. Just to mention a few examples: in biology, recently, everyone promoted proteins, then came calories, and these days it is vitamins; today everybody talks about vitamins and seeking food with vitamins. In psychology, in the most recent past, psychoanalysis was such a similar fad, when everybody was searching for ‘complexes’ within themselves and in their friends. But eugenics and the questions attached to it became even more popular. They talk about it at meetings, in books, at the theatre and so on. If serious scientists deal with eugenics more frequently, this is welcome, because, it is hoped, they will become humble and will not delude the public with slogans and illusions. Unfortunately, today, the debate on eugenics has become irresponsible and excessive, groundless and bizarre ideas had got into people’s minds. Following [the publication of] many articles, and public readings, eugenic propaganda found its way onto the theatrical stage as well. When a new scientific idea becomes such an organic part of everyday life, it is only normal, that we should formulate a statement from a Catholic point of view as well. Eugenics is a noble and serious branch of science, which can serve the improvement and happiness of the human race, but only if it rejects those frivolous hands that try to derail it, putting it on a misguided course, as it has already happened. The object of this study is to state the position of Catholic education and ethical teachings regarding eugenic questions. In order to be able to do this though, we have to draw up a picture of the research that had led to eugenics, that is, we have to talk about the biological foundation of eugenics, namely, the latest research into the question of heredity and its findings. [. . .] Those over-­enthusiastic followers of eugenics, who go over the top, want to forbid the marriage between those who suffer from either serious illnesses or are burdened with mental deficiency, which are likely to be hereditary. The Church, however, sees the unlawful restraint of individual freedom in these aims and does not [. . .] give its blessing. [. . .] A) This point of view can only be understood by those who understand that the [main] tenets of the Catholic faith [are] about the supremacy of spiritual values over physical ones. People are primarily born to the Heaven not to the Earth: to gain everlasting life stands above all other goals in life. Thus, it is quite possible that if imbeciles and unhealthy individuals join in matrimony, this marriage might bring into this world [not only] new babies with ill health and imbeciles, but it might bring such solace and harmony to the lives of the married ones that it might help them to achieve their everlasting aims. Therefore the Church does not forbid even the ill and imbeciles to marry. [. . .] 254

Hungary

  Fanatic eugenicists regard the marriage between different races as treachery [and] want to penalize it. What is more, there were some German doctors who requested official permission to sterilize every Jew, black and those with Down-­syndrome, in order to keep the German race pure. Although, the Church itself is aware that marriage between different races does pose some dangers, however not because of biological but rather cultural and intellectual differences, it does not institute such prohibitive obstacles, because, in theory, it regards every race equal, with equal rights and responsibilities. [. . .] As much as it is just and right to protect the purity of a race, it is equally unjust and dangerous to worship that aim. B) The conviction that a disadvantageous hereditary condition cannot be determined [beyond doubt] endorses the Church’s compassionate and sympathetic approach [in this matter]. Just as it is well known that some notable men have worthless children, in turn we also find outstanding people with poor health or from unhealthy families. [. . . .] Regarding sterilization, Professor Schaffer states that what a mistake it would be if we sterilized every individual with [a] neuropsychopatic constitution when ‘among these neuropsychopatic individuals we can find some gifted at art, literature, [and] even the exact scientific disciplines’. And how much serious responsibility can be detected when one can hear the following from the same home-­grown scientist: The weakness of eugenics is that the medical indications are rather unreliable as certain cases can be judged from opposite points of views, thus medical involvement is not always based on actual diagnosis by any means; its fault is that it often restricts individual freedom, often forcefully, sometimes even in a brutal way. The medical opinion’s practical unreliability makes it understandable that the aims of eugenics are not always well explained. As a result, eugenics in a practical way appears to be a social utopia. As a science, eugenics is still far from being able to affect to a large degree the grandiose card dealings of nature, when it is exactly the mixture of the normal and pathological factors that determine the fate of the individual, whether it is advantageous or disadvantageous.12 Eugenic Sterilization (Az eugenikus sterilizáció) Sterilization (in Hungarian ‘művi meddővététel’) caused more excitement among the supporters of eugenics than the ban of marriage of the imbeciles, because of the medical operation involved, as the result of which, those involved cannot reproduce any longer. Supporters of eugenics would like to implement this operation for two reasons: either for eugenic aims or for punishment. For the purpose of eugenics, they would like to sterilize all imbeciles that are likely to have similar offspring, that is all those, whom they call ‘erbkrank’ or ‘hereditarily ill’. They want to sterilize these individuals even though they did not commit any crime. And they also want to sterilize criminals, who committed certain serious crimes. 255

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The idea of forced sterilization (kényszer-­sterilizáció) has been embraced by many American and Northern European countries, but none of them caused such a furore as the German legislation, which was enacted under the name ‘Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses’ on 25 July 1933 and was implemented on 1 January 1934. This law prescribes compulsory sterilization in cases if: 1. According to a medical diagnosis it is likely that the offspring will suffer from serious physical or mental illness, 2. If it is requested by either the involved individuals, official physicians, medical or penitentiary institutions, and 3. If the national ‘Erbegesundheits-Gericht’13 approved it. [. . .] At first sight, this legislation would appear to present us with a convenient solution to prevent the birth of more hereditarily ill people. [. . .] Having a close look at it though, we can immediately see that this method is not only morally wrong, but it does not satisfy the requirements of eugenics either. The Catholic Church raises its critical voice with impressive courage and declares forced sterilization for the purpose of eugenics to be undignified for humanity; it is a crime that denies the individual its natural rights. The task in front [of] us now is to explain in detail why the Church cannot accept sterilization for eugenic reasons. A) First of all, the state has no right to solve population problems in opposition to natural rights, and sterilization is a serious crime against natural rights. The family’s right to a child is more important than the state’s right to healthy civilians. Children are not born for this world but for the Heavens, thus they are not born for the purpose of the state but for eternity: the state has no right to take this inalienable right from innocent people. Sterilization is the mutilation of the human body, thus it is only allowed by [our] moral code, if, by this, the whole body is to be saved and there is no other way to achieve this goal. The moral criticism of sterilization stems from the fact that it causes the mutilation of the individual’s body, over which neither the individual in question nor the public authority has any right. Disabling any essential parts of the body for the purpose other than that for which they had been destined by nature is a serious mutilation. The state has no such limitless rights over its citizens, like the farmer [has] over his livestock; certain laws limit even state power. Sterilization can be allowed only if it served medical purposes, that is, if it is either part of some medical treatment or the outcome of some life-­saving operation. Therefore, forced sterilization would not be allowed nor should self-­requests for one. B) It must also be mentioned that even if we accepted sterilization, eugenic goals would still not be realized, because in order to achieve serious results we would need to sterilize on average 10 per cent of every generation. What is more, according to some eugenicists (A. Grotjahn), every third individual is degenerate, thus many would have to be prevented from reproducing. But to prove the point of how even the more balanced medical profession has its 256

Hungary

doubts about the expected results of sterilization, it is enough to cite the neurologist and psychiatrist from the University of Budapest, Professor Schaffer: ‘We do not have sufficient arguments to recommend from a professional point of view, responsibly and with a clear conscience, that such a medical act be made compulsory, in certain instances’.14 [. . .] C) However, sterilization is immoral also because it becomes the cause of sexual debauchery in so far as the sterilized man can perpetuate all his vices without any concern for any consequences and as a result of this moral laxity the imminent increase of the sexually transmitted diseases is foreseeable, which of course, goes against eugenic thinking. The authorization of sterilization has rather sad moral consequences. In Germany, for example, even before the sterilization law, thousands of women had themselves sterilized on the basis of ‘social indication’. Unfortunately, less scrupulous doctors allowed for such indications far too easily. [. . .] D) I do have to mention, however, another aspect as well. When one reads the praise from the enthusiasts of eugenics, with which they wish to prevent the birth of every weak and sickly child, one must protest: It is fortunate that these enthusiasts did not live in the olden days and did not have the chance to stop great people from [being] born just because they were disabled, hunchbacks, lame and crippled. It is frightening enough to think what would have been the loss of the world if following beliefs of the supporters of eugenics, people such as, Plato, Aesop, Pope, who were hunchbacks; Leonardo da Vinci, Händel, Walter Scott, Gounod, who were crippled; Leibnitz, who had ‘round back’; Lord Byron, Pergolesi, Talleyrand, who had deformed legs (club foot); Cervantes, who had a crippled left hand; Dickens, who had polio; Verlaine, who was almost entirely crippled, would never have been born [. . .] And if we add to this list of names all the massive number of world greats, whose face showed pronounced deformity, for example: Diogenes, Confucius, Pestalozzi, Voltaire, Livy, Cyrano de Bergerac, Ovid, Michelangelo, Beethoven, I believe, it is beyond doubt that humanity did not make history with its body but with its soul and wishes to carry on in a similar manner, while acknowledging, however, the justification of positive eugenics, but not that of sterilization. [. . .] Catholicism, although it rejects materialist-Darwinist eugenics, which interferes with the plans of God, does not reject the aim to nurture healthier offspring. It rejects the dominance of eugenic goals over everlasting values; this is why it does not object to the marriage between sick individuals, because their soul can gain peace in marriage and thus their soul can be saved, even if the idea of race improvement might suffer a little. The question has arisen: would it not be useful to use eugenic thinking as one of the obstacles to marriage? [. . .] The Church does not deem it necessary to make changes to its policy on marriage based on half-­baked ideas, since its rules have been built up from thousand-­year-old experiences, and considers [this policy] to be adequate for the 257

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

protection of the values attached to the institution of marriage. [. . .] Besides this, it is also to be considered, that the family is an older formation than the state, and more important as well. Thus a family has stronger claim to have children than the state to have healthy civilians. The right to establish a family, and within the family, the right to have children is such a fundamental right of the individual, which can be taken away by the state only in situations, if it was certain, that the practice of it, is a great danger to the common good. [. . .] Eugenic fanatics paint, with frightening colours, [a picture of] how humanity is degenerating without their medicine. But they are wrong. [. . .] The reality is that the correction of defective human material has been carried out for thousands of years by nature without the need for sterilization and even in the future there is no need to fear for humanity, as long as it does not try to oppose the laws of nature. If we are faithful to God’s laws that are encrypted in our nature, we can lay the fate of humanity in the hands of nature, without any fear. Translation by Barnabás Kalina

258

Glossary Alkotó eugenika: positive eugenics Biológizmus: biologism Biometrika: biometrics Cselekvő eugenika: active eugenics Eugenika vallása: eugenic religion Eugenika/Eugenetika: eugenics Eugenikai terméketlenítés: eugenic sterilization Eugenikai felvilágosítása: eugenic enlightenment Eugenikai hipochondriára: eugenic hypochondria Fajbiológiai inventárium: racial biological inventory Fajnemesítő erkölcsök: eugenic morals Fajegészségtan: eugenics, race hygiene, racial hygiene Fajegészségügy: practical eugenics/race hygiene Fajhigiéne: racial hygiene Fajjavítás: genetic care Fajromlás: racial degeneration Fajnemesítés: racial improvement Fajfenntartás: race preservation Fajkeveredés: miscegenation Faj önvédelmi: racial defence Fajhygiénikus gondolkodásmód: race-­hygienic mentality Házassági tanácsadás: marriage counselling Kényszer sterilizáció: forced sterilization Minőségi fajegészségtan: qualitative racial hygiene Mennyiségi fajegészségtan: quantitative racial hygiene Nemleges eugenika: negative eugenics Nemzetbiológia: national biology Népesedésbiológia: population biology Nemzet szellemi eugenezisét: nation’s intellectual eugenization Önkéntes sterilizáció: voluntary sterilization Selejtező eugenika: selective eugenics

Notes 1 Madzsar, J. (1910), ‘Gyakorlati eugenika’, Huszadik Század, 11: 115–7. [Excerpts translated from pp. 115–7]. 2 Madzsar, J. (1911), ‘Fajromlás és fajnemesítés’, Huszadik Század, 12: 145–60 [Excerpts translated from pp. 145 and 158–60]. 3 Apáthy, I. (1911), ‘A faj egészségtana’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 4: 265–79 [Excerpts translated from pp. 265; 266–7 and 278–9]. 4 Apáthy, I. (1918a), ‘A fajegészségtan köre és feladatai I.’ Természettudományi Közlöny, 50: 6–21 and (1918b), ‘A fajegészségtan köre és feladatai, II.’ Természettudományi Közlöny, 50: 81–101 [Excerpts translated from part 1, pp. 9 and 17–18 and from part 2, pp 82–3 and 100–1]. 5 Hoffmann, G. (1916d), ‘Háború és fajhygiéne’, A Cél, 7: 428–37 [Excerpts translated from pp. 428–30; 431–3 and 434]. 6 Hoffmann, G. (1921), ‘Eugenics in the Central Empires since 1914’, Social Hygiene, 7: 285–96 [Excerpts translated from pp. 286 and 291–4]. 7 Méhely, L. (1927), Állítsunk fel magyar fajbiológiai intézetet, Budapest: Held János, 1927 [Excerpts translated from pp. 3; 10–11; 12–13; 14–15 and 16–17]. 8 The Etelköz was the first known Hungarian principality, established around 830 CE. The territory was located around the rivers Dnieper, Southern Bug, Dniester, Prut and Siret [note MT]. 9 Benedek, L. (1935c), ‘Regarding the Drafting of the Hungarian Sterilisation Bill’, in Benedek, L. (ed.), Hughlings Jackson Memorial, Debrecen: Clinic for Nervous and Mental Diseases of the Stephen Tisza University, 1–7 [Excerpts translated from pp. 1 and 3–5]. 10 Benedek, L. ‘Eugenical and Race-Hygienical [sic] Programme for Hungary’, in Benedek, L. (ed.), Hughlings Jackson Memorial, 1–5 [Excerpts translated from pp. 3–5]. 11 Tóth, T. (1935a), ‘Eugenika és katolicizmus’, in Serédi, J. (ed.), Az 1934. évi előadások. Eugenika, élettan, származástan, örökléstan, embertan, pedagógia, Budapest: Korda, 1–29. [Excerpts translated from pp. 12; 21–5 and 28–9]. 12 Schaffer, K. (1934a), ‘Az eugenika jelentősége elme- és idegorvosi szempontból’, 12 [note TT]. 13 Hereditary Health Courts (Germ.) [note MT]. 14 Schaffer, K. (1934a), ‘Az eugenika jelentősége elme- és idegorvosi szempontból’, 14 [note TT].

Bibliography Archives Magyar Országos Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives), Budapest Fond K20–989 (1908) Fond K59–7/d (1921) Fond K 564–66 (1940) Országos Széchényi Könyvtár (Széchényi National Library) Magyar Társadalomtudományi Egyesület iratai Apáthy István iratai Fond 2453 (vol. 1) and 2454 (vol. 2) G. Hoffmann’s letter to I. Apáthy, 22 October 1913, vol. 1, file 116–117 P. Teleki’s letter to I. Apáthy, 24 March 1914, vol. 1, file 63 ‘Körlevél az Egyesületközi Fajegészségügyi Bizottság’, 20 January 1916, vol. 1, file 19 P. Teleki’s letter to I. Apáthy, 4 November 1917, vol. 1, file 44 G. Hoffmann’s letter to I. Apáthy, 17 November 1917, OSZK, Manuscript vol. 1, file 45 ‘A Magyar Fajegészségtani és Népesedéspolitikai Társaság alapszabálytervezete’, 1917, vol. 2, file 968, 46–51 Központi Statisztikai Hivatal Könyvtár (Hungarian Central Statistical Office Library) VB 1282/1. Stefánia Association’s letter to Alajos Kovács, 19 July 1915 VB 1282/2 P. Teleki’s letter to A. Kovács, 4 November 1917 Semmelweis Orvostörténeti Múzeum, Könyvtár és Levéltár, Semmelweis Orvostörténeti Könyvtár (Semmelweis Museum, Library and Archives of the History of Medicine) Budapesti Királyi Orvosegyesület (Medical Association of Budapest) SOL, II6/913 The National Archives, Kew Gardens, Richmond FO 371/24428 FP 370/419 Charles Schaffer, ‘A Short Review of Eugenic Endeavour from the Psychiatrical Point of View’, 1933, 83–9. FO 211/636 ‘Sterilization’ FO L 6047/3718/405 ‘Hungarian publications on the subject of sterilization’ FD 1/1733 Bureau of Human Heredity, Bulletin II University College London, Galton Papers, Correspondence, Fond 270 Truman State University, Kirksville, MO Pickler Memorial Library

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Harry H. Laughlin Paper ‘C’ Box, C-2–1-2 Archiv der Max-Plank-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem Generalverwaltung der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft I. Abt., Rep. 1A, Nr. 1350, Bl. 80f Rockefeller Foundation Archive Folder 43, Box 5, Series 1.1, RG 1.1 ‘Institute of Social Hygiene and Museum’, 1926. Folder 42, Box 5, RG 1.1 ‘Sanitary Reform Bureau, Hungary, 1929’.

Primary Sources (1906), ‘Az olvasóhoz!’ Fajegészségügy, 1: 1. (1911a), ‘A fajnemesítés (eugénika) problémái’, Huszadik Század, 12: 694–709. (1911b), ‘A fajnemesítés (eugénika) problémái’, Huszadik Század, 12: 29–44. (1911c), ‘A fajnemesítés (eugénika) problémái’, Huszadik Század, 12: 157–70. (1911d), ‘A fajnemesítés (eugénika) problémái’, Huszadik Század, 12: 322–36. (1912), ‘Közegészségügyi értekezlet’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 5: 151–71. (1914), ‘A fajegészségügyi (eugenikai) szakosztály megalakulása’,” Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 7: 165–72. (1914), ‘A fajegészségügyi bizottság értekezlete’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 7: 317. (1915), Dolgozatok: Lechner Károly dr. negyedszázados tanári működésének emlékére írták és kiadták tanítványai és tanártársai, Kolozsvár: Egyesült Nyomda. (1916), A ‘Nemzetvédő Szövetség a Nemibajok Ellen’ alapszabályai, Budapest: Stephaneum. (1917), ‘Az anya- és csecsemővédő szakosztály alakuló ülése’, Népjóléti Közlöny 1: 98–100. (1917), ‘Az anya- és Csecsemővédő Központi Intézet’, Népjóléti Közlöny 1: 105. (1917), ‘Ankét a nemi betegségek leküzdése tárgyában’, A Nő, 4: 75–8. (1917a), ‘Ankét a nemi betegségek elleni küzdelemről’, A Nő, 4: 94–6. (1917b), ‘Ankét a nemi betegségek elleni küzdelemről’, A Nő, 4: 114–16. (1917), ‘Magyar Fajegészségtani és Népesedéspolitikai Társaság alakulása’, Szociálpolitikai Szemle, 7: 212–14. (1918), ‘Magyar fajegészségtani és népességpolitikai társaság alakulása’, A Cél, 9: 103–6. (1918), ‘Az Országos Hadigondozó Hivatal népesedéspolitikai és fajegészségügyi tevékenysége’, A Cél, 9: 441–4. (1918), ‘Magyar-­német-­ostrák fajegészségtani nagygyűles’, Népjóléti Közlöny, 2: 153. (1919), ‘The Consequences of the Division of Hungary from the Standpoint of Eugenics’, Nemzetvédelem, 2: 162–4. (1919), ‘Kommunista hygiéne’, Egészség, 33: 73. (1922), ‘Notizen’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 14: 99. (1928), ‘Hungarian Social Hygiene Institute’, Eugenical News, 13: 122. (1933), ‘Fajkutató és fajegeszségi társaság alakul: gróf Teleki Pál lész az elnöke, Nékám Lajos az igazgatója’, Hétfői Napló, 34 (11 September): 3. (1933), ‘A fajnemesítés és sterilizáció magyar tudós társaságról beszél gróf Teleki Pál és Nékám professzor’, Az Est, 24 (13 September): 11. (1934), ‘Sterilization in Hungary’, Eugenical News, 19: 142. (1934), ‘A sterilizálás kérdése körül’, Egészségpolitikai szemle, 1: 123–6. (1937), ‘Ansiedlung von Zigeunern’, Volk und Rasse, 12: 211. (1939), ‘Geplante ungarische Ehegesetzgebung’, Der Erbarzt, 7: 59–60. 262

Hungary

(1939), ‘Zur Zigeunerfrage in Ungarn’, Volkstum im Südosten 1, 308–9. (1940), ‘Az 1940. évi VI. Törvénycikk’, Anya-és Csecsemővédelem, 13: 205–24. (1940), A Magyar Nemzetbiológiai Intézet megalapítása: Az Intézet programmja, Budapest: EPOL. (1940), A húszmilliós magyarságért, Budapest: Magyar Nemzetbiológiai Intézet. Albeker, G. (1935), ‘Harc a gyermekért’, Anya-és Csecsemővédelem 8: 659–61. Ambrus, T. (1937), ‘Magyar feltámadás fele’, Anya-és Csecsemővédelem, 10: 195–7. Angyal, P. (1936), A negatív eugenikai irány büntetőjogi vonatkozásai, Sárospatak: Kisfaludy László. Antal, L. (1934), A hygiénizmus mint új életszemlélet, Kecskemét: Első Hírlap Nyomda. Antal, L. (1940a), A biológizmus mint új életszemlélet: A magyar biopolitika, Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda. Antal, L. (1940b), A Magyar Nemzetbiológiai Intézet megalapítása: az életszemléleti osztály programmja, Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda. Antal, L. (1942), A magyar népesedés kérdései, Budapest: EPOL. Antal, L. (1944), ‘Népesedésbiologia’, A Cél, 34: 114–21. Apáthy, I. (1896), Über das leitende Element des Nervensystems und seine Lagebeziehungen zu den Zellen bei Wirbeltieren und Wirbellosen, Leiden: Brill. Apáthy, I. (1900), Néhany lap önismeretünk történetéből: élettudományi vázlat, Budapest: Hornyánszky Nyomda. Apáthy, I. (1908a), A Magyar Társadalomtudományi Egyesület legelső teendői, Pécs: Taizs József könyvnyomdája. Apáthy, I. (1908b), ‘A nemzetalkotó különbözésről általános fejlődéstani szempontból’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 1: 597–615. Apáthy, I. (1909), ‘A darwinismus bírálata és a társadalomtan’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 2: 309–39. Apáthy, I. (1910), A Darwinismus birálata és a társadalomtan, Budapest: Pesti Köynvnyomda. Apáthy, I. (1911), ‘A faj egészségtana’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 4: 265–79. Apáthy, I. (1912), A fejlődés törvényei és a társadalom, Budapest: Magyar Társadalomtudományi Egyesület. Apáthy, I. (1913), A socialismus az emberi továbbfejlődés szempontjából, Budapest: Országos Ismeretterjesztő Társulat. Apáthy, I. (1914a), ‘Fajegészségügy és fajegészségtan’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 7: 52–65. Apáthy, I. (1914b), ‘Miért nem népszerü ma a magyar nemzet?’, Új Nemzedék, 1: 1–3. Apáthy, I. (1916), ‘Radikálizmus és magyarság’, Új Nemzedék, 3: 1–4. Apáthy, I. (1917), ‘Háború és fajegészségügy’, Új Nemzedék, 4: 289–93. Apáthy, I. (1918a), ‘A fajegészségtan köre és feladatai, I.’, Természettudományi Közlöny, 50: 6–21. Apáthy, I. (1918b), ‘A fajegészségtan köre és feladatai, II.’, Természettudományi Közlöny, 50: 81–101. Balás, K. (1905), A népesedés, Budapest: Politzer. Balás, K. (1926), The Foundation of Social Politics, Ilford: C. W. Clark. Barta, B. (1919), ‘Magyarország közegészségügye’, Egészség, 33: 13–23. Bársony, J. (1922), Rectori beszéd a Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetem tanévnyitó diszülésén, Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda. Benedek, L. (1913a), Juvenilis paralysis progressiva esete, Kolozsvár: Ajtai K. A. Könyvsajtója. Benedek, L. (1913b), A paralysis progressiva aetiologiájáról, Kolozsvár: Ajtai K. A. Könyvsajtója. Benedek, L. (1923), A psychiatria története kultúrtörténeti és faji vonatkozásokkal, Budapest: Mai Henrik és Fia Könyvkereskedése. Benedek, L. (1926), Der heutige Stand der Behandlung der progressiven Paralyse, Berlin: Karger. 263

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Benedek, L. (1931a), Újabb therapiai törekvések az idegrendszer szervi megbetegedéseinél, Budapest: Globus Nyomda. Benedek, L. (1931b), A cselekvő eugenikának és psychiátriának öröklésbiológiai és orvosi vonatkozásai, Budapest: Pester Lloyd-Gesellschaft. Benedek, L. (1931c), ‘Eugenical Efforts in Hungary’, Eugenical News, 16: 172–3. Benedek, L. (1931d), ‘Az eugenikai törekvések Magyarországon’, Magyar Orvos, 12: 200–1. Benedek, L. (1934a), Contributions to the symptomatology and treatment of cerebral mycetism, Debrecen: Pannonia. Benedek, L. (1934b), ‘Időszerű adatok az elimináló eugenica kérdéssphaerájához’, Orvosok és Gyógyszerészek Lapja, 2: 98–101. Benedek, L. (1935a), Hughlings Jackson életéről és munkájáról, Budapest: Franklin Nyomda. Benedek, L. (1935b), ‘Adatok a magyar eugenikai törvényjavaslathoz’, Egészségpolitikai Szemle, 2: 28–34. Benedek, L. (1935c), ‘Regarding the Drafting of the Hungarian Sterilisation Bill’, in Benedek, L., (ed.), Hughlings Jackson Memorial Volume, Debrecen, Clinic for Nervous and Mental Diseases of the Stephen Tisza University, 1–7. Benedek, L. (1935d), ‘Eugenical and Race-Hygienical Programme for Hungary’, Benedek, L., (ed.), Hughlings Jackson Memorial Volume, Debrecen, Clinic for Nervous and Mental Diseases of the Stephen Tisza University, 1–5. Benedek, L. (1938), Konkret psychotische Symptome nach Röntgenbestrahlung bei Gehirntumoren, Budapest: Franklin Nyomda. Benedek, L. (1940), A házasság előtti kötelező orvosi vizsgálat törvenyavaslatának tervezete psychiatriai nézőpontból, Budapest: Bethlen Gábor Nyomda. Benedek, L. (1941a), A központi idegrendszer szervi folyamatainak lokalizálásáról és korai kórjelzéséről, Budapest: Franklin Nyomda. Benedek, L. (1941b), Állásfoglalás a házassági törvény kiegészítéséről és módosításáról szóló törvényjavaslat tárgyában, Budapest: EPOL. Benedek, L. (1943), ‘A háborús elme-és idegbajokról a rokkantellátás szempontjából’, Népegészségügy, 23: 342–8. Berkovits, R. (1913), Amerikai impressziók, Nagyvárad: Nagyvárad-Nyomda és Ujságvállalat. Biró, B. (1935), Eugenika, Budapest: Magyar Szemle Társaság. Bochkor, Á. (1934), ‘Intervju a házassági tanácsadásról’, Keresztény Nő, 12: 56–7. Boróczy, K. (1938), ‘A magyar házassági törvény kiegészítése fajnemesítő és fajvédő rendelkezésekkel’, A Cél, 28: 247–50. Bosnyák, Z. (1941), A harmadik zsidótörvény és a házasság, Budapest: Stádium. Bosnyák, Z. (1942a), A magyar fajvédelem úttörői, Budapest: Stádium. Bosnyák, B. (1942b) ‘Állítsuk fel a Zsidókerdést Kutató Magyar Intézetet’, A Cél, 32: 17–21. Buro, P. (1907), ‘Társadalmi és faji egészségtan’, Egészség, 21: 195–9. Cserey-Pechány, A. (1942), A fajnemesítés problémái, különös tekintettel a magyar eugenesisre, Debrecen: Városi Nymoda. Csiky, J. (1941), A fajvédelmi törvény és végrehajtási rendeletei, Budapest: Grill. Csörsz, K. (1934), Néhány általános érdekű öröklődéskórtani kérdésről, Budapest: Franklin Nyomda. Czeizel, E. (2000), Költők, gének, titkok. A magyar költő géniuszok családfaelemzése, Budapest: Galenus Kiadó. Darányi, G. (1930), ‘Fejlődés, fajfenntartás és öregedés a természetben’, Természettudományi Közlöny, 62: 305–13. Darányi, G. (1934), ‘A közegészségügy és a hygiene-­oktatás új irányai’, Anya-és Csecsemővédelem, 7: 9–12. Darányi, G. (1935), ‘Az eugenikai irányzatok fejlődése’, in Darányi, G. (ed.), Az öröklési és fajfenntartási hygiene alapjai, Budapest: Az Országos Közegészségi Intézet, 1–14. 264

Hungary

Darányi, G. (1939), ‘A Családvédelmi Szövetség feladata és a Házassági Tanácsadó Intézetek megszervezése’, Nemzeti Családvédelem 2 (1939): 3–5. Dienes, L. (1910), ‘Biometrika’, Huszadik Század, 11: 50–1. Dobák, F. (1934), ‘Eugenika és házassag’, Egészségpolitikai Szemle, 1: 232–41. Dobák, F. (1935), Eugenika Házassági Tanácsadás, Budapest: Pallas Nyomda. Donáth, G. (1907), Der Arzt und die Alkoholfrage, Vienna: Moritz Perles. Donáth, G. (1920), ‘A világháborúban legyőzött népek fajbiológiai jövője’, Természettudományi Közlöny, 52: 353–61. Donáth, G. (1934), ‘Eugenika és sterilizáció’, Gyógyászat, 74 (1934): 284–6. Doros, G. (1940), Házassággondozás az eugénia járható útjai, Budapest: A Magyar Családvédelmi Szövetség. Doros, G. (1942), Az eugenika gyakorlati feladatai, Budapest: Stephaneum Nyomda. Doros, G. (1944a), Magyarság biológiai erőállománya, Budapest: Stephaneum Nyomda. Doros, G (1944b), A magyarság életereje: A nemzettest biológiája, fajegészsége és eugéniája, Budapest: Turul Kiadás. Doros, G. (1944c), ‘Fajegészségügy’, A Cél, 34: 142–6. Farkas, J. (1941), Az örökléstan és fajnemesítés alapelemei, Budapest: Buschmann Nyomda. Fenyvessy, B. and Madzsar, J. (eds) (1918), A népegészségi országos nagygyűlés munkálatai, Budapest: Eggenberger. Fülop, Z. (1910), ‘Eugenika’, Huszadik Század, 11: 161–76. Galton, F. (1907), ‘A valószínűseg, mint az eugenetika alapja’, Huszadik Század, 8: 1013–29. Gáspár, J. (1931), Méhely Lajos és a tudományos fajvédelem Magyarországon, Budapest: Stephaneum. Gáspár, J. (1940), A Magyar Nemzetbiológiai Intézet. Öröklési, Fajbiológiai és Eugenikai Osztályának programmja, Budapest: Egyetemyi Nyomda. Gortvay, G. (1929), ‘A magyar faj jövője’, Anya-és Csecsemővédelem, 2: 545–7. Gortvay, G. (1938), ‘Eugenika és szociálpolitika’, Búvár, 4: 3–4. Hézser, L. (1936), ‘Fajegészségügy és egészségpolitika’, Egészségpolitikai Szemle, 3: 145–59. Hézser, L. (1940), Harc a magyar jövőért, Budapest: Novák Rudolf. Hoffmann, G. (1910), ‘Az amerikai magyarság’, Közgazdasági Szemle, 44: 455–85. Hoffmann, G. (1911), Csonka munkásosztály: az amerikai magyarság, Budapest: Magyar Közgazdasági Társaság. Hoffmann, G. (1912), ‘Die Regelung der Ehe im Rassenhygienischen Sinne in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 9: 730–61. Hoffmann, G. (1913a), Rassenhygiene in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika, Munich: J. F. Lehmann. Hoffmann, G. (1913b), ‘Az első állami fajhygieniai hivatal’, Szociálpolitikai Szemle, 3: 161–2. Hoffmann, G. (1914a), ‘Eugenika’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 7: 91–106. Hoffmann, G. (1914b), ‘Rassenhygienische Gedanken bei Platon’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 11: 174–83. Hoffmann, G. (1914c), ‘A fajegészségtan irodalma’, Magyar Társadalomtudományi Szemle, 7: 221–4. Hoffmann, G. (1914d), ‘Rassenhygiene und Familienforschung. Leitsätze der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene über die Geburtenfrage’, Monatsblatt der Kais. Kön. Heraldischen Gesellschaft ‘Adler’, 7: 373–5. Hoffmann, G. (1914e), ‘Eugenics in Germany: Society of Race Hygiene Adopts Resolution Calling for Extensive Program of Positive Measures to Check Decline in Birth-Rate’, The Journal of Heredity, 5: 435–6. Hoffmann, G. (1916a), ‘Fajegészségtan és eugenika’, Természettudományi Közlöny, 48: 450–4. 265

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Hoffmann, G. (1916b), ‘Fajegészségtan és népesedési politika’, Természettudományi Közlöny, 48: 617–21. Hoffmann, G. (1916c), Krieg und Rassenhygiene. Die bevölkerungspolitischen Aufgaben nach dem Kriege, Munich: J. F. Lehmann. Hoffmann, G. (1916d), ‘Háború és fajhygiéne’, A Cél, 7: 428–37. Hoffmann, G. (1916e), ‘Eugenics in Hungary’, The Journal of Heredity, 7: 105. Hoffmann, G. (1918a), ‘Rassenhygiene in Ungarn’, Archiv für Rassen und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 13: 55–67. Hoffmann, G. (1918b), ‘A sokgyermekű család közvetlen gazdasági támogatása fajegészségügyi szempontból’, Közgazdasági Szemle, 42: 610–9. Hoffmann, G. (1918c), Egészséges magyar családnak soha magva ne szakadjon, Budapest: A Társadalmi Muzeum Kiadványai. Hoffmann, G. (1918d), ‘Fajegészségtan és erkölcs’, Magyar Kultúra, 6: 257–62. Hoffmann, G. (1921), ‘Eugenics in the Central Empires since 1914’, Social Hygiene, 7: 285–96. Holmes, S. J. (1924), A Bibliography of Eugenics, Berkeley: University of California Press. Jankovich, A. (1935), ‘Néhány szó az Egyetemi Közegészségtani Intézet örökléstani kutatásairól’, Anya-és Csecsemővédelem, 8: 76–80. Jankovich, A. (1936a), Az új Németország eugenikai törekvései, Debrecen: Pannonia. Jankovich, A. (1936b), ‘Über Zwillingsforschungen in Ungarn’, in Harmsen and Lohse (eds), Bevölkerungsfragen, 737–41. Jeney, E. (1923), ‘Rassenbiologischen untersuchungen in Ungarn’, Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 49: 546–7. Johan, B. (1941), ‘Die leitgedanken des ungarischen Volksgesundheitsdienst’, Donaueuropa, 1: 308–17. Kadmos (Bíró Imre), (1926), Ankét az eugenetikáról, Budapest: Enciklopédia. Kemény, F. (1919), ‘Az egészségügy a Tanácsköztársaságban’, Egészség, 33: 121–44. Kertész, T. (1912), Fajhygiéne és fajnemesítés, Budapest: Országos Központi Községi Nyomda. Kormos, Á. (1943), ‘Hozzászólás a cigánykérdéshez’, Népegészségügy, 24: 95–6. Korponay, A. (1941), Húsz millió magyart!, Budapest: EPOL. Kozáry, G. (1906a), ‘Az Eugenics kérdése (Lapok az Eugenics kérdésének történetéből)’, Athenaeum, 15: 242–8. Kozáry, G. (1906b), ‘Az Eugenics kérdése (Lapok az Eugenics kérdésének történetéből)’, Athenaeum, 15: 351–7. Kozáry, G. (1906c), ‘Az Eugenics kérdése (Lapok az Eugenics kérdésének történetéből)’, Athenaeum, 15: 458–64 Kozáry, G. (1907), ‘Az Eugenics kérdése (Lapok az Eugenics kérdésének történetéből)’, Athenaeum, 16: 59–69. Kühár, F. (1934), ‘A fajnemesités’, Nemzeti Ujság, 16: 2–3. Laughlin, H. H. (1913), Eugenics Record Office. Report No. 1, Cold Spring Harbor: Eugenics Record Office. Lengyel, S. (1934), ‘Eugenika és sterilizáció’, Magyar Kultúra, 7: 289–95. Lenhossék, M. (1918), ‘A népfajok és az eugenika’, Természettudományi Közlöny 50: 212–41. Lenz, F. (1913), ‘Hoffmann, Géza: Die Rassenhygiene in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 10: 252. Lenz, F. (1918), ‘Hoffmann, Geza. Krieg und Rassenhygiene’, Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, 12: 510–11. Madzsar, J. (1906), ‘A szaporodás higienéje’, Huszadik Század, 7: 336–7. Madzsar, J. (1908), Az ember származása, Budapest: Deutsch Zsigmond. 266

Hungary

Madzsar, J. (1909), Darwinizmus és lamarckizmus, Budapest: Deutsch Zsigmond. Madzsar, J. (1910), ‘Gyakorlati eugenika’, Huszadik Század, 11: 115–7. Madzsar, J. (1911), ‘Fajromlás és fajnemesítés’, Huszadik Század, 12: 145–60. Madzsar, J. (1914), ‘Az anya- és csecsemővédelem a háborúban’, Városi Szemle, 7: 726–30. Madzsar, J. (1915), Az anya- és csecsemővédelem országos szervezése: A Stefánia Szövetség alapszabályainak tervezete, Budapest: Székesfőváros Házinyomda. Madzsar, J. (1916a), Mit akar a Stefánia-Szövetség? Budapest: Pfeifer Ferdinánd. Madzsar, J. (1916b), ‘A jövő nemzedék védelme és a háború’, Huszadik Század, 17: 1–22. Madzsar, J. (1916c), A meddő Budapest, Budapest: Pfeifer Ferdinánd. Madzsar, J. (1918), A szoptatódajka kérdés, Budapest: Pfeifer Ferdinánd. Madzsar, J. (1920), ‘The Sanitation of Eastern Europe’, The New Europe, 14: 90–2. Madzsar, J. (ed.) (1926), Az egészség enciklopédiája : tanácsadó egészséges és beteg emberek számára, Budapest: Enciklopédia. Madzsar, J. (ed.) (1928), Társadalmi Lexikon, Budapest: Népszava. Malán, M. (1935), ‘A német sterilizációs törvény és végrehajtása’, Egészségpolitikai Szemle, 2: 303–18. Malán, M. (1940), ‘Magyar vér-oláh vér’, Magyar Szemle, 39: 187–92. Marczell, M. (1939), ‘Tóth Tihamér veszprémi püspök’, Katolikus Szemle, 53: 352–4. Marczell, M. (1940), Érosz és étosz, Budapest: A Szent István Társulat Kiadása. Maring, A. (1937), ‘Eugenika és katholicizmus’, Korunk Szava 7: 663–5. Marosi, A. (1924), Átöröklés és nemzetvédelem, Budapest: St István Társulát. Mártonffy, K. (ed.) (1939), A mai magyar szociálpolitika, Budapest: Magyar Királyi Állami Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1905), A származástan mai állása, Budapest: Pesti Lloyd-Társaság Nymoda. Méhely, L. (1909), Az élettudomány bibliája: Darwin születésének százéves fordulójára, Budapest: Pesti Lloyd Nymoda. Méhely, L. (1912a), A hazai viperákról, Budapest: Pesti Lloyd Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1912b), Die Bedeutung der Epistase in der Artbildung, Jena: Fischer. Méhely, L. (1914), Önéletrajzi adataim, Budapest: n.p. Méhely, L. (1915), A háború biológiája, Budapest: Pallas Irodalmi és Nyomdai Részvénytársaság. Méhely, L. (1925), ‘A magyar élettudomány problémái’, A Cél, 15: 354–65. Méhely, L. (1926a), Néhány szó a magyar fajvédelemről, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1926b), ‘A fajkérdés élettudományi alapjai’, A Cél, 16: 323–41. Méhely, L. (1926c), ‘Szózat a magyar nemzethez’, A Cél, 16: 129–31. Méhely, L (1927a), Állítsunk fel magyar fajbiológiai intézetet, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1927b), Az okszerű népesedéspolitika élettudományi alapja, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1928), Fajvédelmi gondolatok, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1929a), A magyarság anthropologiája, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1929b), A németek Magyarországon. Fajbiológiai tanulmány, Budapest: Stephaneum Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1930a), A vércsoportok faji jelentősége, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1930b), Az én antiszemitizmusom, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L., (1931), A turáni lovas, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1932), A numerus clausus mérlege: élmények és tanulságok, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1933a), Vér, faj, nemzet, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1933b), A magyar fajvédelem pragmatikája, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1934a), ‘Blut und Rasse’, Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie, 34: 244–57. 267

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Méhely, L. (1934b), ‘Nyílt levél a Debreceni “Méhely Bajtársi Egyesület” tagjaihoz!’, A Cél, 24: 215–21. Méhely, L. (1936), Fajvédelem és fajnemesítés, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1937), A fajfenntartás élettudományi kellékei, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1938), A házasság előtti orvosi vizsgálatról, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1939a), A faj lelke, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1939b), Az új zsidótörvény és az élet törvényei, Budapest: Held J. Nyomda. Méhely, L. (1940), Vér és faj, Budapest: Bolyai Akadémia. Naményi, L. (1925), ‘Psychiatria és fajegészségtan’, Gyógyázat, 65: 152–6. Naményi, L. (1926), ‘Az eugenikai terméketlenítés kérdéséhez’, Népegészégügy, 7: 744–9. Naményi, L. (1929), ‘A házassági tanácsadás lényege és feladatai’, Népegészégügy, 10: 1125–33. Naményi, L. (1932a), ‘A házassági tanácsadás eugenikai szempontjai’,’ Népegészégügy, 13: 1042–50. Naményi, L. (1932b), ‘Eugenikai kérdések Németországban’, Népegészégügy, 13: 1125–30. Naményi, L. (1934), Az eugenikai sterilisatio kérdése, Budapest: Athenaeum. Naményi, L. (1936), ‘Galton és az eugenika’, Gyermekvédelem 8: 73–5. Naményi, L. (1939), ‘A párválasztás eugéniai irányelvei’, Egészség, 53: 221–4. Neuber, E. (1938), A bőr- és nemibetegségek eugenikai vonatkozásairól, Budapest: Franklin Nyomda. Nékám, L. (1915), A háború és a nemi betegségek, Budapest: Franklin Nyomda. Nékám, L. (ed.) (1918), A nemibajok leküzdésének irányítása, vol. 1, Budapest: A Nemzetvédő Szövetség a Nemibajok Ellen. Orsós, F. (1943), Európa biológiai veszélyeztetettségének leküzdése, Budapest: Magyar Családvédelmi Szövetség. Pach, H. (1907), Magyar munkásegészségügy, Budapest: Benkő Gyula. Pártos, Z. (1919), ‘Az eugenika a mai államban’, Néptanítók Lapja, 52: 9–11. Petri, P. (1917), A magyar hadigondozás történetének vázlata, Budapest: Fritz Ármin. Pongrácz, P. (ed.) (1919), A Forradalmi Kormányzótanács és népbiztosok rendeletei, vol. 1, Budapest: Franklin Nyomda. Schaffer, K. (1932), ‘Rövid áttekintés az eugenikai törekvésekröl elmekörtani szempotből’, Népegészségügyi, 13: 689–90. Schaffer, K. (1934a), ‘Az eugenika jelentősége elme- és idegorvosi szempontból’, Orvosi Hetilap, 78: 161–6. Schaffer, K. (1934b), ‘Az eugenika jelentősége’, Magyar Szemle, 21 (1934b): 201–5. Schaffer, K. (1937), ‘Megjegyzések a selejtező eugénikához’, Természettudományi Közlöny, 69: 57–8. Somogyi, J. (1934a), ‘A sterilizáció élettani és erkölcsi megitélése’, Katholikus Szemle, 48: 89–95. Somogyi, J. (1934b), Tehetség és eugenika. A tehetség biológiai, pszichológiai és szociológiai vizsgálata, Budapest: Eggenberger. Somogyi, J. (1936), Begabung im Lichte der Eugenik. Forschungen über Biologie, Psychologie und Soziologie der Begabung, Leipzig: Franz Deuticke. Somogyi, Z. (1942), ‘A kötelező orvosi vizsgálat a házasság előtt’, Szociális Szemle, 3: 20–2. Szabó, Z. (1939), ‘Fajegészség és fajvédelem’, Egyedül Vagyunk, 2: 1–7. Szana, S. (1903), Az állami gyermekvédelem fejlesztéséről, Temesvár: Uhrmann Henrik. Szendi, B. (1935), ‘Selektiv-­eugenische Bestrebungen in Ungarn’, Der Erbarzt, 2: 137–8. Szél, T. (1934), ‘The Genetic Effects of the War in Hungary’, in A Decade of Progress in Eugenics. Scientific Papers of the Third International Congress of Eugenics, Baltimore, MD: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 249–54. Teleki, P. (1904), ‘Társadalomtudomány biológiai alapon’, Huszadik Század, 5: 318–23. Teleki, P. (1918), Szociálpolitika és hadigondozás, Budapest: Országos Hadigondozó Hivatal. 268

Hungary

Thim, J. (1905), Fajhygiene és a magyarság, Budapest: Közp. Közs. Nyomda. Tomor, E. (1920), ‘Die Grundirrtümer der heutigen Rassenhygiene’, Würzburger Abhandlungen aus dem Gesamtgebiet der praktischen Medizin, 20: 67–89. Torday, F. (1908), ‘A jövő nemzedék egészségének biztosításáról’, Egészség, 22: 166–81. Tóth, T. (1914), A magyarországi kath. egyház joga vagyonához és a szekularizáció, Eger: Érseki Líceumi Nyomda. Tóth, T. (1919), A tiszta férfiúság, Budapest, Stephaneum Nyomda. Tóth, T. (1923), Az intelligencia lelki gondozása, Budapest: Szerző. Tóth, T. (1935a), ‘Eugenika és katolicizmus’, in Serédi, J. (ed.), Az 1934. évi előadások. Eugenika, élettan, származástan, örökléstan, embertan, pedagógia, Budapest: Korda, 1935, 1–29. Tóth, T. (1935b), ‘A selejtező (negativ) eugenika’, Theologia 2: 17–30. Tóth, T. (1935c), Eugenika és katholicizmus, Budapest: Szent István Társaság. Tóth, T. (1935d), Katolicyzm a eugenika, Poznań: Naczelny Instytut Akcji Katolickiej. Tóth, T. (1936), A keresztény házasság, Budapest: Szent István Társaság. Tóth, T. (1937), Die Eugenik vom katholischen Standpunkt, Vienna: Raimund Fürlinger. Tóth, T. (1940), Eugenesia y catolicismo, Madrid: Sociedad de Educación Atenas. Tóth, T. (1956), Eugenia e catolicismo, Oporto, Livraria Apostolado da Imprensa. Tuszkai, Ö. (1924), ‘Menschenökonomie. Die öffentliche Hygiene auf volkswirtschaftlicher Grundlage’, Archiv für Soziale Hygiene und Demographie 15: 1–12. Tuszkai, Ö. (1928), ‘A fajkiválóság visszaküzdése’, Népegészségügy, 9: 617–26. Verzár, F. and Weszeczky, O. (1921), ‘Rassenbiologische Untersuchungen mittels Isohämagglutininen,’ Biochemische Zeitschrift, 126: 33–9. Verzár, F. and Weszeczky, O. (1922), ‘Fajbiologiai kutatások isohaemagglutinek segitségével és azok orvosi jelentősége’, Magyar Orvosi Archivum, 23: 3–11. Zborovszky, F. (1929), A keresztény család. Biologiai és etikai megvilágításban, Budapest: Az Országos Stefánia Szövetség.

Secondary Sources Ablonczy, B. (2004), ‘Az eugenika vonzásában: A társadalom biológiai tervezése’, Rubicon, 15: 15–18. Ablonczy, B. (2005), Pál Teleki, Budapest: Osiris. Benedeczky, I. (1995), Apáthy István. A tudós és a hazafi, Budapest: Szenczi Molnár Társaság, 1995. Dósa, R., Liptai, E. and Ruff, M. (1959), A Magyar Tanácsköztársaság egészségügyi politikája, Budapest: Medicina. Dósa, R. (1967), ‘A fajbiológia a magyar fasizmus szolgálatában’, Tudományos Közlemények, 1: 1–22. Gergely, J., Glatz, F. and Pölöskei, F. (1991), Magyarországi pártprogramok, 1919–1944, Budapest: Kossuth könyvkiadó. Godinek, I. (2001), Fajvédő eszme a Cél című folyóiratban, Unpublished BA Dissertation: ELTE, Történeti Intézet. Gyurgyák, J. (2001), A zsidókérdés Magyarországon. Politikai eszmetörténet, Budapest: Osiris. Gyurgyák, J. (2007), Ezzé lett magyar hazátok. A magyar nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története, Budapest: Osiris. Gyurgyák, J. (2012), Magyar fajvédő, Budapest: Osiris. Hahn, G. (1960), A magyar egészségügy története, Budapest: Medicina Kiadó. Hanebrink, P. (2006), In Defense of Christian Hungary: Religion, Nationalism, and AntiSemitism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. 269

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Hoóz, I. (1970), Népesedéspolitika és népességfejlődés Magyarországon a két világháború között, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Juhász, G. (1983), Uralkodó eszmék Magyarországon 1939–1944, Budapest: Kossuth Könyvkiadó. Karsai, L. (1992), A cigánykérdés Magyarországon, 1919–1945. Út a cigány Holocausthoz, Budapest: Cserépfalvi Könyvkiadó. Kárpáti, E. (1967), Madzsar József válogatott írásai, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Kiss, L. (2004), ‘Egészség és politika–az egészségügyi prevenció Magyarországon a 20. század első felében’, Korall, 17: 107–37. Koncsos, F. (1998), ‘Az eugenika és fajelmélet kritikája’, in Karikó, S. (ed.), fenomenológiától a nemzeteszméig. Somogyi József életművéről, Budapest: Gondolat, 67–71. Kovács, M. M. (1994), Liberal Professions and Illiberal Politics. Hungary from the Habsburgs to the Holocaust, Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Kovács, M. M. (2001), Liberalizmus, radikalizmus, antiszemitizmus, Budapest: Helikon. Kund, A. (2012), ‘Méhelÿ Lajos és a magyar fajbiológia kísérlete (1920–1931)’, Múltunk, 4: 239–89. Litván, G. and Szűcs, L. (eds) (1973), A szociológia első magyar műhelye: A Huszadik Század köre, vol. 2, Budapest: Gondolat. Mund, K. (2008), ‘The Reception of Darwin in Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Society’, in Engels, E.-M. and Glick, T. F. (eds), The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe, vol. 2, London: Continuum, 441–62. Palló, G. (2009), ‘Darwin utazása Magyarországon’, Magyar Tudomány, 54: 714–26. Petrák, K. and Milei, G. (eds) (1959), A Magyar Tanácsköztársaság szociálpolitikája: Válogatott rendeletek, dokumentumok, cikkek, Budapest: Gondolat. Réti, E. (ed.) (1969), A magyar orvosi iskola mesterei, Budapest: Medicina Kiadó. Réti, E. (1972), ‘Darwin’s Influence on Hungarian Medical Thought’, in Antall, J. (ed.), Medical History in Hungary Budapest: Medicina Kiadó, 157–67. Siró, B. (2003), ‘Eugenikai törekvések az ideg- és elmegyógyászatban Magyarországon a két világháború között’, Orvosi Hetilap, 144 (2003): 1737–42. Sóos, S. (2008), ‘The Scientific Reception of Darwin’s Work in Nineteenth-Century Hungary’, in Engels and Glick (eds), The Reception of Charles Darwin, vol. 2, 430–40. Szállási, A. (2000), Dr. Benedek László (1887–1945), Debrecen: Debreceni Orvostudományi Egyetem. Szikra, D. (2008), ‘A szociálpolitika másik arca. Fajvédelem és produktív szociálpolitika az 1940-es évek Magyarországán’, Századvég, 48: 39–79. Tóth, T. (2011), ‘Méhely Lajos és népbírósági pere’, Válóság, 54: 63–74. Turda, M. (2006), ‘A New Religion: Eugenics and Racial Scientism in Pre-First World War Hungary’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 7: 303–25. Turda, M. (2009), ‘The Biology of War: Eugenics in Hungary, 1914–1918’, Austrian History Yearbook, 40 (2009): 238–64. Turda, M. (2010), ‘Entangled Traditions of Race: Physical Anthropology in Hungary and Romania, 1900–1940’, Focaal, 58: 32–46. Turda, M. (2013a), ‘In Pursuit of Greater Hungary: Eugenic Ideas of Social and Biological Improvement, 1940–1941’, The Journal of Modern History, 85: 1–34. Turda, M. (2013b), “‘If Our Race Did Not Exist, It Would Have to Be Created”: Racial Sciences in Hungary, 1940–1944’, in Weiss-Wendt, A. and Yeomans, R. (eds), Racial Sciences in Hitler’s Europe, 1939–1945, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 237–58. Turda, M. (2014), Eugenics and Nation in Early Twentieth Century Hungary, Basingstoke: Palgrave.

270

5 Romania

Overview Marius Turda

I In Romania, as elsewhere in East-Central Europe, physicians were the first to embrace eugenic ideas of human improvement. In an article published in 1874, the founder of Romanian psychiatry, Alexandru Sutzu (1837–1919), discussed the relationship between heredity and evolution and the dominant role they played in shaping human life (Sutzu 1874: 182–7). Other leading physicians, such as Mihail Petrini (de Galatz) (1847–1926) and Victor Babeş (1854–1926), extended this discussion to include general assumptions about biological selection, racial improvement and national regeneration (Petrini 1876; Babeş 1901). It was, however, the prominent Romanian neurologist and future President of the Romanian Society of Eugenics and Heredity, Gheorghe Marinescu (1863–1938), who in his lecture at the Romanian Academy (Academia Română) in 1906 referred explicitly to Alfred Ploetz’s concept of racial hygiene and Adolphe Pinard’s theories of puériculture (Marinescu 1906: 33–4). By then, French ideas of puériculture, that is medical protection and supervision prior to, during and after conception, alongside demands for a modern social and medical system of state assistance for women and children, were rather widespread among Romanian physicians (Alexandresco 1907: 474–9). British and American eugenics were other sources of inspiration for Romanian physicians, not least due to the national coverage received by the First International Eugenics Congress held in London in 1912. Gynaecologist Constantin I. Andronescu (1859–1943), for instance, commented on the importance of this congress for the advancement of eugenics, while at the same time recommending the introduction of prenuptial certificates and sterilization to prevent human degeneration (Andronescu 1912: 4). He reiterated his proposals in 1914, at the National Congress of Romanian Physicians (Congresul medicilor români), pointing to the fact that sterilization legislation had been progressively introduced in the USA from 1907 onwards (Andronescu 1943: 15 and 44). With growing attention to the relationship between pathology and criminality (Minovici 1906: 433–50), a number of articles in a variety of general interest journals appeared, proposing solutions to the problem of mental degeneracy (Nedelcu 1904a: 222–54 and 1904b: 440–62). That such ideas were gaining support among Romanian physicians and politicians alike is also documented by an announcement published in 1908 in Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, de Medicine Légale et de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, discussing their intention to legislate marriage restrictions for those ‘suffering from epilepsy, tuberculosis and syphilis’ (‘Restriction du marriage’, Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, de Medicine Légale et de Psychologie Normale et

Romania

Pathologique 1908: 96). Yet such views did not go unchallenged. In 1910, for instance, Eraclie Sterian (1872–1948), an obstetrician at one of Bucharest’s main hospitals, criticized North American eugenic sterilization laws as well as Lombrosian criminal anthropology for stigmatizing the alleged ‘born criminal’. Importantly, Sterian questioned the rigid hereditarianism revealed in such practices and theories, claiming that the solution to Romania’s widespread criminality and alcoholism was sanitary reform and education, not eugenic sterilization (Sterian 1910: 113–14). Examining the social and biological causes of human degeneration was the main concern of the emerging eugenic movement in early twentieth-­century Romania. As seen, some eugenicists even considered the introduction of compulsory premarital eugenic certification as an efficient way of preventing the transmission of hereditary diseases to future generations. Others, however, instead adopted a positive stance, urging social reform and the improvement of medical care as immediate ways by which to improve the biological quality of the Romanian population. Prior to World War I, however, eugenics remained marginal to the main medical and social debates on the health of the population. The end of the war and the ensuing creation of Greater Romania in 1918 not only added a new, nationalist, connotation, but also transformed eugenics into a national discipline in the service of the new state.

II After World War I, Romania’s territory nearly doubled. It now included the ethnically diverse regions of Transylvania, Crişana and Maramureş, the Banat, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. This unprecedented territorial enlargement added new eugenic concerns, not least due to the alleged social and biological threats to the Romanian majority represented by large numbers of ethnic minorities (constituting 28 per cent of the total population). The protection and improvement of the Romanian nation began to dominate the eugenic agenda. Moreover, four years of war accentuated Romania’s recurrent health problems, requiring immediate private and state intervention. Among these, infant mortality and the protection of mothers and children received increased official attention after the ‘Prince Mircea’ Society was established in 1919. The Society, named after the Royal prince Mircea, who died in 1916 at the age of three, became one of the most resourceful non-­governmental societies in inter-­war Romania dedicated to maternal and child welfare. For instance, it established the first puériculture clinics in Bucharest in 1920 and throughout the 1930s organized a series of public events devoted to the protection of mothers and infants (Petrescu-Heroiu 1936: 1–8). Other pre-1918 eugenic anxieties did not disappear either. An official medical report from 1921, mentioned in the British medical journal The Lancet, concluded its overview of the problem of insanity in Romania by suggesting that ‘the science of eugenics must play a very important role in the prophylaxis of insanity, and should be carefully studied. When national eugenics become practical politics the problem of the prevention of insanity will have been largely solved’ (‘Insanity in the Balkan States’, The Lancet 273

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

1921: 94). This was a view also promoted by physician Valeriu Bologa (1892–1971), in the first article on eugenics published in Romania after the war. Bologa also envisaged that soon eugenics would separate from hygiene and become an independent scientific discipline in Romania and elsewhere (Bologa 1921: 79–84). Also, in 1921, physician Ioan I. Manliu (1886–?) published the first book on eugenics in Romania. Entitled Crâmpeie de eugenie şi igienă socială (Fragments of Eugenics and Social Hygiene), it outlined a national programme of social and biological improvement, inspired by the success of other eugenic movements, particularly in the USA. During the 1910s, Manliu studied medicine at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau with the renowned paediatrician Carl T. Noeggerath (1876–1952). It was also in Germany that Manliu became interested in racial hygiene (I. I. Manliu, Studien- und Sittenzeugnisse) and read Géza Hoffmann’s book on eugenics in the USA (1913). Like Hoffmann, Manliu was a supporter of American sterilization laws, which he tailored to reflect his own negative eugenic proposals. It was an interventionist eugenic programme that Manliu hoped to apply to Romania. ‘It is towards this direction’, he argued ‘that we must orient our efforts to protect superior elements and prohibit without mercy inferior elements from paternity and responsibilities’. The only way to improve national health, he concluded, was the ‘mass sterilization of degenerates’ (Manliu 1921: 21). Manliu also proposed a number of other eugenic initiatives – including the creation of a Eugenics Bureau; the establishment of chairs of racial hygiene at every university in Romania; a yearly eugenic congress; and the foundation of a Museum of Hygiene and Eugenics – all with the purpose of promoting a healthy Romanian nation and race (Manliu 1921: 39–42 and 78–80). Manliu remained actively involved in ensuing debates on sterilization in Romania during the 1920s and 1930s (Manliu 1923: 1–2; 1931b: 374–81 and 1933: 763–73). His commitment to state interventionism and the control of reproduction also illustrates a more general appreciation of eugenic developments elsewhere, particularly in Germany and the USA. For example, the first issue of Romania’s most important eugenic journal Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic (Eugenic and Biopolitics Bulletin), published in 1927, featured a contribution from none other than the leading American supporter of eugenic sterilization Harry H. Laughlin (1880–1943), the Director of the Eugenics Record Office (Laughlin 1927: 253–7). Negative eugenics was, however, just one method of social and biological improvement that the community of physicians and health reformers in Romania found appealing during the late 1920s (Grinţescu 1923: 103–6). The majority of them promoted schemes of positive eugenics, reaffirming the critical importance of public health, preventive medicine and social hygiene for furthering national improvement. This category of eugenicists planned Romania’s biological future through policies built into the country’s emerging public health and welfare system (Nisot 1929: 433–4). A first step in this direction was taken in 1919, when the prominent health reformer Iuliu Moldovan founded the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene (Institutul de Igienă şi Igienă Socială) in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania. The Institute played a significant role in shaping the development of social hygiene, public health, biopolitics and eugenics in Romania (Botez 1922: 121–3). Moldovan also organized the first 274

Romania

courses on eugenics, hygiene of the nation (‘igiena naţiunii’) and biopolitics in Romania, beginning with the academic year 1921/2. The hygiene of the nation and biopolitics were Moldovan’s own terms, which he believed reflected his theories of social and biological improvement better than eugenics and racial hygiene. He defined the hygiene of the nation as ‘the science dealing with the study of the nation’s biology and pathology’, while biopolitics was ‘the science of government, based on the unalterable laws of biology, investigating all aspects of life in a state from the vantage point of health and eugenics’ (Moldovan 1923: 71 and 73). Together with preventive medicine and social hygiene, the hygiene of the nation and biopolitics constituted the main tenets of Moldovan’s eugenic philosophy of national improvement. The hygiene of the nation was regarded as a source of regenerative nationalism and scientific progress (Voina 1924a: 92–100; 1924b: 183–4 and 1926a), and as a eugenic theory was quickly embraced by Moldovan’s collaborators, such as Aurel Voina (1896– 1967), Sabin Manuilă (1894–1964) and Mihail Zolog (1894–1943) as well as students, including Iordache Făcăoaru (1897–1987), Petru Râmneanţu (1902–81), Ovidiu Comşia (1903–44) and Salvator Cupcea (1908–58). In 1925 Moldovan published Igiena naţiunii: Eugenia (The Hygiene of the Nation: Eugenics), followed in 1926 by Biopolitica (Biopolitics). These two books constitute Romania’s programmatic eugenic texts and are arguably the most influential. Moldovan defined the Romanian national state as the embodiment of agencies and institutions concerned with the population’s health; while the nation was seen and valued as biologically adaptable, capable of being improved through eugenic technologies of social and biological selection. Moldovan placed the nation at the centre of this theory of eugenics and proposed hygienic and public health measures to protect it from social and biological degeneration. A new, revised definition of ‘the hygiene of the nation’ was also proposed. It now dealt ‘with factors and measures that determine the current and future biological prosperity of the nation’ (Moldovan 1925: 37). Aiming to bring the individual and the national community together, Moldovan found in eugenics a scientific doctrine intended to embrace all members of the Romanian nation. What should unite the Romanians, he believed, was not any political ideology acting in the name of the nation, but a new synthesis of nationalist and eugenic ideals, one which Moldovan termed biopolitics. By introducing biopolitics into Romanian public discourse, Moldovan did not just formulate a eugenic interpretation of local realities, he also invested it with a specific historical mission: to preserve and improve the racial qualities of the nation. Biopolitics thus operated through investigations of biological processes regulating the triadic relationship between individual, nation and state. Ultimately, Moldovan insisted, the general eugenic goal was that biopolitics became national politics in Romania (Moldovan 1926). Various Romanian politicians thus seized upon Moldovan’s ideas of eugenics and biopolitics (Vaida-Voevod 1927: 199–211) to demonstrate the necessity for a state-­ controlled programme of national rejuvenation based on ‘therapeutic medicine, preventive hygiene and the hygiene of the nation’ (Haţieganu and Voina 1925: 813). In 1925, the Romanian nationalist society, the Transylvanian Association for Romanian 275

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People (Asociaţia Transilvană pentru Literatura Română şi Cultura Poporului Român, or ASTRA), established a Section on Medicine and Biopolitics (Secţia medicală şi biopolitică) in Cluj, affiliated to the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene. Iuliu Haţieganu (1885–1959), Professor of Medicine at the University of Cluj, was President, with Iuliu Moldovan as Vice-President and Aurel Voina as Secretary (Voina 1926b: 37–9). This section had, in turn, created a sub-­section on eugenics and biopolitics, in fact Romania’s first eugenic society (‘Eugenics in Roumania’, Eugenical News 1936: 84). In 1927, a section on feminism and biopolitics, led by Maria B. Băiulescu (1860–1941), was established, adding a much-­needed women’s contribution to general debates on the health of the national body, racially and spiritually (‘Secţia femenină-biopolitică a ‘ASTREI’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic 1928: 63–4). Also in 1927, the Section on Medicine and Biopolitics began publishing the first specialized journal devoted to theories of social and biological improvement in Romania, Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic. The journal remained faithful to Moldovan’s theory of national eugenics and biopolitics until its final issue in 1947. In 1932, Moldovan was elected President of ASTRA. Under his presidency, alongside celebratory activities praising Romanian patriotism and moral meanings of national identity, eugenics and biopolitics emerged as true measures of the ASTRA’s programme for national renewal. Moldovan reiterated his commitment to eugenics and biopolitics at all general meetings, convened every year in cities and towns across Transylvania. At one held in Satu-Mare in 1935, for instance, he declared: ‘the biopolitical conception of life should become the compass of our thinking and action. It places the man not the environment, the family not the individual, the nation not the society at the centre of our preoccupations’ (quoted in Preda 1944: 30). Illustrating this growing acceptance of eugenics, in 1934, the Section on Medicine and Biopolitics was renamed Section on Eugenics and Biopolitics (Secţia eugenică şi biopolitică), with Moldovan as President and Iordache Făcăoaru as Secretary.1 By then its reputation was well established. Along with advice and guidance on medicine and hygiene the Section emphasized the importance of healthy families and children for the future of the nation. In 1935 alone, for example, the Section organized 315 conferences in villages across the country, including the showing of 72 films (Preda 1944: 122). In 1936, the Section had 70 members (‘Eugenics in Roumania’, Eugenical News 1936: 84), which may not seem a considerable number but, at the same time, ASTRA had two other sections sharing a similar agenda: the above mentioned section on feminism and biopolitics and a new section on demography and ethnopolitics (Secţia demografică şi etnopolitică), led by historian Silviu Dragomir (1888–1962) and established in 1934. Sabin Manuilă and Petru Râmneanţu were among its founding members. Moreover, and by 1928, at Moldovan’s suggestion, a new society was created, committed exclusively to the physical and moral education of the Romanian youth, Carpathian Falcons (Şoimii Carpaţilor), with Haţieganu as President (Preda 1944: 171–8). Since the early 1920s, the programme of national improvement was elaborated upon, by eugenicists in Transylvania, the Banat, Crişana and Maramureş, most of them 276

Romania

affiliated to ASTRA, some also working for various institutes of research and teaching at various departments at the University of Cluj. This firmly placed eugenics, biopolitics and puériculture at the centre of a wide range of educational and cultural activities aimed to set in motion Romania’s transformation into a modern and healthy nation (Popovici 1928: 443–4).

III Notwithstanding the growing importance of Moldovan’s theory of national eugenics and biopolitics with its focus on the family, other eugenic models were not abandoned. During the 1920s, French ideas of puériculture, for instance, were considered one successful eugenic strategy of ‘racial protection and improvement’ (Voina 1924c: 266). For advocates of puériculture, such as Gheorghe Banu (1889–1957), Vintilă Ciocâlteu (1890–1947), physician at the Children’s Hospital in Bucharest, Gheorghe Popovici (1895–1946), Professor of Paediatrics at the Faculty of Medicine in Cluj, Odiseu Apostol (1895–1980) and Iosif Nemoianu (1894–1968), Director of the Centre for Child Protection (Centrul pentru Ocrotirea Copiilor) in Timişoara, to name but a few, the application of eugenics in Romania necessitated not only the adoption of a new biopolitical governing philosophy but also a national welfare programme centred on the protection of the family and children (Banu 1922b; Ciocâlteu 1925; Popovici 1927: 14–16 and 1933; Apostol 1927 and Nemoianu 1928). Revista de Obstretică, Ginecologie şi Puericultură (Journal for Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Puériculture) was established in Bucharest as early as 1920. The Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Cluj had a special department dealing with puériculture (Secţia de Puericultură), led by Gheorghe Popovici, author of the most authoritative work on puériculture published in Romania, Elemente de pediatrie şi puericultură (Basics of Paediatrics and Puériculture) (Popovici 1936–1940). Also in Cluj, Popovici founded a Society for Paediatrics and Puériculture (Societatea de Pediatrie şi Puericultură), which, in 1937, began publishing Revista de Pediatrie şi Puericultură (Journal of Paediatrics and Puériculture). In Romania puériculture developed a close relationship with positive eugenics and the protection of the family, gradually morphing during the 1940s into a national policy related to child welfare and protection, maternal care and the glorification of motherhood (Conferinţa pentru studiul problemei ocrotirii copiilor 1943). The foundation of the State Institute for Racial Biology (Statens institut för rasbiologi) in Uppsala (Sweden) in 1922 echoed widely in East-Central Europe, encouraging eugenicists to propose the establishment of similar institutions in their own countries. In Romania, a description of the Institute’s activities, provided by its Deputy Director, F. J. Linders (1882–1938), was published in 1925 in the prestigious Bulletin de la Société Roumaine de Neurologie, Psychiatrie, Psychologie et Endocrinologie (Linders 1925: 60–3). The Swedish programme of racial hygiene, with its emphasis on the racial vitality and importance of the agrarian population, appealed to eugenicists in Romania, although some of its supporters such as the Hungarian Béla Révész (1869–?), Head Physician at the 277

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Psychiatric Hospital (Spitalul de boli mintale şi nervoase) in Sibiu (Transylvania), highlighted its drive towards social and racial selection of defectives (Révész 1930: 273–4). There were also programmes of social and biological improvement that Romanian eugenicists were rather critical of, such as those experimented with in the Soviet Union. As Ioan Manliu noted in his review of ‘Eugenics in the Soviet Union’, ‘apart from the protection of mothers and infants, the campaigns against social maladies, propaganda and scientific publications on eugenics, the [Soviet] government had not understood the profound role of eugenics for the ennoblement of mankind’ (Manliu 1931a: 139). It was only at the end of World War II that Romanian eugenicists would revise this perception of Soviet theories of human improvement (Cupcea 1944: 299–318). Perhaps there is no better illustration of the diversity of eugenic models at work in Romania during the early 1930s than the publication of F. C. S. Schiller’s study on ‘Eugenics as a Moral Ideal’ in Arhiva pentru Ştiinţă şi Reformă Socială (Journal of Science and Social Reform) (Schiller 1931: 489–97). Schiller (1864–1937) was, among other things, one of the founding members of the Eugenics Education Society in 1907 and the author of Eugenics and Politics (1926) and Social Decay and Eugenic Reform (1932). Interestingly, his article was published in the original English, although a translation was provided by Petru Comarnescu (1905–70), an aspiring literary and art critic who had met Schiller at the University of Southern California where he was teaching philosophy. Moreover, Arhiva pentru Ştiinţă şi Reformă Socială was at the time the most important Romanian journal of social sciences, edited by the Romanian Social Institute (Institutul Social Român), established in 1921 and led by philosopher and sociologist Dimitrie Gusti (1880–1955). Schiller spoke of eugenics as a ‘moral ideal’ meant to ‘fill the gap in our social structure left by older ideals which have faded or become defunct under the conditions of modern life’ and argued that ‘morals [were] in desperate need of reinforcement, precisely and particularly in the quarters with which positive eugenics would most directly be concerned’ (Schiller 1931: 490). He thus highlighted for the Romanian readers the fact that eugenics studied not only the biological basis (both negative and positive) for social evolution, but also investigated the ethics and morality of human improvement. Most articles on eugenics published in the late 1920s and early 1930s in Romania, however, championed issues such as the prevention of venereal diseases, the reduction of infant mortality, the protection of mothers and children, alongside education and propaganda to inculcate physical health and morality. This interpretation of eugenics particularly appealed to Jewish eugenicists in Romania, among them the director of propaganda in the Ministry of Work and Health, Iosif Glicsman (1871–1938), writing under the pseudonym Dr Ygrec, and Iosif Leonida (1903–40), a physician at the health centre in the village of Poseşti-Pământeni (Prahova county). Both were active health reformers who believed in the need to improve the biological strength of the general population, but not through eugenic sterilization (Ygrec 1927: 4–5 and Leonida 1935a: 366–71). Leonida explicitly opposed the Romanians’ ‘Latin mentality’ to the ‘AngloSaxon mentality’ prevailing in those countries where sterilization had already been introduced, such as the USA and Nazi Germany (Leonida 1935a: 367). 278

Romania

This is not to say that there were no Jewish eugenicists in Romania endorsing sterilization or that all of them were neo-Lamarckists. For instance, Eugen Relgis (1895–1987), a noted pacifist and vegetarian activist, fully embraced negative eugenics, no less than the complete elimination of dysgenic individuals. ‘These days’, he maintained, ‘with the help of science, degenerates could be exterminated through euthanasia. It is, however, preferable, from all points of view, that degenerates are not born; even better: that they are not conceived. And, this is possible with the help of science: by sterilizing those who exhibit pathological characteristics or incurable diseases (Relgis 1935: 28–9). Vasectomy, furthermore, was considered ‘a true revolution, not only in the field of eugenics but also in the social domain. We could even say that vasectomy is the basis of the regeneration of the human species’ (Relgis 1935: 64). Such radical views notwithstanding, most Romanian eugenicists, even those who argued for sterilization and the introduction of health certificates before marriage, remained largely committed to positive eugenic programmes. With the launching of the journal Revista de Igienă Socială (Journal of Social Hygiene), Romania’s second eugenic journal, in 1931, ideas of positive and negative eugenics became fully embedded within social hygiene and public health. Gheorghe Banu, editor-­in-chief of Revista de Igienă Socială, between 1931 and 1944, not only provided an alternative to Moldovan’s interpretation of eugenics by including social hygiene, rural biology protection and child welfare (Banu 1927b: 87–121; 1930b and 1930c) but also argued that certain negative eugenic measures, such as the introduction of premarital certificates and voluntary sterilization were essential to the biological improvement of the Romanian nation.

IV These competing models of eugenics were used as a legitimated means to reinforce the agenda of social and biological control, designed to counter what some eugenicists believed to be the degeneration of the Romanian race. These eugenicists did not hesitate to argue for the establishment of ‘eugenic offices’ (Voina 1936: 255–69) and to publicize the immediate benefits of premarital certificates (Voina 1927: 6; Rosenblatt 1936; Banu 1936a: 281–300; Manicatide 1937a: 1–13) and sterilization rather than long-­term modalities of medical treatment. The majority of Romanian eugenicists were, in fact, in agreement that both measures would contribute decisively to reducing the number of those considered physically and mentally dysgenic. Ioan Manliu, for example, went as far as to suggest that if Romania ‘did not contribute with anything to the solution of problems of human biology, she should at least now sterilize 10,000 degenerates in one year in order to accumulate a great experience which could contribute greatly to the generalization of this principle in all of Europe’ (Manliu 1931b: 382). A more moderate perspective was offered by Mareş Cahane (1901–85), a psychiatrist in Diciosânmărtin (today Târnăveni) in central Transylvania, in his presentation to the XIth Congress of Neurology, Psychiatry, Psychology and Endocrinology held in 1931 279

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

under the presidency of Constantin I. Parhon (1874–1969), the founder of the Romanian school of endocrinology. Cahane considered ‘eugenic sterilization of the hereditary defective’ to be a ‘protective measure not a punishment’ (Cahane 1932: 241–9). He further insisted that more attention should be devoted, first and foremost, to ‘legislating therapeutic sterilization, and that it should be limited to [those suffering from] mental illnesses’ (Cahane 1932: 243). He was keen in repeating the necessity to differentiate between therapeutic and voluntary sterilization. With respect to the first, Cahane acknowledged that certain categories of the feeble-­minded, schizophrenics for instance, should be sterilized and castrated. It is at this point that Cahane mentioned that, in Romania, it was Parhon ‘who applied therapeutic sterilization to a patient with sexual deviations and two epileptics (Cahane 1932: 248). Tellingly, Cahane concluded by stressing that directors of psychiatric hospitals had the duty to persuade recovered patients of their necessary sterilization, and inform them how disadvantaged their offspring would have been otherwise. It was left to physicians and psychiatrists working in mental institutions, Cahane insisted, to decide which methods of treatment were most suitable for their patients, a legal framework that was, in fact, codified in the Sanitary Law of 1930 (Article 455). In the meantime, however, the general European trend was gravitating towards legislating negative eugenics. Laws authorizing sterilization were introduced in Switzerland (1928), Denmark (1929), Germany (1933), Norway (1934), and Finland (1935). As a result, Romanian eugenicists became more committed to sterilization (Ionescu 1933: 7; Zolog and Făcăoaru 1934: 186–92; Cahane 1935; Erich 1937). The two main eugenic journals, Revista de Igienă Socială and Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, both presented translations and discussions of the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring and so did other professional journals (Enăchescu 1936: 273–9; ‘Germania: Sterilizarea eugenică’, Revista de Drept Penal şi Ştiinţă Penitenciară 1936: 284). In his commentary, Gheorghe Banu, for instance, expressed his concerns over the ‘authoritarian’ nature of the law, but accepted that its ‘main principles, intended to protect and develop the qualities of the race, biologically, entirely correspond to the ideal of protecting [biological] values of greatest qualities’ (Banu 1935d: 554). Iordache Făcăoaru, on the other hand, praised both the German state for considering ‘the biological capital as the supreme treasure of the nation’ and the law for ‘assuring the priority of family and the ethnic body over the individual’ (Făcăoaru 1934d: 235). While eugenicists, such as Banu and Făcăoaru, formulated their interpretation of eugenic sterilization within the broader context of national improvement, other professionals phrased the problem in terms of the legal and medical provisions the introduction of this measure would entail in a country such as Romania (VasilescuBucium 1935a: 41–2 and 1935c: 363–5). This, for example, was the aim of the book published by Eugen Petit (1882–1959), a jurist and legal adviser to the Court of Appeal in Bucharest and Gheorghe Buzoianu (1901–1974), a surgeon and laryngologist at the Consortium of Eforia Hospitals in Bucharest. Entitled Sterilizarea din punct de vedere juridic şi chirurgical (Sterilization from a Legal and Surgical Point of View), the book 280

Romania

analysed eugenic sterilization from legal and medical perspectives. Petit reviewed European and North American experiences with eugenic sterilization, devoting considerable space to the Nazi law of 1933. While in favour of penal and therapeutic sterilization, Petit expressed concerns about compulsory sterilization: ‘No matter how many and serious arguments are invoked in favour of compulsory sterilization, we believe that in our case such a measure cannot be introduced as an ordinary law’ (Petit and Buzoianu 1934: 17). Petit found no reasons why voluntary sterilization, for example, should not be introduced, with the caveat that it was directed at individuals with hereditary diseases, and only after a commission of specialists agreed to the procedure. When it came to compulsory sterilization, however, Petit was decidedly against it (Petit and Buzoianu 1934: 21). The existing Romanian Penal Code, Petit explained, was explicitly against any obstruction of individual liberties. Accordingly, what was needed was a modification of the Penal Code whereby a sterilization law could be introduced. Petit’s legal discussion was followed by the translation of the complete text of Germany’s new sterilization law, which served as the primary source of information for both the legal and the medical analysis. In the second part of the book, Buzoianu provided a lengthy and erudite medical discussion of various techniques of sterilization for both men and women. Buzoianu was well versed in surgical procedures surrounding sterilization, and offered a balanced synthesis of the latest developments in medical knowledge. Most importantly, he disseminated technical information to the general public in an accessible narrative, dismissing reservations and legitimate anxieties concerning the impact of sterilization on the individual’s health, especially a person’s sexual performance. In his 1935 public conference on ‘Eugenie, ereditate, rasă’ (‘Eugenics, Heredity, Race’), Gheorghe Banu also argued in favour of ‘abortion, segregation and prophylactic sterilization’. Ideally, Banu suggested, dysgenics and anti-­socials, namely those considered to be feeble-­minded, psychopaths, epileptics, but also criminals and alcoholics, should all be subjected to ‘voluntary sterilization’ (Banu 1935c: 106–7). In a 1936 article, Banu further differentiated between two categories of eugenic measures: ‘some immediate, with the aim to purify a society instantly; others, long term, which would slowly improve the biology of the community, generation after generation, diminishing the number of dysgenic elements, preventing the reproduction of non-­ values’. Among the ‘long term’ measures, Banu included: ‘isolation of dysgenic elements, namely segregation; then voluntary sterilization of those hereditarily incurable in order to prevent the reproduction of non-­values; and finally, as a radical measure, castration, especially of recidivist criminals’ (Banu 1936a: 289). The growing debate on eugenic sterilization in Romania did not go unnoticed in other countries, particularly Nazi Germany. For example, in 1934, a memorandum was sent by the Nazi government to the Romanian Ministry of Health, inquiring whether ‘laws or legal decisions exist[ed] [in Romania] to prevent [the birth] of hereditary diseased offspring, to assist the hereditarily healthy, and especially of those hereditarily healthy with many children?’ Two methods were particularly signalled out, sterilization and castration, and German officials were particularly interested in finding out whether 281

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

sterilization was performed in Romanian hospitals and if it were, then how many individuals were sterilized ‘by the end of 1934’. Other questions related to whether specialized eugenic and genetic medical services were offered to the Romanian population and whether hospitals were appropriately equipped with personnel and technology to deal with ‘the cultivation and the promotion of the hereditary sciences and of the race’ (Marinescu 1936: 70–1; original version of the document in Fond Gheorghe Marinescu). The Romanian response (which Marinescu had prepared with Gheorghe Banu) was ‘evasive, because, in reality, in Romania systematic and coordinated measures to encourage the healthy elements and prevent the development of unhealthy ones, anti-­socials, and so on, had not been introduced’ (Marinescu 1936: 71). Some Romanian eugenicists may have been in doubt about the effectiveness of sterilization to reduce the country’s social and biological degeneration and they were not alone (Vasilescu-Bucium 1936: 84–90). For example, at the 11th International Penal and Penitentiary Congress (11. Internationaler Kongreß für Strafrecht und Gefängniswesen) held in August 1935 in Berlin, one section dealt with the legality and applicability of eugenic sterilization for habitual criminals. The debate centred on whether and ‘[i]n what cases and according to what rules should sterilization be applied in the modern penal system, whether by castration or by vasectomy or salpingectomy?’ (Van der Aa 1937: 293). Participants from Romania, alongside those from other Latin countries (Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain) argued against eugenic sterilization, a method, however, strongly endorsed by German and North American participants. On behalf of the organizers, Arthur Gütt (1891–1949), the German Reich’s Justice Minister, suggested that ‘eugenic sterilization should be employed by all States as a means of preventing the transmission of hereditary taints’ (Van der Aa 1937: 296–7). He also recommended that the Congress adopt a resolution proclaiming sterilization admissible ‘by the law in all the States if it seem[ed] necessary for reasons of health or eugenic nature’ and that ‘compulsory castration and sterilization may be coordinated with other measures of security provided by the existing law’ (Van der Aa 1937: 313). In response, Nicolae Iorgulescu (1889–?), a forensic psychiatrist and anthropologist, serving as an adviser to the Romanian Ministry of Justice, warned that acceptance of sterilization as an ‘appropriate method to reduce criminality’ was, in fact, to use sterilization as a contraceptive ‘weapon having as a consequence the diminution of the natural power of procreation and therefore the diminution of the population of a country’ (Van der Aa 1937: 313–14). Additionally, Iorgulescu emphasized the detrimental medical and psychological effects of sterilization and castration on the individual, arguing that ‘[f]rom the medical and social standpoint such methods should be rejected’. Rejecting Gütt’s proposal, Iorgulescu recommended that the Congress instead adopt a resolution stipulating that sterilization ‘must not be applied in a general manner as a prophylactic weapon against criminality’ (Van der Aa 1937: 315–16). In the end, however, the Congress accepted Gütt’s resolution, recommending that, with respect to castration, ‘all States ought to amend or supplement their respective laws, so as to facilitate the performance of such operations upon demand or with the consent of the 282

Romania

person concerned’. The same proviso applied ‘to sterilization for reasons of health or [of a] eugenic nature, provided the person to be operated upon consents to the operation’ (Van der Aa 1937: 340–1). Tellingly, Romanian criminologists such as Iorgulescu, phrased their opposition to eugenic sterilization not only in legal and medical terms but also in terms of individual and collective rights. Directly connected to this was the issue of abortion, which caused a great deal of debate in Romania from the early to mid-1930s. Attempts were made to allow abortion on eugenic grounds, as for example when a new Sanitary Law (‘Legea Sanitară şi de Ocrotire’), the so-­called ‘Moldovan Law’, was introduced in 1930. As the debates surrounding the final text of the law suggest, some eugenicists used this opportunity to argue for the introduction of more interventionist eugenic measures. Sabin Manuilă, for instance, proposed the legalization of abortion on eugenic grounds, suggesting that ‘abortion could also be carried out for eugenic and social causes, determined by a commission of specialists and additionally approved, in social cases, by the responsible local officials’ (‘Proiectul legi Sanitare, 1930, Fond Sabin Manuilă. See also Manuilă 1936a: 33). Although the Sanitary Law did not include legal provisions for eugenic abortion (‘avortul eugenic’) Romanian physicians remained committed to it (Georgescu 1935). In 1934, for instance, Mihai Kernbach (1895–1976), Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Cluj, convened a medical congress in Cluj, which discussed the importance of therapeutic (to preserve the health or save the life of a pregnant woman) and eugenic (to ensure the nation’s biological future) abortion and recommend that it be legalized (Kernbach 1934: 361–6). A similar opinion was voiced in January 1935 in the Upper House of Parliament (Senate) by Daniel Danielopolu (1884–1955), Professor of Medicine at the University of Bucharest (quoted in Georgescu 1937: 237). No consensus existed, however, among the physicians. Nicolae Iorgulescu, for instance, was unwaveringly against abortion, be it for medical, social or eugenic reasons (Iorgulescu 1935: 196–8). Religious leaders added their authority to the debate, particularly after it became known that the new Romanian Penal Code, to be introduced by King Carol II (r. 1930–40) in 1936, would legalize abortion on eugenic grounds. Alexandru Nicolescu (1882–1941), the Greek-Catholic Bishop of Lugoj, for instance, offered a well-­argued denunciation of abortion on the basis of individual liberty and Christian morality (Nicolescu 1935: 1–15). Likewise, Iuliu Hossu (1885–1970), Greek-Catholic Bishop of Cluj-Gherla and Alexandru Theodor Cisar (1880–1954), Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bucharest, entirely opposed the introduction of any clause regarding abortion, arguing that the individual ‘right to live was above any consideration, be it medical or eugenic’ (quoted in Georgescu 1937: 240–1). Disagreement persisted over eugenic sterilization and abortion not only because it was argued that such measures could not be efficiently applied to a rural country such as Romania, but also because such a direct intervention in the private life of individuals contravened the teachings of the church; in the case of the Romanians, the Orthodox and the Greek Catholic Churches. Compared to the public announcements of the 283

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Catholic Church, including the 1930 Papal encyclical Casti Connubii, which condemned negative eugenic methods, such as abortion and sterilization, the Orthodox Church was rather ambiguous on the subject, and did not issue any equivalent official statements, although some Orthodox journals did voice their concern about eugenics (‘Despre eugenie’, Glasul Monahilor 1936: 4). As noted, more categorical statements came from Greek Catholic and Catholic Churches. Ultimately, the new Penal Code introduced in 1936 did not decriminalize abortion although it allowed it in those instances where the life of the mother was in danger and when it was carried out to prevent the transmission of mental hereditary disorders (Codul Penal ‘Regele Carol II’, Art. 484, 89–90). The degree to which these debates on sterilization and abortion had divided Romanian eugenicists became obvious during the 17th International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology (XVIIe Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistorique) held in Bucharest in 1937. The third section of the congress, devoted to heredity and eugenics, was presided over by Gerrit Pieter Frets (1879–1958), President of the Dutch Eugenic Federation (Nederlandsche Eugenetische Federatie). A lively debate occurred between those who endorsed voluntary sterilization and those who insisted on the necessity of compulsory sterilization (Vasilescu-Bucium 1939: 678–80). Gheorghe Marinescu, for instance, agreed with voluntary sterilization in the case of hereditarily transmitted diseases, but rejected compulsory sterilization on account of ‘social and religious reasons’ (‘Discussions’ 1939: 680). Opposing this view was his former student, Gheorghe Stroescu (1904–69), who argued that ‘compulsory sterilization [was] the unique means to prevent the reproduction of those with hereditary illnesses and to improve the race’ (‘Discussions’ 1939: 681). Iordache Făcăoaru endorsed Stroescu’s view and added his opinion that ‘voluntary sterilization remained without effect’. He therefore proposed that ‘eugenic sterilization be made obligatory and coercive’. This was, however, a formulation that Marinescu found too drastic. He suggested instead that ‘eugenic sterilization [was] applied with prudence and only with the consent of the patient’s family (‘Discussions’ 1939: 681). Ultimately, it was Marinescu’s position that prevailed at the Congress.

V The opposition to compulsory sterilization was considered to be one of the distinctive features of Romanian eugenics, and Latin eugenics more generally. This argument was fully articulated by Grigore I. Odobescu, (1881–1958), a psychiatrist at the Central Hospital in Bucharest, in his Eugenie pentru neamul românesc (Eugenics for the Romanian Nation). Odobescu argued that in Romania ‘neither the voluntary sterilization practiced in Switzerland, nor the social prophylactic sterilization practiced in the USA will be received favourably (Odobescu 1936a: 12). ‘Degenerates’ in Romania, Odobescu continued, were largely the result of ruinous economic and hygienic conditions. Among the most important causes of degeneration, Odobescu included poor nutrition, a total 284

Romania

lack of hygiene and rampant contagious diseases but, significantly, not hereditary diseases. Echoing arguments put forward by Moldovan and Leonida, Odobescu further believed there were numerous examples that proved the ‘wonderful quality of the biological substance’ intrinsic to the Romanian nation. What was needed, therefore, was ‘the education of the masses’. This educational programme would not only increase economic and social standards; more crucially, it would ‘augment the biological condition’ of the population. This was, Odobescu concluded, the ‘most suited eugenic policies for our country and nation (Odobescu 1936a: 15). Ultimately, Odobescu believed that the Romanian nation could be perfected by way of educational, social, and agricultural reforms rather than by introducing negative eugenic policies. Odobescu pursued the same arguments further in Politica eugenică (Eugenic Politics). He deliberately connected the achievements of negative eugenics in Germany with the Nazi regime, arguing that ‘such radical measures cannot be generalized’ and applied to other countries (Odobescu 1936b: 4). Accordingly, any introduction of eugenic measures in Romania should take local specificities into consideration. In fact, Odobescu argued, ‘none of the methods applied elsewhere would bring us the desired results; they would be inefficient due to our specific problems’ (Odobescu 1936b: 10). Odobescu insisted that the Romanian peasants’ physical and mental health should be the source of national rejuvenation. In other words, Romania’s rural and agrarian environment protected her from forms of urban degeneration experienced by the industrialized countries of Western Europe. Leonida and Odobescu were not alone in suggesting that social and biological degeneration could be controlled by means other than eugenic sterilization (Leonida 1935b: 692–8). The two leading Romanian eugenicists, Iuliu Moldovan and Gheorghe Marinescu, expressed similar views. That a scientist of such national and international standing such as Marinescu, became so involved with eugenics added further prestige and legitimacy to the movement (Parhon 1938: 373–85). In September 1934, at the 14th Congress of the Romanian Society of Neurology, Psychiatry, Psychology and Endocrinology, Marinescu declared his support for the creation of a new eugenic society. As Făcăoaru remarked in a letter to Marinescu after the Congress, he was ‘convinced that studies on eugenics and heredity’ would be finally taken seriously in Romania. Făcăoaru also used this opportunity to inform Marinescu of his own efforts to establish a eugenic society in Cluj, a year earlier. This attempt failed, not least due to Iuliu Moldovan’s reluctance to endorse it, and a Society of Anthropology (Societatea de Antropologie) was founded instead. Apart from Făcăoaru, founding members included Victor Papilian (1888–1956), Constantin C. Velluda (1893–1978) and Romulus Vuia (1887–1963) (Făcăoaru 1973: 93–164). The creation of this society was nevertheless seen as a step towards the ‘success of eugenics’ in Romania, for, as Făcăoaru noted, ‘heredity and anthropology are the foundations of eugenics’. Făcăoaru also volunteered to inform the leading German eugenicists Fritz Lenz and Alfred Ploetz of the new Romanian eugenic society (Făcăoaru’s Letter to Marinescu, 15 December 1934, Fond Gheorghe Marinescu). Skilfully, Marinescu used various opportunities, not just scientific meetings, to popularize his ideas of eugenics. In February 1935, for instance, he gave two lectures on 285

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Romanian National Radio: one dealing with eugenics, the other with heredity and its relationship with eugenics (Marinescu 1935b: 1–8 and 1935c: 1–10). Both lectures were then included in one comprehensive lecture, entitled ‘Despre hereditatea normală şi patologică şi raporturile ei cu eugenia’ (‘On Normal and Pathological Heredity and its Relationship with Eugenics’), which Marinescu gave to the Romanian Academy in May 1935 (Marinescu 1936: 1–85). In addition to its scientific discussion of heredity and genetics, the lecture covered the achievements of eugenic movements in most countries in Europe and the Americas. As expected, Marinescu articulated his vision of eugenics particularly in relation to his field of research, neuropsychology and endocrinology. Heredity, while the dominant factor, was not the only one shaping individual and collective health. ‘The nation’, Marinescu insisted, was a ‘synthesis: race + culture’ (Marinescu 1936: 50). Equally important, in this lecture Marinescu endorsed the Romanian programme of biological rejuvenation advocated by the Royal Romanian Society of Eugenics and the Study of Heredity (Societatea Regală Română de Eugenie şi Studiul Heredităţii), which formed in January 1935 under Marinescu’s leadership (Marinescu 1936: 79–85). Apart from Marinescu (President), the Society attracted prominent scientists and social activists, including Medea Niculescu (1889–?), Assistant Professor of Endocrinology at the University of Bucharest (Vice-President); Sabin Manuilă (VicePresident); Titu Gane (1883–1956), Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Cluj (Vice-President); Gheorghe Banu (Secretary); Ion Th. Simionescu (1873–1944), President of the Romanian Society of Sciences; Grigore I. Odobescu; Ioan I. Manliu; C. I. Parhon; Mihail Manicatide (1867–1954), Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Bucharest; Anibal Theodorescu (1881–1971), Professor of Law at the University of Bucharest; and the forensic pathologist Nicolae Minovici (1868–1941). The main goal of the new eugenics society was ‘to formulate and publicize the principles and the methods by which to select and improve the most robust and better endowed individuals of the Romanian nation, while at the same time ensuring the reproduction of those individuals by determining the appropriate legislation needed to achieve it’ (‘Autorizarea de funcţionare, actul constitutiv şi statutele Societăţii Regale Române pentru Eugenie şi Studiul Eredităţii’, Revista de Igienă Socială 1936: 271–3). The Society endeavoured to consolidate and intensify the dissemination of theories of biological improvement. It considered public education and propaganda the best means of inculcating eugenic values (Manuilă 1936a: 271–8 and 1936b: 31–2; VasilescuBucium 1935b: 169–74). In tune with the times, however, the need for eugenic intervention in Romania was also articulated, in the form of ‘a sterilization law for degenerated individuals, idiots, imbeciles, feeble-­minded, and criminals’ and the ‘introduction of health cards and prenuptial certificates’ (Marinescu 1936: 84). Local branches were established in a number of Romanian cities, including Craiova, Timişoara and Constanţa. The one in Chişinău, for instance, was led by Iosif Lepşi (1895–1966), Director of the Regional Museum of Bessarabia (Lepşi 1935). Only a month later, in March 1935, a Section on Demography, Anthropology and Eugenics (Secţia de Demografie, Antropologie şi Eugenie) was established at the 286

Romania

prestigious Romanian Social Institute (Institutul Social Român), with Manuilă as President and Dumitru C. Georgescu (1904–74), a statistician and anthropologist, as Secretary. The eugenic research promoted by the new Department was located at the interstices of Moldovan’s biopolitics and Marinescu’s constitutional approach to eugenics, with a particular focus on sociology, statistics and demography. Inspired by the sociological theory of the nation promoted by Dimitrie Gusti (Gusti 1934) the aim was to provide a totalizing interpretation of all social, cultural, economic, biological and political elements that formed the Romanian nation. The new Department aimed to research the ‘morphology, the structure, the evolution and the biological value’ of the Romanian population. No modern state, it was inferred, could survive without a rational population policy and demographic management (Georgescu 1936: 56–7). Eugenics offered the appropriate conceptual framework for those Romanian statisticians and demographers envisioning total control of the national body through intimate knowledge of its social functions (Measnicov 1937: 150–67). By 1936 there were three functioning eugenic societies in Romania (‘Eugenics in Roumania’, Eugenical News 1936: 84–5) – Moldovan’s, Marinescu’s and Manuilă’s – and in 1937 they formed Uniunea Societăţilor de Eugenie (Union of Eugenic Societies). These societies and various state institutions brought together Romanian eugenicists from different disciplines and provided a platform for international collaboration. During the inter-­war period, contrary to their colleagues from Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, Romanian eugenicists did not join the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations, although some of them such as Făcaoaru and Stroescu, were closely connected to German eugenicists, while Romanian books on eugenics, such as those of Moldovan and Banu, were known in the USA. With the creation of the Society of Eugenics and the Study of Heredity, however, Romania’s traditional affinity for French puériculture and Italian biotypology became stronger, not least because of Marinescu’s collaboration with other Latin eugenicists, such as Eugène Apert (1868–1940), Nicola Pende (1880–1970) and Gregorio Marañón (1887–1960) and of the attractions of Fascist Italy. By then, Latin eugenics had become officially codified and was advocated through its own international institution: the Federation of Latin Eugenic Societies (Federaţiunea Societăţilor Latine de Eugenie), established in Mexico in 1935. In the same year, Pende visited Romania at the invitation of the Italian Cultural Institute, giving lectures at the ‘Carol I’ Royal Foundation in Bucharest and at the University of Cluj. His lecture in Bucharest, for instance, dealt with ‘Biotypology and the Improvement of Human Constitution’ (‘Biotipologia şi înbunătăţirea constituţiei umane’), providing a unique opportunity for the general Romanian public to become familiar with his theories, and their practical application to the field of pre- and post-­natal orthogenesis, maternity, and the ‘biological and political problem of race’. On this occasion, Pende criticized negative eugenics, seen as ‘anti-­biological and anti-­human’. Moreover, he argued, it was ‘utopian to want to preserve a pure race, because all nations consisted of a number of races’. As Latins, the Romanian eugenicists were encouraged to adopt biotypology, and thus harness ‘the values of the nation’ to the ‘necessities of the state’ (Pende 1935: 67–8). 287

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

While in Bucharest Pende participated in a meeting of the Romanian Society of Neurology, Psychiatry, Psychology and Endocrinology presided over by Gheorghe Marinescu and visited the Institute of Legal Medicine, under the guidance of Nicolae Minovici. The Society also published a special issue of its Bulletin (issue 3) devoted to Pende in 1935 and at Marinescu’s request he was made a member of the Romanian Academy.2 Pende was equally praised for his achievements at the University of Cluj, where he lectured on the ‘orthogenetic physical education’ (Anuarul 1934–35: 456–7). The Cluj-­based journal Endocrinologie, Gynecologie, Obstetrică (Endocrinology, Gynecology, Obstetrics) devoted the April issue of 1936 to Pende’s work and visit. In his introductory article, Iuliu Haţieganu praised Pende’s role in establishing the centrality of constitutional medicine and endocrinology to individual health, thus creating a ‘new discipline, human biotypology, whose overwhelming contribution to the main questions in racial hygiene and eugenics was widely recognized today’ (Haţieganu 1936: 193). The adoption of the main tenets of Latin eugenics, particularly puériculture, biotypology, constitutional medicine and endocrinology, had a significant impact on the development of eugenics in Romania during the 1930s and early 1940s (Lieblich and Fastlich 1934: 286–301; Săulescu and Mudra 1937; Râmneanţu 1939a; Cupcea 1939: 220–30). Many Romanian physicians had visited Pende’s Institute of Biotypology and Orthogenesis (L’Istituto biotipologico ortogenetico) in Genoa and then in Rome. After one such visit, Liviu Câmpeanu (1889–1948), Director of ‘Gh. Mârzescu’ Hospital in Braşov, for example, became an enthusiastic supporter of biotypology, which he deemed of ‘enormous value for the hygiene and biopolitics of the nation’ (Câmpeanu 1936: 5). Câmpeanu also believed biotypology to be the most fitted scientific methodology to nurture the physical strength of the Romanian youth (Câmpeanu 1941: 1–6). The importance of biotypology as a unifying principle of Latin eugenics was further displayed at the 4th Congress of the Latin Medical Press (4me Congrès de la Presse Médicale Latine) held in Venice in 1936 and at the first International Meeting of Biotypology (Réunion Internationale de Biotypologie), organized in Paris in July 1937. Valeriu Bologa attended the former, while Gheorghe Marinescu the latter. Moreover, Petru Râmneanţu attended the International Congress on Population (Congrès International de la Population), which convened at the end of July 1937, also in Paris, where he presented his research on the relationship between biotype and fertility in the Banat (Râmneanţu 1938b: 14–20). Shortly after, Romanian eugenics reached the zenith of its international reputation on the occasion of the First Congress of Latin Eugenics (Premier Congrès Latin d’Eugénique), which took place in Paris from 1 to 3 August 1937. Gheorghe Marinescu and Sabin Manuilă represented the Union of Eugenic Societies in the Fédération International Latine des Sociétes d’Eugénique (Latin International Federation of Eugenic Societies). Also attending were eugenicists from Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Belgium, Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland. Marinescu gave one of the welcoming addresses, alongside the outgoing President of the Federation, Italian statistician Corrado Gini (1884–1965) and the new President, the French paediatrician Eugène Apert, in which he highlighted the common medical 288

Romania

tradition of the Latin countries (Marinescu 1937a: 13–14). Other Romanian participants included Gheorghe Banu, Mihail Manicatide and Alexandru Caratzali (1904–80), a geneticist. Manicatide discussed infant mortality in Romania (Manicatide 1937b: 292–5), while Marinescu examined the relationship between gigantism and acromegaly from the point of view of histology and genetics (Marinescu 1937b: 351–68). Banu offered the Romanian delegation’s most important contribution on eugenics to the congress. Entitled ‘Les facteurs dysgénique en Roumanie. Principes d’un programme pratique d’eugénique’ (‘The Dysgenic Factors in Romania. Principles of a Practical Eugenic Programme’), his paper revealed a complex understanding of eugenics that owed much to the French and Belgian eugenic ideals of the 1920s (Banu 1937c: 296– 319). Echoing arguments put forward by other Latin eugenicists, Banu believed that eugenics was particularly appropriate for Romania, due to its widespread medical problems, which included venereal and contagious diseases and alcoholism, as well as its social and economic problems. Nevertheless, he also believed that Romanians were endowed with healthy racial qualities: they had ‘high fertility rates, the capacity to adapt and assimilate, innate strength, resistance to adverse circumstances’ and so on. As such, Banu argued that ‘a rational eugenic program’ was needed to protect Romanians from disease and poverty, as well as assure the biological future of their nation (Banu 1937c: 297). Banu placed eugenics at the confluence of preventive medicine, social policies of health and the biological screening of the population. With respect to the latter, he argued for the ‘introduction of prenuptial medical certificates’, ‘a scientific study of heredity’, ‘the organization of school hygiene, and the introduction of the medical card for each individual’, ‘the fight and propaganda against venereal diseases’, the ‘reorganization of the maternal and infant assistance’, and finally ‘the partial introduction of preventive sterilization’ (Banu 1937c: 309–10). The First Congress of Latin Eugenics was only just finished when the 17th International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology began in Bucharest on 1 September 1937. It was the first (and the last) time that leading Romanian eugenicists, such as Sabin Manuilă, Iuliu Moldovan, Iordache Făcăoaru, Petru Râmneanţu, Gheorghe Marinescu and Gheorghe Banu, attended a scientific congress together. Equally important, this presented an ideal opportunity for a new generation of eugenicists, such as Gheorghe Stroescu, Dumitru C. Georgescu, Maria Veştemeanu and Eugenia Petrovici, to discuss their research with established scholars in the field, both from Romania and abroad (Petrovici 1939: 605–14; Georgescu 1939: 640–67). It is safe to assume that academic and public interest in eugenics in Romania was at its highest in the late 1930s. In addition to its specialized journals, numerous publications, scientific meetings and debates in Parliament, eugenic ideas of social and biological improvement became part of a broader public discussion about hygiene, education and morality. National radio was a powerful medium used to enlighten the population about various eugenic topics. Another example is the daily press, and important Romanian newspapers, such as Universul (The World), Adevărul (The Truth) and Cuvântul (The Word), who often featured articles on eugenics. A further category of publications, 289

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

which popularized ‘the problems of medicine, eugenics and sexual education’, were popular science magazines, such as Medicul Nostru (Our Physician), the weekly founded by Ygrec (I. Glicsman) in 1937. It is, perhaps, not surprising then that the Second Congress of the International Federation of Latin Eugenic Societies was planned to take place in Bucharest in September 1939, organized by the Union of the Eugenic Societies in Romania. Constantin I. Parhon was elected the third (and last), President of the Federation, while Gheorghe K. Constantinescu (1888–1950), Director of the National Institute of Zootechnics (Institutului Naţional Zootehnic) in Bucharest, was appointed Secretary General of the Congress. The themes proposed for the Congress included the prevention of hereditary diseases; natalism and demographic growth; heredity and infectious diseases; heredity and intelligence; as well as heredity and endocrinology (‘Al II-lea Congres Internaţional al Federaţiunii Societăţilor Latine de Eugenie’, Revista de Ştiinţe Medicale 1939: 247–8). International events, however, took precedence. In September 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland and a second world war followed. In March 1938, Austria ‘united’ (Anschluss) with Germany, followed in September 1938, by the annexation of the so-­ called ‘Sudetenland’, Czechoslovakia’s northern and western border regions. EastCentral Europe, as fashioned by the victors of World War I, was no more. Romania found herself not only in the proximity of the growing German Reich but also at the crossroads of her own history, soon to be tested by the territorial losses of 1940 (Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, Northern Transylvania and Southern Dobrudja). King Carol II abdicated and following a short period of legionary rule (September 1940 to January 1941) Romania fell under Marshal Ion Antonescu’s military dictatorship (January 1941 to August 1944). These profound territorial and political changes also impacted directly on eugenics, as a new nationalist climate emerged in which racial definitions of the nation were proposed (Voina 1940 and 1942: 21–30; Suciu 1943: 137–8).

VI As elsewhere in East-Central Europe during the war, Romanian eugenicists began to subscribe to the ‘blood and soil’ imagery, which it was then believed, aptly expressed Romania’s new biopolitical programme: the creation of a homogeneous ethnic state (Râmneanţu 1943c: 220–37 and 1943d: 370–92; Moldovan 1943c) and of a new ‘ethnic elite’ to lead it (Comşia 1940: 1–8; Vornica 1942: 221–4). Such aspiration was also confirmed by the anti-Semitic racial laws introduced in Romania in 1940, which categorized the Jews as a distinct race, forbade marriages between Jews and Romanians and, finally, defined Romanian national identity in terms of blood and racial affiliation. Some racist authors went as far as to ask for the sterilization of those of mixed JewishRomanian origin (Petrescu 1940: 124). Opposition to this appropriation of eugenics by racism was exceptional but it existed nevertheless. For instance, Augustin Popa (1893–1974), Professor at the Theological 290

Romania

Academy (Academia Teologică) in Blaj, published a devastating critique of Nazi eugenic sterilization and German racial theories of human improvement more generally in the Greek-Catholic journal Cultura Creștină (Christian Culture) (Popa 1938a–c: 521–35; 674–89 and 746–94). The rejection of racism and negative eugenics by GreekCatholic writers rested largely on theological grounds, but other religious authors placed eugenics within the broader context of national renewal and did not fail to give adequate attention to radical measures such as sterilization. Take the Orthodox theologian Liviu Stan (1910–73) for example, who in a 1941 article entitled ‘Rasism faţă de ţigani’ (‘Racism Against Gypsies’) complained that ‘neither National Socialism nor Fascism’ had introduced an effective ‘racial policy towards the Gypsies’ (Stan 1941: 1). Such a policy was, however, urgent in Romania, where ‘racial promiscuity between Gypsies and Romanians’ was widespread. Stan perceived the Roma to have caused more ‘biological damage’ to the Romanian racial body than the Jews, suggesting ‘prophylactic measures for their segregation’ that included the ‘prohibition of marriage between Gypsies and Romanians’ (Stan 1941: 2). In a book published in 1942, Rasă şi religiune (Race and Religion), Stan complained further about the ‘dysgenic monsters’ populating Romania, suggesting that the introduction of ‘eugenic measures and of Biopolitics’ was testimony to the fact that Romanians were ‘worthy to live’ and that they ‘did not waste the life given to them by God with worldly pleasures’ (Stan 1942: 144). To some extent this example illustrates a more general tendency among Romanian eugenicists at the time to embrace racial hygienic arguments. In 1939, Gheorghe Banu, for instance, published L’hygiène de la race (Hygiene of the Race), arguably the most sophisticated account of racial hygiene produced in Romania (Banu 1939d). In this book, Banu reiterated some of the arguments discussed in his previous articles, but this time his analytical repertoire was markedly improved: he offered both a solid theoretical discussion of heredity, and proposed concrete solutions for the biological improvement of the race. The sixth section of the book focused on the ‘principles and methods for the normalization of the race’. ‘To normalise the race’, that is to say to protect it, was, according to Banu, to employ various methods by which to ‘maintain and increase the normal elements of the race, and eliminate from the heart of the social organism elements which are deficient, physically and mentally’ (Banu 1939d: 256). Preventive sterilization, alongside the introduction of prenuptial certificate and segregation, was recommended as one of the ‘socio-­biological measures’ needed to be adopted in accordance with the ‘normalization of the race’ in Romania. However, Stan’s racist comments against the Roma are also symptomatic of another development. In the unsettling war period, eugenic concerns with the health of the nation body took a distinctively racist turn: if previously eugenic sterilization targeted individuals suffering from hereditary conditions or the habitual criminals, it now focused on the alleged source of degeneration posed by ethnic minorities (Grosforeanu 1936: 81–2). The Roma were particularly singled out for their racial otherness and the ‘dysgenic’ danger they posed to the Romanian majority. While a large community, the Roma were by no means Romania’s most numerous ethnic minority (Hungarians were). 291

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

According to the 1930 Census there were 262,501 Roma living in Romania, 1.5 per cent of the total population of 18,052,896. Most Roma, 221,726 (84.5 per cent) lived in rural areas and 40,775 (15.5 per cent) in urban areas (Manuilă 1940b: 34–37). Yet, in 1940, none other than Sabin Manuilă, Director of the Central Institute of Statistics in Bucharest, engaged with the ‘racial problem in Romania’, identifying the Jews and the Roma as standing outside of, and in opposition to, the Romanian national body. Only a year earlier, when reviewing the ethnic composition of Romania, Manuilă rejected a racial explanation because, he argued, ‘there was no single element, psychological or physical, that belongs exclusively to the Romanian ethnic group. No grouping of two or more anthropological elements could determine a ‘Romanian ethnic specificity’ (‘specific etnic românesc’) (Manuilă 1939: 357–8). In his article ‘Problema rassială a României’ (‘Romania’s Racial Problem’), Manuilă provided a racial representation of the Jews’ and the Roma’s social and ethnic positions. The Jews, for instance, were described as ‘the most important social problem, the most sensitive political problem and most serious economic problem of Romania’. But they ‘[did] not constitute a racial problem as racial mixing between Romanians and Jews’ rarely occurred. The Roma, on the other hand, represented Romania’s ‘most important, sensitive and serious racial problem’. Eugenics, with its hereditary explanation, further pathologized the social and ethnic relationships with the Roma. There was no doubt, Manuilă concluded, that ‘The mixing of Gypsy and Romanian blood is the most dysgenic factor affecting our race’ (Manuilă 1940f: 5). A year later, Manuilă, too, framed his arguments for a new population policy in Romania through the familiar trope of eugenic sterilization (Manuilă 1941a: 1–4). These examples indicate how eugenic sterilization became sanctioned by a version of ethnic nationalism, which was at the centre of the biopolitical programme reflecting the new political realities in Romania. The sociologist Traian Herseni (1907–80), a close collaborator of Dimitrie Gusti, made this connection clear in 1941: ‘Dysgenics must not be allowed to reproduce; inferior races should be completely isolated from the [Romanian] ethnic group. The sterilization of certain categories of individuals must not be conceived stupidly as a violation of human dignity but as a tribute to beauty, morality, and perfection’ (Herseni 1941: 7). Similarly vulnerable to this growing demand for population control in the name of national protectionism were those suffering from hereditary diseases. An Institute of Hereditary and Tumour Diseases (Institutul de Boli Ereditare şi Tumorale) was established in 1940 in Bucharest (‘Decret-­lege pentru înfiinţarea Institutului de Boli Ereditare şi Tumorale’, Monitorul Oficial 1940: 6091), followed by a new Commission on Social Hygiene (‘Compunerea Comisiunii de igienă socială’, Cuvântul 1940: 12). The Ministry of Health established its own commission for the ‘eugenic study of sterilization’ (Tomescu 1942: 119), while the Academy of Medicine created a number of committees after 1940 dealing with eugenics, the protection of mothers and infants, public health, and social assistance. Leading eugenicists such as Iuliu Moldovan, Sabin Manuilă, Gheorghe Banu, C. I. Parhon, Iordache Făcăoaru, Aurel Voina, Titu Gane, Mihail Manicatide and Petru Râmneanţu were members of all these committees, 292

Romania

promoting governmental measures to improve the racial qualities of the Romanian population. Arguably the most important of these new committees was Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Biological Capital of the Nation (Comisia pentru promovarea şi ocrotirea capitalului biologic al naţiunii), established in September 1943. Iuliu Moldovan was President; other members included Sabin Manuilă, Iordache Făcăoaru, Petru Râmneanţu and Gheorghe Banu. The Commission’s goal was to prepare a comprehensive account of the health of the population, to be submitted to Marshal Ion Antonescu together with concrete quantitative and qualitative eugenic proposals. Făcăoaru also proposed the creation of an Institute of Ethno-Racial Biology (Institut de Biologie Etnorasială), composed of five sections: human genetics; bioanthropology; biopolitics; euthenics; and an office dealing with ethnic talents. These five sections, in turn, were divided into over twenty sub-­sections, including heredo-­pathology, serology, biotypology, demography, negative eugenics, migration and so on. A month later, Făcăoaru presented the full description of the institute at the next meeting of the Commission. This time, he also gave it a name: the ‘Marshal Ion Antonescu’ Institute of Ethnoracial Biology (see Appendix 2). The institute was described as the pinnacle of more than twenty years of eugenic and biopolitical work in Romania, initiated in Cluj (Transylvania) by Iuliu Moldovan and his disciples. According to Făcăoaru, the institute’s research would concentrate on the ‘racial and biological-­ hereditary foundations of the Romanian nation’. In January 1944, the Commission proposed a Decret-­lege pentru Ocrotirea familiei (‘Law for the Protection of the Family’). Similar to the French Law of December 1942, the Romanian one proclaimed ‘the family as the life foundation of the Romanian nation and state’. It required prenuptial medical certification, and the introduction of additional eugenic measures to protect the family. Yet, the Romanian proposal went further than its French counterpart; it stipulated the introduction of compulsory sterilization for those with mental and physical hereditary diseases (Fond Nicolae Caranfil). The Law for the Protection of the Family was not adopted, mostly due to military and political emergencies characterizing the last year of the war. It illustrates, however, how the Antonescu regime championed a nationalist revival that aimed to ‘correct’ the Romanian nation’s racial, cultural and social degeneration. To some extent, the regime embraced many of the eugenic projects put forward by Romanian eugenicists since the 1920s, especially in the field of child welfare, maternal protection, demographic growth and the fight against venereal diseases (Trifu 1940: 9–12; Antonescu 1941: 85–6; Pocrean 1943: 137–42). For example, a law was introduced in October 1943, stipulating new measures to contain venereal diseases. Equally important the law also made prenuptial health examination compulsory (Motogna 1944: 238–50). In so doing, it not only vindicated those eugenicists who had been calling for the introduction of prenuptial certificates for more than a decade (Zolog and Comşia 1934: 165–72; Cupcea 1941: 105–26), but also offered a legal framework to those physicians who had already been active in restoring the nation’s health by banning marriages between ‘dysgenic’ individuals (Tiniş 1942: 551–2; Cosma 1946: 28–36). The association of ideas of 293

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

biological renewal with the promise of social protection strengthened the Antonescu regime’s positive eugenic message. As elsewhere in Europe at the time, this was a message that, once excised of its instrumentalization by the political right, not only survived the war but was made to reflect the new biomedical ambitions of the post-­war period with human engineering and population control.

VII After the end of World War II and until the beginning of communism in Romania, in 1947, Romanian eugenicists remained active in the fields of medicine, public health and social assistance (Banu 1947; Moldovan, Stoichiţă and Râmneanţu (1947). Attempts were also made to rescue eugenics from its negative association with Nazi racial ideology. Eugenics, one author argued in the official newspaper of the Romanian Communist Party, Scânteia (The Spark), were still needed in Romania and should ‘concentrate on the physical and mental improvement of the individual, aiming to restore his true human condition’ (Mărgărit 1944: 2). Eugenic legislation adopted before 1944 such as the prenuptial certificate, was not abandoned (Voicu 1947: 5; Bologa 1948: 13). The increased Soviet presence in Romania after 1944 meant, however, that Romania, like other East-Central European countries, would soon experience the troubled transition from an independent country to Soviet occupation and ultimately its transformation into a communist satellite state. Leading Romanian eugenicists, such as Iuliu Moldovan, Gheorghe Banu and Iordache Fǎcǎoaru, were gradually imprisoned and professionally marginalized; others such as Sabin Manuilǎ emigrated. University chairs and departments were dissolved and eugenics was deemed as ‘bourgeois’ science and as such ‘incompatible’ with the new scientific ideologies imported from the Soviet Union. With the establishment of a communist regime in Romania in 1947, eugenics was officially terminated but not forgotten. During the 1960s and 1970s Romanian scientists were not deterred in their attempts to synchronize inter-­war eugenic narratives about the health of the population with communist nationalist principles. This was also the very period in which a new narrative on national identity, alongside a nationwide eugenic project, emerged in Romania after the ascension of Nicolae Ceauşescu to power in 1965. During his regime strict pro-­natalism was introduced in Romania, and the state aimed at the complete control of reproduction. Population management and political demography, coupled with the ideological prioritization of family and mothers, became political tools in communist Romania through which the regime hoped to create a healthy national community, numerically and physically strong.

294

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Marius Turda Translations by Marius Turda and Răzvan Pârâianu

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Iuliu Moldovan

(1882, Bogata de Mureş–1966, Cluj)

Iuliu Moldovan was born in 1882 in Bogata de Mureş (Hung.: Marosbogát). His father was a priest. In 1885, the family moved to Mediaş (Ger.: Mediasch; Hung.: Medgyes), where Moldovan received his primary and secondary education. Emboldened by his father, Moldovan first considered studying theology. In 1901, however, having received a scholarship, he enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine (Medizinischen Fakultät) at the University of Vienna. In 1903, Moldovan moved to Prague where he served as a military doctor. He continued his studies at the First Medical Clinic of the German University (Karl-Ferdinands Universität) in Prague, where he worked, among others, with internist Rudolf von Jaksch (1855–1947) and pathologist Hans Chiari (1851–1916) (Moldovan 1996: 19–24). Having obtained his doctorate in medicine in 1906, Moldovan returned to Vienna where, in 1908, he was appointed an assistant in the Bacteriological Laboratory (Bakteriologischen Laboratorium) of the Austro-Hungarian Army, led by Robert Doerr (1871–1952). He participated and distinguished himself in the Laboratory’s campaigns against cholera in Dalmatia and Montenegro. In appreciation of his work, he was awarded a Military Merit Medal (‘Signum Laudis’) (‘Românii care ne fac fală’, Gazeta Transilvaniei 18 May 1915: 1). Between 1912 and 1914 he visited the Institute of Tropical Medicine (Institut für Tropenmediz) in Hamburg, the Pasteur Institute (Institut Pasteur) in Paris and the Zoological Station (Stazione Zoologica) in Naples. In 1915, he became Docent-Professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Vienna. During World War I, Moldovan served as a physician on the Eastern front, in Galicia, in charge of anti-­ epidemic and hygienic campaigns (Moldovan 1996: 30–39). Having returned to Mediaş in December 1918 Moldovan became a member of the Governing Council of Transylvania (Consiliul Dirigent al Transilvaniei) based in Sibiu. He was also in charge of the Council’s activities in the field of social assistance (Resortul Ocrotirilor Sociale), including the organization of hospitals, ambulatory care units, nursing facilities and the fight against epidemics. He outlined his programme of sanitary reform in 1919 at the Congress of Romanian physicians from Transylvania (Moldovan 1996: 43–56). Many of his ideas were eventually implemented, particularly in the fields of social assistance, nursing and preventive medicine (Râmneanţu 1973: 623–5). In 1919 Moldovan became a professor of hygiene and social hygiene at the newly established Romanian University ‘Regele Ferdinand I’ (Universitatea ‘Regele Ferdinand I’) in Cluj (Moldovan 1996: 62). Also in 1919, Moldovan established the Romania’s first Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene (Institutul de Igienă şi Igienă Socială) (Moldovan 1927h) and the first centre for the treatment of cancer, which became an institute (Institutul pentru Studiul şi Profilaxia Cancerului) in 1929 (Moldovan 1933: 1). 296

Romania

In 1920, Moldovan was elected a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy and between 1924 and 1925 was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Cluj. Moldovan played a significant role in shaping the development of social hygiene and public health in Romania (Moldovan 1921: 7 and 1924a), as well as biopolitics and eugenics (Moldovan 1923: 66–80 and 1924b: 69–70). Moreover, Moldovan trained and collaborated with the leading Romanian eugenicists, including Sabin Manuilă, Mihail Zolog, Petru Râmneanţu, Iordache Făcăoaru, Ovidiu Comşia and Salvator Cupcea. In some cases, with financial assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation, he also facilitated their training in hygiene and public health at institutes and universities in the USA (Râmneanţu 1945: 142). Moldovan was also an established immunologist, who made important contributions to medicine, particularly to the study of the mononuclear phagocyte system (also called the reticuloendothelial system or macrophage system) in immune reactions. In 1923 he discovered an antianaphylactic peptide secreted by the reticuloendothelial system which he termed ‘Reticulina M’, as a tribute to the Russian immunologist Élie Metchnikoff (1845–1916). The drug with the same name, ‘Reticulina M’, was introduced experimentally in 1939, proving successful in the prevention and treatment of various infections, rheumatism, endocarditis and arterial hypertension (Moldovan 1940). In 1928, he was appointed Secretary General in the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance. At the time, Moldovan was one of the prominent members of the Romanian National Peasant Party (Partidul Naţional Ţărănesc). In 1930, when this party was in government, Moldovan succeeded in introducing a new Sanitary Law, the so-­called ‘Moldovan Law’ (Legea Moldovan’), on the basis of which social hygiene and public health care became institutionally defined and centralized in Romania. Significantly, the law also authorized eugenic studies and research to be conducted in psychiatric hospitals (‘Legea Sanitarăşi de Ocrotire’, Art. 455) During the 1920s, Moldovan proposed his own eugenic philosophy adapted to Romanian conditions. Already in 1921 he proposed the creation of a ‘Biopolitical Academy’ (‘Academia biopolitică’), together with institutes devoted to eugenics and biopolitics (Moldovan 1938b: 336–9). In the same year, he began teaching the first courses on racial hygiene, eugenics (‘igiena naţiunii’) and biopolitics in Romania (Moldovan 1923: 77). Although familiar with British, American, German and French models of eugenics, Moldovan aimed instead to propose a definition of the eugenic ideal reflecting his country’s specific circumstances. He tried to nationalize eugenics to better fit with the Romanian nation-­building project. To this effect, in 1925, Moldovan published Igiena naţiunii (Eugenia), which became the most well-­known eugenic text in Romania (Moldovan 1925). Moldovan defined the nation as ‘a biological reality, a human structure with its specific biology and pathology’ (Moldovan 1925: 12). Moldovan then placed the family at the centre of this theory of eugenics, envisioning hygienic and public health measures to protect it from both social and biological degeneration. ‘The hygiene of the nation’, he argued, dealt ‘with factors and measures that determine the current and future biological prosperity of the nation’ (Moldovan 1925: 37). 297

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Romania’s eugenic transformation was not possible, however, without the population having acquired ‘a racial consciousness, a sentiment of biological responsibility’ (Moldovan 1925: 46). According to Moldovan, what should unite the members of the national community was not merely a political ideology acting in the name of the nation, but a fusion of new nationalist and eugenic ideals into the biopolitical state. Moldovan developed this theory in a book he published in 1926 and aptly entitled Biopolitica. He based his eugenic and biopolitical programme of Romania’s national renewal on the peasantry valued as an embodiment of racial fertility and national strength (Moldovan 1926). Equally important, the relationship between the individual, the nation and the state was turned into a specific scientific form of government, one based on biology (Moldovan 1927a–­g: 3–4; 4–7; 29–30; 61–3; 73–6; 76–9 and 338–40). This was equally a eugenic and biopolitical programme that Moldovan promoted extensively in his publications through the institutions he had established in the early 1920s. In a note published in Eugenical News in July 1922, Moldovan reported that a eugenic section was created within the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene (‘Notes and News’, Eugenical News 1922: 92). It was not, however, until 1925 that this section, in effect Romania’s first eugenic society, became operational within ASTRA,3 under the name Medical and Biopolitical Section, with a sub-­section on eugenics. In 1927, Moldovan also established Romania’s first eugenic journal, Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic. It was published, with a brief interruption (1931–3) until 1947. When publication of the journal resumed in 1934 the Medical and Biopolitical Section was renamed the Section on Eugenics and Biopolitics. Equally important, between 1932 and 1947, Moldovan was President of ASTRA. It was this cultural society, through its wide ranges of activities, which played a decisive role in the dissemination of Moldovan’s ideas of national eugenics and biopolitics across towns and cities in Romania (Preda 1944). In 1934, Moldovan began publishing again on eugenics and biopolitics, his decision partly motivated by the progress made in these fields by countries, such as Italy and Germany, and mostly by the growing acceptance of theories of social and biological improvement in his own country (Moldovan 1934: 127–8). In 1938, he restated the need for a nationwide eugenic education programme, this time proposing the creation of a distinctive Faculty of Ethnology and Biopolitics (Facultatea de Etnologie şi Biopolitică) to include such diverse areas of specialism as ‘ethnic history’, ‘anthropology’, ‘ethnobiology’, ‘ethnopathology’ ‘demography’ and of course ‘biopolitics’. He also proposed a new term, namely ‘etneugenie’ (‘ethno-­eugenics’), reflecting his own interpretation of eugenics (Moldovan 1938a: 67–74). Moldovan felt no affinity with racism. At the same time, however, he believed that nation as a eugenic concept lacked the necessary biological strength required to sustain ethnic solidarity. To avoid using the word race, he referred to a specific Romanian notion: ‘neam’.4 In a number of articles published in the early 1940s (Moldovan 1942a: 1–9; 1942b: 145–58; 1942c: 277–303; 1943a: 1–19; 1943b: 137–51 and 1944a: 25–31) and in two books, Statul etnic (Ethnic State) and Introducere în etnobiologie şi biopolitică (Introduction to Ethnobiology and Biopolitics) Moldovan offered the ultimate codification 298

Romania

of autochthonous eugenics in Romania (Moldovan 1943c and 1944b). Reflecting his prominence in 1943 he was appointed President of the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Biological Capital of the Nation. After the war, similar to other Romanian eugenicists, Moldovan refrained from publishing on biopolitics and eugenics. In his memoirs he noted ‘the blame and the unmerited suffering’ these subjects had brought him (Moldovan 1996: 84). He turned instead to his other medical and health interests, such as hygiene and public health (Moldovan 1946a: 1–7; 1946b: 77–92 and 1947), as well as immunology (Moldovan 1947/48: 148–79). Moreover, the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health resumed its activity in the winter of 1945/6, with Moldovan as director (Moldovan’s Report, 15 March 1947). This return to a normal scientific life was, however, short-­lived. Moldovan retired in 1947 and, more tragically, in 1950, he was arrested and imprisoned in Sighet (in northern Romania). He was released from prison in 1955 and returned to Cluj (Fond Iuliu Moldovan), where he lived until his death in 1966 (Râmneanţu 1977: 7).

299

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Hygiene of the Nation: Eugenics5 We cannot admit that we are Romanians or that we feel Romanians only because of language, religion and common interests. Such connections could not be the [only] source of true national solidarity, of those acts of despair and courage, of sacrifice and suffering from the nation’s past; [these connections] do not explain the pride in our origin and the longing to know our past, the love for our ancestors, for the heroes of our people, whom we love and admire more than any other famous person from a foreign country. I feel Romanian not because I live in my country, not only because I speak Romanian and certainly not because of personal convenience. I am Romanian because I was born Romanian, because I believe that in my veins runs a blood different to that of other people and, through my ancestors, [also runs] a drop of the blood of those who had contributed to the creation of my nation. This blood relation, this biological relation of race (legatura biologică de sânge), makes us Romanians, as it did with our ancestors, and it requires of us the supreme duty to pass this untainted heritage on, which may be poor but is of utmost value to us. [. . .] The nation, therefore, is a biological reality, a human construction with its specific biology and pathology, whose evolution and future are determined first and foremost by its inherited qualities, its numerical strength and its environment. Thus, our goal in life will be to keep our nation’s hereditary patrimony (patrimoniu ereditar) untainted, to [contribute] to its further growth, to guarantee its demographic growth, to ensure the victory in the competition with other nations, and finally, to organize our living space in such a way that each individual is able to develop and make the most of his/her innate qualities in the interest of the nation. [. . .] Created by Galton, an English scholar, the science to guarantee healthy and noble descendants was named eugenics (national eugenics). The adjective ‘national’ has been added because racial qualities specific to a nation and inherited from generation to generation, are different in other nations, meaning that each one of them should have, up to a point, their own particular form of eugenics. [. . .] Eugenics, as described by Galton, deals only with the factors that can modify, positively or negatively, the racial quality of future generations. As such, eugenics is limited to influence only the racial, hereditary traits. The hygiene of the nation, as conceptualized by us based on the premise that the nation is a biological, racial construction, deals both with factors which influence [hereditary] traits and with those which ensure the numerical growth of the future generation, but also at the same time aspires to guarantee, for the current generation, that each individual contributes, according to his/her optimal biological ability, [and] to the prosperity of the nation and country. In short, the hygiene of the nation deals with factors and measures which determine the biological prosperity of the nation, in the present and in the future. As such, the hygiene of the nation consists of eugenics, demography and eubiotics.6 [. . .] Family is at the centre of all eugenic measures for the nation, considering [it] is the element that produces the next generation, is the custodian of the hereditary patrimony; [it] is also very important for sexual selection through marriage, and [it] is responsible 300

Romania

for the quantity of the next generation. [. . .] Apart from general hygiene pertaining to marriage and conjugal life, the measures specific to the hygiene of the nation are as follows: 1. Protection of the family from infections and intoxications affecting the next generations. 2. Stemming the reproduction of those individuals with serious hereditary diseases, who cause the qualitative degeneration of their offspring. 3. Selection for reproduction of those individuals with superior qualities, together with measures to facilitate their reproduction and that of healthy individuals. 4. Combating infant mortality. 5. Control of immigration to avoid an undesirable mixing of races or an undesirable competition among races [within the country]. Emigration and internal colonization are included here. 6. Guaranteeing the optimal biological capital of the nation (capitalul biologic naţional). 7. Management of the biological capital of the nation and 8. Eugenic education. [. . .] The most important cultural organization for our nation, to determine and guide its biological worth, is an Institute for National Biology and Eugenics (Institut pentru biologia şi igiena naţiunii). This institute must be established immediately and provided with the latest technology, as it should study our biological past and recommend ways and methods for our national biopolitical action. Translation by Marius Turda

Biopolitics7 I will argue here for a particular state organization and activity that should be deeply involved with and led by the supreme duty of ensuring the biological prosperity of human capital before anything else. Human capital is the sum of all citizens, while biological prosperity is the sum of their physical, intellectual and emotional existence. [. . .] I might surprise some when I assert that the biological prosperity of human capital is in a deplorable state at the moment and that measures to improve it are needed urgently. [. . .] In The Hygiene of the Nation we have seen how natural and social selection is gradually abolished by the progress of civilization, or even [worse] how [it] is reversed, in the sense that the defective, paupers, imbeciles and criminals are breeding and spreading their weak qualities, while those with superior qualities, directly responsible for the progress of civilization, are declining until they will disappear completely. In the end there will be a progressive reduction of those with superior qualities, and a 301

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

quantitative and qualitative dominance of those with serious hereditary defects, of those who are, by their very nature, primitive and savage. [. . .] If it is evident that this decline is entirely due to the continuous neglect of the natural evolution of the human capital, then [. . .] there is no other remedy to prevent it but the complete adherence to the laws of life. This is an elementary fact that once fulfilled should certainly be successful. Instead of an exclusively individualist or social policy, we should place state organization and activity [. . .] on the only real and possible basis: the biological principle, the harmonization of all activities towards a single goal that motivates the very existence of the state, the biological prosperity of the human capital. Instead of placing the importance of various actions on narrow individual needs or vague social needs [. . .], we put family at the centre of all activity and work. [Family] is the only factor that, when protected, determines the positive evolution of our hereditary patrimony, and its negative evolution, when neglected. [. . .] Before anything else, it will be necessary to have a clear idea of our country’s biological human capital, both from quantitative and qualitative points of view. By knowing our specific biological qualities and foreseeing the future quantitative evolution, by following the biological laws unreservedly, we will be able to prepare the complete programme on which to build the optimal prosperity of our biological capital. [. . .] Instead of destroying ourselves prematurely, before reaching the summit [of our existence], before we make some eternal contributions to universal culture, we should do our best to value our positive qualities and prove detractors who consider us inferior people incapable of superior culture wrong. From what has been discussed so far, we can suggest the following: 1. The state is a political structure, a collective organization whose aim is to guarantee to the fullest [degree] possible the biological prosperity of its citizens. 2. This prosperity can be guaranteed exclusively by following the laws of individual and human biological evolution completely. 3. A general programme, based on human capital and aimed exclusively at its biological prosperity, should guide both individual and collective thinking and action. Once absorbed by the public, this biopolitical programme, based on biological responsibility, will automatically guide evolution towards the desired path, [while at the same time] harmonizing individual and social actions in a viable equilibrium and fertile cooperation [. . .] 4. Reproductive family, on whose purity our biological future depends, will be placed at the centre of biopolitics. [. . .] 5. The ensemble of biological qualities will be the only real measure of individual as well as of the nation’s and the country’s worth. [. . .] 6. Social stratification reflecting the variation of biological qualities is a natural process. Artificial levelling through an ignorant democracy is always detrimental to superior values that are naturally meant to rule. 302

Romania

7. Working through the external physical and social environment, natural and social selection retain their overwhelming importance for biological evolution, and they should be assisted, not through the brutal elimination of those defective, but in the sense of their exclusion from reproduction, and through maximum support for those with biological superior qualities. 8. The strength of the human capital is not the same with public health warfare against [infant] mortality and the protection from the negative influences [exerted by] external physical environment. The impressive progress of public health notwithstanding, biological strength had continued to weaken in an alarming way. 9. Economic and cultural development must be subordinate to individual and collective biological development. The biopolitical programme will specifically organize the state and thus the essential content of the constitution in accordance with biological evolution. [. . .] Is biopolitics a utopia? Of course not! Other countries are adopting it, deliberately or not. [. . .] It would be a terrible mistake if we did not assume our biological responsibility, although we see the danger threatening us and have the means to prevent it. To assume this responsibility and achieve some of [this biopolitical programme], no matter how modest, is the first decisive step towards a better future. What we need next is a leadership that, accepting the importance of the biological prosperity of human capital, can agree on and then place this programme at the foundation of the entire [political] organization and public life. Once this is accomplished, the [country’s] optimal development is assured, one based on the biological national principle (principiul naţional biologic). [. . .] It will be necessary that all parties with the good of the nation and country at heart adopt biopolitical principles as their political programmes. Biopolitics is a new science, deserving its autonomy because of its overwhelming importance. [. . .] To give this science all the support [it needs] and to help the fulfilment of its proposals is the supreme duty of those of us, who from deep conviction, not hypocrisy, want to contribute to the nation’s and [the] country’s continuous prosperity. Translation by Răzvan Pârâianu

303

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Gheorghe Banu

(1889, Secuieni–1957, Bucharest)

Gheorghe Banu was born in 1889, in a village near Bacău, a town in Moldova, the eastern province of Romania. His father was a priest. After completing his primary and secondary education in Bacău in 1909 he studied medicine at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1913. Between 1912 and 1914, he was a non-­resident doctor at the Board of Civil Hospitals (Eforia Spitalelor Civile) in Bucharest. Between 1914 and 1917 he was an intern at Colentina Hospital (on contagious and sexually transmitted diseases) and Colţea Hospital (on ophthalmology and dermatology). Banu participated in the Balkan wars (1912–13) and then in World War I, where he worked on various contagious wards. In 1917, he received his first doctorate in medicine and surgery from the University of Iaşi. Two years later, in 1919, he was appointed as a specialist in puériculture by the municipality of Bucharest. In the same year he went to Paris to study medicine and hygiene with the French paediatrician Antoine Marfan (1858–1942), obtaining another doctorate of medicine in 1922 with a dissertation on the neuromuscular system (Banu 1922a). In Paris, Banu also worked with the Romanian biologist Constantin Levatidi (1874–1953), one of the founders of inframicrobiology at the Pasteur Institute, as well as with the renowned physiologist Louis Lapique (1866–1952). Between 1921 and 1926, sponsored by the City Hall of Bucharest, Banu worked with runaway children at the Cantacuzino Asylum (Azilul Cantacuzino) (Banu 1924: 131–51 and 1930a). In 1922 he published his first book on puériculture and medical advice for would-­be mothers (Banu 1922b). In 1924, Banu became Assistant Professor in Child Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, and between 1925 and 1928 was Secretary General of the Ministry of Health. Between August and October 1927, Banu visited the United States, on a research trip sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. The visit resulted in a comprehensive overview of the American system of public health (Banu 1931), as well as recognition of Banu’s growing expertise as a social hygienist. Although his proposal to create a chair in social hygiene was rejected by the Senate of the University of Bucharest, an Institute of Hygiene and Public Health (Institutului de Igienă şi Sănătate Publică) was nonetheless established in Bucharest in 1927. During the late 1920s, Banu began to publish on social biology and rural health (Banu 1927a: 3 and 1927b: 87–121), and with the publication of two books in 1930, Mortalitatea infantilă în România (Infant Mortality in Romania) and L’hygiène sociale de l’enfance (Social Hygiene of Childhood) (Banu 1930b and 1930c), his national and international reputation in the field of child protection and child welfare was confirmed. Banu was active in the international movement for child protection, attending its conferences, such as those in Liège in 1930 and Paris in 1933, and contributing regularly to its journal, Bulletin International de la Protection de l’Enfance (Banu 1930d: 929–63; 1930e: 304

Romania

1247–308; 1936d: 1597–602 and 1938a: 383–95). During this period, he also established and maintained good professional relations with other social hygienists and eugenicists from the region (Correspondence E. Lambadarios and G. Banu, 1930–8). In October 1935, Banu attended the first Balkan congress on the protection of childhood held in Athens, which brought together specialists from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and Turkey (Le premier Congrès balkanique de la Protection de l’Enfance. CompteRendu 1936). In 1931, Banu founded the journal Revista de igienă socială, which he edited until 1944, and which, together with Buletinul eugenic şi biopolitic, served as a conduit for ideas about eugenics, social hygiene and social medicine in Romania. If Moldovan used the Buletin to popularize his version of national eugenics and biopolitics, Banu transformed the Revista into the perfect medium to disseminate his ideas on social and biological improvement. In 1934 Banu became a deputy in the Romanian Parliament, and his political involvement continued throughout the late 1930s: he was Minister of Health between 1937 and 1938, and then appointed to the post of General-Director of the Social Service (Serviciul Social) in 1939. He continued to publish on a wide range of medical and hygienic issues, including one important study of tuberculosis (Banu 1933a) and one on the hygiene of work (Banu 1935a), all contributing to his definitive interpretation of the Romanian nation’s health (Banu 1935b). At the same time he was an advocate for sanitary reform, seen as a prerequisite for the improvement of population health in Romania (Banu 1937a: 3–31; 1937b: 73–97; 1938b; 1940a: 135–204). By the mid-1930s, however, Banu’s main interests increasingly shifted towards eugenics and racial hygiene, including support for sterilization and the introduction of premarital health certificates. For instance, he approved of the German Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring emphasizing that its ‘main principles, intended to protect and develop the biological qualities of the race, entirely corresponded to the ideal of protecting the highest biological values’ (Banu 1933b: 554). In a public lecture delivered in January 1935 to the ‘Carol I’ Foundation in Bucharest, entitled ‘Eugenie, ereditate, rasă’, he succinctly offered both a general history of eugenics and how it applied to Romania. Above all, Banu rejected the idea of ‘pure races’, suggesting that eugenics should not be limited to ‘racial hygiene’ but should instead articulate a collective preoccupation with the nation rather than the race (Banu 1935c: 103). Banu mentioned compulsory premarital health examination, abortion, segregation and sterilization as efficient eugenic measures to be introduced in Romania. He concluded, however, that an educated and concerned public would more readily accept such measures and recommended propaganda and education as immediate eugenic strategies (Banu 1935c: 105–7). Also in 1935, the Royal Romanian Society of Eugenics and the Study of Heredity was established with Gheorghe Marinescu as President and Banu as Secretary. In March 1936, in a lecture on the premarital health certificate, he further differentiated between two categories of eugenic measures: ‘Some immediate, with the aim of biologically 305

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

purifying society right away; others long term, which improve the biology of the community gradually, generation after generation, diminishing the number of dysgenic elements, preventing the reproduction of worthless individuals’ (Banu 1936a: 289). Banu was intent on eliminating the hereditary and environmental factors contributing to the degeneration of the Romanian nation, formulating an interventionist eugenic programme to achieve it (Banu 1936b: 565–76). These ideas were refined in a 1936 lecture to the recently established Academy of Medicine (Academia de Medicină), entitled ‘Principes d’un programme d’hygiène raciale’ (‘Principles of the Programme of Racial Hygiene’) (Banu 1936c: 582–4) and in his paper delivered to the First Congress of Latin Eugenics held in Paris in August 1937 (Banu 1937c: 296–319). He also participated in the 17th International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology, convened in Bucharest in 1937, presenting three papers on dysgenic and toxic factors in rural areas (Banu 1939a–c: 615–20; 620–6 and 635–40). In 1939, Banu published L’hygiène de la race, a book internationally recognized as the most sophisticated account of racial hygiene written by a Romanian eugenicist (Duff 1939: 188; Landra 1942). Banu recommended various eugenic methods in order to ‘maintain and increase the normal elements of the race, and eliminate from the heart of the social organism elements which are deficient, physically and mentally’. Special emphasis was placed on the ‘practical and theoretical investigations of heredity; biological and hereditary statistics; the study of family genealogies, the biological and hereditary status of the population, and the demographic evolution of communities’ (Banu 1939d: 256). Banu formulated his theory of the hygiene of the race as complementary to Moldovan’s theory of the hygiene of the nation. It was, however, more than just another eugenic theory. In the wake of another world war, it also illustrated the need to reconsider previous proposals of social and biological improvement by conceiving of eugenics as a totalizing biopolitical strategy of ethnic survival that was simultaneously racial and national. Banu joined the Academy of Medicine in June 1936, and soon became a member of numerous committees created by the Academy throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s, including the committee for the organization of health in rural areas (created in 1938), the committee for eugenics, the committee for the protection of mothers and infants and, the committee for public health and social assistance (all established in 1943). In 1940, Banu became a professor at the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Bucharest. Equally important, in that year he published the noteworthy volume (both in terms of its size and its importance), entitled Probleme sanitare ale populaţiei rurale din România (Sanitary Problems of the Rural Population in Romania), where he outlined his interpretation of rural eugenics (Banu 1940b: 127–44). As World War II enveloped Europe, Banu re-­affirmed the importance of eugenics for national survival. With official funding and encouragement, he set out to promote a national eugenic programme devised purposely for Romania and its predominantly rural population. Tellingly, by 1941, he also returned to the usage of eugenics rather than 306

Romania

the hygiene of the race in his writings, hoping perhaps to avoid a direct association with Nazi racial hygiene (Banu 1941: 341–97 and 1943) but also as part of a process of reinterpreting eugenics’ relationship with social hygiene, public health and demography. This can be seen in the editorial plan he had envisaged for his Tratat de medicină socială (Handbook of Social Medicine). Although the Handbook was planned to include nine volumes, only four were published, dealing with eugenics, demography, school medicine, social assistance, and infections and venereal diseases (Banu 1944, vol. 1–4). In 1942, the Chair of Social Medicine (Catedra de Medicină Socială) at the University of Bucharest was established and offered to Banu (Banu 1942: 685–97). In 1943 he became Director of the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Bucharest, a position he held with intermissions until the end of 1944 (D. Mezincescu’s letter to George K. Strode, 23 November 1944). Banu continued to publish immediately after the war (Banu 1946: 213–302 and 1947) but, after 1948, he was increasingly marginalized and persecuted by the communist authorities. He died in Bucharest in 1957.

307

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Eugenics, Heredity, Race8 As a science dealing with the study of those factors under social control that could change, for good or for worse, the racial traits of future generations – physical and mental – eugenics dates back to Galton (1883). It aspires, on one hand, to prevent the reproduction of inferior, degenerate (dysgenic) elements, which at a certain time threatens to exceed the number of normal elements; on the other hand, it encourages the proliferation of the superior members of society. Basically, the interest of eugenics overlaps with the interest of race, understood as a group of people sharing the same physical and physiological (somatic) characteristics. A pure race does not exist. We encounter large ethnic groups the world over that had originated from the mixture of various original racial elements and are characterized by common linguistic and cultural characteristics. These are the nations or ‘ethnies’. The notion of ‘ethnie’ thus appears to be more inclusive than the notion of race, and eugenics, to be efficient, cannot be restricted to the notion of race. The Romanian nation, too, has formed from the fusion of three racial elements: Alpine, Mediterranean and Dinaric. Yet, its ethnic homogeneity is perfect because of its linguistic-­cultural unity. In its investigations, eugenics should study the dysgenic causes, namely the factors of degeneration of an ethnic group. Some of these causal factors are pathological: infections and intoxications of the parents, various nutritional and nervous disorders, pregnancy disorders and diseases, various other infirmities. These are proper eugenic factors. A second category of dysgenic causes is the result of unfavourable environmental conditions: poverty, overpopulation, unemployment, namely economic and social factors, also called euthenic factors. As for its practical methods, based on the laws of heredity, eugenics should take both categories mentioned above into consideration. There are, therefore, methods which are purely eugenic (preventive sterilization of degenerates, prenuptial certificate, and so on) and methods which are euthenic, aiming to improve the environment, such as measures of social hygiene (moral education, sexual education, the re-­education of the abnormal, and the improvement of economic and social conditions). [. . .] Methods of Eugenic Action [. . .] The first method is the compulsory prenuptial certificate, attesting that the would-­be spouses do not suffer from a heredity disease transmissible to offspring. [. . .] The second method of eugenic action is heredity studies, conducted in special laboratories. In this way the genealogical tree of the two categories of families can be established: the superior ones, whose reproduction should be encouraged, and families with a nervous and morbid heredity, whose reproduction should be obstructed. The third [method] is the struggle against social, infectious and toxic diseases, as well as the improvement of social conditions that affect the human race. In particular, however, there is need for proper eugenic measures such as the regulation of abortion, segregation and preventive sterilization. [. . .] 308

Romania

The ideal would be the general acceptance of voluntary sterilization, freely consented to by those concerned; yet, for this to happen education and persistent propaganda are necessary. In our country, too, the eugenic sterilization of those individuals with chronic mental illnesses, who had already spent at least five years in a mental institution, has been discussed. In the large masses of population, however, eugenic principles could only be spread through propaganda and education. School is the best institution that can facilitate eugenic education. Translation by Răzvan Pârâianu

Rural Eugenics9 Knowledge of races demands a racial hygiene. This is eugenics, which forms the basis of the development of any community or nation. Nothing, indeed, can be of greater importance than the investigation and superstition of factors liable to injure the racial, physical and mental qualities of future generations. Eugenics has not yet become for us [Romanians] a social science, and there is no progress in this field in our rural environment. Further, the eugenic aspects of our rural population have not yet been studied. [. . .] In our [chapter] on eugenics we have first presented a general survey of the factors which exert a dysgenic influence on the rural population. Hereditary factors, to which must be added certain social factors, exert a dysgenic influence, resulting in the fact that 1,179,995 peasants are of poor biological value; 116,401 are defectives (cripples, abnormals, etc.), 1,063,594 are temporarily or [permanently] deficient. Morbidity rises in indirect relation to the qualitative value of the individual; so too [do] death-­rates and especially infant mortality. We have pointed out the ‘attack’ of death upon the young (31.9 per cent infant mortality in rural districts and 19.9 per cent in towns). Expectancy of life and the health of the [rural] people are [reduced] for the same reason. Dysgenic influences are to be found in schoolchildren (orthogenesis is compromised), as well as in recruits, who present a very high number of minus-­values. [. . .]

General Biology We can synthesize the actual study on this subject (for Romania) as follows: Scientific study of heredity: a problem quite untouched with regard to our rural centres; it could not be dealt with in the present volume, as the basic material is lacking.10 Study of the race: constitution, biotypology, etc.; very modest beginnings, research work on a very small number of individuals, the impossibility of drawing any conclusions, ignorance of racial composition of the Romanian people.11 Studies of eugenics: several identical statements, which we have indirectly arrived at from the analysis of other chapters of social medicine; we have no real studies of eugenics in this country up to now.12 309

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Vital statistics studies: important contributions made during the last few years, by organizing the Central Institute of Statistics. Documentary material is lacking, however, for such studies which would allow [the making] of firm decisions on certain biological chapters, quantitative as well as qualitative.13

Eugenics for the Romanian People14 Eugenics represents today an area of very important research for all nations that aim before anything else to increase their biological quality so that they can assert themselves on political, economic, and cultural levels. For the Romanian people, whose biology has been so often battered in the past as well as in the present by various factors, eugenic work is underway and some efforts in this direction are already noticeable. [. . .] For the Romanian people, the science of eugenics, whatever definition is considered, is at the moment of utmost importance. We can say that eugenics constitutes the basis and the starting point for all measures that aim to increase the biological quality of our people. [. . .] Throughout the centuries various environmental, economic, social and political factors have diminished the Romanian vigour and the value of their superior, constitutional structure. [. . .] The struggle against the biological degeneration of our people cannot be accomplished without a coherent eugenic programme. [. . .] Eugenics, as the biological science whose principles and results have a practical application, should begin with understanding the structure of the great collective groups it addresses: the race and the nation. 1. Race Race is a natural group of people that display common heredity, physical and psychical characteristics adapted to the living space it inhabits. [. . .] 2. Nation Over time, racial mixing had given birth to collective groups, called nations or ethnies, inhabiting the territories of modern states. The nation is characterized by common somatic, linguistic, and cultural characteristics but should not be confused with race. Its characteristics, such as common language and culture, are social realities not biological, while national consciousness is a mental phenomenon. [. . .] We should apply the principles of eugenics to these real entities, the nations, and try to promote, from a biological point of view, the racial dominant element within them. This principle finds its integral application in eugenics for the Romanian people. [. . .] Measures for the normalization of eugenics in Romania The study of the various factors contributing to dysgenic conditions, whose numeric expression has been documented on the basis of existing scientific research, should logically lead to the application of multiple practical eugenic measures that, within the 310

Romania

legislative and institutional future framework, may result in the improvement of the biological value of future generations. These measures, called eugenic politics, have been adopted in some countries in recent years. Categories [of individuals] have been classified; in our country too, programmatic eugenic management should take into consideration a series of biological, social and social-­medical measures and, ultimately, measures for a eugenic policy regarding the family. Indeed, a first set of eugenic measures is preponderantly biological. The attempt is to select the parents even before their marriage; to introduce preventive birth control on eugenic recommendations; to oppose ethnic and racial mixing, which often produces dysgenics; to prevent marriage between close relatives; occasionally to isolate the dysgenic and antisocial elements; and finally, to apply preventive sterilization. Social measures in a eugenic programme are designed to allow great material opportunities for the most prolific individuals of the nation, and with it a good selection of biological values. Rural and urban workers represent these individuals, and the social measures that will be studied could serve as practical eugenic guidance for all countries. Mixed measures, medical and social at the same time (systematic prevention of social diseases, mental hygiene for the masses, eugenic education) also provide a serious contribution for the practical encouragement of eugenics. Eugenic policy regarding the family is a synthesis of many efforts. Its norms are well known today and have found its application in various contexts: state loans for numerous families with normal heredity, compensatory policies for family duties on the basis of the eugenic value of the respective family, fiscal privileges and various other financial supports on the same criteria, and so on. For a centralized organization of eugenics in Romania it is necessary [for] the study of each of these measures, so that, once demonstrated, all [eugenic] principles could be adapted to our country. [. . .] For contemporary Romania we should initiate an effective eugenic policy, which, taking into consideration the accomplishments of other countries, will put into practice the very notion of social medicine: man is a link between generations, he is subject to various hereditary and environment factors, and the centralized intervention of the state should control these factors in order to provide the individual, and by extension the nation, with the most advantageous biological conditions. We should desire the supremacy of the collective over the individual in biology too. Individual life has no sense if not integrated within collective life. Prenuptial certificates, celibacy taxes and eugenic sterilization in certain cases, all are measures selected to improve the material situation of the family, particularly that of numerous families [. . .] The individual will be able to prosper more adequately, both morally and biologically, if the family, the race and the nation are stronger. Translation by Răzvan Pârâianu

311

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Gheorghe Marinescu

(1863, Bucharest–1938, Bucharest)

Gheorghe Marinescu was born in a poor neighbourhood (‘mahala’) of Bucharest in 1863. Between 1874 and 1882, he studied at the Central Seminary (Seminarul Central) Lyceum in Bucharest. In 1882, he enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, where he studied with some of the most important Romanian physicians of the time, including Mihail Petrini (de Galatz), Constantin Istrati (1850–1918) and Iacob Felix (1832–1905). In 1886 he became an assistant and then an intern at the Brâncovenesc Hospital (Spitalul Brâncovenesc) in Bucharest. In 1889 with the support of bacteriologist Victor Babeş, in whose Institute of Pathology and Bacteriology (Institutul de Patologie şi Bacteriologie) he worked as an assistant, Marinescu went to Paris to study with the French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot (1825–93) at his clinic at the Salpêtrière Hospital. While in Paris, Marinescu also came under the influence of the French microbiologist, Louis Pasteur (1822–95). At the time Marinescu’s research interests centred on the peripheral nervous system and its functions (Marinescu 1899). Both Charcot and Pasteur contributed tellingly to the formation of Marinescu’s own medical worldview (Marinescu 1923 and 1925). Marinescu collaborated with other prestigious French neurologists such as Pierre Marie (1853–1940), with whom he gave a paper on the pathological anatomy of acromegaly15 at the 10th International Medical Congress (X. Internationalen Medicinischen Congress) in Berlin in 1890 (Marie and Marinescu 1891: 129–32). Between 1891 and 1896 Marinescu travelled to Germany and worked with German pathologists and physiologists, such as Karl Weigert (1845–1904) and Emil du BoisRaymond (1872–1929). In 1896, Marinescu met the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) and a friendship ensued between the two scientists, although Marinescu did not endorse Lombroso’s theory about the ‘born criminal’. In 1897, having obtained his doctorate in medicine, Marinescu returned to Romania, where he became Director of the Neurological Clinic (Clinica de Boli Nervoase) at the Pantelimon Hospital (Spitalul Pantelimon) in Bucharest. In 1898 he was appointed Professor at the Neurological Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bucharest and, in the following year, was elected a correspondent member of the Romanian Academy. Also in 1898 Marinescu made the world’s first scientific film, Tulburări ale mersului în hemiplegia organică (Walking Difficulties in Organic Hemiplegia).16 By the early 1900s, his international reputation as a specialist in the degeneration of the nervous system was well established (Marinescu 1900; 1905: 151–72 and 1907). This was also confirmed by the publication in 1909 of La cellule nerveuse (The Nervous Cell), with a preface by the Spanish pathologist Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852–1934) (Marinescu 1909). In 1912 Marinescu was elected a correspondent member of the French Academy of Medicine (Académie nationale de médicine). After the outbreak of 312

Romania

World War I, Marinescu moved to Iaşi in eastern Romania. In 1915 he presented his study on the mental traumas and psychoses caused by the war to the Romanian Academy (Marinescu 1920a: 131–200). He then went to Paris, where he spent the rest of the war, working at Salpêtrière Hospital with Pierre Marie. He returned to Bucharest in 1919 and became the head of the Neurological Clinic (Clinica de Boli Nervoase) at the Coletina Hospital (Spitalul Colentina). Marinescu was among the first Romanian physicians to apply methods from histology and histopathology to neurology. One of Marinescu’s original methods consisted of applying the newest experiments in physics and chemistry to the exploration of the nerve cell (Marinescu 1911: 219–63). He applied ultramicroscopy, which was used in the colloidal theory of neuron structure, and made daring medical experiments, such as transplants and cultures of nervous tissue. Through the use of the backward degeneration method he also discovered the locations of nerve formations, such as the nucleus of the pneumogastric and facial nerves (Marinescu 1920b: 425–83). Marinescu also published on morphogenesis and mitogenetic radiation (Marinescu 1935a: 1–32). Finally, he was among the first neurologists in the world to use the encephalographic method and the conditioned reflexes method in diagnosing hysteria, epilepsy, aphasia and neurosis. Certain neurological lesions, such as ‘Marinescu’s hand’ and congenital disorders, for instance ‘Marinescu’s syndrome’, were named after him (Marinescu 1955). Marinescu engaged with eugenics and racial hygiene as early as 1906, in his acceptance speech to the Romanian Academy, published as ‘Progresele şi tendinţele medicinei moderne’ (‘Progress and Directions of Modern Medicine’) (Marinescu 1906: 3–34). Interestingly, Marinescu did not discuss French theories of social and biological improvement, which he was familiar with, but preferred instead to invoke the German racial hygienist Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940) and his efforts towards racial protection (Marinescu 1906: 33). In 1914 at the 2nd National Congress of Medicine (Congresul Naţional de Medicină) he expanded his interpretation of the relationship between medicine and the national body, insisting on the need for a concerted effort to improve the general health of the population (Marinescu 1914). Marinescu’s growing interest in eugenics was a response to Romania’s endemic health problems, such as high infant mortality, widespread contagious and social diseases and the unsanitary living conditions of the Romanian peasantry. The need to improve the health of the peasantry was, in fact, a constant argument he had used in order to justify the need for a eugenic movement in Romania (Marinescu 1920a: 198–200). Marinescu’s encyclopaedic medical knowledge provided an eclectic foundation for his interpretation of eugenics. It thus included physiological theories of the milieu intérieur (the environment within) put forward by the French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813–78), child protection and maternal puériculture advocated by Adolphe Pinard (1844–1934), Francis Galton’s eugenic ideas and Nicola Pende’s biotypology and orthogenesis. Although he stressed the need to improve the health and the environmental conditions of the Romanian peasantry, Marinescu was not a neoLamarckist. Not only did he endorse Mendelian mechanisms of heredity but he also agreed with more radical Romanian eugenicists, such as Gheorghe Banu and Ioan I. 313

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Manliu, on suggestions to reduce the number of undesirable elements of the population. Among these he included the introduction of health cards and premarital health examination, alongside voluntary sterilization. During the early 1930s, biotypology and medical constitutionalism particularly impressed Marinescu. In 1931, he presented a lengthy account of the Italian Constitutional School to the Romanian Academy, extolling both its scientific relevance in relation to other branches of biology and medicine such as endocrinology, but also its positive eugenic ambitions (Marinescu 1934a: 1–34 and 1934b). The comprehensive health examination, essential to biotypology, dovetailed with Marinescu’s constant demand for biological responsibility and the introduction of eugenic legislation to reduce infant mortality and debilitating social and contagious diseases. Therefore, the contribution of eugenics to the improvement of the nation’s health needed to be conveyed to as large an audience as possible, not restricted to physicians and biologists. Acting on this premise, on 7 January 1935, under Marinescu’s leadership, the Royal Romanian Society of Eugenics and the Study of Heredity was established in Bucharest. In a lecture to the Romanian Academy on 20 May 1935, Marinescu explained that the new eugenics society would undertake research into what he termed the ‘normal and pathological heredity’ of the population, especially the study of the ‘superior and normal hereditary personality’ (Marinescu 1936: 84). The Society would suggest social hygienic measures to reduce infant mortality, the spread of venereal diseases and alcoholism. It would promote puériculture, the protection of working mothers and the improvement of sanitary conditions in rural areas. While Marinescu shared this preoccupation with public health and social hygiene with other Romanian eugenicists, he also advocated more aggressive eugenic methods, such as the introduction of prenuptial health certificates and even the ‘sterilization of the degenerate, idiots, imbeciles, the mentally ill, criminals and so on’ (Marinescu 1936: 84). Faithful to his appeal for a broader acceptance of eugenics Marinescu used various opportunities, such as scientific congresses, to popularize his ideas. For instance, on the occasion of the 15th Congress of the Romanian Society for Psychiatry, Psychology and Endocrinology, held in October 1935 in Chişinău, Marinescu gave a public lecture on ‘Eugenics and the Future of the Romanian Nation’. As President of the Romanian Society of Eugenics and the study of Heredity Marinescu also played a crucial role in the formulation of a Latin eugenic discourse during the late 1930s. Together with Nicola Pende and Giacinto Viola (1870–1943), he participated in the Réunion Internationale de Biotypologie (International Meeting of Biotypology), organized in Paris in July 1937 by the French Society of Biotypology. He also took a leading role in the First Congress of Latin Eugenics, which took place in Paris in early August 1937 (Marinescu 1937a: 13–14 and 1937b: 351–68). Marinescu’s last public engagement with genetics and eugenics occurred at the 17th Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology organized in Bucharest between 1 and 8 September 1937. He presented a paper on the influence of hereditary factors on the chromosomal sex determination in Drosophila melanogaster (Marinescu and Stroescu 1939: 575–80). Equally important, during a particularly heated debate on eugenic sterilization, Marinescu reaffirmed his support for voluntary sterilization in the 314

Romania

case of hereditarily transmitted diseases and rejected compulsory sterilization. His vision of national eugenics emphasized individual biological and moral reform as an integral part of a more general transformation of the Romanian society upon the basis of scientific principles. In an article published in 1938, the year of his death, entitled ‘Determinism şi cauzalitate în domeniul biologiei’ (‘Determinism and Causality in Biology’) he asserted that medicine and biology were the two scientific disciplines most suited to promote national health (Marinescu 1938: 215–65). It was this broad interpretation of eugenic improvement, with its emphasis on both the control of heredity and medical reform that represented Marinescu’s main contribution to the development of eugenics in Romania.

315

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Eugenics and Romanianism17 Although ‘know thyself’ was engraved on the Temple of Delphi it seems that man did not learn to know himself. [. . .] The term eugenics means healthy birth. We, scientists, should play the role of the sincere apostle. The scientist who searches for truth without faith is a Pharisee. In our country eugenics has been overdue. [. . .] And yet ‘eugenics’ is the basis, the foundation of the nation. Eugenics is connected with racial hygiene; they are not separate sciences. If we separate them this is so only because of our own deficient knowledge. Galton had established hereditary laws: we inherit half from one parent and half from the other parent. We are not equals and it is natural that this is so. We are destined to be unequal. [. . .] Peasants and Eugenics Our peasants are miserably undernourished, [. . .] living in misery, without culture, [and] without hygiene. The future child should be raised in such a way as to be fully healthy. Life is a great gift of nature, yet the true happiness is to know what to do for your country and your people. Statistics: Dr Manuilă established a mortality rate of 64 per cent in some rural regions of our country. Because of this, our nation loses enormously. Medical assistance in our villages is almost non-­existent; the same with eugenics. [. . .] It is, then, more than necessary that the sanitary condition of our peasants should be the prime concern for all politicians. Our country’s current situation is due not only to international circumstances. Great mistakes I would rather not talk about have been made in our country. [. . .] Circumstances are not the same everywhere: in the Banat, for example, German and Hungarian women have the highest fertility rates. In other parts of the country, it is we who have the highest infant mortality. We do not have a ‘Cult of the Mother and Child’. The Romanian Academy has a prize for virtue and I have proposed a long time ago that this prize should go to a mother with many healthy children. [. . .] In Italy, Mussolini [. . .] established an institute for the ‘Cult of Mother and Child’. Let us create one too. We, the Romanians, do not cherish life, [and] we kill each other in political fights that unleash obstinate passions. Let us control our passion. I, for one, promote the strengthening of eugenics and the onset of a new eugenic mentality. You should know ladies, that a mother with healthy and intelligent children is the happiest woman. I have asked, for a long time now, for the organization of a congress of eugenics and the establishment of a healthy movement for national happiness. Politicians and friends alike have promised that I will have it [the congress]. In our country, however, there is a culture of lying. What do I advocate? Two things: the improvement of the health and of the economic condition of the peasant. I do not know whom I shall address to help free the peasant from darkness. It is necessary to introduce health cards (‘carnet de sănătate’), but to organize it requires knowledge and physicians. By taking care of public health we are, in fact, defending our country. The health card, which should be confidential, is only the 316

Romania

prelude to the introduction of the prenuptial certificate (‘certificatul prenupţial’). The economic question is not within my [area of] expertise, but there will be educated people who know these matters. Here I make an appeal: let us care for the health of the Romanian peasant. Let us be the apostles of eugenics! Translation by Răzvan Pârâianu

On Normal and Pathological Heredity and its Relationship with Eugenics18 History teaches us that the strength of a nation, as that of a family, can ultimately be reduced to heredity. It follows that heredity is of interest not only to biologists but also psychologists, sociologists and historians and it should preoccupy politicians first and foremost. [. . .] From a social and practical point of view, eugenics aims to restrict the reproduction of inferior, sick individuals, carriers of hereditary anomalies, of dysgenic and antisocial individuals, while at the same time it wishes to increase the number of individuals who are superior, physically, intellectually and morally. To achieve these goals eugenics uses [both] coercive and persuasive, educational methods. Coercive methods, as once used by the Spartans, are today: sterilization, marriage restriction laws, prenuptial medical certificate and even isolation. In the European countries, and in the Americas, the consensus, however, is that educational methods are the most useful. This is why knowledge about heredity must be disseminated widely and the youth [must] be aware of the responsibility they have when they get married and the threat represented by the marriage to someone who, in all probability, will have sick offspring. The youth should be guided towards a rational sexual selection, [and] shown the great importance bestowed upon moral and biological principles in contrast to social and economic ones; celibacy must be prevented, particularly in the upper classes; those married with children should be preferred and favoured for public offices; maternal and child assistance should be extended. Eugenic education must be encouraged; [and] sexual education subsumed to a broader scientific pedagogy. This, in general terms, is the eugenic programme promoted in Italy. [. . .] Recently, eugenics has experienced an upsurge: in Italy with Mussolini’s encouragement, in Germany, influenced by Hitler’s ideas, under the guise of racism, which, in its practical application, is based on the writings of many German authors who have dealt with the question of race. The main objective is to explain and educate the population about politics and eugenics. To this effect, an [Enlightened] Office of Eugenics and Population Policy was created in Germany, led by Dr [W.] Gross.19 [. . .] Never have the problems of the race been so present in the German public opinion as now. [. . .] The science of race is not just ‘another’ science, a scientific trend; it is not a ‘sport’. In Germany it has a combative nature because, in contrast to the humanitarian goal of the improvement of all human races, it focuses only on the improvement of that race that played an essential role in the formation of the German nation. Race hygiene (‘igiena 317

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

rassei’) should not be confused with eugenics, which concentrates on all nations and races. Eugenics, because [it] does not distinguish between different racial values (‘diferenţe de valori rassiale’), is international [in nature]. [. . .] The Romanian element must maintain its dominant position within the Romanian state, and thus [it needs] more births. [. . .] This problem was discussed recently, together with the urgent need to establish a society for heredity and eugenics and the benefits such [a] society would bring. [. . .] Our appeal has found support among [many] good people, scholars, physicians, politicians and others interested in the fate of our country. The destiny of the nation is bound with its care for demographic growth, health, the enriching of the mind and the cleansing of morals. [. . .] Today, when in all countries in Europe there are strong eugenic movements, it is imperative that we too have a detailed analysis [of the factors] leading to immediate measures which will increase the moral, intellectual and physical strength of the Romanian nation and to avoid its depopulation. [. . .] By organizing the constitutive meeting of the Society of Eugenics and [the Study of] Heredity I felt I articulated the desire to introduce measures to alleviate the sombre future of our nation’s health voiced, publicly or privately, by scientists, politicians, economists, legal scholars, magistrates, biologists and, above all, by physicians. It would be a crime not to react against the danger threatening the Romanian nation and what is missing is not isolated action, carried out by different societies, but their coordination and collaboration; in a word, solidarity. [. . .] The aim of the Society is to study the laws of normal and pathological heredity and to contribute with research to the popularization of the science of heredity, taking into account also the heredity of the normal and superior personality. Thus, [the Society] will study, with [the help of] statistics, hereditary diseases. It will coordinate genetic-­medical examinations in order to discover the totality of the hereditary traits of the population (genotype) and to detect its visible traits (phenotype). It will examine social and individual actions relating to heredity and eugenics and propose accurate solutions. Most importantly, [the Society] will consider the greatest problem, which is the attenuation of the disastrous infant mortality, and then propose prophylaxis measures to increase the population as soon as possible, according to the needs of our country. It will propose social, economic and biological solutions for the hereditary improvement of the Romanian nation (‘perfecţionarea heredităţii poporului român’) and to prevent [the spread of] social diseases in villages, including syphilis, tuberculosis, alcoholism and pellagra. The study of immigration to our country in the last centuries will be given special attention. The situation of the Romanians in Bukovina and Bessarabia [. . .] as well as in Transylvania, the Banat, Crişana and Maramureş [. . .] will be considered, together with the methods used to de-­nationalize the Romanian element. Also, the Society will provide the most rational solutions to bring back the Romanians left in the successor states. To achieve its programme the Society will employ the following methods: Special protection of the normal woman and the woman with superior qualities, before and during pregnancy, as well as after the birth of the child. Protection of the 318

Romania

child during infancy, childhood and adolescence, until the age of eighteen. Economic and health protection of the adult with normal and superior heredity, so that she/he could have many children. [. . .] Prevention against social diseases, especially in the village, in view of marriage and in pregnant women. Assessment of schools, the church, the army and the administration according to biological principles [. . .] The clarification of woman’s position within the nation’s cultural, economic and biological structure. Thus, the Society of Eugenics will endeavour to take women out of workshops, public and private services and provide work for them at home. Women will stay at home until they are 40–45 years old; after this age, the intellectual and especially the superior woman can be elected to Parliament and any public office that fits her character; the simple woman could get a job outside the house. Mothers will be given the right to vote in parliamentary elections, with a vote for each normal child. [. . .] A tax for bachelors and childless married individuals or with few children will be introduced. [. . .] It is desired that a league for parents with many children, who should obtain the best-­paid jobs, is also created. [. . .] [The Society] will propose the [introduction of] a sterilization law for the degenerate, idiots, imbeciles, feeble-­minded, criminals, and so on. [. . .] It will require the adoption of the health card and of the prenuptial certificate. It will foster a eugenic mentality through the institution of eugenic courses for public servants, physicians, teachers, officers, and so on [. . .] Only through the collaboration of all national forces will the Society of Eugenics and [the Study of] Heredity succeed. Every Romanian loving his country has the duty to contribute to the goals put forward by the Society [. . .] If previous attempts, such as those of Prof. Iuliu Moldovan, the appeal made by the former Prime Minister Al. Vaida-Voevod20 and by many other important physicians, did not achieve much [it] was due to the lack of organization and a common work plan. This is exactly what the Society of Eugenics and [the Study of] Heredity aims to achieve. [. . .] It is regrettable that even those institutions whose aim is the improvement of the Romanian nation do not collaborate closely, namely the big thing called solidarity [is missing]. I am, however, convinced that as eugenics is the foremost problem of our nation, educated people, as the good Romanians they are, will offer their support and hopefully soon we will have a [national] congress of eugenics to discuss the main issues, such as the introduction of the health card and the prenuptial certificate and all the urgent measures needed for the improvement of the economic situation of the [Romanian] peasant. Translation by Marius Turda

319

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Sabin Manuilă

(1894, Sâmbăteni–1964, New York)

Sabin Manuilă was born in 1894 in the village of Sâmbăteni (Hung.: Szabadhely), in western Transylvania, at the time in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a priest. He began his high school education (gymnasium) in Arad and completed it in Braşov (Ger.: Kronstadt; Hung.: Brassó) in 1912. He then studied medicine in Budapest, graduating in 1918 (Egyetemi Quaestura 1918, no. 159). During World War I, he served as a physician in the Austro-Hungarian army. Between 1919 and 1924, Manuilă was one of Iuliu Moldovan’s collaborators at the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene (Institutul de Igiena şi Igienă Socială) in Cluj. In 1921, he completed his first research project, a comparison between epidemics in Transylvania and those in other Romanian provinces (Babeş 1924). During this period Manuilă also became interested in serology and anthropology. Together with Gheorghe Popovici (1895–1946), a professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Cluj, Manuilă was one of the first Romanian physicians to popularize Ludwig Hirszfeld’s theory on the ‘biological index of race’ and its application to the study of Romania’s ethnic groups (Popovici 1924: 224–34; Manuilă and Popovici 1924: 542–3). Based on the special properties of blood groups, Manuilă attempted to identify the biological relationship between individuals of the same and different ethnic groups and thus demonstrate the preservation of hereditary characteristics over time (Manuilă 1924a: 694–8 and 1924b: 1071–3). Also in 1924, he published his first article on eugenics, a short commentary on American sterilization laws (Manuilă 1924c: 484). In 1925, at Moldovan’s recommendation, Manuilă received a Rockefeller fellowship, which enabled him to spend one year at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore (USA). Here, Manuilă specialized in biometry and biomedical statistics, but did not abandon his earlier interest in serology. In 1926, at the National Congress of Immunology, Albany, NY, together with biometrician Lowell J. Reed (1866–1966), he presented a paper on the racial blood index, showcasing his research on 4,469 individuals from different ethnic groups in Romania (Reed and Manuilă 1940: 155–65). Upon his return to Romania, Manuilă relocated to Bucharest, having been offered the position of Director General in the Ministry of Work, Health and Social Assistance (Ministerul Muncii, Sănătăţii şi Ocrotirii Sociale) in 1927. He remained, however, affiliated to the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene in Cluj, both teaching and researching there, as illustrated by the lengthy study of urban demography and ethnic minorities in Transylvania he published in 1929 (Manuilă 1929: 91–212). Some of the eugenic themes that informed Manuilă’s programme of Romanian population policy including: the rejection of neo-Malthusianism, the protection of ‘racial instinct’ (‘instinctul de rassă’), differential fertility among the ethnic groups and the racial 320

Romania

importance afforded to the urban population were first outlined here. This study also highlighted Manuilă’s growing expertise in statistical demography, a field that would occupy a central place in his scientific and public career. In Bucharest, like many other social scientists at the time, Manuilă became a collaborator of Dimitrie Gusti, Director of the Romanian Social Institute (Institutul Social Român) and contributed to some of Gusti’s sociological campaigns in villages across Romania during the 1930s. Direct contact with Romanian villages translated into a number of studies of sanitary and health reform (Manuilă 1927: 4–5; 1937: 87–90; 1940c: 145–170), as well as ethnicity and ethnography (Manuilă 1940a: 239–97 and 1940b) in rural communities. By bringing together medicine, demography, eugenics and anthropology, Manuilă aspired to formulate a science of population that could provide solutions not only to the decline of fertility rates, for instance, but equally important to issues, such as internal colonization, migration and transfers of population (Manuilă 1934a: 55–82). The collaboration with Gusti also proved beneficial for Manuilă’s new career as a statistician. When the Commission for the Population Census (Comisia pentru recensământul populaţiei) was established in 1930 with Gusti as President, Manuilă was appointed director. In this position he supervised the completion of the first modern census in Romania, an impressive collective work intended to count and categorize the entire population, according to language, ethnicity, religion, gender and profession (Manuilă 1938–40, 10 vols.). The thoroughness with which Manuilă performed his task brought him national and international recognition. For example, in September 1931 he participated in the International Congress on the Study of Population (Congresso Internazionale per gli Studi sulla Popolazione) in Rome (Manuilă 1934b: 103–9) and in 1935 in the International Congress on Population Science in Berlin (Manuilă 1936c: 399–403). In 1937, following his participation in the International Studies Conference held in Paris under the auspices of the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation, Manuilă proposed to the Rockefeller Foundation a comparative study of population problems in South-Eastern Europe (including the Soviet Union). His proposal was received favourably and Manuilă obtained the funds (Romanian Project for Demographic Studies 1937). As a testimony to his growing scientific prestige, when the Institute of Central Statistics (Institutul Central de Statistică) was officially created in Bucharest in March 1934, Manuilă became its director. By the mid1930s, Manuilă was one of Romania’s most influential social scientists and arguably its leading statistician. In 1938 he became a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy. In parallel to his statistical work, Manuilă devoted considerable attention to the institutionalization of eugenics in Romania. When the Romanian Royal Society of Eugenics and Heredity was founded in Bucharest in January 1935, Manuilă was elected one of the Vice-Presidents (Manuilă 1936b: 31–2). Two months later, in March 1935, the Romanian Social Institute launched its own Demographic, Anthropological and Eugenics Department with Manuilă as President. In this capacity, Manuilă represented Romania in the Latin International Federation of Eugenic Societies. 321

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

For Manuilă, eugenics served an intermediary position between population policy and public health. He initially followed Moldovan’s interpretation of national eugenics and refrained from insisting too much on racial protectionism (‘Problema raselor’, Interview with Realitatea Ilustrată, 1934, Fond S. Manuilă). By the late 1930s, however, he began promoting an interventionist eugenic programme (Manuilă 1938: 219–38), which eventually turned into an explicit support of negative eugenics, particularly with respect to the Jews and the Roma. In two articles published in 1940, Manuilă accused both Jews and Roma of existing outside of, and in opposition to, the Romanian national body (Manuilă 1940d: 3 and 1940e: 5). ‘The goal of our population policy’, Manuilă noted, ‘should be the gathering in one place of all Romanians and the elimination from our body of all minorities manifesting centrifugal tendencies’. Manuilă based his biopolitical programme on ‘racial commandments’, including pro-­natalism; ‘the programmatic solution to the Jewish question’; ‘efficient solutions to combat the danger of Gypsy racial influence’; and finally practical eugenic measures, such as sterilization of those considered dysgenic. As Romania did not have a proper institution dedicated to racial policy, Manuilă suggested the creation of a ‘Superior Council for the Protection of Race’ (‘Consiliul Superior al Ocrotirii Rassei)’, which would address racial issues scientifically, and in accordance with the political governance of the new regime (Manuilă 1940d: 3). Like other eugenicists in Romania and elsewhere in East-Central Europe during World War II (Manuilă 1940e: 1), Manuilă adopted and championed principles of ethnic re-­engineering and social segregation, while at the same time revealing widely shared anti-Semitic and anti-Roma attitudes. He declared the Jews ‘the most important social problem, the most sensitive political problem and the most serious economic problem of Romania’, however, they did not constitute ‘a racial problem because racial mixing between Romanians and Jews is very rare. The Roma, on the other hand, represented ‘Romania’s most important, sensitive and serious racial problem’ (Manuilă 1940f: 5). Not surprisingly, perhaps, in an article published in 1941, Manuilă defined eugenics as an essential instrument of the population policy promoted by the Romanian state under Marshal Ion Antonescu (1940–4). As such, he recommended the introduction of negative eugenic measures: ‘Reducing [the number of] dysgenics, the undesirables, should be pushed forward until their complete sterilization’ (Manuilă 1941a: 2). Following the territorial losses of 1940 (northern Transylvania to Hungary, northern Bukovina and Bessarabia to the Soviet Union and southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria, respectively) the obsession with ethnic boundaries became a pressing concern in Romania (Manuilă 1941b: 603–13 and 1945). No ideal agreement could be worked out for the deeply contested borders between Romania and her neighbours but the solution proposed by Manuilă and agreed by Antonescu was the transfer of population and thus the creation of an ethnically homogeneous Romania (Manuilă 1941c; 1942a: 198–202). By the end of 1941, Romania had re-­taken possession of northern Bukovina and Bessarabia and incorporated Transnistria. A new vision of the Romanian state was required, both in terms of the resulting demographic changes (Recensământul general al României din 1941) and in terms of the general preoccupation with the nation’s racial 322

Romania

health. Manuilă played an important role in defining not only Romania’s population policy at the time (Manuilă 1942b: 7–16) but also its official eugenic rhetoric. He was involved, for instance, in the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Biological Capital of the Nation, established in September 1943, which functioned as a consultative committee for the Presidency of Council of Ministers (Preşedinţia Consiliului de Miniştri). Manuilă remained Director of the Central Institute of Statistics until 1947. In 1948, he left Romania and settled in New York. In the USA, he played an important role in the organization of the Romanian diaspora at the onset of the Cold War. During the 1950s and early 1960s, Manuilă remained active in various international organizations, including the International Institute of Sociology. Manuilă led the Institute’s Committee for the Study of Sociological Consequences of Displacements of Populations, whose work he presented at the XXth International Congress of Sociology held in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1963. Manuilă died in New York in 1964.

323

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Romania’s Racial Problem21 Scientific truth is above human opinion. It cannot be hidden and covered for long by the noise of tendentious propaganda. This firm conviction justifies my desire to present to the public a few scientific truths about our racial problems. The first statement is about the importance of a given race, which cannot be measured by the number of its members only but mostly in terms of the influence that the particular racial group has on the life of the entire community or the country. A number does not have social or political value. The real value of a population is given by its qualities. Mussolini’s dictum, ‘strength in numbers’, has a particular relevance with respect to one nation’s evolution and growth, because qualitative improvement will certainly follow at some point, while nations which dwindle numerically are destined to disappear. In reality, however, the [biological] quality of a population or ethnic group is more important than its [numerical] quantity. It must, then, be explained that the racial qualities of an ethnic group are determined by the parents’ inherited characteristics. The laws of heredity thus condition racial structure and they apply to each individual as long as he procreates. The racial (hereditary) value of the individual is nil if he/she has no children. It amounts to 0.5 per cent if he/she has one child and to 1.0 per cent if he has two children. The more children one has the more his/her genetic, meaning racial, importance is worth. It follows from this that prolific individuals will ultimately determine the future racial structure of the nation. If one wants to study the future racial structure of the Romanians [they] should not go to the Banat and study their anthropology and psychology but should go to Moldova and Dobrudja, provinces which in the future will supply the masses of Romanians. This observation has a particular significance for the study of racial problems. Among these problems in Romania, two in particular are most important: the Jewish problem and the Gypsies (Ţiganii). The Jews are racially isolated and rarely mix with other people. Their fertility is the lowest among Romania’s ethnic minorities, but their standard of life is the highest. Based on these considerations, the Jewish problem can be defined as the most important social problem, the most sensitive political problem and the most serious economic problem of Romania. The Jews are not a racial problem because racial mixing between Romanians and Jews is very rare. According to Mr M Sturdza,22 our Minister of Foreign Affairs, in an interview to [newspaper] Adevărul, from 5 November, ‘Romanian blood has not mixed with that of Israel’. The Gypsies constitute a rather numerous ethnic group in Romania. Their exact number is not known, because of the assimilation of a great number of sedentary Gypsies. They have no social value. On the contrary, based on what we know from expert studies we can assert that the Gypsy ethnic group is the most inferior, socially, and especially, morally. The cause of this should not be looked for in their anatomical structure but in their intellectual one, which is below mediocre and particularly in their unstable character. They are experts in some physical professions, which require a fine use of fingers. They control, in exclusivity almost, the use of musical instruments. 324

Romania

Gypsies are emotional, temperamental, irrational and thus incapable of sustained effort. The Gypsy problem is Romania’s most important, sensitive and serious racial problem. [. . .] The Gypsy anthropological type must be defined as undesirable and should not [be allowed to] influence our racial structure. In this respect, the situation is most serious. In the lowest strata of the population, at the peripheries of villages and cities [across Romania], ethnic differences are blurred and promiscuity is blossoming. Those who live at the periphery are the most prolific and reproduce more than they can afford. They multiply without any moral restriction. They do not avoid racial mixing and do not limit the number of children. The outcome is catastrophic. A new bastard type, the GypsoRomanian, has appeared, who abandons the life at the periphery, moving towards the centre of villages and cities and then slowly upward into the upper social classes. Nowadays, all social classes [in Romania] are permeated by offspring of GypsyRomanian mixture, whose dowry to our social life is not only the moral life of their Gypsy parents but also their unbalanced race. One can thus explain not only the appearance of the Gypsy anthropological type, which can be seen more and more in Romanian society and which can be recognized immediately, but also the difference between this verbose and noisy, superficial and emotional type and our DacianRomanian type, which is sombre, rationalist, scrupulous and resolute. There is no field of activity [in Romania] left untouched by the Gypsy racial element (elementul rassial ţigănesc). It is true that officially they are assimilated but from a racial point of view they preserve all of their hereditary characteristics. [. . .] These facts oblige us to consider the Gypsy problem as Romania’s most important racial problem. [. . .] It is true that there are other ethnic problems [in Romania], some of high priority due to international politics. But these problems should not obfuscate our major problem with the continuous and unwanted mixing between Gypsies and Romanians, a mixture which degrades the Romanian race. The mixing of Gypsy and Romanian blood is the most dysgenic factor affecting our race. Translation by Marius Turda

Eugenics as an Agent of Population Policy23 Eugenics is a relatively new chapter of population policy. If this science does not yet have sufficient authority and does not yet enjoy a general recognition of its practical application this is due primarily to the insufficient practical knowledge of hereditary biology. We admit that the science itself has numerous aspects of which there is no consensus among the scientists. In social sciences as well as in political science or in philosophy, representatives of various currents of thoughts rarely reach an agreement. A famous American biologist has rightly pointed out that philosophy professors can never agree on anything. There are, however, some problems on which it is necessary to reach an agreement. The upper classes have a very low birth-­rate. Even some middle-­class elements of the 325

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

peasantry are irremediably affected by this infirmity. At the same time, those who are socially dependent and the dysgenic elements have high fertility rates. As a result, [in] population growth the proportion of those superior is diminishing while the number of those inferior is growing. One of the immediate eugenic measures should be the encouragement of the birth-­ rate growth of superior elements by all means and the discouragement or even suppression of the natural growth of those dysgenic elements. This cannot be done in an epoch dominated by a misunderstood humanism whereby individual rights take precedence over collective rights. In our historic times, our concern with the growth, perfection and blossoming of the race should be above all others. Measures should be forceful and immediate. Reducing [the number of] dysgenics, the undesirables, should be pushed forward until their complete sterilization. At the same time, the valuable elements should be convinced that having children is not a burden for their success in life. A concerned nation will not allow its healthy and valuable elements to avoid [performing] their most holy duty to guarantee the future and the life of the nation. The personal contribution of the individual to the country’s progress, no matter how valuable, is secondary, when compared to the contribution to the nation’s progress through the breeding of healthy and well-­balanced offspring. Social values can be created by foreigners and [ethnic] minorities too. National values, however, can only be created by those [who are] racially Romanian (Românii de sânge). The regeneration or [conversely] the degeneration of the Romanian nation depends on their biological progress. We should emphasize repeatedly the disastrous effects produced by the migration of the superior elements from villages and cities on the preservation of our country’s biological qualities. It is known that the urban population does not rise; on the contrary it vanishes in three or four generations. Yet, the cities are continuously growing and this is due to the migration of peasants from villages to cities. Urban intellectuals are quickly vanishing. Their extinction is due to childless marriages or celibacy. Their place is [then] taken by the children of the peasants who are sent to school. This is to say, by the children of the upper peasantry with intellectual aptitudes, the children of superior value from the villages. Each generation has an important number of valuable children who leave their villages and go to school in the cities. However, we should take into account the fundamental laws of human biology. They show that throughout time the population was divided into three distinct groups. The first one is constituted by a very small percentage of superior elements, the second one by the bulk of the average people and, last, the third one by a relatively small percentage of defective or inferior [beings]. If cities are always pumping out the valuable elements of the rural reservoir of population, this reservoir risks depletion. The outcome of this social extraction of superior elements from rural areas is the continuous shrinking of the rural elite, and with it the biological quality of the Romanian peasantry. We cannot find another remedy than to prevent the disappearance of urban intellectuals. Celibacy should be energetically and mercilessly combated as well as 326

Romania

childless marriages. The state, which has the task of supervising the optimal conditions of development for the nation, should not be influenced by the mirage of respecting the rights of individuals. Those who are childless should be discouraged, taking into account the need to protect those who fulfil their high biological duty of perpetuating the life torch of our Romanian community. If there is a need for social levelling, then this is needed without any doubt or delay in the state assistance of those intellectuals with numerous children. This assistance should be acquired from the contribution of those intellectuals without children. All intellectuals, regardless of their marital status, should support all children of [all] intellectuals, children who are the responsibility not only of their parents, who thus risk a life full of worries and shortages, only because they chose to assume a responsibility others decided to avoid. This state problem might be solved within the limits of the current budget, preserving the level of salaries but redistributing them according to a eugenic norm, such as: the salary of an unmarried person would count for three points, a wife for a point and each child for a point as well. A family with two children, then, will have an income of 100 per cent bigger than the single person from the same social class. One with 5 children will have an income of 200 per cent bigger. This reform would not cause budgetary problems but instead would oblige those with fewer responsibilities to contribute to the support of those with more responsibilities. Salary redistribution would be done among employees of the same grade. Thus, the natural hierarchy between people of different quality, different jobs and from different professions will be preserved. It is not the place here to discuss all the problems relating to the Romanian nation’s biology and the state measures needed to guarantee offspring of superior quality. One thing, however, should be highlighted. Racist policy (politica rassistă) is not hidden [but is] to be implemented by government ministries. Racist politics is the policy of the masses, masses that must be persuaded of the racial commandments of the nation and who must have as a holy ideal the biological prosperity of the population. Racial consciousness should be based on knowledge, and knowledge should precede any human action. Based on this fundamental truth, we reach the logical conclusion that the country’s intellectuals should be familiar with the principal laws of human heredity and eugenics. Thus, they will become more caring not only of their own families, but more appreciative as well of the racial problems of the nation which they should naturally lead. To accomplish this practical goal, we should establish scientific institutions for population research and introduce in the curricula of all universities and departments the compulsory study of problems regarding the nation: ethnology, demography, eugenics and biopolitics. Translation by Răzvan Pârâianu

327

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Iordache Făcăoaru

(1897, Străoane-­de-Sus–1984, Bucharest?)

Iordache Făcăoaru was born in 1897 in Străoane-­de-Sus, a village in the Vrancea region in eastern Romania. He finished his primary education in 1909, but due to financial difficulties he did not continue immediately with his studies, working instead as an apprentice in a bookstore in the town of Panciu. It was only in 1913 that he enrolled at the ‘Unirea’ Lyceum in Focşani, graduating in 1920. During World War I, he volunteered for the Romanian army in 1916 and participated in the Second Battle of Oituz in August 1917. He was discharged as a sub-­lieutenant in 1919 (Făcăoaru 1975, Mss.). Between 1920 and 1924 Făcăoaru studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest. In 1925, after a short period as a substitute teacher in Covasna (Hung.: Kovászna), he returned to Bucharest, having been appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Military School ‘Mănăstirea Dealu’. Also in 1925 Făcăoaru gave his first public conference on ‘eugenic marriage’ in the town of Târgovişte. Between 1927 and 1928 Făcăoaru was Professor at the high school (Şcoală Normală) in Focşani, a town in southern Moldavia (Fond Iordache Făcăoaru). On Iuliu Moldovan’s recommendation, with whom he had been in contact and correspondence since 1924, Făcăoaru was able to pursue his research interest in ‘eugenics, heredity and bioanthropology’ in Germany. In 1929 he enrolled at the University of Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität) to study philosophy and medicine (Fond Iordache Făcăoaru). He studied anthropology with Theodor Mollison (1874–1952), pedagogy and social selection with Aloys Fischer (1880–1937), as well as eugenics and genetics with Fritz Lenz. In 1931, he received his doctorate in philosophy, specializing in pedagogy, anthropology and racial hygiene (Studentenkartei Făcăoaru). His dissertation was published in Cluj in 1933 under the slightly changed title Soziale Auslese: Ihre biologischen und psychologischen Grundlagen (Social Selection: Its Biological and Psychological Foundations) (Făcăoaru 1933). In 1932, Făcăoaru became an assistant at the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene in Cluj and a member of the Sub-­section on Eugenics and Biopolitics (Făcăoaru, Cazier). In 1933, together with anatomist Victor C. Papillian (1888–1956) and ethnographer Romulus Vuia (1887–1963), Făcăoaru established the Romanian Society of Anthropology (Societatea Română de Antropologie) in Cluj, whose Secretary he remained until 1940 (Darea de seamă, 1933–1939). At the request of this society, in 1934, Făcăoaru published a textbook for students, outlining the main anthropological theories and methods and their importance for scientific knowledge about the nation (Făcăoaru 1934a). According to Făcăoaru, Romanian national politics required committed racial anthropology (Făcăoaru 1937e: 248–50; 1938c: 149–64; 1938d: 352– 65; 1939a: 26–39; 1940a and 1940c: 79–97). Closely connected to racial anthropology, was Făcăoaru’s research on eugenics and genetics (Făcăoaru 1936g: 9–11 and 1937d; Făcăoaru and Comşia 1937: 75–82). He 328

Romania

was consistent in his support of hereditarian, Mendelian eugenics, which he deemed as the most efficient theory of social and biological improvement (Făcăoaru 1934c: 155–8). He acknowledged the importance of ‘curative and preventive medicine, demography, as well as the hygiene of the individual and the social education of the nation’, as promoted by other Romanian eugenicists, but did not recognize that these disciplines fell within the purview of eugenics (Făcăoaru 1936c: 131). Făcăoaru began publishing extensively on eugenics after 1933, and was a keen supporter of negative measures such as sterilization (Făcăoaru 1934b: 268–70). Not surprisingly, he praised the Nazi Sterilization Law of 1933, for ‘assuring the priority of the family and the ethnic community over the individual’ (Făcăoaru 1934d: 235). Făcăoaru also popularized his views among the students in medicine who took his course on eugenics at the Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene in Cluj, between 1932 and 1940. In the textbook used in the course, he argued, for instance, that compulsory sterilization was ‘one of the best methods to prevent the increase of degenerates of all categories’ (Făcăoaru 1935a: 67). In the following years, Făcăoaru published more articles on racial degeneration, dysgenics and sterilization, declaring at some point that ‘10 per cent of our population should not have children’ (Făcăoaru 1935b: 179–80. See also Făcăoaru 1936f: 214–21). In 1935, Făcăoaru became the Secretary of the Section on Eugenics and Biopolitics and one of the regular contributors to its Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, where he reported often on debates on eugenic developments in other countries, particularly Germany (Făcăoaru 1936a: 49–57; 1936b: 57–9; 1936e: 160–3 and 1937c: 339–54). There was a racist element in Făcăoaru’s interpretation of anthropology (Făcăoaru 1936d; 1937a: 191–209; 1938a: 21–9 and 1938b: 276–87) and eugenics directed particularly the Roma population, which he considered as ‘dysgenic’, ‘asocial’ and ‘criminal’ (Făcăoaru 1937b: 221–7). He thus recommended their complete separation from the Romanians so as to avoid racial mixing and, in some cases, their sterilization. By the late 1930s, Făcăoaru believed that the time had come for the Romanian state to introduce negative eugenic measures. For instance, at the 17th International Congress of Anthropology and Archaeology, held in Bucharest in 1937, he argued for the need to accelerate the application of eugenic ideas of social and biological improvement in Romania. ‘It is the state’, he believed, ‘that should ensure that biological responsibilities and the eugenic ideal are achieved’ (Făcăoaru 1939a: 634). However, like other Romanian eugenicists trained in Cluj, Făcăoaru followed, to some extent, the model of national eugenics and biopolitics advocated by Iuliu Moldovan. This was clearly evidenced in the lengthy historiographic discussion of the work produced by Romanian eugenicists during the period between 1920 and 1936 that Făcăoaru presented at the congress. To this date, it remains the most substantial overview of Romanian publications related to eugenics, heredity and biopolitics (Făcăoaru 1939b: 718–99). In 1939, Făcăoaru became Secretary General of the Institute of Social Sciences (Institutul de Ştiinţe Sociale) in Cluj. In September 1940 Romania was proclaimed a ‘national-­legionary state’ (‘Statul Naţional-Legionar’) and in October 1940 Făcăoaru accepted the position of Director of the Department of Higher Education in the Ministry of National Education. Like other Romanian eugenicists, Făcăoaru saluted the new 329

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

political developments, insisting that ‘the protection of the most precious possession, the biological patrimony, should become a state commandment’. He also argued for the need to regulate marriage and to establish Offices for Pre-Nuptial Consultations (Oficii de consultări prenupţiale) (Făcăoaru 1940b: 1–2). After a brief imprisonment in the summer of 1941 and with Sabin Manuilă’s protection and support, Făcăoaru became Director of the Department of Bioanthropology (Secţia de Bio-­antropologie) within the Central Institute of Statistics, a position he retained until 1948. He was again briefly imprisoned in 1943, without affecting his professional standing and academic position. Thus, when the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Biological Capital of the Nation was established in September 1943 Făcăoaru was one of the members, together with Iuliu Moldovan, Sabin Manuilă, Petru Râmneanţu and Gheorghe Banu. The Commission was to prepare a comprehensive account of the health of the population, to be submitted to Marshal Ion Antonescu together with concrete quantitative and qualitative eugenic proposals (Făcăoaru 1944a: 6–7). Făcăoaru also proposed the creation of an Institute of Ethno-­ Racial Biology (Institut de Biologie Etnorasială) and provided the full description of its activities (Făcăoaru 1944a: 1–7). During the early 1940s, Făcăoaru also belonged to a group of Romanian scientists assigned by the Romanian Social Institute and Central Institute of Statistics with completing social, economic, cultural and racial evaluations of the Romanian population in Bessarabia and Transnistria. According to Făcăoaru, ‘Racial research about our co-­ nationals living outside the borders of the country has both a scientific and biopolitical importance’ (Făcăoaru 1943a: 1). Through this racial research, Făcăoaru hoped to identify those Romanians ‘contaminated with Asian blood’ and to prevent their eventual re-­settlement in Romania. Făcăoaru’s anthropological research in Transnistria served as the basis of one of his most contentious articles dealing with the ‘bio-­racial value’ of the main historical regions constituting Romania (Făcăoaru 1943b: 278–310 and 1944b). Făcăoaru’s argument, in short, was that whatever their racial origins, the various waves of racial mixing Romanian territories had experienced since ancient times had been swept into the dominant autochthonous race. Based on his belief in the existence of superior (Nordic-European) and inferior (Asiatic) races, Făcăoaru envisioned a superior racial type within the Romanian nation, which he then located in Romania’s ‘Western provinces’, namely Bukovina, Crişana, Maramureş, Transylvania and the Banat. In a study published in 1944, Făcăoaru further argued that the superior racial type, which he now called ‘the Carpathian race’, was the archetypal model of the autochthonous Romanian race. It was, he argued, ‘the most beautiful and biologically endowed’ of all races (Făcăoaru 1944b: 7). As Făcăoaru confessed, his naming the autochthonous Romanian race ‘Carpathian’ also had ‘a nationalist-­sentimental reason: the name shows reverence to our mountains, which are joined with the body of the nation. For millennia, these mountains were the cradle of Romanianism’ (Făcăoaru 1944b: 7). After 1948, Făcăoaru barely survived the change of political regime and was completely excluded from public and scientific life in Romania (Fond Iordache 330

Romania

Făcăoaru). During the 1950s, he scraped a living by raising goats and selling their milk. His situation improved in the 1960s, when he began offering tuition in German and English and doing translations. Interestingly, although he had married a German from Munich, Făcăoaru did not emigrate. During the early 1970s, he was subtly accepted by the Romanian Academy’s Centre for Anthropological Research (Centrul de Cercetări Antropologic), at the time led by Olga Necrasov (1910–2000). In 1973, the Centre published a book on anthropology for internal use, which also included Făcăoaru’s history of the Society of Anthropology of Cluj (Făcăoaru 1973: 93–164). In 1975, both as vindication of his unfairly marginalized scientific career and an ultimate homage to eugenics, he completed the genealogy and history of his family, which he donated to the Romanian Academy. Făcăoaru died in 1984.

331

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Breeding of Dysgenics and their Cost for Society and State24 The state is threatened today by a danger unknown in the past: the breeding of individuals with a defective heredity. This situation, in turn, leads to the progressive degeneration of the ethnic body (corpul etnic) and the rise in costs for the care of dysgenics. The healthy part of the nation must make big sacrifices every year to provide assistance for an army of [those who are] hereditarily defective, an army greater than the standing armies. [. . .] As unfortunately we do not have statistical data about the exact number of dysgenics in our country we cannot estimate the costs. We can only discuss those categories [of dysgenics] for which we have data. For the Western European countries the number of dysgenics varies according to the same pattern. We can surmise that our numbers are not too dissimilar. One thing is probably certain: even if we assume that certain categories of dysgenics such as lunatics, are less represented in our country, others, such as criminals, mentally ill, paupers, the feeble-­minded, prostitutes [and] alcoholics are more numerous than in developed countries. We can say that 10 per cent of our population should not have children. [. . .] Not without importance is the group of dysgenics composed of drug addicts, dependents, beggars, vagabonds, lazy people and so one. They add to the parasitic side of our ethnic body, affecting its mental and physical strength through legitimate and illegitimate mixing with individuals of better biological quality [. . .] Individuals inferior due to their ethnic origin constitute a very important chapter of national biology (biologie naţională), which needs to be discussed when the data is completed. We do not want to engage here in a theory of race. We just want to mention some data provided by Dr Manuilă, Director of the Central Institute of Statistics [. . .] regarding two groups of citizens: Gypsies and Tartars. [. . .] Based on the statistical material collected from some provinces, the number of Gypsies in our country is at least 400,000 [and] only a minority of whom can be considered useful to the community. These are settled [Gypsies], and those working in agriculture, craftsmen, musicians and itinerant sellers. The rest of them, whether [living] in colonies or as nomads, represents a foreign body, parasitic and harmful [. . .] The Tartars in Dobrudja, although at a higher level than the Gypsies, constitute a group that it is desired to be kept isolated from other groups and especially the Romanians. [Like the Gypsies] they have the same features that reveal their inferior, Asiatic origin: they live in small houses, most of them in mud houses, [they are] poor, lazy, dirty and idle. The contribution they make as citizens is not above that of the Gypsies. To recapitulate: 1. Dysgenic individuals in European countries breed faster than the rest of the population. 2. On one hand, their breeding brings down the ethno-­biological level, on the other it increases the financial burden imposed on the healthy part of the nation. 3. For our country, the number of dysgenics is not too different than that of other European countries, we must add the number of individuals of non-European, inferior origin, including, among others, Gypsies and Tartars. Translation by Marius Turda 332

Romania

Racial and Ethnic Mixing in Romania25 In the past, the Romanian state concentrated solely on the political regulation of its relations with the ethnic minorities. At best! Essential to biopolitics, however, is the biological relationship among our ethnic minorities and especially between minorities and [the ethnic] majority. We are one of those countries with a high number of foreign peoples. The Romanian state has the following dilemma: it adopts either the principle of uncontrolled ethnic promiscuity or the principle of isolation and ethnic purity (puritatea etnică). There is no other alternative. In the past, countries not only had accepted the assimilation of minorities, but also tried to organize and encourage it. History speaks abundantly of the imperialism of those countries eager to assimilate other peoples. Less known are the attempts to assimilate non-European peoples. For the assimilation of Arabs and Jews we recall the drastic edicts introduced by Inquisitorial Spain. Napoleon was convinced of the possibility and necessity of Jewish assimilation and pursued this political programme with tenacity. [. . .] Maria Theresa had very much wanted to transform all Gypsies in the empire into Hungarians. She forbade the name ‘Gypsy’, forcing them to call themselves ‘Új-Magyars’ (‘New Hungarians’) and to adopt another lifestyle and clothing. In some regions, the children were taken from them and given to [Hungarian] peasants [. . .] Such methods are not used any longer but the predisposition lingers on. In the past the state had wanted to remove the minorities in some ways. As the solution could not be their extermination, as in the medieval and ancient times, or their expulsion, the only option left was their political, ethnic and religious assimilation, either en masse and through violent means, or gradually through marriage. Racial and ethnic biological data obliges us to abandon this option [assimilation]. There is growing acceptance of the idea that the assimilation of minorities, without exception, even if it were possible, has its disadvantages. We are in a period of transition: the old conception [of assimilation] has not completely disappeared, while the new one [of ethnic purity] is only just emerged. Hence a certain incoherence and contradiction [and] irrespective of its chances of success, some are for assimilation others for ethnic purity. The contraction is even more obvious when the same person wants both the assimilation of minorities and ethnic purity. [. . .] In the past, the principle of assimilation or the toleration of ethnic mixing could appear to be justified. The concept of race did not exist or, if it existed, was without [clear] meaning. Not until the founding of genetics as science could race have any substantial meaning. Linnaeus, the naturalist,26 for example, did not use the notion of race but of species. Buffon27 spoke of race but did not assign it any particular importance. For him, racial differences were caused by the climate: the white man in Europe, the black in Africa, the yellow in Asia and the red in North America are the same, only their colour, generated by the climate, is different. For Topinard,28 race was just an abstraction. Natural scientists did not understand what Kant29 was able to: he was the first to give the term race a meaning exclusively anthropologic. [. . .] Finally, Blumenbach,30 the founder of anthropology, demonstrated how race acquired new characteristics and then passed [them] down by heredity. [. . .] 333

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

In our country we have minorities who constitute a serious bioethnic threat (primejduirea bioetnică). The nature and the extent of restrictive measures regarding the ethnic mixing depends on the socio-­anthropological situation of our unwanted minorities. Some preliminary remarks include: 1. Which are the ethnic groups having a defective relationship with our nation? 2. What are the reasons not to want co-­existence with these minorities? 3. If mixing with defective ethnic or biological races does occur, what is its frequency? 4. What is the biological level of mixed people in comparison to that [of] the maternal ethnic groups or races? 5. What are the villages and regions in Romania affected by the mixing with ethnic groups of non-European origin? 6. What are the essential cultural, economic, social and physical differences between us and those of non-European origin? 7. What is their fertility rate in comparison to ours? 8. What measures are recommended for their biological isolation and eventually gradual elimination from our nation?31 9. Until the solution, based on research, regarding minorities in this category are found, what urgent temporary measures can we introduce to control marriages and their military service? Biopolitics and our Minorities We must consider our demographic reality: roughly there is one foreigner to three Romanians. If we do not have to worry too much about historical minorities the situation with minorities of non-European origin is very different. In the first group we include: Germans, Armenians, Bulgarians, Hungarians and Yugoslavs; in the second: Gypsies, Tartars, Turks, Gagauz, Jews, Russians, Ruthenians and Ukrainians. The inclusion of Russians, Ruthenians and Ukrainians among the non-European ethnic group will certainly surprise many. We believe, however, that due to millenary mixing between the Slavic and the Mongol hordes, these ethnicities are closer to the Asiatic people than European nations. The history of the Russian peoples, as much as their biological structure, confirms my statement. [. . .] According to their biological harm and based on two inter-­related factors, the number of mixed marriages and their quality, ethnic mixing can be divided into three categories. Most marriages with individuals from the unwanted minorities of the most inferior quality form the first category. [. . .] In the case of mixing with inferior races such as Gypsies, the lowering of the biological level is a process with consequences so disastrous that other arguments, social and political, as well as those about the estrangement of the ethnic body, are secondary in importance. 334

Romania

The second category consists of mixed marriages, in the urban and rural environment, with individuals from the historical minorities. In this case, the social and political considerations are of prime importance, and the biological harm is reduced. [. . .] The third category is represented by marriages with foreigners. Most individuals who marry a foreigner are intellectuals or from the upper classes, as these would have intellectual, economic or political contact with foreign countries. The most unfavourable for us are the marriages of our women abroad. In addition to the numerical loss there is a qualitative one, as the biological value of these women is certainly above the general average. Translation by Marius Turda

Eugenic Education through Selective Social Assistance32 Next to social assistance [and] with organizational effort, we could organize the first census of dysgenic individuals in our country, according to two categories: the nature of [inferiority] and its significance. [. . .] The eugenic measures that Marshal [Ion Antonescu] had agreed to introduce [in practice] depends largely on the data provided by this forthcoming census. In the first instance, the Council of Patronage (Consiliul de Patronaj33) could take the lead in this action, while the Institute of Ethnic Biology (Institutul de Biologie Etnică), proposed by the Commission for the Protection of the Biological Capital of the Nation (Comisia pentru apărarea patrimoniului biologic al neamului) would assume the technical organization. [. . .] In short: we require the conversion of social assistance to eugenic norms and the use of this action for a dual objective: social-­educational and eugenic [. . .] It is, therefore, necessary to: 1. Make a categorical distinction between families who deserve social assistance and those who do not, such as dysgenics and Gypsies. [. . .] 2. Classify the families proposed for assistance in 3–5 categories, according to their biological value. [. . .] 4. Initiate this action first in the big cities [. . .], and then extend it, based on experience, into the villages. The proposed method will be one of the most efficient to bridge the gap between social classes and to introduce eugenic commandments simultaneously in the lower and upper social strata and in the youth and adult population. 5. The leading role should belong to the Council of Patronage, while the future Institute of Ethnic Biology, advising the government in all biopolitical problems, should be entrusted with the technical organization (determination of the biological value). Translation by Marius Turda

335

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Petru Râmneanţu

(1896, Gaiu-Mic–1975, Bucharest)

Petru Râmneanţu was born in 1896 in the village of Gaiu-Mic (Sr.: Mali Gaj) in the Banat region of Austria-Hungary. He received his primary education in Stamora Germană (Ger.: Deutsch-Stamora; Hung.: Nemetsztamora), followed by secondary school (Realschule) in the town of Versec (Sr.: Vršac; Rom.: Vârşet) and high-­school in Timişoara (Ger.: Temeschburg; Hung.: Temesvár). During World War I, he became politically active in local nationalist societies, developing a particular affinity for the history and demography of the Romanians in the Banat (after 1918 divided between Hungary, Serbia and Romania), which he explored in his scientific work throughout his life. Râmneanţu studied medicine at the University of Cluj, graduating in 1927. Between 1925 and 1926 he was President of the Society of Medical Students in Cluj, an organization noted for its nationalism. Between 1926 and 1927 Râmneanţu was an assistant at the Institute of Physiology (Institutul de Fiziologie) and then at the Institute of General and Experimental Pathology (Institutul de Patologie Generală şi Experimentală), both at the Faculty of Medicine in Cluj. In 1930, after spending a short period as a physician at the Sanatoriu of Agigea (on the Black Sea coast), he returned to Transylvania and began practising as a physician in the Arad county. Between 1933 and 1937 he was an assistant at the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Cluj, and then became chief physician at the same institution. Between 1932 and 1933 he was a Rockefeller scholar at the Johns Hopkins University, specializing in hygiene, public health and biostatistics (Râmneanţu 1942c: 3–7). He began publishing on demography and bio-anthropology early on in his career. For instance, his first book, published in 1928, dealt with abortion as a cause for depopulation in the Banat (Râmneanţu and Oprea 1928). For Râmneanţu depopulation was the main threat to the demographic future of Romanians in the Banat, a phenomenon with wider effects on the reproductive strategies of the people as well as on their marriage patterns. Fertility remained lowest among the Romanians in the Banat combined with an increased number of mixed marriages, further contributing to the loss of Romanian ethnic identity (Râmneanţu 1937e: 467–9 and 1938c: 317–38). Informing his interest in demography was Râmneanţu’s research on the ethnic minorities in Romania. For instance, in 1935, he published ‘Cercetări asupra originii etnice a populaţiei din sud-­estul Transilvaniei pe baza compoziţiei serologice a sângelui’ (‘Serological Researches about the Ethnic Origin of the Population in the South-East of Transylvania’), for which he received the ‘I. Oroveanu Prize’ of the Romanian Academy (Râmneanţu 1935a: 36–66). The article was one of the most articulated combinations of eugenic theories with nationalism and serology published at the time in Romania. It used the latest anthropological and serological theories to explain the origins of ethnic 336

Romania

groups in Transylvania, for ‘blood [was] the real, perhaps the unique, source which remained untouched by the vicissitudes of time’ (Râmneanţu 1935a: 40). The Szeklers were particularly targeted and Râmneanţu endeavoured to demonstrate that although they were linguistically Hungarian, according to Râmneanţu, serological, biometrical and anthropological measurements proved ‘beyond doubt that the ethnic origin of those named Szeklers is identical to that of the Romanians’ (Râmneanţu 1935a: 56). During the 1930s, Râmneanţu continued to conduct serological research on ethnic groups in Transylvania (Râmneanţu 1935b: 45–59 and 1937d: 143–5), deemed to be not only a scientific prerequisite for an all-­encompassing theory of depopulation in Romania (Râmneanţu 1935c: 108–10; 1936: 1–39), but also the solution to the growing debate on the Romanian racial type and its dominant ethnic position. What racial serology offered, according to Râmneanţu, was the possibility ‘to determine to which nation every population nucleus belong[ed]’. In the current state of politicized debates about Romania’s ethnic minorities, ‘the distribution of the blood groups [gave] a better indication about the extension of an ‘ethnie’ than the language, the culture and the customs (Râmneanţu 1939b: 325). In addition to serology and anthropology, Râmneanţu was receptive to new developments in school hygiene and biotypology. He promoted a more explicitly eugenic agenda when discussing methods to improve a healthy and vigorous national body based on a biotypological theory treating the individual as a whole (Râmneanţu 1937a: 257–61; 1937b: 716–36 and 1937c: 84–8). In this, Râmneanţu followed closely the activities of the Société de Biotypologie (Society of Biotypology), established in 1932 in Paris, with psychiatrist Édouard Toulouse (1865–1947) as President. He also adhered to the Italian Constitutional School represented by Achille de Giovanni (1838–1916), Giacinto Viola and Nicola Pende. If other Romanian eugenicists such as Gheoghe Marinescu approached biotypology through the prism of endocrinology, Râmneanţu interpreted it through statistics and anthropology. As many eugenicists of his generation who worked at the Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Cluj, Râmneanţu adopted Moldovan’s concept of national eugenics to his approach to social and biological improvement, which, similar to Manuilă’s, incorporated statistics and biometry (Râmneanţu 1938a: 172–7). Within the growing field of eugenic studies in Romania, Râmneanţu’s biotypological approach was another attempt to manage the country’s demographic and health requirements. In 1938, Râmneanţu visited and worked as a foreign scholar at Corrado Gini’s Central Institute of Statistics (Istituto Centrale di Statistica), followed in 1940 by a specialization at the School of Statistical, Demographic and Actuarial Sciences (Facoltà di Scienze Statistiche, Demografiche ed Attuariali) and at Nicola Pende’s Institute of Orthogenesis and Racial Improvement (Istituto di Ortogenesi e Bonifica della Stirpe), also in Rome (Râmneanţu 1942c: 8). As a confirmation of his growing reputation as Romania’s leading biotypologist, Râmneanţu participated in the International Congress on Population held in Paris in 1937, where he presented his research on the relationship between biotype and fertility, providing a complete inventory of medical, social and biological causes affecting the 337

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

life of the peasant population in two Romanian villages in the Banat (Râmneanţu 1938b: 14–20). Furthermore, in 1939 Râmneanţu published the widely acclaimed Elemente de biometrie medicală şi statistică vitală (The Basics of Medical Biometry and Vital Statistics), a book awarded by the Romanian Academy. The book served both as an introduction to biometry, particularly useful for hygienists and public health workers, and as a recommendation for the application of biotypology and biostatistics to the study of human population (Râmneanţu 1939a). Biotypological and constitutional theories, alongside evolving endocrinal approaches to health, were then applied to the study of rural populations and school children in Romania (Râmneanţu 1940a: 98–117 and 1940b: 118–26) and ultimately became the basis of Râmneanţu’s formulation of the theory of standard Romanian racial type (Râmneanţu 1942a: 9–36; 1942b: 175–201; 1944a: 30–9 and 1944b: 78–87) and his proposals for the introduction of biological records for the entire population (Râmneanţu 1943e: 1–90). In 1941 Râmneanţu was appointed Chief Physician of the Medico-Sanitary Direction (Direcţia medico-­sanitară) and the Director of the Institute of Medicine (Institutul de Medicină) in Odessa, at the time under Romanian occupation. In this position, he was responsible for the organization of campaigns on anti-­contagious diseases (Râmneanţu 1962). He returned to Bucharest in January 1942 (Râmneanţu 1942c: 7). The major territorial changes of the early 1940s, prompted Râmneanţu to champion a nationalist revival that aimed to assist Romania in those difficult historical times (Râmneanţu 1940c: 29–52 and 1941a: 19–35). As such, he renewed many of the nationalist and demographic ideas he had been putting forward since the 1920s (Râmneanţu 1941b: 40–62 and 1943a: 325–48). He also returned to serology and anthropology, reasserting the Romanians’ historical rights in Transylvania (Râmneanţu 1941c: 137–59 and 1942d: 503–11). A further example of the radicalization of Râmneanţu’s racial research is provided by his research on the Catholic communities in Moldova, known as the Csangos (Rom.: Ceangăi; Hung.: Csángók). In an article published in 1943, Râmneanţu developed a fully articulated racial interpretation of the Csangos, according to the main tenets of Romanian nationalism (Râmneanţu 1943b: 51–65). Based on the 1941 census (a census which considered race to be a category of identification) Râmneanţu divided the Csangos into four categories: 1) Orthodox Romanians speaking Romanian, 2) Catholic Romanians speaking Romanian, 3) Catholic Romanians speaking Hungarian, and finally, 4) Catholic Hungarians speaking Hungarian. All four groups, however, had similar ‘blood groups and genes’ (1943b: 60–3). The ethnic appropriation of the Csangos reached a critical stage in 1944, when Râmneanţu published Die Abstammung der Tschangos (The Origins of the Csangos), arguably the most radical reconstruction of the national past of a minority ethnic group attempted in modern Romania (Râmneanţu 1944c). According to Râmneanţu, he had scientifically proven that the Csangos were racially Romanian. The ethnic engineering proposed in Die Abstammung der Tschangos surpassed previous representations of the relationship between the Romanian majority and ethnic minorities in Romania. As such, the serological theories Râmneanţu advocated were well-­integrated within a nationalist culture that became prevalent after 338

Romania

1940 in Romania: a culture composed of clusters of racial biopolitical ideas and practices, as argued in his inaugural lecture as Professor of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at the University of Cluj-Sibiu (Râmneanţu 1943d: 370–92). After World War II, Râmneanţu returned to Timişoara, where between 1947 and 1951 he was the first director of the newly established ‘V. Babeş’ Institute of Hygiene and Public Health (Institutului de Igienă şi Sănătate Publică Dr. Victor Babeş). As the borders of East-Central Europe were redrawn in 1945, after the war, Transylvania returned to Romania. Contributing to the political propaganda meant to justify these changes, Râmneanţu published on the ethnic vitality of the Romanians in Transylvania (Râmneanţu 1944d: 162–91; 1946a and 1946b). The last collaboration with his former mentor and professor, Iuliu Moldovan, occurred in 1947, when together with Iosif Stoichiţă (1892–1972), they published Tratat de sănătate publică (Handbook of Public Health). Râmneanţu contributed a chapter on ‘Vital Statistics’ (Râmneanţu 1947: 197–322). Following the education reform of 1948 a Faculty of Medicine opened in Timişoara and Râmneanţu was appointed Professor of Hygiene, a position he held until 1958, when he retired and returned to Bucharest. He continued to published into the early 1970s, on various medical and anthropological topics (Râmneanţu 1972a; 1972b: 129–38; 1975: 25–30), recycling his research from the inter-­war period. Râmneanţu died in Bucharest in 1975.

339

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Methodology of Biotypology34 In the last years, a new science has appeared on the horizon: biotypology. According to the statute of the French Society of Biotypology (art. 1), the aim of this science is ‘the scientific study of human typologies through research into various connections between morphological, psychological, physiological, pathological and psychiatric characteristics and the application of thus acquired data in various areas of human activity: eugenics, pathology, psychiatry, pedagogy, professional orientation and selection, the rational organization of work, prophylaxis of crime’. Therefore, biotypology is a science of synthesis and coordination, pursuing an eminently practical goal. It classifies individual traits and, by applying statistical methods, determines whether they match each other, thus forming certain typologies, which are more or less well defined. As a practical application, the new science does not limit itself only to individual guidance but aims to be the most authoritative source for the entire rational organization of society, whether about its current or future biological condition. The concept of biotypology [. . .] In more specialized fields, anthropologists have attempted to define human typologies taking into consideration ethnographical classifications; psychotechnicians35 have determined the necessary individual aptitudes needed in various professions; sports medicine physicians have carried out numerous examinations in order to describe the sportive types; criminologists defined the different biological features of various types of criminals, and so on. [. . .] Looking closely at these methods of differentiation of individuals, we notice that all of them are largely based on morphological characteristics. They are, therefore, one-­sided and have proposed only partial solutions. Researchers have been working independently and almost no one [has] tried to put their own results together with those of others from another research area. Thus, if the individual has never been analysed in its totality, these typologies were never completely and properly differentiated. The difference between these approaches and the doctrine of biotypology is enormous, because biotypology focuses on an individual or groups of individuals only after a synthesis [has been achieved], that took into account all sources provided by differential biometry and all classifications based on data, indices and correlation factors. In order to present the new conception more clearly, we should [also] add that the biotype is not understood as the sum of all characters and functions examined, but as a ‘whole’, that is different from its parts, a ‘unitary and correlated’ whole. The creator of biotypology, N. Pende,36 represents it as a quadrilateral pyramid, which is built as follows: the hereditary patrimony of an individual is the basis, and the four sides are: the morphological aspect, the neuro-­clinical characteristics, the basic emotional traits and the intellectual attributes. Seen from the point of view of the [academic] disciplines mentioned above and through the prism of the Italian [Constitutional] School, it is natural to consider biotypology a brand-­new science. 340

Romania

The methods of biotypology Determining the biotype starts with: 1. The complete constitutional and physiologic study of the subject’s family. This is done in order to know the dominant heredity, both constitutional-­morphological and neuro-­psychic. It continues, then, with 2. The morphologic study of the individual, taking into accounts the following characteristics: a) the complete development of the body, b) the relative proportion between the trunk and the arms, c) The relative proportion between the body’s height and width, d) The relative development of the cardiovascular system, e) The relative development of the muscular system, [. . .] and g) The relative development of the sexual system. 3. The study of the neuro-­chemical contractions is done through: a) the measurement of the basal metabolic rate, b) the measurement of the neurovegetative state, c) the measurement of the endocrine condition, d) determining the functional reactions in terms of force and speed. To identify 4. The main affective traits, the following should be studied: a) fundamental instincts (nutrition, reproduction, the [body’s] immune and defence system), b) affective and moral development; c) sensory development; d) attention; e) perceptive functions, f) memory. Finally, 5. The intelligence would be evaluated through a) general intelligence, b) imagination, c) realist and concrete thinking, d) abstract and logical thinking, e) predisposition to euphoria and depression, f) the measurement of synesthesia, g) the assessment of the strength of character. After these examinations, carried out on subjects similar in terms of their sex, age, ethnic origins, and so on, are completed, what follows is the analysis of the raw data and the application of statistical methods. From a statistical point of view, considering the large number of morphological, physiological, psychological and other characteristics, we need a multidimensional correlation, meaning a correlation with n dimensions. [. . .] The statistical procedure has the following goals: 1. To confirm or infer the existence of a relation, 2. To measure the level of correlation (total, partial, and so on), 3. To find the form of correlation (equations and regression curves), 4. To determine the variability of each correlation and its proper context, 5. To eliminate parasitic influences [. . .]; and 6. To select blended types and so on. We should note that none of the existing biological sciences requires so many and diverse statistical methods as biotypology. However, these methods cannot be applied automatically, but must be selected carefully. Statistics is biotypology’s most needed instrument, without which we cannot begin our work. [. . .] Until the academy or the faculty of ethnology and biopolitics is established, as planned by Prof. Iuliu Moldovan, biotypological research is only possible in our country through the collaboration of various institutions, grouped around the Institute for Hygiene and Public Health that have a significant number of technicians with the necessary field experience. Translation by Răzvan Pârâianu

341

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Biotype and Fertility of Women from the Province of Banat (Romania)37 The province of Banat, situated in the western part of Romania, from 1910 until 1930, had a reduction of the population from 968,947 to 941,521, i.e. a reduction of 2.8 per cent. This alarming situation was the subject of several surveys. Those published by us had the main object to find out the determining causes of this natural decrease, which is present even in the rural areas, in spite of the natural increase which exist[s] in the rest of the country [. . .] In our surveys we arrived at the conclusion, that the means used for the limitation of fertility are coitus interruptus and provocated [sic!] abortions. The primary causes which are influencing the population to limit the number of their children are a wrong mentality and the exaggerated materialism. These causes are favorised [sic!] by the custom which exists in this part of the country, that the conjugal life is started early, before the legal marriage is accomplished. [. . .] During this time the couple usually does not have children, as it is quasi prohibited by their parents, for the reason that the existence of them does not interfere with the definite arrangement of marriage. Naturally this fact leads to many sexual and endocrine disturbances, which later on create childless families. The mortality, in the meantime, is maintained at a high level and is due to the following causes. Primary causes: lack of health education; lack of prenatal care and infant protection, lack of preschool and school health work, lack of early tuberculosis diagnosis, bad nutrition, abortions [and] alcoholism. These causes are leading to the following causes of death: congenital malformations and the diseases of early infancy, tuberculosis of the respiratory tract, pneumonia, heart disease, diarrhoea and enterit[is] under two years of age, cerebral haemorrhage and cancer. The studies concerning the causes of depopulation were completed with biotypological surveys made in two villages (Borlovenii-Vechi and Patas, Jud. Caras). These villages are representative samples for the whole province of Banat. [. . .] The biotype of the population In our study we were conducted by the morphological conception established by G. Viola. We measured the following morphological characters: 1. The height of the stern 2. The transversal diameter of the stern 3. The antero-­posterior diameter of the chest 4. The xipho-­epigastric distance 5. The transversal hypochondriac diameter 6. The antero-­posterior hypochondriac diameter 7. The epigastrico-­pubial distance

342

Romania

8. The bi-­cristo-iliac distance38 9. The length of upper extremity 10. The length of lower extremity 11. The height of the person. With the values of these characters, after determining the deviation grades, based upon the tables of grades made up by us, we classified our material taking into consideration the relation between the value of the trunk – which was obtained by: a, product of the values from points 1 + 2 × 3; b, product of the values from points 4 × 5 × 6; c, product of the values from points 6 × 7 × 8 – and the length of the upper extremity and the length of the lower extremity. [. . .] Conclusions From the above results we may conclude the following: The population studied has a greater frequency in the longitype group than in the brachytype.39 There is an evident correlation between the biotype and fertility, namely the brachytype women are the most fertile ones, than those belonging to other groups. Considering these facts, from the villages surveyed from the whole province of Banat the biotype of women and men is influenced or even determined, both from the physical and psychical standpoint, by the hormonal constellation, and is contributing in a great proportion to reduce fertility.

343

Glossary Avortul eugenic: eugenic abortion Biologie naţională: national biology Biopolitica: biopolitics Capitalul biologic naţional: biological capital of the nation Carnet de sănătate: health cards Certificatul prenupţial: prenuptial certificate Comandamentele rasiale ale neamului: racial commandments of the nation Conştiinţa de rassă: racial consciousness Corpul etnic: ethnic body Diferenţe de valori rassiale: different racial values Elementul rassial ţigănesc: Gypsy racial element Etneugenie: ethno-­eugenics Eugenia rurală: rural eugenics Igiena naţiunii: eugenics Igiena rassei: race hygiene Legatura biologică de sânge: the biological relation of race Oficiul eugenic: eugenic office Principiul naţional biologic: biological national principle Patrimoniul ereditar: hereditary patrimony Perfecţionarea heredităţii poporului român: hereditary improvement of the Romanian nation Politica rassistă: racist policy Primejduire bioetnică: bioethnic threat Puritatea etnică: ethnic purity Românii de sânge: racial Romanians Specific etnic românesc: Romanian ethnic specificity Sterilizarea eugenică: eugenic sterilization Valorarea rassială (ereditară): racial (hereditary) value

Notes 1 It would change the name again in 1943 to ‘Secţia biopolitică’, with Moldovan as President [note MT]. 2 The other Italian promoter of Latin eugenics, statistician Corrado Gini (1884–1965) was made a member of the Romanian Academy in 1938 [note MT]. 3 ASTRA, the acronym for Asociaţia Transilvană pentru Literatura Română şi Cultura Poporului Român (Association for Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People), was the most important Romanian cultural organization in Transylvania, established in 1861 [note MT]. 4 ‘Neam’ has a meaning similar to that of the German ‘Volk’ [note MT]. 5 Moldovan, I. (1925) Igiena naţiunii (Eugenia), Cluj: Institutul de Igienă şi Igienă Socială şi Subsecţia Eugenică şi Biopolitică a ‘ASTREI’ [Excerpts translated from pp. 9; 12; 14–15; 36–7; 42–3 and 69]. 6 Eubiotics (Greek eu = good/healthy, bios = life) is the science of good/healthy living [note MT]. 7 Moldovan, I. (1926), Biopolitica, Cluj: Institutul de Igienă şi Igienă Socială şi Subsecţia Eugenică şi Biopolitică a ‘ASTREI’ [Excerpts translated from pp. 5; 9; 14–19 and 94–5]. 8 Banu, G. (1935c), ‘Eugenie, ereditate, rasă’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 5, 2: 102–107 [Excerpts translated from pp. 102–3 and 105–7]. 9 Banu, G. (1940b), ‘Rural Eugenics’ and ‘General Biology’, in Banu, G. (ed.) Problemele sanitare ale populaţiei rurale din România, Bucharest: Revista de Igienă Socială [Excerpts translated from pp. 1407–8 and 1493–4]. 10 The extensive scientific study of heredity in German and Anglo-Saxon countries has often been mentioned by us, especially in the book The Hygiene of the Race [note GB]. 11 We do not expect our own race studies to be as far advanced as those in other countries, but for the sake of comparison, it is useful to mention the immense contribution some people have made in order to know their own racial contribution. Naturally, Germany should be mentioned in the first place [note GB]. 12 Eugenic studies sometimes of considerable groups of population and even the total population of a province have been undertaken abroad [note GB]. 13 We mention that the vital statistics studies of [F.] Burgdörfer especially meet these purposes as they interpret statistic facts in connection with their aspects of general biology; statistics of population; policy of population, and [the] hygiene of [the] race [note GB]. 14 Banu, G. (1941), ‘Eugenia poporului românesc’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 11: 341–91 [Excerpts translated from pp. 341–5; 370–1 and 391]. 15 Acromegaly is a hormonal disorder that develops when the pituitary gland produces too much growth hormone during adulthood. As a result the bones in the body increase in size. Acromegaly is more common in middle-­aged adults [note MT]. 16 Hemiphlegia is the most severe from form of hemiparesis consisting of the complete paralysis of half of the body. Considered lost, these films were discovered in 1975 in Bucharest [note MT]. 17 Marinescu, G. (1935d), ‘Eugenia şi românismul’, Revista Sănătatea şi Viaţa Fericită, 35: 7–8 [Excerpts from pp. 7–8]. 18 Marinescu, G. (1936), ‘Despre hereditatea normală şi patologică şi raporturile ei cu eugenia’, Academia Română. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 11: 1–85 [Excerpts translated from pp. 1; 46–7; 48; 57; 72–4; 79 and 82–5].

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

19 Led by Walter Gross (1904–45) and affiliated to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), the Office of Population Policy and Racial Welfare (Aufklärungsamt für Bevölkerungspolitik und Rassenpflege) was created in 1933. It was renamed Office of Racial Policy (Rassenpolitisches Amt) in 1934 [note MT]. 20 Alexandru Vaida-Voevod (1872–1950) was Prime Minister of Romania in 1932 and again in 1933. In 1927, he gave a public lecture in Cluj, organized by the Sub-­section on Eugenics and Biopolitics. It is very likely that it is this lecture, published in the Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic that Marinescu refers to here [note MT]. 21 Manuilă, S. (1940f), ‘Problema rassială a României’, România Nouă, 7 (22 November): 5 [Excerpts translated from p. 5]. 22 Prince M. Sturdza (1886–1940): Minister of Foreign Affairs during the National Legionary State (September 1940–January 1941) [note MT]. 23 Manuilă, S. (1941a) ‘Acţiunea eugenică ca factor de politică de populaţie’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 12: 1–4 [Integral translation]. 24 Făcăoaru, I. (1935b), ‘Înmulţirea disgenicilor şi costul lor pentru societate şi stat’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 6: 169–83 [Excerpts translated from pp. 169; 179–80 and 182–3]. 25 Făcăoaru, I. (1938b), ‘Amestecul rasial şi etnic în România’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 9: 276–87 [Excerpts translated from pp. 277–8; 281–2 and 285–6]. 26 Carl von Linnaeus (1707–1778): Swedish botanist, naturalist and anthropologist [note MT]. 27 Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788): French naturalist and anthropologist [note MT]. 28 Paul Topinard (1830–1911): French physician and anthropologist. Director of l’École d’Anthropologie in Paris, he coined the term anthropometry [note MT]. 29 Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): German philosopher and anthropologist [note MT]. 30 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840): German physician, naturalist and anthropologist [note MT]. 31 It is known that Turks and Tartars are slowly emigrating from Dobrudja. To illustrate the profoundly wrong conception dominating our public opinion suffices to mention that most popular newspapers disagreed with the government’s help in this matter. [. . .] According to our newspapers, the most idiotic and inferior citizens: Turks, Tartars, Gypsies, Gagauz are of value.  . . because they do not disturb social harmony [note IF]. 32 Făcăoaru, I. (1944a), ‘Educaţia eugenică prin asistenţa socială selectivă’, Buletinul Consiliului de Patronaj al Operelor Sociale, 1: 1–7 [Excerpts translated from pp. 6–7]. 33 Consiliul de Patronaj al Operelor Sociale (Council of Patronage for Social Works) was established by Marshal Ion Antonescu in April 1941 [note MT]. 34 Râmneanţu, P. (1937a), ‘Din metodologia biotipologiei’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 8: 257–61 [Excerpts translated from pp. 257–60]. 35 One specializing in the practical application of psychology [note MT]. 36 Nicola Pende (1880–1970): Italian endocrinologist, pathologist and eugenicist [note MT]. 37 Râmneanţu, P. (1938b), ‘Biotype and Fertility of Women from the Province of Banat (Romania)’, in Congrès International de la Population. Vol. 8, Problèmes Qualitatifs de la Population, Paris: Hermann, 14–20 [Excerpts from pp. 14–15; 17 and 20]. 38 Bi-­iliac, or maximum pelvic breadth [note MT]. 39 This is a terminology used by G. Viola, who classified individuals in four categories: longitype, brachytype, normotype and the mixed type [note MT].

346

Bibliography Archives Arhivele Naţionale ale României (Romanian National Archives), Bucharest Fond Gheorghe Marinescu Fond Sabin Manuilă Fond Petru Râmneanţu Fond Nicolae Caranfil Ministerul Educaţiei Naţionale (Numiri, certificate, ajutoare) Consiliul Naţional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securităţii (National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives), Bucharest Fond Iordache Făcăoaru Fond Iuliu Moldovan Biblioteca Academiei Române (Library of the Romanian Academy), Bucharest Cabinetul de Manuscrise Iordache Făcăoaru, Istoria Familiei Făcăoaru (1975) Arhivele Societăţii Române de Radiodifuziune (Archive of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Society), Bucharest (1935b), Gheorghe Marinescu, ‘Eugenia’, 13 February, Time: 20.00. File 7/1–8 (1935c), Gheorghe Marinescu, ‘Ereditatea şi relaţiile cu eugenia’, 27 February, Time: 20.00. File 7/1–10 (1936), Victoria Petrescu-Heroiu, ‘Eugenia copiilor noştri’, 26 May, Time: 18.00. File 14/1–8 (1937a) Mihail Manicatide, ‘Certificatul prenupţial şi problema eugeniei’, 4 April, Time: 19.07. File 8/1–13 (1941) Liviu Câmpeanu, ‘Educaţia fizica a tineretului în lumina noilor cercetări biotipologice’, 5 May, Time 19.10. File 5/1–6 Arhiva Ministerului Sănătăţii şi Asistenţei Sociale (Archive of the Ministry of Health and Social Assistance), Bucharest Direcţiunea Personal Iordache Făcăoaru, Cazier Ioan Manliu, Cazier Sabin Manuilă, Cazier Biblioteca Documentară de Istoria Medicinei, Institutul de Igienă şi Sănătate Publică (Library and Archive of Medical History, Institute of Hygiene and Public Health), Bucharest Arhivele Naţionale (National Archives), Direcţia Judeţeană Cluj Institutului de Igienă şi Sănătate Publică, 1920–44 Facultatea de Medicină şi Farmacie, Fond Personal Iuliu Moldovan

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Biblioteca Institutului de Antropologie ‘Francisc Rainer’ (Library of the Institute of Anthropology), Bucharest United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington Microfilm, Fond 2242, Opis no. 1, RG-31.004, Reel 4. Semmelweis Egyetem Levéltár (Archive of Semmelweis University) Egyetemi Quaestura 1918, no. 159 Sabin Manuilă Archiv der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (Archive of Ludwig Maximilian University), Munich Studentenkartei, Iordache Făcăoaru Universitätarchiv der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität (Archive of Albert Ludwig University), Freiburg I. I. Manliu, Studien- und Sittenzeugnisse Ελληνικό Λογοτεχνικό και Ιστορικό Αρχείο (ΕΛΙΑ), (The Hellenic Literary and Historical Archives), Athens Correspondence E. Lambadarios and G. Banu, 1930–8 Rockefeller Foundation Archives Folder 35, Box 4, Series 783 RF 1.1 Rumanian Project for Demographic Studies–International Studies Conference, 28 January 1937 and 1 February 1937 Folder 5, Box 1, Series 783, RF 1.1 D. Mezincescu’s letter to George K. Strode, 23 November 1944 Folder 2, Box 1, Series 783, RF 1.1 Moldovan’s Report, 15 March 1947

Primary Sources (1908), ‘Restriction du marriage’, Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, de Medicine Légale et de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, 23: 96. (1915), ‘Românii care ne fac fală’, Gazeta Transilvaniei, 78 (18 May): 1. (1921), ‘Insanity in the Balkan States’, The Lancet, 197, (8 January): 94. (1922), ‘Notes and News’, Eugenical News, 7: 92. (1928), ‘Secţia femenină-biopolitică a ‘ASTREI’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 2: 63–4. (1930), ‘Legea Sanitară şi de Ocrotire’, Monitorul Oficial al României, 48 (14 July): 5338–98. (1933–9), Dare de seamă asupra şedinţelor Societăţii Române de Antropologie din Cluj, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Transilvania’. (1934–5), Universitatea ‘Regele Ferdinand I’, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Ardealul’, 456–7. (1936), ‘Eugenics in Roumania’, Eugenical News, 11: 84–5. (1936), ‘Despre eugenie’, Glasul Monahilor, 14: 4. (1936), ‘Germania: Sterilizarea eugenică’, Revista de Drept Penal şi Ştiinţă Penitenciară, 14: 284. 348

Romania

(1936), Codul Penal ‘Regele Carol II’ din 18 martie 1936, Bucharest: Editura Librăriei ‘Universul’. (1936), ‘Autorizarea de funcţionare, actul constitutiv şi statutele Societăţii Regale Române pentru Eugenie şi Studiul Eredităţii’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 6: 271–7. (1936), Premier Congrès Balkanique de la Protection de I’Enfance. Compte-Rendu, Geneva: Union Internationale de Secours aux Enfants. (1939), ‘Al II-lea Congres Internaţional al Federaţiunii Societăţilor Latine de Eugenie’, Revista de Ştiinţe Medicale, 28: 247–8. (1939), ‘Discussions’, in XVIIe Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistorique, Bucharest: Imprimere Socec, 680–8. (1940), ‘Decret-­lege pentru înfiinţarea Institutului de Boli Ereditare şi Tumorale’, Monitorul Oficial al României, 58 (25 October): 6091. (1940), ‘Compunerea Comisiunii de igienă socială’, Cuvântul, 17 (16 November): 12. (1941), Recensământul general al României din 1941. Lămurirea opiniei publice, Bucharest: Institutul Central de Statistică. (1943), Conferinţa pentru studiul problemei ocrotirii copiilor ţinută la 25–26 iulie 1942. Cuvântări şi rapoarte. Bucharest: Intreprinderile de Arte Grafice şi Editură ‘Eminescu’. Alexandresco, V. (1907), ‘Enseignement official et particular de la puériculture et vulgarisation de l’hygiène infantile en Roumanie’, Annales de Medicine et de Chirurgie Infantile, 11: 474–9. Andronescu, C. (1912), ‘Eugenia’, Higiena, 1 (15 November): 4. Andronescu, C. (1943), Pentru ce ne îmbolnăvim? Noţiuni de patologie socială, Bucharest: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească’. Antonescu, M. (1941), ‘Principiile nouei reforme a Statului Român (despre statul biologic şi biopolitic’, Societatea de Mâine, 18: 85–6. Apostol, O. (1927), Noţiuni generale de puericultură, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească’. Bagdasar, D. (1923), ‘Sterilizarea’, Adevărul, 36 (29 September): 1. Babeş, V. (1901), Regenerarea poporului romîn, Bucharest: I. V. Socecu. Babeş, V. (1924), Epidemiile din Transilvania şi comparaţia lor cu epidemiile celorlalte provincii româneşti în 1921 studiate de D-r Sabin Manuilă: comunicare, şedinţa dela 27 Aprilie 1923, Bucharest: Cultura Naţională. Banu, G. (1922a), Recherches physiologiques sur le développement neuro-musculaire chez l’homme et l’animal, Paris: Imprimerie de la Cour d’Appel. Banu, G. (1922b), Sfaturi pentru mame, Bucharest: Cultura Naţională. Banu, G. (1924), ‘Asistenţa comunală a copiilor găsiţi, orfani şi săraci în Bucureşti’, Arhiva pentru Ştiinţă şi Reformă Socială, 5: 131–51. Banu, G. (1927a), ‘Biologia socială’, Sănătatea Publică, 1: 3. Banu, G. (1927b), ‘Biologia satelor’, Arhiva pentru Ştiinţă şi Reformă Socială, 7: 87–121. Banu, B. (1930a), Igiena copiilor delicvenţi, Bucharest: Tip. Penitenciarului ‘Văcăreşti’. Banu, G. (1930b), Mortalitatea infantilă în România. Studiu de igienă socială şi de statistică, Bucharest: F. Göbl. Banu, G. (1930c), L’hygiène sociale de l’enfance, vol. 1. Paris: Masson. Banu, G. (1930d), ‘L’examen rationnel des écoliers’, Bulletin International de la Protection de l’Enfance, 95: 929–63. Banu, G. (1930e), ‘La protection de l’enfance d’âge préscolaire’, Bulletin International de la Protection de l’Enfance, 96: 1247–308. Banu, G. (1931), La santé publique aux États-Unis: Organisation, Brussels: Ed. Lebègue. Banu, G. (1933a), Igiena socială a tuberculozei în România, Bucharest: Imprimeriile Naţionale. Banu, G. (1933b), ‘Legea sterilizării în Germania’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 3: 550–4. Banu, G. (1935a), Igiena muncii (studiu de igienă şi politică socială), Bucharest: Ed. Göbl. Banu, G. (1935b), Sănătatea poporului român, Bucharest: Fundaţia pentru Literatură şi Artă ‘Regele Carol II’. 349

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Banu, G. (1935c), ‘Eugenie, ereditate, rasă’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 5: 102–7. Banu, G. (1935d), ‘Legea sterilizării în Germania’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 3: 550–4. Banu, G. (1936a), ‘Certificatul medical prenupţial’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 6: 281–300. Banu, G. (1936b), ‘Igiena rasei şi obiectivele ei’, Arhiva pentru Ştiinţă şi Reformă Socială, 14: 565–76. Banu, G. (1936c), ‘Principes d’un programme d’hygiène de la race’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 6: 565–94. Banu, G. (1936d), ‘Données statistique sur la population infantile’, Bulletin International de la Protection de l’Enfance, 144: 1597–602. Banu, G. (1937a), ‘Necesitatea reorganizării statului sub raport sanitar şi al igienei sociale’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 7: 3–31. Banu, G. (1937b), ‘Reorganizarea igienico-­sanitară a statului’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 7: 73–97. Banu, G. (1937c), ‘Les facteurs dysgéniques en Roumanie: Principes d’un programme pratique d’eugénique’, in Premier Congrès Latin d’Eugénique, Paris: Masson, 296–319. Banu, G. (1938a), ‘L’enfant considéré par rapport aux finances publiques, l’impôt et les assurances sociales. La situation en Roumanie’, Bulletin International de la Protection de l’Enfance, 154: 383–95. Banu, G. (1938b), Mari probleme de medicină socială, Bucharest: Tipografia Curţii Regale. Banu, G. (1939a), ‘Dysgénies de nature toxique dans le milieu rural’, in XVIIe Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistorique, Bucharest: Imprimerie Socec, 615–20. Banu, G. (1939b) ‘Hérédité multiple de malformations de la bouche’, in XVIIe Congrès International, 620–6. Banu, G. (1939c), ‘L’orientation moderne de l’éugenique’, in XVIIe Congrès International, 635–40. Banu, G. (1939d), L’hygiène de la race. Étude de biologie héréditaire et de normalisation de la race, Paris: Masson. Banu, G. (1940a), ‘La politique medico-­sociale dans la Roumanie rurale’, in Gusti, D. et al., La vie rurale en Roumanie, Bucharest: XIVe Congrès International de Sociologie, 135–204. Banu, G. (1940b), ‘Probleme de eugenie în pătura rurală a României’ in Banu, G. (ed.), Probleme sanitare ale populaţiei rurale din România, Bucharest: Revista de Igienă Socială, 127–44. Banu, G. (1941), ‘Eugenia poporului românesc’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 11: 341–91. Banu, G. (1942), ‘Ştiinţa medicinii sociale’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 12: 203–19. Banu, G. (1943), Eugenia, Bucharest: Tip. Presa D. Andreescu. Banu, G. (1944), Tratat de medicină socială. Vol. 1: Medicina socială ca ştiinţă. Eugenia. Demografia, Vol. 2: Maternitatea. Prima vârstă. Medicina şcolară, Vol. 3: Asistenţa socială, Vol. 4: Tuberculoza. Bolile venerice, Bucharest: Casa Şcoalelor. Banu, G. (1946), ‘Biologie du people roumain. Principes d’un plan de travail pour l’Académie de Médecine’, Bulletin de l’Académie de Médicine de Roumanie, 19: 213–302. Banu, G. (1947), Biologie du peuple roumain, Bucharest: Bucovina. Bologa, E. I. (1948), ‘Certificatul prenupţial’, Sănătatea Poporului, 4: 13. Bologa, V. (1921), ‘Eugenezia’, Revista Sănătăţii, 1: 79–84. Botez, M. A. (1922), ‘Ce trebuie să fie la noi un Institut de Igienă’, Clujul Medical, 3: 121–3. Cahane, M. (1932) ‘Asupra sterilizării alienaţilor cronici. Necesitatea unei legiferări la noi’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 2: 241–9. Cahane, M. (1935), Câteva date statistice în legătură cu ereditatea în bolile mintale. Este necesară sterilizarea unor categorii de bolnavi mentali?, Bucharest: Tipografia Curţii Regale F. Göbl. 350

Romania

Câmpeanu, L. (1936), Impresii de călătorie. Regimurile politice, igiena naţiunii, biopolitica, biotipologia, chirurgia biotiopologică, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Universală’. Ciocâlteu, V. (1925), Sfaturi mamelor pentru creşterea şi îngrijirea copiilor în primii ani, Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice Bucovina. Comşia, O. (1940), ‘Elita etnică’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 11: 1–8. Cosma, Gh. (1946), ‘Mişcarea populaţiei dela 1930–1940 în plasa sanitară Haţeg şi activitatea acesteia pe anul 1944’, Sora de Ocrotire, 4: 28–36. Cupcea, S. P. (1941), ‘Examenul prenupţial’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 12: 105–26. Cupcea, S. P. (1939), ‘Profesiune academică şi constituţie morfologică’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 10: 220–30. Cupcea, S. P. (1944), ‘Biologia teoretica şi aplicată în URSS’, Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic, 15: 299–318. Duff, U. G. (1939), ‘L’hygiène de la race’, The Eugenics Review, 33: 188. Enăchescu, S. D. (1936), ‘Sterilizarea eugenică’, Revista de Medicină Legală, 1: 273–9. Erich, L. (1937), Problema disgenicilor (referinţe speciale asupra situaţiei disgenicilor de la noi), Cluj: Tipografia ‘Record’. Făcăoaru, I. (1933), Soziale Auslese: Ihre biologischen und psychologischen Grundlagen, Cluj: Huber Verlag. Făcăoaru, I. (1934a). Elemente de antropologie (Somatometrie, somatoscopie, cefalometrie). Cluj: Tipografia ‘Transilvania’. Făcăoaru, I. (1934b), ‘Sterilizarea eugenică’, Clujul Medical, 7: 268–70. Făcăoaru, I. (1934c), ‘Originile ştiinţei eugenice. Scurte consideraţii istorice’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 5: 155–8. Făcăoaru, I. (1934d), ‘Legiurile recente pentru sterilizarea eugenică’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 5: 231–9. Făcăoaru, I. (1935a), Curs de eugenie, Cluj: Institutul de Igienă şi Igienă Socială. Făcăoaru, I. (1935b), ‘Înmulţirea disgenicilor şi costul lor pentru societate şi stat’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 6: 169–83. Făcăoaru, I. (1936a), ‘Legea pentru apărarea sănătăţii ereditare a poporului german (Ehegesundheitsgesetz)’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 7: 49–57. Făcăoaru, I. (1936b), ‘Legiferarea avortului din indicaţii eugenice din Germania’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 7: 57–9. Făcăoaru, I. (1936c), ‘Reviste româneşti în schimb cu Buletinul’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 7: 130–2. Făcăoaru, I. (1936d), Criteriile pentru diagnoza rasială, Cluj: Tip. Universală. Făcăoaru, I. (1936e), ‘Proiectul legii eugenice poloneze’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 7: 160–3. Făcăoaru, I. (1936f), ‘Familii degenerate şi costul lor pentru societate şi stat’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 7: 214–21. Făcăoaru, I. (1936g), ‘Antroposociologia’, Sociologie Românească, 1: 9–11. Făcăoaru, I. (1937a), ‘Concepţia rasială a Mărginenilor’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 8: 191–209. Făcăoaru, I. (1937b), ‘Predispoziţia pentru crimă’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 8: 221–7. Făcăoaru, I. (1937c), ‘Privire critică asupra legii finlandeze de sterilizare în comparaţie cu legea germană’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 8: 339–54, Făcăoaru, I. (1937d), Din problematica şi metodologia cercetărilor eugenice şi genetice în cadrul monografiei sociologice, Bucharest: Institutul Social Român. Făcăoaru, I. (1937e), ‘Die “Ganzheitsanthropologie” und das Studium des Menschen in Rumänien’, Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde und ihre Nachbargebiete, 6: 248–50. Făcăoaru, I. (1938a), ‘Contribuţie la studiul compoziţiei rasiale a studenţilor minoritari din România’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 9: 21–9. 351

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Făcăoaru, I. (1938b), ‘Amestecul rasial şi etnic în România’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 9: 276–87. Făcăoaru, I. (1938c), ‘Antropologia ca ştiinţă şi ca obiect de învăţământ’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 9: 149–64. Făcăoaru, I. (1938d), ‘Socialantropologia ca ştiinţă pragmatistă’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 9: 352–65. Făcăoaru, I. (1939a), ‘Beitrag zum Studium der wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Bewährung der Rassen’, Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde und ihre Nachbargebiete, 9: 26–39. Făcăoaru, I. (1939b), ‘Étude généalogique d’une famille tarée’, in XVIIe Congrès International, 626–34. Făcăoaru, I. (1939c), ‘Eugénique et biopolitique-Hérédité-Sélection sociale’, in XVIIe Congrès International, 718–99. Făcăoaru, I. (1940a), Structura rasială a populaţiei rurale din România, Bucharest: F. Göbl. Făcăoaru, I. (1940b), ‘Normele eugenice în organizaţiile legionare’, Cuvântul, 17 (21 December): 1–2. Făcăoaru, I. (1940c), ‘Despre structura rasială a populaţiei rurale din România’, in Banu (ed.), Probleme sanitare ale populaţiei rurale din România, 79–97. Făcăoaru, I. (1943a), ‘Cercetări antropologice în patru sate româneşti din Transnistria’. USHMM, Microfilm, Fond 2242, Opis no. 1, RG-31.004, Reel 4. Făcăoaru, I. (1943b), ‘Valoarea biorasială a naţiunilor europene şi a provinciilor româneşti: O primă încercare de ierarhizare etnică’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 14: 278–310. Făcăoaru, I. (1944a), ‘Educaţia eugenică prin asistenţa socială selectivă’, Buletinul Consiliului de Patronaj al Operelor Sociale, 1: 1–7. Făcăoaru, I. (1944b), Contribuţie la studiul compoziţiei morfologice a românilor din Republica Moldovenească, Bucharest: Imprimeriile Institutului de Statistică, 1944. Făcăoaru, I. (1973), ‘Înfiinţarea şi activitatea “Societăţii române de antropologie” din Cluj’, in Din istoria preocupărilor despre om, Bucharest: Centrul de Cercetări Antropologice, 93–164. Făcăoaru, I. and Comşia, O. (1937), ‘Criterii pentru determinarea valorii eredo-­biologice’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 8: 75–82. Georgescu, D. C. (1936), ‘Secţia de Demografie, Antropologie şi Eugenie a Institutului Social Român’, Sociologie românească, 1: 56–7. Georgescu, D. C. (1939), ‘La fertilité différentielle en Roumanie’, in XVIIe Congrès International, 640–67. Georgescu, M. (1935), Responsabilitatea medicală şi problema avortului în faţa noului proiect de cod penal: Discurs rostit în şedinţa Senatului la 13 februarie 1935, Bucharest: Monitorul Oficial şi Imprimeriile Statului. Georgescu, M. (1937), Protecţia medico-­socială a maternităţii, Bucharest: Institutul Grafic ‘Luceafărul’. Grinţescu, V. C. (1923), ‘Igiena de rasă’, Educaţia, 5 (May–June): 103–6. Grosforeanu, C. (1936), ‘Rasismul şi problema minoritară’, Revista Institutului Social BanatCrişana, 4: 81–2. Gusti, D. (1934), Sociologia Militans, vol. 1. Bucharest: Editura Institutului Social Român. Herseni, T. (1941), ‘Rasă şi destin naţional’, Cuvântul, 18 (16 January): 1 and 7. Haţieganu, I. (1936), ‘Senatorul Nicolae Pende’, Endocrinologie, Gynecologie, Obstetrică, 1: 193–5. Haţieganu, I. and Voina, A. (1925), ‘ASTRA medicală şi biopolitică’, Societatea de Mâine, 2: 813–4. Ionescu, V. (1933), ‘Sterilizarea’, Axa, 1 (6 September): 7. 352

Romania

Iorgulescu, N. (1935), ‘Neavenirea avortului preventiv, imoralitatea “avortului moral” şi antieugenia celui eugenetic’, Curierul Judiciar, 44 (24 March): 196–8. Kernbach, M. (1934), ‘Legalizarea avortului şi profesiunea medicală’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 5 (1934): 361–6. Landra, G. (1942), Il problema della razza in Romania, Bucharest : Instituto italo-­romano di studi demografici et razziali. Laughlin, H. H. (1927), ‘O privire asupra sterilizării eugenice în America’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 253–7. Leonida, L. (1935a), ‘Ce poate realiza practic eugenia la noi’, Mişcarea Medicală Română, 8: 366–71. Leonida, I. (1935b), ‘Eugenie sau etnologie? (O confuzie şi un răspuns)’, Mişcarea Medicală Română, 8: 692–8. Lepşi, I. (1935), Eugenia, Chişinău: Tipograful Moldovenesc. Lieblich, S. and Fastlich, G. (1934), ‘Biotypologie des criminels’, in Volume Jubilaire en l’Honneur du Professeur Dr. C. I. Parhon, Jassy: Institut d’Arts Graphique ‘Brawo’, 286–301. Linders, F. J. (1925), ‘L’Institut suédois de biologie des races’, Bulletin de la Société Roumaine de Neurologie, Psychiatrie, Psychologie et Endocrinologie 2: 60–3. Manicatide, M. (1937b), ‘Comment fait-­on la statistique de la mortalité infantile’, in Premier Congrès Latin d’Eugénique, 292–5. Manliu, I. (1921), Crâmpeie de eugenie şi igienă socială, Bucharest: Tip. ‘Jockey-Club’. Manliu, I. (1923), ‘Un pericol social’, Adevărul, 36 (18 August): 1–2. Manliu, I. (1931a), ‘Eugenia în Rusia Sovietică’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 1: 136–9. Manliu, I. (1931b), ‘Sterilizarea degeneraţilor’, Revista de Igienă Socială, 1: 374–85. Manliu, I. (1933), ‘Sterilizarea degeneraţilor’, Progresul Social, 2: 763–73. Manuilă, S. (1924a), ‘Cercetări biologice cu privire la rasse, prin aplicarea unei metode nouă’, Convorbiri Literare, 56: 694–8. Manuilă, S. (1924b), ‘Recherches séro-­anthropologiques sur les races en Roumanie par la méthode de l’isohémagglutination’, Comptes Rendus des Séances de la Société de Biologie, 90: 1071–3. Manuilă, S. (1924c), ‘Sterilizarea eugenică în Statele Unite’, Societatea de Mâine, 11: 484. Manuilă, S. (1927), ‘Principiile fundamentale ale organizaţiunii sanitare moderne’, Sănătatea Publică, 1: 4–5. Manuilă, S. (1929), ‘Evoluţia demografică a oraşelor şi minorităţile etnice din Transilvania’, Arhiva pentru Ştiinţă şi Reformă Socială, 8: 91–212. Manuilă, S. (1934a), ‘România şi revizionismul. Consideraţii etnografice şi demografice’, Arhiva pentru Ştiinţă şi Reformă Socială, 12: 55–82. Manuilă, S. (1934b), ‘The Present Situation and the Future Ethnical Evolution of the Cities in the New Provinces of Rumania’, in Gini (ed.), Atti del Congresso Internazionale per gli Studi sulla Popolazione, vol. 7, Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 103–9. Manuilă, S. (1936a), ‘Reglementarea avortului’, Asistenţa Socială, 5: 33. Manuilă, S. (1936b), ‘Societatea regală română de eugenie şi studiul eredităţii’, Sociologie Românească, 1: 31–2. Manuilă, S. (1936c), ‘Rationalization of Demographic Population’, in Harmsen and Lohse (eds), Bevölkerungsfragen, 399–403. Manuilă, S. (1937), ‘Organizarea sanitară a satului’, Sociologie Românească, 2: 87–90. Manuilă, S. (1938), ‘Les influences des mesures ayant un caractère général sur l’eugénetique’, Archives de Neurologie, 2: 219–38. Manuilă, S. (1938–40), Recensamântul general al populaţiei României din 29 decembrie 1930, 10 vols, Bucharest: Editura Institutului Central de Statistică. 353

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Manuilă, S. (1939), ‘Consideraţiuni asupra prezentării grafice a etnografiei României’, Academia Română. Memoriile Secţiunii Istorice, 21: 357–71. Manuilă, S. (1940a), ‘Structure ét evolution de la population rurale’, in La vie rurale en Roumanie, Bucharest: XIVe Congrès International de Sociologie, 239–97. Manuilă, S. (1940b), Studiu etnografic asupra populaţiei României, Bucharest: Editura Institutului Central de Statistică. Manuilă, S. (1940c), ‘Demografia rurală a României’, in Banu, G. (ed.), Probleme sanitare ale populaţiei rurale din România, 145–70. Manuilă, S. (1940d), ‘Comandamentele rassiale şi politica de populaţie,’ România Nouă, 7, 17 (26 October 1940): 3. Manuilă, S. (1940e), ‘Decadenta demografică şi expansiune politică’, România Nouă, 7 (18 November 1940): 1. Manuilă, S. (1940f), ‘Problema rassială a României’, România Nouă, 7 (22 November 1940): 5. Manuilă, S. (1941a), ‘Acţiunea eugenică ca factor de politică de populaţie’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 12: 1–4. Manuilă, S. (1941b), ‘Das Judenproblem in Rumänien zahlenmäßig gesehen’, Deutsches Archiv für Landes- und Volksforschung 5: 603–13. Manuilă, S. (1941c), Die volkspolitischen Folgen der Teiling Siebenbürgens, Bucharest: Dacia. Manuilă, S. (1942a), ‘Structura etnică a României’, România Eroică, 5: 198–202. Manuilă, S. (1942b), ‘Rolul statisticii în organizarea statului modern’, Analele Institutului Statistic al României, 1: 7–16. Manuilă, S. (1945), The Vienna Award and its Demographical Consequences, Bucharest: The National History Institute. Manuilă, S. and Popovici, G. (1924), ‘Recherches sur les races roumaine et hongroise en Roumanie par l’isohémagglutination’, Comptes Rendus des Séances de la Société de Biologie, 90: 542–3. Marie, M. and Marinescu, G. (1891), ‘Sur l’anatomie pathologique de l’acromégalie’, in Verhandlungen des X. Internationalen Medicinischen Congresses, Berlin 4–9 August 1890, vol. 4, Berlin: Verlag von August Hirschwald, 129–32. Marinescu, G. (1899), Expunere de titluri şi lucrări, Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice. Marinescu, G. (1900), Études sur l’évolution et l’involution de la cellule nerveuse, Paris: Masson. Marinescu, G. (1905), ‘Recherches sur le noyau et le nucleoli de la cellule nerveuse à l’état normale et pathologique’, Journal für Psychologie und Neurologie, 5: 151–72. Marinescu, G. (1906), ‘Progresele şi tendinţele medicinei moderne’, Academia Română, Discursuri de recepţie, 28: 3–34. Marinescu, G. (1907), La nature intime du processus de dégénérescence des nerfs, Paris: Masson. Marinescu, G. (1909), La cellule nerveuse, 2 vols. Paris: O. Doin. Marinescu, G. (1911), ‘Despre chimioterapie şi tratamentul lui Ehrlich aplicat la boalele sistemului nervos’, Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 23: 219–63. Marinescu, G. (1914), Materie, viaţă şi celulă, Iaşi: Tip. Dacia. Marinescu, G. (1920a), ‘Neurologia pe câmpul de răsboiu’, Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 38: 131–200. Marinescu, G. (1920b), ‘Date şi cercetări nouă asupra biologiei celulei nervoase’, Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 38: 425–83. Marinescu, G. (1923), Vieaţa, sufletul şi opera lui Pasteur, Bucharest: Cartea Românească. Marinescu, G. (1925), Viaţa şi opera lui Charcot, Bucharest: Cultura Naţională. Marinescu, G. (1934a), ‘Constituţia umană după lucrările şcoalei italiene’, Academia Română. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 9: 1–34. 354

Romania

Marinescu, G. (1934b), Temperamentele după doctrina şcolii italiene, Bucharest: Imprimeria Naţională. Marinescu, G. (1935a), ‘Cercetări asupra razelor mitogenetice’, Academia Română. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 12: 1–32. Marinescu, G. (1935b). See the Archive of the Romanian Radio. Marinescu, G. (1935c). See the Archive of the Romanian Radio. Marinescu, G. (1935d), ‘Eugenia şi românismul’, Revista Sănătatea şi ‘Viaţa Fericită’, 35: 7–8. Marinescu, G. (1936), ‘Despre hereditatea normală şi patologică şi raporturile ei cu eugenia’, Academia Română. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 11: 1–85. Marinescu, G. (1937a), ‘Allocation’, in Premier Congrès d’Eugénique, 13–14. Marinescu, G. (1937b), ‘Les relations du gigantisme et de l’acromégalie considérées a la lumière des données histologiques et génétiques’, in Premier Congrès d’Eugénique, 351–68. Marinescu, G. (1938), ‘Determinism şi cauzalitate în domeniul biologiei’, Academia Română. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 13: 215–65. Marinescu, G. (1955), Pagini alese din opera lui Gh. Marinescu, Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Române. Marinescu, M. and Stroesco, G. (1939), ‘L’influence des facteurs héréditaires sur le mécanisme de non-­disjonction des chromosomes sexuels chez Drosophila melanogaster’, in XVIIe Congrès International, 575–80. Mărgărit O. (1944), ‘Pentru reabilitarea unei ştiinţe: eugenia’, Scânteia, 14: 2. Measnicov, I. (1937), ‘Problemele biologiei sociale’, Sociologie Românească 2: 15–67. Minovici, M. (1906), ‘Remarques sur la criminalité féminine en Roumanie’, VIe Congrès International d’Anthropologie Criminelle, Turin 28 Avril-3 Mai 1906, Turin: Bocca Frères, 433–50. Moldovan, I. (1921), ‘Rolul societăţii în igiena socială’, Revista Sănătăţii, 1: 7. Moldovan, I. (1923), ‘Dare de seamă asupra activităţii Institutul de Igienă şi Igienă Socială în anul şcolar 1921–22’, in Anuarul Universităţii din Cluj pe anul şcolar 1921–22, Cluj: Institutul de Arte Grafice ‘Ardealul’, 66–80. Moldovan, I. (1924a), Principii generale pentru organizarea sănătăţii publice în România, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Cultura’. Moldovan, I. (1924b), ‘Un program biopolitic’, Societatea de Mâine, 1 : 69–70. Moldovan, I. (1925), Igiena naţiunii (Eugenia), Cluj: Institutul de Igienă şi Igienă Socială şi Subsecţia Eugenică şi Biopolitică a ‘ASTREI’. Moldovan, I. (1926), Biopolitica, Cluj: Institutul de Igienă şi Igienă Socială şi Subsecţia Eugenică şi Biopolitică a ‘ASTREI’. Moldovan, I. (1927a), ‘Eugenia–Igiena naţiunii I.’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 3–4. Moldovan, I. (1927b), ‘Biopolitica I.’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 4–7. Moldovan, I. (1927c), ‘Eugenia–Igiena naţiunii II.’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 29–30. Moldovan, I. (1927d), ‘Eugenia–Igiena naţiunii III.’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 61–3. Moldovan, I. (1927e), ‘Biopolitica II.’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 73–6. Moldovan, I. (1927f), ‘Problema democraţiei şi biopolitica’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 76–9. Moldovan, I. (1927g), ‘Necesitatea unui minister al vigoarei naţionale’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 338–40. Moldovan, I. (1927h), The Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene: University of Cluj, New York: The Rockefeller Foundation. Moldovan, I. (1933), ‘Institutul pentru studiul şi profilaxia cancerului’, Cancerul, 1: 1. Moldovan, I. (1934), ‘Igiena naţiunii–biopolitica’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 5: 127–8. Moldovan, I. (1938a), ‘Spre o facultate de etnologie şi biopolitică’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 9: 67–74. 355

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Moldovan, I. (1938b), ‘Adresă şi proect de lege privind înfiinţarea unei Academii biopolitice. Inspectoratul general sanitar şi de ocrotire Cluj. No. 312628/1921’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 9: 336–9. Moldovan, I. (1940), Reticulina-M. Cercetări experimentale şi terapeutice, Cluj: Institutul de Igienă şi Sănatate Public a Universităţii din Cluj. Moldovan, I. (1942a), ‘Neamul’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 13: 1–9. Moldovan, I. (1942b), ‘Despre legile vieţii’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 13: 145–58. Moldovan, I. (1942c), ‘Biologia familiei şi etnobiologia’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 13: 277–303. Moldovan, I. (1943a), ‘Statul etnic’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 14: 1–19. Moldovan, I. (1943b), ‘Igiena neamului’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 14: 137–51. Moldovan, I. (1943c), Statul etnic, Sibiu: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească din Cluj’. Moldovan, I. (1944a), ‘Familia ca unitate biologică’, Sora de Ocrotire: Supliment la Buletinul Eugenic si Biopolitic, 2: 25–31. Moldovan, I. (1944b), Introducere în etnobiologie şi biopolitică, Sibiu: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească din Cluj’. Moldovan, I. (1946a), ‘Concepte din domeniul igienei’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 17: 1–7. Moldovan, I. (1946b), ‘Proiect de regulament pentru organizarea şi functionarea plăşilor sanitare’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 17: 77–92. Moldovan, I. (1947/48) ‘La réticuline-M, hormone du système réticulo-­endothélial’, Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile Secţiunii Ştiinţifice, 23: 148–79. Moldovan, I. (1996), Amintiri şi reflexiuni, Bucharest: Editura Universitară ‘Carol Davila’. Moldovan, I., Stoichiţă, I. and Râmneanţu, P. (1947), Tratat de sănătate publică, 2nd edition. Cluj: n.p. Motogna, A. (1944), ‘Pericolul venerian şi noua lege pentru combaterea maladiilor venerice’, Revista Institutului Social Banat-Crişana, 13: 238–40. Nedelcu, P. (1904a), ‘Alienaţii criminali. Necesitatea internării lor în asile speciale’, Revista Idealistă, 11 (1 January): 222–54. Nedelcu, P. (1904b), ‘Alienaţii criminali. Necesitatea internării lor în asile speciale’, Revista Idealistă, 12 (1 February): 440–62. Nemoianu, I. (1928), Contribuţiuni la problema copiilor în Banat, Lugoj: Tipografia Naţională. Nicolescu, A. (1935), ‘Reflexiuni asupra avortului prilejuite de legiferarea lui în cadrele proiectului noului cod penal’, Revista Instititului Social Banat-Crişana, 3: 1–15. Nisot, M.-T. (1929), La question eugénique dans les divers pays, vol. 2, Bruxelles: Librairie Falk Fils. Odobescu, G. I. (1936a), Eugenie pentru neamul românesc, Bucharest: Monitorul Oficial şi Imprimeriile Statului. Odobescu, G. I. (1936b), Politica eugenică, Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice ‘Eminescu’. Parhon, C. I. (1938), ‘Eloge du Professeur Dr. Gh. Marinescu’, Bulletin de l’Académie de Médicine de Roumanie, 5: 373–85. Pende, N. (1935), ‘Biotipologia şi ameliorarea constituţiei umane’, România Medicală 13, 5: 67–8. Petit, E. and Buzoianu, G. (1934), Sterilizarea din punct de vedere juridic şi chirurgical, Bucharest: ‘Adevărul’. Petrescu, T. (1940), Ni se pierde neamul: activitatea jidanilor împotriva naţiunii române, Bucharest: Cugetarea. Petrini (de Galatz). (1876), Despre amelioraţiunea rasei umane, Bucharest: Tipografia D. A. Laurian. Petrovici, E. (1939), ‘Le facteur héréditaire dans l’apparition de la syphilis nerveuse’, in XVIIe Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistorique, 605–14. 356

Romania

Pocrean, E. (1943), ‘Metode de eugenie, aplicabile în Banat’, Revista Institutului Social Banat-Crişana 11: 137–42. Popa, A. (1938a), ‘Religia sângelui. Puncte de orientare în problema rasistă’, Cultura Creştină, 18: 521–35. Popa, A. (1938b), ‘Religia sângelui. Puncte de orientare în problema rasistă’, Cultura Creştină, 18: 674–89. Popa, A. (1938c), ‘Religia sângelui. Puncte de orientare în problema rasistă’, Cultura Creştină, 18: 746–94. Popovici, G. (1924), ‘Diferenţe şi asemănări în structura biologică de rasă a popoarelor României’, Cultura, 3: 224–34. Popovici, G. (1927), ‘Ce este puericultura?’ Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 14–16. Popovici, G. (1928), ‘Biopolitica, puericultura şi schimbarea de system în conducerea statului’, Societatea de Mâine, 5: 443–4. Popovici, G. (1933), Contribuţiunile româneşti în pediatrie şi puericultură, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Transilvania’. Popovici, G. (1936–1940), Elemente de pediatrie şi puericultură, 3 vols, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Lumina’. Preda, G. (1944), Activitatea ‘ASTREI’ în 25 ani de la Unire (1918–1943), Sibiu: Tiparul Institutului de Arte Grafice ‘Dacia Traiană’. Râmneanţu, P. (1935a), ‘Cercetări asupra originii etnice a populaţiei din sud-­estul Transilvaniei pe baza compoziţiei serologice a sângelui’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 6: 36–66. Râmneanţu, P. (1935b), ‘Origine ethnique des Séklers de Transylvanie’, Revue de Transylvanie, 2: 45–59. Râmneanţu, P. (1935c), ‘The Growth of the Population in Rumania’, Population: Journal of the International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems, 2: 108–10. Râmneanţu, P. (1936), ‘Soluţiuni în legătură cu problema declinului etnic al populaţiei româneşti din Banat’, Revista Institutului Social Banat-Crişana, 4: 1–39. Râmneanţu, P. (1937a), ‘Din metodologia biotipologiei’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 8: 257–61. Râmneanţu, P. (1937b), ‘Le type biotypologique de la population du Banat’, Bulletin de l’Académie de Médicine de Roumanie, 4: 716–36. Râmneanţu, P. (1937c), ‘Körpergrösse und Körpergewicht der rumänischen Schulkinder’, Gesundheit und Erziehung, 50: 84–8. Râmneanţu, P. (1937d), ‘Die Blutgruppenverteilung in Siebenbürgen und Banat auf Grund von 18.675 Bestimmungen’, Zeitschrift für Rassenphysiologie, 9: 143–5. Râmneanţu, P. (1937e), ‘O analiză a proporţiilor căsătoriilor în România’, Transilvania, 68: 467–9. Râmneanţu, P. (1938a), ‘La méthode biotypologique dans l’étude du village’, Archives pour la Science et la Réforme Sociales, 16 : 172–7. Râmneanţu, P. (1938b), ‘Biotype and Fertility of Women from the Province of Banat (Rumania)’, in Congrès International de la Population. vol. 8, Problèmes Qualitatifs de la Population, Paris: Hermann, 14–20. Râmneanţu, P. (1938c), ‘Problema căsătoriilor mixte în oraşele din Transilvania în perioada de la 1920–1937’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 8: 317–38. Râmneanţu, P. (1939a), Elemente de biometrie medicală şi statistică vitală, Bucharest: Institutul Central de Statistică. Râmneanţu, P. (1939b), ‘The Classical blood groups and the M, N and M, N properties in the nations from Transylvania’, in XVIIe Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistorique, 325–332. Râmneanţu, P. (1940a), ‘Biometria rurală (biotipologia adultului)’, in Banu, G. (ed.), Problemele sanitare ale populatiei din România, 98–117. 357

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Râmneanţu, P. (1940b), ‘Biotipologie şcolară’, in Banu, G. (ed.), Problemele sanitare ale populatiei din România, 118–26. Râmneanţu, P. (1940c), ‘Măsuri de politică demografică şi politica demografică totalitară’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 11: 29–52. Râmneanţu, P. (1941a), ‘Evoluţia neamurilor’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 12: 19–35. Râmneanţu, P. (1941b), ‘Românii dintre Morava şi Timoc şi continuitatea spaţiului lor etnic cu al Românilor din Banat şi din Timocul bulgar’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 12: 40–62. Râmneanţu, P. (1941c), ‘Distribuţia grupelor de sânge la populaţia din Transilvania’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 12: 137–59. Râmneanţu, P. (1942a), ‘Bărbatul roman medionormal’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 13: 9–36. Râmneanţu, P. (1942b), ‘Cercetări asupra constituţiei umane la români’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 13: 175–201. Râmneanţu, P. (1942c), Expunere de lucrări ştiinţifice, Sibiu: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească’ din Cluj. Râmneanţu, P. (together with V. Luşirea) (1942d), ‘Contribuţii noi la studiul seroetnic al populaţiei din România’, Ardealul Medical, 2: 503–511. Râmneanţu, P. (1943a), ‘Problemele etnobiopolitice ale Transilvaniei’, Transilvania, 74: 325–48. Râmneanţu, P. (1943b), ‘Grupele de sânge la Ciangăii din Moldova’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 14: 51–65. Râmneanţu, P. (1943c), ‘Înrudirea de sânge’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 14: 220–37. Râmneanţu, P. (1943d), ‘Sânge şi glie’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 14: 370–92. Râmneanţu, P. (1943e), ‘Înregistrarea biologică şi demografia’, in Moldovan, I. (ed.), Probleme de sănătate publică, Sibiu: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească’ din Cluj, 1–90. Râmneanţu, P. (1944a), ‘Cercetari asupra orientării endocrine la români’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 15: 30–9. Râmneanţu, P. (1944b), ‘Constituţie şi fertilitate’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 15: 78–87. Râmneanţu, P. (1944c), Die Abstammung der Tschangos, Sibiu: Centrul de Studii şi Cercetări cu Privire la Transilvania. Râmneanţu, P. (1944d), ‘Tendinţe în vitalitatea neamurilor din Transilvania’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 15: 162–91. Râmneanţu, P. (1945), ‘Fundaţia Rockefeller’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 16: 120–43. Râmneanţu, P. (1946a), Problema iradierii românilor din Transilvania în principatele române, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească’ Râmneanţu, P. (1946b), The Biological Grounds and the Vitality of Transylvanian Rumanians, Sibiu: Centrul de Studii şi Cercetări Privitoare la Transilvania. Râmneanţu, P. (1947), ‘Statistică vitală’, in Moldovan, I., Râmneanţu, P. and Stoichiţa, I. (eds.), Tratat de sănătate publică, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească’. Râmneanţu, P. (1962), ‘Evenimente umanitare şi culturale la Odesa şi istorice la Tiraspol, realizate în anul 1941’, Arhivele Naţionale ale României, Fond Râmneanţu, Petru, No. 1651. Râmneanţu, P. (1972a), Despre romani din Banatul iugoslav, Arhivele Naţionale ale României, Fond Râmneanţu, Petru, No. 1651. Râmneanţu, P. (1972b), ‘Constituţia umană somato-­funcţională a populaţiei adulte din sate de pe valea Arieşului din judeţul Turda’, Studii şi Cercetări de Antropologie, 9: 129–38. Râmneanţu, P. (1973), ‘Activitatea lui Iuliu Moldovan în medicina socială’, Clujul Medical, 56: 623–5. Râmneanţu, P. (1975), ‘Biometrical Variations of Some Anthropological Parameters of Romanians in the Last Century’, Annuaire Roumain d’Anthropologie, 12: 25–30. Râmneanţu, P. (1977), Iuliu Moldovan (1882–1966). Viaţa, realizările şi epoca sa, Bucharest, Manuscript. 358

Romania

Râmneanţu, P. and Oprea, G. (1928), Mişcarea natalităţii în Banat prin avorturi criminale, Cluj: Tipografia Ardealul. Reed, L. J. and Manuilă, S. (1940), ‘The Probable Error of a Racial Blood Index’, Comtes Rendus des Séances de l’Institut des Sciences de Roumanie, 4: 155–65. Relgis, E. (1935), Umanitarism şi eugenism, Bucharest: ‘Vegetarismul’. Révész, B. (1930), ‘Programul norvegian’, Revista Sănătatea şi ‘Viaţa Fericită’, 30: 273–4. Rosenblatt, H. (1936), Certificatul medical prenupţial, Bucharest: Tipografia ‘Activitatea grafică’. Săulescu, N. and Mudra, A. (1937), Elemente de biometrie, Cluj: Tipografia ‘Cartea Românească’. Schiller, F. C. S. (1931), ‘Eugenics as a Moral Ideal: The Beginnings of a Progressive Reform’, Arhiva pentru Ştiinţă şi Reformă Socială, 8: 489–97. Stan, L. (1941), ‘Rasism faţă de ţigani’, Cuvântul 18 (18 January): 1–2. Stan, L. (1942), Rasă şi religiune, Sibiu: Tiparul Tipografie Arhidiecezane. Sterian, E. (1910), ‘Sterilizarea nebunilor şi criminalilor’, Medicul Poporului, 1 (20 March): 113–14. Suciu, P. (1943), ‘Drumul spre omul nou’, Societate de Mâine, 20: 137–8. Sutzu, A. (1874), ‘Evoluţiunea şi hereditatea’, Gazeta Medico-Chirurgicală a Spitalelor, 5: 182–7. Tiniş, A. (1942), ‘Examenul prenupţial obligatoriu în mediul rural’, Ardealul Medical, 2: 451–2. Trifu, V. (1940), ‘Lupta contra natalităţii’, Parlamentul României, 11 (31 January): 9–12. Tomescu, P. (1942), Doi ani de activitate la Ministerul Sănătăţii, 1941 şi 1942, Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice ‘Tiparul Românesc’. Vaida-Voevod, A. (1927), ‘Politica naţională şi capitalul biologic naţional’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 1: 199–211. Van der Aa, J. S. (ed.) (1937), Proceedings of the XIth International Penal and Penitentiary Congress held in Berlin, August 1935, Bern: Bureau of the International Penal and Penitentiary Commission. Vasilescu-Bucium, I. (1935a), ‘Conceptul eugenic în legislaţia modernă’, Justiţia Olteniei, 16: 41–2. Vasilescu-Bucium, I. (1935b) ‘Eugenia şi studiul eredităţii’, Mişcarea Medicală Română, 8: 169–74. Vasilescu-Bucium, I. (1935c), ‘Eugenia şi înoirile codului penal’, Mişcarea Medicală Română, 8: 363–5. Vasilescu-Bucium, I. (1936), ‘Criminologia şi eugenia’, Revista de Medicină Legală, 1: 84–90. Vasilescu-Bucium, I. (1939), ‘Tendances eugénique dans le nouveau Code penal roumain Carol II’, in XVIIe Congrès International d’Anthropologie et d’Archéologie Préhistorique, 678–81. Voicu, M. (1947), ‘Certificatul prenupţial’, Naţiunea, 2 (27 October): 5. Voina, A. (1924a), ‘Eugenia şi igiena naţiunii’, Clujul Medical, 5: 92–100. Voina, A. (1924b), ‘Doi factori de progres: igiena şi eugenia’, Societatea de Mâine, 1: 183–4. Voina, A. (1924c), ‘Aspecte demografice’, Societate de Mâine, 1: 266. Voina, A. (1926a), Valorificarea capitalului uman prin igiena naţiunii, Sibiu: Editura Asociaţiunii ASTRA. Voina, A. (1926b), ‘Activitatea secţiei medicale şi biopolitice a ‘Astrei’, Transilvania, 57: 37–9. Voina, A. (1927). ‘Certificatul medical la căsătorie’, Sănătatea Publică 1: 6. Voina, A. (1936), ‘Oficiul eugenic’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 7: 255–69. Voina, A. (1940), Reforma învăţământului şi biologia naţiunii, Bucharest: Cugetarea, 1940. Voina, A. (1942), ‘Necesitatea unui institut de biologia naţiunii’, Transilvania, 73: 21–30. Vornica, Gh. (1942), ‘Studii eugenice’, Transilvania, 73: 221–4. 359

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Ygrec (Iosif Glicsman) (1927), ‘Eugenia şi ereditatea patologică’, Sănătatea Publică, 1: 4–5. Zolog, M. and Comşia, O. (1934), ‘Consultaţiile prenupţiale şi certificatul prenupţial’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 5: 165–72. Zolog, M. and Făcăoaru, I. (1934), ‘Indicaţia şi legislaţia eugenică a sterilizării’, Buletin Eugenic şi Biopolitic, 5: 186–92.

Secondary Sources Achim, V. (2005), ‘Romanian-German Collaboration in Ethnopolitics. The Case of Sabin Manuilă’, in Fahlbusch, M. and Haar, I. (eds), German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing (1919–1945), New York: Berghahn Books, 139–54. Achim, V. (2007), ‘Consideraţii asupra proiectelor româneşti de schimb de populaţie din anii celui de-­al doilea război mondial’, in Bolovan, S., Bolovan, I., Gräf, R. and Pădurean, C. (eds), Mişcări de populaţie şi aspecte demografice în România în prima jumătate a secolului XX, Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 241–54. Bărbulescu, C. (ed.) (2010), Documente privind politica sanitară în România (1865–1989), Cluj-Napoca: Editura Mega. Bărbulescu, C. (2014), ‘Mariage, race et eugénisme en Roumanie de la fin du XIXe siècle au milieu du XXe siècle’, Annales de Démographie Historique, 1: 235–65. Bokor, Zs. (2013), Testtörténetek. A nemzet és a nemi betegségek medikalizálása a két világháború közötti Kolozsváron, Kolozsvár: Nemzeti Kisebbségkutató Intézet. Bolovan, S. and Bolovan, I. (eds) (1995), Sabin Manuilă: Istorie şi demografie, Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane. Brătescu, G. (ed.) (1984), Apărarea sănătăţii. Ieri şi azi, Bucharest: Editura Medicală. Brătescu, G. (1988), Grija pentru sănătate. Primele tipărituri de interes medical în limba română (1581–1820), Bucharest: Ed. Medicală. Brătescu, G. (1999), Către sănătatea perfectă. O istorie a utopismului medical, Bucharest: Humanitas. Brătescu, G. and Fabritius, K. (1989), Biological and Medical Sciences in Romania, Bucharest: Ed. Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică. Bucur, M. (2002), Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Catala, M. and Poirier, J. (2012), ‘Georges Marinesco (1863–1938): Neurologist, Neurohistologist and Neuropathologist’, Romanian Journal of Morphology and Embryology, 53: 869–77. Săhleanu, V. (1979), Începuturile medicinii sociale în România: G. Banu, Bucharest: Ed. Medicală. Solonari, V. (2010), Purifying the Nation: Population Exchange and Ethnic Cleansing in Nazi-Allied Romania, Baltimore, MD.: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Târcoveanu, E., Romanescu, C. and Litu, M. (eds) (2004), Ctitorii prestigiului: 125 de ani de învăţământ medical superior la Iaşi, Iaşi: Editura Gr. T. Popa. Thorne, M. B. (2011), ‘Assimilation, Invisibility, and the Eugenic Turn in the “Gypsy Question” in Romanian Society, 1938–1942’, Romani Studies, 21: 177–206. Turda, M. (2003), ‘Fantasies of Degeneration: Some Remarks on Racial Antisemitism in Interwar Romania’, Studia Hebraica, 3: 336–48. Turda, M. (2009), ‘ “To End the Degeneration of a Nation”: Debates on Eugenic Sterilization in Inter-­war Romania’, Medical History, 53: 77–104. Turda, M. (2012), ‘Gheorghe Banu’s Theory of Rural Biology in the 1920s Romania’, in Bărbulescu, C. and Ciupală, A. (eds), Medicine, Hygiene and Society from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, Cluj-Napoca: Ed. Mega, 125–40. 360

Romania

Turda, M. and Gillette, A. (2014), Latin Eugenics in Comparative Perspective, London: Bloomsbury. Wedekind, M. (2007), ‘Wissenschaftsmilieus und Ethnopolitik im Rumänien der 1930/ 40-er Jahre’, in Ferdinand, U. and Ehmer, J. (eds), Herausforderung Bevölkerung. Zu Entwicklungen des modernen Denken über die Bevölkerung vor, im und nach dem “Dritten Reich”, Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 233–64.

361

6 Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Overview Ana Cergol Paradiž

I As was the case elsewhere in Europe, Slovene traditions of human improvement predated Galton’s seminal studies on eugenics. According to Božo Škerlj, the most important Slovene eugenicist, beliefs regarding the fateful influence of good or bad hereditary traits in offspring were already present in Slovene folk tradition (Škerlj 1935a: 2–11). Slovene ‘folk eugenic’ ideas were complemented by the publication of a corpus of modern proto-­eugenic texts at the beginning of the twentieth century. Slovene psychiatrists, such as Fran Goestl (1864–1945) and Ivan Robida (1871–1941), and Catholic moralists including the Bishop of Ljubljana, Anton Bonaventura Jeglič (1850– 1937), wrote about the harmful effects of alcohol on offspring. The connection between alcoholism and the progressive degeneration of Slovenes had been a subject of concern since the 1880s (Goestl 1893: 164–72; Robida 1899; Jeglič 1910). Moreover, beliefs regarding the inferiority of specific groups of citizens were latently present in the debate which surrounded the introduction of ‘marriage permits’ for poor people, primarily motivated by Malthusian concerns, and contemporary naturalistic literature; as, for example, Fran Govekar’s 1896 novel V krvi (In the Blood). However, until the end of World War I when the greater part of the Slovene territory was included in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, local eugenic texts remained rare. Only with the widespread recognition of the degenerative effects of war, and the related yearning for a new beginning, did the emergence of eugenics in the Slovene lands become possible. In the early 1920s, Franc Derganc wrote widely as an enthusiastic advocate of eugenics, and worked towards the establishment of a Yugoslav eugenic association. The anthropologist Niko Županič (1876–1961) also envisioned a similar society at this time. In one of his rare texts on eugenics, the 1921 book Evgenika dr. Ivana Tavčarja (Ivan Tavčar’s Eugenics), Županič assumed that the establishment of a eugenic society was possible. However, eugenics did not gain major popularity with Slovene scientific elites until the Anthropological Section of the Hygiene Institute (Higienski Zavod v Ljubljani) was established in Ljubljana in the late 1920s. It was here, under Škerlj’s leadership, that eugenic research began to be conducted in earnest. Most eugenic articles appeared in the Institute’s journal, Zdravje (Health), and in the liberal magazine Življenje in Svet (Life and the World), which devoted a column entirely to eugenic topics.

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

II The most important achievement of Slovene eugenics was the publication of the journal Evgenika (Eugenics) during the 1930s, the only periodical devoted exclusively to eugenics in Yugoslavia. The publication of this journal was predated by a supplement to Zdravniški Vestnik (Medical Journal), entitled Iz evgenike (About Eugenics) and edited by Škerlj. In 1934, the supplement grew into a new publication, Evgenika with Škerlj as its editor; it was published five times a year and contained fourteen pages. It featured ‘original contributions and translations from eugenics, genetics, genealogy, racial sciences, statistics, biology, constitution theory, population statistics, politics etc. and regular reports on domestic and new expert literature, smaller updates and a genetics seminar’ (Škerlj 1937a: front cover). In 1936 the journal had 800 subscribers, including 650 medical doctors. Even though its editor enthusiastically entreated Slovene experts to publish in the journal, Škerlj’s invitations were rarely answered. Most of the contributors, moreover, discussed general questions relating to the origin of humankind, alcoholism, demography and genetics. Of the foreign contributions to Evgenika, including translations, most were from the Slavic world, including the Bulgarian physician Hristo Seizov; Jerzy Morzycki (1905–54), Secretary of the Hygiene Institute in Poznań, and Bohumil Sekla, Secretary of the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society (Seizov 1937: 17–19; Sekla 1937: 19-23). The highest number of articles by foreign Slavic authors appeared in 1937, under the title ‘Eugenics among Slavs’. In addition to Slavic eugenic texts, Škerlj also published an authorized translation of Sterilisation for Human Betterment by the American eugenicist Paul Popenoe (1888–1979); a text by the Norwegian eugenicist Eric EssenMöller (1901–92), and a summary of a lecture by the English biologist Julian Huxley (1887–1975). From the above-­mentioned articles, it would appear that German race-­hygiene was rarely invoked, but this would be somewhat misleading. German racial hygiene appeared frequently in the news and book reviews published in Evgenika, and its influence can also be observed in Škerlj’s articles. Škerlj was, of course, unable to avoid the prevailing influence of German culture and literature on eugenics in East-Central Europe. Furthermore, it seems probable that he first became strongly interested in eugenics during his studies in Germany. The clear emphasis of the advantages of compulsory sterilization over other eugenic methods, and the journal’s silent approval of German racial and population policies and institutional anti-Semitism all suggest the importance of German racial hygiene to Škerlj’s eugenic worldview. Racial anthropology often preoccupied Škerlj. He focused in particular on the so-­called Dinaric race, which was supposedly prevalent in Yugoslavia. In contrast to some anthropologists, he claimed that it was an indigenous European race (Škerlj 1928: 34–56). Although his conclusions on the subject are debatable, they cannot be equated with the glorification of the Dinaric race found in some other Yugoslav authors, such as Svetislav Stefanović (1877–1944), Stevan Ivanić (1884–1948) and Branimir Maleš (1897–1968). Moreover, anti-Semitism is rarely present in Škerlj’s writing in comparison to these authors. Škerlj’s understanding of racism, racial anthropology and race-­hygiene 365

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

is most explicitly demonstrated in his polemic against the Croatian socialist and biologist, Mirko Kus-Nikolajev (1896–1961). In his 1934 Laž rasizma (The Lie of Racism), Kus-Nikolajev described racial anthropology as a discipline in the service of Nazi politics, and argued instead for the equality of human races (Kus-Nikolajev 1934). Škerlj believed Kus-Nikolajev’s arguments to be ‘Marxist demagoguery’, and defended the existence of physiological and psychological racial differences. In return, KusNikolajev labelled Škerlj’s criticism ‘bourgeois science’, prompting Škerlj to explicitly articulate his position on race and racial hygiene thus: Races differ physically and mentally. The differences in intelligence are not as great as those in emotional expression. [. . .] Nations consist of typical racial mixtures, in which one race is often stronger and defines the nation. [. . .] Racial policy and racial hygiene are possible, and by themselves are in no way a cause for the enslavement of nations, which a professional anthropologist will always fight against. [. . .] There exist differences between races. [. . .] and to assert these differences is not racism. It would only be possible to speak of the ‘superiority’ of a race in a biological sense, and in this regard the Nordics would definitely not win out. (Škerlj’s letter to journal Svoboda, 1934) Škerlj did not define eugenics in racist terms. In Evgenika’s first volume, he had already firmly established the distinction between eugenics and racial hygiene. He defined the former as a universal activity transcending differences between nations, aiming instead to improve humanity in general, whereas the latter was a local activity directed towards the improvement of individual races (Škerlj 1934a: 608–10). Several times he also emphasized the difference between eugenics, and what he called ‘Hitlerism’ (Škerlj 1934b: 1). Similar views were put forward by other Slovene eugenicists, such as Maks Kremžar and August Munda. In contrast to other eugenic discourses in EastCentral Europe, particularly Austria, Slovene eugenic texts published in Evgenika were to a large extent devoid of racist connotations. In the writings of Slovene eugenicists, a form of race or nationalist antagonism is only evident in discussions of ‘Slavic’ in contrast to ‘Germanic’ and ‘Latin’ races, which in mainstream European and North American eugenics at the time were treated as superior. Slovene eugenicists did not accept theories that defined Slavs as inferior to Germanic or Latin nations. Franc Derganc, for example, completely rejected the concept of the ‘Übermensch’, sarcastically referring to it as the ‘fair-­haired beast’. He warned against the potential consequences of ‘Western’ eugenics if implemented in Slavic nations while calling upon the latter to organize their own ‘defensive’ eugenics. Ema Deisinger, a pedagogue and child reformer, was of a similar opinion. Škerlj also criticized the negative attitudes held by some of his German colleagues towards the Slavs, arguing that ‘German racism, which cherishes only the Aryan race, can be considered very wrong or at least a heavy exaggeration’ (Škerlj 1934c: 255). On the other hand, Slovene eugenicists such as Bojan Pirc, Karel Petrič (1900–44), Angela Vode (1892–1985) and Katja Vodopivec-Černe (1917–2012) were more concerned with the quantitative competition between Slavic, German and Latin nations, and promoted pro-­natalism. 366

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

At the same time, Nazism’s anti-Slavic racism and the fear that the Nazi regime would exploit compulsory sterilization laws for ‘political aims’ contributed to the rejection of German racial hygiene by many Slovene eugenicists. Take, for example, this comment: On 1 January 1934 a law on compulsory sterilization will come into effect in Germany. [. . .] At first glance the law seems completely reasonable and innocent, but given the conditions that today prevail in Germany, it is to be expected that it will be abused in the ugliest manner. News from Germany suggests that sterilization is viewed as a punishment and not as a eugenic measure. (‘Sterilizacijski zakon v Nemčiji’, Jutro 1933: 6) Other partially eugenically motivated policies were viewed favourably; however, only some of them were introduced in Yugoslavia. As Škerlj and others assumed (‘Eugenics in Yugoslavia’, Eugenical News 1936: 114; Pétrich 1936: 451–7), one of the most important eugenic measures enacted in the country, was the Venereal Disease Suppression Act. In Article  9, the Act stated that before entering into marriage, men must obtain a medical certificate proving that they were not infected with a venereal disease. The Act also ordered the dissemination of sex education, the free treatment of venereal diseases, the establishment of institutions for ‘fallen girls’, and prohibited prostitution in all forms (‘Zakon o zatiranju spolnih bolezni’, Službeni list Kraljevske banske uprave Dravske banovine 1934: 537–9). According to Ivan Prijatelj (1875– 1937), the Minister of Public Health at the time, the Venereal Disease Suppression Act, passed on 31 May 1934, was created, following the examples of Hungarian, Czechoslovak, Austrian and Polish legislation. It became quickly apparent, however, that Yugoslav circumstances did not favour such measures. Even before the Act came into effect, a number of medical doctors cautioned against its stipulations, arguing that the ‘shy and conservative’ rural Yugoslavs were reluctant to be subjected to investigation in this manner (‘Zakon o suzbijanju polnih bolesti’, Folder 72: 10–37). Many were also concerned that the requirement of a medical examination before marriage would increase the number of extramarital affairs (‘Brez zdravniškega izspričevala ni poroke’, Slovenski Narod 1934: 169). Furthermore, doctors questioned the ability of the state to finance free treatment under the Act. Thus, the requirement of medical certificates for marriage was revoked at the beginning of the following year. Škerlj later lobbied for its return, but was unsuccessful (Škerlj 1935b: 37–8). In addition to medical certificates, other measures were implemented during the inter-­war period, which interfered with the reproductive rights of Yugoslav citizens. Such interventions were based on pro-­natalist, positive eugenic arguments. For example, a law passed in 1931 imposed a higher rate of taxation on bachelors (regardless of the alleged quality of their genes), while providing tax relief to large families. Since the tax on single men was implemented as an addition to a ‘supplementary tax’ that only those whose property exceeded a specified amount were required to pay, it affected only wealthier men (‘Davek na neoženjene osebe’, Slovenski Gospodar 1931: 5; ‘Zakon o 367

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

davku na neoženjene osebe in davčni oprostitvi oseb z devetimi ali več otroki’, Službeni list Kraljevske banske uprave Dravske banovine 1931: 72–3). As in many other countries, Yugoslav law forbade abortion and the sale of contraceptive products (Zakon o Štampi: od 6. avgusta 1925. God 1926; Dolenc 1929). The need to change these ‘demographic laws’ was long debated. Socialist and communist authors, such as Stanko Leben (1897–1973), Edvard Kardelj (1910–79) and Angela Vode lobbied for the legalization of abortion for social reasons. This idea was publicly endorsed during the ‘Rally to Regulate Births’ (‘Zborovanje za ureditev porodov’) held in Ljubljana in 1933 by three Slovene women’s associations: the Association of Working Women and Girls (Zveza delavskih žen in deklet), the Women’s Movement (Ženski Pokret) and the Federation of Academically Educated Women– Ljubljana Section (Zveza Akademsko Izobraženih Žena–Sekcija Ljubljana). The event drew around 400 participants and attracted wide media attention (‘Za ureditev porodov’, Ženski List 1933: 1–2).

III During the 1930s, physicians Ivan Jurečko and Živko Lapajne, and to some extent Alojz Zalokar (1887–1944), along with some particularly liberal magazines and eugenicists (including Božo Škerlj and Avgust Munda), lobbied for the introduction of compulsory sterilization. Alternative eugenic measures were, they argued, either ineffective or excessively cruel (Jurečko 1931: 478–80; Lapajne 1935: 95–6 and 129–132; Škerlj 1934d: 30–3; 54–6 and 78–81; Zalokar 1938: 53–66). Some Slovene Protestants (in 1929, for example, around 2.63 per cent of the inhabitants of Drava Banate1 declared themselves Protestants) were also in favour of such measures, as demonstrated by an article published in Evgenika by the Pastor Gerhard May (1898–1980) from Celje. May explained that eugenic ideas could be supported by evangelical charitable efforts, since new discoveries in the field of natural sciences demand an ethical approach that went beyond individualism. May’s Christian rhetoric was infused with eugenic idioms. His arguments went beyond calls for state intervention in the reproductive choices of its citizens, and even suggested that it should collaborate with religious institutions in performing this task: One cannot expect cretins and ethically inferior people to voluntarily renounce sexual intercourse. Of course, consent is to be desired for sterilization, nonetheless, this should not satisfy us. The responsibility for such a decision cannot be left to the individual, even if he is the one most affected. Here the responsibility belongs to not only the juridical but also the moral community. (May 1937: 36–7) Opposing these developments, especially in the wake of the Papal encyclical Casti Connubii (1930) was the extremely influential Catholic camp, which viewed abortion and eugenic sterilization, together with rising divorce rates, falling birth-­rates, and general 368

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

‘sexual debauchery’, as symptoms of a spiritual decline caused by individualist morality and capitalism (‘Kaj Pravite?’ Slovenec 1930: 4; ‘Eros Krščanskega zakona’, Slovenec 1931: 1; ‘Otrok vedno manj’, Slovenec 1935: 1). Slovene liberals typically depicted conservative objections as a sign of ‘Catholic backwardness’ (‘Kaj Pravite?’ Jutro 1930: 3). Thus, the topics of abortion and compulsory sterilization became rhetorical tools employed in the day-­to-day media conflict between traditionally opposed political groups. Although Slovene Catholic authors, including the respected theologian and university professor Aleš Ušeničnik (1868–1952) and gynaecologist Anton Brecelj (1875–1943), condemned eugenic sterilization, they usually did not oppose eugenics per se, but, like Croatian Catholic eugenicists such as Andrija Živkovič, advocated different methods (Brecelj 1924–5: 289–302 and 1933–4: 158–9; Ušeničnik 1930: 128–3 and 1931: 32–3). Thus one can find in their work arguments and ideas that to some extent resemble the ‘Latin eugenics’ then popular in Italy, France and Romania. In addition to opposing sterilization, these include the promotion of positive eugenics, pro-­natalism, the labelling of contraception as a dysgenic influence, the introduction of puériculture, the advocacy of premarital medical certificates, the struggle against prostitution, and the promotion of sexual abstinence as part of a general return to Catholic morality. Although the eugenics lobby did not succeed in the implementation of eugenic legislation in Slovenia and more broadly in Yugoslavia, the inferiority of certain social categories was a concept widely debated in the public arena, as well as among renowned intellectuals, including a number of Catholics. Despite the absence of a consensus on proper eugenic methods, Slovene intellectuals rarely criticized the goals of eugenics. Nevertheless, such criticism did exist, and was voiced, among others, by jurist Metod Dolenc (1875–1941), Angela Vode and Maks Kremžar. These different interpretations of eugenics appeared not only in journal articles, but also in public lectures and papers presented at various national congresses. For example, eugenics was discussed at the Second All-Slav Paedological Congress (Drugi Vseslovanski Pedološki Kongres), which took place in Ljubljana in 1937. On this occasion, Škerlj presented a paper entitled ‘Manj nadarjeni otroci v dravski banovini – evgeniški problem’ (‘Less Talented Children in the Drava Banate – A Eugenic Problem’). Other Yugoslav participants, such as Boris Stevanović (Belgrade), Bogomir Dragaš (Ljubljana), Miodrag Matič (Jagodič) and Ema Deisinger (Maribor), also alluded to eugenics in their papers (‘II. Vseslovanski Pedološki Kongres v Ljubljani’, Učiteljski Tovariš 1937: 2). Furthermore, at the first congress of the Yugoslav Union for the Protection of Children (Jugoslovenska unija za zaštitu dece), held in Belgrade between 30 November and 1 December 1935, an entire session was devoted to race-­hygiene (Jagodič 1935: 1–2). In his introductory speech, the Serbian sexologist Aleksandar Ɖ. Kostić (1893–1983) claimed that the state should distinguish between the protection of ‘healthy children’ and the treatment of ‘defective’ ones. In his view, the latter was just charitable work, whereas the protection of healthy and talented children could be considered an investment for the future. Following Kostić, paediatrician Milan Petrovič (1886–1963) and TB specialist Jevrem Nedeljković (1888–1978), both from Belgrade, lectured respectively on the effects of parental venereal diseases and tuberculosis on offspring. 369

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Next, Boz̆ idar Niketic̆ (1899–1963), a physician at the Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital in Zagreb, spoke on the effects of parental mental illnesses on offspring, while Miloš Popović (1876–1954) examined the hereditary effects of alcoholism. In the discussions that followed it was suggested that the word ‘eugenics’ should be employed instead of ‘race hygiene’, since the latter was too closely associated with National Socialism. The session on ‘race hygiene’ then concluded with the passage of a resolution which urged that eugenics must be considered a matter of primary national importance, and that the state should, therefore, provide full (financial) support to ‘family protection’ efforts. It was also concluded that the measure on premarital examinations, which, as already mentioned, was enacted in 1934 and then revoked in 1935, should be reintroduced. In general, Slovene eugenicists advocated legislation on premarital medical certificates, for ‘hygienic reasons’, purposely as a means to limit the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. Soon after the congress, the child specialist Angela Vode wrote an article in which she criticized Kostić’s claim that the state should not provide care for ‘defective’ children. As she explained: In practice, medical and social care must undoubtedly be distinguished, but both represent complementary obligations of the state. One who does not realize this must reject racial-­hygiene principles that do not consider welfare as the ethical duty of the community towards the individual, but only see the value of the race to the state. (Vode 1936: 30–2) The Yugoslav Union for the Protection of Children returned to eugenics on several other occasions. It published eugenic texts in its journals Narodni podmladak (National Youth) and Zaščita Otrok in Mladine (Youth and Child Protection), and even included the duty to protect children of genetically ‘unhealthy parents’ in its ‘Dečja Povelja’ (‘Children’s Orders’) programme (‘Dečja Povelja’, Narodni Podmladak 1935: 138–9). Similarly, the 1935 all-Yugoslav Medical Congress, held in Belgrade, dealt with ‘The Question of Abortion in Relation to Eugenics and the Protection of Mothers’ (‘Vprašanje splava v zvezi z evgeniko in zaščito mater’). The majority of the 400 participants approved a resolution which demanded that the government introduce social, ethical and eugenic indications for abortion into Yugoslav criminal law, and emphasized the need for the protection of mothers and children (Meršol 1935: 438–40). Several participants, including the Serbian eugenicist Svetislav Stefanović, published their papers in Evgenika (Stefanović 1935a: 52–6 and 1935b: 65–70). Soon after, the Slovene Medical Association organized another conference at which the majority of participants, despite vehement objections from some doctors, once again passed the aforementioned abortion resolution (Furlan 1935: 392–4).

IV As elsewhere, Slovene eugenics must be understood within the context of the professionalization of the medical profession and the general ‘hygienization’ of society 370

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

after 1918. In the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes (and, after 1929, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), eugenic initiatives were particularly closely linked to the establishment of public health institutions, the struggle against infectious diseases, and the improvement of child protection and maternal care (puériculture). It was in this context, for instance, that eugenic research was carried out by the Institute of Hygiene in Ljubljana (Higienski Zavod v Ljubljani). In an edited volume published in 1938 Ivo Pirc collected some of the work carried out at the Institute, including Dr Bogomir Dragaš’s on puériculture, Ivo Pirc’s on health propaganda; Bojan Pirc’s on health cooperativism, Božo Škerlj’s on gymnastics, and Dr Slava Kristan-Lunaček’s (1898–1978) on vacation colonies for children. The second part of the book described the work of hygienic institutions in the Drava Banate (including Škerlj’s Anthropological Section), while the third part highlighted the fight against infectious diseases, such as typhus, tuberculosis, and other health problems, such as alcoholism and poor hygienic conditions (I. Pirc 1938). Eugenic theory and practice was more broadly disseminated within the context of health and hygiene education and propaganda that was organized by the Yugoslav authorities during the inter-­war period. It included the organization of hygiene museums and exhibitions, such as the hygiene exhibition organized in 1935 in Belgrade, health education films, lectures, posters, and so forth. The teaching of hygiene as a school subject also provided information about eugenics through secondary school curricula and textbooks (Homan 1924; Programi: Metodska uputstva, za rad u srednjim Školama, L. 1936, Higiena za VII in VIII razred 1936). By 1937 ‘Race Hygiene (Eugenics)’ was proposed as an optional and distinct course at the Departments of Hygiene at the Medical Faculties at Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade Universities (‘Uredba o Medicinskih Fakultetah na Univerzah v Beogradu, Zagrebu in Ljubljani’, Službeni list Kraljevske banske uprave Dravske banovine 1937: 539–47). Equally important, by then eugenics had become part of the professional exam for medical doctors (‘Pravila o polaganju državnog ispita’, Box 1, folder 517). The Department of Social Medicine at the Institute of Hygiene in Ljubljana was particularly interested in ‘empirical studies’ of the Slovene population. An Anthropological Section (Antropološki Odsek Higienskega Zavoda v Ljubljani) was established in March 1929. Led by Škerlj, the Section initially focused on reconstructing the family trees of children from Ljubljana’s schools until, in 1930, it obtained the ‘necessary anthropological instruments’ to begin ‘serious anthropometric work’. Accordingly, in that same year a ‘genealogical and anthropological’ perspective was applied to the ‘problem of prostitution’, which was ‘at the time, still unexplored in Ljubljana’ (I. Pirc 1938: 236). The Section conducted research on thirty prostitutes with a view to publishing a 200-page study, but its efforts to find a publisher were unsuccessful. In 1930, Škerlj published this study, combined with the results of his research in Germany, in the journal Archiv für Frauenkunde und Konstitutionsforschung (Journal for Women Studies and Constitution Research) (Škerlj 1933a: 51–76). His article drew the interest of some notable sex reformers and eugenicists including Max Hirsch and Paul Popenoe (Hirsch to Škerlj and Popenoe to Škerlj 1933). In October 1932 the Section undertook further eugenic work, which led to a study of seventy-­six children attending special schools. The results were published as the ‘Social 371

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Anthropological Study on the Question of the Inferior Child’, which Škerlj referred to as the only apparent empirical eugenic study in Slovenia. It featured a precise description of the physical characteristics of the children, including physical anomalies and pubescent development, and, in the spirit of eugenics, also data on their ‘family case histories’ and family trees. While many of the subjects’ parents were determined to have been ‘hereditarily burdened’, as many as half of them were determined to be ‘alcoholic’. Furthermore, Škerlj claimed to have discovered that many of the boys and girls studied were on a path to general delinquency or ‘sex crimes’, respectively. In addition, because of the mathematically demonstrated multiplication of the feeble-­minded, it was feared that the Slovene nation was itself undergoing progressive degeneration (Škerlj 1933b: 34–102). In the mid-1930s, the Section moved away from eugenic studies and began to focus more on its anthropological work, which included research on both ‘normal’ schoolchildren and athletes, who were members of the Sokol, an all-Yugoslav gymnastic society, of both sexes (I. Pirc 1938: 240–7). The research focused on the female body especially, and particular attention was paid to the influence of external factors on the menstrual cycle, the types of female constitution and female physical exercise. Škerlj concluded that certain physical exercises proved harmful to ‘reproductive ability’, and with a view to the national demographic interest, therefore argued for the restriction of women’s sporting activities. Towards the end of the 1930s, the Section once again conducted limited eugenic research, including an analysis of the correlation between children’s academic results and their families’ characteristics, and also a study of the relationship between an individual’s physical constitution and their predisposition for contracting tuberculosis (Škerlj to Hodson 1939). The latter study continued at least until 1941 (Škerlj to Gini 1941).

V An account of the history of Slovene eugenics requires not only a discussion of the relationship with other movements elsewhere in Yugoslavia, but also of the wider international context. For example, Niko Zupanič participated at the International Congress on the Study of Population held in Rome in 1931 (Zupanič 1933: 46–63). In 1935, both he and Feodor Mikič (1898–?) attended the International Congress on Population Science convened in Berlin between 26 August and 1 September 1935. Zupanič presented a paper on the ‘Anthropological Aesthetics of the Yugoslav Population’ (‘Zur anthropologischen Ästhetik der jugoslawischen Landbevölkerung’) (Zupanič 1936: 480–5), while Mikič gave two papers, one ‘On the Index of the Birth Effect’ (‘Über den Index des Geburteneffektes’), the other ‘On the Biological Type Index in the Yugoslav Districts’ (‘Über den Index des biologischen Typus in jugoslawischen Bezirken’ (Mikič 1936a: 427–32 and 1936b: 433–9). Soon after, Zupanič also published his congress paper in the Slovene ethnological journal, expressing again his rejection of Nazi racial laws, especially as the German editors of the congress proceedings omitted this last point. Zupanič also argued that due to the existence of a strong Yugoslav racial 372

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

sense, state intervention to engineer society according to the principles of racial hygiene was not needed. Also in 1935, three Yugoslav scholars, including Metod Dolenc, the Slovene professor of criminal law, attended the 11th International Penal and Penitentiary Congress in Berlin. As others at the congress, Dolenc opposed negative eugenic measures in a resolution against compulsory sterilizations, put forward together with other participants from Latin and Catholic countries, such as Romania, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, France, Italy, Portugal, Bolivia and Spain (‘Resnica o vprašanju sterilizacije’, Slovenec 1935: 3). It was, however, Božo Škerlj that contributed most to the popularization of Slovene (and Yugoslav) eugenics abroad. In 1935, Cora B. S. Hodson, the secretary of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO) came across the journal Evgenika and wrote Škerlj immediately, requesting a description of the Yugoslav eugenic movement. She was interested in leading Yugoslav eugenicists, whether a eugenic association already existed in the country, and whether the Ministry of Public Health was conducting eugenic research (Hodson to Škerlj 1935). Škerlj supplied Hodson with answers. With regard to the existence of a eugenic association, he stated that while one did not yet exist in the country, ‘I have heard one is to be established. But this was two years ago’ (Škerlj to Hodson 1935). As for eugenic research commissioned by the Yugoslav Ministry of Public Health, he noted that he was not aware of any. It seems, however, that in 1930 the Ministry of People’s Health and the Central Hygiene Institute in Belgrade had indeed included in their already ambitious programme plans relating to ‘generative hygiene’ (‘Uredba o organizaciji in področju higienskih zavodov, zdravstvenih domov in zdravstvenih postaj’, Službeni list Kraljevske banske uprave Dravske banovine 1930: 66). According to Škerlj, eugenics and demographic policy were mostly examined in Yugoslavia within institutes of hygiene and related institutions. At the Central Hygiene Institute in Belgrade work was carried out by Bojan Pirc and Branimir Maleš, while Feodor Mikić was active at the School of Public Health. Svetislav Stefanović, President of the Yugoslav Medical Association, Avgust Munda, Boris Zarnik (1883–1945), Gregor Tomažič and Ivan Ɖaja were also mentioned. In another letter Škerlj also referred to Aleksandar Ɖ. Kostić. Škerlj’s list of Yugoslav eugenicists convinced Hodson that criteria were fulfilled for Yugoslavia to join the IFEO. Hodson had initially liaised with Svetislav Stefanović about Yugoslavia’s affiliation (Hodson to Škerlj 1935). Škerlj too agreed that Stefanović would be a suitable candidate to represent Yugoslavia at the IFEO. At the time it was assumed that if the much-­discussed Yugoslav eugenic association were established, Stefanović would be its president (Škerlj to Hodson 1936). Škerlj’s correspondence with Hodson continued in 1936, but his letters took on an increasingly gloomy and pessimistic tone. He was concerned at the lack of success with which the establishment of a eugenic society had been met, and observed that the Yugoslavs considered the IFEO’s membership fee to be too expensive. Due to excessive costs, Škerlj was even forced to turn down an invitation to the IFEO conference held in Scheveningen in July 1936. He also felt that Yugoslav eugenic initiatives generally fell on deaf ears, 373

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

especially among the clergy. In light of these problems, IFEO representatives offered him extended free membership for the duration of two years. The offer was accepted and thus with Škerlj as its representative, Yugoslavia became another East-Central European country (next to Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) to join the IFEO. More importantly, on 5 November 1936, on Škerlj’s initiative, the Scientific Committee of the Natural History Society in Ljubljana approved the creation of the Section for Anthropology, Genealogy and Eugenics (Sekcija za Antropologijo, Genealogijo in Evgeniko) (Škerlj 1937b: 28). The Section became active, however, only in March 1937, when its statutes were passed. Research areas included the production of eugenic and anthropological propaganda, the conducting of research and proposal of legislation. A scientific committee of Slovene experts was also established, consisting of zoologist Jovan Hadži (1884–1972), physician Alija Košir (1891–1973), jurists Avgust Munda and Aleksander Maklecov (1884–1948), psychiatrist Mihael Kamin (1898– 1944) and, of course, Božo Škerlj. Other Yugoslav members included Srečko Brodar (1893–1987) from Celje, Boris Zarnik and Feodor Mikič from Zagreb, and A. Petrović from Belgrade (‘Pravilnik Sekcije za Antropologijo, Genealogijo in Evgeniko’, Evgenika 1937: 38–41). At first, the Section was quite active. According to Evgenika, its second meeting took place on 18 September 1937. On this occasion, among other subjects, eugenic proposals for the new Civil Code were discussed which most likely concerned the prohibition of marriages between mentally ill persons (Kamin 1940: 244–53). In 1938, when the two-­ year membership in the IFEO was due to expire the Section was still unable to pay the membership fee, and Škerlj decided to request funds from the Ministry of Public Health (Škerlj to Hodson 1938). Apparently his request was granted, and Yugoslavia remained a member of the IFEO until 1939. On the other hand, there is no information about the Section for Anthropology, Genealogy and Eugenics after 1938, and we can assume that it had ceased to exist.

VI In December 1938 the journal Evgenika also ceased publication. Its editors explained that this was only a temporary setback. According to Škerlj’s correspondence a disagreement had taken place within the editorship of Zdravniški Vestnik and as a result its editor, Robert Neubauer, had been replaced. As his supporter, Škerlj was prompted to leave Zdravniški Vestnik and following Škerlj’s decision, the publication of Evgenika was terminated (Škerlj’s letter to Zdravniški Vestnik 1938). By the early 1940s, however, interest in eugenics began to decline among the Slovenes, but it did not disappear completely. Psychiatrist Mihael Kamin, and jurists Katja Černe and Aleksander Maklecov, for instance, continued to discuss eugenic issues, particularly with respect to criminality. They rejected the then-­popular concept of the ‘natural born criminal’ on the grounds that the delinquent was as much a product of their social environment as their heredity, and were sceptical of negative eugenic 374

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

measures. This was quite possibly connected to the dissemination of news about controversial aspects of National Socialist racial hygiene initiatives, which some Slovenes would experience directly during the 1940s. After Yugoslavia’s capitulation in 1941, the western part of the country was occupied by Italy, the north-­eastern part by Hungary and the northern part by Germany, which began to implement racial laws in the form of racial examinations and euthanasia. The racial examinations carried out by the Nazis in Slovenia during World War II were arguably more extensive than in any other occupied territory, since almost the entire population was subjected to them. As a result of these examinations, individuals with ‘inappropriate’ or ‘non-Aryan racial characteristics’ were identified and later deported, while ‘Aryan’ children of partisans and executed prisoners were given to German families (known as the ‘stolen children’). No less tragic were the consequences of the implementation of eugenic euthanasia. Soon after the German occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, a medical commission from Berlin visited the Novo Celje psychiatric hospital and five other institutions in Slovene Styria. Some 583 patients were selected and later sent to Hartheim near Linz, where they were killed under the T4 programme. Meanwhile, other patients were interned in a psychiatric hospital in Graz. Nazi authorities also executed elderly, sick and mentally handicapped prisoners from the Begunje women’s penitentiary in Upper Carniola. The termination of the T4 programme in 1941 eventually prevented the further killing of psychiatric patients in Nazi-­occupied territory. Other ‘eugenic’ laws that were enacted in the occupied territories of Upper Carniolia and Carinthia as well as in Slovene Styria, include a decree issued on 23 December 1942 (‘Verordnung über die Einführung von reichsrechtlichen Bestimmungen auf dem Gebiete des Gesundheitswesens in den besetzten Gebieten Kärntens und Krains’) and a decree issued on 25 March 1942 (‘Verordnung über die Einführung der Nürnberger Rassengesetze, der Bestimmungen zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwachses and zum Schutze der Erbgesundheit des deutschen Volkes, ferner des Personenstands und Familienrechtes in der Untersteiermark’), respectively. Further investigation is needed, however, to determine whether these decrees were put into practice, and to ascertain whether any individuals were in fact sterilized. That such well-­documented abuses were carried out in the name of National Socialist racial hygiene, undoubtedly contributed to efforts by Slovene intellectuals and the Slovene medical establishment to distance themselves from eugenics in the post-­war period.

375

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Ana Cergol Paradiž Translations by Marko Farić

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Franc Derganc

(1877, Semič–1939, Ljubljana)

Franc Derganc was a physician, a poet and a philosopher. He was born in 1877 in Semič (Ger.: Semitsch). After graduating from medical school in Vienna, he undertook study trips across Europe (Denmark, France, Germany and Switzerland) in order to specialize in surgery. He later became chief surgeon at the surgical department of Ljubljana’s main hospital (Splošna Bolnica v Ljubljani). He is known as the author of numerous revolutionary scientific discoveries, such as the method of subserous appendectomy (appendectomia subserosa), and as the founder of first Slovene medical journal, Zdravniški Vestnik, which also published the supplement Evgenika. Derganc did not affiliate himself with any of the traditional camps (liberal and clerical) that dominated the contemporary Slovene political scene. This attitude was also reflected in the magazine Jug (The South), which he began to publish after 1901 with anthropologist and future director of the Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana, Niko Županič. In Jug, Derganc did not advocate eugenic ideas directly, although he did display some of the intellectual orientations and interests, including an adherence to Darwinism, one that likely influenced his later engagement with the subject (Derganc 1901: 8–11). Furthermore, it is significant that the progressive utopias he envisioned were based on a collaboration of (South) Slavs. He also devoted attention to the issue of disability, particularly to ‘cripples’, but contrary to mainstream eugenic thought, he argued for the equal rights of the disabled (Derganc 1909: 2). In 1920, Derganc published probably his first article on eugenics in Sokolski Glasnik (The Falcon Herald), a journal dedicated to Sokol (Falcon), an all-Yugoslav gymnastic society (Derganc 1920: 159–65; 241–48; 425–32). He introduced the subject by warning against the moral and physical decadence caused by World War I, and expressed concerns about ‘German revenge’ and ‘Mongolian invasion’. Although he commented favourably on American compulsory sterilization laws,2 he devoted more attention to another method of race improvement, which he believed fell within the scope of Galton’s ‘science of improving the human race’, namely gymnastics. In short, a healthy body required a healthy spirit and ethical behaviour; he, therefore, praised the work of the Sokol gymnasts. Derganc, moreover, argued for the establishment of a special eugenic society that would spread such values in Slovene society. His ambitious aims in this regard were never realized, despite the fact that initially at least he enjoyed the intellectual support of several prominent members of the Slovene intellectual elite, including Ivan Oražen (1869–1921), the first president of the Provincial Health Commission for Slovenia and Istria (Prvi Predsednik Pokrajinskega Zdravstvenega Sveta za Slovenijo in Istro) and the first president of the Yugoslav Sokol movement (Starosta Jugoslovanskega Sokola), and Goregor Žerjav (1882–1929), vice-­president and later president of the Provincial Government of Slovenia during the inter-­war period. 377

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

During the early 1930s Derganc’s eugenic views echoed those popularized by the physical and educational work of the Sokol movement.3 As such it is no coincidence that his most extensive treatment of eugenics is to be found in his book Borba zapada in vzhoda (The Conflict between the West and the East), which was dedicated to the centenary of the birth of Miroslav Tyrš, founder of the Sokol movement (Derganc 1932). The book focuses on the struggle between the West and the East, or between Germanic and Slavic peoples, to which Derganc also attributed different forms of eugenics, ‘Western European’ and ‘Sokol’ eugenics, respectively. According to Derganc, the roots of Western European eugenics, or ‘racial hygiene’, can be traced back to French racial philosophy, founded by Comte de Gobineau, and whose successors include H. St. Chamberlain and even Friedrich Nietzsche. The dogma of the superiority of the Aryan race was later adopted by German National Socialism, and propagated at the expense of the Slavic peoples. In Derganc’s view, in order to protect themselves against the united front of the destructive, excessively individualistic and ‘scientifically misguided’ eugenics promoted by the Western nations, Slavs had to organize their own peaceful, defensive eugenics founded on established ethical values. In doing so, however, it was not necessary for them to form a new philosophical system or establish a new society, since the foundations of their defensive eugenics had already been laid down in the second half of the nineteenth century by Miroslav Tyrš and his Sokol movement. Sokol philosophy, and its idea of ‘social cooperation’, represented for Derganc a positive response to the theory of the ‘survival of the fittest’. The degeneration of humankind was not caused by those nations who were pacifist, but by the individualist and imperialist excesses evidenced by the Western nations. It was necessary to oppose this form of ‘survival of the fittest’ aggression, especially by means of a proper physical and ‘spiritual’ eugenics, which would enable people from early childhood to become accustomed to intra-­societal peace and cooperation. Derganc’s theory, his binary opposition between ‘Western European’ and ‘Sokol’ eugenics, was therefore an attempt to ‘scientifically’ challenge the dichotomy between inferior and superior races created by Anglo-Saxon eugenics, and to partially invert it in favour of the Slavs. The same arguments also appeared in Derganc’s later publications, particularly in a collection of essays entitled Svetozor (Worldview) (Derganc 1936). Derganc died in Ljubljana in 1939.

378

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

The Conflict Between the West and the East: On the Occasion of the Centenary of Miroslav Tyrš’ Birth4 The united front of Western European eugenics has declared an aggressive, decisive struggle for survival to all small, ‘depleted, mixed and degenerate nations’, above all the Slavs of Central Europe. Thus, Western aggressive eugenics has provoked the Slavs and forced them, against their peace-­loving nature and goodwill towards defensive eugenics, towards the kind of national defence in which they have found themselves for more than a millennium, and in which they have already lost countless of their best brothers and the most beautiful lands in the north and south of Europe. Is not this historical fact, in connection with a second fact, namely that the aggressive eugenics of the West is assembling a group of 120 million, enough to render the already apathetic Slavic minority of 65 million completely powerless? The Slavs’ historic duty is defence. Hostile eugenics teaches us that our defensive eugenics must likewise be theoretical and practical. Theoretical meaning that our scientists and philosophers must critically revise the biological, sociological and philosophical fundamentals of Western eugenics, and investigate whether the whole of the Western system of thought does not rest on a sand pile of dialectical fallacies. Positive science has already proved, in many areas, that the eugenics of Gobineau, Darwin and Nietzsche is merely a negative demonstration of what correct and scientific eugenics should not be at all. Gobineau’s theory of harmful racial mixing has proved to be a particularly fantastical illusion without any empirical basis. Chemistry proves already that through the mixing and merging of different elements, new bodies form with new, extraordinary and precious properties. Likewise, one notices in the metallurgy of alloys, for example, that the addition of strong, cheap metals increases the durability, glare and sound of gold. In botany, grafting ennobles the savage. Biology teaches us that vegetative, non-­sexual multiplication of protozoa only applies to a certain number of generations. After that degeneration appears, from which the protozoa can only be saved by the conjugation (merging) of two separate individuals, as is usual in normal reproduction. Livestock breeders replenish and invigorate languishing herds with new blood. Homogeneity leads to decay. Biologists count cross-­breeding among the primary conditions for the appearance of new forms and species, and consider mixing as a positive factor if it involves healthy and normal individuals. Gobineau himself cites two cultured, noble races, the Aryans and the Mongols, with the latter even acknowledged by some as superior with regards to statehood, organization and morality. The addition of Mongol blood, therefore, equips the Aryan Slavs for higher tasks. We Slavs can only be proud of our amalgam of Aryan and Mongol blood as a guarantee of a better future. [. . .] The type of Western eugenics represented by Gobineau, Darwin and Nietzsche is an attempt to build an ethical-­eugenic movement, but on completely misguided, incorrect ethical and eugenic foundations. Deriving throughout from exploitative, imperialist, and therefore unethical and non-­eugenic instincts, Western eugenics is a true monstrum per excessum,5 and therefore, a pathological formation. Indeed, the whole future of 379

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

humanity depends on an ethical-­eugenic movement that would cultivate and better the soul and body of man, and suppress and eliminate degenerate, antisocial and pathological types. First the soul, since all social-­developmental progress can only be directed by a properly structured human soul: a proper method of perception (observation), feeling, striving and acting (reactive composure). From the primary crisis of the contemporary soul originate all secondary crises (social, economic and cultural). Ethics remains the Archimedean point in the human soul from where the whole world can be turned over. Ethics came first, not only according to Socrates’ and Plato’s philosophy, but also in light of the empirical fact that an immoral person is dull, unresponsive to all cultural ideals of freedom, work, truth, justice and beauty, and that he slavishly serves only the lowly instincts of egotism, avarice and sexuality. Nevertheless, who is to establish the ethical-­eugenic movement that humanity so desperately needs, and when? We Slavs do not need it, because we have had it for a long time; it has been among us with the best of results, created for us by our old and tested mentor, the Czech nation. Our defensive ethical-­eugenic movement was established for us by the Czech philosopher and organizer Dr Miroslav Tyrš. Already seventy years ago in 1862 when the aggressive eugenics of Western Europe barely existed, Tyrš founded Sokol, an international and all-Slavic society for defence and education. Translation by Marko Farič

380

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Božo Škerlj

(1904, Vienna–1961, Ljubljana)

Božidar (Božo) Škerlj was born in Vienna in 1904, but his family moved to Ljubljana after World War I. There he attended gymnasium and university, graduating with degrees in biology and geography in 1926. He also studied under the Czech anthropologist and eugenicist Jindřich Matiegka (1862–1941) at Charles University in Prague, receiving a doctorate in natural sciences and anthropology in 1927. He was the first scientist in the nascent Yugoslav state to have a PhD in anthropology. Afterwards, he continued his studies in anthropology at the University of Bern, supported by a scholarship from the Czechoslovak government. He returned to Prague where he began working at the Institute of Pedology. It was here under the guidance of another Czech eugenicist and geneticist, Artur Brožek (1882–1934), that he first became more closely acquainted with genetics, and the study of the family trees of mentally challenged children and youths. In 1929, with assistance from the Croat health reformer Andrija Štampar (1888–1958), he obtained a position at the School Polyclinic in Ljubljana where he worked until 1946. From 1933 he was engaged as a private lecturer in anthropology without pay at the University of Ljubljana. During this time he undertook several study trips abroad. In 1931/32 he was the recipient of a Rockefeller scholarship to study in Germany, first in Berlin under Eugen Fischer (1874–1967) at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik), where he also worked with Otmar von Verschuer (1896–1969) and Hermann Muckermann (1877–1962). Škerlj completed his German research trip with a visit to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute für Genealogie) in Munich. In 1933, again on a Rockefeller scholarship, he travelled to Norway for two months and visited Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim in order to study the effects of climate on ‘menarche’ (commencement of the female menstrual cycle). Finally, supported by the Yugoslav Sokol League, in 1934 he was sent to Poland to work with the Polish anthropologist Jan Czekanowski (1882–1965) (Škerlj to Zarnik 1938). Škerlj maintained an extensive correspondence with other anthropologists and eugenicists in Europe and the USA. Among Yugoslav eugenicists, he kept a long-­term correspondence with Boris Zarnik, who during the inter-­war period directed the Institute of Morphological Biology at the University of Zagreb. In 1934 Zarnik and Škerlj lobbied together for the founding of an all-Yugoslav anthropological and eugenic association. As part of this plan, the possibility of establishing a chair in anthropology and eugenics at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana was discussed (Škerlj to Zarnik 1933). Although their plans were never realized, Škerlj did include eugenics in his lectures on criminal anthropology (‘Eugenics in Yugoslavia’, Eugenical News 1936: 114). 381

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

In general, however, Škerlj was pessimistic about the possibility of establishing a chair in eugenics in Yugoslavia, since, as he had explained in a letter to the American eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin (1880–1943), some of his colleagues, such as art historian Izidor Cankar (1886–1958) and literary comparativist Jakob Kelemina (1882–1957), thought eugenics to be identical with the ‘National-Socialist (Hitler!) system’ (Škerlj to Laughlin 1936). In addition to Zarnik, Škerlj corresponded with the Serbian gynaecologist Vilma Janiševa and Croats Feodor Mikič and Andrija Štampar (1888–1958). He also probably knew Kostić, Svetislav Stefanović and Branimir Maleš personally, although communication with them was limited, in all likelihood due to the language barrier. Despite his polyglotism, his knowledge of Serbo-Croat was apparently not very good. At some point, he also had reservations towards Maleš, particularly towards his research methods (Škerlj to J. Erdeljanović 1939). On the other hand, Škerlj maintained especially close ties with Czech anthropologists and eugenicists, including his former mentor, Jindřich Matiegka, Jirí Maly, Bohumil Sekla and others (Škerlj to Matiegka, Maly, Sekla and Matiegka; Maly and Sekla to Škerlj 1926–41). He published a good number of his studies in Czechoslovakia, and was on the editorial board of the journal Anthropologie (Anthropology). In addition to the Czech influences, of great importance to Škerlj’s intellectual formation were his connections with Austrian and German scientists. Although he had a serious disagreement with the secretary of the journal Volk und Rasse (Nation and Race), Bruno K. Schulz (1901–97), whom he accused of harbouring a dislike for the Slavs, and held a latent grudge against Eugen Fischer for the same reason (Škerlj to Lang 1935), Škerlj always maintained friendly relationships with Austrian and German physicians and anthropologists such as Siegfried Placzek (1866–1946), Viktor Lebzelter (1889–1936) and Egon von Eickstedt (1892–1965), who also made him a member of the editorial board of Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde (Journal of Racial Studies) (Škerlj to Placzek, Eickstedt and Lebzelter, and Placzek, Eickstedt and Lebzelter to Škerlj 1932–1941). Škerlj even had an amicable relationship with biologist and Nazi ideologue Theobald Lang (1898–1957), who conducted research in Yugoslavia on the effects of soil radioactivity on goitre and ‘cretinism’. Their letters sometimes turned to eugenic topics, such as the influence of alcohol on offspring, and Škerlj even introduced Lang to his theory that a disproportionate number of homosexuals were born into the families of alcoholics (Škerlj to Lang 1939). Interestingly, in his communications with Czech and German academics, Škerlj only occasionally broached strictly eugenic topics. The opposite was the case in his correspondence with English and especially American eugenicists, including Paul Popenoe, Harry H. Laughlin, Robert S. Huse, and Cora B. S. Hodson, all of whom displayed a keen interest in Yugoslav eugenic developments (Laughlin, Huse, Popenoe and Hodson to Škerlj 1934–40). Škerlj became particularly friendly with Paul Popenoe, who was well-­disposed towards him partly because his wife was of Yugoslav descent. Popenoe read Škerlj’s eugenic studies on the effects of alcohol on the sex ratio with interest and approval, although despite Škerlj’s request he failed to see them published in American eugenic journals. Škerlj also discussed his hypothesis that more girls than boys were born to alcoholic families and that the number of ‘inferior’ boys in institutions exceeded the 382

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

number of ‘inferior’ girls. For Popenoe, however, this difference was caused mainly by social environmental factors (Škerlj to Popenoe and Popenoe to Škerlj 1934–6). Popenoe was not the only American researcher to whom Škerlj had turned in his attempts to leave Europe. He also placed his hopes in Aleš Hrdlička, since he was of Slavic descent (Škerlj to Matiegka 1936). In 1940, Škerlj contacted the GermanAmerican anthropologist Franz Boas (1858–1942), among others, for the same reasons. Škerlj was also interested in working outside the USA, and so wrote to the GermanAmerican sport physician Ernst Jokl (1907–97) in South Africa, O. Henkel in Chile and others, to inquire about such possibilities in addition to expressing a desire to exchange scholarly information (Škerlj to Jokl, Henckel and Boas, and Jokl, Henckel and Boas to Škerlj 1938–40). In 1938, Škerlj requested the Rockefeller Foundation fund at least a short study trip to the USA. He planned to visit Cold Springs Harbor where he intended to study ‘human and theoretical genetics’, to visit Wilton M. Krogman’s (1903–87) anthropological school in Chicago, and ‘finally also California, as [the state with] the oldest eugenic laws and eugenic institutions’ (Škerlj to Štampar 1938). However, the Foundation did not grant him the funds. Despite his attempts, Škerlj did not succeed in leaving Europe with his family in the 1930s. Škerlj defined eugenics as a universal discipline. He was a member of the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and of the Comité International de Standardisation de la Technique Anthropologique (International Committee for the Unification of Anthropological Method), and through these organizations also attempted to establish contacts with various French anthropologists (Škerlj to Tildesley 1936). Despite his efforts, such connections remained weak. Even the Italian intellectual world, directly bordering Yugoslavia, remained somewhat distant to Škerlj. This situation changed markedly during World War II, when parts of Slovene territory, including Ljubljana, were occupied by Italy. Škerlj maintained an extensive correspondence with the Italian eugenicist and demographer Corrado Gini (1884–1965), who even arranged for him to work at the Central Institute of Statistics in Rome, where he remained for a few months in 1941 (Škerlj to Gini and Gini to Škerlj 1939–42). Two years earlier, in 1939, the Italian racial journal, La Difesa della Razza (The Defense of the Race) published Škerlj’s article on the racial differences between Italy and the Balkans (Škerlj 1939: 46–51). Upon his return to Ljubljana, Škerlj joined the resistance movement, but in 1944 he was captured by German forces and sent to the concentration camp at Dachau, where he was held until the end of the war. He continued his anthropological work in the new Yugoslavia, but openly distanced himself from some of his previous work on eugenics and racial anthropology, and moved closer to Marxism (Škerlj 1949). His plan for an anthropological society in Yugoslavia (Antropološko Društvo Jugoslavije) was finally realized in 1958, and he also became an anthropology professor at the University of Ljubljana. In 1955 Škerlj contributed an article to the Yearbook of Anthropology (Škerlj 1955: 651–70), but his final academic gesture was to resign from the editorial board of the controversial journal The Mankind Quarterly (Škerlj 1960: 172–3). Škerlj died in 1961 in Ljubljana, undoubtedly as a consequence of the suffering he endured in Dachau. 383

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Social Anthropological Study on the Question of the Inferior Child6 Upbringing and schooling can improve the individual in cases we have talked about in this sense. This, however, as we know, does not improve the individual’s hereditary material. The question of inferiors will, therefore, not be sufficiently resolved if, in the future, society does not know how to protect itself from such children. Our discussion thus far indicates that in regard to this question, what is at stake is not just the children’s well-­being, but also the children’s place in their family and, through their family, society in general. If we have succeeded in proving that the majority of such children come from hereditarily burdened families, if we have succeeded in proving that such families multiply faster than others, then who would not wish to know what society can do to counter this, what it can do for its own well-­being, for its future? Eugenics, the word means the theory of good (healthy) offspring, has for many people recently become synonymous with Hitlerism! These people, though otherwise not exactly ignorant, know nothing of eugenics other than what they have recently read in the daily newspapers: that with his programme Hitler is trying to put into practice some eugenic vision. For these people eugenics is, therefore, just a kind of political ‘tune’ of only short-­term, party-­political importance. But eugenics existed well before Hitler; its father is Francis Galton (1822–1911), the famous cousin of C. Darwin (Galton’s first eugenic work is from 1864). We would stray too far if we were to describe here the historical development of the science of eugenics; it is better to state that the study presented here is eugenic, that therefore eugenics works with scientific, biological means; that it studies the biology of man and the nation in general; that it endeavours to discover norms for the healthy development of humankind; and that, therefore, it is not and should not become some party-­political ‘tune’. Our previous arguments, too, were not of a party-­political character, and yet they were written throughout in the spirit of eugenics. In addition to Hitlerism, when hearing the word eugenics, many people quickly think of sterilization and of birth and population control, even of abortion advocacy and many other things which in themselves are not eugenic, but are – if properly employed – eugenic methods. It is true that all these things can be [described as] negative eugenic methods, but eugenics must also employ positive methods, for example, to accelerate the procreation of superior individuals through tax relief, housing and other benefits. The eugenicist views society in the same way a doctor views the individual. The individual wants to live long, society likewise; the individual thinks of his future, although perhaps only in the form of a pension or old-­age insurance. [. . .] Here, however, we cannot write that society does likewise. Not yet! Today society lives like a truly absent-­minded individual, from one day to the next. Although society does ‘think of the future’, it does so only egocentrically, materialistically and unclearly; it does not think about what it will leave its descendants, its future generation. What will this generation be like? Will everything in it be the way, for example, that an individual would desire for his own comfort? How long can society, humankind, go on living without thinking of its, let us say, old-­age insurance? 384

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

With the present study I aimed to uncover a painful wound in society and to bring to attention the problem of the inferior child. This attempt is not the first; in Germany and America they have been writing on this topic for years. I hope I have proved, however, that this problem is relevant for us too, and in the following I will argue this further. The problem of the inferior child is important for the future of humankind in two respects: 1) because of the heavier, above-­average hereditary burden on such children; 2) because inferior elements multiply faster. [. . .] A person with a lower sense of responsibility, socially unprotected, although perhaps independent, will already in adolescence have children without considering their future, while a more responsible person waits for a social and existential opportunity. This is why the second person has children at a later age, and on top of that also has fewer (which is a consequence of the former). We thus stand today before the sad fact that the inferior are breeding in excess, while the superior are dying out. What kind of future awaits our descendants if already we ourselves, in light of our clear realization of this terrible asymmetry, do not begin to consider eugenic measures? [This] can be calculated by anyone – one could almost say by hand. Only after preparatory eugenic work has provided the most exact statistics possible on the health of the population (cities, regions, countries, continents), can we also consider eugenic methods of preserving at least that which we already have. Our generation, which has begun to recognize the facts, bears a great responsibility towards its descendants, and will also bear a great guilt before them, if it does not leave them a better inheritance! Future generations will always be able to point directly at us, who were beginning to understand but had done nothing, although we could have, since we had known. The guilt lies in that we know what awaits our own children, who one day will weep under the heavy burdens they will have to carry: to maintain ever more sick-­ houses, more institutions, more penitentiaries, more madhouses. A generation that does not think only of itself, but also of its descendants, should also think of their welfare. Again and again it should consider adequate measures so that the burdens of the inferior carried today by the superior will not become unbearable. In choosing eugenic methods we must always take into account the economic circumstances of populations and individuals. The means employed by a population for its health must, of course, be determined by society either through its government (legislation) or through associations authorized by the government or perhaps even by the League of Nations. We have already briefly mentioned the methods available to eugenics. Positive eugenics, which should be the goal of any wise population policy, is today in almost all countries largely unfeasible since it would be very costly. How one can in spite of this achieve at least some results cannot be addressed within the narrow framework of this study. Negative eugenics has at least one greatly effective means at its disposal: the sterilization of those categorized as inferior. The legal aspect of sterilization cannot be discussed here, since there are already so many proposals for sterilization laws that it would require a separate discussion. Such a law has been implemented best and for the longest time in California. Results have been good. The principle behind this law, and 385

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

almost all legislative proposals for it, is that sterilization is only done on a person who has consented to it or on whose behalf consent has been given by his or her legal guardian, representative, or similar, if the person is not of sound mind (‘accountable’). In countries where they have arrived at the same conclusions as we have (that is, that those found to be inferior and hereditarily burdened multiply in larger numbers and faster), they have begun to consider sterilization as the most appropriate eugenic method in the struggle of healthy society against inferior citizens who are increasing in number. The consequences of a well-­implemented sterilization law should also be noticeable in terms of positive eugenics. If we bear in mind that the inferior [individuals] in society require expensive institutions (asylums, hospitals, prisons, madhouses, etc.) and that the number of inferior [individuals] is increasing (and will therefore require more and more institutions!), we can see that much too much public money is going towards caring for inferior [individuals] who are completely useless to the population and frequently antisocial. If, with a well-­implemented sterilization law, we were to reduce [or] perhaps even prevent, the procreation of individuals determined to be inferior by experts, we would save on the public expense required today by special institutions for inferior individuals, and we could use this money for positive eugenics, that is, to support superior individuals: such that the young and healthy may marry; that they receive an adequate reward for each child; that families are relieved of taxes for every next child, and so on. The path, which today seems already at hand, therefore, leads through negative eugenics, which is to relieve the healthy collective as much as possible from the terrible expense of caring for inferior [individuals], toward positive eugenics, which will oblige society to care for its healthy superior members and their offspring. Only then will the ‘White race’ be able to further maintain the leading position it enjoys today. For our country, too, the time has come to think of the defence of its existence and to take into account the problem of inferior individuals. Today, European countries are threatened in their existence much more from the inside than the outside – it is unfortunate that many have not even begun to study the problems posed by their own populations. Hopefully, I have proved in this study that this problem [of the inferior child] also exists in our own country. We, too, will have to take into account eugenics and eugenic legislation, which would ensure the existence of at least some of our future generations. Our country, God willing, is not just for our generation. Rather, we wish for it to live on also for innumerable future generations. For us to achieve this, however, eugenic principles must become an important part of domestic state policy! Translation by Marko Farič

Eugenics or Racial Hygiene?7 The famous Sir Francis Galton introduced the word and concept of ‘eugenics’ in 1883. The word is used in all English-­speaking countries and one only rarely reads ‘racial ­hygiene’. In Germany, on the other hand, the first proponents of the eugenics movement 386

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

(Schallmeyer, Ploetz, and others) already spoke about ‘racial hygiene’ (‘Rassenhygiene’) and used this expression – at least Ploetz certainly did – to mean roughly what to this day we understand by ‘eugenics’. Precisely at that time in Germany [the beginning of the twentieth century] a strong tendency also emerged towards politicizing biological findings, especially in anthropology (e.g. Woltmann’s Politisch-Anthropologische Revue). Moreover, whereas by race-­hygiene Ploetz did still mean the hygiene of a given community, a ‘reproductive community’ (‘Fortpflanzungsgemeinschaft’), possibly consisting of several systemic races, others in Germany – though not as professional as Ploetz – began to talk increasingly about the hygiene of a particular systemic race; in Germany, of course, mainly the Nordic race. One can thus see that the word ‘racial ­hygiene’ can be understood in two ways, and that the concept of race-­hygiene does not necessarily cover the whole concept of eugenics. What is eugenics, therefore, and what could race-­hygiene be? Eugenics [. . .] is the theory of healthy offspring. [. . .] Its task is to determine all the conditions that affect hereditary material for good or for bad, i.e. in a positive or negative sense. [. . .] Its field of activity is broad, all-­human; its goal is healthy offspring of whichever race, whichever nation. It knows no bounds; it knows only man and his future generations. It encourages the responsibility of parents toward their offspring; all this from the perspective of a healthy community. [. . .] Eugenics holds true in its principles as much for an Australian, an African Negro, a Pygmy or an Eskimo as it does for a Japanese person, an Englishman, or a Slav. [. . .] Eugenics does not emphasize national or racial differences. It holds true for every nation, even those consisting of the most varied racial mixtures. It is precisely in this sense that Ploetz first introduced the word ‘Rassenhygiene’. He did not mean a single race, but rather the hygiene of any racial ingredient typical of any nation. However, the name ‘Rassenhygiene’ already contained [in it] the seeds of misinterpretation. As is known, there are several races of the white subspecies of man in Europe; let me here list them only briefly: the Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, East Baltic, and so on. Of these, the first four are the most widely known. In anthropology these are called systemic races. These are, therefore, not races in the narrower biological sense, when we talk of a race even if it differs from another in only a single hereditary trait. We must not, however, confuse systemic races – by which we mean groups of living beings sharing a definite fusion of definite hereditary traits – with nations, that is, with what (from a biological perspective) are mixtures of two or more systemic races. There are people who argue for special respect to only one or another systemic race within a nation. In this way, of course, race-­hygiene easily becomes political. We do not wish to reject this view a priori: let the Germans have their ‘Rassenhygiene’, the English their ‘race-­hygiene’, the Slavs their ‘rasna higiena’, and every nation its own, if its existence can be argued for scientifically. Perhaps it can be; if not today, maybe in time, when the roles of individual systemic races will be clearer. [. . .] The question is also whether the concept of racial hygiene can replace the concept of eugenics. I doubt it. I feel that in our language ‘eugenics’ is also a much better expression than ‘racial hygiene’, even though the latter has gained acceptance in some books and 387

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

writings. If, however, we wish to use the term ‘racial ­hygiene’, we should realize that it does not completely cover the term ‘eugenics’! Eugenics is more than racial hygiene, if we emphasize ‘race’, and less than or at least different from racial hygiene if we emphasize ‘hygiene’. The tasks of eugenics and hygiene are not the same. Eugenics in the narrower sense does not include bacteriological work, sanitation, disinfection, pest control, water and air surveys, etc. All of these can only be indirectly important for the work of eugenics. The main task of eugenics is the study of hereditary matter, heredity. I claim, consequently, that we would be right to be aware of the difference between ‘eugenics’ and ‘racial ­hygiene’. In its essence racial ­hygiene is, therefore, the discipline that deals with the best living conditions for a given race or racial community. It can be argued for in a scientific sense, but it is much closer to daily politics than eugenics. Of course, eugenics too is a national matter of statehood, and thus also a matter of politics, but of a special type, so-­called population policy. The state that implements eugenics knowledge in the most long-­term manner undoubtedly has the best prognosis for the future. However, we cannot talk so generally about racial ­hygiene, since racial ­hygiene rests on knowledge of special – that is, superior – individuals within a given race. The Germans feel a need to cultivate the Nordic race particularly. I do not claim that it has been flawlessly proven in a scientific sense that this race possesses the best traits, but what is important is that the Germans are convinced of this and that with proper racial ­hygiene they can truly do much for this race. Likewise, we can encourage those traits of the Dinaric race, most common in our country, which have been found to be good. We can, for example, prohibit marriage with members of other races – this is conceivable. Whether it would be useful or not is a different matter altogether. The Jewish Question also belongs under the heading of racial ­hygiene. The Jews are a nation of cross-­breeds between other, mainly non-European races (Near-Eastern and Oriental), to which, depending on the nation, traits from one or another European race have been added. It is not only a matter of taste whether to allow the mixing of Jews with the native European population of whichever nation. In their racial constitution Jews are foreign to every European nation of every racial mixture.8 From this perspective, we can see German racial policy as based on their racial h­ ygiene. However, the task of eugenics is different, of more general importance for every nation, and every country. Under this heading we have hitherto concerned ourselves with only proper eugenic questions. Despite this, we will perhaps occasionally also concern ourselves with the more narrow questions of racial ­hygiene, for example, with the importance of particular races for individual nations. Or occasionally the special questions of our Yugoslav eugenic needs will be of importance. The circumstances of eugenic works vary greatly from country to country, even within the various nations or the various regions of one and the same country. Just think of the different circumstances of white and black Americans in the USA, of the different circumstances of the various nations and races that form the British Empire! [. . .] Racial hygiene is local, while eugenics contains a universal human morality; it is a worldview! Translation by Marko Farič 388

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Ema Deisinger

(1901, Kamnik–1990, Dingolfing, Germany)

Ema Deisinger was born into a well-­off family in Kamnik (Ger.: Stein), in northern Slovenia, in 1901. In 1927 she enrolled at the Faculty of Arts (Filozofska Fakulteta) at King Alexander University in Ljubljana. She graduated in pedagogy four years later. Afterwards, she taught at various schools in Ljubljana and Maribor and worked at a parenting consultancy centre. She was also active in the fields of literature and paedagogy, and published over thirty studies, most of them in the Catholic-­oriented pedagogical journal Slovenski Učitelj (Slovene Teacher) (‘Ema Deisinger’, SI AS 231, Folder ‘Ministrstvo za Prosveto Ljudske Republike Slovenije, 1900–1951’). Other important Slovene female authors, such as, for example, Angela Vode and the notable social-­democratic women’s rights activist, Alojzija Štebi (1883–1956), also wrote about eugenics. For instance, in an article in the magazine Ženski Pokret (Women’s Movement), Štebi directly advocated the implementation of the 1934 Norwegian sterilization law. Mainly in the interests of promoting the protection of motherhood, she argued from the perspective of the quality of offspring (Štebi 1934: 111–13). Like many feminists at the time, Vode and Štebi too believed eugenics to be but a rhetorical means for promoting puériculture, maternal assistance and the struggle against prostitution (Štebi 1930: 1–2), while Slovene female authors also used it as an argument for the assertion of their reproductive rights; for example, in advocating a ‘eugenic indicator’ for abortion. Yet Deisinger was probably the only Slovene woman to play a visible role in the eugenic movement, as illustrated particularly by her article ‘Pedagoška Evgenika’ (‘Paedagogical Eugenics’) (Deisinger 1935: 105–8), which also featured as a supplement to her 1936 book Deška predpubertetna doba (Pre-Puberty in Boys). In addition to eugenics, Deisinger wrote on morality, a theme to which she returned again and again in relation to the problems of degeneration, the degradation of values and the terrible consequences of individualism, capitalism and communism, all of which were a common leitmotif among conservative Slovene authors. Deisinger devoted special attention to the problem of ‘sexual debauchery’, which in her view was being encouraged by modern culture, such as film, popular music, immoral magazines and pulp novels. She also attempted to debunk theories on the harmful effects of sexual repression, which were being spread by ‘liberal sexual pedagogues’, among whom she especially pointed out Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Auguste Forel (1848–1931) and Max Hodann (1894–1946). Furthermore, Deisinger cautioned against the crisis of the Slovene family as reflected in the ‘epidemics’ of rising divorce rates and falling birth-­ rates, which she claimed had also caused the downfall of the Roman Empire. She believed that the same fate awaited Europe if it did not resolve its social problems and overcome its materialistic mentality, which were the basis of the ‘demands by professionally active married women for legalizing abortion’ (Deisinger 1936: 205). 389

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

In her critique of materialistic mentality, falling birth-­rates and sexual debauchery, Deisinger came close to the views expressed in the Papal encyclical Casti Connubii (1930), which she directly cited in her texts and which also influenced her views on eugenics. In some instances, she explicitly opposed tendencies to restrict ‘the reproduction of inferior individuals’, although she did not doubt Mendel’s laws of heredity and the importance of the heritability of psychological traits, which humanity should ennoble through education. Education was the focus of her ‘paedagogical eugenics’, which despite having a different ideological background, shared many common features with the version of eugenics proposed by Franc Derganc. While emphasizing the importance of education and upbringing, particularly the transfer of ethical values, both authors ardently opposed Hitler’s ‘racial eugenics’ and its idealization of the ‘blonde beast’, whose advantage lay only in its beauty and physical strength (Deisinger 1934: 59). Škerlj did not consider Deisinger’s ‘Paedagogical Eugenics’ a ‘proper’ eugenic text. He was critical of it, claiming that the term ‘paedagogical eugenics’ is scientifically incorrect since it causes only unnecessary confusion. According to him, eugenics was always universal, and cannot, therefore, be ‘paedagogical, national, racial’. In his opinion, Deisinger’s ‘paedagogical eugenics, could at most be termed paedagogical hygiene’ (Škerlj 1937c: 29). Following Škerlj’s fierce criticism, the impact of ‘Paedagogical Eugenics’ among Slovene eugenicists was rather limited. Probably as a result of Škerlj’s reaction, Deisinger never wrote on eugenics again, although she continued to publish a number of pedagogical articles into the 1940s, when she emigrated to Dingolfing in Germany. There she worked as a teacher and later as the head teacher of a high school. She died in Dingolfing in 1990.

390

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Paedagogical Eugenics9 In the life of an individual, as well as of a nation, heredity is of tremendous importance. [. . .] Not only external physical attributes (the colour of eyes, hair, family resemblance, and so on) but mental attributes too are inherited. Specifically these prevailing (dominant) mental attributes are causally connected to heredity. [. . .] Albeit the inheritance of physical attributes, their virtues and weaknesses is extremely important, [but] of even greater importance for the competitive ability of individuals and nations in the area of culture is the heritability of psychological attributes. Although the Germans greatly emphasize racial purity, they nevertheless cannot talk of a unified German race, since race in the biological sense is a grouping of individuals that differs from another grouping by its combination of a given number of characteristic hereditary attributes and by its mental structure, insofar as the latter is independent of life experience. It is a degradation of humanity to talk of the superiority of the Germanic race with regard to other European races, since the biological term ‘race’ encompasses only a small grouping of people and not the whole nation, which is an ethnological term. The phrase ‘Germanic race’ applies not only to Germans but also to the English, Norwegians, Danes, the Flemish, the Irish and Scots, who in biological terms differ racially between themselves in the same way Germans from various regions of the Reich do. [. . .] Social conditions and environment are undoubtedly an important factor influencing an individual’s constitution. Excessive drinking in particular has a destructive (ruinous) effect on generative germ cells; excessive alcohol consumption physiologically alters the plasma of germ cells so that the offspring of alcoholics are inferior. The social conditions in which an individual lives can accelerate or inhibit the development of some hereditarily determined attributes. [. . .] In today’s antisocial conditions many are deprived of the favourable development of their psycho-­spiritual abilities and aptitudes. The greatest evil of our present time is unemployment, which destroys the spirit of a person. Unemployment, which is an abscess on the body of humankind, deprives particularly young intellectuals of their self-­esteem. [. . .] At its core, education is something beautiful and bright, and [is] a person’s inner need; it channels a person’s individual spiritual abilities into professional and fruitful activity, raises his self-­esteem, illuminates his attitude towards the whole of life and helps him rise above his petty everyday environment towards the heights of inner satisfaction. Never, ever should education lead an intellectual to spiritual and organic ruin, towards which he is being pushed today by unemployment. [. . .] It should never come to pass that many who have diligently prepared for their future professional life, have looked forward to their work, [but] due to unemployment fall into the lowest social level and there add to the number of unemployed proletarians (who according to the latest statistics already number 25 million across the world!), whereas in better social conditions they would represent a force for cultural and moral progress. This fact should pain us to our graves. Today’s progress in technology and productivity has impoverished the soul of a person. The signs of this dwindling life are becoming ever more evident. [. . .] Today’s modern man is a slave to his civilization, decomposed in his soul, degenerate in his inner life. 391

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Eugenics, which as a discipline has benefited from the findings of biology and is closely related to medical science, today arches as a very promising rainbow beneath the dark firmament of contrived and materialistic culture. In the name of racism and biological eugenics, the German nation, ill from its super-­culture, is awakening. Biological eugenics demands the elimination of all inferior individuals; it watches over reproduction like a dragon so that only strong, robust and healthy bodies blossom into a new flowering of humankind. This playing with the human reproduction of racially robust individuals is an impertinent and precarious risk, a neck-­breaking manoeuvre, indeed, since it challenges a person to submit to a purely bodily life. In this racial religion the body is elevated to an object of cult worship, and spiritual life is sacrificed to bodily life. Thus under racial eugenics humankind is degenerating and is returning to a state of animal culture. It should not happen that the spirit is sacrificed to the body. Mens agitat molem!10 We are undoubtedly pleased with achievements in gymnastics and sports, but they are of little importance to the intellectual life of individuals and the nation. The human body can grow physically until age twenty or twenty-­five, while spiritual growth should continue throughout the whole of an individual’s life. Of more importance than the physical beauty of the body are psychical beauty and energy and the blossoming of a rich psycho-­spirituality in each individual. [. . .] Our cultural efforts therefore should not avoid a more important task: as a national-­cultural organism we must develop our own spiritual essence. [. . .] A task higher and more fruitful than that of all racial hygiene and racial eugenics is, therefore, to be implemented by paedagogical eugenics, which is to awaken neglected mental abilities, stimulate mental energies, strengthen them, and thus enable the higher cultural development of the individual and the nation. In individuals, organically embodied skills and sporting ability gained through practice are not heritable, in light of which physical skills achieved through practice are of no consequence for psycho-­generative development, whereas, in contrast, psychological virtues are heritable and are to be precisely the purview of pedagogical eugenics. From paedagogical eugenics shall arise the nation’s strength, on the mental maturity of our nation depends its special and unique calling in the domain of culture and spirit. At the heart of any small nation should reside something deeper and more serious than physical sporting ability, so that it is able to hold out against large nations; its cultural ability should be based on ethical-­moral values, so that it can spiritually rise above other nations and weave for itself a crown of eternity and social elevation. [. . .] Indeed, it is an important truth and very enlightening for us that their racial hygiene, after they had cultivated it entirely in their megalomania, and prescribed it as the new religion of their national enterprise, has failed. Man is not a means on which racial eugenics could speculatively experiment for national purposes. Racial eugenics is cold toward fellow humans and toward the value of love. Man’s life is not only in the body, but should also be in the spirit; a soul seeks understanding in a kindred soul, and if it does not find it, it becomes shallow. Although racial eugenics is a kind of protest against human deterioration, its measures are nevertheless devoid of the joy of life: cold, measured, calculated, rational; marriages 392

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

based on this persuasive yet misleading eugenic science lack the strong bonds of spirituality and higher, considerate love, and so quickly fall apart. The aesthetics of the soul is simply higher than the aesthetics of the body and ‘skin and hair care’; the moral ideal is higher than revelling in material well-­being and fashionable trivialities; spiritual and moral aspirations are higher than flaunting fashion’s dernier cri; moral and spiritual value is more important than outward servility and bodily boastfulness. From the spiritual and moral attributes of the individual flow enormous innate forces that are of crucial importance to any nation. Spiritual and moral attributes are no artificial product of social environments, but are inherited attributes that must be stimulated and developed by paedagogical eugenics, while undesirable attributes must be inhibited. If we wish to improve our nation, we will first have to mould the spiritual and moral attributes of our young people, strengthen and cement their character and involve them in active occupational life. [. . .] Only spiritual and moral qualities, and not sporting ability, will enable our nation to reach important heights in culture, refinement and progress, and our nation’s life to ring out in eternity. A nation that achieves this mature form of pedagogical eugenics will in its inner essence be healthy and strong, capable of reaching the highest rungs on the ladder of life and culture. [. . .] Paedagogical eugenics embraces the regularity of natural laws, according to which no moral infraction goes unpunished. Every deviation from morality leads to spiritual and organic decay, physically and mentally poisoning the human organism. The more widespread the growth of immorality and lack of character, the more horrific the bodily and spiritual devastation. Thus the ‘sins of fathers against their children are literally avenged to the third and fourth generation’.11 The question of bequeathing traditional spiritual and moral qualities to our future generations is, therefore, of greater importance for our Slovene nation than all other problems. Translation by Marko Farič

393

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

August Munda

(1886, Brežice ob Savi–1971, Ljubljana)

August Munda was born in 1886 into a wealthy family. His maternal grandfather owned a leather factory in Slovenj Gradec (Ger.: Windischgrätz), while his father, Ivan Munda, was a government councillor and head of the veterinary department of the provincial government in Ljubljana. Munda attended elementary school in Brežice (Ger.: Rann), gymnasium in Celje (Ger.: Cilli) and Maribor (Ger.: Marburg), and then the University (Karl-FranzensUniversität) in Graz. Like Franc Derganc, Munda showed an interest in the early Yugoslav national idea. He consequently joined the Yugoslav-­oriented National-Radical Movement (Narodno-Radikalno Gibanje) and wrote for the journal Omladina (The Youth). After graduating from university, he became a legal trainee and later a judge in Ljubljana and Radovljica (Ger.: Radmannsdorf), in Upper Carniola region. In 1914, he was drafted into the military. Following demobilization in 1918, he worked at the Ministry of Justice (Ministrstvo za Pravosodje) in Ljubljana, and in 1923 was promoted to Deputy Attorney General. Almost from the outset of his professional career he developed an interest in criminal law, on the basis of which he later built a successful academic career at King Alexander I University in Ljubljana. From 1933 he was a private lecturer in substantive criminal law at the Faculty of Law, later a full professor of procedural criminal law and criminology, and during 1944–5 he even held the position of Dean of the Faculty. He remained active as a researcher and professor until 1956. Munda was a pioneer among Slovene jurists in the field of criminal law, which he combined with natural sciences and psychology. It was precisely this interest, especially the search for connections between law and the natural sciences that probably led him to eugenics. During the inter-­war period he argued passionately for eugenic sterilization. Munda had touched upon this subject in his 1933 Habilitation lecture given to the Faculty of Law (Munda 1934a: 101–26), and later also in a public lecture organized by the Sociološko Društvo (Sociological Society). The latter was favourably reviewed in the daily press (for example, ‘Sterilizacija in pravo. Predavanje dr. Munde’, Slovenec 1934: 4), and was soon after also published in the law journal Slovenski Pravnik (Slovene Jurist) under the title of ‘Problem sterilizacije in kazensko pravo’ (‘The Problem of Sterilisation and Criminal Law’) (Munda 1934b: 244–69). The article focused on the argument that eugenic compulsory sterilization was not permissible and was justifiable only in cases of ‘de lege ferenda’, that is, through the introduction of new legislation. But, if it was voluntary, ‘de lege lata’ applied, meaning that it was theoretically legal under existing Yugoslav criminal law.12 However, Munda considered voluntary sterilization generally morally wrong since it went against the pro-­ natalist interests of the nation, and was only permissible in cases of specific indication, namely ‘medical, eugenic, or criminal’. The first benefited the person in question, since 394

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

it was only permissible if sterilization would protect the person’s life or health, while the latter two served the interests of the community by protecting the state from the procreation of inferior individuals, in which case the communal benefits outweighed the ethical cost of violating the principle of injury. According to Munda, in Yugoslavia voluntary ‘medical, eugenic, or criminal’ indication for sterilization was already permitted (Munda 1935a: 209–11). Furthermore, in his view the introduction of new legislation should, in the spirit of the superiority of collective over individual interests ensure the legalization of compulsory sterilization (Munda 1935b: 17–21). He also argued in favour of a eugenic indicator for abortion and, contrary to some prominent Slovene intellectuals at the time, against a social indication for it. He also argued in favour of the ‘criminal-­political indication’ for castration (Munda 1935c: 51–2). Munda’s support of eugenic sterilization was motivated by concerns for a supposed progressive decline or degeneration of the human species brought about by several complex processes. He identified alcohol and the faster reproduction of the feeble-­ minded as the primary causes of degeneration. More widely, however, the nation’s dysgenic decline was also caused by a disregard for the natural law of the survival of the fittest. Munda was one of the few Slovene authors to oppose the efficiency of social-­ hygienic measures from a eugenic perspective. His views probably reflected the international, particularly German, debates on sterilization and other criminal-­law issues. But despite occasionally relying on German eugenicists with National Socialist sympathies (including Lothar Gottlieb Tirala and Falk Ruttke), Munda disliked Hitler’s ‘racial hygiene’, and he explicitly denied the acceptability of a racial (in contrast to a eugenic) reason for sterilization and abortion. He was convinced that the Nazi view on racial mixing was misguided, since it had supposedly been proved that ‘races that only reproduce within themselves have only a small number of geniuses’ (Munda 1934b: 257). Munda remained in contact with various German scholars after World War II. For example, in 1948 he was invited by the German legal scholar Adolf Schönke (1908–53) to publish in the journal Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft (Journal for General Criminal Law Science), and he also contributed a chapter to the volume Das ausländische Strafrecht der Gegenwart (Current Foreign Criminal Law) (edited by Mezger, Schönke and Jescheck 1955). Munda died in Ljubljana in 1971.

395

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Biological Regeneration of Nations and Criminal Law13 From a biological perspective, the problem of national regeneration falls under the purview of eugenics. Eugenics is the theory of human reproduction, its conditions and rational planning. Its goal is to prevent the inheritance of physical and mental defects and to achieve healthy offspring. The means whereby this goal is to be achieved can be either positive or negative. Positive means are: increasing the number of eugenically healthy people with rewards for births, homes for healthy babies, and the like. Negative means are: marital prohibitions for the mentally or physically defective, institutionalization, or deportation. These means are partly ineffective, partly unfeasible, and are partly excessively cruel. Adequate and successful negative eugenic means include sterilization, abortion, and to a degree also castration. We will only discuss these latter means. We will attempt to answer the question of what our criminal law has to say about this method of national regeneration [i.e. eugenics]. We will first address the problem of sterilization in this regard. From a medical point of view, sterilization is an operation performed as a vasectomy (in men) or salpingectomy (in women). Sterilization can also be performed in a non-­bloody manner by irradiation (as in the state of Michigan). In a vasectomy, a part of the semen channel is cut out or tied up; this prevents the ejaculation of semen. In a salpingectomy, the egg channel is cut, so that the egg cannot move from the ovary to the uterus. The effect of sterilization is that the sterilized person becomes infertile, but does not lose his or her sex drive. Sterilization can be prescribed or non-­prescribed. Non-­prescribed sterilization is always punishable by law; for example, one might undergo sterilization simply to be able to indulge in sexual pleasure undisturbed. This is different from so-­called prescribed sterilization, for which the reasons are medical, social, eugenic, criminal or race-­ hygienic. In the present discussion we will only deal with eugenically prescribed sterilization. Sterilization is eugenically prescribed if in a particular case it is expected that the offspring of the person in question will be affected by inferior hereditary traits. First we must ask who is hereditarily diseased. The hereditarily diseased are parents who by way of their germ cells pass their diseased hereditary predispositions for mental or other illnesses on to their children. The concept of hereditary disease, therefore, refers to two persons, since a child is the result of its father and mother’s hereditary material. A different question is which hereditary traits are passed on to children. This question must be answered according to the disease at hand. It has been established, for example, that schizophrenia is inherited in 9 to 10 per cent of cases where one of the parents is affected; 30 to 40 per cent of children from such marriages are neuropaths. If the father and mother are both schizophrenics, the percentage of diseased children from such marriages rises from 60 to 80 per cent. Furthermore, every child of a schizophrenic inherits the predisposition to this disease. It depends on external circumstances whether the disease manifests itself. Hereditary predisposition (‘Anlage’) and environment (‘Umwelt’) are factors, of which one or the other may prevail. 396

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

An important and dangerous group of hereditary diseases is feeble-­mindedness. If one of the parents is feeble-­minded, 54 per cent of children from this marriage will be feeble-­minded; if the father and mother are both feeble-­minded, the percentage rises to 77 per cent. Another dangerous phenomenon in the inheritance of mental illnesses is that mentally defective people reproduce more than normal ones. This is perfectly natural. Defective people are not aware of, or at least do not correctly consider, moral and social obstacles so as to regulate the number of offspring. Statistics show that the number of mentally ill people is increasing more and more, not only in absolute but also relative terms. In England, for example, between 1906 and 1929 the number of defective people increased by 35 per cent, while in the same period the population only increased by 14 per cent. In German madhouses there were 250,000 patients in 1926, while in 1929 there were already 300,000; the annual maintenance costs for these patients totalled 500 million marks. In America the number of mentally inferior people has reached 15 per cent of the population. In Germany the mentally abnormal number more than one million, and in Yugoslavia we have more than 100,000 mentally defective schoolchildren. The percentage of mentally inferior people is, therefore, becoming larger and larger. One might object: if this was the case, by now all of humanity should have become mentally defective. This objection does not stand. Until recent times nature itself eliminated inferior elements. The inferior perished in the struggle for survival; today they are protected by various homes, shelters, madhouses and other hygiene institutions. Meanwhile, eugenically healthy people must tear away from their mouths their hard-­earned income to pay for the cost of these institutions. Professor Kohlrausch14 is correct in claiming that by preserving inferior elements, civilized countries are implementing a misguided policy; in doing so they are ‘engaged in negative selection, while nature engages in positive selection’. It is not our intention to belittle the humanitarian and ethical importance of these institutions. We have only mentioned all of this because we need this data to answer the question of whether eugenically determined sterilization is punishable by our laws. It is in the state’s interest that the population increase and that its members remain fertile. Because of this the community cannot allow reproductive ability to be a matter of individual responsibility. The state only benefits from people who are mentally and physically healthy, while the mentally ill are a burden. The state, therefore, has no interest in inferior citizens reproducing; on the contrary, it is in the state’s interest that they do not reproduce. Eugenically prescribed sterilization, consequently, does not infringe upon the public interest, but only upon the interest of the person affected. In practice, the person affected has the right to demand that no-­one curtail his or her physical integrity. However, if the person consents to sterilization, the measure ceases to be unconstitutional. Eugenic sterilization following the consent of the person affected is, therefore, not punishable by law and is legally permissible. On this occasion we would also like to touch upon the question of how to regulate the problem of eugenic sterilization in future legislation. Is the lawmaker legally and ethically entitled to permit eugenic sterilization even when the person affected 397

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

does not consent to sterilization? The answer is affirmative. We have already mentioned that it is in the interest of the state to eliminate inferior elements from the reproductive process. The interest of individuals must be unconditionally subordinate to the interest of the community! In this regard the lawmaker should not bother with any objections. It would be a misguided concern for your fellow man to go further down this path. Hitherto-­existing population policy must be changed fundamentally: the reproduction of eugenically precious elements should be accelerated and the reproduction of inferior [individuals] suppressed. Such a measure would not only be in the interest of the community, but also in the interest of those affected and their offspring. Nevertheless, sterilization is not the only means of preventing the transmission of diseased hereditary traits to offspring. In order to prevent any chance of defective people reproducing, sterilization would have to be performed before patients become sexually mature. It is, however, difficult to definitively diagnose a hereditary disease at an early age. Sterilization is, of course, not able to capture all who are hereditarily diseased. If sterilization is permitted, then logically abortion for eugenic reasons must also be allowed. The dogma of the absolute inviolability and sanctity of a living being in its mother’s womb cannot, and must not, remain in effect where the interests of the community are at risk. Our criminal code already permits abortion for medical reasons. According to Article § 173, Paragraph 3 of the criminal code,15 a doctor may perform an abortion if pregnancy poses a serious risk to the mother’s life. This provision is logical, just and well-­founded: the lesser good must make way for the greater good. In future legislation this principle should also be applied to eugenic abortion. Medically prescribed abortion takes into account only the life of the mother, therefore a single person, whereas eugenically motivated abortion is in the interest of the community since it is to prevent the birth of a defective child. Consequently, from an ethical standpoint, eugenic abortion surpasses medical recommendation. Abortion should, of course, only be permitted under terms and conditions precisely specified by law. Nevertheless, it is usually necessary to combine both abortion and sterilization in order to prevent future births of hereditarily afflicted children. Abortion will suffice only exceptionally, for example, if it can be expected that a hereditarily diseased husband will soon pass away. A healthy woman should not be deprived of the ability to bear healthy children by a healthy husband in a new marriage. In future legislation, abortion should also be permitted in some cases to prevent the birth of a child conceived in crime (rape, incest and similar offences). It is cruel and inhumane to force a woman to carry to term a foetus conceived against her will with a criminal. [. . .] Finally, a few words on castration as it pertains to eugenics. Castration, too, is permissible by our criminal code if it is medically justified. It is not rare in legal practice to find cases of sexual criminals who are not able or do not know how to control their sex drive and, therefore, commit crime after crime. No punishment brings them to their senses. The only effective means against such criminals is castration. [. . .] In such cases we talk of a criminal cause for castration. Here castration is also of eugenic importance, since it also prevents the reproduction of criminal types. 398

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

It follows from all this that the state has a right to eliminate from the reproduction process elements that pass their hereditary diseases on to offspring. This must be the leading ideology for our future eugenic legislation. Our nation will only successfully compete with other cultured nations and effectively defend itself against foreign expansion if the nation’s hereditary body is eugenically healthy! Translation by Marko Farič

399

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Ivo Pirc

(1891, Ljubljana–1967, Ljubljana)

Ivo Pirc, like most eugenicists, was a physician. He was born and spent his childhood in Ljubljana (Ger.: Laibach), at the time in the Austrian Empire. In contrast to Munda, Škerlj and Derganc, Pirc was of humble social origin, being the second-­born son in a family of ten living only on his father’s income. While studying medicine in Graz, he was drafted into the Austrian army, where he served as a sanitation officer. His proSlavic beliefs led him to delay his return to Graz following the end of World War I; instead he continued and completed his medical education in Prague. It was probably his daily contact with the health problems of ordinary people and the suffering of soldiers on the front that led him to pursue a career in public health. He specialized in hygiene and social medicine under the supervision of Gustav Kabrhel (1857–1939), founder of the Czech public health school and Professor at the Institute of Hygiene in Prague. It was in Czechoslovakia’s capital that he also formed friendships with colleagues who would later become the pioneers of Yugoslav public health, such as Milan Prica, who became Professor of Hygiene at the University of Belgrade, and Emil Prášek (1884–1934), a bacteriologist from the University of Zagreb. He pursued further studies in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and France, with the support of the Hygiene Section of the League of Nations. Thus in 1923, following his friend and role model, Andrija Štampar, Pirc founded the first Institute of Hygiene (Centralni Higienski Zavod) in Ljubljana. The Institute was comprised of several of the leading institutions of Slovene public health at the time: an epidemiological department, a department for infectious diseases, and also a department of social medicine. It was in the department of social medicine that Božo Škerlj, who was also a personal friend of Pirc, conducted his anthropological and eugenic research after 1929. Eugenics had been a familiar subject to Pirc before the establishment of Škerlj’s Anthropological Section. He had already written an article on ‘Plemenska ali generativna higiena’ (‘Racial or Generative Hygiene’) in 1927 (I. Pirc 1927: 157–60). He also included it in his 1928 Čitanka o higijeni: za učiteljišča, višje razrede srednjih šol in srednje strokovne šole (Hygiene Reader for Colleges of Education, Upper Classes of Secondary Schools and Secondary Vocational Schools). Under Pirc’s editorship, numerous contributions supportive of eugenics were also published in the popular science magazine Zdravje. From the outset the journal, which specialized in news on the development of hygiene in Yugoslavia, featured articles about eugenic marriages, premarital examinations, and sterilization (for example, Arnšek 1925: 49–51). Pirc’s understanding of eugenics differed considerably from that of Munda and Škerlj. Whereas Munda did not consider premarital certificates a viable eugenic method, as it was impossible to prevent the extramarital birth of ‘inferiors’, Pirc was in favour. 400

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

He also placed greater importance on eugenic education before marriage, but devoted less attention than Škerlj to issues such as compulsory sterilization. Pirc’s attitude differed with regards to the application of negative and positive eugenic programmes. For example, whereas Škerlj’s hopes rested almost exclusively on negative eugenics, since he viewed positive eugenics as ‘very expensive’, and as requiring ‘a great deal of funds for rewarding births, for breastfeeding and for various special schools’ (Škerlj 1934c: 3), Pirc endorsed positive eugenics, particularly quantitative pro-­natalist demographic policy, and was a staunch opponent of contraception and abortion. In this respect, Pirc’s worldview and political orientation resembled those of other Slovene Catholic eugenicists, such as Ema Deisinger and Anton Brecelj. Pirc’s Catholicism shaped both his eugenics and his professional career. He became Director of the Institute of Hygiene at a time when conservatives dominated the Slovene political arena. However, in the early 1930s, after the ‘forced constitution’ came into effect,16 the political rudder of the Drava Banate passed into the hands of the centralist and royalist liberals. As a Christian socialist, Ivo Pirc too fell into disfavour. In 1933 he was removed from office as Director of the Institute of Hygiene and was transferred to Skopje, while his position was given to the liberal hygienist Karel Petrič. Following the assassination of King Alexander in 1934, the political scene changed once again, and the conservative Slovene People’s Party (SLS), which was favourably disposed towards Pirc, returned to power. In mid-1935 Pirc was again appointed Director of the Institute of Hygiene and resumed his campaign against infectious and so-­called ‘social’ diseases. Alcoholism was a ‘social’ disease that Pirc focused on in particular, since he was deeply convinced that it was the main cause of the Slovene people’s degeneration. According to him, it not only led to the intellectual and physical destruction of the alcoholic and the economic downfall of his or her family, but it also had a disastrous effect on the offspring (I. Pirc 1940). As suggested by Pirc’s statistical data, wine-­ producing regions had a significantly higher incidence of stillbirth and new-­born death than others. Pirc also held that alcohol caused harm to ‘germ cells’, and thus caused degeneration in the offspring of affected parents. Drawing on the Swiss eugenicist August Forel (1848–1931), as well as on the work of the Slovene psychiatrist Ivan Robida and, of course, Božo Škerlj, Pirc assumed that children of alcoholics were often born as incurable mental patients, ‘retards’ and ‘feeble-­minded’, or even as alcoholics themselves. Nonetheless, he also accepted that, in some cases, it was hereditary feeble-­ mindedness that predisposed a person towards alcoholism. Like Deisinger, Munda, and Škerlj, Pirc viewed alcoholism as a eugenic problem and, therefore, cited the threat of degeneration as one of the fundamental concerns behind the temperance movement, which was the focus of an important part of his public health work. During World War II, Pirc focused mainly on the prevention of infectious diseases. He also helped the People’s Liberation Front (NOB), and for a time after the war worked in the military and lectured at various faculties in Ljubljana. He died in 1967 in Ljubljana.

401

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Racial (Generative) Hygiene17 While in the broader sense hygiene refers to the prevention or elimination of disease, racial hygiene refers to the prevention or elimination of racial diseases. Theoretically, racial hygiene investigates the influence of heredity and selection on the biological value of future generations, while practically it determines and acts to improve the inherited value of a nation. If with its advice racial hygiene turns to the individual, it is personal, while if it takes refuge under the aegis of society or the state, it is public. In many respects, social and racial hygiene overlap; many questions are addressed by both, for example, the question of alcoholism. Most questions of hygiene are also of importance to racial hygiene. Which diseases would be racial? Perhaps diseases found in one race but not in another? One finds racial diseases in every race, although not to the same extent, and by their character they can destroy a race entirely. That is, there are diseases that afflict particular members of a family through multiple generations. Such diseases remain in the bloodline, ruining and destroying it. Inflammation of the lungs is, therefore, not a racial disease. Neither are other infectious diseases. Diseases, which attack the individual and end in his recovery or death, are not racial diseases. The latter must have the property of remaining in the bloodline, of passing on within one and the same bloodline, and therefore, the character of being inherited. Racial diseases are, therefore, those that are inherited. Conversely, however, not all inherited diseases or anomalies are racial and important enough to warrant the attention of practical racial hygiene. For instance, we know about haemophilia or the tendency toward bleeding, gout, obesity and diabetes. All of these are inherited, but more or less affect only individuals. A special case is tuberculosis, which is also not a true racial disease. It is caused by germs, without which there is no illness. We know that tuberculosis progresses faster and more severely in some individuals than in others. Today it is said that the former have a stronger and the latter a weaker disposition towards the disease. It is true that tuberculosis appears predominantly in the same families, but this is not due to heredity. It is because the healthy become more easily infected through frequent contact with the patient and his belongings. Heredity does play a part, to the extent that the disposition, the susceptibility towards becoming ill, is passed on to offspring. Without infection, however, this susceptibility would not be harmful to the race, consequently, one should not count tuberculosis among racial diseases, although it too can destroy a race. We, therefore, call tuberculosis a social disease. Among racial diseases we also count such illnesses or disorders in the functioning of the human body which preclude an individual’s natural development and undisturbed participation in the progress of the whole race. Here belong many physical inferiorities (physical weakness, diseases of the blood vessels, heart defects, poor resistance against external influences) and also mental inferiorities, in short: all those anomalies of the human mind and body that cause degeneration and decay of the bloodline. Mental anomalies also belong here, which escalate toward mental illness, and so do ethical defects, which characterize the extensive armada of criminals. All such conditions are 402

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

inherited; they did not originate in the present individual, but are part of his constitution. Racial diseases are, therefore, of a constitutional character, and it is thus understandable that the struggle against them is extremely difficult. It is necessary, therefore, to make clear the concept of heredity. The word refers to the transfer of attributes from the father and mother to the child by way of germ cells. These cells contain all the attributes of the parents, since they otherwise could not appear in the child. This is best observed in birds, which reproduce with eggs. When a bird has laid an egg, her influence on the emerging life has ceased, but the hatchling nevertheless displays all her attributes. Like all other attributes, the seeds of racial diseases are also contained in the germ cell. As a result heredity takes place by way of germ cells, and the child must be similar to its parents, as such ‘the apple does not fall far from the tree’. In this sense, racial diseases may, therefore, be termed germ cell diseases. [. . .] Of the toxic substances harmful to humans, alcohol has been researched the most. Let us look at it! It causes a whole range of conditions in individuals and especially affects ganglion cells in brain matter. It damages ganglion cells that were healthy before, and so it follows that it damages the germ cells of the brain, thus damaging newly-­formed brain matter from the outset. We can even expect that the poorly resistant germ cells of the brain are damaged more than that person’s brain. Other toxins also act like alcohol. Given that racial diseases exist, we should always be wary of them spreading through human reproduction. Will the endeavours of racial hygiene meet with any success? Can a person afflicted by a racial disease be cured? Sadly, he cannot, because the seed of the disease is in his germ cells, the disease is, therefore, his attribute and cannot be excised. A machine that is out of order because it is poorly oiled can be fixed by oiling it, while this will not work with a machine made from inferior materials. It is the same with humans. An acute disease can be eliminated, but not a racial one. Until the germ cells have been cured, the inheritance will progress further, even if we could cure the person carrying the diseased germ cells. These disappear only with the person’s death. It would therefore follow from this line of thought that humanity will deteriorate due to incurable racial diseases. However, past experience has shown that it never comes this far since here too nature’s self-­help has intervened. Nature has it that people with spoiled germ cells are less capable of reproduction or even incapable of it. This phenomenon can, for example, be observed in alcoholics (sterility in France!), idiots, the feeble-­minded, diabetics, the mentally ill, etc. One can also see that in families where degeneration appears, the ability to reproduce the racial dynasty (‘plemenska rodbina’) fades away, without us being able to explain the phenomenon in more detail. Thus many die without offspring. The second path of self-­help set by nature is that the descendants of sick people gradually heal on their own after some generations, so that the children are still sick, the grandchildren already less so, while the great-­grandchildren are already almost healthy. Of course, this process can also take a long time indeed. Recovery can take place in two ways. The first way is this: a germ cell preparing for insemination secretes certain parts in the form of ‘polar bodies’. It is imagined that the seeds of disease in the embryo also hang 403

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

onto these polar bodies. Of course, we have no proof of this hypothesis. Only the second option is possible, explained and supported by Mendel. Namely, that in insemination two cells participate, the male and female, and that heredity follows constant laws according to whether the attributes are of a dominant or recessive nature. In the merging of a recessive cell containing the seed of disease with a healthy cell, matter that pushes the diseased seed into the background normally prevails. However, if a germ cell containing such a withering, diseased seed merges with a cell also containing a diseased seed of the same kind, at first a ‘latent’ disease develops. This danger is especially great in families resulting from marriages among relatives and, therefore, the fact that many cretins come from such marriages is perfectly explainable. If we removed existing racial diseases, we would, of course, not yet have achieved everything. There would still exist the possibility of new hereditary diseases appearing. Consequently, alongside the elimination of hereditary diseases, it is also necessary to prevent new ones. If one wishes to approach this task, however, one must have knowledge of the damage that [can] afflict germ cells. Again, we are interested especially in the effects of alcohol. It is generally accepted that alcohol, consumed in large amounts, causes serious mental disorders in offspring, such as idiotism, epilepsy, serious mental illnesses, moral defects, physical inferiority, criminal tendencies, etc. It is also more or less accepted that it causes female offspring to be incapable of breastfeeding. One may of course object to all this. Who is able to prove reliably that a drunkard’s son is epileptic because the father was a drunkard? As such, thousands of such cases are not yet sufficient proof. The reverse could also be the case, namely, that intemperance is the consequence of an abnormal mental condition, that an abnormal mental condition is primary, while alcoholic dissoluteness is secondary. It is known that not all people who otherwise meet the same conditions become alcoholics. A hereditary mental inferiority is necessary. One therefore sees that in individual cases it is not easy to decide between one and the other possibility, although it is perfectly certain that even in the case of a primary abnormal mental condition, the consumption of alcohol further harms the already damaged germ cells. Therefore, the danger of alcohol abuse must be beaten down by all means. We must make this decision, even though the harmful effects of alcohol on the body have not yet been completely explained. Thus, for instance, it is wrong to label alcohol as the sole cause of cirrhosis of the liver. If this were the case, this illness would be much more widespread. In many alcoholics the illness is completely absent. It is the same with kidney atrophy, arteriosclerosis, heart enlargement, and so on. All of these conditions require a hereditary disposition. A hereditary mental inferiority and disposition is characteristic of alcoholics. What is true of alcohol is also true of all other harmful influences, such as morphine, opium and other germ toxins. Tuberculosis and venereal diseases should be mentioned above too. These diseases threaten the race, since they cause sterility in women, and degeneration and defects in offspring. Other specifically racial diseases are also important, for example, cancer, cretinism, rheumatism, heart defects, and so on. The task of racial hygiene is mainly to prevent the birth of new inferior people by removing the damage that leads to hereditary diseases. Much can be accomplished by prohibiting or preventing sick people from reproducing. The first step toward this goal 404

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

is the prohibition of marriage between sick or hereditarily afflicted persons. In many countries such a prohibition has already been implemented with the introduction of compulsory medical examinations. Of course, this instrument too does not always achieve its aim. All laws are broken and no law is perfect. Educating young people before they enter marriage or form romantic relationships is also very helpful. Of course, it is still difficult today for a doctor or layman to determine whether a person is hereditarily afflicted since in this regard science is still very deficient. We only have knowledge of some external signs, from which we can infer a hereditary disease or affliction, but we do not yet have a reliable indicator, as we do for other diseases (a thermometer). Since time immemorial, humankind has employed various drastic methods to eliminate hereditary diseases, but it has done so unwittingly, for example, when it introduced the death penalty and prison for criminals, whereby it removed much evil. Mandatory confinement in madhouses and sanatoriums can be added to this. These and other measures restrict the reproduction of inferior individuals. In modern times, other drastic measures have also been employed in the struggle against hereditary diseases, for example, sterilization and castration (as in North America). Of much greater importance for the prosperity or deterioration of a race, however, are limitation of births, including late marriages, remaining single, abortions and childless marriages, which caused the decline of all nations that have existed in history and developed high culture. Against these phenomena, too, all available means of public and personal racial hygiene must be employed. Only a healthy race will be ‘master of its own land’! Translation by Marko Farič

405

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Bojan Pirc

(1901, Ljubljana–1991, Ljubljana)

The life choices of Bojan Pirc were similar to those of his older brother Ivo. Bojan, too, decided to study medicine and later to work in the field of hygiene. Supported by a Rockefeller scholarship, between 1927 and 1928 he studied medical statistics and epidemiology as well as the organization of public health and hygiene at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. It is possible that he became more familiar with eugenics in the USA, although at the time it apparently did not leave as much of an impression on him as did, for example, the struggle against infectious diseases or demographic statistics. The picturesque letters he sent from the USA to the monthly Zdravje in 1928, for instance, do not mention eugenics. Also in 1928 Pirc became the head of medical and vital statistics at the Central Hygiene Institute in Belgrade. He worked at an institution that in addition to personal and social hygiene also counted ‘generative hygiene’ among its activities. The fact that Bojan Pirc worked with two great supporters of Yugoslav public health, Andrija Štampar and Jovanović Batut, who themselves were sympathetic towards eugenics, probably also played a part in influencing his eugenic outlook. Pirc devoted greater attention to this subject during the early 1930s, when eugenic laws were being implemented in various European countries, above all Germany. Pirc did not dispute the need to prevent the reproduction of the ‘feeble-­ minded’, but questioned the most efficient and humane choice of methods. Like Škerlj and Munda, he rejected isolation as inhumane and too expensive, and the use of abortive means as completely inefficient. He thought sterilization acceptable from an economic point of view, given its low cost and effectiveness, but doubts about the objectivity and clarity of the definition of ‘inferior person’ precluded his support for such a measure (B. Pirc 1934a: 5–7 and 1934b: 19–21). In addition, he also predicted the possibilities for its abuse, since: ‘Who can guarantee that healthy married couples will not make use of it as the most reliable way to limit the number of children they have?’ (B. Pirc 1934b: 21). Bojan Pirc, much like his brother Ivo and Ema Deisinger, adapted eugenics to reflect the principles of Catholic morality. As already suggested, according to Catholic-­oriented eugenicists, moral degeneration was equally important. They were also generally united by a belief in the greater utility of positive eugenics. Thus Bojan Pirc argued for tax policies that would punish financially ‘hereditarily superior’ individuals without offspring and reward those ‘hereditarily unburdened’ parents that had many children (B. Pirc 1932b: 53–5). According to Pirc, aspiring parents as well as the state should act to ensure the quality of offspring by taking care in their choice of spouse and getting to know his or her family case history. Not everybody, however, was capable of understanding the theory of heredity, and therefore in some countries, such as the USA and Germany, special marital consultancies were organized, where eugenicists educated potential married couples on such problems, and advised ‘hereditarily inferior’ persons 406

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

against marrying or even prohibited them from doing so. At the time marital consultancies did not exist in Yugoslavia, and until they were created potential married couples should seek eugenic advice from physicians (B. Pirc 1932c: 150–7). By pointing to the positive aspects of large families, Bojan Pirc linked his eugenics to pro-­natalism, on which he also wrote extensively. He problematized Yugoslavia’s birth rate and demographic evolution, especially in the light of competition with neighbouring countries (B. Pirc 1932a: 26–8 and 1940: 35–6). He applied this same logic to the demographic contest between Slavic, Latin and Germanic nations, which at the time he saw as favouring Slavs due to their faster growth, that in the future could also enable them to gain political supremacy (B. Pirc 1935: 23–7). Natalism was only one of Pirc’s many research interests, however. Through the prism of social hygiene and public health, he also enthusiastically researched rates of general mortality, infectious diseases, national dietary habits, alcoholism – which, of course, he also studied in relation to its effects on offspring – and other, similar problems. He collected the results of this work into his extensive bibliography and paedagogical work, tirelessly sharing them through lectures as well as hygienic museums and exhibitions, which were very popular at the time. In 1930, with the assistance of his colleagues, he organized the Yugoslav pavilion at a famous international hygienic exhibition in Dresden, and he also organized an all-Yugoslav exhibition in Belgrade in 1935. During the 1930s Pirc devoted himself to several social projects. He participated in the organization of health co-­operatives and took on a more active role in the youth section of the conservative Catholic Slovene People’s Party (Slovenska Ljudska Stranka), but interrupted his political activities during World War II. He continued to work, however, as head of the social medicine department of the Central Hygiene Institute which, due to a shortage of funds and staff during wartime, only performed the most important medical tasks, mainly the control of infectious diseases. After the liberation of Belgrade in 1944, as a Catholic and former royalist he was sentenced to six months in prison. In the following years his professional career began to improve again. In 1955 he became assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine at University of Zagreb, and also became an associate of the World Health Organization (WHO), working as an expert on health statistics at the WHO Regional Office for the East Mediterranean. In 1974 he became full professor of statistics at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ljubljana, and between 1968 and 1980 he also conducted various postgraduate studies in Ljubljana and Maribor, where he lectured on health care research, health care for mothers and children, occupational medicine and public health for dental surgeons. He died in Ljubljana in 1991.

407

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Remediation of Marriage18 Eugenics or the theory of heredity is not as young a science as one might conclude on the basis of it still being so little known. The latter fact, however, is in great contrast to its importance for the development of the individual and the nation as a whole. In all ancient nations we find among their mores and laws a clearly expressed desire: healthy offspring. The most resolute in this regard were the Spartans, who in their laws to protect good and healthy offspring went as far as to limit very personal rights when offspring was in question. We have had new modern eugenics for only sixty years, and its goals are as clear as they were in ancient times, only the manner is different, which must be adapted to the present conditions. The Consequences of Bad Marriage The future and progress of a nation depend on the number and quality of its children. Since children are dependent on their parents, of whom 90 per cent are married, the future of a nation depends on the number and quality of marriages. Marriage also determines the happiness of individuals, whether of the married couple themselves or their children. In bad marriages, children are born who are feeble-­minded, cretins, have physical or mental defects and are less or not at all fit for life. The maintenance of such children then becomes a burden on the whole nation. Many cases demonstrate that children of criminals went down the same path in their lives as their parents, and caused repeated damage to the national economy. How high are the maintenance costs for the offspring of hereditarily burdened feeble-­minded persons in madhouses, in various institutions for mentally stunted children? How high for convicts who became criminals due to characteristics inherited from their parents? These sums add up to millions and millions. How many people are there, in addition to these, who are on the border of one or the other, and because of this are again incapable of living as is appropriate to human dignity? Would it not have been better if they had never been born: better for them and better for human society as a whole? How to have Better Offspring? This question would be resolved if people did not marry solely because of the heart’s demands (which is, of course, increasingly rare), but listened to reason as well. This would be achieved not by seeking a good marriage partner in the economic sense, but also in the biological sense, that is, by marrying a spouse of whom you can expect healthy, strong and better offspring. If in all social strata only the best marry, we will achieve better and better offspring. It is also necessary to adequately prevent the procreation of individuals of whom it is thought, according to our present understanding of the theory of heredity, that they would produce inferior children who would be unfit for life and unable to live off their own income. 408

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

What Should be Considered Before Entering Marriage? The most important thing is to look for possible signs of degeneracy, be they mental or physical, in the children of the same parents from which you choose your marriage partner. But do not let yourself be misled because your chosen mate does not exhibit these signs. The latter may be hidden in the mass of cells that will determine his offspring, and it can thus happen that the children will show the same signs of degeneracy as perhaps an uncle or aunt do, while the mother and father do not. Because this is difficult to observe in a small number of children, it is much safer to choose a spouse from parents with more children, since it is more probable in such cases that the good and bad hereditary characteristics of the family are expressed. One should also pay attention to what the family’s ancestors were like in its main and side branches. If there exist known cases of mental abnormalities and diseases that are known to be hereditary, then it is better not to look for a spouse in such a family. We would stray too far if we were to address here the question of all that can be inherited. With regard to this, I must emphasize the need to set up consultancies for choosing marriage partners, where a person could inform themselves about the chances of having weak children by reviewing the family trees of both the spouses’ families. A simultaneous medical examination able to uncover possible diseases, which could affect offspring, would be of great use. The requirement of a medical examination to determine various diseases (venereal, tuberculosis, and so on), which in confirmed cases prohibit or postpone marriage, is a known hygienic requirement and is not based only on eugenic principles. Such consultancies, where a medical examination is required for the first or second purpose, are giving good results in more advanced countries. Is the Nation Today Growing in Such a Way as to be Giving Birth to Children Who, in a Eugenic Sense, Are Better? The sad fact is that it is not; quite the contrary, precisely that which is inferior is reproducing much faster. Primitive people do not know birth control. The latter is a negative consequence that wanders into a people together with civilization, and is more widespread among individuals who within the nation are in one way or another more successful. These are the kind of people who due to their special talents have entered the leading ranks of the nation, and if they marry their equals, then their children, due to natural laws, are of even better quality. It is sad that such children are very few. Various data on this show specifically that members of professions in which people of better quality are required have much fewer children than individuals who are stunted, who are therefore below the former or below the average level of the nation. Since the best procreates little, while the bad does so proportionally too fast, there is a danger that the average level of the biological quality of the nation is falling. From this again follows the lesson that it would be wisest if those who have risen above the average level had more children, while those below the average cultural level did not exceed the average number of children. If we acted thus, the nation as a whole would doubtlessly grow biologically stronger and better. 409

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Is a Tax on the Unmarried Just with Regard to the Above? A tax on unmarried and married couples without children is recommended by many sides as a means of attaining a higher birth rate, although it has not been successful in places where it has been implemented (France, Italy). Despite this, it is possible to maintain that from the nation’s and from the state’s perspective few taxes are as justified as this one, if it is then employed to assist socially weak but biologically strong strata with many children. In any case, tax rates should be set so that those of whom it is expected that they would produce superior children but do not marry or have children would pay more than the average individual, while those below the average level should remain untaxed and thus not be forced to produce inferior children. Undoubtedly, the issue is very difficult and cannot be resolved schematically. In individual cases, making a decision requires much knowledge and consideration. To find a solution to enable the economically weak but biologically strong to maintain a higher number of children, much would have to change in the present economic way of life. When entering marriage, children must be considered. Precisely the question of children is a much more important problem than usually thought. To assess its importance correctly, knowledge of basic eugenic principles is required. In this matter, we are especially prone to arrive too late at the realization that we have made a mistake. However, when the necessary legal steps are introduced for all citizens, the situation is usually such as to be beyond repair. It is therefore important to ensure that the younger generations themselves reflect on this in time, and that they come to understand on their own what is truly necessary and act of their own free will in this regard. Translation by Marko Farič

410

Glossary Biološka regeneracija: biological regeneration Dinarska rasa: Dinaric race Etična indikacija za abortus: ethical indication for abortion Evgenika: eugenics Evgenična indikacija za abortus: eugenic indication for abortion Generativna higiena: generative hygiene Hitlerizem: Hitlerism Pedagoška evgenika: paedagogical eugenics Plemenska higiena: racial hygiene Plemenska rodbina: racial dynasty Predporočna spričevala: premarital certificates Rasna higiena: racial hygiene Slaboumen-­mna –o: feeble-­minded Socijalna higijena: social hygiene Socijalna indikacija za abortus: social indication for abortion Sokolska evgenika: Sokol eugenics Sterilizacija: sterilization Zapada/zahodna evgenika: Western eugenics

Notes 1 The Drava Banate or Drava Banovina (Dravska Banovina) was a province (Banovina) of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between 1929 and 1941 [note ACP]. 2 What Derganc failed to notice, or perhaps did not want to notice, was that American eugenicists also indiscriminately classified South Slavic peoples as belonging to a mentally and physically inferior type! The US Immigration Act of 1924, which was lobbied for by American eugenicists, drastically limited the immigration of South-­eastern Europeans, including the Yugoslavs [note ACP]. 3 The Sokol movement was a Czech nationalist gymnastic movement founded in 1862 in Austria-Hungary by Miroslav Tyrš and Jindřich Fügner. Similar organizations were later founded in many other Slavic nations, including Slovenia. In 1905, the Slovene Sokol League was founded, an umbrella organization for all Slovene Sokol associations. In 1906, Catholic gymnasts founded their own organization, Orel (in Slovene, ‘sokol’ means ‘falcon’, and ‘orel’ means ‘eagle’). After the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Slovene Sokol League joined the Yugoslav Sokol League, which in contrast to Orel favoured Yugoslav Unitarianism. In its striving for the perfection of the national body and its collectivistic ethos, the Sokol movement promoted various forms of eugenics [note ACP]. 4 Derganc, F. (1932), Borba zapada in vzhoda: ob stoletnici Tyrševega rojstva, Ljubljana: Učiteljska tiskarna, 1932 [Excerpts translated from pp. 32–5 and 38–9]. 5 ‘Phenomena that are monstrous through excess’ (Latin) [note ACP]. 6 Škerlj, B. (1933b), ‘Socialno-­antropološka študija k vprašanju manjvrednega otroka’, Pedagoški Zbornik Slovenske Šolske Matice, 8: 74–9 [Excerpts translated from pp. 74–9]. 7 Škerlj, B. (1934a), ‘Evgenika ali rasna higiena?’ Zdravniški Vestnik, 6: 608–10 [Excerpts translated from pp. 608–10]. 8 I think this question can only be fully understood by one who has dealt with Jews (not with an individual who proves the rule!) during one’s research, in institutions, and most definitely by one who has had the opportunity to become acquainted with the big Jewish ghettoes in Warsaw and Krakow. There, one must realize that Jews are a special nation, that it is not only a question of faith, as many – especially Jews themselves – would like to hear [note BŠ]. 9 Deisinger, E. (1935), ‘Pedagoška Evgenika’, Slovenski Učitelj, 36: 105–8 [Excerpts translated from pp. 105–8]. 10 Mind moves matter! Virgil, Aeneid (Latin) [note ACP]. 11 Exodus 20: 5, 6 [note ACP]. 12 ‘De lege lata (lex lata)’, ‘the law as it exists’ – as opposed to ‘de lege ferenda’ (lex ferenda), ‘what the law should be’ (Latin) [note ACP]. 13 Munda, A. (1935a), ‘Biološka regeneracija naroda in kazensko pravo’, Misel in Delo: Kulturna in Socialna Revija, 1: 209–11 [Excerpts translated from pp. 209–11]. 14 Eduard Kohlrausch (1874–1948): German professor of criminal law [note ACP]. 15 The Yugoslav Criminal Code was introduced in 1929 [note ACP]. 16 On 6 January 1929, after a political crisis triggered by the assassination of the Croat politician Stepan Radić, King Alexander prorogued Parliament, abolished the constitution and introduced a personal dictatorship known as the 6 January Dictatorship (Šestojanuarska Diktatura). The name of the country was changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and its territory divided into nine banovinas (provinces). In 1931, Alexander decreed a ‘forced constitution’ that only allowed the existence of one political party, the Yugoslav Radical

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Peasants’ Democracy (Jugoslovanska Radikalna Seljačka Demokracija – later renamed Jugoslovanska Nacionalna Stranka/Yugoslav National Party), which among other political groups also included Slovene liberals [note ACP]. 17 Pirc, I. (1928), ‘Plemenska (Generativna) higijena’, in Pirc, I., Čitanka o higieni: za učiteljišča, višje razrede srednjih šol in srednje strokovne šole, Ljubljana: Jugoslovanska tiskarna, 277–81 [Excerpts translated from pp. 277–81]. 18 Pirc, B. (1932b), ‘Asanacija zakona’, Zdravje, 8: 53–5 [Excerpts translated from pp. 53–5].

413

Bibliography Archives Ministrstvo za Prosveto Ljudske Republike Slovenije (Archives of the Republic of Slovenia), Ljubljana Ema Deisinger, SI AS 231 Nacionalni Inštitut za Biologijo (Library of the National Institute of Biology), Ljubljana B. Škerlj’s Correspondence: B. Škerlj to J. Matiegka, J. Maly and B. Sekla (1926–41) J. Matiegka, J. Maly and B. Sekla to Škerlj (1926–41) B. Škerlj to G. Placzek, E. Eickstedt and V. Lebzelter (1932–41) G. Placzek, E. Eickstedt, V. Lebzelter to B. Škerlj (1932–41) M. Hirsch to B. Škerlj (1933) B. Škerlj to P. Popenoe (1933–6) P. Popenoe to B. Škerlj (1933–6) B. Škerlj to Svoboda (1934) H. Laughlin, R. Huse, P. Popenoe and C. Hodson to Škerlj (1934–40) B. Škerlj to R. Huse (1934) B. Škerlj to T. Lang (1935; 1939) B. Škerlj to H. Laughlin (1936) B. Škerlj to C. Hodson (1935–6; 1938) B. Škerlj to E. Essen-Moeller (1936) B. Škerlj to M. Tildesley (1936). B. Škerlj to Zdravniški vestnik (1938) B. Škerlj to B. Zarnik (1933, 1938) B. Škerlj to A. Štampar (1938) The Rockefeller Foundation to B. Škerlj (1938) B. Škerlj to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts (University of King Alexander, Ljubljana) (1938). B. Škerlj to E. Jokl and O. Henckel, F. Boas (1938–40) E. Jokl, O. Henckel, F. Boas to B. Škerlj (1938–40) B. Škerlj to C. Hodson (1936, 1939) C. Hodson to B. Škerlj (1936, 1939) B. Škerlj to C. Gini and Gini to Škerlj (1939–42) B. Škerlj to J. Erdeljanović (1939) Hrvatski Državni Arhiv (Croatian State Archives), Zagreb Higijenski Zavod sa Školom Nrodnog Zdravlja ‘Pokretna izložba mati i dete’; ‘Pravila o polaganju državnog ispita’, Box 1, Folder 517, 323–7 Narodna Skupština Kraljevine Jugoslavije (Archives of Yugoslavia), Belgrade ‘Zakon o suzbijanju polnih bolesti’, Folder 72/10–37

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Primary Sources (1925), ‘Važno vprašanje v premiale’, Ženski List, 1: 1–2. (1926), Zakon o Štampi: od 6. avgusta 1925. God, Zagreb: Tipografije. (1927), ‘Zdravniški pregled pred Ženitvijo’, Zdravje, 3: 84–7. (1930), ‘Uredba o organizaciji in področju higienskih zavodov, zdravstvenih domov in zdravstvenih postaj’, Službeni list Kraljevske banske uprave Dravske banovine 1930, 1: 66. (1930), ‘Kaj Pravite?’, Slovenec, 63: 4. (1930), ‘Kaj Pravite?, Jutro, 11: 3. (1931), ‘Eros Krščanskega zakona’, Slovenec, 64: 1. (1931), ‘Zakon o davku na neoženjene osebe in davčni oprostitvi oseb z devetimi ali več otroki’, Službeni list Kraljevske banske uprave Dravske banovine 1931, 2: 72–3. (1931), ‘Davek na neoženjene osebe’, Slovenski Gospodar, 65: 5. (1933), ‘Za ureditev porodov’, Ženski List, 3: 1–2. (1933), ‘Sterilizacijski zakon v Nemčiji’ (1933), Jutro, 14: 6. (1933), ‘Naša akcija za regulacijo porodov in naši nasprotniki klerikalci, Ženski List, 9: 1. (1934), ‘Zakon o zatiranju spolnih bolezni’, Službeni list Kraljevske banske uprave Dravske banovine 1934, 5: 537–9. (1934), ‘Sterilizacija in pravo. Predavanje dr. Munde’, Slovenec, 62: 4. (1934), ‘Brez zdravniškega izspričevala ni poroke’, Slovenski Narod, 67: 169. (1935), ‘Resnica o vprašanju sterilizacije’, Slovenec, 63: 3. (1935), ‘Otrok vedno manj’, Slovenec, 83: 1. (1935), ‘Dečja povelja’, Narodni Podmladak, 1: 138–9. (1936), Programi: Metodska uputstva, za rad u srednjim Školama, L. 1936, Higiena za VII in VIII razred, Belgrade: Državna Štamparija Kraljevine Jugoslavije. (1936), ‘Eugenics in Yugoslavia’, Eugenical News, 21: 114. (1937), ‘Pravilnik Sekcije za Antropologijo, Genealogijo in Evgeniko’, Evgenika, 3: 38–41. (1937), ‘II. Vseslovanski Pedološki Kongres v Ljubljani’, Učiteljski Tovariš, 77: 2. (1937), ‘Uredba o Medicinskih Fakultetah na Univerzah v Beogradu, Zagrebu in Ljubljani’, Službeni list Kraljevske banske uprave Dravske banovine, 8: 539–47. (1939), ‘Ustanovitev vzgojne svetovalnice v Mariboru’, Jutro, 20: 6. (1939), Sveučilišne vlasti i red predavanja u sveučilištu Kraljevine Jugoslavije u Zagrebu u ljetnom poljeću 1938/1939, Zagreb: Hrvatski Tiskraski Zavod d.d. u Zagrebu. (1942), ‘Verordnung über die Einführung der Nürnberger Rassengesetze, der Bestimmungen zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwachses und zum Schutze der Erbgesundheit des deutschen Volkes, ferner des Personenstands und Familienrechtes in der Untersteiermark’, Verordnungsund Amtsblatt des Chefs der Zivilverwaltung in der Untersteiermark, 75: 534–5. (1942), ‘Verordnung über die Einführung von reichsrechtlichen Bestimmungen auf dem Gebiete des Gesundheitswesens in den besetzten Gebieten Kärntens und Krains’, Verordnungs- und Amtsblatt des Chefs der Zivilverwaltung in den besetzten Gebieten Kärntens und Krains, 27: 238. Arnšek, A. (1925), ‘Dednost in narodno zdravje?’ Zdravje, 1: 49–51. Arnšek, A. (1926), ‘Poišči si zdravo nevesto’, Zdravje, 2: 172. Brecelj, A. (1924–5), ‘Seksulani problem in inteligenči naraščaj’, Čas, 19: 289–302. Brecelj, A. (1933–4), ‘O prisilnem ojalovljanju’, Čas, 28: 158–9. Brodar, T. (Edvard Kardelj) (1932–33), ‘§ 171’, Književnost: mesečnik za umetnost in znanost, 1: 250–4. Cankar, I. (ed.) (1925), Slovenski biografski leksikon, vol. 1, Ljubljana: Zadružna Gospodarska Banka. Deisinger, E. (1934), ‘Sodobno-Kulturni vzgojni problemi’, Slovenski Učitelj, 35: 59. Deisinger, E. (1935), ‘Pedagoška Evgenika’, Slovenski Učitelj, 36: 105–8. 415

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Deisinger, E. (1936), ‘Vzroki razkroja družine in propadanja družine’, Slovenski Učitelj, 37: 205. Derganc, F. (1901), ‘Darwin’, Jug, 1: 8–11. Derganc, F. (1909), ‘Oskrb pohabljencev’, Dom in svet, 22: 2. Derganc, F. (1920), ‘Evgenika’, Sokolski Glasnik, 2: 159–65; 241–8 and 425–32. Derganc, F. (1932), Borba zapada in vzhoda: ob stoletnici Tyrševega rojstva, Ljubljana: Učiteljska Tiskarna. Derganc, F. (1934), ‘Človek in zdravnik’, Zdravniški Vestnik, 6: 65–74. Derganc, F. (1936), Svetozor: prvi zvezek izbranih esejev, Ljubljana: Učiteljska Tiskarna. Dolenc, M. (1929), Tolmač h kazenskemu zakoniku kraljevine Jugoslavije, Ljubljana: Tiskovna Zadruga. Drugi Vseslovanski Pedološki Kongres v Ljubljani—Jugoslavija 26., 27. in 28. avgusta 1937 (1937), Ljubljana: Učiteljska Tiskarna. Essen-Möller, E. (1936), ‘Raziskavanja o plodnosti nekaterih skupin druševno bolnih (schicofrenikov, manično-­depresivnih in epileptikov)’, Evgenika, 2: 17–23. Furlan, T. (1935), ‘Znanstveni sestanek Slov. Zdrav. Društva 15. IX. 1935 v Ženski bolnici’, Zdravniški Vestnik, 7: 392–4. Goestl, F. (1893), ‘Pijanost in blaznost’, Letopis Matice Slovenske, 23: 164–72. Goestl, F. (1934), ‘Vpliv alkohola na zarod’, Zdravje: Priloga Prerodu, 10: 22–3. Homan, A. (1924), Higiena. Pouk kako si ohranimo zdravje, Ljubljana: Kr. zaloga Šolskih Knjig in Učil. Jagodič, V. (1935), ‘Prvi Kongres Jugoslovanske Unije za Zaščito Dece’, Učiteljski Tovariš, 76: 1–2. Jeglič, A. B. (1910), Ženinom in Nevestam: Pouk za srečen zakon, Ljubljana: Katoliška Tiskarna. Jurečko, I. (1931), ‘Evgenika’, Življenje in Svet, 10: 478–80. Kamin, M. (1940), ‘Položaj duševno abnormnih v predhodnem načrtu jugoslovanskega državljanskega zakonika’, Slovenski Pravnik, 54: 244–53. Kocijančič, V. (1935), ‘Zdravniška preiskava pred vstopom v zakon’, Zdravje: Priloga Prerodu, 11: 32–3. Kremžar, M. (1934), ‘Evgenika’, Življenje in Svet, 15: 470–1. Kus-Nikolajev, M. (1934), Laž rasizma, Zagreb: Radnička Štampa. Lapajne, Ž. (1935), ‘O splavu in sterilizaciji’, Zdravje, 11: 95–6 and 129–32. Leben, S. (1933), ‘Urednikove pripombe k paragrafu 177’, Sodobnost: Neodvisna Slovenska Revija, 1: 425–9. M. Ć. P. (1940), ‘Šta se i kako se nasleđuje’, Narodni Podmladak, 6: 90–4. Maklecov, A. (1945–6), ‘Življenjski pojavi in vzroki mladinske zločinstvenosti: (odlomek iz uvoda v kriminologijo)’, Zbornik Znanstvenih Razprav, 21: 1–47. May, G. (1937), ‘Evangelijska cerkev in evgenika’, Evgenika, 3: 36–7. Meršol, V. (1935), ‘Zdravniški Kongres v Beogradu od 29. IX.-2.X. 1935’, Zdravniški Vestnik, 7: 438–40. Mezger, E., Schönke, A. and Jescheck, H.-H. (eds), (1955), Das ausländische Strafrecht der Gegenwart, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Mikič, F. (1936a), ‘Über den Index des Geburteneffektes’, in Harmsen and Lohse (eds), Bevölkerungsfragen, 427–32. Mikič, F. (1936b), ‘Über den Index des biologischen Typus in jugoslawischen Bezirken’, Harmsen and Lohse, (eds), Bevölkerungsfragen, 433–9. Morzicky, J. (1937), ‘Razvoj evgeniškega gibanja na Poljskem’, Evgenika, 3: 33–6. Munda, A. (1934a), ‘Kako učinkuje privolitev oškodovanca na protipravnost kaznivih dejanj zoper Življenje in telo?’, Slovenski Pravnik, 48: 101–26. Munda, A. (1934b), ‘Problem sterilizacije in kazensko pravo’, Slovenski Pravnik 48: 244–69. 416

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Munda, A. (1935a), ‘Biološka regeneracija naroda in kazensko pravo’, Misel in Delo: Kulturna in Socialna Revija, 1: 209–11. Munda, A. (1935b), ‘Indicirana odprava telesnega plodu in naš kazenski zakon’, Evgenika, 1: 17–21. Munda, A. (1935c), ‘Kastracija kot očuvalna odredba v smislu kazenskega zakona’, Misel in delo, 1: 51–2. Munda, A. (1936), ‘Nova nemška rasno-­higienska zakonodaja’, Evgenika, 2: 30–1. Pesek, A. (1902), ‘Darwinizem in vzogja’, Popotnik, 23: 311. Petrič, K. (1934), ‘Življenjska moč naroda’, Zdravje, 10: 63. Pétrich, J. M. (1936), ‘Le Droit yougoslave et la stérilisation’, Bulletin de la Société de Législation Comparée, 4: 451–7. Pirc, B. (1932a), ‘Ko poslednji ce biti prvi’, Zdravlje, 8: 26–8. Pirc, B. (1932b), ‘Asanacija zakona’, Zdravje, 8: 53–5. Pirc, B (1932c), ‘Što su naše dužnosti’, Zdravlje, 9: 150–7. Pirc, B. (1934a), ‘Evgenični zakon v Nemčiji, I’, Zdravje, 10: 5–7. Pirc, B. (1934b), ‘Evgenični zakon v Nemčiji, II’, Zdravje, 10: 19–21. Pirc, B. (1935), ‘Ćija je budučnost Europe’, Zdravlje, 11: 23–7. Pirc, B. (1940), ‘Naši susedi i mi’, Zdravlje, 16: 35–6. Pirc, I. (1927), ‘Plemenska sli generativna higiena’, Zdravje 3: 157–60. Pirc, I. (1928), Čitanka o higieni: za učiteljišča, višje razrede srednjih šol in srednje strokovne šole, Ljubljana: Jugoslovanska tiskarna. Pirc, I. (ed.) (1938), Zdravstvene prilike in delo higijenske organizacije v Sloveniji 1922–1936: spomenica ob petnajstletnici Higijenskega Zavoda v Ljubljani, Ljubljana: Higijenski Zavod. Pirc, I. (1940), Naroda rast—zdravje družin, Ljubljana: Zadružna Tiskarna, Prosvetna Zveza. Potrč, J. (1935), ‘Socialne indikacije splava’, Evgenika, 1: 70–3. Robida, I. (1899), Alkohol und Irresein, Sonderabdruck aus der Laibacher Zeitung, Laibach: Ig. V. Kleinmayr & Fed. Bamberg. Seizov, H. (1937), ‘Skrb za raso v Bolgariji’, Evgenika, 3: 17–9. Sekla, B. (1937), ‘Populacijska politika in evgenika na Češkoslovaškem’, Evgenika, 3: 19–23. Stefanović, S. (1935a), ‘Rasna higijena, bortus i zaštita matere’, Evgenika, 1: 52–6. Stefanović, S. (1935b), ‘Rasna higijena, abortus i zaštita matere’, Evgenika, 1: 65–70. Škerlj, B. (1928), ‘Kako naj razumemo dinarsko raso’, Geografski Vestnik, 5: 34–56. Škerlj, B. (1933a), ‘Zur Anthropologie der Prostituierten’, Archiv für Frauenkunde und Kontitutionforschung, 19: 51–76. Škerlj, B. (1933b), ‘Socialno-­antropološka študija k vprašanju manjvrednega otroka’, Pedagoški Zbornik Slovenske Šolske Matice, 8: 34–102. Škerlj, B. (1934a), ‘Evgenika ali rasna higiena?’ Zdravniški Vestnik, 6: 608–10. Škerlj, B. (1934b), Sredstva Negativne Evgenike, Golnik: s. n. Škerlj, B. (1934c), ‘O rasah v Evropi in v Naši Državi’, Življenje in Svet, 15: 255. Škerlj, B. (1934d), ‘Ali in kako moremo izboljšati človeško rod’, Življenje in Svet, 13: 30–3; 54–6 and 78–81. Škerlj, B. (1935a), ‘Evgenika v naših narodnih pregovorih’, Evgenika, 1: 2–11. Škerlj, B. (1935b), ‘K Preklicu Zakonske Določbe o Obveznem Zdravniškem Pregledu Moških Oseb Pred Poroko’, Evgenika, 1: 37–8. Škerlj, B. (1936), ‘Narod i potomstvo iz Sofije’, Evgenika, 2: 15. Škerlj, B. (1937a), ‘Evgenika’, Evgenika, 3: front cover. Škerlj, B. (1937b), ‘Sekcija za Antropologijo, Genealogijo in Evgeniko’, Evgenika, 3: 28. Škerlj, B. (1937c), ‘Deisinger, E. Deška predpubertetna doba’, Evgenika, 3: 29. Škerlj, B. (1939), ‘Rapporti di razza fra Jugoslavia e Italia’, La Difesa della Razza 3: 46–51. Škerlj, B. (1949), O človeških rasah in o rasizmu, Ljubljani: Slovenski Knjižni Zavod. 417

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Škerlj, B. (1955), ‘Yugoslavia: An Anthropological Review for 1952–1954’, Yearbook of Anthropology, 651–70. Škerlj, B. (1960), ‘The Mankind Quarterly’, Man, 60: 172–3. Štebi, A. (1930), ‘Materinstvo i žensko pitanje’, Ženski Pokret, 11: 1–2. Štebi, A. (1934), ‘O vprašanju ojalovljenja (sterilizaciji)’, Ženski Pokret, 15: 111–13. Ušeničnik, A. (1930), ‘Evgenika’, Čas, 25: 128–33. Ušeničnik, A. (1931), ‘Evgenika’, Čas, 26: 32–3. Vode, A. (1936), ‘Kdo ima dolžnost skrbeti za duševno zaostale otroke’, Glas Nedužnih, 2: 30–2. Vodopivec-Černe, K. (1937), ‘Populacijska poltika nekaterih držav’, Ženski Svet, 15: 118–19. Vodopivec-Černe, K. (1944), Statistična Metoda v Kriminalni Etiologiji: Disertacija za dosego doktorske časti, Obranjena 11. Decembra 1943, Ljubljana: Samozaložba. Zalokar, A. (1938), ‘Biologija v Nacionalni Politiki’, Misel in Delo, 4: 53–66. Zupanič, N. (1933), ‘K Fizio-Etnični Metamorfozi Narodov s Posebnim Ozirom na Jugoslovene’, Etnolog, 5–6: 46–63. Zupanič, N. (1936), ‘Zur anthropologischen Ästhetik der jugoslawischen Landbevölkerung’, in Harmsen and Lohse, (eds), Bevölkerungsfragen, 480–5. Živković, A. (1933), Eugenika i moral (Zagreb: Hrvatska Bogoslovska Akademija, 1933).

Secondary Sources Batagelj, B. (2008), ‘ “Škodovati ne smemo ne posameznicam, ne narodu!” Božo Škerlj, antropometrija in ženski šport v 30-ih letih 20. stoletja’, Zgodovinski Časopis, 62: 177–85. Bögel-Dodič, M. (1996), ‘Profesor dr. Božo Škerlj’, Antropološki Zvezki, 4: 9–13. Cergol Paradiž, A. (2008), Senčna stran znanosti: evgenika v slovenski preteklosti in Človeški Genetiki Sodobnih ter Prihodnjih Generacij, Ljubljana: University of Ljubljana. Cergol Paradiž, A. (2009), ‘Evgenika na Slovenskem v perspektivi spola’, Zgodovinski Časopis: Glasilo Zveze Zgodovinskih Društev Slovenije, 63: 408–25. Dugac, Ž. (2010), Kako biti Čist i Zdrav. Zdravstveno Prosvjećivanje u međuratnoj Hrvatskoj, Zagreb: Srednja Evropa. Ferenc, T. (1975), ‘Nacistična “evtanazija” v Sloveniji leta 1941’, Prispevki za Zgodovino Delavskega Gibanja, 15–16: 97–119. Ferenc, T. (1994), ‘Viri o Rasnih Pregledih Slovencev Pod Nemško Okupacijo’, Prispevki za Zgodovino Delavskega Gibanja, 34: 231–44. Javornik, M. et al. (eds), (1988), Enciklopedija Slovenije, vol. 2 and vol. 7, Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga. Klavžar, K. (2006), ‘Vode, Angela’, in De Haan, F., Daskalova, K. and Loutfi, A. (eds), A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms in Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe: 19th and 20th Centuries, Budapest: CEU Press, 604–7. Knežević Hočevar, D. (1996), ‘Božo Škerlj, Slovene Anthropologist: Dilemmas and Controversies of an Early Professional Career’, Antropološki Zvezki, 4: 25–34. Kyovsky, R. (1954), ‘Maltuzianizem slovenskega meščanstva ob začetku delavskega gibanja pri nas’, Socialistična Misel, 2: 764–76. Lučovnik, H. (1959), ‘Avgust Munda’, Zbornik Znanstvenih Razprav, 29: 13–22. Marhold, B. (2008), Ema Deisinger in Slovenska Pedagogika Med Obema Vojnama, Maribor: Barbara Marhold. Promitzer, C. (2001), ‘Niko Županič in Vprašanje Jugoslovanstva; Med Politiko In Antropologijo (1901–1941)’, Prispevki za Novejšo Zgodovino, 41: 7–30. Rožman, I. (2012), ‘Eugénisme et Croyances Populaires: le dépistages des infirmités dans le passé’, Ethnologie Française, 42: 301–12. 418

Yugoslavia I (Slovenia)

Slekovec, D. (2004), ‘Ob 100-letnici rojstva dr. Boža Škerlja, v Drevesa, slovensko rodoslovno društvo’, Letnik, 11: 65–7. Studen, A. (2008), ‘Tudi Če so Trezni, niso angeli, pijani pa so zverine: problem alkoholizma in recepcija Teorije Progresivne Degeneracije na Slovenskem konec 19. in na začetku 20. Stoletja’, Zgodovina za vse: vse za zgodovino, 15: 90–108. Valenčič, V. (1968), ‘O Ženitni Svobodi in Njenih Omejitvah od fevdalizma do liberalizma’, Zgodovnski Časopis, 22: 225–60. Vode, A. (1998), Spor in upor, Ljubljana: Krtina. Ziherl, S., Čebašek-Travnik, Z. and Zupanič-Slavec, Z. ‘The Extermination of Psychiatric Patients in Occupied Slovenia in 1941’, International Journal of Mental Health, 36: 99–104. Zupanič-Slavec, Z. (2005), Razvoj Javnega Zdravstva na Slovenskem med prvo in Drugo Svetovno Vojno in Njegov Utemeljitelj dr. Ivo Pirc (1891–1967), Ljubljana: Znanstveno društvo za Zgodovino Zdravstvene Kulture Slovenije. Zupanič-Slavec, Z. (2007), Javno zdravstvo 20. stoletja in njegov soustvarjalec dr. Bojan Pirc, Ljubljana: Znanstveno društvo za Zgodovino Zdravstvene Kulture Slovenije.

419

7 Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Overview Vjera Duić

I Eugenic ideas first appeared among Croatian scientists, intellectuals and religious thinkers in connection with debates on the improvement of the nation’s health and morality on one hand, and society’s social ills on the other. The Croatian physician and encyclopaedist, Fran Srećko Gundrum (1856–1919), for example, dedicated his professional life to advocating a healthy lifestyle, condemning alcoholism and tuberculosis, while promoting the psychophysical health of the young population. Gundrum’s eugenic worldview brought together heredity, sexual hygiene and morality. When discussing hereditary diseases he included physical maladies, such as moles, polydactyly, rotten teeth, short-­sightedness, medical conditions, such as gout, obesity, and diabetes mellitus, and also mental and neurological afflictions, with a special emphasis on epilepsy. As for sexual hygiene, Gundrum was the first Croatian physician who dealt with the problems of sexuality. In 1905 he published Zdravstvo spolnoga života (Sexual Health Care), a book dedicated to the subject of health and morality (Gundrum 1905). Christian morality, in particular, encompassing the improvement of living conditions and the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle, together with hygienic education and the introduction of modern ideas of public health, remained constant preoccupations for Croatian eugenicists. Similar to other places in the predominantly rural societies of East-Central Europe, educational health initiatives were primarily directed at the Croatian countryside, where alcoholism and infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and syphilis, were widespread. These initiatives must be seen within wider developments in Croatian medicine at the time, such as its institutionalization and nationalization. To promote Croat medicine, a Society of Physicians (Zagrebačko Liječničko Društvo) was established in Zagreb (Ger.: Agram) in 1845. Equally important, at the first congress of physicians from the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia held in Zagreb in 1850 it was requested that medical education was provided in Croatian. Dr Moric Weiss was the first to lecture on hygiene at King’s Academy of Science (Kraljevska Akademija znanosti) in Zagreb, followed by Franjo Hensler (1838–85) and Mihajlo Joanović (1861–1925) who taught at the University of Zagreb. The first Croatian medical journal Glasnik Druztva Slavonskih Liečnika (Journal of the Slavonian Medical Association) was established in 1877 in Osiek. Further developments include the establishment of the Hygiene Institute at the University of Zagreb in 1899 and of the Croatian Society for the Preservation of Public Health (Hrvatsko Društvo za Čuvanje Narodnog Zdravlja) in 1913. The Medical School at the University of Zagreb, established in 1874, was one of the first institutions promoting modern ideas

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

of eugenics among Croatian physicians. The founder of the school was Milan Rojc (1855–1946), and it was he who recruited eugenically inclined biologists, such as Boris Zarnik, to lecture at the newly established faculty. Rojc also invited another scientist and eugenicist, Eduard Miloslavić (1884–1953), to become a member of the Faculty, but Professors Miroslav Čačković (1865–1930), Dragutin Mašek (1866–1956) and Teodor Wickerhauser (1858–1946) rejected his candidature. This was due to Miloslavić’s alleged anti-Yugoslav and anti-Serb attitude. Dr Jakša Miličić (who during World War I was the head of surgical department of the military hospital in Risno until Miloslavić replaced him) wrote damning accusations against Miloslavić in an article published in 1920 in a Split-­based newspaper Novo Doba (New Era). Instead, sociologist and criminologist Ernest Miler (1866–1928) and pathologist Ljudevit Jurak (1881–1945) were hired as part-­time professors. It was only in 1932 that Miloslavić was finally appointed professor and subsequently became the head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Zagreb. In 1909, following the initiative of the Social Democrat politician Ivan Ancel (future Commissioner for Social Welfare in the Croatian government during the 1920s) and of physician and writer Milivoj Dežman, the first sanatorium for tuberculosis patients opened in Brestovac, near Zagreb, with Dežman as its first director. Poor living conditions, poverty, low salaries, exhausting work and low quality nutrition were all factors contributing to the spread of tuberculosis. The contemporary medical orthodoxy routinely attributed the illnesses and health problems of the majority of the population to social factors. The population’s poor economic and health status, poor living conditions and nutrition, epidemics as well as general health ignorance led unavoidably to this conclusion, and thus to an awareness that the health care system had to be improved. Child protection and maternal care were also deemed essential to this process. The Society for the Protection of Yugoslav Children (Jugoslovenska Unija za Zaštitu Dece), for instance, was thus established in 1917, advocating child welfare programmes alongside campaigns for vaccinations and measures to reduce infant mortality (Popović 1918).

II After 1918, Andrija Štampar was at the forefront of the Croatian social hygiene and public health movement. He offered an organicist socio-­medical theory which understood society as a living organism built from individual cells, which represented its constituent individuals (Štampar 1919a: 455–8). ‘An ill social organism’, Štampar believed, could not ‘be treated individually but socially’. He argued for the introduction of drastic measures, including: Social endemic diseases: tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases and alcoholism require special measures and specific legislation, because they have poisoned public health. They cannot be treated or prevented by usual measures employed prior to the war, but demand joint and potentiated work [stemming 423

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

from] both public and private initiatives. Social and health policy must supplement, especially social security authorities, in the defence [against] epidemics. (Štampar 1919c: 489) A ‘health renaissance’ was urgently needed. Eugenics was seen in this context as a means to recover from a devastating world war as well as the foundation upon which to build a new society and state (Štampar 1925: 41–8). According to Štampar, ‘there are three paths which we must follow in order to heal our national diseases and improve national health. The first is national health education, then eugenics and [finally] social hygiene’ (Štampar 1919b: 471). Štampar wanted to ensure proper medical care for all members of society, regardless of their financial circumstances, and medicine was to take on a social purpose in order to educate the population about the most widespread diseases confronting the nation. Social medicine had to ensure access to medical care and educate the population about health care. The newly established Yugoslav state embraced this modern, scientific ethos. Eugenics, in turn, was to be promoted at local and national levels. The process of public health reorganization began as early as 1918 with the establishment of the Ministry of Public Health (Ministarstvo Narodnog Zdravlja) in Belgrade. The first minister of public health, the Serbian physician Uroš Krulj, was a keen promoter of eugenics. Krulj integrated eugenics within the state’s new health policy. A period of internal organization followed. The Central Hygienic Bureau of the Ministry was created in 1919 with Štampar’s active involvement. The Department of Racial, Public and Social Hygiene (Odjeljenje za Rasnu, Javnu i Socijalnu Higijenu) was established in 1919, with Štampar as its first director. One of the Department’s aims was to oversee the implementation of eugenics as part of wider programmes of social hygiene and public health education. To this effect, the Department’s main eugenic activities focused on the protection of pregnant women, preventing illegal abortions, supervision of occupations that can damage the unborn child, protection of mothers and newborn, infants and orphans. It organized facilities for sick and disabled children and promoted physical exercise, gymnastics and, finally, it initiated anthropological and biometrical research as well as the collection of demographic data (‘Uredba o ustrojstvu Ministarstva narodnog zdravlja od 7 lipnja 1919’, Narodne Novine 1919: 1; Štampar 1921: 4–16). To promote these diverse forms of hygiene, the department organized numerous lectures in psychology, hygiene, sexual hygiene and ethics in primary and secondary schools throughout the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which were intended to prepare young students for healthy, modern sexuality. Štampar promoted the view that medical practice should focus not only on individuals but also on society at large. Hence, those who ‘have always been doctors only of individuals, not of society or the nation’ (Štampar 1919a: 457) had to change their attitude and serve a higher national purpose. His views were echoed by the physician Lujo Thaller (1891–1951), who in his discussion of abortion as a social and medical problem similarly entrusted the physician with the authority to decide on biological matters related to the future of the population (Thaller 1920: 483–4). 424

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

During the 1920s, Croatian medical elites, like their Slovene and Serbian counterparts, were determined to deal with the major health problems facing the new country. Poor educational conditions, high rates of illiteracy and poor behaviour prompted Štampar and other health reformers to find another effective way to educate the population. To this effect, one efficient way to disseminate knowledge about the importance of eugenics to the national community was through popular literature and health education materials usually associated with such themes as sexual education, good maternity and the protection of infants and children. Besides organized educational programmes, during the 1920s, public health activists used a new, interesting and more effective method to educate people about diseases – film. Although Štampar continued to use different tools, such as brochures and booklets, he strongly believed in the communicative value of film, and was personally responsible for the production of many films dedicated to health education. Štampar spent the 1920s working in the Ministry of Public Health to promote his version of eugenics, together with ideas of social hygiene and public health. In his articles ‘Etika i narodno zdravlje’ (‘Ethics and the Health of the People) (Štampar 1919–20a: 17–20) and ‘Naša ideologija’ (‘Our ideology) (Štampar 1928: 229–31), as well as in his books Zdravlje i društvo (Health and Society) and Higijena i socijalna medicina (Hygiene and Social Medicine) (Štampar 1939 and 1940), Štampar promoted the concept of comprehensive health education for the masses, a form of ‘social therapy’ (Štampar 1919– 20b: 261–71), which included sexual education (for the benefit of the young population), the promotion of proper housing and sanitary habits, prevention of infectious diseases (including venereal diseases), and the prevention of alcoholism (Štampar 1938). These programmes were largely intended for the rural population, which comprised the majority of the Yugoslav population at the time. Štampar’s ideas on public health established him as a promoter of a form of Croatian eugenics, one based on humanist principles rather than political radicalism and racial and national exclusion. These views brought Štampar and some of his associates (like Lujo Thaller) closer to Serbian eugenicists, such as Vladimir Stanojević (1866–1978), Milan Jovanović Batut (1847–1940) and Svetislav Stefanović. The common Yugoslav eugenic theory served, at the same time, as a vehicle for the government to promote its brand of a unique Yugoslav identity. Influential intellectuals, such as Milan Marjanović (1879–1955) for instance, praised the virtues of the Yugoslav people and encouraged the amalgamation of different nationalities into a single one, which would provide a better human for the future world (Marjanović 1913). They would emphasize the qualities of distinct ethnic groups, such as Serbian bravery, Croatian intellectuality and Slovene endurance, and the optimistic prospect of their ethnic mixing. The quasi-­scientific basis for such ideas implied that individuals are deprived of their right to reproduce freely for the purpose of the nation’s biological amelioration. Based on this paradigm, all mentally or physically disabled, criminal offenders and patients with epilepsy or tuberculosis were considered incompatible. Štampar’s basic idea had always been to work not for one’s own benefit, but exclusively for the common good, and thus for the benefit of the ordinary people (Štampar 1939: 15). Poverty and hunger were sources of the nation’s poor overall health, 425

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

and he thus perceived the achievement of equality and the raising of basic living standards as public health issues. Although some of Štampar’s ideas promoted recognizably interventionist eugenic policies; for example, he suggested that ‘No person who is mentally retarded, mentally ill, epileptic, or has tuberculosis can enter into a marriage’ (Štampar 1919b: 471), he was aware of individual rights and promoted his ideas through intensive ethical and hygienic education, sometimes by bureaucratic constraint but never by force (Štampar 1919e: 166–7). Eugenics, in this respect, was seen as a form of social therapy as well as a basis for the new state’s emerging health policy. Yet, eugenic intervention to prevent the further degeneration of society was encouraged (Štampar 1919d: 424–9). The introduction of marital examination before marriage was such an intervention, aimed to increase both the quantity and quality of the Yugoslav race. In other words, negative eugenics required the prevention of ‘degenerate’ procreation in order to preserve the racial qualities of the nation. Another institution that dealt with health issues and eugenics in Croatia was the Institute for Social Medicine (Institut za Socijalnu Medicinu) established in Zagreb in 1924. At the same time, the health service reform abolished health departments and local sanitary administrations, which was the reason why inspectorates of the Ministry of Public Health took charge of these activities. One such inspectorate, established on 1 April 1924 and abolished on 31 March 1928, had its headquarters in Zagreb and took over health education activities, such as general health propaganda. Moreover, with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Štampar succeeded in establishing the School of Public Health (Škola Narodnog Zdravlja) in 1926 (officially opened on 3 October 1927). The School became the most important institution for preventive public health and health education in Croatia, dealing with all hygiene educational issues and also created all the necessary educational programmes. Its task was the theoretical and practical health education of the population, with special reference to the hygienic needs of the peasant population.

III These efforts at improving population health and living conditions were complemented by eugenic attempts to increase birth-­rates in Croatia. Due to its wide social, religious and economic consequences, pro-­natalist arguments centred on the following: prevention of serious problems associated with the ‘white plague’ and infant mortality caused by poor life conditions and diseases; encouragement and stimulation of procreation (for example, by imposing taxes on those unmarried or married without children); persuading people to procreate by writing articles and books on the issue; and the legal and moral prohibition of abortions. As with tuberculosis and other diseases, demographic problems were also caused by poor diet, arduous lives and deplorable living conditions. To address these, eugenics was filtered through a national health programme. Engaging with these issues, the first Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Zagreb, Ernst Mayerhofer (1877–1957) founded the Medical School Children’s Hospital 426

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

at the University of Zagreb in 1923. Considering pediatrics as part of social medicine, Mayerhofer started a campaign entitled ‘Mothers for Children’s Health’ (‘Majke za Zdravlje Djece’), whose aim was to educate and improve health conditions in Croatia in the mid-1930s, and to reduce the high infant mortality of children less than one year of age. In order to educate mothers, Mayerhofer published leaflets, brochures and booklets containing ten important instructions based on scientific and paediatric knowledge, which directed parents on how to raise children in their first years of life. As a student of the Austrian paediatrician Clemens von Pirquet (1874–1929), the founder of the science of paediatric nutrition, Mayerhofer paid special attention to the subject. He stressed the importance of infant diet and recommended breastfeeding as the most natural method of nourishment. Besides nutrition, Mayerhofer gave health and hygienic instructions for children and outlined some preventive measures for pregnant women. In the spirit of ‘racial-­hygiene’, Mayerhofer argued that the raising of healthy children was a woman’s sacred duty and merit. Social reforms with openly eugenic components were also proposed at the Annual Congress of the Yugoslav Physicians’ Society (I. Jugoslovenski Pedijatrijski Kongres) held in Bled in 1934. In one such scheme, taxes were to be imposed upon single women in order to encourage them to marry and have children. Already on 30 December 1930, the Tax Law for Unmarried People and Tax Exempt for People with Nine or More Children (Oglas o porezu na neženje, te o poreskom oslobođenju lica sa devetero i više djece) came into force. This legislation targeted the unmarried or divorced and widows without children, excluding those younger than thirty and older than sixty years old. The only ones exempt from paying taxes were priests, soldiers, convicted criminals and foreigners. The tax rate varied depending on the age of the unmarried persons. Thus people between the ages of thirty and thirty-­five years paid 50 per cent of the amount of additional tax on land or buildings revenue without the rent tax legacy, 40 per cent was levied from taxpayers aged between thirty-­five and forty years, 25 per cent from people aged forty to fifty years and 10 per cent for those older than fifty and younger than sixty years. Quantitative population policies were also promoted by the demographer Fedor Mikić, head of the Department of Vital Statistics at the School of Public Health and an active abolitionist. He decried the decline of birth-­rates and the rise of infant mortality in Croatia, especially among infants born out of wedlock (Mikić 1940: 249–51). Božidar Niketić, Professor of Psychiatry and head of the Psychiatric Department in Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital in Zagreb from 1938 to 1941, similarly highlighted the importance of demography and eugenics. According to him, ‘taking care of mentally and physically healthy and unencumbered hereditary offspring undoubtedly can be considered as a high-­minded and proud task of present society (Niketić 1936: 159). Niketić believed in the necessity and importance of racial hygiene and associated measures. Nonetheless, he was aware that nervous and mental disorders and diseases could never completely disappear. However, he believed they could be controlled by extensive and responsible work in the field of child protection (Niketić 1936: 167). Niketić expressed these views at the First Congress of the Yugoslav Union 427

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

for the Protection of Children (I. Kongres Jugoslovanske Unije za Zaštitu Dece), which took place in Belgrade from 30 November to 1 December 1935. He asserted that the hereditary nature of mental illness had received experimental validation. Since, for the majority of nervous diseases, the causes and treatments remained unknown, he concluded that it would be necessary to introduce racial hygiene (‘rasna higiena’) measures to mitigate their promulgation. These eugenic arguments were again presented in a more detailed form in Niketić’s book Duševne i nervne bolesti roditelja i potomstvo (Mental and Nervous Disorders of Parents and Offspring) (see especially Niketić 1936: 159–67). In Croatia, moreover, eugenic and demographic policies were strongly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. As elsewhere in the Catholic world, some Croatian theologians and secular scientists aimed to offer a religious interpretation of eugenics, one which emphasized the role of Christian ethics, while at the same time recognizing the importance of theories of racial improvement. One notable Croatian eugenicist and Catholic theologian was Andrija Živković (1886–1957). According to Živković, although some eugenic principles have a noble purpose and were consistent with common sense, they could not fulfil the moral expectations of the Catholic Church. Yet, he agreed that ‘the principles of Christian morality protect the conservation of the race and are the best defence of the family, since they are the most correct method to achieve real eugenic goals’ (Živković 1933a: 161). As for abortion, not surprisingly, Živković condemned it. He similarly opposed mandatory and imposed sterilization of people deemed eugenically unfit. No one, he argued, should be sterilized and the Croatian authorities had no right to impose compulsory sterilization for eugenic reasons (Živković 1933a: 163). For instance, commenting on a radio lecture delivered by Boris Zarnik to the Zagreb radio station in 1932, and entitled ‘Crkva i eugenika’ (‘Church and Eugenics’), Živković chastised Zarnik for misinforming the listeners about Pius XI’s encyclical on Christian marriage, Casti Connubii. Zarnik claimed that the encyclical did not ‘make a difference between sterilization and castration’, using the term interchangeably. ‘Papal encyclicals’, Živković reminded his readers, were ‘not made from some superficial knowledge or speculation. What is said in them is seriously verified and deeply studied. [T]hey are reliable sources of church doctrines and opinions’ (Živković 1933b: 48). Živković noted that with respect to the topics discussed by Zarnik, Pius XI explicitly denounced sterilization for eugenic purposes. After giving examples of eugenic practices in several European and non-European countries, Živković concluded that the Catholic view on eugenics: ‘was and still is primarily about creating a favourable mentality of the population, about implementation of eugenic measures from [a] hygienic and social standpoint’ (Živković 1933b: 79). He also added that the liberal spirit has always fuelled an anti-Christian concept of morality and undermined the strength of moral consciousness. His preferred method of eugenic intervention was moral education, rather than sterilization or birth control. Yet he did not dismiss negative eugenic methods entirely, adding that they were useful and helpful but only if ‘performed within the limits of human reason’ (Živković 1933b: 22–4). 428

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

IV Catholic eugenic arguments coupled with pro-­natalist policies became more widespread after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) on 10 April 1941 (Hrvatski Narod, Special Edition, 10 April 1941).1 In order to promote family values, the country’s Poglavnik (Leader), Ante Pavelić, organized a series of campaigns under the heading The Week of the Croatian Mother and Child (Hrvatski Tjedan Majke i Djeteta), during which he visited young mothers across Croatia in order to honour them and their sacred role. The first such event was held in Zagreb from 31 May to 7 June 1942; the last was organized between 28 May and 4 June 1944. On these occasions Pavelić extolled the values of motherhood, thus: ‘a mother is sacred to her own child, so it is sacred in the eyes of each person, each Croat, to be sacred in the eyes of the whole nation’ and ‘a nation who does not have an abundance of children, has no future, therefore that people must die, must become a prey and sacrifice of others’ (Pavelić 1942: 3–4). Dr Kamilo Bresler (1901–67), a leading expert at the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, similarly stated in 1943 that ‘a nation without children is a nation without a future’, referring to low birth-­rates and high infant mortality rates caused by problematic modern lifestyles. Another health official, Josip Rasuhin (1892–1975), also provided opinions and solutions to demographic problems. In a 1942 lecture broadcast by Croatian State Radio dealing with the new regime’s demographic politics, Rasuhin declared that each married couple should have at least three children in order to preserve and rescue the Croatian nation from extinction. To this effect, abortion was banned on 10 June 1941 (either as a self-­induced miscarriage, or performed by another person) and penalties for those who ignored the law were very strict (‘Zakonska odredba o zabrani i kažnjavanju uzrokovanog pometnuća i o prekidanju trudnoće’, Narodne Novine 1941: 1). Understandably, women were not alone in receiving punishment. Doctors, pharmacists and midwives all performed abortions as well and were, therefore, liable to prosecution; which carried a death sentence. Doctors were allowed to perform abortions only in limited circumstances and with the unanimous support of a hospital committee, most often when a pregnant woman was in a life-­threatening situation or when the continuation of pregnancy posed an inevitable danger to her health. In cases of self-­induced abortion (as defined by § 171), cases where the means for inducing abortion had been made available with (§ 172) or without (§ 173) women’s consent, or in cases where such means had been publicly offered (§ 174), sentencing could not be mitigated (‘Zakonska odredba o zabrani i kažnjavanju uzrokovanog pometnuća i o prekidanju trudnoće’, Narodne Novine 1941: 1). Moreover the criteria codified by § 171 defined, categorized and punished abortion more strictly than infanticide, which suggests that infanticide remained in a privileged position in comparison to abortion. Henceforth, infanticide remained a misdemeanour while abortion became a criminal offence. The Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honour of the Croatian Nation (Zakonska odredba o zaštiti arijevske krvi i Časti Hrvatskog Naroda), introduced on 429

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

30 April 1941, was essential to the penalization of abortion in the NDH. The main goal of the decree was to prevent marriages, relationships and biological links between Aryans and non-Aryans. Due to its main objectives, very often the cause of abortions were alleged racial incompatibilities, or the fear of specific additional penalties. The legal actions pursued against women and the penalties imposed for abortion provision, which are documented in the Croatian State Archives, attest to the continued availability of abortion services in spite of the decree. Although the procedure of sterilization by vasectomy was known and available, compulsory sterilization was not employed as an official eugenic policy in the NDH. A typical account of the relationship between eugenics and abortion was provided by the Catholic medical expert Eduard Miloslavić. In an article written in 1943, Miloslavić warned women of the terrible fate awaiting them as a result of the ‘unnatural, harmful and destructive phenomenon in our homeland that has a damaging influence on the organism of the nation and leads to the unavoidable destruction of the population’. According to Miloslavić, ‘legalized abortion means certain doom for the nation’ (Miloslavić 1942–43: 231). In his view, procreation was simply part of women’s nature, and those without the urge to breed were unnatural and doomed to lead sad and empty lives. Women, he wrote, had a natural instinct for motherhood; anything else was ‘degenerate thinking’. The role of eugenicists, like himself, was to teach the younger generation to look after their bodies in order to increase their fertility, and thus produce ‘future healthy biological generations’. Miloslavić encouraged the population to feel a personal responsibility towards Croatia’s future generation. He thus warned of abortion and abortionists: We must unite in the struggle against the murderers of man’s offspring, their supporters and their sponsors. We should unravel and prevent their deadly labour among our people. We must direct all our efforts against these criminals and their destructive deeds – the crimes of abortion will disappear. We must not discuss the crime further – we must seek the criminal! (Miloslavić 1942–43: 237) In his opinion, the primary duty of every Croatian woman and man was ‘to warn of all those unnatural, harmful and fatal occurrences in our country, which have harmful effects on the organism of the people’, and to avoid ‘the impending doom of the population’ without hesitation. Furthermore, Miloslavić argued, the nation’s organism will be infected if the situation remained the same and if the population did not act in order to save it from the negative effects of abortion. The prohibition of abortion was dictated both by demographic concerns about a declining Croat population and by Catholic precepts. Moreover, according to the Ustasha ideology, motherhood was a woman’s duty, and some publications sharply criticized all women who did not conform to this ideal, chastising those who have not yet become mothers, who had no desire to become mothers or who had aborted pregnancies in the past. Moreover, the ideology asserted its control over women’s physical appearance and behaviour. In this sense, ‘immoral’ clothing (skirts above the 430

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

knee), make-­up and smoking, for example, especially by working women, were not legally permissible. The ideal Ustasha woman was depicted as a sacrosanct temple of virtue and purity, completely devoted to family and motherhood as well as to the raising of children in the Croatian spirit. The nationalist ideal of sacrifice and ideas of eugenic motherhood were integrated within a broader racial vision of new Croatia. This vision also included a number of racist laws and provisions, as well as wider dissemination of the principles of racial hygiene (‘Rasno-­biologiski tečaj u Zagrebu’, Napredak 1942: 185–6). Racial legal provisions, like all legal documents in the NDH, were signed by Ante Pavelić and published in the newspapers, especially in the Hrvatski Narod (Croatian Nation).2 Undoubtedly, there were many similarities between German and Croatian racist laws, as their names clearly indicate: Law on Racial Affiliation (Zakonska odredba o rasnoj pripadnosti), Law on the Protection of Aryan Blood and Honour of the Croatian Nation (Zakonska odredba o zaštiti arijske krvi i časti Hrvatskog Naroda) and Law on Citizenship (Zakonska odredba o državljanstvu). Ustasha ideologues insisted, however, on describing the racial laws as the result of domestic Croatian developments in the field of racial sciences and eugenics, with the Slovene-­born biologist and eugenicist Boris Zarnik having written most of them (Lorković 1945: 44–7). On 30 April 1941, the law on citizenship was introduced. It defined a Croat citizen by blood,3 and his/her Aryan origin. Article 2 A citizen of the state is of Aryan origin, if he/she has proven, that he/she has not worked against the liberation and aspiration of the Croatian nation and who is willing and ready to serve the Croatian nation and the Independent State of Croatia faithfully. The legal conditions imposed on citizenship explain why the expression ‘Aryan origin’ could be easily misunderstood as a result of the translation into the Croatian language. In the Croatian language, ‘blood’ does not mean ‘origin’ as it does in German. In the sense of ‘origin’, ‘blood’ is a metaphorical term, because the blood in the biological sense has no involvement in inheritance. Some ideologues of the NDH conceded that a ‘pure Croatian race’ could not exist, because the Croats – much like other East-Central European nations – were a mixture of Nordic, Dinaric, Alpine, and Mediterranean Baltic races. In the Law on Racial Affiliation, introduced on 30 April 1941, Pavelić did, however, define in detail who was of ‘Aryan origin’ and who was not: Article 1 A person is of Aryan descent if one descends from forebears who are members of the European racial group or who descend from descendants of this racial group outside of Europe. In the event that other provisions do not exist for special services, Aryan descent is proved by a certificate of baptism (birth) and marriage of one’s first – and second – generation forebears (one’s parents and grandparents). 431

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Members of the Islamic religious group, who are unable to submit the above documents, must provide written testimony by two reliable witnesses who knew their forebears and that among them are no persons of non-Aryan descent. In ambiguous cases a decision is made by the Ministry of Internal Affairs upon the recommendation of the Racial-Political Committee. Jews and Gypsies (Roma) were considered to fall outside the ‘European racial group’. While the provision of a baptism certificate was hoped to demonstrate that the parents and grandparents of an individual were members of the ‘Aryan racial community’, this provision allowed someone who was only half Jewish to be considered an Aryan (Hrvatski Narod 3 May 1941). It was reasoned that a half Jewish man could have either Aryan or Jewish characteristics. Consequently, if this man married a Jewish woman, it showed that he was more inclined towards his Jewish racial heritage. On the other hand, half Jews who had assimilated into the ‘Croat Aryan community’ could apply for ‘Aryan’ status. At the same time, a half Jew who had married another half Jew before the introduction of the law could be considered an ‘Aryan’ thus: Article 3 For purposes of this decree the following are considered to be Jews: 1. Persons who are descended from at least three ancestors in the second generation (grandparents) who are Jewish by race. The grandparents are considered to be Jews if they are of the religion of Moses or if they were born into this religion. 2. Persons having two forebears in the second generation who are Jewish by race in the following instances: a. If they were on 10 April 1941 members of the religion of Moses or if they later converted to this religion; b. If they have a marital partner who is considered to be a Jew, as per 1; c. If after the enactment of this decree they concluded marriage with a person having two or more forebears in the second generation who are Jewish by race, and the descendants of such a marriage; d. If they are illegitimate children to a Jewish man, as per 1; and born after 31 January 1942; e. If the Ministry of Internal Affairs decides, upon justified recommendation by the Racial Policy Commission, that they are to be considered Jewish. 3. Persons born outside the territory of the Independent State of Croatia to parents who do not originate from the Independent State of Croatia, if they were on 10 April 1941 members of the religion of Moses or have at least two forebears of the second generation who are Jewish by race, or are considered to be Jews according to the laws of the country from which they originate. 432

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

4. Persons who after the enactment of this decree concluded, by circumventing the decrees on protection of Aryan blood, a marriage that is prohibited, and their descendants. 5. People who are illegitimate children born to a Jewish woman, as per §1. The racial aim of the Independent State of Croatia was to prevent any relationships and marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans in order to create a new biologically pure Croat race. The Law on the Defence of Nation and State (Zakonska odredba za obranu naroda i države), introduced on 17 April 1941, was one of the first racial provisions of the newly established state, following those introduced in the Third Reich, which introduced capital punishment for all actions that were perceived as hostile to the interests of the Croatian nation, or that in any way endangered or tried to jeopardize the survival of the Independent State of Croatia or the government. Another important racial provision was the above-­mentioned Law on the Protection of Aryan Honour and Blood of the Croatian Nation, enacted on 30 April 1941. It stipulated new racial regulations as follows: Article 1 The marriage of Jews and other persons who are not of Aryan descent with persons of Aryan descent is prohibited. Similarly prohibited is the marriage of a person having, in addition to Aryan forebears, one forebear in the second generation who is a Jew by race or other European non-Aryan, with a person who is of the same descent by race. Which persons are considered to be Jews or non-Aryans is determined by the decree on racial affiliation. Article 2 Special permission to conclude marriage is required in the following cases: 1. For marriage of a person with two forebears in the second generation who are Jewish by race with a person having one forebear in the second generation who is a European non-Aryan by race, or a person who is of Aryan descent; 2. For marriage of a person having among his forebears members of other nonEuropean races with a person of the same descent, or with a person having one or two forebears in the second generation who are Jews by race or one forebear in the second generation who is a Gypsy by race, or with a person of Aryan descent; 3. For marriage between a citizen (državljanin) and a state national (državni pripadnik)4 unless prohibited by §1. Permission for such marriage is issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs after consultation with the Racial Policy Commission. Article 3 Extramarital intercourse of Jews or other person of non-Aryan blood with a female member of Aryan descent is prohibited. A non-Aryan male who violates this prohibition commits the crime of racial defilement will, therefore, be punished 433

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

by confinement in a prison or dungeon. In particularly severe instances, especially in the case of rape of an innocent girl [i.e., virgin], the death sentence may be imposed. Article 4 Jews or other persons who are not of Aryan descent are forbidden to employ in their households female persons of Aryan descent younger than 45 years of age. These three racial laws were accompanied by a number of regulations, such as the Law on the Transition from One Religion to Another (Zakonska odredba o prelazu s jedne vjere na drugu), the Law concerning the Protection of National and Aryan Culture of the Croatian Nation (Zakonska odredba o zaštiti narodne i arijske kulture Hrvatskog Naroda), and so on. There were also various laws intended to deprive the Jewish people of their rights and wealth, such as the Law Preserving the Croatian Public Property (Zakonska odredba o sačuvanju Hrvatske Narodne imovine), the Law for the Compulsory Registration of Jews and Jewish Property (Zakonska odredba o obveznoj prijavi imetka židova i židovskih poduzeća), the Law on the Prevention of Concealment of Jewish Property (Zakonska odredba o sprečavanju prikrivanja židovskog imetka), and so on. A number of institutions were created in Croatia after 10 April 1941, intended to ensure the new state’s legitimacy and political functioning. These included the Ministry of Justice (Ministarstvo Pravosuđa), the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Ministarstvo Unutarnjih Poslova) and the Ministry of Education (Ministarstvo prosvjete). The Ministry of Internal Affairs, for instance, was established on 16 June 1941, and included a Directorate for Public Order and Safety, which closely cooperated with the Ustasha Surveillance Service (Ustaška Nadzorna Služba). The Surveillance Service was tasked with resolving the Jewish question and racial issues in general, drafting laws, giving opinions and recommendations to government, and collecting materials related to racial biology, politics and hygiene. The Racial-Political Commissariat (Rasno-Političko Povjerenstvo) was established under the Ministry’s directorate on 4 June 1941. The Commissariat consisted of the Racial-Political Council (RasnoPolitičko Vijeće), the Racial-Political Office (Rasno-Politički Ured), and other auxiliary institutions. The Commissariat had nine members (including a doctor, a biologist, a lawyer, a pedagogue and an expert on national economy; all of whom had to be of ‘pure Aryan origin’ as well as their spouses). Boris Zarnik, Z. Lorković, Đuro Vranešić and Milovan Žanić attended the first meeting. Zarnik was the only prominent Croatian eugenicist to participate in the NDH’s racial policies. On 18 June 1941, the Minister of Health suggested new members for the RacialPolitical Committee: Ivo Stipčić (a primary physician and director of the State Hospital in Sisak), Ivo Rakulić (a doctor in the Sanatorium Merkur Zagreb) and for the position of Deputy, Hinko Kovačić (secondary physician in the Hospital Sisters of Mercy in Zagreb) (‘Ministarstvo unutarnjih poslova Nezavisne Državne Hrvatske 1941–1945’, HR-HDA-223, IIA/ 100). In 1941, the Ministry for Education and Religion (renamed the Ministry for National Education in 1942) entrusted the Commissariat with: the development of plans for the 434

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

legal reform of ‘racial biology, racial politics, and racial hygiene or eugenics’; ensuring that legal statuses were in accordance with the principles of racial politics; and advising the regime on questions of racial politics and eugenics. The Ministry also developed a series of courses – some taught by Boris Zarnik and his colleague Dr Đuro Vranešić (1897–1946) – intended to educate teachers, doctors and medical students in order to emphasize the importance of the legal provisions, to educate people about race and most of all to warn about the consequences of transgressing them. Faced with the difficult task of determining the racial origin of the Croats (for which de facto ‘scientific’ evidence never existed), the Racial-Political Commissariat formally dissolved on 19 January 1942. When the Commissariat was abolished, a Department of Racial Policy (Odsjek za Rasnu Politiku) was created that took over its duties. Specific legal provisions, however, were based on eugenic principles, even before the establishment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Nevertheless, one of the Commissariat’s tasks, namely the ‘enlightenment of the people in terms of racial biology, racial politics and eugenics’ continued in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. Racial and eugenic legislation introduced by the NDH limited the civil rights of all individuals of Serbian, Jewish or Roma origin and restricted marriage and procreation between Jews and Gentiles. Moreover, ideas of race and eugenics were widely propagated throughout the educational system and the media, particularly through newspapers, such as Hrvatski Domobran (Croatian Defender) and Hrvatski Narod, who used virulent and derogatory language against ethnic groups labelled non-Aryan. Despite the similarities with Nazi racial propaganda, the eugenic policies of the Ustasha regime never matched the elaborate implementation of eugenic principles which took place in the Third Reich with the T4 programme and compulsory sterilizations of individuals who were considered hereditarily ill. The Ustasha regime relied predominantly on the brute extermination of populations perceived as racially inferior as the main instrument of their eugenic ideology. Starting in the summer of 1941, numerous concentration camps were founded throughout the NDH. However, the mass murder of the Serbian population often took place outside of such camps. The most notorious of the Croatian death camps was Jasenovac concentration camp.5

V The military victory of the Yugoslav Partisans in the spring of 1945 marked the end of such policies in the territory of modern Croatia. On 3 May 1945, Ante Pavelić declared all legal acts enacted by the government of the NDH null and void, including those on the preservation of Croatian race and ethnicity (‘Zakonska odredba o izjednačenju pripadnika NDH s obzirom na rasnu pripadnost’, Hrvatski Narod 1945: 1). In post-­war Yugoslavia, previously pursued eugenic ideals were cast aside and replaced by the social health policies introduced by the nascent communist government.

435

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Vjera Duić Translations by Dinko Klarić and M. Halar

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Andrija Štampar

(1888, Brodski Drenovac–1958, Zagreb)

Andrija Štampar was born in 1888 in a small Croatian village, Brodski Drenovac, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a teacher. After finishing school in Vinkovci (Ger.: Winkowitz; Hung.: Vinkovce), he went to study medicine in Vienna, graduating in 1911. During his medical studies, Štampar formulated a clear conception of a public health system based on social hygiene, education and government funding (Štampar 1910a: 5 and 1910b: 215–16). It was also in Vienna that he came under the influence of the Austrian eugenicist Julius Tandler, whose ideas about the welfare state he later emulated. Štampar returned to Croatia during World War I and worked briefly for the Red Cross. In 1918, he was appointed health commissioner for the Croatian Commission for Social Welfare (Povjerenstvo za socijalnu skrb u Hrvatskoj) and in 1919 became head of the Department of Public Health in Zagreb (Odjel za rasnu, javnu i socijalnu higijenu pri Ministarstvu zdravstva Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca). In this position, he laid the foundations of the public health service in Yugoslavia (Štampar 1918: 481–3), and a number of socio-­medical institutions, including the School of Public Health in Zagreb (Škola narodnog zdravlja), established in 1926. In 1922 Štampar became Professor at the Medical Faculty at the University of Zagreb, promoting new ideas of preventive medicine (with a particular focus on tuberculosis, malaria, typhus and endemic syphilis) and social hygiene. Štampar also endorsed the introduction of social medicine into medical school curricula, based on hygienic, epidemiological and preventive programmes. Like other public health reformers in East-Central Europe, Štampar requested and received financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation. As a result, the School of Public Health opened in Zagreb in 1927. Štampar envisioned an all-­encompassing system of social healthcare and managed to secure governmental funding for it. He defined health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-­being rather than the eradication of disease or infirmity, a definition that was also adopted in 1946 by the World Health Organization. In his view, for the benefit of the nation, great emphasis had to be placed on health education. Only through education would the population understand its duties toward the national community and act accordingly. According to Štampar, public health was a matter of public wealth (Štampar 1915: 94–5). He viewed poverty and hunger as a source of bad overall health of the nation, and perceived equality and basic living standards as health issues. Štampar rarely promoted restrictive health measures based on negative eugenic considerations. Nonetheless, in his 1919 article ‘Primjedbe k osnovi zakona o čuvanju narodnog zdravlja’ (‘Some Comments on the Law for the Protection of National Health’) (Štampar 1919d: 424–9), he recommended the introduction of eugenics, in addition to 437

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

public health and social hygiene. This article also served as an inspiration for the draft of the Law for the Protection of National Health (Zakon o čuvanju narodnog zdravlja) proposed in February 1921. Discussing the issue of health policy, he emphasized the importance of improving national health by dealing with the actual tasks that needed to be resolved as soon as possible, such as the legalization of some eugenic principles, child protection, health of workers and diseases of the population, because every day of delay meant a tremendous loss to public health (Štampar 1919e: 166–7). In order to improve national health, the entire race should be improved. This eugenic programme was called the ‘hygiene of conception and childbirth’ (‘higijena začeća i rađanja). According to Štampar, hygiene of conception and childbirth was the newest branch of hygiene or social medicine (Štampar 1925: 41). Childbirth therefore should not be isolated and not every individual should have the right to be a parent. He noted the example of the USA’s prohibition of marriage for certain congenital defects and concluded that strict legal provisions should regulate this issue in order to prevent the birth of children in poor health who are unable to live and would as a consequence be a burden to society. To this effect, Štampar suggested premarital compulsory medical examination, which could contribute to the revival of eugenic principles and also to the improvement of public health (Štampar 1919e: 166). In most of his writings, however, he was aware of individual rights and promoted his eugenic ideas through intensive ethical and hygienic education, sometimes by bureaucratic constraint, but not through coercive policies. He was also unwavering in his belief that improvements in rural health were essential to any sustained and long-­ term transformation of society according to modern ideas of hygiene and medicine. Štampar was not favoured by political regimes in inter-­war Yugoslavia. In 1931, after refusing the position of Minister of Internal Affairs of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the reign of King Alexander, due to his opposition to the King’s dictatorship, he was forcibly relieved of his position as Director of the Ministry of Public Health. While his institutional presence in Yugoslavia was waning, Štampar’s international prestige, which gave him the opportunity to travel and lecture in various parts of the world as an expert for the League of Nations Health Organization, grew (Štampar 1938). Between 1931 and 1939, he participated in the creation of an international public health system and, as an adviser to the Chinese government organized the health care system and medical education in China. After his return to Zagreb in 1939, Štampar was named Professor of Hygiene and Social Medicine at the University of Zagreb’s School of Medicine. In the same year, he published Zdravlje i društvo (Health and Society), followed by Higijena i socijalna medicina (Hygiene and Social Medicine) in 1940. Once again, he underlined the close relationship between public health, social hygiene and eugenics, while at the same time criticising racist theories (Štampar 1939 and 1940). In the academic year 1940/41 he was elected Dean of the Medical School in Zagreb. During the Ustasha regime Štampar was imprisoned in Graz. He was liberated in 1945 by the Russian army. Upon his return to Croatia he was appointed the Rector of the University of Zagreb and, shortly after, President of the newly created Yugoslav 438

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Academy of Sciences and Arts (Jugoslavenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti). At the International Health Conference held in New York in 1946, the constitution of the World Health Organization was adopted and the first World Health Assembly formed to ratify it. Štampar became its first president in 1948, confirming his international recognition. Towards the end of his life, in 1955, Štampar received the Leon Bernard Foundation Prize, the highest international award for achievements in social medicine. He died in Zagreb in 1958 from cerebral apoplexy.

439

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Some Comments on the Law for the Protection of National Health6 The foundation of the Ministry of National Health complies with the only correct principle: the management of health and health laws should be the same for the entire country because we are all the same nation, suffering from [the] same ailments and requiring [the] same remedies for our regeneration. The Law for the Protection of National Health must deal with the difficult task of modern health policies, which are of crucial importance, in concordance with social policies following the devastation of the World War. The future belongs to the nation which knows how to appreciate its health, its organic capital, and which will pay more attention to the economy of people, rather than the economy of things. The proposed Law, as designed for Serbia by the Commission of the Serbian Physicians Society has many good and advanced sections, but pays no attention to social hygiene, which is sorely needed at this time. The correct implementation of health policies which are adequate for today’s demanding times requires an incredible amount of material sacrifices; this is why I consider the presently allocated medical funds, as stipulated in the proposed laws, completely inadequate. It is necessary to construct a whole medical system which will bring about a yearly influx of funds and which will be solely used for medical (preventive and curative) purposes, while the funds for maintaining the medical staff would come from the regular budget. This is why I propose a tax system for medicine, one which would be carried on the back of those who are economically strong for the protection of the weak. [. . .] Consequently, I believe that all our health circles will realize the necessity of justifying these demands because national health must no longer be solely observed from the humanistic standpoint, but must be considered as the most important part of the national economy. The more healthy and strong people are, the more prosperous is their state. According to this view, only those institutions which comply with the old maxim: ‘prevention is better than the cure’ can be a part of the new health law. In this spirit I present the following preventive legal frameworks: 1. All schools will start implementing health lectures according to the directives of the Minister of National Health in agreement with the Minister of Education. 2. Teacher’s colleges and theological colleges will include special courses for school hygiene which will be undertaken by those people who will one day become teachers. School hygiene will be a required course. 3. All physicians who work in public health are required to educate the people about the decrees made by the Ministry of National Health during regular medical exams. 4. Societies whose purpose is to educate the public about health and to fight against social disease will enjoy permanent annual support from the budget of the Ministry of National Health. 440

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Eugenics 1. No one can enter into a marriage before presenting a form signed by a state physician which states that they are healthy and capable of marriage. 2. No person who is mentally retarded, mentally ill, epileptic, or has [been] diagnosed [with] tuberculosis can enter into a marriage. Sexually Transmitted Diseases 1. Obligatory sexual education is to be included in later grades of high schools. 2. All physicians who are specifically trained for treating sexually transmitted diseases and other official physicians who are given this task are required to educate the people about sexually transmitted diseases in an appropriate way in their appointed areas in specific intervals. 3. Each physician is bound by law to educate the person they treat about the meaning and importance of diseases and the threat they pose to the environment. They are also required to present a signed statement signifying that they did so to the health department. 4. It is allowed to sell means of protecting from sexually transmitted diseases as long as they are not harmful and disseminated in an inappropriate way. 5. Each physician is bound by law to report to the local health department each detected occurrence of a sexually transmitted disease. The corresponding measures will be decided by the health department. 6. A person infected with a sexually transmitted disease may not enter a marriage until they present a document signed by two official physicians which states that the person is now healthy and that the disease is not hereditary. 7. Those that deliberately, or because of insufficient precautions, put a person in a situation where they may get infected by a sexually transmitted disease must be brought to the local health department, which will then decide whether the situation merits a warning, a written reprimand or a complaint to the criminal court. If a person becomes infected because of these actions, the guilty party may be punished with jail. The guilty party must also bear the cost of the first three years of treatment and pay compensation. If the infection occurs during a marriage, then the spouse decides whether they want to press charges. 8. The keeping of brothels is forbidden. 9. All females suspected of prostitution for the first time must be examined not only physically, but also mentally. [. . .] All minors and mentally retarded persons are to be sent to special reformatory institutions. Persons who became prostitutes because of social and economic conditions are to be given to the care of charitable organizations, supervised and helped in leading a normal life. [. . .] 441

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

10. Those that overtly incite others sexually in a way which is disruptive to public order will be punished with a jail sentence. If there are mitigating circumstances the punishment may be changed into a fine. 11. Persons which are involved in prostitution or suspicious behaviour are to be supervised by the health department. They must present evidence of following the regulations of the health department. Persons which fail to follow these regulations will be reported to the police. [. . .] 13. Persons suffering from any kind of sexually transmitted disease are obligated to undergo treatment. The health department is required to demand evidence of treatment from any person known to be infected. 14. Persons suffering from any form of sexually transmitted disease have the right to seek treatment on public expense, regardless of whether they can afford it or not. [. . .] 15. If the person’s relations are such that only isolation can prevent the spreading of disease, then such a person must be treated in a hospital. 16. If a person infected with a sexually transmitted disease leaves the care of a physician, the physician is required to seek evidence that the person is undergoing treatment with another physician. Otherwise the person is to be reported to the health department. 17. As a rule, persons infected with sexually transmitted diseases should be treated by specially trained physicians at public expense. 18. [. . .] each local health department will have stations for treatment of sexually transmitted diseases equipped with necessary devices. Each hospital will have a special ward which will comply with the required demands for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. 19. The implementation of these methods is to be undertaken by municipal, district and county health departments. The top health department will form a Committee for the Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Disease. [. . .] County health departments and cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants must have a specialized physician. 20. Costs incurred by these measures for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases are to be borne by the State. [. . .] Because of the great importance of racial and social hygiene, this subject needs to become a part of the final state exam for all those physicians who want [to] serve the public. Naturally, these proposals are minimal and must be included in the new health law if we want to stop our people from becoming sick and dying as they have been so far. Let us not forget that we have lost 14 per cent of our people in this war and that it is our duty to save them from further decline. Translation by Dinko Klarić

442

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

On Health Politics7 Eugenics aims at solving the problem of rational reproduction and degeneration. Masses of degenerate persons would disappear automatically if degeneration were detrimental to the power of reproduction. But this is not so, and the number of less valuable members of society continually increases and is becoming a distressing characteristic of contemporary life. The increase of degeneration could easily be stopped if we controlled reproduction and isolated degenerate individuals. [. . .] Compulsory methods are never crowned with such success as is at first expected. Voluntary methods are far better, but they are conditioned by high general culture at which we shall have to aim for many years to come. Voluntary celibacy is the perfect thing but requires a high individual ethnical culture and will never become a universal method. Surgical methods for the prevention of births in degenerate people are not always applicable, and are not without danger either. They must, therefore, be replaced by rational preventive measures, reckoning upon the same conditions as in voluntary celibacy. In all preventive measures there is a great risk of their being used where they ought not to be used, i.e. in those who are not degenerate. Eugenics aims at a qualitative rationalization of our propagation, but cannot be directed from above by compulsion, because it touches the most elementary phenomenon of life, the sexual instinct. Its future lies in intensive ethical and hygienic education. Only when every human being is aware of the responsibility he has towards his offspring will eugenics become an integral part of people’s life, and the source of degeneration will then dry up. Translation by M. Halar

On Social Therapy8 Eugenics. The well-­known biological truth that the health and biological worth of each individual are already determined at conception has enriched medical science by the hygiene of conception. People’s health would considerably improve, social diseases would lose much of their destructive action, if we succeeded in seeing to it that only healthy individuals, devoid of hereditary burdens, should be born. However little we know about conception, efforts have been made for quite a long time to influence it so that only healthy offspring without handicaps should come into this world: almost all marital reforms are aiming at this. Great efforts of the United States, which by strict legislation go so far as to encroach upon the freedom of the individual, show how much is being done to nip the evil in the bud. After the war, a number of countries began preparing similar marital reforms. One of our experts, too, has set forth a proposal for a marital reform to show in which way certain eugenic principles could be put into practice. At the bottom of all these efforts, however, there is something wrong. Eugenic principles cannot be put into practice by legal or police measures, especially where the situation among people is unfavourable. Sexual relations cannot be regulated by force. This is why these efforts have been 443

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

failures so far. Instead, the education of the mind and character should be introduced, which can best be done through various privately established eugenic societies whose chief aim is education. However, it would be wrong for such an important work to be left to private initiative alone. This initiative should be backed intensively by a rational state educational policy which not only in schools but also outside schools should propagate and explain the importance of eugenic laws and principles and try to make them attractive to everybody, particularly to clergymen entrusted at present with the task of performing the marriage ceremony. However, even if we succeed in the field of eugenics, this first factor of social therapy, so as to make it possible not only for healthy offspring to come into the world but went no further, we should have only a third of our way behind us. The healthiest offspring will fall ill and deteriorate if it comes into a non-­sanitary environment; socio-­ pathological factors will again create unhealthy relations for which eugenics alone can do very little. Translation by M. Halar

444

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Boris Zarnik

(1883, Ljubljana–1945, Zagreb)

Boris Zarnik was born in Ljubljana in 1883. His pronounced interest in natural sciences led him to the University of Jena, where he studied philosophy and medicine. After completing his studies, he worked for a short period in Jena as a zoologist. Together with Miroslav Mikuličić (1883–1955), Zarnik went to Kolozsvár to work with renowned Hungarian biologist and eugenicist István Apáthy at his Zoological Institute. He perfected his microscopy studies under Apáthy’s supervision in 1903 (Lorković 1945: 44–7). Zarnik then returned to Germany and continued his studies with Theodor Boveri (1862– 1915), Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the University of Würzburg. Zarnik became Boveri’s assistant in 1904, and completed his Ph.D. in natural sciences (cytology in particular) under the guidance of his celebrated mentor. In 1910, Zarnik became Associate Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the University of Würzburg, and from 1915 to 1918 he was Professor of Zoology at the University of Istanbul, where he also established a Biological Institute (‘Announcement’, Science 1915: 642–3). He then went to the University of Zagreb in 1918, and dedicated most of his university career teaching general biology, histology and embryology at the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb, where from 1918 to 1942 he established a modern morphological and biological institute (Morfološko-­biološki zavod) (Zarnik 1930a: 141–58). He was also among the founders of the Oceanographic Institute in Split, as well as holding the position of President of the Croatian Natural History Society. Zarnik was one of the first experimental scientists in the field of biology in Croatia. He was highly respected during his lifetime, his ideas of human improvement widely publicized in both popular and scientific journals. He took special interest in developmental biology, genetics and inheritance of biological traits, a field that was closely linked to his eugenic ideas. Contrary to Štampar’s eugenics, Zarnik’s was rather exclusionary. In a seminal article published in 1931, and entitled ‘Temelji i ciljevi eugenike’ (‘Foundations and Objectives of Eugenics’), Zarnik postulated that Darwinism was the foundation of eugenics and that human activities and modern welfare have a negative impact on natural selection. Examples included: medicine that cured ‘sick’ people, wars that killed the ‘able’, while the ‘weaklings’ stayed home and procreated, women who worked instead of taking care of children, celibacy and so on. According to him, there are two ways of implementing eugenic principles: the sterilization of degenerate individuals and the encouragement of the ‘most qualified’ to have more children through appropriate social policies (Zarnik 1931a: 35–48). This article and Zarnik’s radio broadcast on ‘Church and Eugenics’ in 1932 provoked much debate, mainly in the religious community. The Jesuit journal Život (Life), for instance, chastised Priroda (Nature) for publishing Zarnik’s article. 445

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Zarnik’s prestige as a eugenicist was confirmed in June 1941 when he became a member of the NDH’s Racial Political Commissariat (Rasno-­političko povjerenstvo). Engaging with the prevalent official discourse on ‘Aryanism’, Zarnik refuted the idea that only the Nordic race was the only one capable of cultural creativity, but conceded that it was ‘very probable’ that the Nordic race had created the most noticeable aspects of the cultures of the Indo-European peoples. In some of the articles published during the early 1930s, Zarnik had already argued that the Nordic and Dinaric racial types were intellectually and spiritually gifted to a greater degree than other races (Zarnik 1930b: 1–14 and 1931b: 129–140). Zarnik also rejected ideas of racial purity, and spoke favourably of racial mixing. In a contribution to the 1942 edition of the Croatian Encyclopaedia (Hrvatska Enciklopedija), while quoting German eugenicists such as Eugen Fischer, Zarnik argued that there was strong evidence to suggest that the mixing between ‘some races’, notably the Nordic, Alpine and Dinaric races, had positive consequences. Goethe, he argued, had many Dinaric physical characteristics, so ‘indeed it can be determined that the prominent people are of mixed race’ (Zarnik 1942: 355). His aim was, ultimately, to separate eugenics from racism and to suggest that ‘racist efforts have no basis in the science of races (Zarnik 1942: 355). In the same year that this chapter was published, 1942, Zarnik retired from academic and political life. He died in Zagreb in 1945.

446

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

The Foundations and Goals of Eugenics9 The reasons for striving toward eugenic goals are of a dual nature; both negative and positive. The negative measures are those that prevent people with hereditary physical, mental and moral flaws from procreating. With those who have committed serious crimes this is already assured because they are sentenced to twenty years in prison or more and are so prevented from reproducing. [. . .] Nonetheless, most of those who are hereditarily flawed escape such punishment, which would take away their ability to propagate. There is another method already heavily used in North America, which is, as far as applying eugenic measures goes, the most advanced country in the world. This method is the sterilization of such individuals. When we speak of sterilization, we refer to the procedure which results in infertility. In case of men this is a very simple operation which involves the cutting of the spermatic cord. The organism is in no way damaged and the sex drive remains intact, it is only that these men are infertile because sperm cannot be ejaculated anymore. The sterilization of women involves opening the abdominal cavity in order to cut the fallopian tubes, but this is not a difficult procedure. As a result of this operation, the eggs cannot enter the uterus anymore and the woman cannot become pregnant. This sterilization is undertaken in [North] America among various hereditarily flawed criminals, but only with their consent. Experience dictates that most accept this because they are given the chance for early release [from prison]. Sterilization of the mentally retarded is also carried out with the consent of their family. The only European country to have implemented eugenic sterilization so far is Denmark, but Sweden is also preparing such a law. Sterilization is the only and the most humane way for preventing the burdening of future generations with flawed genetic qualities. All other measures, such as forbidding marriage to such individuals, either fail to achieve their goals, because such people can have children out of wedlock, or are extremely inhumane, such as the incarceration in various institutions of individuals who are otherwise harmless. Such internment comes at a great financial cost to the state. It is clear that to categorically cleanse the cultured nations of flawed hereditary qualities sterilization must be implemented to a much greater degree than has been the case. The American eugenicist, H[arry] H. Laughlin, claims that at least ten percent of the entire population should be sterilized to extinguish all flawed hereditary traits. The German eugenicist [A]. Grotjahn has suggested that almost a third of the German population have flawed hereditary qualities. A greater degree of sterilization would not only improve the future generations, but also prevent much social misery and relieve human society of the burden of providing for such wretches who are unable to support themselves. Understandably, sterilization should be strongly regulated by laws so that doctors can only implement it on those who are truly hereditarily challenged, and never on capable people who want to avoid having children for their own reasons. Otherwise, the effect of sterilization would be completely reversed. This is why in America each sterilization requires a special procedure during which one must prove that the individual is truly hereditarily challenged. 447

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Perhaps even more important than the suppression of bad qualities is the positive genetic practice whose purpose is to expand good qualities as much as possible in the future generations. Namely, to undergo specific measures to increase the number of children of capable people. The most dreadful thing is that capable people have too few children and that the less capable have very numerous families. The aforementioned goal can only be achieved by modifying all laws which dictate personal and family affairs in such a way that they allow capable people to have as many children as possible. Let me note just one example: state officials in most states have such a small family supplement that many of them remain unmarried, and those that do not either have no children or have only one or two. Also, these supplements are equal in all degrees. From a eugenic standpoint this is simply devastating. While a clerk can somehow pull through with a 150 dinar supplement for a wife and each child, an Adviser to the Ban10 cannot marry a woman using a 150 dinar supplement. He will simply not marry if he, or his prospective wife, whose hereditary qualities may be lacking, is not personally wealthy. It is precisely those people who have the intellectual and moral capabilities of achieving the position of an Adviser to the Ban who should have as many children as possible. They should be given supplements for a wife and each child so that their family can be materially completely provided for. Indeed, their supplement should be increased for each new child, so that they derive material benefits for having as many children as possible. Those and similar methods would to a degree curb the counter selection brought upon by the higher education of women, because all intelligent girls, even poor ones, could marry a man of their social position in due time. This is only an example. In fact, there are no regulations or laws which do not have something to do with eugenics because they all influence the material issues of individuals, and all such regulations must be rendered in such a way as to give the most capable the greatest possible benefits. One important question which is deeply connected to the goals of eugenics is the issue of career advancement. Eugenics demands that the capable are enabled to progress rapidly, bypassing several degrees, because it is important that such people achieve a high position and high salary as soon as possible so that they can create a family, and not wait until they are forty years old to even think about getting married. It is also important that the state uses various eugenic degrees to influence the personal issues of private employees and workers. In fact, even the form of government can be of vital importance for the quality of the future generation. Even if a country’s laws are entirely calibrated toward eugenic goals, if it is governed by [a] so-­called parliamentary system under which individual parties place their supporters on various positions despite their personal qualities, even the best laws can be applied in such a way as to lead to the worst consequences for eugenics. Instead of benefiting the truly capable, it could occur that such benefits are given to party members and that the truly capable people of high moral qualities, who refuse to partake in party struggles, remain in such material conditions that they are prevented from having a numerous family. Eugenics demands a complete reorganization of all social measures. It demands the implementation of a qualitative social policy which strives toward increasing the number 448

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

of descendants of capable people and decreasing the number of descendants of incapable people. In the countries which already manage population growth, such as France and Italy, only the quantity of offspring is considered important while the quality is not. For the self-­preservation of a nation and its cultural and material advancement, the quantity of the future generation is not as important as its capabilities. Almost as important as the increase in the reproduction of capable people through qualitative social policies is the education of the people in the basics and guidelines of eugenics. Even the best laws cannot achieve their goal if each individual does not participate in their purpose. The choice of a marriage partner depends on the will of the individual and marriage is precisely the act which forms the basis of the new generation. This is why it is necessary for everyone to understand at least the basics of eugenics, so that they know that there exist moments where one should question if a marriage between a certain man and a certain woman can produce good and capable children. Everyone should know that in the case of various hereditary flaws or untreatable sexually transmitted diseases it is better not to get married, or at least not to have children, than to have a child which is burdened with hereditary flaws or permanently sick because of diseases inherited from the parents. On the other hand, everyone should be aware that the first and most glorious duty of every capable man toward the state and the people is to marry an equally capable partner and have as large a family as possible. If the understanding of eugenic goals spreads among the people in this way at least, if every person remains aware during those most important moments, then they would all ask a eugenicist for advice before getting married. How much evil would this prevent! This is why there is a specific law in Germany which establishes special offices where eugenically educated physicians counsel people who intend to get married. Experience shows that in most cases the counsel is accepted and the success of this ordinance is almost complete. [. . .] Unfortunately, today most states are very far from taking seriously the implementation of eugenic measures. In each nation, people of higher intelligence and deeper insight are a small minority, and where the majority decides it is rare that the proposals of an insightful minority are considered. Even more so if the majority lacks the basis for understanding such proposal. No one would think of deciding the method of treating a patient by a public vote by neighbours and friends. They would call a doctor who knows about diseases and how to treat them. We must not forget that each nation is an organism, and each cultured nation today is a diseased organism which was left to fester during the centuries and is now riddled with bad hereditary qualities. Should we let this organism be treated according to the conclusions of the uneducated majority, when this treatment is much more difficult and requires a deeper understanding than the treatment of an individual patient? This is not only the spirit of the age, but the influence of the analysis of the results of the science of heredity and its effects on an ever wider percentage of the population. If the cultured nations today are seeking new paths, let them create a form of government which will actually achieve what is necessary for the good of the nation. This is not a reaction, but a desire for the true advancement of mankind. 449

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

It is clear that the nation which applies the principles of eugenics best will be victorious. The ignorance of eugenics led to the degeneration and downfall of ancient cultured nations, which were replaced by fresh and yet un-­exhausted nations. The cultured nations of Europe will face the same fate if they do not understand this in time and apply eugenic measures. Eugenics is the salvation of our culture and our survival. This is why it is the duty of anyone who understands the basis of eugenic measures to propagate them by any means necessary in order to help create the framework for their full implementation. Translation by Dinko Klarić

450

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Andrija Živković

(1886, Sikirevci–1957, Zagreb)

Andrija Živković was born in Sikirevci (Brod-Posavina County) in 1886. Having finished his primary and secondary education in Osijek (Hung.: Eszék; Ger.: Esseg ), he went to Rome to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University (Pontificia Università Gregoriana), and was ordained a priest in 1912. Continuing his education at the Biblical Institute in Rome, in 1913 he acquired a doctorate in theology. After graduation he returned to Đakovo (Ger.: Diakowar: Hung.: Djakovar), where he performed various spiritual services and worked as a professor at the local lyceum. In 1924 he moved to Zagreb to teach moral theology at the Theological Faculty. From this position, Živković had to defend and explain standpoints of the Church. In a 1926 booklet entitled Katolička crkva i duh evropske kulture (The Catholic Church and the Spirit of European Culture), he criticized materialism and liberalism, seen as a products of modernity, and advocated an ethical revival for the Croatian nation based on Catholicism (Živković 1926). In 1935, Živković was named president of the Teachers’ Association of the University of Zagreb and in 1938 was elected Rector, after his predecessor, Professor Edo Lovrić (1866–1951), had retired. He retained his position until 1943. During this period, Živković was a productive author who published twenty books, about 400 articles, notes, reviews and critics, and 200 independent discussions in the fields of moral theology and eugenics. His main work Katoličko moralno bogoslovlje (Catholic Moral Theology, 3 vols) represents the first systematic scientific survey of Catholic ethics and morality in Croatia (Živković 1938–46). In this work, Živković returned to the fathers of Catholic theology such as St. Thomas and Alfonso de Liguori, in many respects creating a ‘new moral terminology’. Furthermore, he was responsible for the reorganization of the study of theology at the Theological Faculty in Zagreb. Živković endorsed the encyclical Casti Connubii, recommending, however, that the Catholic Church in Croatia should engage with the concepts of modern eugenics and embrace some aspects of it, in accordance with the Catholic doctrine (Živković 1931). In the preface of his 1933 book Eugenika i moral (Eugenics and Morality), Živković explained the way he perceived eugenics was primarily as a useful and necessary practical science. His main argument was that the supreme goal of eugenicists was to preserve racially healthy and progressive families, their upbringing and development in that direction, as well as improvement if possible (Živković 1933d: 348–71). To achieve this goal, Živković was willing to accept negative eugenic measures, assuming that they were introduced in practice within reason. To this effect, he suggested the term ‘preservation of the race’ (‘očuvanje rase’) instead of ‘improvement of the race’ (‘poboljšanje rase’). Although Živković claimed that eugenics has always been present in human history, because ‘it is the human nature to strive for health, strength and beauty’ (Živković 1933c: 160), he opposed Nazi racist ideology. Thus, in his 1936 article ‘Osnovne ideje “pozitivnog 451

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

kršćanstva” u Njemačkoj’ (‘The Basic Idea of “Positive Christianity” in Germany’) Živković criticized Alfred Rosenberg’s views expressed in the book Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (The Myth of the Twentieth Century) (Živković 1936: 233–54). Under the Ustasha regime, Živković participated in various debates on natalism and the protection of family. For example, in 1942, he served on an academic commission discussing Josip Salač’s dissertation Brojčano opadanje poroda: ćudoredno pitanje naše Moslavine (Numerical Decrease of Childbirth: The Moral Question of Our Moslavina) (Salač 1942). Živković spent most of the war period writing and re-­ reviewing his work on moral theology (Katoličko moralno bogoslovlje, 1938–46), as well as contributing with articles against abortion (Živković 1942: 130–31). He died in Zagreb in 1957.

452

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

On Eugenics from a Moral Standpoint11 The problem of man’s heritage is still obscured by a veil of mystery, which we cannot pierce with any certainty. Although it seems theoretically very straightforward, it has been proved that it is impracticable and futile to create a higher, better, and more ideal race through selection. We emphasized this when we pointed out that there is something not entirely clear or correct in the term ‘improvement’ of the human race. And without a doubt, all endeavours in this regard brought no results. Eugenics can do absolutely nothing to achieve this goal. According to our current scientific abilities any serious work in this direction is simply impossible. Scientists are afraid to openly state this and admit it. Positive and practical eugenic endeavours, if they are to remain scientific, can only develop toward the goal of maintaining a healthy racial type and improving upon it in some relative sense. A positive procedure can, and has been developed, toward such a purpose: the favouring of everything which benefits and leads to the stabilization of noble and useful racial features. Something can also be said in favour of eliminating and avoiding bad consequences, of preventing degeneration and transmission of pathological defects from one generation to another. This is a negative method which can provide much benefit and help if it is kept within limits dictated by the reasonable nature of man. [. . .] The good master who wants to improve his livestock breeds only the individual animals with good features and uses the positive method. Nevertheless, if his only goal was to prevent the transmission of bad features by simply excluding their carriers regardless of their specific racial features, he would be using [a] negative method. This comparison can be applied to humans. Can eugenics completely apply any of the above-­ mentioned positive and negative methods? It cannot. And this is why: the keeper of animals is given complete freedom. There are no moral or legal obstacles. He can treat his horses or sheep in whatever way he thinks is better or more successful. He can, and must, regulate their breeding according to his goal. He can remove and destroy the offspring which he dislikes or believes to be harmful. It is immediately clear that one cannot act in such a way toward man. There can be no doubt about the suitability of the positive and negative method as it is applied to animals. This is the root of the fallacy of modern Anglo-Saxon eugenics which failed to take man’s personality into account. The characteristics of man, his reasoning and free will, change the entire matter completely. Édouard Jordan12 stresses the special importance of the sexual act for man’s nature; its physical and psychological side, as well as its moral side. All these elements play an immeasurably important role in the life of an individual. The strength of natural drives and the need to overcome and control them in certain instances must not be forgotten. On the other side, there man has a conscience and sense of responsibility which impart upon him new obligations. This is the source of man’s need to use his natural drive in a certain useful way. It is a calculation of a kind which can often be noticed in both sexes. These are the forces which control and guide the reproduction of mankind. But often human conditions are so terribly 453

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

disjointed that they lead to difficulties which can be linked to the victims. This is what we refer to as the misfortune and pain of life. If it is therefore clear that the positive and the negative method cannot be applied in eugenics in the same sense as in the rational control of animals, it clearly does not follow that only the negative method can be applied, as claimed by Professor Édouard Jordan. Even if a degenerated individual is consistently repulsive, even if a single visit to a hospital or asylum vividly and clearly warns a man to keep himself and his descendants from such consequences, it is still not enough of an incentive for a man to seek a healthy wife, nor does this bring about in him a realization of the importance of good health. Each individual has an innate desire for what is beautiful and healthy; a positive, we can even say conscious, will to choose. This is why a man who considers the age in which he is to be married, the family and features of his prospective wife, acts positively in eugenic terms, and not just negatively. Jordan’s other reason for substantiating his thesis of an exclusively negative method focuses only on births. It is true that there exist no means of forcing someone to beget children at an appropriate time like we can force an animal. It is also true that those who would disobey us and ignore our advice are those who are by our own opinion the most suitable and appropriate for having children. They are spoiled by the poisonous breath of neo-Malthusianism. It is even more unfortunate that they are so numerous today. Nonetheless, conscience and honesty still exist in the world. The world has not gone wrong yet, even if those who walk on the evil path are the most vocal and make it seem like everyone is the same as them and that others do not exist. The noble purpose of eugenics should be to successfully correct the mentality and immoral practices of those enveloped and seduced by neo-Malthusianism. Many German writers and propagators clearly support this, but it will flourish and succeed best among those who correctly understand life and its purpose both on an individual and on a social level, such people are not entirely gone! This is why other methods apart from the negative ones will survive and become applied in practice. In a world in which materialism clouds the clear view of life, the negative eugenic methods are characterized as an undertaking which rescues us from, prevents and escapes destruction. This is because a large number of so-­called caretakers of mankind, as well as a huge proportion of the general population, have lost the notion of God’s care and providence in their lives. They are shrouded by the darkness and icy cold of the naturalistic view of life and the world. Positive eugenic methods are in most instances already chosen as a kind of innate desire of man’s own nature. In the conscious and even deliberate choosing and desiring of a healthy marriage and healthy descendants they make the duty and purpose of eugenics seem useful and sympathetic. However, this in no way lessens the importance of negative methods. Nature rejects evil in whichever forms it appears. Man flees pain and sickness and is weary of disease. He is especially motivated to defend himself when, by observing the misery of others, he is convinced of all the terrible consequences that can befall him. This is why a sane man will do anything he can to avoid hereditary flaws and use the negative method to follow the eugenic goal. In this regard his options 454

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

are limitless. The question, then, is: is this all that eugenics can accomplish? The question will remain as long as biology fails to reveal to us a definite explanation of the process of heredity. By today’s scientific standards we are still in a position of uncertainty, at least as much as the heritability of positive features and their continuation and perfection in descendants are concerned. Nonetheless, despite that, the applicability of eugenics is still wide. It occurs, or at least might occur, for the benefit of mankind in the positive endeavour to preserve and improve the healthy strain of mankind and its descendants. Translation by Dinko Klarić

455

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Eduard Miloslavić

(1884, Oakland, USA–1953, St Louis, USA)

Miloslavić was born in 1884 in Oakland, USA. He and his family returned to Croatia in 1889. After finishing his primary education in Dubrovnik, Miloslavić studied medicine at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1908. In 1912, he worked for some time in the Patho-Anatomical Institute in Brno (Ger.: Brünn). In the same year he attended the 10th International Congress on Tuberculosis (Dixième Conférence Internationale contre la Tuberculose) and the 7th International Congress on Dermatology and Syphilis (VII. Congresso Internazionale di Dermatologia e Sifilografia), both held in Rome. In 1917 Miloslavić was appointed Professor of Pathological Anatomy of the University of Vienna. Until the end of World War I, Miloslavić remained in the Austrian capital where he continued to work at the university as a research fellow and subsequently as a successful professor of anatomy. Due to his Slavic origin, living and working in Vienna during the last years of World War I became difficult. He then tried unsuccessfully to obtain a position at the Medical School in Zagreb. Consequently, in 1920 he accepted a post as Professor of Pathology at Marquette University in Milwaukee (Wisconsin, USA). It was there that Miloslavić, a now well-­known forensic pathologist, was one of the first to work in the new field of criminology. In 1932 when forensic medicine became mandatory at the Medical School in Zagreb, Eduard Miloslavić was elected its first chair. In addition, he was also an honorary professor of pastoral medicine at the Theological Faculty in Zagreb. On 7 June 1935 Miloslavić established the Institute of Forensic Medicine and Criminology (Institut za Sudsku Medicinu i Kriminalistiku), modelled after the most modern institutes in Europe and the USA. Besides his progressive scientific achievements, Miloslavić was a strong supporter of Catholicism as evidenced by his lectures on ‘pastoral medicine’ at the Faculty of Theology in Zagreb. In his inaugural lecture ‘Pastoralna medicina kao katolička znanost’ (‘Pastoral Medicine as Catholic Science’) delivered on 26 October 1937, he described the priest ‘as the doctor of the soul’, while the physician was the ‘doctor of the body’. According to him, religion and science shared the same goal, namely human improvement. Miloslavić’s eugenic views were mostly expressed in relation to abortion and euthanasia. He voiced his opposition to negative eugenics in works which achieved widespread recognition during the 1940s. In his 1942 book, Kobno spriečavanje poroda (The Fatal Prevention of Births) and the subsequent article with the same title (Miloslavić 1942–43), Miloslavić put forward a eugenic message which also echoed the official anti-­abortion rhetoric of the NDH regime. Miloslavić also added a commitment to Catholic values expressed in demographic terms. He argued that the eugenic betterment of future generations was impossible if abortion was widespread. Miloslavić underlined both the importance of individual responsibility towards their offspring and towards 456

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

their national community’s racial future. He also detailed the numerous complications, injuries and infertility caused by abortion. He not only chastised women who contemplated abortion, but harshly criticized the doctors who performed abortions, demanding their public stigmatization and conviction as criminals. Miloslavić was also one of the founders and the first president of the International Academy of Legal Medicine and Social Medicine, established in Bonn (Germany) in 1938. In 1940 he became a member of the prestigious Medico-Legal Society in London and in the following year he was promoted as a full member of the Academy of Natural Sciences Leopoldina (Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina) in Germany. After the establishment of the NDH in 1941, Miloslavić replaced Andrija Štampar as Dean of the Medical School in Zagreb for a period of six months. Miloslavić’s importance in the NDH regime is also exemplified by his direct involved in the establishment of a Faculty of Medicine in Sarajevo, which was finally realized in 1944. The Faculty had eight professors, among them two Serbs (Žarko Praštalo and Milutin Gligić), and one Muslim (Muhamed Kontardžić). Out of 180 students, about 35 per cent were Muslim, 35 per cent Croatian, 25 per cent Serbian, the remaining 5 per cent included Jews. In 1945 Miloslavić became a doctor honoris causa of the University of Vienna but the communist authorities were not willing to forget his involvement in the investigation of war crimes during World War II in Katyn and Vinnitsa. In 1943, at the invitation of the Nazi government, Miloslavić became one of the medical-­legal experts of the International Commission created to investigate the 1940 massacre of approximately 12,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest by the Soviet army. As Miloslavić, like other members of the Commission, established Soviet responsibility for these crimes, he had lost favour with the communist movement in Croatia. In 1944 Miloslavić emigrated to St. Louis, USA and never returned. After World War II the Yugoslav government sentenced him to death in exile. He died in 1953 in St. Louis hospital, where he was transferred after having a heart attack while attending a symposium in Madrid (Spain).

457

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Fatal Prevention of Births13 Russian reports give us the best data about the pandemic rise of abortions. For example, there were 7,969 abortions in Moscow in 1922 and four years later, namely in 1926, the number of abortions increased to 31,986. Among the village peoples of Georgia there were over 120,000 abortions yearly. These are terrible facts which will undoubtedly lead to an almost total depopulation of entire regions; to the extinction of a people. The physician Vera Lebedeva, the administrator of the People’s Commissariat for Public Health in Moscow, states that there were 150,000 artificial removals of foetuses in villages between the years 1922 and 1924. Out of this number 66,000 women had to go to the hospital for treatment because of serious injuries, but despite the treatment there were around 3,000 fatalities. This data makes it clear that almost every second termination of pregnancy results in serious medical complications relating to the inner sexual organs of a pregnant woman and also that every fourth or fifth case results in the death of the woman. During the same period a German yearly statistic report for 1926 informs us that there were 1,313,625 births and 875,750 abortions in 1924 in Germany. It would be interesting to know how many abortions were performed in Zagreb and how many in other regions of our homeland, but the important [issue] is to determine who carries out these abortions. The purpose and goal of criminal investigation is not only to determine the number and type of criminal acts, but also to expose and punish the criminals. Crime can be prevented if the criminal knows that his punishment is unavoidable. Physician-­abortionists are determined to have the crime of artificial termination of pregnancy protected by law, to have abortion legalized, so that they can continue to perform this crime unrestricted and only for the purpose of their own enrichment, that is, for their own interest. That is the so-­called ‘social suggestion for artificial abortion’ which the physician-­abortionists express at every opportunity and loudly disseminate among the public. Each good and righteous physician who lives and works for his people in the service of humanity will reject, with disgust, even the faintest notion of defending and protecting the destructive work of the physician-­abortionist, his criminal co-­worker. He will also vigorously confront any actions by ignorant laymen, lawyers or physicians who work toward lessening or abolishing the criminal punishment of abortion. The legalization of the termination of pregnancy signifies the downfall of a nation. The practising physician and the common layman cannot even comprehend the danger which the artificial removal of the foetus signifies for a woman. The Russian experiment involved hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of women and resulted in devastating results which clearly and vividly show us that abortion signifies the gradual extinction and disappearance of a people. Any person who desires to support the thesis that abortion is supported by a eugenic, social, medical or any other standpoint can closely study the experiences of physicians in Soviet Russia and he will be convinced that legalized abortion leads to the downfall of a people. [. . .] 458

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

These modern destructive ideas are suddenly penetrating our most remote villages. Our unsuspecting and uninformed villagers listen to and trust the criminally minded pseudo-­intelligentsia. Abortion is rife among our people and destroys women and mothers in the best years of their lives more radically than even the deadliest infectious diseases. The white plague overflows the doorsteps of village cottages, destroying the happiness and means of survival of individual families. The villages are gradually wasting away because there are no children and newborns. The villages are decaying, disappearing. And the doctors are discussing the social suggestion that abortion must be performed unconditionally! Criminal abortion triumphs! Only a little while ago artificial abortion was unable to take root in the villages. The very idea was firmly rejected with disgust. The Catholic faith and Catholic morality defended our villagers from such criminal actions, from such suicidal intentions. The pseudo-­sociologist, with his eugenic propaganda and theories of the need for the, so-­ called, rationalization of sexual activities and birth, and physician-­abortionists with their social suggestions which serve only to fill their own pockets, have spread among the people deleterious ideas of the importance and need of artificially extracting the foetus, allegedly only in special circumstances, and stopping pregnancies. In this way they destroy the morale of the people and make them receptive to and prone to this deadly crime against the village, against their own family, against society and against their own people. Their guidance is as follows: demoralize the people, destroy the reputation of priests and attack religious principles and axioms of purity. This is how they pave the way for spreading the pseudo-­scientific propaganda of limiting births, preventing pregnancies and destroying foetuses in the wombs of pregnant mothers. [. . .] First I want to emphasize that the eugenic suggestion for the termination of pregnancy is completely unnecessary and this fact makes it unjustified. Modern regulations which demand that a young couple presents a medical report which signifies that they are mentally and physically healthy represent an excellent eugenic procedure and prophylaxis. Practical eugenics must be understood as following: that any individual, male or female, as soon as they reach an understanding of their position in the world and in society, as soon as they are sexually mature and feel that in the foreseeable future they will be invited into a pact of marriage, must avoid all those poisonous pleasures (alcohol, nicotine, etc.) which have a harmful effect on the sexual glands because if they do not they contribute to the development of unhealthy and abnormal offspring. Furthermore, they must watch out for venereal diseases, especially syphilis, which, when present in the parent, cause severe somatic and mental degeneration of the parent’s own children. Today’s youth must be eugenically educated so that further generations become and remain healthy. It is the duty of eugenically educated youths to be wary of anything that can have a harmful effect on their bodies, so that they do not damage their biological heritage, but keep it intact for their offspring. It is to beget physically and mentally fit children in a marriage. This is what eugenics primarily means in the true sense of the word. Youths educated in this way are aware of their position in society and of their duties toward themselves, toward their future families and toward their people, also that they 459

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

comprehend the importance of Catholic morality, which has been supporting these views for centuries. The Catholic faith does not reject eugenics which are based on ethical and valid principles which work towards the betterment of mankind. Nevertheless, it sharply condemns all adventurous, sensationalist and pseudo-­scientific propaganda of certain modernistic eugenicists, who are otherwise irresponsible elements and who favour anti-­religious and selfish reasons which influence and delude the laymen and the ignorant. Our religion does not speculate, nor does it recklessly found its conclusions on superficial claims and risky experiments of self-­styled ‘scientists’, but it firmly rejects all attacks against religious principles and morals. The eugenics of the individual, the eugenics within the family, is the eugenics of a nation. It signifies a happy future for upcoming healthy generations, which is something that cannot be achieved through the ‘eugenic reasoning’ for the termination of normal pregnancies. All those elements, be they physicians, sociologists, eugenicists or laymen, who for political motives and for their own benefit, propagate the ‘eugenic termination of pregnancies’ or terminations for any other reasons, are the greatest enemies of the people and their work must be publicly condemned and vigorously prevented. Our rural people are healthy both mentally and physically. I have briefly touched upon only a few issues of this most important social problem of our time – the prevention of births and the gradual disappearance of generations. I am aware of the fact that this brief treatise represents only a small part of all the worrisome issues of our time. We must unite in the struggles against the murderers of man’s offspring, their supporters and their sponsors. We should unravel and prevent their deadly labour among our people. We must direct all our efforts against these criminals and their destructive deeds, [so that] the crimes of abortion will disappear. We must not discuss the crime further – we must seek the criminal! Translation by Dinko Klarić

460

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Nikola Sučić

(1890, Dobrinje–1960 or 1962, Rijeka)

Nikola Sučić was born on 6 December 1890 in the village of Dobrinje on the island of Krk (Ger: Vegl; Ital.: Veglia). He finished his primary education in Susak (Ital.: Sansego; Ger.: Sansig) and then went on to study medicine in Austria. After returning to Croatia in the early 1920s, Sučić worked in the largest psychiatric hospital in Zagreb, Vrapče (Psihijatrijska bolnica Vrapče) as a secondary physician first from October 1926 until October 1927, and then as an honorary psychiatrist, from March 1929 until the end of October 1930. He continued his career working in several other psychiatric institutions, such as the Royal Institute for Mentally Ill in Stenjevec (Kraljevski zemaljski zavod za umobolne u Stenjevcu) and the Brothers of Charity Hospital (Milosrdna braa Hospital), the oldest hospital in Zagreb. He also led the female department at the Hospital for Mental Diseases in Kovin, a town in South Banat District of Vojvodina, while at the same time working a private practice in Zagreb. During his career Sučić published numerous research papers and medical books dealing in marriage hygiene, sexual health and the psychopathology of male-­female relationships, which has confirmed his status as ‘Croatia’s first sexologist’. Sučić was also one of the first Croatian scientists to emphasize the importance of Freud’s theory of sexual pathology. He warned that it is important to distinguish exclusively heterosexual and extremely homosexual types of personality; and between them bisexuals. He was one of the first experts to approach these subjects from a scientific point of view, as illustrated by his 1935 book Spolni život: spolne bolesti i higijena braka (Sexual Life: Venereal Diseases and the Hygiene of Marriage) (Sučić 1935). Other important books dealing with these issues include Psihologija i psihopatologija nagona ljubavi (Psychology and Psychopathology of Love Instincts) and Psihologija i psihopatologija čovječanstva (Psychology and Psychopathology of Mankind), both published in 1939 (Sučić 1939a and 1939b). In his 1937 book, Bolesti živaca i duše (Diseases of Nerves and Soul) he gave an overview of general psychology and psychopathology, personality, body size, temperament and character, neurosis, psychoneurosis and psychoses, with the addition of neuralgia and headaches (Sučić 1937). Sučić wrote on human sexuality in a historically difficult period. He emphasized that the Freudian theory offered immensely valuable and extraordinary material for sexual pathology. Furthermore, he emphasized the need to distinguish pure heterosexual types, extreme homosexual types and the bisexual persons between these two behavioural extremities. He also discussed the existence of the male menopause. According to him, only in the age of menopause were men and women similar in the sociological sense. The reason for this similarity was that at that age men and women were more prone to conflicts, they have an enhanced affectivity and their capability to judge was reduced. 461

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

In Na izvoru života (The Source of Life), published in 1943, he dealt with issues that were considered as the most complicated in applied biology at the time. He touched on the most delicate topics, which are after all, part of the sexual instinct. The book deals with a wide variety of topics including anatomy, physiology and biology of reproductive organs, embryology, sexual diseases and marital hygiene (Sučić 1943a). Apart from his interest in medical and psychiatric issues, Sučić also developed his own version of Croatian nationalism, as illustrated by his 1943 book Hrvatska narodna mitologija (Croatian National Mythology). Although the book is fragmented, and much of the arguments are incomplete and often opaque, Sučić managed to unravel Croatian mythology by juxtaposing it with other nationalist mythologies of the world. His arguments echoed those voiced by other ideologues of the NDH regime, particularly his insistence on ideas of survival of the nation in terms of racial decline (Sučić 1943b). In this context, Sučić considered that marriage and healthy families were fundamental to the creation of a Croatian state and society (Sučić 1937: 98). Since the task of the sexual act is only to breed, fertilize and create a family, clearly the main and only purpose of marriage is to procreate. Understandably, for Sučić, ‘marriage where a husband looks at his wife as a mistress and wife her husband as a lover, who sexually satisfies her – is not a marriage!’ (Sučić 1937: 98). Sučić described and criticized women from the past (referring to the behaviour of women before the establishment of the NDH, during the period of ‘corrupt’ Yugoslavia), who were ‘seen in cafes, on the street, in a pub, alone and without companion, just everywhere and always, day and night. Dressed blatantly, perfumed intensively, full of ornate things, rings. Many of them were wealthy, unemployed and the main preoccupation was flirting’ (Sučić 1943b: 151). According to Sučić, women who were healthy and fertile, but destroyed their offspring only for the sake of appearances, have no right to be part of the usual cult of women, which is given to mothers. To be more precise, for him some women’s greed for possessions, luxury and easy life, therefore, were an instrument of temporary sexual selfishness and formed a negative social stratum of society (Sučić 1937: 98). He defined the prototype of the Croatian woman as the one who finds the meaning of life in giving birth. But Sučić did not only criticize women. He also said that men ‘who are brutal, drunkards, schizoid or criminal types – should not be allowed to marry’ (Sučić 1943b: 169). Sučić described homosexuality in accordance with the dominant scientific discourse of his time, referring to it as a hereditary disease (like alcoholism and criminality). Not much is known of Sučić’s life and activities after 1945. He may have lived in Rijeka during the 1950s, where he also died in 1960 or possibly 1962.

462

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Inherited Biology14 The character is in the cell, that is, in the chromosomes and genes. Along them we inherit their meaning, be it good or bad. That is how we inherit positive values, such as goodness, well-­meaning, righteousness, respect, decency, morals, bravery and a healthy disposition in females. Apart from good traits we also inherit bad traits, such as: a) Hysterical character; which wants to be sensationalistic and interesting, which wants to clear itself of guilt, which wants to compensate [for] a hated individual and exaggerate personal suffering as an expression of insatiable egoism. Apart from that it inherits hysterical wantonness, a tendency to lie and steal, malice, intrigue, recklessness, unconditional suggestibility, fickleness, inconsistency, capriciousness, stubbornness, brutal and inconsiderate egoism, unrestrained vanity and a desire for adoration and attention. b) Jal (jealousy). The word ‘jal’ is of a definite Croatian origin. Jealousy and the reaction of jealousy consist of the following: Jealousy is an abnormal reaction to daily stimuli and experience of the environment and is a specific form of an innate reaction and personal hypersensitivity. This hypersensitivity is actually intolerance. The reactions of the jealous are very similar to those of hysterics and are actually almost the same in reactive episodes. The characteristic of jealousy is that it is exhibited only in a safe environment, where it cannot be attacked in the locus minoris resistentiae.15 The hysterical reaction and the jealousy reaction are always proportional to the desire to compensate for one’s own mental and, more importantly, physical deficiencies. The compensations are a result of mental deficiencies and physical flaws and this is why they consist of insults, stupid jokes and laughter. [. . .] The Biological Image of a Nation The biological image of a nation whose features were more often negative and less often esteemed or positive throughout the centuries provides a negative index of general advancement. Woe to the nation that has many inferior individuals, many criminals and many oligophrenics (imbeciles). Such persons can graduate from a gymnasium, or even a university, and become good lawyers, doctors, merchants and company managers. Nevertheless, their knowledge is worthless because they are carriers of a deficient character and asocial feelings and are, therefore, always in danger of committing thoughtless and even criminal acts. Such a person will juristically and learnedly prove a lie that is masked as truth. Such types mostly appear in criminal circles of cities and small cities (we do not have large cities). To this category belong: vagabonds, swindlers, frauds and inveterate egoists who cheat and lie in cunning ways. Such individuals comprised a high proportion of the population in Croatia, especially in the northern regions of the Sava basin. In recent times their ranks were doubled by many moral imbeciles (derelicts) who for various reasons moved to Croatia before the war. In this way, a paradox formed. 463

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

While Croats fled to ‘work’ in America, Persia, Asia, Africa, etc., those lazy foreigners became the ‘citizens’ of Croatian cities overnight. If the leading class of the nation has 40 per cent foreign elements, the nation loses the uniqueness of its ancient forefathers. If such a nation consists of a substantial percentage of inferior individuals – like criminals, thieves (‘gentlemen, peasant and poor’) or women who are divorcees, loose or prostitutes – then such a nation has passed into the state of decadence and national decline which is in the psychology of nations known as the extinction of a nation. Such a nation cannot be happy. Not Only the Number, but the Quality of the Offspring Is Important for the Benefit of the Nation Here, this is the importance of heritability. Not only is the multitude of births important for the happiness and advancement of a nation, but also the quality of the offspring! In order to achieve this goal it is important to prevent those who are oligophrenics from birth, hereditarily (unfortunately) blind or deaf, and those who have hereditary deformities or are born as freaks from multiplying and breeding. The fortune and misfortune of every nation rests on this heritage. If we want the nation to be happy we must eliminate the individuals with no character, the foreign scum and all educated and uneducated corrupted persons. The nation, which has throughout the centuries increased the number of individuals with negative features, and lessened the number of those with positive and esteemed features, will sooner or later transform its mental status for the worse! The Biological Death of a Nation The biological death of a nation does not come all at once, but gradually, over several generations. The main factors of the dying out of a race or nation are: bastardization, vices, the white plague, sickness, the multiplying of the inferior, the destruction of mentally strong individuals who are a highly esteemed national asset, emigration of the healthy elements and the introduction and favouring of foreign parasitic elements. These are the crucial fallacies that destroy the homogeneity of esteemed individuals, families and groups and inevitably lead to the death of a nation. The death of a nation also results from degenerative phenomena, such as alcoholism, crime, the emigration of national assets and the immigration of parasitic foreigners who possibly have a higher standard of living and callous mental-­speculative capabilities. Reproduction of the inferior and interbreeding of bastardized elements is one of the cardinal phenomena of national decline. The nation, which still has not understood this, cannot remedy this. It changes its physiognomy, its appearance, and with it its very soul; both the individual soul and the soul of the nation. It changes the species and genus from the smallest cell to its form and colour, all of which are provided by the mutation of the gene. This is the greatest biological discovery of the last century; that the nucleus of the cell and the genes contain within themselves all the hereditary characteristics of a family, group or 464

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

race. The great English and German, and certain Russian, scholars and biologists who used this knowledge to establish the pathology of heritage, already discovered this in the nineteenth century. These biological frameworks are the basis for the modern cultivation of useful plants, fruits and trees, and the breeding and refinement of farm animals, but also of the most important factor, the biological breeding and refinement of a nation. This enormous scientific knowledge is also applied in the racial-­political area. In recent times it has often been applied in all Nordic countries, but most of all in the states of North America. Translation by Dinko Klarić

465

Glossary Arijska rasna zajednica: Aryan racial community Arijskog podrijetla: Aryan origin Biometrija: biometry Eugenika: eugenics Hrvatska rasna zajednica: Croat Aryan community Hrvatska rasa: Croatian race Hrvatska krv: Croatian blood Higijena začeća i rađanja: hygiene of conception and childbirth Higijena rađanja: hygiene of birth Kontraselekcija: contraselection Narodno zdravlje: national health Narodni učitelj: public teacher Očuvanje rase: preservation of the race Ortodietetika: orthodietetics Poboljšanje rase: improvement of the race Rasna higiena: racial hygiene Socijalna higijena: social hygiene Socijalna zaštita: social protection Zaštita potomstva: preservation of the offspring

Notes 1 The newly created state encompassed the territory of modern-­day Croatia and BosniaHerzegovina, with the exception of Istria and large parts of Dalmatia, which were handed over to Italy [note VD]. 2 Hrvatski Narod was a Croatian weekly newspaper published in Zagreb. Soon it became a daily newspaper. The first issue was published in February 1939 and the last in May 1945. Its editor was Mile Budak [note VD]. 3 In comparison, the German law of 1935 speaks of the ‘Deutsches oder artverwandtes Blut’, while the Italian law of 1938 of ‘Razza italiana’ [note VD]. 4 A citizen was a Croat of Aryan origin; a state national was a person under the legal protection of the NDH [note VD]. 5 Estimates put the number of Serbian civilians who died at the hands of Ustasha death squads or in the regime’s concentration camps anywhere between 200,000 and 350,000 out of the nearly 2 million Serbs residing in the Independent State of Croatia, although it is possible that as many as 500,000 perished [note VD]. 6 Štampar, A. (1919d) ‘Primjedbe k osnovi zakona o čuvanju narodnog zdravlja. Preventivni dio zakona’, Liječnički Vjesnik, 41: 424–9 [Excerpts translated from pp. 424–5 and 427–9]. 7 Štampar, A. (1966), ‘On Health Politics’, in Grmek, M. D. (ed.), Serving the Cause of Public Health: Selected Papers of Andrija Štampar, trans. by M. Halar, Zagreb: Medical Faculty of the University of Zagreb, 58–78 [Excerpts translated from pp. 66–7]. 8 Štampar, A (1966), ‘On Social Therapy’, in Grmek, (ed.), Serving the Cause of Public Health, 79–89 [Excerpts included from p. 84]. 9 Zarnik, B. (1931a), ‘Temelji i ciljevi eugenike’, Priroda, 21: 35–48 [Excerpts translated from pp. 45–8]. 10 In 1929 Yugoslavia was divided into nine provinces called Banovinas, each with its own governor (ban) [note VD]. 11 Živković, A. (1933d), ‘O eugenici s morlanog gledišta’, Bogoslovska Smotra, 20: 348–71 [Excerpts translated from pp. 349–54]. 12 Édouard Jordan (1866–1943): French historian and Catholic eugenicist [note VD]. 13 Miloslavić, E. (1942–3), ‘Kobno spriečivanje poroda’, Ustaški Godišnjak, 2: 227–37 [Excerpts translated from pp. 230–2 and 237]. 14 Sučić, N. (1943a), ‘Nasljedna biologija’, in Sučić, N., Na izvoru života, Zagreb: Nakladna knjižara J. Kratina, 1943 [Excerpts translated from pp. 38–42]. 15 ‘Place of less resistance’ (Latin) [note VD].

Bibliography Archives Hrvatski Državni Arhiv (Croatian National Archives), Zagreb Ministarstvo Unutarnjih Poslova Nezavisne Državne Hrvatske 1941–1945 HR-HDA-223, IIA/100

Primary Sources (5 November 1915), ‘Announcement’, Science, 42: 642–3. (1919), ‘Uredba o ustrojstvu Ministarstva Narodnog Zdravlja od 7 lipnja 1919’, Narodne Novine, 85: 1. (1930), ‘Oglas o porezu na neženje, te o poreskom oslobođenju lica sa devetero i Više Djece’, Narodne Novine, 96: 1. (10 April 1941), Hrvatski Narod, Special edition. (18 April 1941), ‘Zakonska odredba za Obranu Naroda i države’ Hrvatski narod, 3: 3. (30 April 1941), ‘Zakonska odredba o zaštiti arijevske krvi i Časti Hrvatskog Naroda’, Narodne Novine, 105: 1. (3 May 1941), Hrvatski Narod, 80. (10 June 1941), ‘Zakonska odredba o zabrani i kažnjavanju uzrokovanog pometnuća i o prekidanju trudnoće’, Narodne Novine, 105: 1. (4 June 1941), ‘Naredba o ustrojstvu i djelokrugu rada rasnopolitičkog povjerenstva’, Narodne Novine, 105: 2. (1942), ‘Rasno-­biologiski tečaj u Zagrebu’, Napredak, 83: 185–6. (5 May 1945), ‘Zakonska odredba o Izjednačenju Pripadnika NDH s obzirom na rasnu pripadnost’, Hrvatski Narod, 7: 1. (1941–45), Zbornik zakona i naredaba Nezavisne Države Hrvatske, Zagreb: Hravtska Državna Tiskara. Dugački, Ž. (1942), ‘Demografijske i Narodne Prilike’, in Dugački, Ž. (ed.), Zemljopis Hrvatske, Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 619–37. Grmek, M. D. (ed.) (1966), Serving the Cause of Public Health: Selected Papers of Andrija Štampar, trans. by M. Halar, Zagreb: Medical Faculty of the University of Zagreb. Gundrum, Fran S. (1905), Zdravstvo spolnoga života, Zagreb: Knjigotisak Milivoja Majcena. Jagodič, V. (1935), ‘Prvi kongres Jugoslovanske Unije za zaščito dece’, Učiteljski Tovariš, 75: 1–2. Kus-Nikolajev, M. (1934), Laž rasizma, Zagreb: Biblioteka Naš front. Lorković, Z. (1945), ‘Prof. dr. Boris Zarnik’, Liečnički Vjestnik, 67: 44–7. Marjanović, M. (1913), Savremena Hrvatska, Beograd: Šrpska Književna Zadruga. Mikić, F. (1940), ‘Vitalnostatistični zavod v Ljubljani’, Kronika Slovenskih Mest, 7: 249–51. Miloslavić, E. (1942–43), ‘Kobnospriečivanje poroda’, Ustaški Godišnjak, 2: 227–37. Miloslavić, E. (1942), Kobno spriečavanje poroda, Zagreb: Hrvatski Tiskarski Zavod. Miloslavić, E. (1942–3), ‘Kobno spriečivanje poroda’, Ustaški Godišnjak, 2: 227–37. Niketić, B. (1936), Duševne i nervne bolesti roditelja i potomstvo, Belgrade: Narodni pomladak. Pavelić, A. (1942), ‘Poglavnikov govor hrvatskim majkama’, U I. Hrvatski Tjedan Majke i djeteta. Od 31. svibnja do 7. lipnja 1942, 3: 3–4.

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Popović, M. Đ. (1918), Dečje pitanje: Program rada Društva za zaštitu Jugoslavenske Dece, Beograd: Društva Za Zaštitu Jugoslavenske Dece. Salač, J. (1942), Brojčano opadanje poroda: Ćudoredno pitanje naše Moslavine, Zagreb: Zagrebačka Priradna Tiskara. Sučić, N. (1935), Spolni život: spolne bolesti i higijena braka, Zagreb: Jugoslavenska Štampa. Sučić, N. (1937), Bolesti živaca i duše: opća psihologija i psihopatologija, Zagreb: Tipografija. Sučić, N. (1939a), Psihologija i psihopatologija nagona ljubavi, Zagreb: Tipografija. Sučić, N. (1939b), Psihologija i psihopatologija čovječanstva, Zagreb: Vlastita Naklada. Sučić, N. (1943a), Na izvoru života, Zagreb: Nakladna knjižara J. Kratina. Sučić, N. (1943b), Hrvatska narodna mitologija: biserje priča čarobnog carstva drevnih vremena, Zagreb: Grafika. Štampar, A. (1910a), ‘Socijalna higiena’, Slobodna Riječ, 9: 5. Štampar, A. (1910b), ‘Socijalna higiena i higijena: Suzbijanje socijalnih bolesti’, Savremenik, 5: 215–16. Štampar, A. (1915), ‘Narodno zdravlje’, in Zadrugar: Koledar Hrvatskih Seljački Zadruga, 94–5. Štampar, A. (1918), ‘Kako ćemo očuvati narodnozdravlje?’, Hrvatska Njiva, 2: 481–3. Štampar, A. (1919a), ‘O zdravstvennoj politici’, Jugoslavenska Njiva, 3: 455–8. Štampar, A. (1919b), ‘O zdravstvennoj politici’, Jugoslavenska Njiva, 3: 471–4. Štampar, A. (1919c), ‘O zdravstvennoj politici’, Jugoslavenska Njiva, 3: 489–91. Štampar, A. (1919d), ‘Primjedbe k osnovi zakona o čuvanju narodnog zdravlja. Preventivni dio zakona’, Liječnički Vjesnik, 41: 424–9. Štampar, A. (1919e), ‘O aktuelnim zadacima naše zdravstvene politike’, Jugoslavenska Njiva, 3: 166–7. Štampar, A. (1919f), ‘Suzbijanje spolnih bolesti’, Jugoslavenska Njiva, 3: 203–5. Štampar, A. (1919–20a), ‘Etika i narodno zdravlje’, Glasnik Ministarstva Narodnog Zdravlja, 1: 17–20. Štampar, A. (1919–20b), ‘O socijalnoj terapiji’, Glasnik Ministarstva Narodnog Zdravlja, 2: 261–71. Štampar, A. (1920), ‘Zadaće zakonodavnih i upravnih oblasti u suzbijanju tuberkuloze’, Liječnički Vjesnik, 42: 113–15. Štampar, A. (ed.), (1921), Nacrt zakona o čuvanju narodnog zdravlja, Belgrade: Ministarstvo Narodnog Zdravlja. Štampar, A. (1925), ‘Politika o populaciji’, Jugoslavenska Njiva, 9: 41–8. Štampar, A. (1928), ‘Naša ideologija’, Nova Evropa, 18: 229–31. Štampar, A. (1938), Public Health in Jugoslavia, London: University of London. Štampar, A. (1939), Zdravlje i društvo, Zagreb: Hrvatska Naklada. Štampar, A. (1940), Higijena i socijalna medicina, Zagreb: Narodne Novine. Thaller, L. (1920), ‘Socijalna indikacija aborta’, Liječnički Vjesnik, 42: 483–4. Zarnik, B. (1930a), ‘Morphologic-Biological Institute, State University at Zagreb, Jugoslavia’, in Methods and Problems of Medical Education, Seventeenth Series, New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 141–58. Zarnik, B. (1930b), ‘Krv i rasa’, Priroda, 20: 1–14. Zarnik, B. (1931a), ‘Temelji i ciljevi eugenike’, Priroda, 21: 35–48. Zarnik, B. (1931b), ‘Rasa i duševna produktivnost’, Priroda, 21: 129–40. Zarnik, B. (1942), ‘Čovjek’, in Hrvatska enciklopedija, vol. 4, Zagreb: Naklada Hrvatskog Izdavalačkog Bibliografskog Zavoda, 355. Zubović, J. (1924), ‘Jugoslovenski čovek’, Nova Evropa, 10: 146–53. Živković, A. (1926), Katolička crkva i duh evropske kulture: Osvrt na izvode g. M. Vidovića u Časopisu, Zagreb: Tisak Nabiskupske Tiskare. Živković, A. (1931), Enciklike pape Pija XI. Za Moralno Socijalni Preporod Drustva, Zagreb: Tisak Nadbiskupiske Tiskare. 469

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Živković, A. (1933a), ‘Iz povijesti eugenike’, Bogoslovska Smotra, 21: 160–8. Živković, A. (1933b), Eugenika i moral, Zagreb: Tisak Nadbiskupske Tiskare. Živković, A. (1933c), ‘Iz povijesti eugenike’, Bogoslovska Smotra, 21: 160–9. Živković, A. (1933d), ‘O eugenici s morlanog gledišta’, Bogoslovska Smotra, 20: 348–71. Živković, A. (1936), ‘Osnovne ideje “pozitivnog kršćanstva” u Njemačkoj’, Bogoslovska Smotra, 23: 233–54. Živković, A. (1938–46), Katoličko Moralno Bogoslovlje, 3 vols, Zagreb: Vlastita Naklada. Živković, A. (1942), ‘Poljedice pometnuća, Bogoslovska Smotra, 30: 130–1.

Secondary Sources (1997), Tko je tko u NDH Hrvatska 1941–1945, Zagreb: Mineva. Balabanić, J. (2009), ‘Darvinizam u Hrvatskoj između znanosti i ideologije’, Nova prisutnost: časopis za intelektualna i duhovna pitanja, 7: 373–406. Balen, I., Vukovac, S. (eds) (2006), Andrija Štampar knjiga I: Mladost Andrije Štampara, Slavonski Brod: Posavska Hrvatska. Bartulin, N. (2006), The Ideology of Nation and Race: The Croatian Ustasha Regime and its Policies toward Minorities in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945, PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales. Bartulin, N. (2007), ‘Ideologija nacije i rase: ustaški režim i politika prema Srbima u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj 1941–1945’, Radovi, 39: 209–42. Bartulin, N. (2009), ‘The Ideal Nordic-Dinaric Racial Type: Racial Anthropology in the Independent State of Croatia’, Review of Croatian History, 1: 189–219. Bartulin, N. (2013), Honorary Aryans: National-Racial Identity and Protected Jews in the Independent State of Croatia, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bartulin, N. (2014), The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia, Leiden: Brill. Biškup, M. (1975), ‘Msgr. dr. Andrija Živković’, Bogoslovska Smotra, 1: 57–67. Blažević, R., Alijagić, A. (2010), ‘Antižidovstvo i rasno zakonodavstvo u fašističkoj Italiji, nacističkoj Njemačkoj i ustaškoj NDH’, Zbornik Pravnog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Rijeci, 2: 879–916. Brown, T. M., Fee, E. (2006), ‘Andrija Stampar: Charismatic Leader of Social Medicine and International Health’, American Journal of Public Health, 96: 1383. Bosiljka, J. (2008), Politički teror u Hrvatskoj 1918–1935., Zagreb: Hrvatski Institut za Povijest-Dom i Svijet. Dugac, Ž. (2005a), Protiv bolesti i neznanja. Rockefellerova fondacija u međuratnoj Jugoslaviji, Zagreb: Srednja Europa. Dugac, Ž. (2005b), ‘Zdravstveno prosvjećivanje protiv tuberkuloze u međuratnoj Hrvatskoj’, Medicus, 14: 155–71. Dugac, Ž. (2008), ‘Andrija Štampar (1888–1958): Resolute Fighter for Health and Social Justice’, in Borowy, I. Hardy, A. (eds), Of Medicine and Men. Biographies and Ideas in European Social Hygiene between the World Wars, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 73–101. Dugac, Ž. (2009), ‘Zdravstveno prosvjećivanje filmom ranih 1920-ih u Hrvatskoj’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41: 751–62. Dugac, Ž. (2010), Kako biti čist i zdrav. Zdravstveno prosvjećivanje u međuratnoj Hrvatskoj, Zagreb: Srednja Europa. Dugac, Ž. (2011), ‘ “Like Yeast in Fermentation”: Public Health in Interwar Yugoslavia’, in Promitzer, C., Trubeta, S., Turda, M. (eds) (2011), Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945, Budapest: Central European University Press, 193–232. Dugac, Ž., Pećina, M. (ed.) (2008a), Andrija Štampar Dnevnik s putovanja 1931–1938, Zagreb: Hrvatska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnost. 470

Yugoslavia II (Croatia)

Dugac, Ž., Fatović-Ferenčić, St., Kovačić, L., Kovačević, T. (2008b), ‘ “Care for Health Cannot Be Limited to One Country or One Town Only, It Must Extend to the Entire World”: The Role of Andrija Štampar in Building the World Health Organization’, Croatian Medical Journal, 49: 697–708. Dugački, V. (1997), ‘Eduard Miloslavić—svjedok istine o boljševičkom velezločinu u Katynskoj šumi’, Marulić: časopis za književnost i kulturu, 30: 1190–4. Dugacki, V. (1999), ‘Prvi medicinski fakultet u Sarajevu (1944–1945)’, Marulić: časopis za književnost i kulturu, 32: 282–5. Dugački, V. (2006), ‘Medicinska nastava u Zagrebu prije otvorenja Medicinskog fakulteta’, Acta Medico-Historica Adriatica, 4: 111–20. Dugački, V. (2007), ‘Razvoj zdravstvenih ustanova u Hrvatskoj do Prvoga svjetskog rata’, Medicus, 16: 251–5. Dugački, V. (2008), ‘Prof. dr. Eduard Miloslavić osnivač Zavoda za sudsku medicine’, List Medicinskog Fakulteta, 27: 60–3. Dugački, V. (2009), ‘Razvoj zdravstvenih ustanova u Hrvatskoj do Prvoga svjetskog rata’, Acta Medico-Historica Adriatica, 7: 61–9. Đurin, S. (2012), ‘O politici seksualnosti u Hrvatskoj devedesetih, o diskursima koji su je oblikovali i o njezinim simptomima danas’, Narodna Umjetnost, 49: 33–51. Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, vol. 8 (1971), Zagreb: Jugoslavenski leksikografski zavod. Enciklopedija Slovenije, vol. 15 (2001), Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga. Fatović-Ferenčić, S. (2008), ‘ “Society as an Organism:” Metaphor as Departure Point of Andrija Štampar’s Health Ideology’, Croatian Medical Journal, 49: 709–19. Fatović-Ferenčić, S., Dugački, V. (2009), ‘Ljudevit Jurak (1881–1945) and Eduard Miloslavić (1884–1952), Founders of Croatian Pathological and Forensic Medicine and Experts at the Investigations of Mass Graves at Katyn and Vinnitsa during WW2’, in Debons, D., Fleury, A., Pitteloud, J.-F. (eds), Katyn and Switzerland- Forensic investigators and investigations in humanitarian crises 1920–2007, Geneva: Georg Editeur, 189–201. Goldstein, I. (2001), Holokaust u Zagrebu, Zagreb: Novi Liber. Jareb, M. (2008), ‘Jesu li Hrvati postali Goti? Odnos ustaša i vlasti Nezavisne Države Hrvatske prema neslavenskim teorijama o podrijetlu Hrvata’, Časopis za Suvremenu Povijest, 40: 869–82. Jelčić, B., Bejaković, P. (2012), Razvoj i perspektive oporezivanja u Hrvatskoj, Zagreb: HAZU. Jukić, V., Matijaca, B. (eds), Psihijatrijska bolnica Vrapče: 1879–1999, Zagreb: Psihijatrijska Bolnica Vrapče. Karaula, Ž. (2012), ‘Drugi svezak memoara Milana Rojca “Oko mene” (1906–1919.), osnivača Zagrebačkog Medicinskog Fakulteta’, List Medicinskog Fakulteta 311: 76–8. Kuhar, M., Fatović-Ferenčić, S. (2012), ‘Prostitutes and Criminals: Beginnings of Eugenics in Croatia in the Works of Fran Gundrum from Oriovac (1856–1919)’, Croatian Medical Journal, 53: 185–97. Leček, S. and Dugac, Ž. (2007), ‘Majke za zdravlje djece: zdravstveno prosvjetna kampanja Seljačke sloge (1939–1941)’, Časopis za Suvremenu Povijest, 39: 983–1005. Masić, I. (2008), ‘Contribution of Andrija Štampar to the Development of Public Health’, Materia Socio Medica, 20: 178–85. Matković, H. (2002), Povijest Nezavisne Države Hrvatske, Zagreb: Naklada P.I.P. Pavičić. Miletić, A. (1986), Koncentracioni logor, Book I: Jasenovac 1941–1945, Belgrade: Narodna knjiga. Polšek, D. (2004), Sudbina odabranih, Zagreb: ArTresor Naklada. Popova, K. (2007), ‘From “Save the Children” to “Save the Tribe”: Child Care in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, 1919–1939’, CAS Working Paper Series, 1: 3–21. Pavlović, E. (2011), ‘Dr. Nikola Sučić—jedan od prvih hrvatskih seksologa’, in Eterović, I. (ed.), Znanstveni skup ‘Rijeka i Riječani u medicinskoj povjesnici’ 2000–2009, Rijeka: Hrvatsko Znanstveno Društvo za Povijest Zdravstvene Kulture, 27. 471

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Srpak, N. (2006), ‘Kazneno pravo u doba Nezavisne Države Hrvatske (1941–1945)’, Hrvatski ljetopis za kazneno pravo i praksu, 13: 1117–44. Švajger, A. (1991), ‘Tradition and the Present State of Developmental Biology in Yugoslavia’, The International Journal of Developmental Biology, 35: 155–60. Van Zile Hyde, H. (1958), ‘A Tribute to Andrija Štampar, M.D., 1888–1958’, American Journal of Public Health, 48: 1578–82. Weiss-Wendt, A., Yeomans, R. (eds) (2013), Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 1938–1945, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Yeomans, R. (2007), ‘Of Yugoslav Barbarians and Croatian Gentlemen Scholars: Nationalist Ideology and Racial Anthropology in Interwar Yugoslavia’, in Turda, M., Weindling, P. J. (eds), Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe 1900–1940, Budapest: Central European University Press, 83–122. Yeomans, R. (2011), ‘Fighting the White Plague: Demography and Abortion in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941–1945’, in Promitzer, Trubeta and Turda (eds), (2011), Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945, 385–426. Yeomans, R. (2012), Visions of Annihilation: The Ustasha Regime and the Cultural Politics of Fascism, 1941–1945, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Yeomans, R. (2013), ‘Eradicating “Undesired Elements”: National Regeneration and the Ustasha’s Regime’s Program to Purify the Nation, 1941–1945’, in Weiss-Wendt, Yeomans (eds), Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 200–36. Zvonar, I. (2010), ‘Prilog za Biobibliografiju Mons. Dr. Andrije Živkovića’, PILAR-Časopis za Društvene i Humanističke Studije, 5: 71–87.

472

8 Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Overview Vladimir Petrović

I Prior to World War I, the notion of eugenics was largely absent from Serbian medical discourse. One of the earliest eugenic texts in Serbian came from its Bosnian diaspora in Austro-Hungary. It was written by the physician Uroš Krulj (1875–1961) in 1910 and entitled ‘Nacionalna rasna higijena’ (‘National Racial Hygiene’). Inspired by Francis Galton, Krulj dwelled on the measures offered by eugenics in promoting national health and advocated a full set of eugenic measures, including birth control and regulation of marriage (Krulj 1910: 260–72). Such plans were perhaps too ambitious for Serbia, which lacked systematic local training for medical practitioners, and education of its doctors was in Vienna, Prague and Budapest through a programme of state scholarships. Upon their return, these scarce medical personnel went either into private practice, or worked in the few hospitals that existed in Serbia at that time. They combated both infectious and chronic diseases, which seriously threatened public health, and triggered the discussion of methods for its improvement. Early eugenic ideas of organized social hygiene were also advocated by Milan Jovanović Batut (1847–1940), one of Serbia’s most active promoters of preventive medicine at the time. These debates, however, were cut short by the prolonged period of warfare in the Balkans (1912–18), which put an enormous strain on Serbia’s scientific and political elites. Its medical community was practically decimated during the 1915 typhus epidemics, which was as traumatic for the general population as was the 1918 Spanish influenza in Bosnia and Croatia. The health system in the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes emerged against this disastrous backdrop. The devastating experience of World War I was fixed firmly in the minds of the founders of the new state. As was the case with their French contemporaries, Yugoslav policymakers and intellectuals were of the opinion that victory was earned at the cost of a demographic catastrophe. To that end, major changes in the medical sphere were envisaged. A general shift from curative to preventive medicine was the order of the day. One argument frequently used among the main advocates of the public health movement was that the state should react proactively, rather than being limited to retroactive treatment.

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

II On 3 November 1918 the Ministry of Public Health (Ministarstvo Narodnog Zdravlja) was established under the control of Uroš Krulj; it was properly organized on 17 December 1920 and ultimately regulated by the ‘Law on the Structure of the Ministry of Public Health’ (‘Zakon o ustrojstvu Ministarstva Narodnog Zdravlja’) on 25 November 1921. After 1919, official publications from this ministry started to influence the field of health and hygiene, while introducing professional and public audiences to the concept of eugenics. A part of Krulj’s own writings (Krulj 1920), a comprehensive discussion of various theories of human improvement was provided in a book entitled Eugenika: Higijena čovečijeg začeća i problemi nasledja (Eugenics: Hygiene of Human Conception and the Problem of Inheritance), written by a young military doctor, Vladimir Stanojević (Stanojević 1920). The desire to ‘create a healthy society’ together with attempts ‘to increase the biological capital’ and ‘to eradicate our weaknesses’ intensified during the 1920s. Serbian doctors were becoming more interested in the possibilities for improving the nation’s biological capital. In this context racial hygiene and eugenic research aroused interest as it seemed to offer practical measures for the improvement of the nation’s general state of health. Until the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, healthcare in Serbia was regulated by the 1881 ‘Law on the Organization of Medical Profession and the Preservation of Public Health’ (‘Zakon o uređenju sanitetske struke i čuvanju narodnog zdravlja’). After 1918, as a part of the institutional changes there were attempts to redefine the role of healthcare within the overall legal structure of the new state. The first constitution of the new state, proclaimed on 28 June 1921, detailed the socio-­ economic responsibilities of the state. Article 27 explained the involvement of the state in regulating the health of the population, stipulating that: The State will provide for: (1) The improvement of general hygienic and social conditions that affect public health; (2) Special provisions for mothers and small children; (3) The protection of the health of all citizens; (4) Containment of all acute and chronic infectious diseases and of the abuse of alcohol; (5) Free medical help, medications and other aspects of protection of health, for the poor. An attempt to act on these promises and unify the distribution of healthcare at national level was expressed in a number of draft laws, most notably the ‘Law for the Protection of National Health’ (‘Zakon o čuvanju narodnog zdravlja’) proposed to Parliament in February 1921. Although this proposal, like similar others, never became law, its draft offers important insights into the eugenic views held by the Ministry of Public Health. Its first chapter proposed an ambitious set of educational and public awareness measures, as follows:

475

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Chapter 1: Health Education §1 The Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Education are obliged to take care of the health education of the people: a) To organize public lectures on the topic of health b) To found special mobile teams for popular education, equipped with vehicles and other equipment necessary for practical education c) To organize permanent and travelling exhibitions on health d) To create plans of healthcare institutions for the people §2 Every cinema is obliged to show films on health, at least once a week §3 Societies concerned with the protection of public health are entitled to special subventions from those ministries which work on popular education §4 All state and private schools are obliged to teach hygiene. The Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Education will set the curriculum The draft law’s second chapter proposed a set of measures including the prevention of marriage for specific categories of the population: Chapter 2: The Improvement of Race-Eugenics §5 When two people register their intention to get married at the church or a state institution, they will get a specially written brochure outlining instructions on the importance of health and the harmful effects of diseases on marriage and family. §6 Marriage is banned for those who are ill with any mental disease, epilepsy; severe degeneration of the nervous system, those who are of weak moral character, mentally handicapped, ill with active tuberculosis or any sexually transmitted disease in an infectious stage. The protracted legal and administrative harmonization in Yugoslavia, as well as the resistance of the Serbian medical community to these initiatives, which aspired to have its 1881 law re-­enacted, resulted in a legislative stalemate which lasted until 1941. Consequently, no eugenic law was introduced in Yugoslavia during the inter-­war period. These disagreements notwithstanding, belief in the necessity of strong state intervention in shaping the general health of the population was shared by all political parties. A network of medical institutions, consisting of the Ministry of Public Health, the Chief Sanitary Council (Glavni Sanitetski Savet), the School of National Health (Škola Narodnog Zdravlja) and the Central Hygienic Bureau (Centralni Higijenski Zavod) was set up with the task of coordinating healthcare across the entire country by reaching out to its population and altering its living conditions. The Ministry not only covered the health system, but also social policy, which was reflected in the change of its name to the Ministry of Social Hygiene and Public Health (Ministarstvo Socijalne Politike i Narodnog 476

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Zdravlja) in 1929. A set of institutions under this ministry, such as the Chief Sanitary Council and the Department for Racial, Public and Social Hygiene (Odeljenje za Rasnu, Javnu i Socijalnu Higijenu) dealt with public health guidelines. The system was intended to evolve into a ‘capillary’ network that would reach the entire country with the Central Hygienic Bureau at its centre. The Bureau was founded in 1924 and carried out its central role together with the Permanent Bacteriological Station and the Institute of Social Hygiene (Institut za Socijalnu Higijenu). The creation of the new state seemed to offer a new beginning, and was followed by a set of initiatives intended to improve the healthcare of the population. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes took the lead in EastCentral Europe in formulating a state-­sponsored childcare programme.

III The institutionalization of social hygiene in Yugoslavia, therefore, occurred under the influence of preventive medicine. To this effect, the Faculty of Medicine was established at the University of Belgrade in 1923, and within it the chair and the Institute for Social Hygiene, led by the hygienist Bogoljub Konstantinović (1896–1944). The Serbian professors at the Faculty shared their enthusiasm for preventive measures as part of a wider programme of social hygiene and public health. Interestingly, this fascination was scattered across a wide political spectrum. Stevan Ivanić, whose initial political inclinations leaned towards the left, also argued for a greater role for the new state in public health. Emblematic of this period is his book Za Narodno Zdravlje (For Public Health), written as a healthcare programme for the Yugoslav Social Democrats (Ivanić 1921). The book argued for bold reform of the institutional framework of healthcare, creation of a well-­developed sanitary apparatus and for the division of the newly created Medical faculty into two branches divided between individual and social medicine. The envisaged measures provided an expanded role for the state in the health affairs of its subjects, and for the complete socialization of medical services. Particular attention was given to eugenic measures. Similar measures were advocated by Svetislav Stefanović, whose political allegiances, as well as Ivanić’s, shifted gradually from left to right, but whose determination towards the crucial role of eugenic measures in the general project of racial regeneration remained untouched. Despite this shared enthusiasm and apparent similarities in their ways of thinking, the reception of eugenic thought among Serbian medical and political elites was neither simple nor straightforward, and was subjected to different interpretations and challenges across the political spectrum of the new state’s multi-­national government. Emerging victorious from the war with an enlarged territory and multi-­ethnic population, there were many authors in Yugoslavia who criticized the growing influence of German racial science in Serbia. As early as 1921, Laza Popović (1877–1945), Professor of Radiology at the School of Medicine in Zagreb and Director of the Central Institute of Roentgenology, condemned what he saw as a ‘dangerous dead-­end of hypertrophic ideas – egotistic, national-­ imperialistic currents, such as, the cult of pan-Germanism (promoted by Chamberlain and 477

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

others)’. He also denied the existence of ‘pure races’, as ‘humankind [was] in fact a colossal mixture of races’ (Popović 1921: 243). Interestingly enough, similar critiques of ideas of racial superiority came from the political right. Svetislav Stefanović, for instance, had ‘observed in Yugoslavia the same phenomenon which had emerged in other countries recently – that young, renewed nationalism is significantly sprinkled with racialist elements. It is a task of serious scholars and researchers in the field of racial sciences to help avoid and prevent [the] perversions of racism’ (Stefanović 1936: 83–91). Nonetheless, the most consistent criticism of racial thought came from Marxist authors. In 1937, philosopher Dušan Nedeljković (1899–1984), for example, alluded to racism’s inherent connection with Nazism in his book Rase i rasizam (Race and Racism). He sought to shield the concept of distinct races from such abuses by dividing the ‘illegitimate ideas of racial supremacy’ from ‘legitimate studies’ of the ethno-­ psychological peculiarities of different racial types (Nedeljković 1937). In the same year, the leftist physician and sociologist Ljubomir Živković (1900–68) published his Ljudsko društvo i rasna teorija (Human Society and Racial Theory), in which he outlined the distortion of Darwinist thought by the imperialistic tendencies of capitalism which gave credence to racial theories (Živković 1937). The contradictory credo ‘yes to race, no to racism’ was popular with the majority of Yugoslav authors of the period, notwithstanding the enormous political differences between them. For instance, Laza Popović continued to advocate the work of German racial hygienists (particularly those of Alfred Ploetz, Wilhelm Schallmayer and Otto Ammon) in an attempt to overcome stiff racial divisions and the narrow physical anthropological definition of race. Through this wider approach, Popović discarded the principle of selection as an applied form of racial hygiene, ‘as, from the point of view of the community, all lives are equally worthy, there are no better or worse lives, and it is natural to stop the blade of selection at this point’. Still, he acknowledged the collective duty of fostering ‘national reparation’ based on ‘the creation of a normal and average type’, and he saw ‘the true definition of the so-­called betterment of the race in raising the number of bearers of that type’ (Popović 1921: 243–4). Summing up his eugenic creed, he asserted: Races exist only as mixed, but an average, normal, healthy and strong type, which is created in physical, intellectual and moral harmony and needs to be developed. This can and will be done, first and foremost, with the peasantry, which is the best, strongest and healthiest segment of society – far more numerous than the inhabitants of the cities – and which already carries the instinct of racial selection and eugenics in itself and its soul. (Popović 1921: 244) Reservations towards racism among Serbian intellectuals did not necessarily result in resistance to eugenic thought and practice. The failure to develop these ideas into practical measures was a constant source of frustration. The new state included a mixture of different healthcare infrastructures, inherited from Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro and even the Ottoman Empire. Visions of their harmonization and modernization differed, revealing, not in the least, inter-­ethnic tensions within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. 478

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

The modalities of state intervention were hotly debated. Initiatives in this direction became altogether stronger at the end of the 1920s and at the beginning of the 1930s, partly under influence of the general European move towards the political right, and partly as a consequence of accumulating dissatisfaction with political life in Yugoslavia, particularly by its failure to adequately solve national questions. Nevertheless, because the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes presented a complex case of nation-­building, its eugenic agenda was never clear-­cut. In the beginning it was unclear whether the goal of its eugenic project was to create a new Yugoslav identity; to maintain or reinforce existing ethnic loyalties; or to create a new ‘Yugoslav man’ through the maintenance, strengthening, hybridization or destruction of existing identities. The destination became clearer from 1929 with the imposition of royal dictatorship, followed with renaming of the country as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and introduction of the doctrine of ‘integral Yugoslavism’. As the pronounced goal of the regime was based on the imposition of Yugoslav sentiments onto more firmly established local identities (Serb, Croat and Slovene), the concept of ‘purification’ of the nation was not considered politically feasible. Alleged ‘Yugoslav’ racial qualities were advocated as the presumed outcome of a healthy mixture between different groups comprising the so-­called ‘Dinaric race’. The proponents of a strong Yugoslav state and nation were inspired by the anthropological work produced by the Serbian geographer Jovan Cvijić (1865–1927) and his disciples. Cvijić’s ‘Dinaric type’ was considered to be the basis of a new ‘Yugoslav man’. The inter-­war period saw a number of ventures towards supporting this notion with empirical evidence and exploring the resultant sub-­types (Cvijić 1922, 1931). Political support for the enhancement and protection of the ‘Yugoslav race’ grew stronger. According to Dušan Stojanović, for instance, ‘The nation is a reservoir of energy. In humankind it plays the same role that herbs plays in nature. It carries strength in itself, and is a source of strength. It is a measure of the power of the race’ (Stojanović 1929: 387–8). Around the same time, Velibor Jonić (1892–1946), future Minister of Education in the collaborationist Commissary Government, proposed a racial definition of culture, deducing ‘a number of signs which make it obvious that today we, the Slavs, are called upon to lead humankind (Jonić 1928: 263). With the introduction of the royal dictatorship, this faction received state support and institutional backing through the creation of the Yugoslav Society for the Preservation of Public Health, led by the founder and the long-­lasting director of Central Hygienic Bureau, Dr Stevan Ivanić, who in the meantime had become closely affiliated with the extreme right. The leading personality of the new institution was not a medical doctor, but an anthropologist, Branimir Maleš, who directed his attention towards anthropological research, based on large samples of empirical data. He argued that there were ‘basic differences’ between Dinaric and Alpine races. Both were ‘brachymorphic, and although their cephalic index perhaps matches completely, they are so different that they cannot possibly belong to the same anthropological group’. The political implications of this assumption were immediate: ‘we repeat: the Dinaric race is a completely formed and independent race’ (Maleš 1936a: 1–7). That is not to say that a consensus existed among Serbian eugenicists with respect to the Dinaric origin of the Serbs, as demonstrated by 479

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

the debate between Maleš and Stefanović over the importance of a connection between blood and race. Anthropology therefore joined forces with medicine in the creation of a new political community. Medical activity in diagnosing the state of the population’s health was followed by a wave of anthropological studies, expressed in endeavours to measure and classify the population. In the final years of inter-­war Yugoslavia a dangerous mixture of medicine and anthropology received professional support, and was on course to exert influence on policymaking, entailing proposals to limit the offspring of the disabled population, a suggestion which resonated with the eugenic measures undertaken in the Third Reich. The concept of racial purity never evolved into an organized policy, but was nevertheless immensely influential in political discourse, particularly in the early 1940s.

IV In the political chaos that followed the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the Axis Powers aspired to maintain control by supporting the ultra-­nationalist regime in the newly created Independent State of Croatia, and by attempting to found a similar arrangement by which to govern the shrunken, occupied Serbia. In such circumstances, the ideas of racial and national renewal gained a new meaning. On 30 April 1941, Stevan Ivanić became the Commissioner of the Ministry of Social Policy in the collaborationist administrative government. He publicized his programme on Radio Belgrade on 5 June 1941, and outlined the failure of the inter-­war social policy. His broadcast stressed the importance of the example set by National Socialist Germany and proclaimed: ‘We understand the life of the state and of the national community organically. The state and the national community represent an organism. Therefore one should always attempt to place all organs within the body. Until now, we have had many organs, but no body’. At the same time, Ivanić called upon the ‘manly words of Hitler’ and upon traditions of the old Serbian zadruga (families living together in a close-­knit community). He announced the creation of a dense healthcare network through the unification of preventive and curative medicine with a remit to ‘preserve the health of our people, defend it from sickness; protect the family, children and mothers from degeneration and mortality; overcome many social diseases and teach them [how to live] a healthy and progressive life’ (Ivanić 1941: 1–2). Shortly after, Branimir Maleš declared, in the journal Novo Vreme (New Time), that ‘an awkward mixture appears through a sudden acceptance of a superior culture – in our case Western civilization’. In assessing the damage from the quick and superficial reception of foreign ideas, he attributed the phenomenon to a certain ‘characteristic of Dinaric man’. For him the two main problems facing the new Serbia were ‘the peasant who abandoned the plough and the pseudo-­intellectual. They are our greatest evils, which need to be eradicated without mercy’ (Maleš 1941: 4). The appointment of the collaborationist Commissary Government on 11 July 1941 created a new impetus for putting eugenic ideas into practice. As the occupying regime stabilized, concentration camps were established in Belgrade and elsewhere in Serbia 480

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

with the purpose of ‘cleansing’ the country of ‘undesirable elements’. More was to follow, as announced by Ivanić in August 1941: To that end, preparations are made to establish a special institute for racial-­ biological research and for the protection of our people from bad influences of heritage and ruinous racial mixing. The desire to protect human generations from the unfavourable consequences of hereditary diseases, as well as to foster racial and biological specificities of the people is increasingly felt both in science and in practical politics. Our people belong to the Dinaric race, one of the best races of humankind. We need to protect, nurture and foster this rich, God-­given heritage by all means known and recognized by contemporary scholarship. (Maleš 1941: 4) The announced research institution echoed plans put forward by one of the main politicians of the new regime, Dimitrije Ljotić (1891–1945), who argued that the new Serbian state needed to perform the racial and biological protection of the nation’s health. This brief summer of eugenic dreams ended in the autumn of 1941. Limited by wartime realities, the collaborationist regime of General Milan Nedić was not institutionally capable of such radical measures. The transformation of Serbian society that it advocated was pushed through with less revolutionary measures, such as repression of ideological opponents, the re-­education of the youth and nationalization of culture. Proponents of strict eugenic measures, such as Ivanić, remained somewhat sidelined. Others, such as Branimir Maleš and Svetislav Stefanović, were active. Stefanović in particular glorified in his texts the ‘fascist revolution of Western Europe’. A strong proponent of the ‘organic’ conception of Serbia, he announced a time of ‘radical cleansing and renouncing of the foreign political burden which has nothing to do with the realities of Serbian national peasantry, therefore, we all are in favour of the organic building of New Serbia’ (Stefanović 1942 [2006]: 83). In the following two years the Nedić regime initiated measures directed towards the protection of mothers and children, and went a step further by launching a compulsory medical and anthropological screening of school children, with the ultimate goal of sending recommendations to parents stipulating whether ‘the student should: a) continue schooling in a Gymnasium, b) be transferred to a specialized school, or c) learn a craft or if he or she is showing special abilities for something [in particular]’ (‘Izveštaj o radu prosvetnog odbora i pregled rada Ministarstva prosvete i vera’, Prosvetni Glasnik 1943: 425). More far-­reaching eugenic proposals followed. On the initiative of the writer Vladimir Velmar-Janković (1895–1976), Assistant-Minister of Education and Religion, his ministry established, during 1942, an expert committee with the task of creating a document detailing a long-­term development programme for Serbia, the so-­called ‘Srpski civilni plan’ (‘Serbian Civil Plan’). The committee was called the ‘Advisory Board’ and was composed of Velibor Jonić, Minister of Education and Religion; Vladimir Velmar-Janković; Professor Nikola Popović, Rector of Belgrade University; 481

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Radoslav Grujić, Dean of the Faculty of Theology; Professor Veselin Čakjanović, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy; Professor Branko Popović, Dean of the Technical Faculty; Professor Mihajilo Gradojević, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture; Professors Nikola Radojčić, Milosav Vasiljević and Dušan J. Popović. A number of sub-­committees were also created to analyse the state of affairs in different spheres of life in Serbia, to detect key problems, and to suggest ideas for a programmatic document entitled ‘Putevi srpskog samosnalaženja’ (‘Paths to Serbian Self-­help’). One such sub-­committee was the Board for the Protection of Serbian Blood and Serbian Offspring (Odbor za Zaštitu Srpske Krvi i Srpskog Potomstva). It consisted of three professors from the Faculty of Medicine: Borivoje D. Milojević, Svetislav Barjaktarević and Borivoje Tasovac. The Board’s main task was eugenic research. To this effect, it proposed to establish a ‘Eugenic Bureau’ (‘Eugenički biro’) at the University of Belgrade, namely a Department for scientific and statistical analysis of population problems, as well as genetic research. The Board also called for the introduction of a ‘Eugenic Law’ (‘Eugenički zakon’), the implementation of eugenic marriage counselling, and the creation of the Serbian Eugenics Society (Srpsko Eugeničko Društvo), in order to promote eugenic education among the Serbs. In detail, the eugenic agenda contained the following basic guidelines: 1) The introduction of measures to maintain and improve Serbian somatic and psychological racial type; 2) Establishment of institutions for the implementation of these measures. The Board for the Protection of Serbian Blood and Serbian Offspring would coordinate the activity of the following boards: for biological-­ anthropological research of Serbian man and for the creation of a racial map; for social and medical research of our country; for the protection of mothers and children; for sociological research of the Serbian environments. Many eugenic inquiries and measures could only be implemented after these other boards issued the necessary directives. (‘Board Report from January 1944’, AVII, NDA, 35-2a–40) Velmar-Janković circulated this eugenic agenda to the other experts in the field, including Dr Stevan Ivanić, who in turn sent a reply dated January 1944, which contained a number of proposals to advance the eugenic project in Serbia, with a zeal apparently untouched by a turn in the fortunes of the war (Ivanić 1944).

V The main Serbia eugenicists found themselves in positions of considerable institutional power under the collaborationist regime. They also shared the predicaments of its collapse in autumn 1944. Svetislav Stefanović was among the first to be shot by the Communist authorities upon the liberation of Belgrade from the Germans. Ivanić and Maleš succeeded in emigrating, but were declared war criminals by post-­war 482

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Yugoslavia. Less important figures from the medical community remained, however, in their posts, as the new regime needed them to reorganize the new healthcare system (Nikoliš 1981). Among the Serbian eugenicists, only Vladimir Stanojević made a successful transition in the post-­war period, retaining a university post in the secluded field of history of medicine. His final published work appeared in 1960 and was entitled Tragedija genija. Duševni poremećaji znamenitih ljudi (Tragedy of a Genius. Mental Diseases of Illustrious Men). The book dealt at length with the problem of the inheritance of mental traits, and was reprinted in 1972. Praising Gregor Mendel and Francis Galton, Stanojević basically reproduced, in this late work, all of his major arguments from his 1920 book on eugenics, albeit only partially conceding that a general shift in attitudes had taken place. ‘Biological science and the pathology of inheritance’, he wrote, ‘cannot experiment on humans as it is against their free will, and also because these experiments would span generations. Consequently the experiments are conducted on plants and animals’ (Stanojević 1960: 65). With apparent regret, he concluded that ‘biology and pathology of human inheritance have thus far provided us with modest results, and therefore, brought to a halt the practical work on eugenics – the conscious and planned betterment of human offspring’ (Stanojević 1960: 74). Apart from Stanojević’s work, the very word ‘eugenics’ disappeared from post-­war Serbian and Yugoslav medical discourse, alongside the change of the names of the public health institutions after the war. For instance, the Central Hygienic Bureau became the Federal Hygienic Institute (Savezni Higijenski Institut) in 1945 and eventually the Institute for Public Health (Institut za Javno Zdravlje), revealingly named in 1979 in honour of Milan Jovanović Batut.

483

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Vladimir Petrović and Dragomir Bondžić Translations by Marija Petrović

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Vladimir Stanojević

(1886, Caribrod–1978, Belgrade)

Born near Caribrod (Bul.: Dimitrovgrad), the son of a customs officer, Vladimir Stanojević attended elementary school in Pirot and then gymnasia in Niš and Belgrade. In 1905 he received a state scholarship to study medicine in Saint Petersburg, and graduated there in 1911. During his studies he took additional medical courses in Berlin, Vienna and Munich. Upon his return to Serbia, he was conscripted into the army and served in both the First and the Second Balkan Wars, rising to the rank of lieutenant and was appointed as a hospital commander. He had experience in the treatment of dysentery and malaria, as well as typhoid fever, which nearly killed him during the 1914–15 epidemics. After recovering, Stanojević oversaw the largest wartime military hospital in Niš, and organized its withdrawal across Albania to Corfu. For the rest of World War I he served as a military doctor in Odessa, Russia as well as on the Thessaloniki front, gaining considerable experience in organizing military healthcare. At the end of World War I, Stanojević became a lecturer in hygiene at the Infantry School for Non-Commissioned Officers and in 1922 he was promoted to head of the Statistical Medical Office in the Ministry of Defence. He was also one of the founders of the Yugoslav Society for the Protection of Public Health (Jugoslovensko Društvo za Zaštitu Narodnog Zdravlja) and one of the editors of the journal Zdravlje. Around the same time Stanojević turned his attention to eugenics. His first article on this topic was published in 1919 in the official journal of the newly established Ministry of Social Hygiene and Public Health (Ministarstvo Socijalne Politike i Narodnog Zdravlja) (Stanojević 1919–20: 20–6). It was followed, in 1920, by Eugenika. Higijena čovečijeg začeća i problem nasledja. The book gave a state of the art overview of the field of eugenics. It also advocated both further research and the implementation of eugenically informed public awareness campaigns (Stanojević 1920). Stanojević was also interested in the social function of medicine in times of war, epidemics and hygiene in such books as Istorija ratnih zaraza (The History of Wartime Epidemics, 1924); Istorija srpskog vojnog saniteta (The History of Serbian Military Healthcare, 1925); Vojna higijena (Military Hygiene, 1926); and Narod i odbrana zemlje (People and the Defence of the Country, 1928). Later, in Paris, he specialized in the study of protection against chemical weapons. Upon his return to Yugoslavia in 1929, Stanojević continued his career in the army, advancing to the rank of brigadier general in military healthcare. He was head of the Division Hospital in Vranje, then Chief of the Medical Corps of the First Army District in Novi Sad, and head of the Army Hospital in Zagreb. He was also in charge of the Main Military Medical Depot in Zemun, and organized its evacuation during the April War in 1941. He was captured, but was soon released and settled in Belgrade. In the autumn of 1941 he was appointed the Head of the Military Medical Division in the 485

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

collaborationist Commissariat of the Ministry of Public Health and Social Politics (Komesarijat Ministarstva Socijalne Politike i Narodnog Zdravlja), which at that time was headed by Stevan Ivanić. At his own request he was discharged and allowed to retire at the beginning of 1942. Most of the work he published after the war was in the field of the history of medicine, which he taught at the University of Medicine in Belgrade. In 1952, he wrote a textbook on the history of medicine (Stefanović 1952), and organized the Section for the History of Medicine of Serbian Medical Association (Sekcija za Istoriju Medicine Srpskog Lekarskog Društva). He was elected an honorary member of the French Society for the History of Medicine. He died in Belgrade in 1978.

486

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Eugenics. The Hygiene of Human Conception and the Problem of Inheritance1 Eugenics is a new word in hygiene and biology. It was created several years ago by the English naturalist Sir Francis Galton. The word ‘eugenics’ is of Greek origin and in translation means ‘good breeding’; that is, ‘breeding of healthy progeny’. Galton used this word to name a new hygienic-­biological science which he founded with the intention and the goal of examining and perfecting the laws of improvement and cultivation of the human race. Physical and mental improvement and cultivation of human progeny through the hygienic-­biological regulations of births and of healthy marriages – this is the purpose and the goal of eugenics. Closely connected to eugenics is another science, which originated in Germany in the 1890s. This is Racial Hygiene or as the Germans call it ‘Rassenhygiene’. The goal of this science which concerns itself with the procreation of healthy progeny is somewhat wider and more comprehensive than that of eugenics. Eugenics is concerned with the hygiene of human reproduction, and it deals exclusively with the internal, biological factors of healthy progeny, while racial hygiene (exclusive of eugenics) is concerned not only with the internal factors but also with a complex of external, social, national, economic and all other factors which have influence on the conception and birth of healthy progeny. In place of incantations and palm reading we have today precise and secure data and laws which let us know in advance the destiny of each child. The science which makes this possible is hereditary science or genetics. Eugenics is a science concerned with man’s future; it is like a new Book of Revelations which foretells the destiny and the happiness of people as soon as they are born. Those who are getting married and who want to know in advance their domestic situation and the happiness of their children – just need to open this book, read it and think it over. Darwin was the first one to notice that civilized humankind gets weaker the more it develops and moves forward. [. . .] The more a social class or a nation develops culturally, the more it degenerates, and comes closer to death and extermination. This is a law of human biology. When dealing with primitive peoples, as well as with animals the task of eugenics is simple because in these instances the manner and the tempo of procreation, as well as the improvement and natural selection of progeny, takes its natural, instinctive course, and is best regulated by nature itself through the process of natural selection. Eugenics’ task is indescribably difficult among civilized humanity, which lives not in natural but in artificial living conditions, where the laws of natural selection are not only without any power, but on the contrary, are constantly disrupted and annulled by the numerous factors of counter selection. [. . .] Civilized humanity in its entirety can only move forward – it cannot go back to nature, to natural ways of life. Therefore, the original way of solving eugenic issues has to be discarded as unrealistic. We are then left only with the second option, the option of practising hygiene. This is a compromise, an option indicating the acceptance of life under artificial conditions. The aim is to correct and counterbalance unnatural and artificial characteristics of civilized life. 487

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

When understood in this way, eugenics can be divided into two fields of study. Firstly, the hygiene of reproduction has the goal of investigating and applying the laws and hygienic measures of human reproduction, secondly, the hygiene of improvement and cultivation of progeny aims to develop measures which would lead to better and more precisely selected progeny. In other words, the first is quantitative and the second is qualitative eugenics. Through centuries of experience with breeding and cross-­breeding of various animals man has come to the empirical conclusion that the success of breeding depends on the biological factors which are at play. Breeding is most successful when a male and a female from the same biological genus, but from two distinctive races are matched. [. . .] However, constant inbreeding not only leads to reduced fertility, but in the end to extinction. [. . .] Wherever there was no diversity and no biological crudeness among people, that is to say wherever marriages happened only among a restricted number of people, classes or nations; wherever there was no influx of or mixing with the people and races who were crude, fresh and untarnished by culture, it led to the decline of the offspring and extinction. [. . .] On the contrary, wherever there was more diversity and more exposure to biological crudeness propagation was faster, and advancement stronger. [. . .] According to all of this, the hygiene of human reproduction, i.e. quantitative eugenics, implies a rational use and regulation of these factors of diversity and biological crudeness on the one hand, and improvement of all external factors of propagation on the other. The situation is different regarding mental improvement and cultivation of offspring. In this case it is not the biological laws of natural selection which are in force, but man-­ introduced artificial selection, counter selection, led not by biological, but by practical considerations. Domesticated and improved breeds of domestic animal, cultivated plants, and even civilized man – all of this achieved through counter selection, and not through selection. Considering its ‘unnatural’ origin, mental improvement also requires unnatural, anti-­biological and counter-­selective conditions for its development and perfection. And while the physical improvement of offspring requires frequent mixing of different blood, the mental cultivation on the contrary demands the preservation of a single-­breed of blood, pure blood, and separation from other ‘unclean’ blood. When breeding domestic animals, with the aim to produce selected offspring, man selects and pairs only the best specimens, those which have good characteristics and qualities, and are free of faults and illnesses. The aim of matching selected human individuals is the same, here we also have exactly the same goal. In the cultured circumstances of our lives this aim is achieved through marriages. Thus the issue of ‘matching’ individuals does not mean anything else but the reform and reorganization of the ways in which marriages are conducted. Modern ways of conducting marriages and modern matching of cultured people are not based on the principles of eugenics, and do not secure healthy and selected offspring. On the contrary, through their artificiality and their materialistic and social prejudices and motives they contribute to the deformation and disfiguration of the progeny. There is nothing natural in the modern way of creating human couples, not one of the conditions 488

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

and aims of eugenics is observed – everything is artificial, and eugenic considerations are completely ignored. In place of the natural, instinctive mating of strong, fresh and healthy individuals, who won in the struggle for survival, who had remained alive only because of their stamina and strength; in place of mating in the heat of the romantic fervour and natural sexual drive, modern man approaches everything differently. Not only material, but various cultural and moral concerns and motives are considered. There are barriers: class, religion, nationality, social status, folk beliefs and customs, different levels of culture, different religious and civic customs, formalities and other innumerable similar considerations. Modern marriage serves the purposes of the church, the state and tradition better than the needs of individuals and their progeny. Modern marriage is not only a servant, but also a killer of its offspring. Therefore it is necessary to reform marriage on the principles of eugenics, and to promote eugenic marriages far and wide. Active propaganda should be used as soon as possible to create a strong consciousness of eugenics among people, and to create both a new morality and reform marriage law based on eugenics. Translation by Marija Petrović

489

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Uroš Krulj

(1875, Mostar, Bosnia–1961, Belgrade)

Uroš Krulj was born to a Serbian family in Mostar (present day Bosnia and Herzegovina). He finished his secondary education in Novi Sad and received medical training in Vienna, where in 1902 he was awarded a doctoral degree. Upon his return to Bosnia he practised medicine in Bijeljina, Dubrovnik and Mostar, where he was a city physician until 1906. He was politically active within Serbian nationalist groups in Vienna and Bosnia, and was influenced by Nikola Stojanović. In 1907 he became the owner and one of the founders of the journal Narod (Nation). In the same year he was elected to the Bosnian Parliament (Bosanski Sabor), where he argued for the implementation of such policies in his parliamentary speeches. His first article on eugenics, entitled ‘Nacionalna rasna higijena’, was published in 1910. According to Krulj, eugenics was a broad theory of human improvement, and he endorsed Galton’s vision of eugenics as a secular religion. Yet, and similar to other Central European interpretations of eugenics, Krulj also promoted a synthesis between racial hygiene and nationalism, specifically with the purpose of ensuring the biological survival of the nation (Krulj 1910: 262–4 and 269–72). He was also a member of the Orthodox Diocesan Council in Herzegovina. Krulj gained prominence as one of the most active opponents of the annexation of Bosnia in 1908, and was a member of the Serbian delegation which went to Vienna and Zurich to protest against it. He remained opposed to the Austro-Hungarian authorities, and in 1911 re-­launched the journal Narod (as both its owner and editor), in order to confront those parts of the Serbian political elite which took part in the Bosnian government. After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and the outbreak of World War I, the journal was abolished and Krulj was interned. After World War I, Krulj emerged as one of the most prominent politicians from Bosnia. He immediately became a member of the Bosnian National Council and a minister in the provincial government. He was also a member of the Temporary National Representation, an interim Assembly of the Kingdom of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. As a member of the Democratic Party he was one of only two ministers from Bosnia in the first inter-­war government. He was given control of the Ministry of Public Health (1919–21), and through this institution he aspired to launch policies in accordance with his well-­ known inclinations towards eugenic measures. In the following year he wrote Važnost higijene za državu i naciju (The Importance of Hygiene for State and Nation), in which he further developed his interpretation of national eugenics and racial hygiene (Krulj 1920). He took an important part in the creation of the Ministry of Public Health and of the public healthcare network in Yugoslavia, as he chaired the Health Department (Zdravstveni Odsjek) for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1919 until 1929. In 1925 he published Politika i Rasa: Rasni Nacionalizam (Politics and Race: Racial Nationalism) (Krulj 1925). 490

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Krulj was also a prolific publicist, writing on a wide range of subjects, from railway communications to the crisis of parliamentarianism. After the abolition of democracy, he was again appointed Minister of Public Health in the government of General Petar Živković (1929). He was to preside over the transformation of this office into the Ministry of Social Hygiene and Public Health. After his brief second term as minister, Krulj took up the post of Director of State Hospital in Sarajevo (1929–31), and then he became a Ban (Governor) of Zetska Banovina (this province falls largely within the borders of contemporary Montenegro) during 1931–2. He is mostly remembered for the public works that he initiated, including the construction of the road from the provincial capital, Cetinje, to the seaside. In 1932, the King appointed him to the Senat, where he served as Vice-President (in 1934). He was elected and re-­elected on the list of the Yugoslav National Party (Jugoslovenska Nacionalna Stranka). After the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1941, he worked in medical private practice in Belgrade, Bajina Bašta and Požega, keeping out of politics. After the war, he continued working as a doctor in Veliko Gradište and Rabrovo. In 1947 Krulj was transferred to the Committee for Protection of Public Health (Komitet za Zaštitu Narodnog Zdravlja), and in 1948 to the Federal Epidemiological Institute (Savezni Epidemiološki Institut). His last position after 1949 was on the Committee for Social Care, working for its Main Board for the Handicapped (Glavna Invalidska Uprava). He died in Belgrade in 1961.

491

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

National Racial Hygiene2 In the great and mighty fights of man against man, man against nature, state against state, nation against nation and race against race, those who won and those who will always win are those who are both mentally and physically stronger. One should therefore keep in mind this biological and historical fact that the conflicts among nations, states and races have been won by those who are mentally and physically stronger. [. . .] The principles and the purpose of national racial hygiene should penetrate into [the] national consciousness of the people and of each individual. This should be one of the national obligations, an integral part of modern nationalism [. . .]; the improvement and perfection of the race, i.e. the nation, is one of the most noble and most important goals we should aim for. National eugenics should imbue a nation and should become, as Galton so wonderfully put it, its national religion. [. . .] Nationalism, as one of the main characteristics of modern times and modern societies, necessarily promotes racial cultivation of nations according to the demands of racial hygiene. [. . .] The prevention of births of individuals infected by diseases or with mental and physical handicaps, and the stimulation of births of fine and strong individuals are the most important tasks of racial hygiene, which belong to the realm of national eugenics. National eugenics should intervene with two sets of measures: negative and positive. The negative measures would aim to reduce, that is to say prevent, the birth of ill and unfit members of society, while positive measures would encourage the breeding of capable members of society and their further perfection. In the competition among nations, hegemony is gained by those who are stronger in mind and body, because nations rise and fall, gain power and lose it all in accordance with the increase and decrease of their spiritual and physical qualities [. . .]; it is therefore necessary to ensure that: as few as possible or preferably no individuals with mental or physical disabilities (defects) and predispositions to these are born in the future; the existing racial diseases are eradicated and racial pathological characteristics removed; the appearance of new racial pathological conditions and racial diseases is prevented. On the other hand, the task of racial hygiene is to perfect the race through racial culture based on the principle of natural selection. Translation by Marija Petrović

The Importance of Hygiene for State and Nation3 If we look at the circumstances in all countries now, after this great world war, we will see that today’s society is in a state of turmoil, a sort of quaking, everybody is looking for a new orientation, as if society wants to shake something off. Society wants to take a step forward in its development, it is in a state of flux between the current individualistic understanding of human relationships and a collective understanding, i.e. interpretation, of all social interaction from the point of view of the interest of the whole, complete society, that is to say the nation. [. . .] It is not most important to cure diseases but to 492

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

prevent them. [. . .] The main subject of curative medicine is the individual, hygiene concentrates on the whole society. If a man lives in completely ideal circumstances [. . .] he cannot achieve his maximum [. . .] if he had not been born healthy, if he had not inherited from his ancestors completely normal genes both social and physical, i.e. if he has not fulfilled the demands of racial hygiene. You can see such individuals all the time. They live in good conditions [. . .] but are still troubled in some respect, whether social or physical. I will say here a little about this youngest branch of hygiene, racial hygiene. There is a natural phenomenon which Darwin observed, examined and tied to sexual selection, and that is the contest about who will be noticed, who will participate in producing progeny, which specimens of a certain species will participate in the procreation of new specimens, i.e. offspring. [. . .] This phenomenon is fully visible in nature; this is the so-­called natural selection in reproduction. It is based on an unrelenting, merciless and unusually strong biological law of heritage and heritability. [. . .] And not only that, but all mental and physical characteristics are inherited according to this law. Everybody knows that when we say ‘a spitting-­image of his mother’ or ‘a spitting-­image of his father’ we mean that every little detail is inherited. Not only normal mental and physical characteristic are inherited, but the pathological ones as well. [. . .] People have understood this through simple observation and experience and formulated it in sayings like ‘everything is in the blood’ or ‘an apple does not fall far from the tree.’ What is now at stake is the rational implementation and conscious use of everything that already exists in nature, all these biological laws, in practice, especially among humans. This is what racial hygiene is trying to accomplish. This is its task. It wants to rationally use these laws of natural selection in reproductive and hereditary laws, and to introduce artificial selection, a principle that has long been in use in agriculture for breeding of all domestic animals, and cultivation of fruits and vegetables. [. . .] It is strange that no one has so far thought of implementing this in practice among humans. [. . .] This is what racial hygiene is trying to accomplish from this racial-­ hygienic point of view by regulating and preventing marriages. The main reasons why, thus far, not much has been accomplished in this respect are the already mentioned individualistic ideals of modern society, which have led people to believe that they have no right to limit personal freedom in these matters and to ban anyone from having offspring. The other reason is economic in nature, the existing economic relationships in our society which have always played an extremely important role. We see that even today some of the biggest mistakes and violations regarding racial hygiene are made out of the love of profit, a good dowry or an ‘eligible bride.’ It is very clear from all of this how relevant racial hygiene is for the life of society and state. It requires the limitation of individual freedoms in this area, and needs provisions for racial-­hygiene legislation. [. . .] In order not to have people think that this is just some sort of utopian vision, I have to stress that the path of these ideas has already been cleared, and that such laws have already been passed in many modern countries, especially in some North American states, there are laws that prevent racially degenerated individuals from reproduction [. . .] 493

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Apart from these legal measures [. . .] it is necessary to raise the nation’s racial awareness, its racial pride, and its racial selection – sentiments which are already a part of human nature. [. . .] All of this leads to one, for the nation, very important issue: perfection of the race, i.e. its elevation to a higher level of biological and social development. In the future this will determine the survival and superiority of some races and nations in the cultural and economic contest. Racial hygiene has only recently attracted more attention, but now it has a great and splendid future. While all other branches of hygiene concern themselves only with the external circumstances of life and take care of only one generation, all of which does not mean much in the life of a nation, racial hygiene deals with internal relationships, the essence of the race itself, and takes care of future generations. Racial hygiene will completely fulfil its great and noble task only when it manages to ensure the health of that gene which is lasting, which lives and transmits life from generation to generation. Racial hygiene and its integral part, eugenics, teach us how to achieve this. It teaches us one great thing, which fills us with pride, and that is the power to determine destiny, prosperity and happiness of generations far into the future. It offers us a means to purify the race and society of the social burden, which brings a sad note into man’s life, which spoils the happiness and idealism of human life, that is to say of all those oppressed by heritage and hereditary illnesses, physically and mentally degenerate, feeble-­minded and mad, mentally and ethically degenerate, anti-­social elements, and so on. Translation by Marija Petrović

494

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Stevan Z. Ivanić

(1884, Mali Mokri Lug–1948, Lingen, Germany)

Born in Mali Mokri Lug, near Belgrade in 1884, Ivanić completed his secondary education in Kragujevac in 1904, and initially enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade. He then studied medicine in Prague, Graz and Vienna, where he obtained a medical degree in 1910. After returning to Serbia in 1912 he became a district doctor in Ivanjica, then Director of the hospital in Raška, and distinguished himself in the fight against cholera. After the outbreak of the First Balkan War, he joined the Serbian army to become a doctor in the military hospitals in Belgrade, Lazarevac, Niš and Kragujevac. He took part in the withdrawal of the Serbian army through Albania in 1915. In Thessaloniki, he was active in campaigns to eradicate malaria and dysentery and was among the assistants of Ludwig Hirschfeld in his bacteriological and serological laboratory. Ivanić’s interests were broadly in the field of preventive medicine. After the war, he specialized in bacteriology in Vienna, Hamburg, Berlin and Warsaw. Upon his return, Ivanić became the Director of the hospital in Smederevo. In 1922, Ivanić was named Head of the Permanent Bacteriological Station (Stalna Balteriološka Stanica). In this same year he became Head of the Department of Racial, Public and Social Hygiene at the Ministry of Public Health, established in 1919. While shifting away from his socialist views he advanced both as a professional and as a civil servant. He became Acting Head of the Central Hygienic Bureau (Centralni Higijenski Biro) in 1926, and then its director in 1928. Under his guidance, the Bureau broadened its activities from the protection of public health to include anthropometrical and serological research of racial types, organizing research across the country, and publishing the results in the Central Hygienic Bureau Yearbook. From 1930 onwards, he was also a member of the Chief Sanitary Council (Glavni Sanitetski Savet), consisting of a group of experts affiliated to the Ministry of Public Health. From 1924 until his emigration he served as Vice-President, and then as President of the Union of Medical Association and the Association for the Protection of Public Health. In 1933 he became Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade. A prolific writer, he published scholarly articles, schoolbooks and essays directed at the popularization of sanitary measures and eugenics. He wrote around 250 studies in the field of hygiene, epidemiology, social medicine, bacteriology, serology, immunology, history of medicine and popularization of medicine. He was among the foremost advocates of the move from curative to preventive medicine. He remained obsessed with the idea of domesticating preventive medicine and eugenic measures in the rural context of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He was involved in various public debates about the organization of health services (Ivanić 1933: 2–3). Ivanić started his political career in the inter-­war period with the Yugoslav Social Democratic Party, and then gradually shifted towards the political right. In 1934 he was among the founders of the right-­wing movement ‘Zbor’ (‘Rally’), led by Dimitrije 495

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Ljotić (1891–1945). After the collapse of Yugoslavia in the April War, he became the Commissar for Public Health in the collaborationist administrative government, a position he held from 30 April until 29 August 1941. In this capacity he signed ‘An Appeal to the Serbian People’, published in the occupation newspapers, and advocated the creation of an institute for racial and biological research. Ivanić lost this post in the autumn of 1941 when General Milan Nedić formed a new government. Ivanić, however, remained active as a State Councillor in the Ministry of Justice. He also chaired the Central Hygienic Bureau during World War II. The Bureau’s main concern was the health crisis which emerged due to: the war and the influx of refugees, the fight against tuberculosis and malaria, as well as the organization of health services for the refugees and families of the prisoners of war. Ivanić remained active in occupation newspapers, and was a lecturer at the Bureau for the Compulsory Re-­education of the Youth (Zavod za Prinudno Vaspitanje Omladine). This Bureau, founded in 1942 in eastern Serbia, was actually a camp for the internment of the youth considered to be under the influence of Bolshevism and thus in need of re-­education. As the occupation regime collapsed he left Belgrade in October 1944, and worked to organize the military medical services of the Serbian Volunteer Corps (military wing of the ‘Zbor’) in Slovenia and Istria, in the rank of active senior captain. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, he went to Italy, where the Allies detained him. He was not extradited to the Yugoslav government, even though the State Commission for Investigation of Crimes of the Occupiers and their Helpers labelled him a war criminal. He settled first in Switzerland, then in Lingen, Germany, where he died on 5 November 1948.

496

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

For Public Health4 Unfortunately today’s society is full of unhealthy, pathological relationships. The social milieu is affected by this bad content. And this bad content of the class society causes illness among the members of society who, like the masses of peasants and workers, are too weak to defend themselves from the influences of the unhealthy social relations. The World War has disturbed the old state apparatus. The nations have learned too much from this world carnage to be governed in the manner in which they had been governed before. [. . .] The old type of state is dying out. The state is gradually taking upon itself some social obligations. [. . .] Among the most important issues is the provision of public healthcare. In human society health cannot be a private matter for each individual. The health of each individual is necessary for the entire society. And it is not only necessary because each individual is one cell, one production unit [of society], but because the health of the individual members of society is closely connected. If one member falls ill, either due to unfavourable circumstances or because of contagious bacteria, the disease will quickly spread to other individuals who live in similar conditions or are in contact with the sick person. The state needs a healthy and strong nation. Only a strong population can advance the economy of a country, and make it rich. Only by having a healthy population can a state be strong. [. . .] That is why it is necessary that the state has a central administration, which will take care of the issues of public health. [. . .] We have just founded the Ministry of Public Health as a central body. But the aim is not to found a ministry and then leave it to do administrative work. The Ministry of Public Health is to be the heart of communal life, which will provide initiatives of all kinds to improve public health. [. . .] Socio-­political and economic reforms should only be introduced after the sanitary bodies had given their opinions on their usefulness. The task of racial hygiene is to implement in society those known biological laws, which will help to create and to nurture, in terms of health and development, better generations of humankind. Every living organism represents a collection of inherited characteristics, anatomical and physiological, mental and physical. These characteristics are from the very start thus combined, that, one can say, each spermatozoid (male seed) and each female egg represent a different combination of inherited traits. It is a well-­known fact that breeders of animals and plants, stockbreeders and farmers, choose only the best specimens for breeding, and keep the weak ones separated and not only do [they] not allow them to breed. [. . .] One takes care of the cattle, and chooses only the best specimens for breeding, but it has still not been realized that it is necessary to implement the same principles among humanity. By advocating personal hygiene among the population, and by introducing public hygiene to society we are creating better living and health conditions, not only for those of healthy and strong constitution, but also for those with weak inherited traits. Through personal and public hygiene we can do a lot to prevent degeneration of those who had inherited good traits, but we cannot change weak traits into good ones. Individuals weighed down by inheritance can only be eliminated from society through racial hygiene. 497

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Racial hygiene (rasna higijena) needs to address two main issues. On one hand how to get only those people with good and healthy traits of body and mind to propagate and how to increase their procreation. On the other hand how to stop people with weak inherited traits from marrying, or more precisely, from procreating and passing these weak traits on to their offspring. [. . .] The next task of racial hygiene, once it achieves procreation of only those individuals with good traits, is to facilitate further development of this progeny. [. . .] It follows from here that it is necessary to reform marriage law, which would pave the way for racial-­hygienic laws. But it is not enough to demand only healthy marriage, it is even more important to provide possibilities for healthy individuals to propagate at the time when they are most likely to conceive children and to make it possible for those of poor material standing to have large progeny. This can only be achieved through social welfare and aid for poor couples and families. The second issue, how to stop procreation of those with weak inherited traits, can be solved in two ways: they can be banned from getting married, but in this way one cannot stop their procreation out of wedlock. That is why the second approach is more radical: spaying or castration of these individuals. In many US states there are already such laws. Our country also needs a racial-­hygienic reform of marriage: we need clear racial-­ hygienic legislations whose effect will be to increase good inheritance and to prevent procreation of all those with weak traits. The population must take all possible measures to facilitate its own regeneration. This is its principal right. Therefore our society has the right to adopt all necessary measures to prevent those crippled by inheritance from burdening the population with their unfortunate offspring. Translation by Marija Petrović

Letter to Assistant-Minister Vladimir Velmar-Janković5 Much respected Mr. Assistant-Minister, I am very grateful for the invitation to give my opinion on the Paths to Serbian Self-­ help. I am very sorry I was not more prompt with my reply, and even on this occasion because of the lack of time I am not in a position to give you my full views on this subject. However, I felt obliged to send some comments on the matters which are my specialty, to prevent the draft [of this document] becoming a full programme in this form. If possible I will also make some additional comments. Already at the beginning (p. 10) it is stated that: ‘It will be easy to agree on a biological group’. It seems to me, considering what has been mentioned as important in that group, that this will be difficult to accomplish, because although important problems of this group have been listed in 17 points, they have not been organized into an organic system of needs, but have only been put together as a list of problems which are the concern of the state [. . .] But precisely because there was no organic approach [to these problems] there were no results to match the importance of these problems. The Plan gives, to use a medical term, the symptoms which need to be treated, but forgets about the organism which needs to be cured. 498

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

This organism is our Serbian people, and that is where we have to start. It is important to begin with the question which determines its survival. This is not a place to start listing evidence (although I have plenty of it) but I have to stress that, according to the demographic data on the movement of population over the last 12 years, the biological basis of our people is seriously endangered. The population is showing such marked signs of declining that we have: 1. Counties where the number of deaths surpasses the number of births, and consequently, there is no population growth; 2. Counties where there are only one or two children per rural family; 3. Indications that we are no longer among the ‘progressive’ nations, i.e. nations that have more than 35 children under the age of 15 per 100 inhabitants; 4. A continually growing number of families without children; 5. The family, as the basic unit of society, is endangered in various ways, and biological vulnerability is reflected in the decline of the national strength, i.e. continually declining number of men of the recruitment age (21); 6. All the evils and chronic diseases, as well as the high rate of mortality among babies, toddlers and small children (more than one-­third of all male children die before reaching recruitment age) as a consequence of the vulnerability of this exact basic unit of society. What follows from these statements, which can be proved by impeccable data, is that the biological issues in Paths to Serbian Self-­help have to be viewed in a completely different way. An organically understood system would look (without going into details) like this: 1. A biological basis for the improvement of the Serbian people (protection of marriage) racial-­biological protection, maturity of marriage, protection and improvement of fertility and population growth, observation of biological laws, regulation of the population, legislation regarding marriages and propagation. 2. Protection of the family (all socio-­medical, socio-­political and socio-­ethical measures should concentrate on family, protection of birth, pregnant women, mothers, babies, small children, school-­age children and youths in families. Care must be taken to ensure young people stay on the right path and become useful members of families and society, protection of families from [the consequences of] early death, illness, chronic and infectious disease (tuberculosis, venereal disease, syphilis, malaria, mental illnesses, weak health, acute and other chronic illnesses, poor nutrition, clothing, living arrangements, and so on. 3. Protecting settlements (social measures, social and public hygiene, social medicine, education about general rules of healthy life, and so on). 4. Recruiting people to work on biological protection and the protection of health, to actively cooperate in medical and social measures, health stations, education stations, institutions, charity events, insurance, protection of health and life. 5. Reconstruction and reorganization of health and social services, institutions and bodies (hospitals, treatment, hygiene, social medicine, institutions for the prevention and cure of chronic diseases, maternity hospitals, institutions for pregnant women, mothers, children and the youth, physical and mental hygiene, pathology research, study of nutrition and other necessities, production of 499

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

medication and other ways/means to protect life, and so on). Appropriate network of institutions, bodies, medical and auxiliary staff in the whole country, according to the pathology of the people. 6. Spiritual and professional reorientation of the people, doctors, pharmacists, auxiliary staff, state administration in charge of these measures and of coordination of these aspects of national life (faculties, specialized schools, specialization and re-­education of doctors, teaching directed at the needs of Serbian national life). 7. Coordination and cooperation of the bodies and institutions of general and public health with agriculture, economy, education, engineering, internal administration, cooperatives, charitable institutions, and so on. 8. Urban planning and the technical organization of settlements and roads, hygienic and health institutions and needs, provision of [clean] water, removal of waste, sewage and other refuse, cemeteries, slaughter houses, markets, farmyards, stables, landfills, and so on. 9. A permanent public body which will approve plans and regulations and give advice on all these issues (similar to the current Main Educational Council). 10. Protection at work, and education for work; promotion of work as the highest social honour (protection in workshops, hygiene, insurance, national work service, making workers a part of the national cultural community, and so on). 11. Research on Serbian national life, customs, folklore, language, sayings, literary works, current and past material culture, monuments of folk medicine, history of healthcare with the aim of creating our [own] national ethno-­hygiene and ethno-­medicine. 12. In order to facilitate everything that has been mentioned here it is necessary to establish these central research institutions: a) Institute for the Improvement of Life in Villages, which will unite and coordinate work on the improvement of all aspects of life in villages; b) Institute for Biological Improvement and the Protection of Reproduction; c) Institute for the Protection of Families, Mothers and Children; d) a reorganized Central Hygienic Institute with the School of National Health; e) a reorganized General State Hospital; f) the Faculty of Medicine reorganized in such a way that it would prepare doctors as cultural and health workers among the Serbian people. These would be general guidelines for an organically understood plan, the details of which should be further developed. I would also like to make some general comments, without going into the evaluation of other proposals. This whole plan looks to me more like a broad general platform for an objective inquiry and research about the Serbian people, than Paths to Self-Help. There is no doubt that, if it is implemented and serious people are set to work, it will produce some useful material. But Paths to Self-Help must promote specific, clearly 500

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

defined trends that would serve as the basis for the education of both the youth and the people in the spirit of self-­grown, unique and authentic spiritual creativity. I have listed here only some of the issues, and there are at least as many which have not been mentioned. And that is good. But from this pile of issues it is necessary to create organic plans, then plans according to various professions and aspects of life, and then to synchronize all these plans in order to produce a functioning organism with all its organs, whose main aim would be to establish the principles and guidelines of our self-­help. This thought is of unusual importance, because only if it is developed in an organic way and is given a real foundation can we face the future confidently and predict and manage its events, rather than just react to them, as we have been doing thus far. I have given here my opinion in short and blunt outline, with the best intentions to make this plan work. I am always ready to use my knowledge and my experience, accumulated over many years of work on similar issues, to help in every possible way in preparation of the best and the most appropriate plan which will strengthen the Paths of Serbian Self-Help. With sincere wishes that this important work is fruitful and of general use to our people, I ask you Mr. Assistant-Minister, to accept the assurances of my utmost respect. Stevan Ivanić

Translation by Marija Petrović

501

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Branimir Maleš

(1897, Rab, Croatia–1968, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina)

Maleš was born on the island of Rab in Croatia. He finished his gymnasium education in Zadar (Ital.: Zara), a city on the Adriatic coast. In 1917 he was recruited into the Austro-Hungarian army, and was discharged a year later. He studied biology at the University of Belgrade and graduated in June 1923. He briefly worked as a civil servant at the Ministry of Religion in 1919. In September that year he was made a teaching assistant at the university, and in 1924, after his graduation, he became an assistant professor in physiology. In June 1930 he was elected Associate Professor at the Department of Physiology and until 1935 he taught physiology of the nervous system and anthropometry, and special courses on physiology for the psychology students. He also worked at the Bureau for Physiology. From 1936 he was a professor at the gymnasium in Kotor, and then at the Second Boys’ Gymnasium in Belgrade. He also worked at the Ministry of Education for a short period. In 1924 Maleš founded a Psychometric Laboratory (Psihometrijska Laboratorija) at the Central Hygienic Bureau in Belgrade, and he cooperated with this institution until 1938. He was the recipient of a Rockefeller scholarship, and he spent 1928/9 in Italy where he attended lectures on anthropology and took a course on anthropometry at the School of Statistics of the Demographic Institute in Rome. He also worked at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Rome, at the Institute of Physiology of the Medical Faculty in Rome, and at the Zoological Centre in Naples. After his return to Yugoslavia, Maleš started his anthropological-­physiological research at the Central Hygienic Bureau, examining the psycho-­physical properties of the Serbian population, and the problems tied to nutrition, hygiene and social medicine. He built the foundation of anthropology and anthropometry in Serbia under a strong influence of the Italian, German and Polish schools of anthropology. He used modern anthropological methods and instruments, had excellent knowledge of contemporary literature in the field and an ability to draw theoretical conclusions from practical examples. He studied the various racial typologies of the Balkan Peninsula, especially the Dinaric and Mediterranean types (Maleš and Konstantinović 1928). Maleš was the most important popularizer of the ideas of craniometry and racial anthropology in Serbia. He started writing science papers as a student. He also wrote articles on Serbian cultural and national issues, and on racial subjects, especially those concerning the Dinaric race (Maleš 1932). Often he went further than simply stating anthropological facts, and digressed into over-­emphasizing the importance of racial characteristics and biological inequalities. In right-­wing newspapers, such as Ideje (Times) and Otadžbina (Fatherland) he openly promoted racist and anti-Semitic views, showed sympathy for Nazism and supported conservative, traditional and nationalistic ideas (Maleš 1934: 3; 1935a: 10 and 1935b: 19). 502

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Maleš developed his methodology under the strong influences of Egon Eickstedt and Rudolf Martin. In 1936 he published an influential pamphlet on race entitled O ljudskim rasama (On Human Races), which contained the popular lectures he had given at the Kolarac Foundation in Belgrade (Maleš 1936b). He lectured at adult education institutions in many Yugoslav cities (Vršac, Osijek, Užice, Kraljevo, Bijeljina, Šabac, Skopje, etc.), and also held a series of lectures on the Dinaric race and the racial composition of the Balkans at the Anthropological Society of Rome. Maleš published numerous articles on physiology, anthropology and comparative psychology in both Yugoslav and international journals such as Rivista di anthropologia (Journal of Anthropology), Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde and L’anthropologie (Anthropology). He was a regular and associate member of many academies and learned societies in the country and abroad, including the Anthropological Society of Rome (1929); the Belgrade Biological Society (1930); the Naturalist Society in Ljubljana, specifically its Department of Anthropology, Genealogy and Eugenics (1937); the Italian Anthropological and Ethnological Society in Florence (1938); and the Anthropological Institute of Paris (1938). At the beginning of World War II, in July 1941, he was appointed acting head of the Department for Adult Education of the Ministry of Education. He remained in this position until January 1943. He signed the ‘Appeal to Serbian People’ and was active in the collaborationist government of General Milan Nedić. At the beginning of 1943 he became a professor at the Department for Anthropology and Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the reorganized University of Belgrade. During the war he wrote for publications, such as Novo Vreme (New Time), Obnova (Renewal), Naša Borba (Our Fight) and Srpski Narod (Serbian Nation), and supported the German new order and the policies of Nedić’s government. He participated in the implementation of the ‘Serbian Civil Plan’, and gave lectures at the Bureau for the Compulsory Re-­education of the Youth. In May 1942 he converted to Orthodoxy as a sign of support for Nedić’s government. Both he and his son, Ljubomir, actively collaborated with the Gestapo during the war, passing on information on civil servants from the Ministry and the University, and on students from secondary schools and the University. He fled to Germany in 1944, and then moved to Italy. The State Commission of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia charged with establishing the crimes of the occupiers and their collaborators ruled on three occasions (in April, June and July 1945) that he was guilty of war crimes and declared him ‘an enemy of the people’. He was accused of collaboration with the occupying forces, collaboration with the Gestapo, inciting people to fight against the Communist resistance movement, signing the ‘Appeal to Serbian People’ in August 1941, working for the Ministry of Education, supporting Nedić’s pro-­fascist education policies, etc. Yugoslav authorities pressured the Allies to have him deported, without success. Eventually, he emigrated to Argentina where he worked as a professor at the University of San Miguel de Tucumán, continuing to publish on the Dinaric race, racial anthropology and human biology (Maleš 1947: 30–54; 1957 and 1964: 3–20). He died in Argentina in 1968. Dragomir Bondžić 503

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Race, Nation and Nationality6 Everyone who knows even a little bit about racial characteristics, that is to say about morphological, functional and mental characteristics which have thus far been mentioned, understands that there are very few people who biologically belong to one single race. Pure racial types are rare. Nations are racial mixtures, and individuals are products of mixing of one or more races. But there are cases where one race dominates over others, where the characteristics of one race, to a greater or a lesser extent, appear more often than the characteristics of other races. Such is the case with the Nordic race in North Germany, Mediterranean race in South Italy and Dinaric race in the Konavle region7 or in Herzegovina. If one race becomes dominant in one nation or in a large part of one nation, then the whole nation starts showing characteristics of the dominant race. The mental characteristics of the race show especially clearly, because they are tied more closely to the habits, customs, life and history of the people. Through the mixing of the same races and the common surroundings the biological differences start to fade. The older the nation the more biologically homogeneous and harmonious it is going to be. Thus a race is one thing, and a nation a different thing. Common language, common customs and habits, common past – those are features of a nation, and just as a race has its biological history, so does a nation have its racial history. And nationality is yet another thing. Awareness that we belong to one and [the] same national community, that we have common principles and demands, and the feeling of belonging to that community, is what creates a nationality. Thus ‘race is clearly defined as a biological community, the nation as a cultural, and nationality as an historical entity’ (Eickstedt); but at the same time there is an unbreakable biological link between them. There is no nationality without a nation, and no nation without the racial conglomerate that creates it. This biological link becomes even stronger, when a nation is aware of its community, when it knows how to value not only its cultural but also its racial characteristics. All mental and physical characteristics that are good, and that improve one part of the race, become a programme of nationality. But at the same time one should not forget that a nation is a conglomerate of races. Everybody who puts the race before the nation, who excludes all those who belong to ‘non-­national’ races from the national community is wrong. Each race has its value, in its surroundings and in its time. If it is a product of its surroundings, the surroundings in which it had developed, each race is national [. . .] To ensure the health and a better biological, cultural and social future of a nation it is necessary to preserve the racial conglomerate, the racial picture created by those various races. In our case it is necessary to preserve the hegemony of the Dinaric race and the proportions that exist in its relationship to the other races that form the racial picture of our nation. In the first place it is necessary to preserve mental characteristics of the nation, that is to say spiritual characteristics, which again in our case come mostly from the Dinaric race. Mental traits are inseparably tied to physical ones. Mental and physical characteristics create one biological unity. Both one and the other are a reflection of our inner state, a 504

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

reflection of a hormonal balance. Nevertheless, mental characteristics are easier to alter than physical ones. Our desires, our character [and] even our intelligence change under the influence of a transformed way of life, transformed culture and social surroundings. Therefore, in the first place, one should preserve mental characteristics, because they are national in an important way; then one should eliminate the unfit for life and incurably ill, producers of disease and degeneration, regardless of the race these hereditary labelled people belong to. One should create favourable conditions for the offspring of mentally and physically healthy parents, especially the offspring of racially pure types, those with higher physical and spiritual harmony. And one should not allow the development of individuals and generations who are both weak, biologically and in character. This must be the most sacred goal of an enlightened nation. Because this is the essence of a continuous biological battle waged by every nation, every nationality, whether they are aware of it or not. [. . .] We have mentioned already that each race has its role in the history of the nations and of the world. And this is precisely why one needs to learn about these values. And the state is also obliged to take care of these various races. In that case the race and the nationality become synonymous, two roads that lead to the same goal: affirmation, progress and a better life of the whole nation. Our cultural and political ambitions are satisfied in nationality, and our striving towards better health, the physical and spiritual progress of our people is realized through race. If we preserve our life values, biologically and nationality, and if on every occasion we reaffirm what is truly ours, and from that we select only the best, then we will become worthy of our better and older ancestors, we will preserve that which is racially ours, as it has been preserved by our great national feats. This booklet is a shortened version of several lectures I gave at Kolarac Public University (on aims and methods of contemporary anthropology, on races in general, on the physiology of race, on race in Europe, and on the Dinaric race). To write this text I have used publications of many anthropologists and biologists [. . .] and especially the great works of E[gon] von Eickstedt (Rassenkunde und Rassengeschichte der Menschheit, 1934) and R[udolf] Martin (Lehrbuch der Anthropologie, 1928). In these two books one can find an almost complete bibliography of works in anthropology and racial studies. I, therefore, recommend these two books to those of you who want to learn more about these issues; also among new works in French, G. Montandon, La race, les races (1933) and L’ologénèse humaine (1928). Dr. Božo Škerlj has published a book in Slovene, Čovek (1934), which summarizes, in precise and concise language, all that is important in the science of man. Translation by Marija Petrović

505

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Svetislav Stefanović

(1877, Novi Sad–1944, Belgrade)

Svetislav Stefanović was born in Novi Sad (Ger.: Neustatdt; Hung.: Újvidék) in 1877. Although he was an orphan as a child, he completed elementary school in Stari Futog and gymnasium in Novi Sad, then studied philosophy (1897/8) and medicine (1898– 1902) in Vienna and Prague. He specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and in comparative literature, completing his dissertation on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He moved to Serbia in 1903 and worked as a physician in Jagodina, Obrenovac and Belgrade. Stefanović participated in both Balkan Wars (1912–13) and in World War I (1914–18), serving in the medical corps and becoming a decorated officer. During World War I he retreated with the Serbian army in 1915, and took part in the restructuring of the military medical service. At the forefront of the epidemiological laboratory established by the Polish immunologist Ludwig Hirszfeld in Thessaloniki, he developed an interest in the relationship between blood groups, heredity and racial science. After World War I, he played an important part in the restructuring of the healthcare system of the new country, and gained prominence in a heated debate over the causes of the disastrous typhoid epidemics which struck Serbia in 1915. Eventually he became the chairman of the Yugoslav Medical Society (Jugoslovensko Medicinsko Društvo), a position he kept until his retirement in 1935. He occasionally translated literary works from German, Italian, French, Hungarian and Hebrew, but he excelled in translating Shakespeare’s works. He was also an accomplished modernist poet. Stefanović started his political career as a young supporter of Svetozar Marković’s socialist movement. After he moved to Serbia, he joined the People’s Radical Party, then switched to the Independent Radical Party in 1910. After the war he was among the founders of the Republican Democratic Party, with which he parted ways in 1922. After this departure he abstained from party politics for more than a decade, focusing instead on the development of his independent publishing activities, and devoting himself to advocating the restructuring of healthcare through the implementation of racial theory. He shifted gradually towards vehemently anti-Marxist positions, acknowledging the monarchy as a symbol of Yugoslav unity and adopting Christianity instead of his formerly militant atheism. In 1934, Stefanović began contributing to the newspaper Ideje with a series of articles on race, racism, and culture (Stefanović 1934: 6; 1935a: 22 and 1935b: 26). The solution Stevanović proposed was ‘the renewal of Yugoslav nationalism’, which formed the leitmotif of his texts published in the summer and autumn of 1934. The basic principal of this renewal was the strengthening of national culture and its peasant roots as the uncorrupted embodiment of the Yugoslav spirit. In a series of articles published from early 1936 in Letopis Matice Srpske (Yearbook of Matica Srpska), one of the most prestigious journals in Serbia, he developed a vision of an organic patriotism marked by 506

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

a complete rejection of liberal democracy and party politics in favour of the ‘socially aware Yugoslav nationalism’ (Stefanović 1936: 83–91). Advocating corporatism was not particularly original at the time, but Stefanović imbued it with a firm racial tone. Acknowledging the existence of religious and ethnic differences, he sought to emphasize common racial affiliation as a unifying force within Yugoslav nationalism. He was initially inspired by the German psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer (1888–1964), but his heavy emphasis on the importance of blood types in defining racial affiliation was the result of the time he had spent in Ludwig Hirszfeld’s wartime laboratory. This trajectory brought him closer to the small, but influential groups of intellectuals advocating different brands of fascism as the solution to Yugoslavia’s problems. In 1936 he joined the right-­wing group called Yugoslav Action (Jugoslovenska Akcija), and after this organization merged with Dimitrije Ljotić’s movement ‘Zbor’, Stevanović became one of its influential members. In 1937, however, he parted ways with Ljotić. Together with other members of the Yugoslav action, Stevanović left ‘Zbor’ in order to support the Prime Minister, Milan Stojadinović. These voices were weakened by the internal struggles and ultimately marginalized during the period of revived party political manoeuvring during the Regency (1935–41). They returned to relevance after the April War and the partition of Yugoslavia in 1941. In the chaos following the Axis occupation and the partition of Yugoslavia, the Germans attempted to create a local civil government to assist with the occupation of a shrunken Serbia (many prominent Yugoslav public figures had fled abroad, been arrested or withdrawn into isolation). The so-­called administrative ‘Commissary Government’ created in May, lasted only until August 1941 and did not live up to the task. A new solution was found in the appointment of General Milan Nedić as Prime Minister of the so-­called ‘Government of National Salvation’ (September 1941 to October 1944). Nedić’s government tried to give a broad ideological background to the collaboration, and to secure public support and intellectual backing. During the occupation, on the initiative of the Minister for Education and Religion, Velibor Jonić and his deputy Vladimir Velmar-Janković, Stefanović was appointed to lead the publishing house ‘Srpska Književna Zadruga’ (1942–44). Shifting between extreme ethnic nationalism and a conservative peasantism, this publishing house attracted a number of dissatisfied intellectuals, who assumed a visible role in the restoration of cultural life in the country. His appointment was meant to be a step towards rebuilding Serbian culture on a ‘healthy basis’. Although by this time he was out of touch with medical practice, Stefanović gave his professional and public voice in support of the collaborationist regime. In 1943, as a medical expert from an occupied country, he participated at one of the Nazi-­staged visits to the site of NKVD mass killings in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. He wrote abundantly and fervently against Communism, proposing a vision of an organic New Serbia within the Nazi ‘New Europe’. He was arrested two days after the liberation of Belgrade and shot by the Communist authorities on grounds of collaboration in October 1944. His scattered writings, both political and literary, came to light for the first time in the mid-1990s. 507

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

On the Question of Race as a Cultural and a National Problem in Yugoslavia8 All existing cultures have been created from individual races, that is to say nations, and specific racial types. The power of the race has always been the force which overpowered political and economic factors and created a culture, a state and a nation. [. . .] That is why the question of race is gaining prominence and the methods for the research of racial questions, as well as the methods to analyse the results of this research, are multiplying from year to year. One of the most important new methods for the research of racial issues is the study of blood types. The origin of the idea of blood type study is connected in a certain way to Yugoslavia, or more precisely to the Serbian people. While in the service of the Serbian army during the Great War, in Thessaloniki on the Balkan front, my great friend and a friend of the Serbian people, Professor Doctor Ludwig Hirszfeld, currently the director of the Serological Institute in Warsaw, had the idea to implement Landsteiner’s theory of blood types to the research of races. He tested this idea on those multiple races and nations which had congregated in Thessaloniki. [. . .] For the Yugoslavs Hirszfeld’s research had an especially important implication, because it showed that the Bulgarians shared an almost identical blood index with the Serbs, and thus proved that claims which were widely popularized during the war, that the Bulgarians belong to the Mongol race, a race very distant from the Yugoslav race, were completely wrong and bereft of value. The results of the research conducted by Yugoslav scientists on the importance of the blood types and their relationships are not yet final and have only been partially published. [. . .] The results of this research are given here as numerical values of the so-­called biochemical index, for the Yugoslavs this number is 2.01. This index represents the correlation between two main blood types: Type A which is dominant in Europe; and Type B, which is dominant in Asian and African peoples. [. . .] The English and the Nordic peoples, who have the largest number of representatives of the so-­called European Group A, have the racial blood index of 4.3; German 2.8; and Asian and African people below 1. [. . .] Belgrade, the Adriatic coast, Montenegro and Northern Serbia show the highest European blood index; Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia are comparatively lower and the lowest. [. . .] It is too early to draw any far-­reaching conclusions from these modest preliminary results. But it is difficult to suppress the impression and the inkling that these results, such as they are, are not accidental but are in a certain way representative of the real situation. It must seem important that precisely those parts of Yugoslavia, which display the highest European blood index, are the parts where, both in the past and in more recent times, the forces of state creation have been most prominent. The regions with low blood index, lower than average, should be studied especially carefully, with an emphasis on the higher degree of mixture between foreign racial qualities. Further research should concentrate on the relationship between blood types of the various nations and races who live in Yugoslavia, for example, Slavs and Yugoslav Hungarians, Germans, Albanians, Gypsies, and so on. This research has the potential to provide many interesting insights into questions of the biological importance of blood 508

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

types, the importance of racial purity that is the mixing of the races, and especially into the importance of blood types for the study and the estimate of the importance of the most important Balkan racial type, the Dinaric type. Over the last few years, and especially over the last two years, all these reasons have led to an increase in interest in questions of race and the attention paid to these issues both in scholarly journals and in the daily Yugoslav press. [. . .] The same changes which are happening in other countries can now be observed in Yugoslavia as well – young and renewed nationalism is to a great extent intertwined with racist elements. The task of serious academic researchers in the field of racial science is to aim to avoid and prevent the exaggerations and perversity of racism. On the other hand, in the current times even the most serious researcher, especially in the field of racial science, has to be aware that academic research cannot only follow its pure academic aims, but has to try to find answers to important questions and tasks of life, which he should serve and consider the most important duties of science – for the good of men, for the good of the nation and for the good of humankind in general. In this context the questions of race acquire cultural and social importance and become the cultural and social problems of all nations, and the Yugoslav nation as well; I here have in mind the preservation and protection of positive racial qualities of the nation; protection of family, which includes all issues regarding the protection of mothers and children; and finally, the protection of health not only of individuals, but of the whole national community, including both physical and mental health. We have today, even in our midst, both individuals and organization[s] who pay increased attention to the problems of social hygiene, racial hygiene or eugenics and the protection of family, mothers and children, and who make them the main focus of our state and national politics. However, coordination is what is necessary for the future of the Yugoslav nation and Yugoslav race in its historical mission in the Balkans and among the Balkan nations, and in the Danube valley, among the nations of Central Europe. The national aspect of this mission involves the Slavization of these parts of Europe. Its racial aspect will bring the incorporation into European culture of a better, more heroic and at the same time more humane Dinaric type of man, who has been predestined, by his high racial qualities, to create not only new states in place of the old and disintegrated ones, but also new distinct forms of social organization, based on the synthesis between the individual and the collective spirits, and the new cultural values of this extremely distinctive ‘brave racial type’: the one who not only rules and governs, but is also humane and human-­loving; not only brave but also noble and merciful, and not only an heir of Marko the Prince and his brave deeds (of distributing justice among quarrelsome nobles), but an heir of Matija Gubac9 and his tragic struggle for the rights of a little man, and possibly above all an heir to St Sava, a statesman and a teacher, a diplomat and a mystic, eternal peacemaker between brothers in dispute, between the East and the West in dispute, a universal spirit and a national spirit, a hero and a saint, who turned the church of his people into a part of Christ’s universal church, and was the first great, possibly the greatest, Yugoslav synthesis in its great cultural and spiritual pursuits. Translation by Marija Petrović 509

Glossary Antropogeografija: anthropogeography Biohemijski indeks: biochemical index Čuvanje narodnog zdravlja: preservation of public health Dinarski čovek: Dinaric man Dinarski rasa: Dinaric race Dinarski tip: Dinaric type Eugenika: eugenics Etnopsihologija: ethnopsychology Kvantitativna eugenika: quantitative eugenics Kurativna medicina: curative healthcare Higijena čovečijeg začeća: hygiene of human conception Nacionalno čišćenje: national cleansing Nacionalna rasna higijena: national racial hygiene Narodno zdravlje: national health Narodna reparacija: national reparation Nasledne bolesti: hereditary diseases Organska država: organic state Popravljanje rase: improvement of the race Problemi nasledja: problems of inheritance Rasna higijena: racial hygiene Rasna teorijà: racial theory Rasni nacionalizam: racial nationalism Rasno-­biološka zaštita: racial-­biological protection Rasno-­biološka istraživanja: racial-­biological research Rasno-­biološke osobine: racial-­biological traits Socijalna higijena: social hygiene Srpski somatski i psihološki rasni tip: Serbian somatic and psychological racial type Superiorna rasa: superior race Zaštita srpske krvi i srpskog potomstva: protection of Serbian blood and Serbian offspring

Notes 1 Stanojević, V. (1920), Evgenika, Higijena čovečjeg začeća i problem nasledja, Belgrade: Ministarstvo narodnog zdravlja kraljevije, 1920 [Excerpts translated from pp. i, iii, viii, 107–9, 119–20, 130–3, 135 and 154]. 2 Krulj, U. (1910), ‘Nacionalna rasna higijena’, Pregled 5 (15 September): 260–72 [Excerpts from pp. 262–4; 269 and 272]. 3 Krulj, U. (1920), Važnost higijene za državu i naciju, Sarajevo: Izdanje zdravstvenog odsjeka za Bosnu i Hercegovinu, 1920 [Excerpts translated from pp. 3 and 18–19]. 4 Ivanić, S. Z. (1921), Za narodno zdravlje, Belgrade: Pravo Naroda, 1921 [Excerpts translated from pp. 1–2; 4 and 27–8]. 5 Ivanić, S. Z. (1944) ‘Pismo pomoćniku ministra Vladimiru Velmar-Jankoviću’, Arhiv Vojnoistorijskog Instituta AVII, NDA, 35-2a-43. 6 Maleš, B. (1936b), ‘Rasa, narod i naodnost’, in Maleš, B., O ljudskim rasama, Belgrade: Biblioteka Kolarčevog Narodnog Univerziteta, 1936 [Excerpts translated from pp. 59–62]. 7 Konavle is a small region situated southeast of Dubrovnik, Croatia [note VP]. 8 Stefanović, S. (1936), ‘O rasnom pitanju kao kulturnom i nacionalnom problemu u Jugoslaviji’, Letopis Matice Srpske, 345: 83–91 [Excerpts translated from pp. 83–91]. 9 Marko the Prince is a figure of Serbian medieval history, and Matija Gubec of Croatian early modern history, who after their deaths achieved mythical status [note VP].

Bibliography Archives Belgrade, Arhiv Vojnoistorijskog Instituta (Archives of the Institute for Military History): ‘Board Report from January 1944’, AVVI, NDA, 35-2a-40 Ivanić, S. Z. (1944), ‘Pismo pomoćniku ministra Vladimiru Velmar-Jankoviću’, AVII, NDA, 35-2a-43 Belgrade, Arhiv Srbije (Archives of the Republic of Serbia), fond Ministarstvo prosvete NR Srbije, M-VI-10 Belgrade, Arhiv Jugoslavije (Archives of Yugoslavia), fond Državna komisija za utvrđivanje zločina okupatora i njihovih pomagaca, 110-85-766

Primary Sources (1943), ‘Izveštaj o radu prosvetnog odbora i pregled rada Ministarstva prosvete i vera’, Prosvetni Glasnik, 11–12: 425. Cvijić, J. (1922), Balkansko poluostrvo i južnoslovenske zemlje osnovi antropogeografije, vol. 1, Belgrade: Državna Štamparija. Cvijić, J. (1931), Balkansko poluostrvo i južnoslovenske zemlje osnovi antropogeografije, vol. 2, Belgrade: Državna Štamparija. Jonić, V. (1928), ‘O savremenom nacionalizmu’, Narodna Odbrana, 3: 263. Ivanić, S. Z. (1921), Za narodno zdravlje, Belgrade: Pravo Naroda. Ivanić, S. Z. (1933), ‘Die Bedeutung der Gesundheitsgenossenschaften in der Förderung der Volksgesundheit’, Woge-Blatt, 1: 2–3. Ivanić, S. Z. (1937), Naša zdravstvena služba, Belgrade: Godišnjak Centralnog Higijenskog Zavoda. Ivanić, S. Z. (6 June 1941), ‘Potrebno je podići čast radu do najvišeg zakona narodne zajednice’, Novo vreme, 1–2. Konstantinović, B. (1937), Organizacija zdravstvene službe i sanitetsko zakonodavstvo, Beograd: Godišnjak Centralnog Higijenskog Zavoda. Krulj, U. (1910), ‘Nacionalna rasna higijena’, Pregled, 5: 260–72. Krulj, U. (1920), Važnost higijene za državu i naciju, Sarajevo: Izdanje Zdravstvenog odsjeka za Bosnu i Hercegovinu. Krulj, U. (1925), Politika i rasa: rasni nacionalizam, Sarajevo: Državna Štamparija. Maleš, B. (1932), Antropološka ispitivanja, Belgrade: Štamparija Drag. Gregorića. Maleš, B. (20 October 1934), ‘Rase i krvne grupe’, Ideje, 3. Maleš, B. (31 January 1935a), ‘Narodnost i rase’, Ideje, 10. Maleš, B. (23 March 1935b), ‘Problem našeg nacionalizma: U čuvanju rasnih odlika naših je spas’, Ideje, 19. Maleš, B. (1936a), ‘Nekoliko napomena o dinarskoj rasi’, Socijalno-­medicinski pregled, 8: 1–7. Maleš, B. (1936b), O ljudskim rasama, Belgrade: Biblioteka Kolarčevog narodnog univerziteta.

Yugoslavia III (Serbia)

Maleš, B. (1938), ‘Die Rassentypen bei den Serben und Kroaten’, Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde, 7: 234–51. Maleš, B. (22 June 1941), ‘Dva naša najveća zla’, Novo Vreme, 4. Maleš, B. (1947), ‘Contribution à l’étude de la biodynamique et de la biogenèse de la Race Dinarique’, L’Anthropologie, 51: 30–54. Maleš, B. (1957), Contribuciones al estudio de la raza Adriática: recolecciones y síntesis, San Miguel de Tucumán: Instituto de Etnologia. Maleš, B. (1964), ‘Racial Biodynamics and Biogenesis in the Study of Population’, The Mankind Quarterly, 5: 3–20. Maleš, B. and Konstantinović, B. (1928), Contributo all’antropometria dei contadini Serbi, Rome: La Sede della Societa. Marković, L. (n.d.) Zadaci narodne uprave za unapređenje rasne higijene i evgenike, Novi Sad: Štamp. Supeka i Jovanovića. Nedeljković, D. (1937), Rase i rasizam, Skoplje: Izd. knj. ‘Slavija’. Popović, L. (1921), ‘Popravljanje rase’, Nova Evropa, 2: 243–4. Stanojević, S. (ed.) (1928), Narodna Enciklopedija Srpsko-Hrvatsko-Slovenačka, vol. 2, Zagreb: Bibliografski Zavod. Stanojević, V. (1919–20), ‘Eugenika i rasno-­higijenski problem’, Glasnik Ministarstva Narodnog Zdravlja, 1: 20–6. Stanojević, V. (1920), Eugenika: Higijena čovečijeg začeća i problemi nasledja, Belgrade: Izdanje Ministarstva Narodnog Zdravlja. Stanojević, V. (1960), Tragedija genija. Duševni poremećaji znamenitih ljudi, Belgrade: Medicinska Knjiga. Stefanović, S. (24 November 1934), ‘O krvnim grupama i rasnom problemu’, Ideje, 6. Stefanović, S. (13 April 1935a), ‘Odgovor na neozbiljna raspravljanja rasnog pitanja u nas: Rasa i kultura’, Ideje, 22. Stefanović, S. (18 May 1935b), ‘Socijalne tendencije rasizma: Rasizam i ekonomska struktura društva’, Ideje, 26. Stefanović, S. (1936), ‘O rasnom pitanju kao kulturnom i nacionalnom problemu u Jugoslaviji’, Letopis Matice Srpske, 345: 83–91. Stefanović, S. (1942), ‘Izgrađivanje Nove Srbije kao seljačke države’, in Stefanović, S. (2006), Starim ili novim putevima: odabrani politicki spisi, 1899–1943, Novi Sad: Artprint, 81–4. Stefanović, S. (1952), Istorija medicine, Belgrade: Medicinska Knjiga. Stefanović, S. (2006), Starim ili novim putevima: odabrani politički spisi, Novi Sad: Artprint. Stojanović, D. (1929), ‘Narod, tradicija i vera’, Nova Evropa, 4: 397–8. Živković, L. (1937), Ljudsko društvo i rasna teorija, Zagreb: Znasntvena Knjiga.

Secondary Sources Bondžić, D. (2010), ‘Branimir Maleš’, Srpski Biografski Recnik, 5: 804–5. Đokić, D. and Dovijanić, P. (2000), Institut za zaštitu zdravlja Srbije ‘dr Milan Jovanović Batut’. Osamdeset godina u službi zdravlja naroda, Belgrade: Medicinski Fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu. Đorđević, S. P. (1980), ‘Dr. Vladimir S. Stanojević’, Srpski Arhiv za Celokupno lekarstvo, 108: 281–92. Jovanović, M. and Perišić, M. (ed.) (1992), Vladimir Stanojević. Istorija sprskog vojnog saniteta/Naše ratno sanitetsko iskustvo, Belgrade: Vojna Štamparija. Lakićević, D. (1976), Misao i praksa socijalne politike Jugoslavije između dva svetska rata, Belgrade: Institut za Socijalnu Politiku. 513

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Malović, I. (2008), ‘Eugenika kao ideološki sastojak fašizma u Srbiji 1930-ih godina XX veka’, Sociologija 50: 79–96. Milanović, M. (2005), Biografski Leksikon: Poznati Srpski Lekari, Belgrade: Milanović Milena. Milosavljević, O. (2010), Savremenici faizma, Belgrade: Helsiniški Odbor za Ljudska Prava. Mitrović, A. (2007), Serbia’s Great War, West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Nikoliš, G. (1981), Memoari. Korijen, stablo, pavetina, Zagreb: Liber. Pantović, L. (2013), Eugenics and the ‘Nation’ in the Writing of a Turn-­of-the-Century Serbian Physician: the Case of Milan Jovanović Batut, Unpublished MA Dissertation, Budapest: Central European University. Pavlović, M. (2006), ‘Zdravstvena služba u Kraljevini SHS/Jugoslaviji 1919–1941’, Zbornik Radova Instituta za Savremenu Istoriju, 10: 39–48. Pejić, S. (1966), ‘Prof. dr. Vladimir Stanojević’, Srpski Arhiv za Celokupno Lekarstvo, 94: 833–5. Petrović, L. (2007), Nevidljivi geto. Invalidi u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji 1918–1941, Belgrade: Institut za Savremenu Istoriju. Petrović, V. (2008), ‘Od borbe protiv bolesti do borbe za očuvanje rase— biopolitička dimenzija (ne)dovršene modernizacije srpskog i jugoslovenskog društva’, Istorija 20. Veka, 26: 438–60. Popov, N. (1993), ‘Srpski populizam: od marginalne do dominantne pojave’, Vreme, 133: 1–35. Ristović, M. (2008), ‘Rural “Anti-Utopia” in the Ideology of Serbian Collaborationists in the Second World War’, European Review of History, 15: 179–92. Stojanović, A. (2007), Srpski civilni/kulturni plan Vlade Milana Nedića, Belgrade: INIS. Stojanović, D. (2006), ‘U senci “velikog narativa”: Stanje zdravlja žena i dece u Srbiji početkom XX veka’, in Žene i deca. Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima XIX I XX veka, vol. 4, Belgrade: Helsinški odbor za ljudska prava u Srbiji, 160–75. Stanojević, V. (1972), ‘Stvaranje lekarskog kadra u Srbiji, osnivanje Srpskog lekarskog društva i rad do obustave u drugom Evropskom ratu 1941. Godine’, in Ćurić, D. et al. (eds), Spomenica, 1872–1972, Belgrade: Srpsko Lekarsko Društvo, 6–21. Zgodić, E. (2000), ‘Uroš Krulj: Biologija, nacija, politika’, Znakovi Vremena, 18–19: 50–7. Žorž, B. (2006), Zavod u Smederevskoj palanci. Ostrvo spasa ili robijašnica, Belgrade: Branislav A. Žorž.

514

Part II Minority Eugenic Movements

9 Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

Overview Filip Krčmar

I After the initial post-World War I years, marked by hardship and deprivation of their political rights, the ethnic German minority (Volksdeutsche) in the newly founded Yugoslav state (1918) entered a period of self-­organization and steady (although periodically interrupted) political, economic and cultural progress. This advancement was orchestrated by, and conducted under, the auspices of the Swabian-German Cultural Association (Schwäbisch-Deutsche Kulturbund, abbreviated Kulturbund) – the central German organization in Yugoslavia founded in Novi Sad in 1920. At its constituent assembly it defined itself as a non-­political organization, representing the cultural objectives of the German communities living in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Although it emphasized its loyalty to King and country, the Kulturbund was banned on 11 April 1924, under the pretext that it pursued political rather than cultural goals. The real reason for the ban, however, was different: the emerging political party of Germans in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Partei der Deutschen in Königreich SKS) withdrew its support for the ruling government and joined the opposition in Parliament. With the help of local authorities, some branches of the Kulturbund continued their activities. The organization was officially restored in 1927, when Johann Keks was elected as its chairman. After the establishment of the royal dictatorship by King Alexander I, on 6 January 1929, the Kulturbund was prohibited again. The ban lasted until 10 August 1930. Contrary to these difficult moments, the Kulturbund was altogether a rather successful organization. Even after the establishment of the German political party, the Kulturbund remained the most important representative of Yugoslav Germans and was recognized as such by the Yugoslav authorities. In time, it developed into an umbrella-­organization of all German associations in inter-­war Yugoslavia, and a strong and vital network of its branches was established in every area with a significant number of German inhabitants. As one of its main goals was to preserve, shape and promote the German national identity, it carried the strong features of both racial and social protectionism.

II According to the 1921 census, the ethnic German minority was by far the largest in the Yugoslav state: its 513,472 people constituted 4.3 per cent of the country’s total

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

population (Stanić 1931: 117; Wüscht 1936a). The majority of these Germans (approx. 328,000) were residents of the northern province of Vojvodina.1 The Germans lived predominantly in the countryside, being strongly attached to their rural way of life which was inherited from their eighteenth-century ancestors; this was one of the main features of their ethnic identity. The German sense of discipline and organization was at that time already proverbial. For instance, in the multicultural landscape they inhabited, one could always tell the difference between German villages and those of their Serbian, Hungarian, Romanian or Slovak neighbours. They often reflected a better financial status, and also their highly valued sense for order. It was noted by contemporary Serbian sources that Yugoslav Volksdeutsche also paid more attention to hygiene and social welfare than their non-German neighbours. A better and more comfortable life, as well as a desire to accumulate rather than divide the family’s wealth, were often the arguments invoked by the Volksdeutsche community to describe themselves. They were also believed to be materialistic and frugal – two attributes of their national character that eventually led to a strongly marked tendency to limit the numbers of their children, and thus cause an inevitable decline of their birth-­rate. This form of family planning and population management was known as the ‘One- and TwoChild System’ (‘Ein- und Zweikindersystem’). Such a practice had appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, only to reach its apex during the inter-­war period when it was widely criticized by Kulturbund officials. Moreover, it was feared that this phenomenon would be amplified by the ‘corruption of blood’ and the ‘degeneration of life-­strength’ (as both German and Serbian contemporaries had noticed) due to traditional inter-­marriage practices and strict loyalties to one’s own village. For instance, when marriages were arranged more attention would be paid to the economic and social status of their future spouse, rather than mutual attraction. This way, marriages among relatives or marital ties limited exclusively to the same village were quite common. As a consequence, general enthusiasm and will for life (Lebenswillen) were deteriorating; people became lethargic, which in addition to the ‘Ein- und Zweikindersystem’ led to the decline of the birth-­rates. Reproduction was gradually becoming a political issue for the Kulturbund leadership. By the 1930s the Kulturbund had gradually gained control of almost every aspect of the life of the Volksdeutsche community. Through the establishment of various economic and agricultural societies such as Landwirtschaftliche Zentralgenossenschaft Agraria (est. 1922) and Zentral-Darlehen-Kasse als Verband der deutschen Landwirtschaftlichen Genossenschaften (est. 1927), as well as cultural, educational and academic associations such as Landesverband der Deutschen Akademiker Südslawiens im SchwäbischDeutschen Kulturbund (est. 1926) and Schulstiftung der Deutschen des Königreichs Jugoslawien (est. 1931), the Kulturbund controlled the entire economy, education, publishing industry and cultural life of the Volksdeutsche. Dedicated almost entirely to their land and means of enlarging their wealth and property, the Volksdeutsche in Yugoslavia were traditionally apolitical and followed the political and social agenda proposed by the Kulturbund almost involuntarily. In response, the Kulturbund constantly pointed out, and attempted to promote, old German customs, values and tradition. Above all, rural life was idealized as the traditional, desirable and 519

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

German way of life and, most importantly, as the path laid out for future generations by the German ancestors. In this way, the image of the eighteenth-­century German colonist, a courageous farmer, cultivator and tamer of the desolate wastelands of Southern Hungary, became the role-­model and archetype for his Volksdeutsche descendants living in the twentieth-­century Yugoslav state. Kulturbund leaders constantly lauded German moral virtues, such as piety, diligence, honesty, devotion to his family and land, as well as psychological traits. This heritage was emphasized extensively in public discourse at that time through the Kulturbund-dominated press. Despite these efforts, however, it soon became clear that upholding the idea of the Volksdeutsche as a ‘nation of peasants’ was becoming increasingly difficult in the face of increased modernization and industrialization.

III A very important organization founded by the Kulturbund was the Central Cooperative for Welfare (Zentralwohlfahrtsgenossenschaft, ZEWOGE). It was created in 1930 through the merging of several existing funeral homes, which existed in almost every German village or township. After a period of discussion, their representatives decided to unite and expand their field of work. ZEWOGE set as its main objectives the Volksdeutsche’s racial preservation, the protection of its physical and moral health, and the safeguarding of the purity of German blood (Plautz 1940: 94–5). The significance of ZEWOGE became apparent after the 1931 people’s census that showed an evident decline in the birth-­rate among the German minority in Yugoslavia. Johann Wüscht, ZEWOGE’s general manager, spent most of the late 1920s and early 1930s alerting his compatriots to this problem by giving lectures and publishing numerous articles, statistical surveys, and the like. As he remarked in 1936, there was ‘an increased interest in biological problems’ among the Volksdeutsche ‘pertaining to the protection and maintenance of our nation’s health’ (Wüscht 1936b: 22). Such responsiveness to biological self-­preservation, Wüscht believed, was due to the widespread ‘worldview’ that the Volksdeutsche’s ‘blood values’ (‘Blutswerte’) needed to be preserved and promoted. A new ‘family policy’ (‘Familienpolitik’) was envisioned, one equally designed to reflect the importance of children for the national community and of ‘reproduction for racial growth’ (‘Mehrung unseres Blutes’). Wüscht also highlighted the urgency of the Volksdeutsche’s new ‘biological mission’ (‘biologischen Sendung’), insisting on the need for unity and ethnic responsibility (Wüscht 1936b: 26). To some extent, ZEWOGE reflected the Volksdeutsche’s ‘biological mission’ in Vojvodina. It was quite successful in establishing a diversified institutional network and gaining a large membership. In 1938 it had almost 42,000 members, forty-­four local subsidiaries with fifty-­two funeral funds, twenty-­two ambulances and seven kindergarten facilities. Local sections employed thirty-­three physicians, two midwives, nine kindergarten-­teachers and three nurses. On an annual basis, nearly 16,000 patients received medical treatment. Seven subsidiaries had their own pharmacies, and in 1936 a brand new 520

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

hospital was open in Bačko Dobro Polje, with a thirteen-bed capacity. A number of branches purchased X-ray machines and medical supplies, and had counselling services for mothers and pregnant women. Doctors and experts taught and gave lectures to women and girls coming from rural areas. A special school-­centre (‘Woge-Heim’) was opened in Novi Sad, where pregnant women attended three-­month long courses in order to prepare themselves for their future role as mothers. In these ways ZEWOGE was actively involved in the ‘work for the people’s welfare’ (Wüscht 1936c; Plautz 1940: 94–5). ZEWOGE issued a monthly bulletin called Woge-Blatt, edited by Wüscht, which published precise analysis and statistics about the Volksdeutsche’s natality, mortality, alcoholism, criminal rate, and so on. Equally important, ZEWOGE provided help during childbirth and organized regular nursing patrols to visit women living in the countryside. The fact that workers represented about 64 per cent of ZEWOGE’s membership gave this organization a strong urban orientation (Plautz 1940: 94–7). In 1935 the Kulturbund established a special demographic section headed by its secretary Matz Giljum, whose main goal was to ‘spread the awareness among Germans about the essential issue of the Volksdeutsche’s future’ (Plautz 1940: 44). The Kulturbund strived to promote family values and support families with many children by helping them in any way they felt possible, frequently organizing lectures on demography and population growth. These apparently successful German initiatives were to some extent copied, not only by other minority groups in Yugoslavia, but also by the Serbian majority. The Kulturbund also tended to include women in its national and social agenda. To that purpose, women’s sections (‘Frauenabteilungen’) were occasionally founded within the Kulturbund’s local subsidiaries which were actively engaged in community work. However, women’s involvement in the Yugoslav Volksdeutsche society only intensified after 1939, when they were granted membership in the Kulturbund, immediately and automatically, after their husbands became members. Until that time, the two most prominent and influential female figures among the German minority in Yugoslavia were Hilde Isolde Reiter (a journalist and ardent pan-German activist) and Ida Kremling (1871–1937), the wife of Ludwig Kremling, President of the German Party in Yugoslavia. Both women took part in the Kulturbund’s activities, often writing articles about the role of women in the Volksdeutsche’s national movement (Kremling 1927 [1989]: 244–6). Ida Kremling also occupied a high position within the Kulturbund, serving as a member of its managing board. She was also one of the founders of ZEWOGE, a member of the Board of the School Foundation of Germans in Yugoslavia (Schulstiftung der Deutschen in Jugoslawien), and the presiding chair of the Board of Trustees for German Heroes’ Burial Sites in Yugoslavia (Ausschuss zur Betreuung der Heldengräber in Jugoslawien).

IV Another very important target group for the Kulturbund was the German youth. Until the mid-1930s, sports and gymnastic clubs were the most common means of socialization for 521

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

the younger generations. In 1928, the Association of German Gymnastic and Sport clubs (Verband der deutschen Turn- und Sportvereine) was founded under the leadership of Thomas Menrath. Shortly after, the Kulturbund established the Verband der deutschen Jugend (German Youth Association) with both male and female sections (Jugend-& Mädelabteilungen). However, compared to other segments of the population, the Kulturbund in general did not appeal too much to the German youth. This attitude can be explained by the turmoil and conflict among its leadership caused by the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Older, politically experienced and more conservative leaders, who had begun their activism already in Austria-Hungary and during the early years of the Yugoslav state, valued democratic principles and showed no sympathy for the Nazi regime. On the other hand, the younger generation born in Yugoslavia and educated abroad (mostly in Germany and Austria), adhered easily to National-Socialist ideas and adopted them promptly. Younger members of Kulturbund soon began to criticize and challenge the older generation for supremacy, not only within the Kulturbund, but among the wider Volksdeutsche community as well. In 1934 they secretly created an organization of their own, called Comradeship of the Renewal Movement (Kameradschaft der Erneuerungsbewegung), and gradually began to work at taking over the leadership of the Kulturbund. However, by the end of 1934, their leaders were expelled and thus deprived of their ability to exercise any influence within Kulturbund. Backed by Yugoslav authorities, the Kulturbund denounced the so-­called ‘Renewalists’, which reorganized itself by disbanding all youth organizations. In the following year (1935), the ‘Renewalists’ were forbidden to attend the Kulturbund’s general annual assembly, to which they responded by an unsuccessful attempt to physically seize the Kulturbund’s headquarters in Novi Sad during its gathering. For a while, it seemed as if the ‘old-­school’ Kulturbund managed to prevail in its clash with the Nazi sympathizers among the Volksdeutsche. However, their troubles were only beginning. Though eliminated from Kulturbund, the ‘Renewalists’ continued their activities and tried to gain influence outside the central Volksdeutsche organization. They promoted their ideas in their own newspapers and magazines, such as Volksruf (People’s Call) and Volk und Arbeit (People and Work). In these publications, the ‘Renewalists’ popularized National-Socialist ideas of race and ‘the blood and soil’ ideology, including racial protectionism and eugenics. Although most of these articles were simply reproduced from newspapers and periodicals published in the Third Reich, members of the Renewal Movement authored many themselves. Contributors included the physician and leader of the ‘Renewalists’, Jakob Awender, Gustav Halwax (considered the main ideologue of the ‘Renewal Movement’, with close connections to the SS), Fritz Metzger and Heinrich Reister. Their wives, too, were involved in publishing activities, advocating National Socialism from the women’s perspective. By that time, the Volksdeutsche woman was already described as the source of the eugenic and racial revival of the national community. Through ZEWOGE’s general manager, Johann Wüscht, who was one of their supporters, the ‘Renewalists’ sought and found a stronghold in well-­organized Volksdeutsche 522

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

cooperatives. In the political sense, most important was their short-­lived fusion with the Yugoslav fascist organization ‘Zbor’ (‘Rally’), led by Dimitrije Ljotić, which lasted from early 1937 to mid-1938. For this they were put under strict surveillance by the authorities, who also banned several German language newspapers edited by ‘Zbor’ (such as Sturm, Erwache, Angriff ); it also prevented the organization of mass gatherings, as well as ZEWOGE’s courses on health and welfare in Novi Sad, which were often used to spread Nazi propaganda. Still, the ‘Renewalists’ and their sympathizers would often disguise their political activism within various cultural, musical and sport associations. In addition to their constant attacks on the Kulturbund, the ‘Renewalists’ also criticized the Catholic Church. Even though the Kulturbund proclaimed equality of all Germans regardless of their confession at its constituent assembly, a strong antagonism between German Catholics and Protestants continued to exist in inter-­war Yugoslavia. The Catholic Church always perceived the Kulturbund as an organization with strong Protestant leanings. The Protestant Volksdeutsche, on the other hand, considered themselves better and the true representatives of ‘Germandom’, in contrast to the Catholics. Such conviction came from the fact that they belonged not to the ‘universal’ church of Rome, but to the German and ‘national’ church of their own; therefore, they considered themselves to be ‘better Germans’ than their Catholic compatriots, who were often perceived to be under Hungarian or Croatian influence. This was to some extent true, as certain German Catholic priests had indeed advocated GreaterHungarian ideas, while opposing German National Socialism. In the mid-1930s, the Volksruf became involved in a harsh dispute with the Catholic newspaper Die Donau (Danube) from Apatin,2 edited by the Catholic priest Adam Berencz. The ‘Renewalists’ accused the Catholic Church of being anti-­national, ‘pro-Habsburg’, and the main propagator of Hungarization among the Volksdeutsche in Yugoslavia. On the other hand, Die Donau claimed that the ‘Renewalists’ were trying to eliminate religion from the lives of the Volksdeutsche. The dispute lasted until the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941.

V By the late 1930s, the ‘Renewalists’ had gained significant influence among the Volksdeutsche, which was additionally fuelled by the international successes of the Third Reich. The relationship between the Yugoslav state authorities and the Volksdeutsche was largely determined by international relations between Yugoslavia and Hitler’s Germany. As early as the mid-1930s it had become quite obvious that the international order enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles was facing collapse. As a result, Yugoslavia began to turn away from its traditional ally France (who was a guarantor and chief protector of the order created by the Peace Treaty of Versailles), and to instead seek alliance with Germany who became Yugoslavia’s primary economic partner and, from 1938, an extremely powerful immediate neighbour whose demands were often difficult to ignore. In such circumstances, the Yugoslav authorities would often turn a blind eye to 523

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

the pro-Nazi Volksdeutsche propaganda, thus feeding bitter dissatisfaction among other nationalities, most significantly Serbs, and thus increasing their mistrust of the German minorities in general. After numerous complicated and strenuous negotiations, carried out with the participation of Yugoslav authorities, but mostly with Third Reich mediation, the ‘Renewalists’ returned to the Kulturbund in the autumn of 1939, when they finally managed to oust the old, conservative Kulturbund leadership. Under constant pressure, Kulturbund’s president, Johann Keks, and its general secretary, Matthias Giljum, resigned. Dr. Sepp Janko (1905–2001), who was considered to be a moderate ‘Renewalist’, was appointed president. In reality, however, the new leadership brought about further Nazification and Gleichschaltung of the Volksdeutsche, in alignment with Hitler’s Germany’s foreign policy. The main goal of this increasingly pro-Nazi organization was now to regain control over each and every aspect of the Volksdeutsche community. Various cultural, educational, social and other associations and cooperatives that by this time had developed into autonomous organizations were reorganized and unified within Kulturbund as its organizational units, thus ceasing to exist as separate entities. ZEWOGE, for instance, was reorganized as the Association of German Doctors (Bezugsgenossenschaft der deutschen Ärzte). The president of the Kulturbund received the title of ‘national leader’ (‘Volksgruppenführer’). In order to intensify the political mobilization of the Volksdeutsche women, a special section (‘Frauenamt’) was established in February 1940. The Kulturbund was driven by the idea that German women needed to be enabled to serve their people through taking care of health, youth education, the organization of various social gatherings and the preservation of the purity of German blood. In that sense, German girls were introduced to the ‘ten commandments’ of racial hygiene issued by the Third Reich’s Office of Public Health (Reichsgesundheitsamt): 1) Keep in mind that you are German! 2) If you are healthy, you should not remain unmarried! 3) Keep your body clean! 4) Cherish the purity of your soul! 5) As German, choose a spouse of same or Nordic blood! 6) While choosing a spouse, ask him about his ancestors! 7) Health is a precondition of beauty! 8) Marry only out of love! 9) Look not for fun, but for a lifetime companion! 10) If possible, you should desire as many children as possible! (‘Zehn Gebote für die Gattenwall’, Landwirt 1940: 137) The Volksdeutsche in Vojvodina had by then lived for nearly two centuries in a multi-­ ethnic environment, while preserving their cultural and ethnic individuality; they had rarely, if at all, relied on racial arguments to describe their social and economic status. 524

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

After 1939, however, special attention was paid to recruitment of the German youth and their racial indoctrination, through film propaganda, various printed publications and brochures, but most of all through camping, scouting, field-­trips and common activities. At such occasions, the youth were lectured on racial hygiene and introduced to the works of Goebbels, Baldur von Schirach, Richard Walther Darré and other Nazi ideologues. The impact of these teachings was further influenced and supported by the simultaneous successes of the Third Reich’s foreign policy, especially after Anschluss with Austria in 1938. The aggressive approach towards Gleichschaltung pursued by the ‘Renewalists’, alongside Hitler’s plans for the mobilization of their compatriots, led to considerable changes in the racial identification of the traditionally apolitical Volksdeutsche community in Vojvodina.

VI In the autumn of 1940, the mobilization of the Yugoslav Germans gained significant media attention. Ten thousand Kulturbund members took part in massive preparations to help other ethnic Germans from Romania’s Bessarabia and Bukovina who were being repatriated to the Third Reich as part of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreement. To that end, a total of fifty-­five wagons of wheat, as well as eight wagons of other food supplies were provided, while 6,000 Volksdeutsche women were assigned to seventy-­three different textile-­factories, in order to supply clothing for the settlers passing through on their way to Germany. ‘Agraria’ (the main Yugoslav Volksdeutsche agricultural cooperative) issued an interest-­free 15 million-­dinar loan to establish the admission centres in Prahovo and Zemun along the Danube, which was also supported by the Yugoslav authorities and wealthy individuals (‘Selidba Nemaca iz Besarabije i Bukovine’, Politika 1940: 9). The Third Reich supplied this endeavour abundantly with barracks, tents, beds, up-­to-date kitchens, well-­supplied ambulances, infirmaries, maternity hospitals, auxiliary facilities, means of transportation and voluntary medical and other personnel. A total of 250 Yugoslav Volksdeutsche women were active in the admission centres in Prahovo and Zemun, whereas personnel from the Third Reich included seventy-­five drivers, fifteen medical doctors and about fifty nurses (‘Pretsednik vlade g. Cvetković i ministri g. g. Cincar-Marković i Bešlić sa pretsednikom Beogradske opštine g. Tomićem posetili su juče logor spremljen za iseljenike iz Besarabije, kod Sajmišta’, Politika 1940: 9). Aside from the considerable media coverage, this large-­scale operation attracted the attention of high-­ranking government officials and members of the Yugoslav royal family, who inspected the admission centre in Zemun accompanied by SS and Yugoslav Volksdeutsche officials (‘Visoka poseta logoru na levoj obali Save’, Politika 1940: 5). It was later revealed that under pretext of a ‘medical inspection of people’s health’ SS medical officers sent from Germany had actually selected recruits for the SS from among the Bessarabian Germans, while Sepp Janko admitted in early 1941 that a great number of ethnic Germans had in fact joined Romania’s Bessarabian Germans and travelled to Germany in order to enrol in SS units. 525

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

VII In April 1941, the Third Reich invaded and conquered Yugoslavia in just two weeks.3 At that time, the Yugoslav Volksdeutsche were already armed and prepared for military engagement. Sport sections of Kulturbund had previously organized military exercises, whereas the semi-­secret Volksdeutsche militia (‘Deutsche Mannschaft’) was fully operational by the end of 1940. Beside German forces, Yugoslavia was occupied by the militaries of her neighbouring countries: Hungary, Italy, Albania and Bulgaria, all of whom had territorial aspirations towards Yugoslav land and a desire for the revision of the Trianon Treaty. Yugoslav territories inhabited by the Volksdeutsche population were divided among the occupying countries. Batschka was annexed by Hungary; Srem became, along with Baranya, part of the Independent State of Croatia; while the Banat gained special status within Third Reich-­occupied Serbia. For the remainder of the war, the Volksdeutsche could do little to protect their distinct individuality, as it became subsumed to Nazi racial policies in East-Central Europe.

526

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Filip Krčmar Translations by Tudor Georgescu, Tania Mühlberger and Marius Turda

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Central Cooperative for Welfare (ZEWOGE)4 As with most central cooperatives, so too the Central Cooperative for Welfare emerged from the lap of the Swabian-German Cultural Association. Its social ambitions were also borrowed from the Cultural Union’s statutes, while the judicial regulations emulated those of the Central-Loan-Fund (Zentraldarlehenskasse). ZEWOGE’s fiscal foundation was created by the old funeral-­care-societies found in almost every German community. On the 13 April 1930 delegates of twenty-­four communities gathered in Novi Sad to decide on the conversion of these societies into a more legally suitable cooperative form. Already at this first meeting the necessity of expanding mutual help beyond the current provision of aid merely in the case of death was emphasized. The Welfare Cooperatives have emerged, as it states in a leaflet, out of our national community’s economic, health and biological need, and form a supplement to the existing cultural and economic organizations. They are not professional associations (Standesorganisationen), material or credit cooperatives, they want, born by the will of realizing the national community (Volksgemeinschaft), to sustain the nation and the health and purity of the blood. They seek to achieve these aims: 1. Through the organization of lectures on health and population policy, through further education courses for young women and girls, and exhibitions on hygiene. 2. Through the enabling of appropriate and affordable medical care of members in the case of illness. 3. Through the expansion of social-­hygiene, infant and paediatric welfare, schooling for mothers, combating social diseases and the like. 4. Through the cultivation of racial hygiene to protect our nation’s hereditary heritage. ZEWOGE’s first governing board was formed out of the following national comrades: Johann Keks as Director, Dr Desider Annau as Deputy, Ms Ida Kremling, Master Johann Schuetz, Franz Riester, [and] Franz Cidlik, all from Novi Sad; [. . .] Johann Wüscht was appointed General Manager. Within the first year of its creation, in December 1930, the publication of the law for health-­cooperatives opened up a great many possibilities for the young welfare-­cooperatives in these areas of work, while simultaneously also stipulating their organizational integration into the Serbian Union of Health Cooperatives (Serbischer Verband der Gesundheitsgenossenschaften) in Belgrade while largely preserving their self-­government. The general assembly in April 1931 complied with this legal stipulation and since then ZEWOGE has been active as an autonomous sub-­union of the named Union in Belgrade. Through a series of brochures and essays, and in its own journal, the Woge-Blatt (in the meantime it ceased publication), the (particularly for us) urgent question regarding the national community’s population-­political condition (bevölkerungspolitische Lage) has been consistently discussed. The statistical research and results of ZEWOGE have enjoyed great recognition, especially abroad. Translation by Tudor Georgescu 528

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

Johann Wüscht

(1897, Miletić, Austria-Hungary–1976, Koblenz, Germany)

Born in Miletić (West Bačka County) in 1897, Wüscht attended grammar school in Kalocsa (Serb.: Kaloča; Ger.: Kollotschau) and the School of Commerce in Novi Sad. During World War I he was a prisoner of war in various Russian camps (1915–16), where he was introduced to socialist ideas. After the war, he returned home and worked as a clerk, but also showed an interest in social, agricultural, economic and demographic issues of the Volksdeutsche community in the newly founded Yugoslav state. He became head of the Kulturbund branch in his home town and worked ardently to organize and assist various village cooperatives. Yet he often criticized the ‘peasant people’ image attributed to the Volksdeutsche, and upon which the Kulturbund leadership based its cultural activism. Wüscht’s interest and involvement in such issues as demography, social welfare and hygiene, the working people’s movement and general health care, eventually led to the establishment of the Central Cooperative for Welfare (Zentralwohlfahrtsgenossenschaft, ZEWOGE), in 1930. Wüscht played a major role in the organization’s establishment and was appointed its Managing Director (Geschäftsführer), a position he held until 1938. He was also the editor of ZEWOGE’s own journal, Woge-Blatt, published between 1932 and 1935. In this and other journals, Wüscht published numerous articles and statistics addressing social problems of the Volksdeutsche community, particularly in Vojvodina (Wüscht 1936a). Wüscht’s main demographic concern was the decline of the birth-­rate among the German minority in Yugoslavia (Wüscht 1936b: 22–26; 1938: 27–33 and 1939: 165–171). In 1932, for example, he established that the number of births was 8,531; by 1937 it had declined to 5,962. For Wüscht, this was a clear ‘sign that fertility rate decline was already gnawing on the bone marrow of our national body (Wüscht 1938: 29). He argued that this demographic decline was a post-­war phenomenon as before 1918 the fertility rates among the Germans in Hungary, Serbia and Romania were close to those of the Hungarians, the Serbs and the Romanians. When, however, he compared fertility rates between the Volksdeutsche and other ethnic groups in the region in 1938, he discovered that the birth-­ rate among the Germans was 17.3 per cent per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to the South Slavs’ 19.6 per cent, and the Hungarians’ 21.4 per cent (Wüscht 1939: 166). Yet while birth-­rates were declining, so were the mortality rates. According to Wüscht, almost half of the German community (49.4 per cent) lived longer than sixty years (Wüscht 1939: 167), a fact attributed equally to healthy living and biological vitality. In the late 1930s, Wüscht established regular correspondence with the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Dragiša Cvetković (1893–1969), upon whose order he acted as liaison between the Yugoslav authorities and the diplomatic circles of the Third Reich. For services provided to the Yugoslav regime, he was awarded the ‘Medal of Sveti Sava 529

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Order’ (Third Class) in 1940. Wüscht also became a close associate of Sepp Janko, President of the Kulturbund, and the wartime leader of the Volksdeutsche. Together with Janko, Wüscht was placed under house arrest and police surveillance just a month prior to the outbreak of World War II in Yugoslavia. Wüscht successfully negotiated the release of German hostages, using his previously established personal acquaintances and contacts with representatives of the Yugoslav authorities. He also continued to write about the Germans in Vojvodina under the new political circumstances (Wüscht 1940). In 1941, Wüscht was put in charge of the Public Relief Office (Wohlfahrtsamt), an organization that succeeded ZEWOGE, and took over its activities. In 1942 he was transferred to Budapest, after being appointed as the head of the Forschungsstelle für Wirtschaft (Research Centre for Economy). In the autumn of 1944 Wüscht fled to Austria, where he spent several years helping Volksdeutsche refugees in admission and care centres, which operated in the same manner as ZEWOGE. He moved to Strasbourg (France) in 1949, where he worked in a hemp trading company. In 1956 he permanently settled in Koblenz. He worked at the National Archive (Bundesarchiv) between 1957 and 1964 where he organized the gathering of documentary material about the Volksdeutsche in South-Eastern Europe. During this period, Wüscht wrote several books on the Volksdeutsche in Yugoslavia, including Die Rechtslage der deutschen Minderheiten im ehemaligen Königreich Jugoslawien (The Legal Situation of the German Minority in the Former Kingdom of Yugoslavia) (Wüscht 1961), Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Jugoslawien 1934–1944 (Contributions to the History of the Germans in Yugoslavia) (Wüscht 1966), and Jugoslawien und das Dritte Reich (Yugoslavia and the Third Reich) (Wüscht 1969). He died in Koblenz in 1976.

530

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

The Natural Movement of the German Population in Vojvodina5 The Foundation and Direction of Development The number of births has decreased in the previous century in virtually all of the European states. In Germany, a prominent increase in the birth rate has been experienced since 1934. This is a phenomenon gradually becoming discernible among German ethnic minorities who settled outside the German Empire in the East and also by us who reside in the South-East [of Europe]. More and more, prominent population experts positively acknowledge that ethnic communities, both inside and outside the mother country, represent a unique biological organism that responds uniformly to the heartland irrespective of its spatial and political separation from the mother country. This is also the case with the German ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia. With considerable concern, the men of this ethnic minority became responsible for the persistent descending spiral in the German life curve (deutschen Lebenskurve) that occasionally resembled a sudden and steep fall from which no return seemed possible anymore. These men who were responsible became more and more numerous, and today the obvious realization of this threatening situation has made its presence known even in the smallest of villages. Yes even [. . .] in our prosperous and most affluent farmhouses, whose self-­satisfied affluence and current enjoyment should not be disturbed by happy children’s voices. If we are considering generations to come, we are able to characterize the biological situation thus: the generation of our grandparents still had families with many children, five, six, ten and possibly more. Today, the generation of our parents, one that has participated in, experienced, and ultimately had to acknowledge the immoral consequences of the war and the revolutions that followed, while influenced by a liberal worldview, suddenly initiated the one- and two-­child system (Ein- und Zweikindersystem). The young generation however, that are now entering reproductive age (Zeugungsalter), marry even now with the sense and feeling of responsibility for the continual existence, and therefore the survival and racial prosperity of the nation (rassische Güte des Volkes), something that each German marriage should have as its foundation. The economic considerations that determine the beginning of the family for their parents should come after the sense of responsibility. These young people do not consider the third child ‘random’ anymore. But this positive biological change is bound to have a numerical effect only over a certain period of time, and thus it carries the blame that the ethnic minority’s spiritual reflection cannot be fully recorded in statistical figures. However, the large decline in birth-­rates in the ethnic group’s recent past caused considerable damage not only to the nation’s biological body (biologischen Volkskörper), but to various areas of their life, [and] to their attitude in the fight for self-­assertion and for their rights of existence. One can draw the following conclusion: A nation that lives in ‘decadence’, this is best shown by a weak will to live, loses its right to its own schools, national culture, cultivation of its blood values (Pflege seiner 531

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Blutswerte), and finally the land on which it built and lived. [. . .] The inner relationship between blood and soil is suddenly discovered. [. . .] Firstly, we have observed through the discussion of the life curve that the decline in birth rate [. . .] is a pre-­war phenomenon. Yet, the chronic aging of the nation’s biological body (chronischen Überaltung der Volkskörper), the result of the declining age structure of the population, as one can see from the age of the diseased, is unlikely. The transition from productive periods to the years of decline took place suddenly, just as this was also the time (around 1930) in which birth rates in the border regions experienced a rapid, albeit small, increase. Secondly, the economic and social construction is the foundation upon which the German ethnic minority’s extensive agricultural community exists. Its proportional settlement ratios are shaped such that the small and the medium groups prevail, something that was always assessed as a sign of the special intensity of German life vitality. Both these factors decide decisively the living and developmental laws of a nation, and from this foundation our ethnic minority has not yet deviated. The agricultural population and a well-­structured settlement area form the most healthy fertility basis (Fruchtbarkeitsbasis) of a nation, a departure from this must sooner or later also elicit a change in the conception of life and in the attitudes regarding reproductive issues. This departure from the sources of their social structure and from the geographical bonds of their settlements, as we have observed, has not yet happened in the German ethnic minority. What has changed is their conception of life and their attitudes regarding reproduction, and admittedly this is completely unjustifiable, because the fertility basis has remained the same. As regards further advantages they have, the German ethnic minority is likely to be the only one of all of the ethnic minorities of this region who are in the position to create existential and employment possibilities, and therefore also the economic prerequisites for normal reproduction, due to their own individual hard work, and in spite of the existing social differentiation among their social classes. Where a great number of these individuals appear, additional employment possibilities become available (in industry, commerce, transportation and so on). The main industry, for example, is principally in the German villages with large families. To summarize therefore, we infer the following: 1) The decline in the birth rate affected not only the German ethnic minority, but all nations in this region [. . .]. 2) The post-­war decline in the birth rate of the Germans began in earlier times. 3) Recent years indicate an encouraging recovery of the healthy German birth rate. 4) The German ethnic minority is found not to be deteriorating in its life vitality (Lebenskräfte), because it persistently holds onto its original fertility foundation. 5) The causes of the German decline in the birth rate primarily lie in the psychological and emotional area, elicited through the disastrous effects that 532

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

civilization may have, even in the smallest villages of our settlement regions in the Vojvodina. 6) Because the causes of the decrease in the German birth rate are primarily due to attitudes and to the question of resolve, they should also be removed as soon as possible through psychological and emotional involvement of the nation in the reproductive question (the ‘psychological population policy’ described by Dr. Burgdörfer).6 Translation by Tania Mühlberger and Marius Turda

533

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Gustav Halwax

(1910, Hajdučica, Austria-Hungary–1941, near Romny, Ukraine)

Born in Hajdučica (Ger.: Heideschütz) in 1910, Halwax was educated in Werschetz (Serb.: Vršac) and Neu-Werbaß (Serb.: Novi Vrbas). He lived intermittently in Berlin, where he studied technical science, theology and economics. In this context, during the 1920s, Halwax became acquainted with National Socialism. During his vacations in Yugoslavia, he often expressed his sympathies for the Nazi movement. For that reason, Yugoslav authorities had him arrested and withheld his passport in 1933. Soon afterwards, he co-­founded, along with several of his like-­minded peers and Kulturbund members, the Comradeship of the Renewal Movement, a faction consisting of younger followers of National Socialism, who challenged the older and more conservative Kulturbund leadership. Consequently, he was expelled from the Kulturbund along with his fellow-­conspirators and dedicated himself to editing the Renewal Movement’s newspapers Volksruf and Volk und Arbeit. Halwax became one of the leading and most influential ideologues of the ‘Renewal’ movement. In this position he often lectured on indoctrination courses for junior members and even negotiated mutual cooperation and support with the Yugoslav fascist movement ‘Zbor’ in 1937. In 1939 Halwax returned to Berlin and joined the SS. In December 1940, after taking part in the German campaign in France, he returned to Yugoslavia by order of the SS-Dienststelle (SS-Office), who instructed him to influence the Volksdeutsche leadership’s conduct. He had also hoped to create an organization of athletic Volksdeutsche (‘Sportmannschaft’) fashioned after the ‘Sokol’ movement. This attempt was futile however, as other members of the Erneuerungsbewegung allied against him and managed to have him recalled by the SS. He was soon transferred to the Russian front as an SS-Untersturmführer of the ‘Das Reich’ Division. He was killed near Romny, Ukraine in September 1941. One of the ‘Deutsche Mannschaft’ units (auxiliary Volksdeutsche militia in later German-­occupied Serbia) was named after him, as he helped their establishment and was posthumously hailed as hero by the Volksdeutsche propaganda.

534

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

New Nation7 The expression ‘New Nation’ does not imply that our nation’s nature should be changed or that it should be inculcated with new characteristics that it does not already carry within it. Education cannot create new characteristics as they, by their nature, cultural as well as spiritual in character, are natural. They are given to the child by its mother and father at birth, in its blood. Hence blood is destiny. [. . .] And even if we are only small of number in our fatherland: In us glows the same fire that inspires the past and present of the entire German nation. We too work towards the future of the entire nation. We too work towards the future of the entire world. Because we are the bearers of the German mission, to whose realization we are committed. This duty is as old as our nation. It was born with the German blood and lives within it into eternity. Our entire life stands under the banner of this duty because from it we draw the strength to live (Kraft zum Leben). The nation hence remains unchanged: It is neither old nor new. The fateful effect of blood-­strains that affect us, we cannot turn off: Blessing remains blessing and guilt remains guilt. The sins of our ancestors in our blood accompany us and our grandchildren. And yet we want a new nation. We want a nation that thinks of its blood and stops piling sin upon sin until it perishes. There needs to be a new will! Because will alone can maintain and propagate blood-­values. The maintenance and propagation of blood-­values cannot, though, be grasped through tables, nor recognized through statistics. Although the birth rate can say many a thing about a nation’s will-­to-life, because a nation that wants to live has children, it is not decisive. Decisive is the question: Who has children? We have no interest in sick people having children, because thereby only the misfortune spreads the guilt of the fathers. Only healthy people can have healthy children, and only healthy children are a blessing to the nation and nations. [. . .] The nation should not just increase numerically, but in terms of value (wertmässig). We may not and cannot be content with the proliferation of the average and that will eventually gain the upper hand in our national life. Because then we cease to be a nation of generative creation; a nation of achievement. The nation’s best should have the most children. Unfortunately, today, it is the opposite. We are threatened not merely by a quantitative demise, but much rather that of quality. [. . .] Then again, one sees spouses healthy in body, spirit and character, but that only have one to two children. They are beautiful and strong children, but too few! It is the urgent task of our movement to tell these people that they are robbing the nation and world of the most precious: of the creative people. They commit the greatest crime. [. . .] National comrades, remember: It is not the quantity (Menge) that matters, but the quality (Güte)! We cannot be satisfied to statistically establish a birth rate rise, but our concern must chiefly be: what value is inherited with these births? Our nation must grow in number and value. That is the underlying purpose of our demand to keep our blood pure and [continuing] our nation’s numerical growth. We do not want to be a great nation solely because of our size, because we want to be a beautiful, strong, and creative 535

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

nation. We have been enabled, through the whim of fate, to be such. The blessing, given to us in our blood, is greater yet than the guilt. At the last hour we are faced with the question, whether we can muster the strength to multiply the blessing. Because we are in danger of entirely succumbing to guilt. That is why we need a new nation! That is why the movement for renewal fights for the renewal of the German person! There is more at stake than the conquest of organizations. It is about the preservation and proliferation of our blood, against which generations have badly sinned. Only a new nation can solve this task. Only a nation with a new faith and resolve. Faith and resolve must become new; faith and resolve will allow the energies needed to realize the task conferred by the blood to burst forth. A new faith should inspire us! Faith in the German mission and in German destiny. Faith in our nation’s eternal strength. Faith that is a mercy of provenance, to be German Faith, that the blood is our innermost law determined by God. Faith, that God’s will reveals itself in our nation. Faith must be profound and passionate, so that it may brush away all such inhibitions as petty selfishness and undue individualism, and lead the nation to a victorious resolve. [. . .] A rich slacker must be considered a wastrel and the creative person as bearer of the future. If someday we think so and respect the achievements of people, then all class barriers will fall and give way to the nation’s resolve. This resolve towards the nation (Wille zum Volk) will renew our nation culturally. Instead of the plump, miffed person who devours a Viennese Schnitzel for breakfast only to then, for his digestion, crave quiet. A new man (neuer Mensch) must determine the face of our national group. A new man who cleans up the ostentatious accumulation of parquet, heavy carpets and mahogany furniture in ungainly, large but tasteless farmhouses. The German being must also assert itself in lifestyle. If our national group were to perish today, then no other memories of us would remain than the cultivated field, an achievement of our settler ancestors, and a reminder of the large chunks and bottles that we could scoff down. This inner, spiritual flattening, which degenerated into bleakest materialism, is complicit in the biological deterioration to which we are witnesses. Only among Germans can German blood prosper! Translation by Tudor Georgescu

536

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

Mathias (Matz) Giljum

(1902, Deutsch-Elemer, Austria-Hungary–1980, São Paulo, Brazil)

Giljum was born in Deutsch-Elemer (Serb.: Elemir) and educated in Gross-Betschkerek (Serb.: Veliki Bečkerek, present-­day Zrenjanin). After graduating from the local School of Commerce, he started working as a bank clerk and part-­time journalist for the German weekly newspaper Neue Zeit (New Time), whose chief-­editor was Johann Keks, future President of the Schwäbisch-Deutsche Kulturbund (German-Swabian Cultural Association). In 1922 Giljum moved to Vienna, where he pursued his studies in economics and commerce, while attending lectures on philosophy, pedagogy, law and German studies. During this period he became an associate member of the Association of the Banat Swabians (Verein der Banater Schwaben) and the Association of Swabian Students in Vienna (Vereinigung Schwäbischer Hochschüler in Wien). Following the completion of his one-­year mandatory military service in the Yugoslav army (1929–30), Giljum became actively involved in the social life of the Volksdeutsche. He took an active role in the Central German Agricultural Cooperative (Deutsche Landwirtschaftliche Zentralgenossenschaft Agraria) (1930–2). Under the presidency of Johann Keks, Giljum rose to be the general secretary of the Kulturbund, serving from 1932 to 1939. As such, he took a major role in the reorganization of local subsidiaries across Vojvodina, after the Kulturbund was re-­established in 1930 (it had been banned during the previous year). At this time he began writing for the Volkswart (National Ward) magazine and editing its supplementary periodical Unsere Schule (Our School). He became the head of Demographic Section (Amt für Demographie) within the Kulturbund, founded in 1935, and often wrote articles and gave lectures on the Volksdeutsche’s social and demographic issues (Giljum 1933: 2–12). He was particularly alert to the different fertility rates between Catholic and Protestant Germans in Yugoslavia. According to his research in 1928 the former’s birth-­rate per 1,000 inhabitants was 8.3 per cent while the latter’s was only 4.1 per cent (Giljum 1933: 3). Between 1921 and 1923, for instance, in the province of Batschka (Serb.: Bačka; Hung.: Bácska), Catholic Germans experienced an increase of 24 per cent in their birth rates, while the Protestant Germans, during the same period, witnessed a decline of 12 per cent. These statistics indicated that Protestant Germans (among which the ‘Ein- und Zweikindersystem’ were widespread) faced rapid extinction, as their numbers were reduced, in some areas by half in twenty-­five years (one generation according to Giljum). He further concluded that ‘considering the present-­day data, German people in Batschka, and especially Protestant Germans, are no longer able to prevent their own extinction’ (Giljum 1933: 5–6). In October 1939, confronted with the growing power of the Erneuerungsbewegung at the Kulturbund’s expense, Giljum resigned his post and was appointed Secretary of the School Foundation of Germans in Yugoslavia (Schulstiftung der Deutschen in Jugoslawien). Following the occupation and dissolution of the country in 1941, this 537

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

organization continued and expanded its activities into Hungary, prompting Giljum to move to Budapest in 1942. He fled to the West in autumn 1944, finding refuge in Linz. For several years he held various placements in Upper Austria’s Volksdeutsche organizations, prior to his emigration to Brazil in 1951. He settled in São Paolo, where he worked as a journalist and publisher until his retirement in 1961. He died in 1980, leaving behind the unpublished manuscript of his memoirs (Erinnerungen).

538

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

Nation without Youth: Our Nation’s Core Question8 No defeat on the battlefield, political suppression or the prevention of cultural life ultimately decide a nation’s future, but solely and only its biological will to live. A healthy nation can be enslaved, suppressed, torn up, but not eradicated. A nation can only be extinguished, disappear, through itself, through its own becoming infertile. That is any nation’s most dangerous enemy. [. . .] This danger threatens the German nation and with it also, in particular, our German national group in Yugoslavia. The German nation has stopped being a growing nation. The biological balance of life (Lebensbilanz) of the German nation and of our Swabian national group in particular, concludes with a remarkable deficit. The shrinking of our national body seems to be our nation’s lot. But this shrinking means serious threats for our future. Beyond the poetic expression ‘Nation without Space’ another problem menacingly emerges: Nation without youth. Nation and space are the natural components of a nation’s struggle for its continued existence. The population, which colonizes a space, has the natural urge to reproduce. A nation’s spatial expansion is not always possible. With advances in agricultural techniques, with the advances being made in relation to attaining and utilizing the given space’s existent natural riches, the population capacity of the given space expands, increases the yield, and therewith its Lebensraum’s natural ability. [. . .] The German nation ceased to be a growing nation Following the period of unusually pronounced population growth among our ancestors as well as in Germany during the pre-­war period, it seems there was no period of stagnation and transition to a stationary population, as was the case in France, but immediately ensued by a shrinking of the national body. We will later recognize that the German nation’s birth rate lags far behind France’s, the classic country of fertility limitation. Unfortunately, today’s German nation must be characterized as a shrinking, aged nation. This realization is all the more applicable to the German nation in Yugoslavia. As the German nation outside the Reich’s borders has also ceased to sufficiently reproduce itself, the danger of extinction, despite the tenacious clutching to its material possessions and its cultural uniqueness, has now [been] brought to the fore. [. . .] The biological question is our nation’s key question Everything we have heard concerning the biological state of the German nation, and the positions of other nations on this question, is for us, as German people, insofar as we still hold our nation dear, quite saddening and shaming. One may appraise the biological question, our nation’s core question, differently according to temperament and worldview, but one should be brave enough to recognize facts as such and deal with them objectively. Participating in this, our nation’s vital 539

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

question (Lebensfrage), is of course conditional upon one not having, through intentional childlessness or the intentional limitation of the number of children in one’s own family to one or two, already become one’s own nation’s destroyer and gravedigger. [. . .] What can save our German nation from doom? The self-­destruction can only be overcome through a re-­awakening and strengthening of the natural will-­to-life on a nationally self-­aware and religious-­moral foundation. But a practical population policy could generate change. The current economic order doubtlessly disadvantages he with many children in relation to he with few or no children, and that in every social class. He cannot afford what these can afford. Today’s economic order with the capitalist system invariably leads to fertility limitation. Here the work must set in, to create a social and economic order in which it no longer makes sense to kill one’s own foetus (Leibesfrucht). In this economic order, that is to be aspired to, there will be a rebalancing of economic resources, and an increased burdening of the large family versus the small or childless. In short, a form of population-­political financial equalization within the German nation must be pursued such that the actual economic benefits of childlessness are curtailed in favour of those families blessed with children. With the means thus won from the childless, the burden of large families can be reduced. Having a large family will always be linked with sacrifices. These sacrifices cannot and should never be entirely removed, but they should be alleviated and made bearable. Such fiscal measures could also be implemented in the current economic order in the form of an increased tax burden for the childless and its lessening for the large families, where four to five children should already be presumed to mean large, then also in such a way that salary scales in both public and private businesses adjust to the number of family members. This could be implemented everywhere without increasing the burden on budgets, at the expense of those with none or few children. Prof. Dr. Gini9 says: ‘The surest way to promote population growth is to help those profligately fertile groups to reproduce’. Our current social morality is predominately hostile towards families because it virtually punishes those that render the greatest service to the whole by education and offspring. Here change must be affected through the previously mentioned de-­burdening of families. Will such economic-­social measures be able to bring about a turnaround? The implementation of such measures encounters, especially among us, a minority-­ nation, [faces] great difficulties because the state apparatus is not led by us. But some opportunities for our main central German economic organizations open up. But because we did not see and recognize economic episodes as the cause of the declining birth rate, that the economic arguments were just pretence for the non-­ economic sacrifices, for the sacrifices in comfort, liberty and personal freedom, we know that socio-­economic measures alone cannot bring about an enduring success. They will only then prove their full impact if, coming from within, a mental renewal, a spiritual re-­orientation and rebirth, a deepened attitude to life (Lebensauffassung) on 540

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

a nationally-­self-­aware (volkstumsbewusst) and religious-­moral foundation can be brought about, one which does not view life as personal property but as a gift and obligation and enables the achievement of the greatest of life’s duties owed by a man to the long chain of ancestors, his family, his nation: the duty to live on in a sufficient number of healthy children. To undertake this great educational work, that is the goal our Swabian-German Cultural Association has set itself. This inner renewal is well underway in our motherland and the leadership has focused its attention precisely on the biological question of the German nation. [. . .] May the German nation recognize its true life-­purpose and life-­duty (Lebensaufgabe und Lebensverpflichtung) before it is too late! Then the German nation will, therefore, and in spite of all the dangers, once more become and remain, what in the course of its glorious, if tumultuous history, it always was: a nation of youth, a nation of hope, a nation of the future! Translation by Tudor Georgescu

541

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Thomas Menrath Biographical information on Thomas Menrath is scarce. He was a Kulturbund official in charge of youth activism and a professor at the German College for Teachers (Deutsche Lehrbildungsanstalt). In 1928 Menrath founded the Association of German Gymnastic and Sport clubs (Verband der deutschen Turn- und Sportvereine) and became its first president. Three years later, in 1931, he is mentioned as a faculty member of Deutsche Lehrbildung-Anstalt in Gross-Betschkerek. As such, he participated in organizing various sporting events and gatherings and wrote articles addressing the issues concerning the proper spiritual and physical development of the German youth (Menrath 1934a: 8–14 and 1934b: 40). He also believed in the political revival advocated by the younger generation of Volksdeutsche activists. In a programmatic text from 1933 published in Deutsches Volksblatt (German People’s Journal), he described the ‘Renewalists’ as ‘torchbearers’ and ‘enlightened leaders’, leading the Volksdeutsche ‘to a better future’ (Menrath 1933: 1). When the German Youth Association (Verband der deutschen Jugend) was founded within the Kulturbund in 1934, Menrath was appointed as its president. However, both youth organizations headed by him were disbanded in 1935, in order to prevent the increasing influence of National Socialism among the younger Kulturbund membership.

542

Volksdeutsche Eugenics in Vojvodina

Towards a National Community through Active Youth Welfare10 We not only live in a time of greatest economic need that depresses the entire world, but also in a time of national need (völkische Not), in a time of seeking the most navigable routes that can lead our entire Swabian nation in our state, whether peasant, workman, day labourer, merchant or man of learning, towards the true national community. To find these routes to true national community and pursue them is all of our duty, but the youth have contributed best, because ‘the future belongs to the youth’. The necessity and possibility of how our entire youth can and must be drawn in to achieve our goal in order to attain the true national community I will discuss in the following remarks: 1. Youth welfare is a term we all think to know well, but that only seems so, because through its daily use in the sense of a general education of children, the pure and noble content of this term is no longer. Thereby it becomes so blurred and it is hence necessary, in the interest of the healthy development of our national life, to clear the routes to a healthy, community-­building, practical youth welfare. 2. Every person received the fundamental education in the parental home and at school. These two main-­educators augment and complement each other in the child’s education, but they only really encompass the education of young children, while the teenage years (between twelve and eighteen years), probably [the] most important period for the child’s high principled education, when the child is in most need of a clear and strong leadership, are mostly subjected to very damaging influences.  As early as with the twelfth and fourteenth year of age the male youth in particular experiences a tangible weakening not only in the general education, in terms of joined up education, but also in the necessary supervision of a healthy lifestyle. [. . .] So what have we today to understand [is] the word and concept of ‘youth-­work’ to mean, and why does one and we too speak of a ‘deliberate youth welfare’? We understand ‘youth welfare’ as the all-­encompassing educational capture of our Swabian youth, chiefly though the capture of the youth having left school, of both genders and of every social class. [. . .] We understand ‘deliberate youth welfare’ as the deliberate education of our youth into fully-­fledged and conscientious members of our national community, to a self-­ evident loyalty to the state and the ancestral (angestammt) nation, to a full comprehension of the necessity of our nation’s own cultural and economic organizations! [. . .] So, how can youth-­work be practically implemented and be achievable? Prior to the actual youth-­work and in close relation to it, comes the education of parents, masters and employers, perhaps at parent-­teacher meetings and so on, because 543

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

where the parents, masters and employers are oblivious or indifferent of our work, there it will be hardest, or not at all possible, for our educational goals to reach the youth. ‘Vocational youth welfare’ comprises not only the social dimension, like the SwabianGerman Cultural Association’s recently established, and already exquisitely working, apprentice-­welfare (Lehrlingsfürsorge), so not only the very important placement of German apprentices with German masters, tradesmen and ventures, but vocational youth welfare must also deal with vocational-­spiritual and leisure-­bodily and with the nationally conscious (Völkisch) education of youths of all professions. Practically this means that particular care must be taken to first statistically register all youths, whether peasant, craftsman, merchant or student, before a controllable work method is possible. [. . .] For general educational lectures the entire youth of all occupational branches come together, as also for the annual Communal-Youth Events (GemeinschaftsJugendveranstaltungen), whereby the true national-­communal idea first blossoms into reality through practical education, because the one essential principle that must precede any youth welfare work, is: Where our youth cannot be continuously called upon to work together, as is realistically only the case in a few of our youth-­associations and especially in our associations, there can also be no talk of community-­building! [. . .] This whole question of organization and implementation is, actually, no problem at all, as so happily postulated by those timid people and those that do not want to let themselves be disturbed from their tranquil peace, but the whole matter is to be compared to a completed blueprint, a blueprint for the construction of a proud construction, for which all building materials are already there. It just needs stepping up to with fresh courage and dogged will to work at the deed, in order to lay, as we can surely claim, stone-­hard soil of our healthy but individually very tight-­knit nation, the foundation that should lead to the construction of a real national community. And there the first spades of earth turned towards this work will surely reveal that our uplifting work is confronted with merely ostensible, but no truly insurmountable, obstacles. It is truly only necessary that bold men and women are found in our midst, who approach the realization of a purposeful youth welfare with serious and concerted will, because this work constitutes a holy duty to our nation and fatherland! Translation by Tudor Georgescu

544

Glossary Bevölkerungspolitiker: population expert biologischen Volkskörper: the nation’s biological body Blutverderben: blood corruption chronischen Überaltung der Volkskörper: chronic aging of the nation’s biological body deutschen Lebenskurve: German life curve Ein- und Zweikindersystem: One Child and Two Children policy Erbgut/Erbgesundheit: Protection and welfare of hereditary heritage Fruchtbarkeitsbasis: fertility basis Gebürtenrückgang: birth decline Lebenswillensschwächung: degeneration of life-­strength Lebensbilanz unseres Volkes: our nation’s balance of life Lebenskräfte: life vitality Rassenhygiene: racial hygiene rassische Güte des Volkes: racial prosperity of the nation Volksgemeinschaft: national community Volkstumsbewusst: nationally self-aware völkische Not: national need Zeugungsalter: reproductive age

Notes 1 Vojvodina was the unofficial name for the northern parts of newly formed Yugoslav state, previously belonging to Austria-Hungary. It consisted of parts of the historical regions of the Banat Bačka and Baranja (divided among the successor-­states of Austria-Hungary), while it was widely and unofficially considered to have included the historical region of Srem (Syrmien) as well [note FK]. 2 A town in Vojvodina, located in the West Bačka District [note FK]. 3 The brief ‘April War’ that lasted from 6 to 17 April 1941 came as a consequence of revolutionary events in Yugoslavia, after this country had joined the Axis powers on 25 March that year. Two days later, massive protests took place in Belgrade, backed by the British secret intelligence service, which also supported the coup d’etat and change of government that ensued. Although the new Yugoslav authorities proclaimed their allegiance to the Tripartite Pact, they did not gain the Third Reich’s trust, and a German invasion followed [note FK]. 4 ‘Die Zentral-Wohlfahrtsgenossenschaft (ZEWOGE)’, in Plautz, O. (1940), Das Werden der deutschen Volksgemeinschaft in Südslawien, Novi Sad: Sonderabdruck aus dem ‘Deutschen Volksblatt. [Excerpts translated from pp. 94–5]. 5 Wüscht, J. (1939) ‘Die natürliche Bevölkerungsbewegung der Deutschen in der Wojwodina’, Volk und Heimat: Zeitschr. d. Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Deutschtums in Südslawien für Heimatgeschichte, Volkskunde, Familienforschung und Schrifttum, 2: 165–71 [Excerpts translated from pp. 165–6 and 170–1]. 6 Friedrich Burgdörfer (1890–1967), Germany’s leading demographer at the time [note FK]. 7 Halwax, G. (1938), ‘Neues Volk’, Volk und Arbeit, 1: 35–42 [Excerpts translated from pp. 35–6; 37–8 and 40]. 8 Giljum, M. (1933), ‘Volk ohne Jugend–die Kernfrage unseres Volkes’, Volkswart: Vierteljahrsschrift für deutsche Volkstumspflege in Südslavien, 2: 2–12 [Excerpts translated from pp. 2, 6–7 and 10–12]. 9 Corrado Gini (1884–1965): Italian demographer, statistician and eugenicist [note FK]. 10 Menrath, T. (1934a), ‘Durch praktische Jugendpflege zur Volksgemeinschaft’, Volkswart: Vierteljahrsschrift für deutsche Volkstumspflege in Südslavien, 3: 8–14 [Excerpts translated from pp. 8–10 and 12–14].

Bibliography Archives Biblioteka Matice srpske (Library of Matica srpska) (Novi Sad) Istorijski arhiv Zrenjanin (Historical Archives of Zrenjanin) Berlin, Bundesarchiv; Bestandssignatur BDC, SS-0, Archivnummer Halwax, Gustav Stuttgart, Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Abt. Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg, K 410 I Bü 19071: Personalakten der Bahnbeamten, Giljum Mathias Tübingen, Institut für donauschwäbische Geschichte und Landeskunde

Primary Sources (17 March 1940), ‘Zehn Gebote für die Gattenwall’, Landwirt, 137. (26 September 1940), ‘Pretsednik vlade g. Cvetković i ministri g. g. Cincar-Marković i Bešlić sa pretsednikom Beogradske opštine g. Tomićem posetili su juče logor spremljen za iseljenike iz Besarabije, kod Sajmišta’, Politika, 9. (27 September 1940), ‘Selidba Nemaca iz Besarabije i Bukovine’, Politika, 9. (30 September 1940), ’Oživeo je logor na levoj obali Save’, Politika, 7. (8 October 1940), ‘Visoka poseta logoru na levoj obali Save’, Politika, 5. (9 October 1940), ‘Iseljenici iz Besarabije putuju na nova ognjišta’, Politika, 9. Giljum, M. (1933), ‘Volk ohne Jugend–die Kernfrage unseres Volkes’, Volkswart: Vierteljahrsschrift für deutsche Volkstumspflege in Südslavien, 2: 2–12. Halwax, G. (1938), ‘Neues Volk’, Volk und Arbeit, 1: 35–42. Kremling, I. (1927), ‘Die Frau in Dienste am Volkstum’, Deutsche Volksblatt (19 and 20 November 1927). Republished in Rasimus, H. (ed.), Als Fremde im Vaterland. Der schwäbisch-­deutsche Kulturbund und die ehemalige deutsche Volksgruppe in Jugoslawien im Spiegel der Presse, München: Donauschwäbische Kulturstiftung, 1989, 344–6. Menrath, T. (1933), ‘Akademiker, Führer und Volk’, Deutsches Volksblatt (17 September 1933), 1. Menrath, T. (1934a), ‘Durch praktische Jugendpflege zur Volksgemeinschaft’, Volkswart: Vierteljahrsschrift für deutsche Volkstumspflege in Südslavien 3 (1934), 8–14. Menrath, T. (1934b), ‘Verband der Deutschen Jugend’, in Die Arbeit des Kulturbundes vom 1. November 1933 bis 31. Oktober 1934, Tätigkeitsbericht der Bundesleitung zur 10. ordentlichen Hauptversammlung in Novisad-Neusatz, 3. Dezember 1934, Novi Sad: Druckerei- und Verlags-A.G., 40. Plautz, O. (1940), Das Werden der deutschen Volksgemeinschaft in Südslawien, Novi Sad: Sondernabdruck aus dem ‘Deutschen Volksblatt’. Stanić, S. (1931), ‘Socijalni pregled. Švabe u Vojvodini’, Letopis Matice Srpske, 330: 114–30. Wüscht, J. (1936a), Beitrag zur biologischen Lebensbilanz der Deutschen in der Wojwodina, Novisad: Druckerei-­u. Verlags-A.G.

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Wüscht, J. (1936b), ‘Beitrag zur biologischen Lebensbilanz der Deutschen in der Wojwodina’, Woge-Blatt, 5: 22–6. Wüscht, J. (1936c), Die genossenschaftliche Krankenvorsorge: Grundlagen und Arbeit, Novisad: Zentralgenossenschaft d. Ländl. Wohlfahrtsgenossenschaften. Wüscht, J. (1938), ‘Natürliche Bevölkerungsbewegung der deutschen Volksgruppe in der Wojwodina’, Volk und Heimat: Zeitschr. der Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Deutschtums in Südslawien für Heimatgeschichte, Volkskunde, Familienforschung und Schrifttum, 1: 27–33. Wüscht, J. (1939), ‘Die natürliche Bevölkerungsbewegung der Deutschen in der Wojwodina’, Volk und Heimat: Zeitschrift der Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Deutschtums in Südslawien für Heimatgeschichte, Volkskunde, Familienforschung und Schrifttum, 2: 165–71. Wüscht, J. (1940), Die Wojwodina und ihr Deutschtum, Vienna: Publikationsstelle. Wüscht, J. (1961), Die Rechtslage der deutschen Minderheiten im ehemaligen Königreich Jugoslawien, Koblenz: Bundesarchivs Koblenz. Wüscht, J. (1966), Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Jugoslawien für den Zeitraum vom 1934 bis 1944: aktenmäßige Darstellung, Kehl am Rein: J. Wüscht. Wüscht, J. (1969), Jugoslawien und das Dritte Reich: Eine Dokumentierte Geschichte Der Deutsch-­jugoslawischen Beziehungen von 1933 bis 1945. Stuttgart: Seewald.

Secondary Sources Antolović, M. (2008), Politika nemačke manjine u Dunavskoj banovini (1929–1941). Unpublished MA Dissertation. University of Novi Sad. Bešlin, B. I. (1999a), ‘Nemci u Vojvodini 1918–1941’, Tokovi Istorije, 1–4: 207–39. Bešlin, B. I. (1999b), ‘Die Deutsche Katholische Presse in der Vojvodina und ihre Haltung gegenüber den Nationalsozialisten 1935–1941’, Zbornik Matice srpske za istoriju, 59–60: 107–23. Bergen, D. L. (1994), ‘The Nazi Concept of “Volksdeutsche’‘ and the Exacerbation of AntiSemitism in Eastern Europe, 1939–1945’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29: 569–82. Böhm, J. (2009), Die deutsche Volksgruppe in Jugoslawien 1918–1941: Innen- und Aussenpolitik, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Böhm, J. (2012), Die deutschen Volksgruppen im Unabhängigen Staat Kroatien und im serbischen Banat: Ihr Verhältnis zum Dritten Reich 1941–1944, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Burleigh, M. (1988), Germany turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich, New York: Cambridge University Press. Ivkić, S. (2013), Flucht, Evakuierung und Zwangsaussiedlung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus Kroatien nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Unpublished MA Dissertation, University of Vienna. Janjetović, Z. D. (2000), ‘Duhovni profil vojvođanskih Švaba’, Tokovi Istorije, 1–2: 55–68. Lyon, P. W. (2008), After Empire: Ethnic Germans and Minority Nationalism in Interwar Yugoslavia, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Maryland. Lumans, V. O. (1993), Himmler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Rasimus, H. (1989) Schwäbisch-­deutsche Kulturbund und ehemalige deutsche Volksgemeinschaft in Spiegel der Presse, Munich: Arbeitskreis für donauschwabische Heimat- und Volksforschung in der Donauschwabischen Kulturstiftung. Spannenberger, N. (2002), Der Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn 1938–1944 unter Horthy und Hitler, Munich: Oldenbourg. Spannenberger, N. (2012), ‘The Ethnic Policy of the Third Reich toward the Volksdeutsche in Central and Eastern Europe’, in Cattaruzza, M., Dyroff S. and Langewiesche, D. (eds), Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War: Goals, Expectations, Practices, New York: Berghahn, 56–71. 548

10 Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Overview Tudor Georgescu

I The inter-­war period was awash with fervent nation-­building projects. Eugenics too gained traction across much of Europe and beyond within this flurry of notions and ideologies. Its regenerative agenda channelled a broad spectrum of popular national laments on demographic decline and hereditary degeneration, while its imaginations on the biologically re-­conceived nation resonated with widely felt anxieties about national fitness and public health. The Saxon eugenic discourse in Transylvania is a fascinating example of how a conceptual current crystallized into a distinct indigenous movement, then developed into a fully ­fledged policy programme in response to the socio-­political upheavals of inter-­war Romania, only to be co-­opted by the Third Reich’s geopolitical ambitions after 1940. Romania emerged from a cataclysmic World War I as Greater Romania with a drastically swollen territory and a corresponding assortment of newly acquired ethnic minorities. Transylvania had, of course, been the main prize, and brought two large German minorities under Bucharest’s rule, namely the Banat Schwabs and the Transylvanian Saxons, the latter of which had settled in the region in the thirteenth century. In contrast to most other German minorities in Romania, the roughly 250,000 Saxons had a firmly entrenched sense of national identity, strong urban and rural economies, established political traditions, and the influential National Protestant Church (Evangelische Landeskirche) entrusted with coordination of the Saxon school system. But despite adamant assurances by its elites that these pillars of Saxon identity were historical fixtures, the realities of the geopolitical storm gathering over Europe – the flurry of new ideas on, and definitions of, nationhood and race which were rapidly replacing cultural and linguistic paradigms – and the growing pressures exerted by an increasingly nationalist Romanian nation-­building project, together wreaked havoc on Saxon economic, social and political life. Against this backdrop the eugenic promise was heard more loudly than it had ever been since first proposed by Heinrich Siegmund in the early twentieth century. As such, the Transylvanian Saxon eugenic project between 1900 and 1940 offers a particularly enticing, and remarkably neglected, case study of an ethnic minority’s embrace of eugenics in the name of national salvation. Nevertheless while historiographic scrutiny seems to mostly skirt around the ideas, visions and policies pursued by an increasingly interventionist eugenic agenda, the Transylvanian Saxons themselves do feature in the ever expanding library on the Third Reich. This has mostly been either in relation to National Socialist territorial ambitions

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

(and plans for these regions’ ethnic reconfiguration), or in terms of their utility as diplomatic bargaining chips vis-à-vis the Romanian state. These studies, however, frequently focus on Germany’s appropriation or instrumentalization of Romania’s Germans as they were increasingly co-­opted into the Third Reich’s bio-­political dystopia after 1940. Posing as pockets of untapped human capital, these German ethnic enclaves were also the focus of intense scientific curiosity, and considerable funding was made available for their anthropological and biometric study as idealized vestiges of a rural and grounded past long since uprooted by industrialization and the onslaught of a degenerating modernity. However, such an account may in fact vindicate the perpetually reiterated ‘historic mission’ to civilize and cultivate, to act as geo- and bio-­political bridgeheads. So while current interpretations tend to focus on how and why a plethora of National Socialist state and party organizations vied for supremacy over Europe’s Volksdeutsche, they often do so by looking in from the outside.

II The perception by Saxon eugenicists of an acute existential crisis after 1900 gravitated around two overarching but intricately related themes, namely the ongoing loss of ‘living space’ (‘Lebensraum’) on one hand, and a continuously declining birth-­rate on the other. But the contentious issue here was not that the Saxons had diminished numerically and territorially, but that of agency. Had a diminishing Lebensraum, as Heinrich Siegmund would have it, created ‘a shortage of space’ (‘Raumnot’) that forced a demographic decline, or as Alfred Csallner and most other Saxon eugenicists vehemently argued later, did a declining birth-­rate allow the ethnic ‘Others’, allegedly streaming from the hills, a foothold? These competing interpretations are illustrated by the remits of various eugenic organizations. For example, Heinrich Siegmund’s 1906 Land Preservation Society (Bodenschutzverein) promoted internal colonization schemes, in contrast to Alfred Csallner’s 1927 Society of Child Enthusiasts (Verein der Kinderfrohen) that demonized the proliferation of one- (and two-) child families, while supporting the growth of large families. Aggravating these perceptions of quantitative decline, a plethora of ‘socio-­biological’ studies on differential fertility warned that the nation’s most valuable socio-­economic castes were teetering on the precipice of a statistical abyss, and threatening a qualitative degeneration. These issues were in turn amplified by a host of tributary concerns, especially mixed marriages, the emigration of racially valuable stock, the employment of non-Saxon agricultural labourers and apprentices, and social ills such as alcoholism and tobacco smoking. Saxon eugenicists repeatedly pointed to the substantial cumulative wages paid by Saxons to the very ethnic ‘Others’ who proceeded to buy their way into Saxon towns and settlements. If this indicated a perpetual, downward spiral then the Saxon consumption of alcohol and tobacco only accentuated the problem. Saxon eugenicists were also keenly in tune with developments in Germany, and many Saxon organizations took inspiration from their German counterparts. So, for 551

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

example, Csallner’s Society of Child Enthusiasts looked to the influential German pro-­ natalist Reich Union of Large Families (Reichsbund der Kinderreichen), and Fritz Fabritius’ Self-Help (Selbsthilfe) organization, modelled after Heinrich Dolle’s Aus Not zu Brot. Siegmund, for his part, had extensive links to numerous German and Austrian organizations; his 1937 National Health Exhibition (Volksgesundheits-Ausstellung) was modelled on the 1911 Dresden Hygiene Exhibition, whose resulting museum contributed numerous exhibits to Siegmund’s showcase (Inv. 107, LL. 1–29, Files 38– 107). A valuable example of the extent to which Saxon eugenics directly benefited from German material and financial help in the 1930s is the field of racial anthropology and the various studies conducted at Eugen Fischer’s request, most notably by the Saxon racial anthropologist Alfred Hermann. The same is true for the level of funding awarded to individual eugenicists in the form of research grants or even salaries, as was the case with Alfred Csallner and Johann Bredt, among others, most commonly from the German Foreign Institute (Deutsches Auslands-Institut) in Stuttgart. Apart from these extensive dealings with German and, interestingly to a lesser degree, Austrian organizations, Saxon eugenics was disengaged from its Hungarian and Romanian counterparts, who were scarcely mentioned in Saxon literature. On the other hand however, Saxon fascism was suffused with a pan-German ambition that appears remarkable when the Saxon isolationist tradition is considered, as it promoted an essentially second nation-­building project to tie together the culturally, religiously and economically divergent groups in the Banat, Bessarabia, Bukovina, Dobrudja, as well as the disjointed concentrations of Germans in the Romanian Old Kingdom. That said, the Transylvanian Saxon eugenics can largely be divided into three distinct phases between 1885 and 1944, each with a distinct set of key actors and the corresponding means of implementation. These can, overall, be described as a formative period between 1885 and 1918 dominated by private initiates and societies; second, a period of increasing politicization, radicalization and gradual implementation through Church structures and as a result of Self-Help’s empowerment up to 1940; and a third period in the service of the Third Reich between 1940 and 1944, during which indigenous structures were replaced by imports from Germany. The formative phase of Saxon eugenics spanning the years 1885 to 1918 was essentially dominated by two competing evaluations of Saxon demography. When Oskar von Meltzl published his article ‘Statistik der Sächsischen Landbevölkerung in Siebenbürgen’ (‘The Statistics of the Saxon Rural Population’) to much acclaim in 1885, the underlying ‘destruction theory’ (‘Vernichtungslehre’) explained the declining number of Saxon settlements as the result of Hungarian and Romanian populations moving into areas already emptied of their Saxon inhabitants by wars and plagues. In doing so, it not only set the political status quo of decades to come, but also gave an emerging eugenic discourse its initial impetus and purpose: to substantiate its sense of an impending crisis born of internal, rather than external, processes such as declining birth rates and creeping racial degeneration (Von Meltzl 1885: 213–510). Heinrich Siegmund, arguably the most important Saxon eugenicist and the founder of modern Saxon social medicine in Transylvania, championed this alternative model 552

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

insisting on ‘displacement’ rather than replacement. Siegmund was the first to describe the Saxon nation as a biological entity embroiled in a Darwinian battle for survival and relentlessly warned that the Saxon nation’s failure to actively protect its Lebensraum contributed to the decline in Saxon fertility in what amounted to an impending ‘national death’ (‘Volkstod’) – or, as the title of his landmark book (Siegmund 1931) announced, the Deutschen-Dämmerung in Siebenbürgen (Twilight of the Germans in Transylvania). Remarkably, Siegmund had published a seminal text ‘Zur sächsischen Rassenhygiene’ (‘On Transylvanian Saxon Racial Hygiene’) as early as 1901. In it he called for a concerted engagement with a burgeoning field that ‘can serve to help strengthen our Saxon nation as a biological unit, as a race, to adapt to the environment and so safeguard its future’. As a result he was quick to point to the potential advantages offered by racial hygiene as ‘the conscious control of variation, despite being an incredibly important weapon, is indeed perhaps one of the most important ones in the battle to preserve our national specificity’ (Siegmund 1901: 9). This biologization of the Saxon nation was the foundation of Siegmund’s proposed ‘Science of National Defence’ (‘Wissenschaft der Volksverteidung’) that diagnosed individual settlements as either ‘endangered’, ‘sick’, ‘seriously ill’, or ‘dying’ (‘gefährdet’, ‘krank’, ‘schwerkrank’, or ‘sterbend’ respectively). Indicative of the ideological core that was to define Saxon eugenics in the following decades, Siegmund called for: a significant qualitative increase in Saxon fertility – the betterment of the nation’s racial stock by discouraging the hereditarily ill and mentally infirm from bearing children, a decrease in emigration; a battle against the corrosive effects of tobacco and alcohol on societal health and the nation’s collective purse (himself a leading member of the International Order of Good Templars’ abstinence movement, Siegmund also convinced the Saxon Protestant Church to introduce the ill-­fated and much derided ‘alcohol-­free Sundays’ concept in the hope that money that would have been spent in the pub would be donated to a fund for purchasing land); and the promotion of internal colonization schemes to create a living belt of racially vibrant settlements enclosing an enlarged and re-­ homogenized Saxon Lebensraum. This was precisely the goal of Siegmund’s first eugenic organization, the Land Preservation Society founded in 1906 that relentlessly (if mostly unsuccessfully) sought funds for such schemes until its dissolution after World War I, after which Siegmund turned to the Church to establish a new institutional platform. This became his 1922 Welfare Committee (Fürsorgeausschuss) that lobbied the clerical, pedagogical and medical professions to engage with race-­hygienic ideas through training programmes, such as annual workshops, public lectures, and so on, publications such as its Evangelischer Fürsorger (Protestant Welfare Worker) and the aforementioned Welfare Exhibition. Foreshadowing the eugenic programmes implemented during the 1930s, Siegmund’s committee also created a remarkable space in which Csallner’s Society and Fabritius’ Self-Help collaborated in the 1920s with various Church parishes. Gradually, however, the Welfare Committee itself joined the ranks of the emerging fascist movement to access loans for internal colonization projects. 553

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

III The Saxon eugenic discourse’s second phase thus began with the union of Transylvania with Romania, and spanned the inter-­war years 1919 to 1940. Most importantly, it witnessed the emergence of a new and increasingly nationalist generation of Saxon eugenicists which included, among others, Alfred Csallner and Wilhelm Schunn, as well as racial anthropologists, such as Albert Hermann, Eckhard Huegel and Johann Bredt (all three having worked and collaborated with the German racial eugenicist Eugen Fischer during the 1920s and 1930s). The emphasis was placed on the theoretical honing, institutional grounding and, most importantly, the clerical and political pursuit of population policies geared towards the rejuvenation of an idealized Saxon national community. This process, in which ‘quality’ consistently overrode ‘quantity,’ was substantially assisted by the emergence of an indigenous Saxon fascist movement for renewal, Fritz Fabritius’s Self-Help. Although it had undergone a myriad of restructurings by 1940, this organization was initially established in Sibiu (Ger.: Hermannstadt) in 1922 by ten founding members with the purpose of acquiring land for new housing and providing cheap loans, particularly for the urban poor. It also inherently conveyed a political message, as described by Fritz Fabritius: ‘[t]he self-­help work is much more than collecting and handing out money – it is a battle front (‘Kampfgemeinschaft’) (ZAEV, LK 103.90 (1929): 19). Self-Help represented an indigenous fascist movement that adopted the National Socialist franchise in 1932 when it founded a political party alongside its core building society business, and was subsequently re-­branded the National Socialist Self-Help Movement of the Germans in Romania (Nationalsozialistische Selbsthilfebewegung der Deutschen in Rumänien). Undoubtedly boosted by, but surely not conditional upon, the Third Reich’s ascension to power, the Self-Help Movement succeeded in pushing a watered down version of its draft for a ‘National Programme’ (‘Volksprogramm’) through the Saxon ‘constitutional assembly’ (‘Sachsentag’) in October 1933 and assumed control of the Saxon National Council (Volksrat) a month later. Self-Help’s 1932 draft programme included a range of provocative declarations partially stated during negotiations on the final 1933 version, including the opening diatribe against its 1919 predecessor and the Saxon political status quo in sum. A characteristic example of this is the draft programme’s first article, which unequivocally asserted that ‘we profess ourselves to be part of the racial and cultural unity of all the Germans in the world, with whom we constitute a single nation’, the toned down official rendition read: ‘We profess ourselves to the unity of all the Germans in the world, with which we form one large nation’. Yet, despite the various edits and modifications, the final national programme marked a revolution in Saxon politics, setting out rules and guidelines for both their relationship with the Romanian state as well as internal national organizations and their competences (‘Das sächsische Volksprogramm: Ein Entwurf der Selbsthilfe für den im Herbst 1932 abzuhaltenden Sachsentag’, Ostdeutscher Beobachter 1932: 1–3). 554

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Following the Romanian government’s ban of the Self-Help Movement in November 1933, the party re-­emerged days later as the National Movement for Renewal of the Germans in Romania. Fabritius, a moderate, allied himself with conservatives to form the Association of Germans in Romania (Verband der Deutschen in Rumänien) in June 1935. Nonetheless, the crisis persisted until its resolution by Berlin in 1938 when the Third Reich removed Fabritius, among others, and installed Wolfram Bruckner in his stead until Andreas Schmidt assumed the role as national leader in 1940. The political turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s also had a significant impact on the very viability of eugenic policies above and beyond private initiatives. The Saxons effectively had two overarching, large scale organizations: the Protestant Church and the political establishment. With the latter largely deadlocked by the mid-1920s until the ascendance of Saxon fascism to power, the Church remained the key avenue through which to promote and pursue a wide range of eugenic policies from shaping its school curriculum, changing its tax codes to favour large families, creating hereditary fitness databases, to refusing to wed mixed-­race couples among others. Yet the Church’s unique role in Saxon society was eroded during the 1930s by the revival of Saxon politics under the fascist aegis and its calls for a more centralized political leadership. Csallner is again a perfect example of this movement. Having abandoned his Society of Child Enthusiasts and its unsuccessful attempts to lobby the Church for eugenically minded tax codes and salary packages, he established a Self-Help Race Office in 1932 instead. This institutional shift constituted a structural landmark in Saxon eugenics, and was itself only the foundation of what ballooned into the extensive and influential National Office for Statistics and Genealogy (Landesamt für Statistik und Sippenwesen) by 1939. The Office housed six main departments on: Statistics; Genealogy; National Betterment; Lebensraum; Foreign Nations; and Enlightenment, Recruitment and Education (Statistik; Sippenwesen; Volkspflege; Lebensraum; Fremde Voelker Völker; Aufklärung, Werbung und Erziehung), themselves housing a total of thirty individual sub-­departments. As with any political ideology, it is particularly difficult to qualify what, if any, real impact Self-Help eventually exerted over individual lives above and beyond membership cards and uniformed marches. Wilhelm Schunn’s National Neighbourhoods (Völkische Nachbarschaften), were the centrepiece of the fascist quest to reinvent not only the Saxon nation, but all of Romania’s presumed Germans, which were ‘resurrected’ through the implementation of the 1933 Saxon National Programme. The executive of the fascist-­dominated legislative, Schunn’s organization almost looked like an interior ministry populated by twenty-­two individual (and frequently overlapping) offices and institutions that were instrumental in the fascist bid to exert an increasingly totalizing degree of control over its body politic and, most importantly here, to translating eugenic population policies into practice. Schunn’s almost complete absence from Saxon historiography is particularly surprising considering his remarkable efforts to establish these ‘regenerated’ National Neighbourhoods in 1933 as well as his wider portfolio as the Commissioner of the Nation’s Organic Constitution (Beauftragter für den Volksornischen Aufbau) in 1935. 555

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

IV The National Neighbourhoods are valuable examples not merely of a historic tradition reinvented and revolutionized to suit the fascist discourse, but indeed as a truly remarkable case study of how an ethnic minority strove to bypass its host state in a quest to cast an ever wider eugenic net over its body politic. Schunn was also a close friend of Csallner, and the National Neighbourhoods’ eugenic population policy of awarding the fiscally substantial ‘Honorary Gift’ (‘Ehrengeschenk’) in celebration of the birth of a ‘racially valuable’ family’s fourth or more child was deeply indebted to many of his core ideals, all the more so as these ‘gifts’ were conditional – they had to be invested in items ‘of enduring value’ to retain Saxon property, which was in danger of being sold to ethnic ‘Others’ and even encourage the re-­homogenization of a fractured Saxon Lebensraum. Also as these ‘gifts’ were designed to benefit qualitatively valuable offspring, the potential recipients were to be subjected to evaluations of their ‘hereditary quality’ (while all renditions of the Neighbourhood guidelines insist on this practice, it is important to point out that it has been impossible to find anything but circumstantial evidence of such evaluations). This approach not only embraced a distinctly biological framework, but also resorted to a draconian internal dynamic whereby Saxons failing to live up to an imagined racial and moral bar would be publically shunned: The rule that the hereditarily diseased and hereditarily lazy (erbuntüchtig) are not allowed to receive the honorary gift has made wide sections of the masses aware that reproduction is undesirable in such families, and hence acts as the first practical measure towards combating undesirable offspring in our national group. The honours are proof of gratitude. A child not honoured is an unwanted child. (Schunn and Pastior 1940: 44) Schunn took great pride in reviving what he considered to be the Indo-Germanic ideal type of community life (Schunn 1937), a system that turned a numerical weakness opposite their ethnic neighbours into an organizational strength. Nevertheless if nothing else, the rise of the National Neighbourhoods and their ability to implement eugenic policies indicates a greater trend at work here, namely that inter-­war eugenics was to lean increasingly on political, rather than clerical, means to legislate and execute its agenda from the mid-1930s onwards. While there is still considerable scope for further research into the National Neighbourhoods, there remain significant gaps in our knowledge of several other important areas, including the positions and roles assumed by the various political and Church-­based women’s organizations that established themselves in the 1880s. The few, broader, studies of Saxon inter-­war women’s organizations do not explicitly discuss their, or their main protagonists’, relationships with the wider eugenic framework. There is, however, a range of emblematic debates on the role of women in Saxon society and politics throughout the first half of the twentieth century that invoked race-­hygienic themes on both sides of the argument such as women’s education and the struggle for suffrage within the Saxon political structures. 556

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

For instance in the pages of the journal Karpathen (Carpathians), published in Kronstadt (Rom.: Braşov), we find an illustrative exchange between Karl Jickeli claiming racial-­hygiene demands upon wives and mothers (Jickeli 1911: 424–8) and Meta Roemer-Neubner insisting on emancipation and the realities of an era in which social norms were being rewritten (Roemer-Neubner 1911: 538–44). Unsurprisingly perhaps, Siegmund also got embroiled in these debates, publishing ‘Sächsische Volksmehrung und Frauenbewegung’ (‘Saxon Population Growth and the Women’s Movement’) as a two-­part article (Siegmund 1913a: 731–4 and 1913b: 750–8). While more extensive research in these areas, as well as biographic studies on the main figures, such as Adele Zay, Grete Teutsch and Lotte Binder, will doubtlessly enrich our appreciation of women’s involvement with inter-­war Saxon eugenics, the overall tone assumed by the German-Saxon Women’s Union (Deutsch-Sächische Frauenbund) is clearly heard in its 1934 Merkblatt für die sächsische Frau (Instructions for the Saxon Woman). Reflecting a number of the eugenic themes discussed here, the two (of a total of sixteen) recommendations on mixed marriages and Lebensraum deserve special mention: ‘Only marry a man of your blood and religion! You will otherwise, from the beginning, plant discord in your home;’ and ‘Hold on to your house and land! By selling it you actually take away the soil wherein your descendants’ strength is rooted!’ (‘Deutsch Sächischen Frauenbund’ 1934: 1).

V With the onset of the Saxon eugenic discourse’s third period in 1940, the rules of engagement changed decisively. This was a cataclysmic year that witnessed a series of geopolitical upheavals including: Transylvania’s geographic dismemberment with the northern territories returned to an ever irredentist Hungary following the ‘Second Vienna Accord’; the resettlement of German minorities out of Bessarabia, Bucovina, and Dobrudja; as well as the Romanian state’s recognition of its German minorities as a legal body and the resultant recruitment of German minorities into the Waffen-SS, among others. Most importantly, it also marked the Third Reich’s assumption of direct control over Saxon internal affairs by appointing Andreas Schmidt (interestingly, Gotlob Berger’s son-­in-law) to the post of National Leader (Volksgruppenführer). Schmidt, for his part, immediately set about reforming existing organizations and institutions to mirror their Third Reich counterparts, and the resultant ‘NSDAP of the German National Community in Romania’ (NSDAP der Deutschen Volksgruppe in Rumänien) largely stripped Transylvanian Saxon eugenics of its own particularities. These political changes marked a fundamental methodological, if not necessarily dogmatic, departure. Symptomatically perhaps, few of the eugenic movement’s most influential inter-­war figures survived this sea change: Siegmund died in 1937; Fabritius was removed from his post in 1938; Schunn basically retired in 1940, when his Neighbourhoods were converted to a party political structure by Schmidt; and finally 557

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Csallner was effectively sidelined soon thereafter. The Protestant Church too was relieved of most of its institutional influence – most significantly of its schools and youth organizations. Schmidt’s comprehensive reorganization of Saxon society and politics had a similarly transformative impact on Saxon medicine: existing professional associations were swept away in favour of a centralized, totalitarian approach to the conceptualization and delivery of healthcare. That is, the construction of a medical approach to individual and public hygiene wholly mimicking its Third Reich counterparts and managed by a central office of National Health, one that could overcome a much derided individualism and fractured medical landscape of ‘the liberal era that did not understand health-­leadership (Gesundheitsführung) as a political duty’ (Mathias 1943: 5). As Wilhelm Hager (Director of the Main Office for National Health) and Viktor Weindel (Chair of the Union of German Doctors in Romania) put it in November 1940, Schmidt’s creation of the NSDAP der VgrDR laid the foundation upon which a comprehensive, pan-German system for all of Romania’s Germans could be built with enough executive power to safeguard that national community’s ‘biological existence, its racial purity and healthy development’ (Hager and Weindel 1940: 283).1 This new health office took the form of the highly centralized Main Office for National Health (Hauptamt für Volksgesundheit), which itself contained two sub-­offices, one for Health Services (Amt für Gesundheitswesen) the other for Physical Education (Amt für Leibesübungen) (Schmidt 1940: 3). By 1942 it came to subsume six departments, covering Organization and Inspection; Medical Provision (Gesundheitsdienst); Medical Insurance and Hospitals; Hygiene; Press and Propaganda; as well as Racial-Hygiene and Hereditary-Biology (Rassenhygiene und Erbbiologie) tasked with working on ‘measures in racial and hereditary health’, and itself subsuming the Departments of Hereditary Survey; Hereditary Index; Hereditary Archive; and Racial-­legislative measures (Erbbestandsaufnahme; Erbkartei; Erbarchiv; and rassengesetzliche Massnahmen) (Mathias 1943: 5–7). That said, the 1940 reorganization, partly motivated by the increasingly autonomous Saxon position vis-à-vis the Romanian state, also unwittingly reflected proposals for a much more active medical profession first suggested in a 1919 ‘Report of the Saxon Medical Association on the future configuration of Saxon healthcare’ (‘Gutachten des sächsischen Ärztevereins über die zukünftiger Gestaltung des sächsischen Gesundheitswesens’). This three-­page report, having defined Saxon healthcare’s two core competences as encompassing the quantitative ‘increasing of offspring’ and qualitative ‘maintenance and improvement (Ertüchtigung) of offspring’, set out several key methodologies which included racial hygiene alongside individual and public health (Sächsischer Ärzteverein 1919). Yet despite this ambitious agenda, the Saxon medical association’s original 1902 statutes remained largely unchanged throughout the inter-­war period (apart from minor corrections in 1924 and again in 1933) (Siebenbürgisch-­deutscher Ärzteverein 1933: 7–19). After 1935, however, it became stymied by political deadlock, as well as an ongoing conflict with the Banat Schwab Semmelweis Medical Group (Semelweis 558

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Gruppe der Banater Ärzte) that was included within it. Nevertheless, in 1939 a new medical association was founded with Viktor Weindel as its Chair, the short-­lived Union of German Doctors in Romania (Bund deutscher Ärzte in Rumänien) that was superseded by the German Doctors in Romania (Deutsche Ärzteschaft in Rumänien), whose creation was announced at the Union’s annual meeting in Temeschburg (Rom.: Timişoara) in May 1941. Introducing Franz Wilhelm Wokalek, Weindel justified the move by arguing that ‘the way we have governed ourselves until now, whose characteristics were choice and elections, has these days – when a tough authoritarian leadership has proven itself necessary in all other areas – become outdated, not fit for purpose or our times’ (‘Vollversammlung des Bundes der Deutschen Ärzte in Rumänien am 10. Mai 1941 in Temeschburg’, Medizinische Zeitschrift 1941: 85). Consequently, the Union’s executive committee resigned their posts to be replaced by Schmidt’s appointments, making Wokalek Chair to the new medical association (while Weindel became the Deputy Chair). Wokalek’s opening address was saturated with the usual political and ideological noises, lauding the authoritarian model and setting out the main duties of the Main Office for National Health as streamlining all medical work; ‘supporting the hereditarily industrious (Erbtüchtigen)’; ‘premarital counselling, prenatal and postnatal care,’ alongside ‘the battle against infant mortality’, as well as ‘the elimination of the hereditarily diseased (Ausmerzung der Erbkrankheiten); the prevention of the inflow of foreign blood (Verhinderung des Einströmens artfremden Blutes); the battle against national plagues’ such as tuberculosis and rickets and finally ensuring ‘the defence against other social plagues, increasing the overall productivity’ (Wokalek 1941: 168–74). A year later, in the first issue of Arzt im Osten (Physician in the East), the medical association’s new journal, Wokalek set out the profession’s duties as ‘keeping German blood pure, caring for the German child, and the preservation of national health’ (Wokalek 1942c: 1). Eugenics and racial hygiene were certainly invoked with frequency in the post-1940 Schimdt era, as was the pan-German ideal of unifying all of Romania’s Germans under one coherent, and increasingly autonomous, system through an authoritarian party political framework, one that built upon but was unequivocally independent (not to say forgetful) of the inter-­war eugenic discourse. Yet we know remarkably little about what specific eugenic policies were pursued or implemented during World War II until the catastrophic collapse of August 1944.

559

Main Eugenicists and Key Texts Tudor Georgescu Translations by Tudor Georgescu

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Heinrich Siegmund

(1867, Mediasch–1937, Mediasch)

Siegmund was the grandson of a Saxon national hero, Stephan Ludwig Roth. He studied medicine in Graz and Vienna, and was heavily influenced by the works of Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel and Rudolf Virchow. Upon his return to Mediasch (Rom.: Mediaş; Hung.: Medgyes) in 1893 Siegmund opened a medical practice and became the city’s ‘Medical Officer’ (‘Stadtphysikus’) two years later. Siegmund founded the first of his various journals in 1902, aptly named Volksgesundheit (National Health), which was published until 1911. Already having extensive links to German eugenicists, it was also in 1911 that he joined Alfred Ploetz’s Society for Racial-Hygiene as a ‘founding member’ in return for advancing its agenda in Transylvania (the two corresponded as early as 1904) (Inv 107, LL. 1–29, 65). Siegmund also stood at the very forefront of the Saxon abstinence movement and constantly, if hardly ever successfully, battled Saxon drinking habits in word and in print. In 1904 Siegmund joined the ‘International Order of Good Templars’, a remarkably prolific abstinence movement and fraternal society with an international network of lodges, and immediately set about creating a Transylvanian branch that eventually re-­emerged from World War I in 1924 as the Romanian ‘Grand Lodge 2 (German)’, with Siegmund as its Grand Templar. He was also instrumental in the introduction of ‘School Nurses’ in Protestant schools in 1908, in recognition of which the Saxon Bishop Friedrich Teutsch (1852–1933) made Siegmund the first ‘medical member’ of the Church’s governing council, the Landeskonsistorium, in 1920 (Gyurgyevich 1937: 315–26). Siegmund was instrumental in the development of Saxon eugenics, and initially attempted to translate his agenda through private initiatives before turning to the Church for organizational support in the early 1920s. The creation of the Land Preservation Society (Bodenschutzverein) in 1906 was crucial in the evolution of Saxon eugenics, the first of the host of eugenically minded organizations that followed. Subsuming the various keystone tenets of his ‘Science of National Defence’, and its insistence on a dwindling Lebensraum as the motor driving Saxon degeneration, it set out to employ a ‘defence fund’ (‘Wehrkasse’) supported by donations and annual membership fees for the purpose of acquiring non-Saxon properties. These, in turn, were to be re-­allocated to hereditarily sound settlers. While the Land Preservation Society did not survive World War I, Siegmund’s agenda is aptly illustrated by the publication of the two editions of his volume on the Saxon Population Increase and Defence (Sächsische Wehr- und Mehrbuch) (Siegmund, Englisch and Schuster 1914 and Siegmund 1922), all the more so by the substantial changes in the book’s content and language which clearly reflect his radicalized worldview after World War I, aptly illustrated by his chapter on ‘Saxon Racial Hygiene’ (‘Die Aufgaben der sächsischen Rassenhygiene’). 561

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Siegmund had an ambiguous relationship with the Protestant Church, complaining that the institution was, on one hand, too dogmatic and rigid, but courted the Church for its societal influence and structural network with the other. To that end, Siegmund persuaded the Church to create a Welfare Committee (Fürsorgeausschuss) under his direction in 1922 (Collmer 1936). Not only did this organization offer him a novel avenue down which to pursue his assessments of the Saxon nation’s racial health through annual censuses, it was also instrumental in disseminating his views among the clergy and wider population. Siegmund’s most important project, however, was the Welfare Committee’s National Health Exhibit (Fürsorgeausstellung Volksgesundheit). The exhibition was modelled on the 1911 Dresden Hygiene Exhibition (Internationale Hygiene-Ausstellung) and Siegmund’s project received a considerable donation of materials from its successor. Siegmund died shortly after the opening in Hermannstadt (Rom.: Sibiu; Hung.: Nagyszeben) in 1937, and was posthumously awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Deutsche Auslands-Institut in Stuttgart.

562

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

On Saxon Racial Hygiene2 The following will try to illustrate the importance of a health-­science (Gesundheitswissenschaft) informed by the new realizations about life, as applied to the Saxon nation as a race. To that end a few introductory terms require discussion, which will be attempted with reference to some of the most important researchers. The kind reader will hopefully have some patience with the somewhat more difficult introductory comments, as it cannot be too much to ask that every Saxon politician at least know the most basic of biological realities these days. But it is also part of the purposes of the society whose creation is proposed here, to advance the understanding and nurturing of health (Gesundheitslehre- und pflege), and hence necessarily also the correct views on life, within our nation. [. . .] The following lines want nothing other than to offer a model that may be changed as seen fit, if indeed the time for such a unification has come, until a satisfactory structure has been found that can bestow upon the work and time a living warmth and wholesomeness. Hygiene is such an extensive and inexhaustible domain that there will never be a lack of work, while, on the other hand, the society’s activities would be so distinctive: in part agitation-­practical – so, for example, following the model offered by the Agricultural Society (Landwirtschaftlichen Verein) – in part theoretical-­ research, so that it has a wide sphere of activity. Furthermore, the society can only expect to achieve drastic successes if its members are drawn from all the nation’s social classes, but in particular from all the educated professions. Should one want to address personal hygiene, then we find, standing on equal footing with the doctor, the health technician (Gesundheitstechniker), the lawyer and the pedagogue. If one wants to pursue a question of racial hygiene then we must, all the more so, pool the experiences of various professions, including and in addition to those already mentioned, the economists, the theologians, the merchants, and the tradesmen so that no area, which could possibly not be discussed from a race-­hygienic perspective, is neglected. [. . .] The society’s main focus would have to be the dissemination of correct views, which are correct hygienic views corresponding to the latest in scientific knowledge, among the widest possible parts of the nation (Volkskreise). This could, for example, following the model of the Agricultural Society, consist of small events going from village to village with public lectures by doctors, technicians, pedagogues, and so on, while simultaneously distributing flyers, short instructional publications, easily comprehensible stories, and so on. It would have to be the society’s endeavour to reconcile, as far as possible, the contradiction between individual and racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene), which by its inherent imperative (Naturnotwendigkeit) admonishes the conflict between egoism and altruism, selfishness and brotherly love, by carefully investigating and evaluating the corresponding perspectives’ expectations according to rich practical and theoretical experience. This needs to be done very carefully and with the greatest possible consideration for existing, justified as well as unjustified, views, habits and traditions so 563

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

that no productive and industrious man can feel repulsed or excluded because here, as with all our national endeavours, the call goes: All men on board! [. . .] Should we Saxons manage to follow the laws of racial hygiene based upon the broad and stable ground of scientific experience and insight, and which exhibits so many similar traits to the thousands of years old, tried and tested commandments [of] the ancient Near Eastern civilizations, above all the Jews, then our national future would be secured for quite some time. As such, we must strive to establish a social health regime (gesellschaftliches Gesundheitsgesetz) compulsory for all Saxons, because ‘a nation can only truly survive and thrive if its racial hygienic matters are not left to its capriciousness, but are methodologically led’. This is the goal pursued by the society whose foundation has been laid out in the preceding articles on Saxon racial hygiene. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

The Tasks of Saxon Racial Hygiene3 The race is the root from which the trunk, branches, leaves, blossoms and fruits of national culture sprout. Just as there are different types of root, so too there are different races and cultures: noble and base ones. If the race is diseased, we can see that in its fruit. If the root dies, the whole plant’s life expires with all its blossoms and fruit. We now come to know them, the different forms of racial decay: racial mixing, changing, and degeneration. But how do we prevent it? How are we working to offset it? We counter the danger of racial mixing by avoiding racially mixed marriages. No member of our nation should enter into marriage with a non-Saxon. We can make achieving this moral imperative easier for ourselves and our national comrades through the tools of biological segregation (lebschaftlichen Absonderung). These are: 1. Conscious expression of national particularities and language, faith, customs, traditions, and so on. That is why we cannot encourage every Saxon insistently enough to tend to their own dialect. Through our dialect we recognize ourselves as Saxons, in it and with it we separate ourselves from the non-Saxons with immediate clarity. [. . .] 2. The purposeful social and economic integration of our national comrades. The harmless commingling of youth may all to easily grow into a habit, even produce a presumption of a closer relationship and mutual attraction that tears down the natural barriers to mixed marriages. It is not a malicious attitude towards others, but a truly warranted national self-­defence against the danger of blood mixing, when our societies, institutions, church, schools and businesses pay attention to national unity. Once it is broken through by any individual case, if the first step to loosening it has been taken, then the end is unforeseeable. In villages, where the social separation is more marked, the dividing barriers of national customs and traditions more ruggedly stand, there mixed marriages are far rarer than in towns. 564

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

A racial mixture’s most valuable component is the Germanic or Nordic (see Gobineau’s essay The Inequality of Human Races). We refer to changes in the ratios of these different components within the racial mixture as racial-­change (Rassenwechsel). This can be to the nation’s benefit if the Nordic proportion increases. It is damaging to it when the non-Nordic component grows disproportionately. Both components, that is, both races have their special characteristics (Lebensbedingunen) in addition to communal properties. As is beyond doubt that, as discussed in the chapter on ‘RacialChange’, the Nordic proportion within the Saxon nation is dwindling, let us take an exclusive closer look at this real danger in the following deliberations. The destruction of the German racial component occurs: Through a birth-­rate that is too low, and through its higher mortality rate. The discussions in Chapter 24 on The Proliferation (Mehrung) and Care of Offspring and in Chapter  25 on The Limitation of Family Size (Kinderbeschränkung) are considered here too. The murderous city life extinguishes the educated in particular, the majority of which belong to the German race. There are many causes, for example, hereditary alcoholism (vererbliche Weingeistgenuss), which increases the mortality of men and their descendants. Venereal diseases conspiratorially offer it help, that which so prematurely strangles the educated middle-­class families in their third or fourth generation. The city encourages a life of excessive indulgence, which suffocates the national and social sense of duty. And so small families sneak into the nation’s ranks, which experience has shown to originate within the educated middle class. This requires remedial action. It is the duty of every educated individual, but especially of the nation’s appointed educators, the doctors, the clerics and teachers, to mightily throw off all backwardness in thinking and doing. All strength must unite to pave the way for early marriage. The removal of alcohol and tobacco, thrift, and lowered expectations will offer an opportunity for this. Our current social norms are entirely tailored to the benefit of the monetary-­men, traders, and industrialists. That precipitates the decline of the educated middle classes and thereby the nation as a whole. We need to get to the point where their spiritual work’s value for the whole nation is remunerated correspondingly well. It is not a shame, but a calamity for the nation when the salaries for the cultural professions are too low. The educated middle classes should, in particular, be given ample resources towards raising children. No amount of money can replace the lack of children! That is why high, very high family allowances need to be arranged. Small ones are entirely worthless. Other forms of support for education and training need to be granted to the children of the educated, or, rather, to all of the nation’s sons aiming for higher education. Our women’s societies and organizations surely do good, in many cases indispensable, national work. Nevertheless how many sit on the committees that limit their number of children on purpose? That is a noxious contradiction. These women and mothers have a thousand worries about others, but forget their own gender. A mother’s first duty is to protect the family, and the wider family (Sippe) through [having] a numerous brood. This is where the educated middle-­class mother’s national work has to set in. If she does her duty here, then many of the ills she patches and plasters over will solve themselves. 565

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

We counter the receding German racial component, a high proportion of which is carried by migration patterns from the villages into towns (see Chapter 7, The Population Stream) through settlement projects (Siedlungsarbeit). This does not only comprise enabling households to establish themselves through purchasing land. Simultaneously, or perhaps firstly, we need to open up and ease access to all vocations for the children of Saxon day-­labourers, lease and small holders. Our poorest national brothers among the peasantry need to have the assurance that their children as day-­labourers, lease and small holders, servants and maids, apprentices and assistants will have a certain prospect of making a secure living. Then the limitations on having children in rural areas will also decrease. With this suggestion, we have also named a race-­hygienic tool that must also, first of all, be used against racial degeneration. Racial hygiene can reduce fertility and, as such, opposes the reproduction of the racially inferior or sick. Nonetheless it [racial hygiene] can encourage fertility as well, by facilitating the proliferation of the racially industrious and healthy. And while we, in this way, think of the members of the German racial component in particular, we should not neglect the intellectually and bodily excellent mixed-­race or members of the non-German racial component. Outstanding intellectual achievements are, regardless of their bearer’s racial differences, useful and advantageous. Races degenerate when harmful mutations to the hereditary substance, or hereditary characteristics, are insufficiently treated. In so far as it is possible, we must work to prevent these mutations themselves. Alcohol plays a particularly big role in these detrimental hereditary mutations. That is why the abolition of habitual drinking is one of racial hygiene’s most important demands. At this point we also need to mention tobacco. Neither of these poisons damage the race through their significant poisonous aberrations, as these often do not get to reproduce. It is, rather, the smaller damage that prevents full and exceptional achievements and hence stands in the way of the spiritual heights of national culture. Once the race’s hereditary mutation has begun, there is little that can prevent its reproduction. It is in this sense that the demand for the exchange of health-­certificates prior to marriage operates. In any case the youth needs to be comprehensively enlightened about the incredible value of a healthy body and healthy heredity to happiness in marriage. In North America they have even purposefully sterilized inferior individuals. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

566

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Alfred Csallner

(1895, Bistritz–1992, Altenmark, Germany)

Born to Dr Ludwig and Frieda Csallner in Bistritz (Rom.: Bistriţa; Hung.: Beszterce) in 1895, Alfred Csallner studied, and spent World War I, in Budapest, Vienna and Berlin before hastily returning to Transylvania to tend to his sick father in May 1918. Due to this premature return to Bistritz and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary that followed shortly thereafter, Csallner was never to complete his degree. In 1919 he did, however, publish an abridged version of his work entitled Die Grundbesitzverhältnisse im Nösnerland (Landownership in the Nösnerland). It was to be the first of many publications which grappled with the continuous loss of Saxon Lebensraum and declining birth rates in a career that took shape in the ashes of World War I. During this period Csallner was to find a new sense of purpose in his nationalist work: ‘When the total collapse at the end of 1918 and its aftermath had violently shook and profoundly churned me, I – filled with such hunger for action and work – threw myself into all kinds of work for our nation. It was a new life that had begun for me, a life that I considered really worth living, and which I was happy for’ (ZAEV, LK 103.84 (1923): 5647: 2). Nevertheless, Csallner had to wait until 1936 to dedicate himself exclusively to these pursuits, working in the meantime as a teaching assistant (Supplent) in Bistriţa (1918–22) and at a teaching vocational college (Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalt) in a number of Saxon towns, including Sighişoara (Ger.: Schäßburg; Hung.: Segesvár) (1923), before being ordained and serving in the villages of Roseln (1923–9), Stolzenburg (1929–32) and Kleinscheuern (1932–6). Csallner’s eugenic ideology underwent an ongoing process of politicization and radicalization throughout the 1920s and 1930s. This is evidenced by the various eugenic proposals he put forward to the Church; Csallner demanded that increasingly centralized and authoritarian measures be taken to contain the growing practice of the one- and two-­ child family. He also proposed that those spiritually bankrupt elements that could (not to mention would) betray their heritage by entering mixed marriages be expelled from Saxon communities, together with the invading ethnic ‘Others’ that had inflicted such heavy damage upon the Saxon economic spheres and integrity of its Lebensraum. An indicative example of the methodology Csallner consistently employed in his studies on hereditary talent is afforded by his 1934 study Von der Bedeutung der Gattenwahl für Wesen und Schicksal der Kinder (On the Importance of the Choice of a Spouse to the Nature and Destiny of Children) (Csallner 1934). In it he compared the final report cards given to 176 peasant children in fourteen Saxon rural communities to those of their parents to provide clear evidence for the inheritance of not merely academic skill, but spiritual worth. Tellingly, Csallner concluded that: The more we know to tell ourselves about these primordial laws of life, whether we are even allowed to conceive new life or not, and with whom to create this new 567

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

life would be a crime, with whom a joy and blessing – all the more will we be able to avoid disaster, let less of the good rot, all the purer and nobler will the noble remain, and all the better the good become. (Csallner 1934: 2) He put it even more bluntly in his 1937 essay Ein Falscher Trost (A False Comfort): ‘untalented parents cannot have highly talented children’ (Csallner 1937: 3). In 1927, Csallner founded the Society of Child Enthusiasts. He had tried hard to garner support for the idea, giving a series of talks in 1926 and 1927, as well as organizing a lecture series by Dr Andreas Thomsen of the Reichsbund der Kinderfrohen on ‘The Rise and Fall of Nations’ (‘Werden und Vergehen der Völker’), visiting Hermannstadt, Schässburg, Kronstadt, Mediasch and Bistritz, and addressing a joint meeting of the Free Saxon Women’s Union (Freier Saechsischer Frauenbund) and the teachers and priests of the village of Gross-Schenk (Rom.: Cincu; Hung.: Nagysink). When the society, however, failed to attract a significant membership and its policy submissions to the Church’s governing council led nowhere, Csallner turned to SelfHelp. It is thus not surprising that Csallner exerted a considerable influence over the design and implementation of Schunn’s Neighbourhood population policies, nor that he simultaneously pursued his own vision of a eugenic fortress, an impressive engineering project that humbly began as Self-Help’s Race Office in 1932 (Csallner 1939: 1). And while it was a rather more virtual than tangible institution, Self-Help’s rise to political power in 1933 allowed Csallner to transform his Race Office into the considerably more influential National Department for Statistics, Population Policy, and Genealogy (Landesarbeitsstelle für Statistik, Bevölkerungspolitik und Sippenwesen). When the Society for the Germans Abroad (Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland) encouraged him to relinquish his priestly duties and offered to pay his salary in 1936, Csallner was delighted with the prospect of finally dedicating himself to his work on racial hygiene full time (Csallner 1975: 7). He also enjoyed some substantial financial assistance from the German and South-German Research Offices (Deutsche and Südostdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften). What he hoped to achieve with his enlarged organization was evident when he wrote to the Church that: The task which National Socialism has set itself in Germany, namely the biological salvation of the mortally endangered German nation – that will now also be tried among the even more threatened Germans in Romania with a special Office. I am supposed to lead this Population Policy Office directly attached to the Central Committee of the ‘Association of Germans in Romania’ and will therefore have to resign my pastorate and leave the Church. (ZAEV, LK Archiv, 103.97 (1936): 58: 9) By 1938 Csallner was to reach the pinnacle of his political influence and literary output with the reorganization and expansion of his department into the National Office for Statistics and Genealogy (Landesamt für Statistik und Sippenwesen). It was Csallner’s prime means of proliferating, partially even implementing, his eugenic 568

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

agenda prior to Andreas Schmidt’s arrival and the Third Reich’s Gleichschaltung of Romania’s German minorities in 1940. Although the LSS was given the status of an Institute briefly thereafter, Csallner soon fell out with Schmidt, who proceeded to rid himself of Csallner by briefly sending him to Germany before dismantling the LSS in 1943. A year later, in 1944, Csallner was arrested and interred in the Romanian prisons Târgu Jiu and Turnu Mӑgurele (Csallner 1975: 8). Upon his release in 1946, Csallner returned to his priestly activities and began writing again, although this time to write novels and a series of short stories. Following two further incarcerations in Romanian prisons, a string of interrogations and house searches, Csallner finally emigrated to Germany in 1974, where he died in 1992.

569

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

What We Want4 A fearful anxiety about our Saxon nation’s continued existence grips us every time we think about its small number and the aberrational child limitation (Kinderbeschränkung), which does not allow it to grow faster and strengthen. How long now have we fought against it in word and print! We have achieved that; now more so than previously, our nation has a sense of where we stand and generally wishes it were better off. But what else? Oh, we are yet far too few who battle this plague, work without the necessary networks, and focus too much on acting through word and print alone. Barely anyone has tried to reach into life itself, to grasp and rework it. But to do precisely that throughout the Saxon lands, in various ways and in accordance with a cohesive plan, this is the aspiration of the Society of Child Enthusiasts that hopes to slowly, truly, overcome our nation’s suicidal child limitation [policies] from within. We had received the first impetus to establish it from Germany. The Reich’s Union of Large Families (Reichsbund der Kinderreichen Deutschlands) was founded there eight years ago. [. . .] Our movement did not grow out of the need, that is, the economic need, of large families. Although we want to support them as much as possible also, that is not our main objective, as we, from the very beginning and above all else, seek to secure the continued existence of our entire nation, to save its future. That we have survived here for almost 800 years, regardless of how frequently and reassuringly we like to see this as a guarantee for, in the first instance, [of] another 800 years: even the longest and most glorious history cannot itself vouch for our continued existence as a nation for another 200 years; yes, perhaps not even for a hundred years. And if ‘we’ have maintained ourselves, not to mention all the other things that have changed, often very much so to our disadvantage, in these 800 years: ‘We’ have survived, yes, but how many others did not survive! How many, once Saxon towns, have not been Saxon for hundreds of years! How many of those that we still call Saxon are actually close to, often desperately close to, not being called Saxon anymore, because we have stayed weak or had become too weak within them! Oh, the proclamation of certain victory sounds beautiful and proud: ‘Here the German will not die!’ And all of [the] party-­goers enthusiastically applaud and call: ‘Hoch!’ and ‘Heil!’ But if it continues as it has until now, if it does succeed to contain the child limitation in our nation, then the Germans here will die after all; then we are finished! But we, Child Enthusiasts, want to prevent this through coming and working together for our nation. We want our entire nation to become rich in happy children again, that it may strengthen and overflow, that it blossom and flourish and, in any case, continue to exist. [M]ore children are again born in our nation, because of us, for the sake of the present, because we want to have them, because we see in our children our joys and riches and feel all the more richly blessed the more God gives us, then our nation too will be saved, then we have secured the future. How do we want to intervene in our nation’s life and affect such change? First, through the economic advancement of parents of large families. [. . .] Therewith it has also been aptly said – we are not simply interested in economically helping large families 570

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

alone. Indeed, that is not even the most important means to an end, but should actually only help to attract the multitude of the nation to us, so that we may more easily influence its soul. It is supposed to help bind our nation even more so than up to now to consciously and purposefully be a community bound by destiny ready for action. In particular, it should give the large families among us courage and confidence, to help them to not lose the joyous faith that having many children is a blessing for parents and children alike, that their pride and pleasure in their children may affect our nation ever more deeply. Because this is the main issue: We want to influence our nation’s soul, its attitude to life and leading it [and] its sentiments, we want to bend its will. This required our coming together into a proper organization. [. . .] Only as an organization, never as a merely loose collection of individuals, will we be able to also ensure that those others, those who shy away from having children or are too comfortable to have them, the degenerates and corrupted, will simply no longer dare to publicly mock and belittle that which we see as our pride, joy and divine gift, that no one will dare tell a peasant father that having many children was no achievement, that one is anyway not responsible for their plight; that no peasant wife shall again, in any village, feel ashamed of her blessed body when walking through the community; and that no one may speak so freely and easily, so shamelessly and unscrupulously, as they so commonly do now, about how they or a sister or a friend aborted [a pregnancy], and how much they paid X and how much they paid Y to be scraped out [Auskratzen]. [. . .] We will, in most cases, only reach our goals if we, following a clear, considered and consistent plan, work like a political party, that we become the ‘public opinion’, and with our tenacious and undeterred work win over the powerful and influential that can petition or legislate or execute something, as well as the wider population; that they may themselves realize this to be right and want it, or at least not to prevent it through too much opposition. This is why we need a strong and disciplined organization. Nevertheless, we do not have exaggerated expectations. We do not presume to be able to change all of our many shy children, or even make a sizeable number of them happy again, and persuade families with low birth-­rate (Kinderarmen) to be rich in children (Kinderreich) again. Certainly not! But if we succeed there, where there still is a healthy pleasure in children to be found and a life-­affirming desire to have children, or just where there is at all a willingness to have children, so that at least, it is not aborted and thereby not prevented from coming if it wants to come. If we succeed in preserving that there, that the same spirit is inherited by the children and by the children of their children, then we would be satisfied. Then [. . .] large and happy families will grow and overflow and fill the gaps again, and our nation will grow, and thereby also make the entire nation happy and willing, will make it numerous once more. Because who will our nation be in fifty, or a hundred, or two hundred years? It will be us [. . .] And more and more so, and ever more exclusively the spirit that fills us, if we nurse and preserve it, will become the spirit of our entire nation. Because the others will shrink together and die out – and their attitudes with them. That is how we can save our nation, saving and securing its future if only we are strong enough to not be infected by the ‘child-­shy’ plague, but that we remain in favour of many children, 571

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

so we are not also eliminated as our national body cleanses itself [. . .] But because we deal with our entire nation and its future, and with large families in our nation only in the second instance, we did not create a society for them, but a society for ‘child enthusiasts’, which any national comrade may join if he shares our convictions; one which should, in particular and from the very beginning, embrace those that are not a numerous family yet but in whom we rest our hopes that they will be at some point: the young couples. We also think ‘child enthusiasts’ sounds better and nicer than ‘large families’, as it expresses not merely an external, perhaps even unintended reality, but is also an affirmation of our conviction, our wants [and] our hopes. Above all else though, the title is simply more accurate. Because we are not a society for large families with a subsection dealing with families which are childless or have few children, that has no other purpose than [to] better help fill our coffers with their higher membership fees; rather, we are an organization for the preservation and strengthening (Ertüchtigung) of our entire nation. Now, at the end, a clarification. We call ourselves the Society of German Child Enthusiasts in Romania, and yet I always talk about the Transylvanian Saxons alone. Our movement is indeed currently limited to these, so that we should actually still call ourselves the Society of Transylvanian Saxon Child Enthusiasts. But we have chosen this name because we think it likely that our movement will, sooner or later, elicit similar movements among the other Germans of this country, and we count on the possibility that they will want to join us, and have considered it in our constitution, not out of a lust for power, ambition, or undue impatience, but because we know the local circumstances and want to keep all the options open for the future. Also, we want to avoid the difficulties and expenses which we cannot get around now, in the future. Otherwise we would not really want to expand too quickly over a larger area. We would much rather develop for a while within our little confines, and thereby, learn to work more effectively, to strengthen [our nation] more and build [it] better [and] more durable. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

About the Creation of Self-Help’s Race-Office5 The very best that we as a nation own, and which forms the very precondition for a continuously industrious nation worthy of life and survival, is our hereditary substance. Our racial worth has, naturally, steadily declined since our immigration as a result of an undesirable degree of mixing with other nations; the emigration of our hereditarily best endowed; a declining fertility among our best classes; alcoholism and other processes, and perhaps this decline was never as rapid as it currently is. This is why we must act now to not only mobilize and preserve our hereditary fitness from further rot, but, not least through the acquisition and securing of further Lebensraum, to encourage an above-­average level of population growth so as to turn an ongoing degeneration into regeneration. The latter goal will always be Nordification (Aufnordung). Nevertheless considering the particular realities within and outside of our nation, it might currently be 572

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

prudent to not necessarily underline this point and focus on the immediate goal of protecting and increasing that in our nation which is worthy. Self-Help is now the only organization among us with the will and power to begin this task. It has taken up the work entrusted to it by the special Race Office under which, given the circumstances, further individual regional and local Race Offices may be subsumed. Only a fraction of all that which needs to happen, of course, can currently be done; and most must first be made possible, especially through working closely with the Selbsthilfe-Arbeitsmannschaft (SA). For one, by gaining precise insights into the conditions and processes within and beyond our nation, but then also by attracting the necessary colleagues and increasingly preparing the ground among the wider national community so that we do not merely arrive at the point where they simply accept and endure this or the other measure, but that we get to a point where it [the wider national community] itself wants that which is necessary, and actively helps realize it. A key task, therefore, will be to study, town by town: our racial composition, our physical and spiritual merits in general by highlighting especially the valuable [individuals] and most valuable families, the spread of tuberculosis, venereal diseases, idiocy, epilepsy, alcoholism; the spread of family limitation, vital space (Lebensraum), migration, debts, the progress of foreign nations (fremde Volkstümer), protective and defensive options against imminent dangers, and more along these lines. After adequate preparation the studies conducted by volunteer working groups, particularly the SA, will also offer the best imaginable opportunity to open the wider masses’ eyes to all this, to teach them to think, and hence often also act, more properly, to sharpen a sense of national responsibility in general, and their hereditary-­health and race-­hygienic conscience in particular, and thereby prevent many a calamity. The opportunity to introduce a generous campaign against tuberculosis through the foundation and proper orientation of saver-­communities [is] already existent in several local branches of SelfHelp, to promote an enthusiasm for children and large families, to battle the plague of wine-­spirits and tobacco, to strengthen our German rural working class, and thereby prepare the very much needed protection and expansion of our Lebensraum – [this is] only a hint at the most important things. Further, there will have to be additional studies on all sorts of questions on our struggles to live and flourish, not only carried out by ourselves but through encouraging, and under circumstances also leading, others as the aim is, anyway, not only to enlighten ever wider circles, but also to encourage those among us lucky enough to be able to research scientifically to finally engage with these important, existential questions more than they have until now. Individual lectures, lecture series and courses will serve the same purpose: our nation’s spiritual awakening and re-­orientation, and to attract new collaborators, especially in the suburbs of our settlement areas, as will relevant publications in our press, and a mobile library. Anything that occurs, or so much as readies itself, within and beyond our nation that could impact our hereditary constitution (Erbverfassung) will be constantly 573

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

monitored and immediately responded to, warned against or comforted, battled or encouraged, and there is to be a constant exchange with all the key and influential national organizations. We do not want to enlist the energies of Self-Help towards the nation’s racial improvement alone, but want to influence other organizations into our way of thinking and win them over as collaborators, in particular the Church’s Welfare Committee and Welfare Office, the insurance companies; maybe also our banks, then our youth and women’s organizations, the medical associations, the abstinence societies and many others. Alfred Csallner, Director [Leiter] of the Race Office

574

Translation by Tudor Georgescu

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Fritz Fabritius

(1883, Hermannstadt–1957, Prien, near Hamburg)

Born on 27 March 1883 in Hermannstadt (Rom.: Sibiu; Hung.: Nagyszeben), Fritz (or Friedrich) Fabritius was the founder and leader of the ‘movement for renewal’ (‘Erneurungsbewegung’) among the Germans of Romania. Fabritius’s life and work was largely subsumed by the ‘Führer-­myth’ he so fervently fed that celebrated his hands-­on pragmatism in particular. Like so many of his contemporaries Fabritius was not an ideologue, but a disgruntled World War I veteran searching for a new meaning. A graduate of the Viennese Military Academy, fluent in French and Hungarian, Fabritius rapidly moved through the ranks, and was made a lieutenant in 1903. In spite of his military success, he transferred to the reserves and moved back to Hermannstadt in 1907, the year in which he married Hermine Promper. In August 1914 Fabritius returned to active duty in a lancer regiment before being transferred to the dragoons and was awarded the Military Merit Medal (Militär-Verdienstmedaille) two months later. He was promoted to the rank of ‘cavalry captain’ (‘Rittmeister’) in March 1915, awarded the ‘Order of the Iron Cross, Third Class’ in October 1916, and had ‘swords’ added to his ‘Militärverdienstkreuz’ in February 1917 (CGR, A.I.1. Album A: 2). Despite this promising military career, Fabritius rarely focused on his wartime exploits. On the contrary, he was most commonly idealized for his trials and tribulations as a farmer after 1907, and the ‘historic significance’ of his 1912 anti-Semitic Youth Defence (Jugendwehr) organization that had purportedly laid the foundations for SelfHelp. Upon his return to Transylvania in 1907 Fabritius had leased twenty-­eight acres of land which, after two successive droughts, had left him facing financial ruin. Yet this did not dampen his social charisma. According to Wilhelm Schunn ‘even in his misery, and without intending to, Fabritius became the friendly spirit (gute Geist) to a crowd of simple, indeed of the poorest, people that so naturally flocked around him, as a magnet attracts iron, and which he would have had to chase away had he not wanted to offer them anything’ (Schunn 1934: 7–8). Fabritius’s financial difficulties came to an end in 1912 when he met the prominent banker Karl Wolff. This encounter led to a relationship that laid the programmatic groundwork for his future movement’s form and function, and one of its most potent ideological founding myths. Fabritius’s appropriation of Karl Wolff as his völkisch father figure and the early inter-­war gloom created the backdrop to Self-Help’s second central (and historiography’s most controversial) founding myth – a chance encounter between Fabritius and Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1922. While there is concrete evidence that such a meeting actually took place, the fiction is itself in many ways more significant than reality. That Fabritius had been carefully developing contacts in Austria and Germany before and after 1922 is widely known, and that his choice of comrades leaves little to the 575

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

imagination is similarly evident in his correspondence (if nothing else) with the völkisch writer Guido von List (1848–1919) in February 1918 (CGR, A.I.1. Album A: 11), his membership of a host of German organizations such as the German Union (Deutschbund) which he joined in March that year (Schunn 1934: 12–13), and his 1921 membership (interestingly enough as member number 16) of the Union of German Agricultural Schools (Schirmherrschaft der Deutschen Bauernhochschule). Similarly, there is evidence that Fabritius was exchanging letters (or rather postcards) with Ernst Röhm (1887–1934), the founder of the SA, by 1926, a time during which Fabritius also became increasingly involved with the German writer Wilhelm Kotzde-Kottenrodt (1878–1948) and his ‘Eagles and Hawks’ (‘Adler und Falken’) – a group which Self-Help had hosted as guests earlier that year. Whether Fabritius had met with German eugenicists, however, is currently impossible to establish, but in 1931 he published a rather interesting appeal: ‘I need pictures of national brothers in our settlement area for a scientific study to be published by the Nordic Ring (Berlin). Send me two good passport photos. On the rear side write name, city, birth date, height, skin, hair, and eye colour’ (Fabritius 1931: 6). In any case there is no tangible evidence of a correspondence, let alone a meeting, between Fabritius and Hitler prior to May 1933, when Hitler thanked Fabritius for two unnamed books sent to him on the 13 April 1933, concluding with: ‘I am glad to hear your letter’s renewed insistence on the old unbreakable German combat spirit of the Germans and their ancestral homeland’ (Fabritius 1931: 48). By the time Self-Help gained majorities in first the Saxon National Council (1933) and subsequently the Association of Germans in Romania (1935), the political stage had changed dramatically. The fascist movement succumbed to bitter infighting between the moderates surrounding Fabritius and radical National Socialists around Alfred Bonfert and Waldemar Gust. In 1935 Bonfert and Gust formed the National Party of the Germans in Romania (Deutsche Volkspartei in Rumänien). The rift having been mediated or, rather, simply ended, by Berlin in 1938, the Deutsche Volkspartei in Rumänien was reintegrated into the Association of Germans in Romania (Verband der Deutschen in Rumänien). However, Fabritius continued to aggravate political relations with Bucharest and was promptly summoned to Berlin where he was relieved of his post as national leader and replaced by his deputy Wolfram Bruckner, who was himself replaced in 1940 when the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Ethnic Germans Liaison Office) appointed Andreas Schmidt. Fabritius survived the war in Germany, and died in 1957 in Prien near Hamburg.

576

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Home Soil6 Which are the foundations that guarantee any national community’s continued existence? Apart from the community’s typological homogeneity (racial homogeneity) [Artgleichheit (Rassegleichheit)], which is self-­evidently the natural precondition for shared moral values, a shared sense of law and honour, and its communal economic policy, the availability of sufficient Lebensraum is the central issue from which all paths towards to a healthy higher evolution lead. Self-Help is built upon these preconditions. It wants, in the first instance, to nourish and strengthen the national body’s germ-­cell (the family) nationally and economically so that through this localized work the slow strengthening of the entire national community may occur. National regeneration, raising it to selflessly serve its own blood-­community (Blutsgemeinschaft) and expanding our settlement areas must therefore be, especially for the Germans abroad, the central objective of any political or economic policy – should it want to create something permanent for the future of our entire nation (Gesamtvolk). This settlement work is all the more important as the ‘November-­criminals’ [NovemberVerbrecher7] in the Reich8 have shattered the generous ‘Eastern colonization project’ (Ostsiedlungswerk) – begun by the Teutonic Knights, and then continued by Frederick the Great. Through General Ludendorff’s generosity it should have been re-­introduced, but various peace treaties, land and other reforms, have purposefully strangled and constrained the German nation’s Lebensraum more and more. As due to the daily defensive struggle (Abwehrkampf), which consumes the strength of all the political leaders of the Germans abroad, since the collapse9 nothing but defence (no rebuilding or creation), could get underway, and so the founders of Self-Help set the above tasks, national strengthening and the building of new settlements, as its goal. Simultaneously the entire monetary economy should be adapted to the German, Aryan nature, by slowing the interest-­rate-bondage that takes away the majority of the earnings to which the productive national comrade is entitled, so that here too a path towards a positive economic development may be cleared. Here the core principle must once more come into its own that, should our nation be returned to health again, man must be placed above the trading tool (money) and not, as the Roman (Semitic) law has done up to now to the damage of all nations, make man the slave of the international monetary powers. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

577

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

National Programme of the Transylvanian Saxons (1 October 1933)10 In the name of God, the almighty! We, the Saxon nation of Transylvania, driven by your will to bring forth an ever more perfect community and solidify it, to in future continue to serve the inherited German mission, to promote our honour and strength, to have peace prevail among us, to fight for justice, and to safeguard the particularities of our distinctiveness for us and our descendants, have decided upon this national programme. Fundamentals [Grundlagen] [§ 1–5] 1. We pledge ourselves to the unity of all the Germans in the world, with which we form one large nation. With an immutable bond to our homeland we stand on the ground of the Romanian state, and place our strength and loyalty at its disposal. 2. We proclaim, that the state will only realize its destiny if all the nations and national groups that it comprises are supported and protected in the same and just way. 3. The totality of the Germans living in Romania constitutes a single national and political unit with duties and rights internally and externally. [. . .] 4. The national community has to ensure that every Saxon is raised to a national (völkisch) and Christian view of life. It has to create Lebensraum and sufficient job opportunities for its members, to strive towards social equality, and through education, enlightenment, and influence, to awaken and maintain the conviction that the German nation is a God-­given unity and every comrade [is] our blood-­brother for whom we are all responsible. 5. Every Saxon has to observe the national programme and preserve national discipline. [. . .] Demands of the State [§ 6–24] 18. We demand state compensation for the social and economic damages inflicted upon us since 1918, such as agricultural reform, agricultural loan conversion, etc., and simultaneously effective protection from any form of economic disadvantage, but especially the immediate cessation of the unfair taxation of our national comrades and the usage of all this country’s citizens to support public expenses equally. [. . .] Appendix: Guidelines on Shaping National Life (Richtlinien für die völkische Lebensgestaltung) [§ 1–14] 1. It is demanded of every national comrade, apart from the verbal allegiance to the national community, for which they are willing to make material and bodily sacrifice. Materially, at the least every national member will be requested to 578

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

sacrifice a contribution to maintaining organizations communal to all. The bodily sacrifice, at its very least, is realized through offering a part of his intellectual and physical strength (Arbeitskraft) to the national community, in order to serve it if needed, for free. 2. The maintenance and expansion of Lebensraum is one of the national community’s fundamental duties. Our nation’s peasant foundation must, as its natural source of strength and renewal, be preserved, solidified and extended. Our old settler tribe’s (Siedlerstam) connection to the land (Bodenverbundenheit) needs to be understood and actively supported through enlightenment, a path-­ breaking approach to leading by example, and joint national strength. 3. The questions of national health, hygiene, racial hygiene, and population growth constitute a considerable portion of our national organizations’ work agenda. Apart from public enlightenment, this work will be conducted through [the] institutions of national health, especially through the creation of national hospitals (Volksspitäler), the preferential treatment of large families, and by battling child limitation (Kinderbeschränkung). 4. Every national comrade has to strive to keep pure and deepen Saxon family life, and to nurture German nature (deutsche Wesensart). National institutions (Körperschaften) are to contribute to educating the national will to that end. A leader must be a role model in how he conducts his life. The highest honour and calling for women is motherhood. [. . .] 6. Our youth education aims to, apart from teaching practical skills and spiritual knowledge, make the young Saxon person into an ideally and socially minded German (ideal und sozial gesinnten Deutschen). Schools have to lay this foundation. Its extension is to be conducted by the youth organizations subsumed by the general German Youth League (Jugendbund) through planned national education reaching its pinnacle through physical strengthening (Ertüchtigung), attitude formation (Gesinnungsbildung) and national labour service – in so far as it can be done without adversely impacting family life. It is the moral duty of every national comrade to perform voluntary labour to the benefit of the national community in their youth. Hence all national comrades born in and after 1915 can only be elected into national bodies if they fulfil the obligations to be set out in the statute by the National Council on the question of the moral mandatory labour service, and especially on work camps. The national organization has to lead and influence the work of the youth clubs, and support the Church’s religious-­national youth education. [. . .] 11. During internal national conflicts weapons such as they are commonly used by political parties battling for power, insofar as they mean misleading or agitating the electorate, should not be used. The creation of inner-Saxon political parties is to be avoided if possible. It is demanded from every national comrade that he stay free of any international ties that damage the nation (volksschädlich). Translation by Tudor Georgescu 579

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Instructions for the Saxon Woman11 1. Honour the holiday according to rights and custom! In doing so you strengthen your national feeling and deference for the past. 2. Only marry a man of your blood and religion! You will otherwise, from the beginning, plant discord into your home. 3. Never forget that your house is a Saxon house! So speak the Saxon [dialect] and maintain a Saxon spirit therein. 4. Ensure healthy offspring through a sensible, moral (sittlich) way of life and detest any unallowed procedure on your body. 5. Do not turn your children into your idols and yourself into their slave! Much rather, educate them by your example in self-­evidently fullfilling your duties, to the truth and to love their nation. 6. Hold on to your house and land! By selling it you actually take away the soil wherein your descendants’ strength is rooted! 7. Hold out an open hand to your nation! If you must save, save on indulgence, but not on your nation which today depends on each of its members. 8. Keep a cheerful heart in difficult times! Take part in the pain and joy of your fellows, and you will bear your own hardship more lightly. 9. Never apologize or tolerate recklessness! Like a pus-filled boil it currently spreads around spoiling us and our nation. 10. Insist upon strict order, punctuality and modesty in your home! You will see how much will remain for national work as well. 11. Turn your Saxon farm helpers and Saxon apprentices into national comrades, by discussing national matters with them. 12. Only buy from established shops, even if it may seem more expensive to you! The products’ quality still makes the purchase advantageous. 13. Buy and read local books! You thereby support the Saxon spirit in two ways. 14. Do not attend degrading performances (Schmutzvorstellungen), be it at the cinema or the theatre, and do not read filthy books (Schmutzbücher). They damage you by hardening and dulling you to[wards] ignorance. 15. Do not drink alcohol with your [kin]! The money thus saved will benefit your national work and thereby the increased productivity of your house. 16. Judge yourself more stringently than your fellow! In the quiet hours sometimes take judgement of yourself and your deeds. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

580

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Wilhelm Schunn

(1888, Hermannstadt–1966, Schaal, near Sibiu)

The twelfth of thirteen children, Schunn was born in Hermannstadt in 1888. He lost his mother at the age of six, a childhood trauma that suffuses the thoroughly intriguing personal biography that he submitted to the Church in support of his application for a parish post in September 1951 (ZAEV, Bestand Schunn, no. 1: 1–4). Schunn had studied theology, mathematics, and physics in Jena, Leipzig and Klausenburg before returning to Hermannstadt to work as a teacher. Having spent World War I as an army chaplain, Schunn returned to his teaching post in Hermannstadt and married in 1923, but was not to have any children. By the late 1920s, he became increasingly melancholic, and he sought to alleviate this sense of crisis by plunging himself into the task of reinventing the Saxon National Neighbourhoods’ model of structuring communal life. Schunn played a vital role in distilling and implementing the National Neighbourhoods’ eugenic policies, especially with regard to ‘honorary gifts’, the training of Hermannstadt’s thirty-­nine individual ‘Genealogy Officers’ (‘Amtswalter für Sippenwesen’) in January 1937 (CGR, D.XIV.841: 1 and D.XIII.B.612: 193), and by disseminating his interpretation of the interplay between heredity, race, and Lebensraum in numerous public lectures (D.XIII.B.477: 28). The National Neighbourhood, as Schunn reinvented it, relied on the Saxon historical template which had been banned by the Hungarian state as subversive in 1871. Building on this sense of historic legitimacy, the Neighbourhoods re-­emerged thoroughly suffused with the indigenous brand of fascist dogma, and were designed as practically self-­ sufficient local Self-Help collectives consisting of some 100 Saxon families in cities and 50 to 60 in rural communities. Each National Neighbourhood, Hermannstadt alone had thirty-­nine of them, oversaw, among other duties: the collection or requisition of fiscal and material donations; the distribution of gifts on festive occasions, such as weddings, births, and funerals; coordination of the communal help given to members building or rebuilding homesteads; to ensure that property sales did not denigrate Saxon Lebensraum which was deemed to be in constant peril; to discourage mixed marriages; to act as an informal employment office preventing ethnic ‘Others’ from undermining Saxon businesses and industries by tailoring the supply of Saxon labour to Saxon economic needs; to guarantee a high standard of medical provision; and ultimately, to enforce their members’ ideological indoctrination in the name of national salvation. In short, they were omnipresent in everyday life from the cradle to the grave. Andreas Schmidt’s growing political influence in 1940 necessarily resulted in a fundamental redefinition of Schunn’s Neighbourhoods in both form and function – one that Schunn did not approve. Schunn summarized the key aspects of his dislike for the new regime in a letter to Schmidt that began with turning down several new restitutions offered to him, before lamenting the Neighbourhood’s ‘destruction’ through the 581

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

imposition of German (rather than Saxon) organizational models: ‘I think: the form of the party’s work in the Reich were developed to pursue the political goals of one party against another, and did so – which one may not forget – in the Reich! Our national organization though is not tasked with the purpose of a political battle it cannot accommodate, but has to create a framework for our entire national community’s national life as it evolved over centuries’ (ZAEV, Bestand Schunn, no. 6: 1). Schunn deeply resented the National Neighbourhoods’ appropriation by Schmidt’s NSDAP der VgrDR that re-­tooled them into the party’s organizational hierarchy of ‘blocks’ and ‘cells’, and replaced the ‘Neighbourly Help’ and its honorary gifts with a social welfare office based on the German National Socialist People’s Welfare model by Wilhelm Schiel. Hence 1940 was to mark the beginning of the end of Schunn’s career. He re-­emerged from the chaos of 1944, like Csallner, as a priest. In October 1951 Schunn became the village priest in Schaal (Rom.: Şoala; Hung.: Sálya). In 1957 he was elected the ‘city preacher’ of inner Kronstadt, a post he had to turn down though due to illness (ZAEV, Bestand Schunn, no. 3). Following a 1958 government ban stopping his attempts to reconstitute the Neighbourhoods, Schunn remained simply ‘a Christian among Christians’ in the community he served until his death in 1966.

582

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

The Honouring of Large Families Among the Germans in Romania12 The Honorary Framework With the small document collection presented here, we hope to offer evidence, first and foremost, of the economic importance of the honorary gifts of the German National Community in Romania for families with numerous children. The honorary gift is collected and awarded within the framework of our Neighbourhoods and has, when seen economically, the purpose of redistributing costs between families. Our Neighbourhood system is itself a piece of old Germanic communal life (altgermanischen Gemeinschaftslebens) that has been preserved over the centuries. After the movement for renewal’s victory in the German National Community in Romania (Deutsche Volksgruppe in Rumänien), we tended towards this old way of life (Lebensform) connected to the soil (mit dem Boden verbundenen), which we still found alive in one of the seven German regions in Romania. We did this because we realized that this adaptable model, having emerged from the old Germanic views on life, allows for the realization of the idea of a national community (Volksgemeinschaftsgedankens) better than any other organizational form we know. An idea which we view as the core characteristic of the entire new German Weltanschauung (worldview) and to which we, as Volksdeutsche (German people) in a foreign environment, feel particularly called upon to realize. [. . .] We tried to transplant one regional neighbourhood model we found and remodelled [and applied it], as indicated, across to the other six regions. But that is not a simple and easily done task, as taking over the neighbourhood system equates to a complete reconstruction of the whole national life. We are not yet nearly advanced in every German village in this land, but we may say that the main work now lies behind us. The Honorary Gift We wish to place honouring and encouraging large families at the centre of all our work. Our genealogical trees (Ahnentafel), which are framed and glass-­covered and awarded as presents at weddings, already contribute to this process of honouring, as well as our certificate of thanks and baby shoes that commemorate births. While we ask that the little national comrade wear these, their first little shoes, as a symbol that he belongs to us all and that we want to take some of the care for him unto ourselves. But we thought that, in addition to these small gestures for large families, the national community needed to undertake substantial work. It was supposed to be something difficult to realize, so that the necessary wake-­up call and subsequent, permanent, contribution may refocus the entire nation’s view onto the child. We dared to decide that the honorary gift for every fourth live birth be 20,000 Lei, and 10,000 Lei for every further child. [. . .]

583

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

The Honorary Gift’s Purpose We had to realize, with a smile, that our national comrades do not entirely believe us that the honorary gift does not have the purpose of encouraging large families through material gain, but should merely redistribute their costs across families, as we are unable to do so through ongoing financial contributions. We are not ourselves involved, and rather do not enjoy hearing it, when individual national comrades repeatedly tell of how poorer families design business plans on the basis of honorary gifts. We much rather hear the assertion that our honouring and profiling first gave the impetus for the wealthy to have a fourth child, and wish that they may count among those that have fully done their duty. One may also rigorously, and perhaps correctly, point to the increase in the birth-­rate and connect [it] to the honorary gift. It is our opinion that the desire for more children (Geburtenfreudigkeit) cannot be achieved, in the long term, through material benefit, but that it must come through a change in mentality (Gesinnungswechsel). The honorary gift is not supposed to cause this change in attitudes (even if it impressively points to the importance of demography), but the honorary gift’s conferral out of the entire population’s communal funds is a symbol that attitudes have already changed. That the movement for renewal (Erneurungsbewegung) gave the deciding impetus for this attitudinal change appears to us to be certain. [. . .] The Honouring At the honorary gift’s conferral the honouring is emphasized, not the gift. The honorary gift must, therefore, also be accepted by the wealthiest and be used as specified in a submitted spending plan for things of permanent value. It was initially not understood by all that without this provision the honorary gift would soon have been reduced to a form of charity for the poorest and which anyone with pride would have to decline. But we place particular emphasis on the first two syllables of the word[s] honorary gift and on its symbolic character (‘The child belongs to us all, not only the parents. Hence all, rich and poor, contribute the smallest of coins’ [and] ‘This is not any money; this is holy money. The poorest and the richest alike take it’). Indeed, who among us is honoured more than the large family since we have introduced the honorary gift? Is there any ceremony with more meaning anywhere in town or country than our little celebration occasioned by the conferral of an honorary gift with a subsequent simple communal meal with parents and the neighbourhood’s leaders? Getting the Funds We gather the funds for the honorary gift by simply collecting what we need from every national comrade, except from those who are fully or partially exempt, every month: lately about 17 to 18 Lei. With that we not only cover the costs of honorary gifts, but 584

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

also those for funerals and, in the countryside lately, also for substantial wedding gifts. But nothing more shall be reported about these two expenses, which consume more than half of our income, here. [. . .] The Honorary Gift’s Side Effect Prior to any conferral the family is studied to determine whether it comprises [of] exclusively only desirable members of the national community, and that they are hereditarily healthy. Asocial behaviour is also a reason for refusal. This is the first practical and frequently even rather drastic defensive measure against unwanted offspring that, to my knowledge, a German national community has been able to introduce. Just imagine what it would mean for a family if the medical examiner rejects the honorary gift’s conferral. Soon, of course, the entire Neighbourhood would know that further children in this family were to be sinful. So, if more children are born to it anyway, the bad father would have the entire Neighbourhood’s public opinion against him and have to run the gauntlet between his outraged neighbours’ gruff remarks. We just have to accept as an unalterable fact that we are currently unable to examine the entire population to the same degree in advance. Other specifics about the conditions for conferral should not be listed here. But criteria have been established so that, for example, a speculative move from an area where the honorary gift is not yet awarded is pointless. [. . .] Translation by Tudor Georgescu

585

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Franz Wilhelm Wokalek (1914, Bistritz–?)

Little is known of Franz Wokalek’s life, but the hallmarks of his career are illustrative of the new, post-1940 generation of Saxon fascists and eugenicists. He was born in Bistritz in 1914. He studied medicine in Prague, Greifswald, Erlangen, Graz and Berlin, where he submitted his thesis on the heredity of eye disorders in 1939 (Wokalek 1939). Punctuated by his various managerial responsibilities, Wokalek built and headed the new German Doctors in Romania (Deutsche Ärzteschaft in Rumänien) medical association as well as the Main Office for National Health after 1941 (Wokalek 1942a: 175–80). Having been active in various National Socialist youth and student organizations, Wokalek volunteered for service in the SS Leibstandarte ‘Adolf Hitler’ regiment in September 1939, which he formally joined in August 1940, and assumed key functions in the medical oversight of resettlement projects in the Ukraine, Bessarabia and Dobrudja in 1940 and 1941. Wokalek worked for the Resettlement Command (‘Wolhynien-Galizien’) from November 1939 to February 1940, after which the Reich Physicians Chamber gave him charge of the military affairs at the Resettlement Command, and in July 1940 Wokalek was put in charge of the resettlement of Germans from Romania. Wokalek rapidly climbed through the ranks, with numerous deployments between 1941 and 1944, both to the front as well as the SS-Führungsamt and SS-Sanitätsamt, among others, and was promoted to the rank of captain (Hauptsturmführer) in November 1943. After being wounded in late 1943, Wokalek returned to Braşov in Transylvania, where he stayed until March 1944. After this date, we have no reliable biographical information.

586

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

National Socialist Healthcare13 The developments of the last two years have made it possible for the German national community in Romania to partake in the German nation’s existential battle (Existenzkampf) in the measure that we, as a German national group have always yearned to do. The struggle, in which we as Germans now are, demands the grouping of all our available strengths. This general mobilization of our strengths, to thereby support the German victory, has only been possible here in Romania through the statesman-­like foresight of the nation’s leader Marshal [I.] Antonescu. Only through Romania becoming our motherland’s brother-­in-arms (Waffengefährte) were we given the opportunity to flourish in all aspects of our cultural and national life. [. . .] Tending to bodily health and the purity of blood are fundamental demands of the National Socialist Weltanschauung (worldview). Their protection is the highest duty of any National Socialist National leadership (Volksführung), and which, in order to live up to this task, it has created the Main Office for National Health (Hauptamt für Volksgesundheit). Even if the work of the Department for National Health is not as visible to the individual national comrade as the work and achievements of other organizations, whose tight columns marching in locked step and confident public appearances attract the main attention, our work is still, taking the longer view, the prerequisite for creating these formations with racially highly valuable, and physically truly healthy, people – as a purposeful national health policy (Volksgesundheitsführung) must anyway guarantee the eternal existence of the nation in its racial, bodily, and spiritual purity. It is self-­ evident to us, and clear to any National Socialist, that this work must be supported with all available resources, as it is the precondition for the nation’s eternal existence. In order to conduct this work we must, first of all, set about training the medical profession, as the appointed leader in the area of national health, ideologically and in part also academically in such a way that it can live up to all the challenges we have to place before it. This year, in particular, will see the execution of comprehensive measures in the domain of national health that will also reach into the lives of individuals. In doing so, we proceed from the fundamental principle that the individual’s health is no longer his private matter, but that the right of a person to his own body is surpassed by the nation’s right over it. For the individual this brings not rights, but responsibilities. First of all the duty [is] to lead his life in a way he can justify to his own health, to his family and his nation. The individual’s duty towards health (Gesundheitspflicht) is what first allows for a comprehensive and planned national health policy, based on National Socialist principles, to be built. Translation by Tudor Georgescu

587

Glossary Ahnentafel: genealogical trees altgermanischen Gemeinschaftslebens: old Germanic communal life Artgleichheit (Rassegleichheit): typological homogeneity (racial homogeneity) Aufnordung: Nordification Blutsgemeinschaft: blood-­community Erbverfassung: hereditary constitution Erbkrankheit: hereditary illness Erbmasse: hereditary mass/core Erbschwäche: hereditary weakness fremde Völker: foreign nations Gesundheitslehre- und pflege: understanding and nurturing of health Kinderbeschränkung: Limiting fertility/family size Kinderreich: large families with many children Kinderarm: small families with few children Kinderfroh: child enthusiasts lebschaftlichen Absonderung: biological segregation Rassenhygiene: racial hygiene Sippe: wider family Siedlungsarbeit: settlement projects vererbliche Weingeistgenuss: hereditary alcoholism Verdrängungslehre: displacement theory Vernichtungslehre: destruction theory Volksgesundheitsführung: national health policy völkische Erneuerung: national regeneration volksschädlich: national damage Volkstod: national death Volkskörperpflege: care of the national body Wissenschaft der Volksverteidung: Science of National Defence

Notes 1 This is, of course, not entirely true, if one considers Heinrich Siegmund’s Welfare Committee and the Department of Health (Arbeitstelle für Volksgesundheit) under Dr Wilhelm Hager [note TG]. 2 Siegmund, H. (1901), Zur sächsischen Rassenhygiene, Hermannstadt: Peter Drotleff [Excerpts translated from pp. 3, 17–20 and 24]. 3 Siegmund, H. (1922), ‘Die Aufgaben der sächsischen Rassenhygiene’, in Siegmund, H. (ed.), Sächsisches Mehr- und Wehrbuch, 2nd edition, Mediasch: G. A. Raiffenberger [Excerpts translated from pp. 214–18]. 4 Csallner, A. (1927), ‘Was Wir Wollen’, Evangelischer Fursorger, 4: 9–12 [Excerpts translated from pp. 9–12). 5 Csallner, A. (1932), ‘Zur Errichtung des Rassenamtes der “Selbsthilfe” ’, Ostdeutsche Beobachter, 11: 4. 6 Fabritius, F. (1927), ‘Heimaterde’, Selbsthilfe, 7: 1. 7 Those who signed Germany’s capitulation on 19 November 1918 [note TG]. 8 Here Fabritius may be referring to those who had accepted the German defeat in World War I [note TG]. 9 The reference here is to the Austro-Hungarian Empire [note TG]. 10 Volksprogramm der Siebenbürger Sachsen (1933), Hermannstadt: n.p. [Excerpts translated from pp. 234–40]. 11 ‘Deutsch Sächsischen Frauenbund’, Merkblatt für die sächsische Frau, 2nd ed. (1934): 1. 12 Schunn, W. and Pastior, O. (1940), Die Ehrung des Kinderreichtums bei den Deutschen in Rumänien, Hermannstadt: Krafft & Drotleff [Excerpts translated from pp. 3–9]. 13 Wokalek, F. (1942b), ‘Nationalsozialistische Volksgesundheitsführung’, Der Arzt im Osten 16, 2: 33–4 [Excerpts translated from pp. 33–4].

Bibliography Archives Arhivele Naţionale ale României (Romanian National Archive), Sibiu 1. Brukenthal Collection Inv. 107, LL. 1–29. Files 38–107 Inv 107, LL. 1–29, File 65 2. German Community in Romania: 1904–1940 CGR, A.I.4: 1–44 CGR, D.XIII.B.612: 193 CGR, D.XIII.B.477: 28 CGR, ‘Inventar Suplimentar’, D.XIV: 19 CGR, D.XIV.841: 1 CGR, A.I.1. Album A: 2; 11; 12; 21; 28, 35, 48 Zentralarchiv des Landeskonsortiums der Evangelischen Kirche A.B, (Central Archives of the Protestant Church) Sibiu Bestand Schunn, no. 1: 1–4; no: 3 and no. 6: 1 LK 103.90 (1929): 19 LK 103.84 (1923): 5647: 2–4 LK 103.97 (1936): 58: 9 Siebenbürgische Bibliothek (Transylvanian Library), Gundelsheim (Germany) F.V/144 [K]

Primary Sources (27 August 1932), ‘Das sächsische Volksprogramm: Ein Entwurf der Selbsthilfe für den im Herbst 1932 abzuhaltenden Sachsentag’, Ostdeutscher Beobachter. Kampfblatt für das ehrlich arbeitende Volk, 1: 1–3. (1933), Volksprogramm der Siebenbürger Sachsen 1933, Hermannstadt: n.p. (1933), Volksprogramm der Siebenbürger Sachsen beschlossen vom Sachsentag am 1. Oktober 1933 in Hermannstadt, Hermannstadt: Gött. (1934), ‘Deutsch Sächsischen Frauenbund’, Merkblatt für die sächsische Frau, 1. (30 June 1934), ‘Kundgebung der NEDR in Kronstadt’, Ostdeutscher Beobachter. Kampfblatt für das ehrlich arbeitende Volk, 3: 1. (30 June 1934), ‘Die Kundgebung der NEDR im Burzenland: Das Bekentniss zu Heimat, Volk und Vaterland’, Ostdeutscher Beobachter. Kampfblatt für das ehrlich arbeitende Volk, 3: 2–4. (1941), ‘Vollversammlung des Bundes der Deutschen Ärzte in Rumänien am 10. Mai 1941 in Temeschburg’, Medizinische Zeitschrift, 11: 85–7. Bredt, J. (1929), Windau in Gegenwart und Vergangenheit: Eine Ortsgeschichte auf Grundlage der Volkskörperforschung, Bistritz: Buchdruckerei Gustav Zikeli. Bredt, J. (1930), Volkskörperforschung, Breslau: Ferdinand Hirt.

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Collmer, P. (1936), Fürsorge als völkische Selbstbehauptung: Dargestellt am Beispiel des Fürsorgewesens der Siebenbürger Sachsen, Berlin: Carl Heymanns Verlag. Csallner, A. (1927), ‘Was Wir Wollen’, Evangelischer Fursorger, 4: 9–12. Csallner, A. (1928), ‘Fackelträger’, in Csallner, A., Kleine Aufsätze. Hermannstadt: Selbstverlag, 1–8. Csallner, A. (1932), ‘Zur Errichtung des Rassenamtes der “Selbsthilfe” ’, Ostdeutscher Beobachter. Kampfblatt für das ehrlich arbeitende Volk, 11: 4. Csallner, A. (1934), Von der Bedeutung der Gattenwahl für Wesen und Schicksal der Kinder, Hermannstadt: Amt für Erbbiologie beim Kulturamt der Deutschen in Rumänien. Csallner, A. (1937), Ein Falscher Trost, Hermannstadt: Honterus. Csallner, A. (1937–8), ‘Schul- und Lebensleistungen siebenbürgisch-­sächsischer Bauern’, Verhandlungen und Mitteilungen des Siebenbürgischen Vereins für Naturwissenschaften zu Hermannstadt, 87–8: 23–4. Csallner, A. (1939), Das Landesamt für Statistik und Sippenwesen der Deutschen Volksgemeinschaft in Rumänien, Manuscript, 10 October, RNA, Brukenthal Museum. Csallner, A. (1940), Die volksbiologische Forschung unter den Siebenbürger Sachsen und ihre Auswirkung auf das Leben diese Volksgruppe, Leipzig: S. Hirzel. Csallner, A. (1975), Meine wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten, Traunau: Selbstverlag, 1975. Dolle, H. (1918), Aus Not zu Brot. Hellerau: Hakenkreuz-Verlag. Fabritius, F. (1927), ‘Heimaterde’, Selbsthilfe, 7: 1. Fabritius, F. (1931), ‘Wer hilft mit?’, Selbsthilfe, 11: 6. Frank, R. (1943), ‘Das Gesundheitswesen unserer Volksgruppe’, Der Arzt im Osten, 1–2: 7–8. Gyurgyevich, J. E. (1937), ‘Vorarbeiten zu einem Schriftenverzeichnis des Landeskonsistorialrats Dr. med. Heinrich Siegmund’, Medizinische Zeitschrift, 5: 315–26. Hager, W. and Weindel, V. (1940), ‘Deutsche Ärzte!’, Medizinische Zeitschrift, 11: 283. Hermann, A. (1937), Die deutschen Bauern des Burzenlandes, Jena: Fischer. Hügel, E. (1936), ‘Möglichkeiten und Aufgaben der Rassen- und Erbforschung in Siebenbürgen’, Siebenbürgische Vierteljahrsschrift, 5: 7–9. Hügel, E. (1942a), ‘Rassenforschung und Volksgruppe’, Deutsche Forschung im Südosten, 1 (1942): 107–14. Hügel, E. (1942b), ‘Rassenforschung und ärztlicher Beruf’, Der Arzt im Osten, 7: 143–7. Hügel, E. (1943), ‘Rassenpolitische Gesichtspunkte aus der Geschichte der Deutschen in Rumänien’, Deutsche Forschung im Südosten, 2: 397–439. Jickeli, K. (1911), ‘Mädchenerziehung und Rassenhygiene’, Die Karpathen, 2: 424–8. Jickeli, O. F. (1935), Unser Weg zur Erneuerung des deutschen Volkes in Rumänien, Hermannstadt: Buchvertrieb E. Bruckner. Mathias, A. (1943), ‘Der Aufbau des Amtes für Volksgesundheit’, Der Arzt im Osten, 1–2: 5–7. Roemer-Neubner, M. (1911), ‘Frauenbewegung und Rassenhygiene’, Die Karpathen, 2: 538–4. Sächsischer Ärzteverein (ed.) (1919), Gutachten des sächsischen Ärztevereins über die zukünftiger Gestaltung des sächsischen Gesundheitswesens, verhandelt und angenommen in seiner Hauptversammlung vom 6. Juli 1919 in Mediasch., n. p. Schmidt, A. (1940), ‘Der vorläufige Arbeitsrahmen der Volksorganisation der deutschen Volksgruppe in Rumänien’, Arbeits-Nachrichten (21 December): 3. Schunn, W. (1934), Weg und Feinde der NEDR (Nationale Erneuerungsbewegung der Deutschen in Rumänien), Sibiu-Hermannstadt: H. Schlosser. Schunn, W. (1937), Die Nachbarschaften der Deutschen in Rumänien, Hermannstadt: Krafft & Drotleff. Schunn, W. and Pastior, O. (1940), Die Ehrung des Kinderreichtums bei den Deutschen in Rumänien, Hermannstadt: Krafft & Drotleff. Siebenbürgisch-­deutscher Ärzteverein (1933), ‘Die rechtlichen Grundlagen des siebenbürgisch-­ deutschen Ärztevereins’, Medizinische Zeitschrift, 2: 7–19. 591

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Siegmund, H. (1901), Zur sächsischen Rassenhygiene, Hermannstadt: Peter Drotleff. Siegmund, H. (1913a), ‘Sächsische Volksmehrung und Frauenbewegung, Teil I’, Die Karpathen, 4: 731–4. Siegmund, H. (1913b), ‘Sächsische Volksmehrung und Frauenbewegung, Teil II’, Die Karpathen, 4: 750–8. Siegmund, H. (ed.) (1922), Sächsisches Wehr und Mehrbuch: Ein Volksbuch, Mediasch: Reissenberger. Siegmund, H. (1931), Deutschen-Dämmerung in Siebenbürgen, Hermannstadt: Honterus. Siegmund, H., Englisch, M. and Schuster, R. (eds) (1914), Sächsisches Wehr und Mehrbuch: Ein Volksbuch, Mediasch: Selbstverlag. Teutsch, G. (1913), ‘Dr. Heinrich Siegmund und die Frauenbewegung’, Die Karpathen, 4: 40–2. Von Meltzl, O. (1885), ‘Statistik der Sächsischen Landbevölkerung in Siebenbürgen’, Archiv des Vereins für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 2–3: 213–510. Wokalek, F. W. (1939), Statistische Untersuchungen über die Häufigkeit erblicher Augenleiden, Berlin: Pfau. Wokalek, F. W. (1941), ‘Der Arzt als Treuhänder der Volksgesundheit’, Medizinische Zeitschrift, 11: 168–74. Wokalek, F. W. (1942a), ‘Die Volksgesundheitliche Lage und Betreuung der Volksgruppe’, in Jahrbuch der Deutschen Volksgruppe in Rumänien, 1942, Hermannstadt: Krafft und Drotleff, 175–80. Wokalek, F. W. (1942b), ‘Nationalsozialistische Volksgesundheitsführung’, Der Arzt im Osten, 16: 33–4. Wokalek, F. W. (1942c), ‘Zum Geleit!’, Der Arzt im Osten, 1: 1. Zillich, H. (1932a), ‘Entwurf zu einem sächsischen Volksprogramm’, Klingsor, 9: 364–72. Zillich, H. (1932b), ‘Sachsentag und Volksprogramm’, Klingsor, 9: 482–4.

Secondary Sources Beer, M. and Seewann, G. (eds) (2004), Südostforschung im Schatten des Dritten Reiches: Institutionen–Inhalte–Personen, Munich: Oldenburg. Behrwerth, F. (1970), ‘Dr. Heinrich Siegmund’, Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter, 2: 104–8. Binder, L. (1994), ‘Die Evangelische Landeskirche A.B. in Rumänien, 1920–1944’, in König, W. (ed.), Siebenbürgen zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen, Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 237–64. Böhm, J. (1985), Das Nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die deutsche Volksgruppe in Rumänien, 1936–1944: das Verhältnis der deutschen Volksgruppe zum Dritten Reich und zum rumänischen Staat sowie der interne Widerstreit zwischen den politischen Gruppen, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Böhm, J. (1993), Die Deutschen in Rumänien und die Weimarer Republik, 1919–1933, Ippesheim: AGK-Verlag. Böhm, J. (2003), Die Gleichschaltung der deutschen Volksgruppe in Rumänien und das ‘Dritte Reich’, 1941–1944, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Böhm, J. (2000), ‘Die politische Entwicklung der deutschen Minderheit in Rumänien von 1918 bis 1944’, Revista Istoricӑ, 5–6: 345–69. Böhm, J. (2006), ‘Von der völkischen Verblendung zum Nationalsozialismus, Teil II.’, Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur und Politik, 2: 55–69. Böhm, J., and Braeg, D. (eds) (1997), Dr. Viktor Glondys: Tagebuch – Aufzeichnungen von 1933 bis 1949, Dinklage: AGK-Verlag. Davis, S. E. (2009), ‘Maintaining a “German” Home in Southeast Europe: Transylvanian Saxon Nationalism and the Metropolitan Model of the Family, 1918–1933’, History of the Family, 14: 386–401. 592

Saxon Eugenics in Transylvania

Ernst, W. (1983), ‘Heinrich Sigmund und die “Volksbiologische” Forschung in der Zwischenkriegszeit’, Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 2: 177–86. Fahlbusch, M. (1994), Wo der deutsche . . . ist, ist Deutschland!: Die Stiftung für deutsche Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung in Leipzig 1920–1933, Bochum: Brockmeyer. Fahlbusch, M. (1999), Wissenschaft im Dienst der nationalsozialistischen Politik? Die ‘volksdeutschen Forschungsgemeinschaften’ von 1931–1945, Baden-Baden: Nomos. Gabel, I. (1999), ‘ “Wir wollen frei sein, um zu dienen”: Der “Freie sächsische Frauenbund” von seinen Anfängen bis 1933’, Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 22: 67–78. Georgescu, T. (2010), ‘Pursuing the Fascist Promise: The Transylvanian Saxon “Self-Help” from Genesis to Empowerment, 1922–1935’, in Pyrah, R. and Turda, M. (eds), Re-Contextualising East Central European History: Nation, Culture and Minority Groups, Oxford: Legenda, 55–73. Georgescu, T. (2011), ‘The Eugenic Fortress: Alfred Csallner and the Transylvanian Saxon Eugenic Discourse in Interwar Romania’, in Promitzer, Trubeta and Turda (eds), Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeast Europe to 1945, Budapest: Central European University Press, 351–84. Glass, H. (1996), Zerbrochene Nachbarschaft. Das deutsch-­jüdische Verhältnis in Rumänien (1918–1938), Munich: Oldenbourg. Glass, H. (1997), ‘Wer ist ein Deutscher? Anmerkungen zum Selbstverständnis der Rumäniendeutschen (1919–1944)’, Halbjahresschrift für südosteuropäische Geschichte, Literatur und Politik, 12: 15–29. Gündisch, K., and Beer, M. (2005), Siebenbürgen und die Siebenbürger Sachsen, Norneuburg: Langen Müller. Harald, R. (1994), Politische Strukturen und Strömungen bei den Siebenbürger Sachsen, 1919–1933, Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 180–22. Haynes, R. (1999), ‘Germany and the Establishment of the Romanian National Legionary State, September 1940’, Slavonic and East European Review, 7: 700–25. Haynes, R. (2000), Romanian Policy towards Germany, 1936–40, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Liebig, S. (1998), ‘Siebenbürger Sächsinnen zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus’, Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 21: 57–76. Linger, H. (1992), ‘Sitte, Moral und Volksreinheit bei Heinrich Siegmund’, Siebenbürgische Semesterblätter, 6: 169–72. Milata, P. (2007), Zwischen Hitler, Stalin und Antonescu: Rumäniendeutsche in der Waffen-SS, Köln: Böhlau Verlag. Offner, R. (2005a), ‘Zur Geschichte des siebenbürgisch-­ungarischen Ärztevereinwesens’, Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 25: 23–34. Offner, R. (2005b), ‘Studierende aus Ungarn und Siebenbuergen an der Universitaet Erfurt in der Neuzeit (1521–1816)’, Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 25: 129–38. Popa, K. (2008), ‘Deutsche Forschung im Südosten’, in Haar, I. and Fahlbusch, M. (eds), Handbuch der völkischen Wissenschaften: Personen–Institutionen-ForschungsprogrammeStiftungen, Munich: Sauer, 112–16. Pine, L. (1997), Nazi Family Policy, 1933–45, Oxford: Berg. Quandt, V. (1980), Nachbarschaft, die überschaubare Einheit mit Herz, Vienna: Kramer. Reinerth, K. M. (1994), Zur politischen Entwicklung der Deutschen in Rumänien 1918–1928: Aus einer siebenbürgisch-­sächsischen Sicht, Köln: Böhlau Verlag. Reinerth, K. M. and Cloos, F. (1988), Zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Rumänien 1935–1945: Beiträge und Berichte, Bad Tölz: Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Südostdeutsche Volks- und Heimatforschung. Ritter, E (1976), Das Deutsche Auslandsinstitut in Stuttgart, 1917–1945, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. 593

East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945

Roth, H. (2003), Kleine Geschichte Siebenbürgens, Köln: Böhlau Verlag. Roth, H. (2004), ‘Wissenschaft zwischen Nationalsozialismus und Stalinismus’, in Beer and Seewann (eds), Südostforschung im Schatten des Dritten Reiches, 123–33. Schuster, O. (ed.) (1984), Epoche der Entscheidungen: Die Siebenbürger Sachsen im 20 Jahrhundert, Köln: Böhlau Verlag. Stephenson, J. (1979), ‘ “Reichsbund der Kinderreichen”: the League of Large Families in the Population Policy of Nazi Germany’, European History Quarterly, 3: 351–75. Traşcӑ, O. (2011), ‘Die Deutsche Volksgruppe in Rumänien und die Ereignisse vom 23. August 1944 im Spiegel eines unveröffentlichten Manuskripts’, Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 34: 186–228. Von Killyen, H. (1985), ‘Zur Geschichte des siebenbürgisch-­sächsischen Fürsorgewesens’, Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 8: 163–72. Von Killyen, H. (1991), ‘Zur Geschichte des Siebenbürgisch-Sächsischen Ärztevereinwesens (1887–1944)’, in Heltmann, H. (ed.). Naturwissenschaftliche Forschungen über Siebenbürgen, vol. 4. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 27–65. Von Killyen, H. (2002), ‘Die Rolle der siebenbürgisch-­sächsischen Vereine in der Förderung des Gesundheitswesens im Zeitraum 1880–1914’, Orvostörténeti Közlemények, 1–4: 111–21. Von Killyen, H. (2006), ‘Neue Daten zu Studien- und Wirkungsorten siebenbürgisch-­sächsischer Ärzte im Zeitraum 1870–1936’, Orvostörténeti Közlemények, 3–4: 165–79. Wagner, E. (1981). Geschichte der Siebenbürger Sachsen: Ein Überblick, Innsbruck: Wort und Welt Verlag. Wien, A. U. (1998), Kirchenleitung über dem Abgrund. Bischof Friedrich Mueller vor den Herausforderungen durch Minderheitenexistenz, Nationalsozialismus und Kommunismus, Köln: Böhlau Verlag. Wien, A. U. (2007), ‘ “Entjudung” und Nationalsozialismus als Ziel des Religionsunterrichts: Zum Lehrplan für den Religionsunterricht an deutschen Schulen 1942’, Zeitschrift für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde, 30: 65–77. Wolfgang, M. W. (1972), Das Dritte Reich und die Deutsche Volksgruppe in Rumänien 1933–38: Ein Beitrag zur nationalsozialistischen Volkstumspolitik, Bern: Lang.

594

Appendices

Appendix 1: Eugenics Societies in East-Central Europe Sektion für Sozialbiologie und Eugenik (Section on Social Biology and Eugenics), est. 1913 (Vienna, Austro-Hungary) Magyar Fajegészségügyi Bizottság (Hungarian Committee on Eugenics), est. 1914 (Budapest, Austro-Hungary) Česká Eugenická Společnost (Czechoslovak Eugenic Society), est. 1915 (Prague, Austro-Hungary) Magyar Fajegészségtani és Népesedéspolitikai Társaság (Hungarian Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy), est. 1917 (Budapest, Austro-Hungary) Sekcja Higieny Spolecznej i Eugeniki (Section for Social Hygiene and Eugenics), est. 1918 (Warsaw, Poland) Eugenická Komise, Masarykova Akademie Práce (Commission on Eugenics, Masaryk Academy of Labour), est. 1919 (Prague, Czechoslovakia) Odjeljenje za Rasnu, Javnu i Socijalnu Higijenu (Department of Racial, Public and Social Hygiene), est. 1919 (Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) Polskie Towarzystwo Eugeniczne (walki ze zwyrodnieniem rasy) (Polish Eugenic Society (to Combat Race Degeneration), est. 1921 (Warsaw, Poland) Československý Ústav pro Národní Eugeniku (Czechoslovak Institute of National Eugenics), est. 1923 (Prague, Czechoslovakia) Oberösterreichische Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (Society for Racial Hygiene in Upper Austria), est. 1923 (Linz, Austria) Grazer Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (Graz Society for Racial Hygiene), est. 1923 (Graz, Austria) Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege (Rassenhygiene) (Viennese Society for Racial Care/Racial Hygiene), est. 1924 (Vienna, Austria) Secţia de medicină şi biopolitică a Asociaţiunii ‘ASTRA’ (ASTRA’s Section on Medicine and Biopolitics), est. 1924 (Cluj, Romania) Sub-secţia de eugenie şi biopolitică a Asociaţiunii ‘ASTRA’ (Sub-Section on Eugenics and Biopolitics), est. 1925 (Cluj, Romania)

Appendices

Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (Society for Racial Hygiene), est. 1926 (Freistadt, Austria) Zentralstelle für sudetendeutsche Familienforschung (Central Office for Sudeten German Family Research), est. 1926 (Dux/Duchcov, Czechoslovakia) Secţia femenină-biopolitică a Asociaţiunii ‘ASTRA’ (ASTRA’s Feminist and Biopolitical Section), est. 1927 (Cluj, Romania) Verein der Kinderfrohen (Society of Child Enthusiasts), est. 1927 (Hermannstadt/Sibiu, Romania) Arbeitsbund für österreichische Familienforschung (Workgroup for Austrian Family Research), est. 1927 (Graz, Austria) Österreichischer Bund für Volksaufartung und Erbkunde (Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies), est. 1928 (Vienna, Austria) Zentralwohlfahrtsgenossenschaft (Central Cooperative for Welfare), est. 1930 (Novi Sad, Yugoslavia) Erbbiologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (Working Group on Hereditary Biology), est. 1932 (Vienna, Austria) Der Verband Familienschutz (Association for the Protection of the Family), est. 1934 (Vienna, Austria) Verein für Menschliche Vererbungslehre und Endokrinologie (Association for Human Heredity and Endocrinology), est. 1934 (Vienna, Austria) Secţia de eugenie şi biopolitică a Asociaţiunii ‘ASTRA’ (ASTRA’s Section on Eugenics and Biopolitics), est. 1934 (Cluj, Romania) Amt für Erbbiologie beim Kulturamt der Deutschen in Rumänien (Office for Hereditary Biology, German Cultural Institute in Romania), est. 1934 (Hermannstadt/Sibiu, Romania) Örökléstani Szakosztály, Magyar Psychologiai Társaság (Heredity Section, Hungarian Psychological Society), est. 1934 (Budapest, Hungary) Egészségpolitikai Társaság (Society for Biopolitics), est. 1935 (Budapest, Hungary) Societatea Regală Română de Eugenie şi Studiul Heredităţii (Royal Romanian Society of Eugenics and the Study of Heredity), est. 1935 (Bucharest, Romania) Secţia de Demografie, Antropologie şi Eugenie (Section on Demography, Anthropology and Eugenics), est. 1935 (Bucharest, Romania) Sekcja eugeniczna przy Państwowej Naczelnej Rady Zdrowia (Eugenic Section of the State Supreme Health Council), est. 1935 (Warsaw, Poland) Deutsche Gesellschaft für Familienkunde und Eugenik (German Society for Family Study and Eugenics), est. 1936 (Prague, Czechoslovakia)

596

Appendices

Uniunea Societăţilor de Eugenie (Union of Eugenic Societies), est. 1937 (Bucharest, Romania) Sekcija za Antropologijo, Genealogijo in Evgeniko (Section for Anthropology, Genealogy and Eugenics), est. 1937 (Ljubljana, Yugoslavia) Česká Společnost Biotypologická (Czech Society of Biotypology), est. 1937 (Prague, Czechoslovakia) Rassenbiologisches Institut (Institute of Racial Biology), est. 1938 (Vienna, Greater Germany) Institut für Erb- und Rassenbiologie (Institute of Hereditary and Racial Biology), est. 1939 (Innsbruck, Greater Germany) Fajnemesítési Szakosztály, Magyar Családvédelmi Szövetség (Section on Racial Improvement, Hungarian Association for Family Protection), est. 1939 (Budapest, Hungary) Unterabteilung für Rassenforschung, Landesamt für Statistik und Sippenwesen (SubDepartment on Racial Research, National Office for Statistics and Genealogy) est. 1939 (Hermannstadt/Sibiu, Romania) Öröklési, Fajbiológiai és Eugenikai Osztály, Magyar Nemzetbiológiai Intézet (Section on Heredity, Racial Biology and Eugenics, Hungarian Institute of National Biology), est. 1940 (Budapest, Hungary) Embertani és Fajbiológia Intézet (Institute for Anthropology and Racial Biology), est. 1940 (Szeged, Hungary) Hauptamt für Volksgesundheit (Main Office for National Health), est. 1940 (Hermannstadt/Sibiu, Romania) Ústav pro Národní Biologii a Eugeniku (Institute for National Biology and Eugenics), est. 1940 (Prague, The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) Institut für Erb- und Rassenhygiene (Institute for Hereditary and Racial Hygiene), est. 1941 (Prague, The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) Institute für Rassenbiologie (Institute for Racial Biology), est. 1941 (Prague, The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) Beratungsstelie für Erb- und Rassenpflege (Counselling Centre for Hereditary and Racial Care), est. 1941 (Prague-Albertov, The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) Universitätsinstitut für Erblehre und Rassenhygiene (Institute for Heredity and Racial Hygiene), est. 1941 (Graz, Austria)

597

Appendices

Ortsgesellschaft Prag der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene e. V. München (Prague Organisation of the German Society for Racial Hygiene registered in Munich), est. 1941/42 (Prague, The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia) Rasno-Političko Povjerenstvo (Racial Political Commissariat), est. 1941 (Zagreb, Independent State of Croatia) Odsjek za Rasnu Politiku (Department of Racial Policy), est. 1942 (Zagreb, Independent State of Croatia) Rassenbiologischen Institut der Universität Wien (Institute of Racial Biology, University of Vienna), est. 1942 (Vienna, Greater Germany) Odbor za Zaštitu Srpske Krvi i Srpskog Potomstva (Board for the Protection of Serbian Blood and Serbian Offspring), est. 1942 (Belgrade, Serbia) Fajegészségügyi és Fajnemesítési Szakosztály, Magyar Családvédelmi Szövetség (Section on Eugenics and Racial Improvement, Hungarian Association for Family Protection), est. 1942 (Budapest, Hungary) Rassenhygiene und Erbbiologie Amt (Racial Hygiene and Hereditary Biology Office), est. 1942 (Kronstadt/Braşov, Romania) Secţia de biopolitică (ASTRA’s Section on Biopolitics), est. 1943 (Sibiu, Romania) Comisia de Eugenie, Academia de Medicina, (Commission on Eugenics, Academy of Medicine), est. 1943 (Bucharest, Romania) Comisia pentru promovarea şi ocrotirea capitalului biologic al naţiunii (Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Biological Capital of the Nation) est. 1943 (Bucharest, Romania) Verein für freiwillige Erbpflege (Humangenetik) (Society for Voluntary Hereditary Care/Human Genetics), est. 1961 (Vienna, Austria)

598

Appendices

Appendix 2: ‘Marshal Ion Antonescu’ Institute of Ethnoracial Biology (Bucharest)

599

Appendices

Redrawn from: Romanian National Archives, Fond Personal N. Caranfil, Dosar no. 384, File 77 p. 32.

600

Appendices

601

Index Entries in italics indicate references within translated text Abderhalden, Emil  37 Abolitionist Society (Poland)  74, 78, 92 abortion Austria  7, 8, 27, 43, 54 Banu on  308 Benedek on  250 and Catholicism  12, 13, 113, 253, 283, 369, 459 Croatia  424, 426, 429–30 Csallner on  571 Czechoslovakia  138 Deisinger on  389 Giljum on  540 Miloslavić on  456, 458–60 Munda on  395, 398 Niedermeyer on  53, 55 Poland  90 Růžička on  164 Reichel on  41 Romania  281, 283–4, 305, 336, 342 Sekla on  176 self-induced abortion  429 Slovenia  367, 368, 370, 389 Tandler on  25 Živković on  428 abstinence, from alcohol  111, 113, 151, 553, 561 abstinence, sexual  95, 97, 112–13 Action T4 (Nazi euthanasia)  145, 375, 435 Adametz, Leopold  36 ‘adaptive’ vs ‘selective’ eugenics  134, 164, 166 Akiva, Rabbi  117 Albeker, G.  253 alcohol Brožek on  149 Croatia  425 Csallner on  572, 573 Czechoslovakia  132 Deisinger on  391 Foustka on  151 Gantkowski on  111, 113 Haškovec on  158 Hirszfeldowa on  108

Hungary  193, 215 Madzsar on  218 Marinescu on  318 Munda on  395 Pirc (Ivo) on  401, 403, 404 Poland  74, 75, 90 Růžička on  164 Reichel on  39 Romania  273, 281, 289, 314 Saxon eugenics in Romania  551 Siegmund on  553, 561, 565, 566 Slovenia  364, 370, 372, 382 Wernic on  93 Alexandresco, V.  272 altruism  134, 159, 164, 167, 563 Altschul, Theodor  5 American eugenics see USA Ammon, Otto  478 Ancel, Ivan  423 Andronescu, Constantin I.  272 Anschluss  14, 17, 290, 525 Antal, Lajos  210, 211–12 anthropology Austria  10, 16–17, 36, 57 and biotypology  340–1 Czechoslovakia  141, 180 Hungary  210, 212, 242 Poland  98, 100, 101 Romania  292, 328, 330, 333, 338 Saxon eugenics in Romania  552, 554 Scholz on  57–8 Serbia  478, 479–80, 502 Slovenia  365–6, 371–2, 381, 383, 384–6 anti-facism  xxi, 169 anti-Semitism Austria  9, 43 Hungary  202, 204, 212, 238–9 and Maleš  502 Poland  82, 99, 101–2 religious vs racial basis of  55–6 Romania  290, 322 Slovenia  365

Index

Antonescu, Ion  290, 293, 322, 330, 335, 587 Apáthy, István  xiii, 195–6, 198–9, 202, 216, 229, 445 biography  221–3 Race Hygiene  224–5 The Scope and Tasks of Race Hygiene  225–7 Apert, Eugène  287, 288 Apostol, Odiseu  277 Apponyi, Albert  197, 198, 202 assimilation  77, 101, 210, 239, 333 Association for Human Heredity and Endocrinology  13–14, 47 Astel, Karl  144 ASTRA (Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People)  xxi, 275–6, 298 asylums, confinement to Austria  5, 12, 14, 37, 46–7 Niedermeyer on  53 Pirc (Ivo) on  405 Zarnik on  447 Austrian Society for Population Policy  6, 36, 46 Austrian Union for National Improvement and Hereditary Studies  9, 11–12, 13–14, 21, 36, 42, 46, 47, 57 Awender, Jakob  522 Băiulescu, Maria B.  xxi Babeş, Victor  272, 312, 320, 339 bachelor taxes see celibacy/childlessness taxes Bail, Oskar  xix Balás, Károly  193, 204 Banat study (Râmneanţu)  341 Banu, Gheorghe  xv, xvii, 277, 279, 280, 282, 286, 287, 289, 291, 292, 293, 294, 313, 330 biography  304–7 Eugenics, Heredity, Race  308–9 Eugenics for the Romanian People  310–11 General Biology  309–10 Rural Eugenics  309 Bársony, J.  202 Barta, B.  201 Bartucz, Lajos  209, 238 Basch, Franz Anton  xx Battle of White Mountain  131 Batut, Milan Jovanović  406, 425, 474, 483 Bauer, Julius  14 Bédy-Schwimmer, Rózsa  xxi Bělehrádek, Jan  xvi, 138, 141, 142, 145, 174 biography  169–70 604

Eugenics and Racism  172–3 The Foundations and Perspectives of Eugenic Initiatives  171–2 Belgian Eugenic Society  94 Belgian eugenics  289 Bell, Alexander Graham  171 Benedek, László  205, 206, 207, 238 biography  244–6 Eugenical and Race-Hygienical Programme for Hungary  248–51 Regarding the Drafting of the Hungarian Sterilisation Bill  247–8 Beneš, Edvard  xv, 132, 138, 141 Beneš, Vojta  138 Berencz, Adam  523 Bergauer, Vladimír  139, 141, 142 Berger, Gotlob  557 Berkovits, René  195 Bernard, Claude  313 Berzeviczy, Albert  198 Biblical bases for eugenics  117–18 Binder, Lotte  557 Binding, Karl 21 bioethnic threats  334 biological capital  222, 280, 301–2, 475 biological determinism  77, 89, 315 biological family research see genealogicalhereditarian research ‘biological individuality of a nation’  134 ‘biologism’  210 ‘biology of social types’ definition of eugenics  93 biometry  xxi, 135, 194, 218, 320, 337, 338, 340 ‘biopolitics’, use of the term  275 biotypology  xii, 180, 181–2, 287, 288, 309, 314, 337–8, 340–1, 342–3 birth control see contraception birth rates, falling Croatia  426, 427, 429 Csallner on  570 Czechoslovakia  132, 177–8 Giljum on  537, 539–41 Hungary  197 Ivanić on  499 Janiszewski on  105 Poland  81 Saxon eugenics in Romania  551, 567 Siegmund on  565 Slovenia  389, 407 Tandler on  22–3

Index

and the Volksdeutsche  519, 520 Wüscht on  529, 531–3 ‘blood and soil’ imagery  290, 522, 532 blood group typing (serology)  203, 320, 336–7, 338, 507, 508–9 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich  333 Boas, Franz  383 Bochkor, Á.  252 body vs spirit  392 Boeters, Emil  24–5 Boguszewski, Jan  95 Bois-Raymond, Emil du  312 Bologa, Valeriu  274, 288, 294 Bonfert, Alfred  576 ‘born criminals’  273, 312, 374 Boróczy, K.  208 Bosnyák, Zoltán  212, 239 Botez, M. A.  274 Boulanger, Dr  94 Bouterwek, Heinz  58 Boveri, Theodor  445 breastfeeding  401, 404, 427 Brecelj, Anton  369, 401 Bredt, Johann  552, 554 Breinl, Freidrich  xi Bresler, Kamilo  429 Brezina, Ernst  11, 15 British eugenics Austria  47 British Eugenics Society  46, 47 Czechoslovakia  130, 134, 147, 151 English Eugenics Society  206 First International Eugenics Congress (London, 1912)  272 generally  xii Hungary  194, 195, 206, 217, 245 Romania  272 Slovenia  365, 382 Tietze on  49–50 Wernic on  95 Brodar, Srečko  374 Brožek, Artur  xi, xvi, 130, 132, 136, 160, 381 biography  137, 147–50 Eugenics, the Science of Human Improvement and Sanitation based on the Principles of Heredity  149–50 Bruckner, Wolfram  555 Buday, Kálmán  244 Buffon, Comte de  333 Bujwid, Odo  80 Burgdörfer, Friedrich  533

Buro, Péter  194 Buzoianu, Gheorghe  280, 281 Čačković, Miroslav  423 Čáda, František  131, 132, 136 Cahane, Mareş  279–80 Californian sterilization laws  44, 172, 229, 383, 385 Câmpeanu, Liviu  288 Cankar, Izidor  382 capital punishment  130, 405, 434 ‘Carpathian’ race  330 Casti Connubii (Papal Encyclical, 1930)  8, 12, 44, 53, 55, 85, 86–7, 113, 207–8, 253, 284, 368–9, 390, 428, 451 castration Austria  21 Benedek on  247 in Casti Connubii  428 Czechoslovakia  138 Ivanić on  498 Munda on  395, 398 Pirc (Ivo) on  405 Poland  83 Romania  280, 281, 282 Tandler on  24 Catholic Church and abortion  12, 13, 113, 253, 283, 369, 459 Austria  6, 6–7, 8, 12–13, 53–4 Casti Connubii (Papal Encyclical, 1930)  8, 12, 44, 53, 55, 85, 86–7, 113, 207–8, 253, 284, 368–9, 390, 428, 451 Catholic Action  113–14 and contraception  8, 13, 53, 112 Croatia  428, 429, 451, 456, 459 Csango communities  338 Hungary  207 and ‘Latin’ eugenics  75 and Madzsar  215 Miloslavić on  459–60 and motherhood  113, 430–1 Poland  85, 86–7, 111, 112–14 and positive eugenics  85, 86, 112–14, 252–3, 257, 369 and racism  291 and the right to reproduce  86–7 Romania  284, 291 and sexual abstinence  112–13 Slovenia  368–9 Society of Catholic physicians (St Lukas Gilde)  12, 13, 53, 203, 252 605

Index

and sterilization  xvi, 8, 12, 13, 43, 44, 47, 49, 85, 87, 207, 252, 253, 255–7, 368–9, 428 Tóth on  254–8 and the Volksdeutsche  523, 537 Catholic eugenicists Bojan Pirc  406–10 Brecelj, Anton  369, 401 Chura, Alojz J.  xvi Deisinger, Ema  389–93 Gantkowski, Paweł  111–14 Miloslavić, Eduard  456–60 Muckermann, Hermann  10, 252, 381 Niedermeyer, Albert  53–6 Pirc, Ivo  400–5 Tóth, Tihamér  208, 252–8 Živković, Andrija  451–5 Ceauşescu, Nicolae  294 celibacy celibacy/childlessness taxes  311, 319, 367, 410, 426, 427, 540 Manuilă on  326–7 outlawing  239, 317 Reichel on  40 Štampar on  443 censuses  83, 321, 335, 338, 520 Černe, Katja  374 Chairi, Richard  10, 35 Chamberlain, H. St.  378, 477 Charcot, Jean-Martin  156, 312 charity/philanthropy  218, 219, 220, 369 Chiari, Hans  296 child welfare see also maternal and child welfare Croatia  423 Haškovec on  159 Hungary  192, 193–4, 216–17 Menrath on  543–4 Růžička on  165 Romania  304–5 childcare  220 Chodźko, Witold  80 Christian, Max  230 Christian morality  xxi, 86, 283, 422, 428, 451, 460 chromosome theory  137, 181 Chura, Alojz J.  xvi Church, A. G.  245 Ciocâlteu, Vintilă  277 Cisar, Theodore  283 coitus interruptus  342 606

Collmer, P.  562 Comşia, Ovidiu  xiv, 275, 290, 293, 297 Comarnescu, Petru  278 Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Biological Capital of the Nation (Romania)  293, 323, 330 communism  201, 212, 294, 307, 435, 457, 482, 507 compulsory sterilization see forced sterilization concentration camps  435, 480 Constantinescu, Gheorghe K.  290 ‘constitution’  181–2 constitutionalism  314 contraception Austria  43 Benedek on  250 and Catholicism  8, 13, 53, 112 as dysgenics  369 and falling birth rates  105 Janiszewski on  105 Pirc (Ivo) on  401 Poland  82 Romania  342 Schmulders’ contraceptive method  112, 113 Slovenia  367 Stojanowski on  99 counselling, eugenic see marriage/genetic counselling Crew, F. A. E.  174 criminals abortion as criminal offence  429, 457, 458 ‘born criminals’  273, 312, 374 and castration  24, 83, 247, 281, 282, 395, 398 and heredity  273 marriage prohibition  51 Romania  273 Slovenia  374 sterilization  47, 83, 150, 173, 206, 247, 255, 281, 282, 394–5, 447 Csallner, Alfred  551, 552, 553, 554, 555, 556, 558, 582 biography  567–76 About the Creation of Self-Help’s RaceOffice  572–4 What We Want  570–2 Csango communities  338 Cserey-Pechány, A.  211 Csík, Lajos  xviii, 210 Csiky, J.  211 Csörsz, Károly  245

Index

Cupcea, Salvator  275, 278, 288, 293, 297 Cvetković, Dragiša  529 Cvijić, Jovan  479 Czech/Czechoslovak Eugenic Society  xv, 131–3, 135–7, 138–9, 142, 144, 156–7, 160, 174, 176, 178 Czechoslovak Institute of National Eugenics  135, 136 Czeizel, Endre  212–13 Czekanowski, Jan  98, 381 Dąbrowski, Kazimierz  88 Dąbrowski, S.  85 Ɖaja, Ivan  373 Danielopolu, Daniel  283 Darányi, Gyula  xvii, 205, 209, 238 Darré, Richard Walther  525 Darwin, Leonard  47 Darwinism  194, 215, 218–19, 221, 237, 257, 377, 379, 395, 445, 478, 487, 493–4, 552–3, 561 Daszyńska-Golińska, Zofia  xxi Davenport, Charles B.  xi, 130, 136, 137, 147 death rates, decreasing  199 defensive eugenics  xx, 366, 378, 379–80 degeneration concerns Apáthy on  224 Csallner on  572 Czechoslovakia  128–9, 151 Deisinger on  389 Hungary  193, 194, 216, 222 Ivanić on  497–8 Madzsar on  219–20 Méhely on  243 Miloslavić on  430 Munda on  395 Pirc (Bojan) on  409 Pirc (Ivo) on  401, 403 Romania  273, 279, 284–5, 291, 308, 551 Saxon eugenics in Romania  552 Siegmund on  566 Slovenia  364, 372, 378 Štampar on  426, 443 and the Volksdeutsche  519 Živković on  453–4 Deisinger, Ema  xvi, xxi, 366, 369, 401, 406 biography  389–90 Paedogogical Eugenics  391–3 de-nationalization  318 Denmark  207, 447

depopulation, fears of see also birth rates, falling Czechoslovakia  174, 177–8, 179 Poland  81 Romania  336, 342 Derganc, Franc  xiii, xviii, 364, 366, 390, 394, 400 biography  377–8 The Conflict Between the West and the East: On the Occasion of the Centenary of Miroslav Tyrš’ Birth  379–80 Detre, László  201 Dežman, Milivoj  423 Dienes, Lajos  194, 195, 201, 202 Dinaric race  365, 388, 446, 479, 480, 502, 504, 509 disabled people  24, 106, 218, 220, 233, 257, 377, 424, 425, 480, 492 disease elimination measures see also heredity Austria  6 Croatia  424 Czechoslovakia  129–30, 131 Haškovec on  158 Hungary  246 Ivanić on  499 Krulj on  492 Pirc (Ivo) on  402 Poland  87 recessive disease elimination  87, 109–10, 154, 171, 404 Reichel on  40 Romania  289 Živković on  454 divorce  389 Dobák, F.  208 Doerr, Robert  296 Dolenc, Metod  369, 373 Dolle, Heinrich  552 Donáth, Gyula  192, 203, 207 Doros, Gábor  209, 211, 212 Dostál, Rudolf  148 Drachovský, Josef  138 Dragaš, Bogomir  369, 371 Dragomir, Silviu  276 Dresden Hygiene Exhibition  xvii, 194, 195, 407, 552, 562 drug addiction  90 economic considerations Fabritius on  577 Giljum on  540 607

Index

Ivanić on  497 Janiszewski on  104 Krulj on  493 Munda on  397 Niedermeyer on  53 Pirc (Bojan) on  406, 408 Pirc (Ivo) on  401 Poland  104 Schunn on  581, 583–5 Sekla on  179 Siegmund on  561 Škerlj on  386 Tandler on  24 Wernic on  92–3 Wüscht on  532 Zarnik on  447 educated women, as threat  81, 99, 448, 565 education, eugenic Austria  39, 54, 57, 60 Banu on  308, 309 Benedek on  249–50 Croatia  422, 424–5, 435 Csallner on  573 Czechoslovakia  132, 143, 156, 160 Deisinger on  390, 391 Făcăoaru on  335 Fabritius on  579 Gantkowski on  113 generally  xxi Hoffmann on  234, 235 Hungary  196–7, 200–1, 208, 211–12, 230 Ivanić on  499 Marinescu on  317 Menrath on  543–4 Miloslavić on  459 Moldovan on  301 Pirc (Ivo) on  401, 405 Poland  82 Romania  278, 285, 286, 297 Růžička on  164, 167 Sekla on  176 Serbia  476, 481, 482, 485 Siegmund on  553, 563 Slovenia  371 Štampar on  437, 440, 444 Stanojević on  489 Wernic on  95 Zarnik on  449 and ZEWOGE  528 Živković on  428 608

Eickstedt, Egon von  382, 503, 504, 505 electric shock therapies  42 elites, care of  133, 318–19 English Eugenics Society  206 environment, role of Banu on  306, 308 and Catholicism  112 Croatia  426 Czechoslovakia  134 Deisinger on  391–2 Krajník on  182 Marinescu on  313 Munda on  396 Poland  76, 88, 93, 115 Růžička on  163, 166–7, 168 Slovenia  374, 382 Wagner-Jauregg on  44 Wernic on  93, 95 epilepsy Brožek on  150 Csallner on  573 Czechoslovakia  131 and marriage prohibition  441 Pirc (Ivo) on  404 Poland  84, 90 Romania  272, 280, 281 Tandler on  21, 24 Tietze on  50 Wagner-Jauregg on  44 Eppinger, Hans  14 Erdeljanović, J.  382 Erich, L.  280 ‘Ernestinum’ (Prague-Hradčany)  130–1, 147, 160 Ertl, Franz  10 Essen-Möller, Eric  365 ethical foundations of eugenics  151–2, 153–5 ethics, see morality ethnic cleansing  481 ‘ethnic elites’  xiv, 290 ethnic minorities see also Jewish people; Roma people Croatia  425 and eugenics generally  xviii–xix Romanian  291–2, 333–5, 336–7, 338, 550–94 Volksdeutsche  517–48 ethnic re-engineering  322 ‘ethno-eugenics’, use of term  298 eugenic libraries  xv ‘eugenic offices’  279

Index

eugenic societies Austrian  4, 7, 9–15, 26 Hungarian  195–7, 204–5, 212–13, 245 Polish Eugenic Society  75, 79–81, 82, 88–9, 92, 99, 104, 109 Romanian eugenics societies  276, 285, 287, 298, 314 Saxon eugenic societies  551, 553, 561, 571 Slovenian eugenic societies  371, 373–4 Yugoslav eugenic societies  364, 371, 373–4, 377, 381 ‘eugenic universalism’  136 eugenic war  104 ‘Eugenika vita’  216 euthanasia Action T4 (Nazi euthanasia)  145, 375, 435 Austria  8, 21, 27, 37 Benedek on  245, 250 Croatia  435 Czechoslovakia  145 Miloslavić on  456 Reichel on  41 Slovenia  375 Tóth on  253 ‘euthenics’  308 exhibitions, eugenic see also museum exhibitions Dresden Hygiene Exhibition (1911)  xvii, 194, 195, 552, 562 Hungary  201, 202, 204 Poland  82 Saxon eugenics in Romania  552, 553, 562 Slovenia  407 Vienna international hygiene exhibition (1925)  10, 36, 46 experimentation, human  14 Făcăoaru, Iordache  xii, xvi, 275, 276, 280, 284, 285, 287, 289, 292, 293, 294, 297 biography  328–31 The Breeding of Dysgenics and their Cost for Society and State  332 Eugenic Education through Selective Social Assistance  335 Racial and Ethnic Mixing in Romania  333–5 Fabritius, Fritz  552, 553, 554, 555, 557 biography  575–6 Home Soil  577 Instructions for the Saxon Woman  580

National Programme of the Transylvanian Saxons (1 October 1933)  578–9 family, focus on the Austria  6, 12–13, 27, 35, 37, 43 Banu on  311 Croatia  429, 451 Fabritius on  577, 579 generally  xiii Hungary  203, 208–9, 212 Ivanić on  499 Méhely on  240 Moldovan on  300–1, 302 Niedermeyer on  55 Poland  89 Reichel on  39 Romania  276, 277, 293, 297 Siegmund on  565–6 Slovenia  370 Stefanović on  509 Tóth on  252–3 and the Volksdeutsche  520–1 family/ancestral research see genealogicalhereditarian research Federation of Latin Eugenic Societies  287 feminism  xxi, xxiii, 6, 276, 389 Fick, Adolf  111 Fieber, Hermann  18 financial incentives for large/healthy families Banu on  311 Croatia  427 Csallner on  570–1 Făcăoaru on  335 Giljum on  540 Hungary  208, 230, 235, 239 Ivanić on  498 Janiszewski on  105 Madzsar on  220 Manuilă on  327 Marinescu on  319 Pirc (Bojan) on  406, 410 Poland  81, 84, 99 salary redistribution  327, 448, 540, 555, 565 Saxon eugenics in Romania  555, 556 Schunn on  581, 583–5 Siegmund on  561, 565 tax breaks  6, 43, 54, 236, 239, 367, 427 Zarnik on  448 Finkey, Ferenc  206 first-born children, inferiority of  219, 224 Fischer, Aloys  328 609

Index

Fischer, Eugen  xii, xvii, 207, 238, 381, 382, 446, 552, 554 ‘folk eugenics’  364 forced confinement  405 forced emigration  94, 99, 101 forced sterilization Austria  4, 10, 14, 21, 37, 43 Bělehrádek on  173 Benedek on  250 Brožek on  150 Croatia  430, 435 Czechoslovakia  138, 139, 140 Făcăoaru on  329 generally  xvi Hungary  206, 246, 247 Marinescu on  315 Munda on  394–5, 396–9 Pirc (Ivo) on  401 Poland  81, 85, 88 Romania  280, 281, 282, 284, 293 Scholz on  58 Slovenia  366, 368, 373, 377 Štampar on  443 Tietze on  50 Tóth on  256 Živković on  428 Forel, Auguste  244, 389, 401 Foustka, Břetislav  128, 132, 134 biography  151–2 Ethics and Eugenics  153–5 French eugenics  xii, 289, 293, 313, 340–1, 369, 378 Frets, Gerrit Pieter  284 Freud, Sigmund  42, 389, 461 Friedl, Hans  15 Frumkin, Balbine  43 Fülöp, Zsigmond  194, 195 Furlan, T.  370 Gaál, Jenő  194 Galton, Francis  xi, xii, xvii, 49, 96, 128, 151, 154, 192, 194, 200, 212, 215, 219, 222, 224, 228, 238, 300, 308, 313, 316, 384, 386, 474, 483, 487, 490 Gane, Titu  286, 292 Ganner, Hans  18 Gantkowski, Paweł  xvi, 86 biography  111 The Views of Polish Doctors on Catholic Ideas  112–14 Gáspár, János  xvii, 210, 211 610

Gates, Reginald R.  136 Gaulhofer, Karl  8–9, 13 Geőcze, Sarolta  xxi genealogical-hereditarian research see also heredity Austria  10–12, 13–14, 15, 16, 27, 36, 43, 47 Banu on  308 Benedek on  248–51 Czechoslovakia  131, 134, 135, 136–7, 143, 145, 163 Hungary  203, 209 Krajník on  181–2 Madzsar on  218–19, 219–20 Marinescu on  318 Méhely on  240–1 Pirc (Bojan) on  406, 409 Poland  84, 93, 115 Polland on  29, 31 Růžička on  165, 168 Râmneanţu on  341 Romania  314, 328–9, 581 Scholz on  57–8, 60 Sekla on  174 Serbia  481 Slovenia  371–2 generative hygiene  402–5, 406 genetic counselling, see marriage/genetic counselling geniuses  24, 212, 240, 257, 395 genotypes vs phenotypes  181–2 Georgescu, Dumitru C.  287, 289 Georgescu, M.  283 German eugenics see also Nazi eugenics Austria  5, 8 vs British  49–50 euthanasia  8 Hungary  194, 195, 205, 206, 207, 222, 245 Marinescu on  317 Romania  274, 278, 281–2, 287, 313 Saxon eugenics in Romania  552, 575–6 Slovenia  382, 392 Živković on  454 German Health Office (Prague)  144–5 German minority in Yugoslavia (Volksdeutsche)  517–48 German Society for Blood Group Research  10, 27, 57, 238 German Society for Racial Hygiene  4, 5, 9, 15, 21, 58, 144 Geyer, Eberhard  xx, 17 Giddins, Franklin H.  151

Index

Giesswein, Sándor  252 gifted elites  94–5, 154, 172, 255, 446, 536 Giljum, Matthias (Matz)  521, 524 biography  537–8 Nation without Youth: Our Nation’s Core Question  539–41 Gini, Corrado  288, 337, 372, 383, 540 Giovanni, Achille de  337 Glicsman, Iosif (Dr Ygrec)  xvi, 278, 290 Glücklich, Vilma  xxi Gobineau, Comte de  169, 199, 378, 379, 565 Goebbels, Joseph  525 Goestl, Fran  364 Goethe  446 Goldberger, Márk  xvi Goldscheid, Rudolf  5 Gömbös, Gyula  239 gonorrhoea  75, 92, 96, 159 Gortvay, György  204, 205, 210 Gosney, Ezra S.  47 Gottschewski, Georg  17 Govekar, Fran  364 Grant, Madison  27, 136 Graz Society for Racial Hygiene  7, 9, 10, 26 Graz Sterilization Trial  47, 49 Great Britain see British eugenics Grinţescu, V. C.  274 Grosforeanu, C.  291 Gross, W.  317 Grosser, Otto  142 Grotjahn, A.  50, 256, 447 Gruber, Max von  xvii, 4, 21, 230 Grushka, Theodor  xvi Grzywo-Dąbrowski, Wiktor  87 Gundrum, Fran Srećko  422 Günther, Hans F. K.  128, 169 Gust, Waldemar  576 Gusti, Dimitrie  278, 287, 292, 321 Guth, Jiří  132 Gütt, Arthur  282 gymnastics  8, 371, 372, 377–8, 380, 392, 424, 521–2, 534, 542 Gypsies  212, 291, 322, 324–5, 332, 333, 334, 432, 435 Habsburg dynasty, and heredity  133 Hadži, Jovan  374 Haeckel, Ernst  561 Hager, Wilhelm  558 Hahn, Dezső  201 Haider, Leopold  10

Hainisch, Michael  xv, 4, 11, 42 Haldane, John B. S.  170 Halwax, Gustav  522 biography  534 New Nation  535–6 Hammerschmidt, Johann  15 Haškovec, Ladislav  xvi, 129, 131–2, 133–4, 136, 137, 147, 165, 178 biography  156–7 The Eugenics Movement in the Czechoslovak Republic  158–61 Haškovec, Vladimír  156 Haţieganu, Iuliu  275, 276, 288 health cards  289, 314, 316, 319 health registers  129, 131, 165, 286 health services see public health services Hecke, Wilhelm  xvii, 9, 230 Henkel, O.  383 Hensler, Franjo  422 hereditary biological inventory see genealogicalhereditarian research hereditary health, Nazi doctrine of (Erbgesundheitspflege)  17, 128 heredity Apáthy on  195, 222 Banu on  306, 308–9, 309–10 Benedek on  244, 248–51 Croatia  428 Csallner on  567, 572 Czechoslovakia  129–30, 133, 134–5, 143, 149–50, 153–5, 157 Deisinger on  390, 391–3 Făcăoaru on  329, 332 generally  xviii Haškovec on  158–9 Hirszfeldowa on  109–10 Hungary  195, 205, 210 Ivanić on  497 Janiszewski on  105–6 Krajník on  181–2 Krulj on  493 Madzsar on  218–19 Manuilă on  320, 324–5 Marinescu on  313–14, 317–19 Méhely on  238, 240–1 Moldovan on  300–1 Munda on  396–9 Pirc (Bojan) on  406 Pirc (Ivo) on  401, 402–5 Polland on  29–31 Růžička on  162–3, 164–7 611

Index

Romania  285–6, 292 Sekla on  174, 179 Serbia  475, 483 Siegmund on  566 Škerlj on  384–6, 387–8 Slovenia  364 Stanojević on  487–9 Sučić on  462, 463–5 Tandler on  23–5 uncertainty over human heredity  88, 108, 110, 150, 154, 171, 181–2, 207, 255, 405, 455, 483 Zarnik on  447, 449 Živković on  454 Herfort, Karel  128, 130–1, 147, 160 Hermann, Alfred  552, 554 Herseni, Traian  292 Hesch, M.  10 Hézser, L.  210 ‘Higher Mendelism’  130, 143, 181 Hirsch, Max  371 Hirszfeld, Ludwig  107, 203, 320, 495, 506, 507, 508 Hirszfeldowa, Hanna  87 biography  107–8 Issues of Heredity and Eugenics  109–10 historical justifications for eugenics  150 Hitler, Adolf  50, 384, 390, 480, 575, 576 Hoche, Alfred  21 Hodann, Max  389 Hodson, Cora B. S.  47, 372, 373, 382 Hoffmann, Géza  xi, xvii, 195–6, 197, 199, 200, 202, 216, 217, 222, 274 biography  228–31 Eugenics in the Central Empires since 1914  234–6 War and Racial Hygiene  232–4 Hoffmann, Hugó  228 Hofstätter, Robert  18 holistic views  169, 211 Hollós, József  215 Holmes, S. J.  228 Homan, A.  371 homosexuality  382, 461, 462 honorary gifts  583–4 Horbaczewski, Jan  132 Horthy, Miklós  217, 239 Hossu, Iuliu  283 Hrdlička, Aleš  136, 383 Hrubý, K.  145 Huegel, Eckhard  554 612

human capital  20, 301–3, 551 ‘Human Economy’ (‘Menschenökonomie’)  5, 20, 23–5 human genome programme  212 humanism  142, 326, 425 humanitarianism  159 Hungarian Association for Social Sciences  194, 221 Hungarian Committee on Eugenics  196–7, 201, 216, 222–3, 229 Hungarian eugenic societies  195–7, 204–5, 212–13, 245 Hungarian Institute of National Biology  210, 212 Hungarian Institute of Racial Biology  239, 240–3 Hungarian Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy  9, 198–200, 201, 202, 204 Huntington’s chorea  50, 206 Huse, Robert S.  382 Huxley, Julian S.  170, 365 Hygiene Exhibition (Dresden, 1911)  xvii, 194, 195, 407, 553, 562 ‘hygiene of conception and childbirth’  438 ‘hygiene of the nation’, use of the term  275 hygiene of the race vs hygiene of the nation  306 Ich klage an (I Accuse)  37 immigration Făcăoaru on  330 and population policies  21 and Romania  318 and US eugenics  229 incestuous breeding/inbreeding  154, 171, 211, 241, 255, 311, 404, 488, 519 individual vs collective concerns Apáthy on  224, 226–7 Banu on  311 Croatia  423–6 Hungary  222, 253 Ivanić on  497 Krulj on  492–3 Manuilă on  326 Moldovan on  302 Munda on  397 Romania  283 Škerlj on  384 Wokalek on  587 Zarnik on  449 Živković on  453–4

Index

individualism  368–9, 378 industrialization  4, 61, 193, 243, 285, 520, 551 infant mortality Austria  6 Croatia  423, 426, 427, 429 and feminism  xxii Hungary  193, 197 Ivanić on  499 Romania  273, 278, 313, 314, 316, 318 Siegmund on  565 infanticide  429 ‘inferior’ groups, suppression of Apáthy on  224–5 Austria  5 Banu on  308 Bělehrádek on  172–3 Deisinger on  392 Făcăoaru on  330, 332, 334–5 Halwax on  535–6 Hoffmann on  228 Ivanić on  498 Janiszewski on  105 Krulj on  492 Maleš on  505 Manuilă on  274, 326 Marinescu on  317 Munda on  397 Niedermeyer on  55 Pirc (Bojan) on  406 Poland  88 Polland on  29–31 Romania  274, 292 Růžička on  164–5 Siegmund on  553, 566 Slovenia  364, 369, 378, 384–6 Sučić on  463–5 Tandler on  23–5 insanity  21, 50, 109, 206, 273–4 see also mental illness Institute for Anthropology and Racial Biology (Hungary)  209–10 Institute for Hereditary and Racial Hygiene (Charles University, Prague)  143, 144–5 Institute of Hygiene and Social Hygiene (Romania)  274, 296, 298, 328 Institute of Hygiene (Slovenia)  371, 400 Institute of National Biology (Hungary)  210, 212 Institute of National Eugenics (Czechoslovakia)  135, 136, 142, 163, 166, 174, 176 Institute of Racial Biology Austria  16–17

Hungary  239, 240–3 interdisciplinary research  15–16, 140, 563 International Congress for Population Science (1935)  58 International Congress of Medicine, 15th  129 International Eugenics Congresses First  272 Second  xiii, xviii, 133, 135, 136, 157 Third  205 International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO) Austria  10, 11, 27, 36, 37, 47 Central Clearing House  249 and the Czech/Czechoslovak Eugenic Society  135, 174 generally  xi and Hungary  205 Romania not a member of  287 and Scholz  59 and Slovenia  373 and Wernic  92 and Yugoslavia  373–4 International Federation of Latin Eugenic Societies  xi, 321 international hygiene exhibition, Vienna (1925)  10, 36, 46 International Order of Good Templars  215, 553, 561 Ionescu, V.  280 Iorgulescu, Nicolae  282, 283 irradiation sterilization  140, 396 Islamic people  432 isolation, see segregation Istrati, Constantin  312 Italy  xii, 287, 298, 314, 316, 317, 337, 369, 383 Ivanić, Stevan  365, 477, 479, 480, 481, 482, 486 biography  495–6 Letter to Assistant-Minister Vladimir Velmar-Janković  498–501 For Public Health  497–8 Jackson, John Hughlings  244 Jagodič, V.  369 Jahn, Ferenc  xvi Jaksch, Rudolf von  296 Janiševa, Vilma  382 Janiszewski, Tomasz W.  xv, 80 biography  103–4 Polish State Interest and Population Policy  105–6 Janko, Sepp  524, 525, 530 613

Index

Jankovitch, Adél  xii, xxi, 205, 207 Jasenovac concentration camp  435 Jászi, Alice  215 Jászi, Oszkár  192, 215 Jeglič, Anton Bonaventura  364 Jeney, E.  203 Jewish eugenicists Glicsman, Iosif (Dr Ygrec)  xvi, 278, 290 Goldberger, Márk  xvi Grushka, Theodor  xvi Lewin, Gerszon Gabriel  115–18 Naményi, Lajos  xvi Parnass, Zewi  xvi in Poland  76–8 Relgis, Eugen  xvi in Romania  278–9 Tietze, Felix  46–52 Zollschan, Ignaz  xvi, 140–1, 169 Jewish people Croatia  432–4, 435 Czechoslovakia  145 Hungary  212 Jewish racial science  140–1 Jewish–non-Jewish marriage  40–1, 51, 77, 211, 212, 239, 290, 324, 432–3 Lewin on  115–16, 117 Poland  xxiii Romania  291, 292, 322, 324, 334 Škerlj on  388 Stojanowski on  99, 101–2 Jickeli, Karl  557 Joanović, Mihajlo  422 Johan, Béla  209 Jokl, Ernst  383 Jonić, Velibor  479, 481, 507 Jordan, Édouard  453, 454 Jurak, Ljudevit  423 Jurečko, Ivan  368 Kabrhel, Gustav  400 Kacprzak, Marcin  80, 87 Kamin, Mihael  374 Kammerer, Paul  5, 21 Kant, Immanuel  333 Karaffa-Korbut, Kazimierz  75–6 Kardelj, Edvard  368 Károly, Mihály  201 Kassman, Hanna see Hirszfeldowa, Hanna Kaup, Ignaz  4, 5 Kautsky Jr, Karl  11, 12, 13, 16 Keks, Johann  518, 524, 528, 537 614

Kelemina, Jakob  382 Kelsen, Hans  11 Kemény, F.  202 Kernbach, Mihai  283 Kertész, T.  195 Knaus, Hermann  112 Kogerer, Heinrich von  14 Kohlrausch, Eduard  397 Konstantinović, Bogoljub  477 Kormos, Á.  212 Korponay, András  210 Košir, Alija  374 Kostić, Aleksandar Ɖ.  369, 370, 373, 382 Kotzde-Kottenrodt, Wilhelm  576 Kovačić, Hinko  434 Kovács, Alajos  210, 230 Kozáry, Gyula  192 Kozubski, Zygmunt  86 Kraepelin, Emil  244 Kraft-Ebbing, Richard von  42 Krajník, Bohumil  xii, 138 biography  180 Biotypological Study and its Importance for National Defence  181–2 Kramsztyk, Stefan  80 Kreisch, János  237 Kremling, Ida  xxi, 521, 528 Kremling, Ludwig  521 Kremžar, Max  366, 369 Kretschmer, Ernst  507 Kristan-Lunaček, Slava  371 Kříženecký, Jaroslav  xv, 132, 133 Krogman, Wilton M.  383 Kropotkin, Peter  215 Krulj, Uroš  424, 474, 475 biography  490–1 The Importance of Hygiene for State and Nation  492–4 National Racial Hygiene  492 Kühár, F.  252 Kulejewska, Konstancja  86 Kulhavý, František  131 Kulturbund  518, 519–20, 521, 522, 523, 524, 525–6, 529, 534, 537, 542 Kun, Béla  201 Kurzweil, Heinz  37 Kus-Nikolajev, Mirko  366 Küttel, Lajos  xix Lamarckian heredity  128 see also neo-Lamarckism

Index

land distribution  230, 235 Land Preservation Society  xx, 551, 553, 561 Landra, G.  306 Landsteiner, Karl  203 Lang, Theobald  382 Lapajne, Živko  368 Lapique, Louis  304 large families see also financial incentives for large/healthy families Apáthy on  224 Austrian policies  37, 54 and Catholicism  112–13 Croatia  429 Csallner on  570–2 Hungary  210 Madzsar on  219 Manuilă on  327 Marinescu on  319 Pirc (Bojan) on  407 Saxon eugenics in Romania  551, 556 Schunn on  583–5 Siegmund on  565 tax breaks  367 Wüscht on  531 Zarnik on  449 Lašek, František  129–30 ‘Latin eugenics’  xviii, 75, 76, 282, 284, 287–90, 314, 321, 366, 369, 373 Laughlin, Harry H.  136, 164, 195, 274, 382, 447 Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease/ Hereditarily Diseased Offspring (1933)  8, 14, 49, 50, 85, 137–8, 174, 178, 207, 256, 280, 281, 305, 329, 367 Law for the Promotion of Marriages (1934)  51–2 Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour (1935)  51 Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German Nation (Marriage Health Law)  51 League of Nations  385, 400, 438 Lebedeva, Vera  458 Leben, Stanko  368 ‘Lebensraum’ (‘living space’)  551, 553, 556, 557, 561, 567, 572, 573, 577, 578–9, 581 Lebzelter, Viktor  13, 382 Lechner, Károly  244 legislation, eugenic in Britain  245 Croatia  427, 429–30, 431–5 Czechoslovakia  138–41

general European trends towards negative eugenics  280 Hungary  206–7, 245, 246, 247–8 Krulj on  493 Munda on  394–5, 396–9 Nazi  8, 49, 50, 51, 82, 85, 104, 137–8, 174, 178, 207, 256, 280, 281, 305, 329, 367 Nazi sterilization laws  14 Pirc (Ivo) on  405 Poland  83–5, 88, 109, 110 Romania  280, 281, 283, 286, 293, 297 Serbia  476 Škerlj on  385–6 Slovenia  367–8, 369, 370, 374, 375, 394–5 Štampar on  440–2, 443–4 Zarnik on  447, 448 Leidesorf, Maximilian  42 Lenhossék, Mihály  200 Lenz, Fritz  xii, 49, 50, 58, 229, 230, 285, 328 Leonida, Iosif  278, 285 Lepşi, Iosif  286 Levatidi, Constantin  304 Lewin, Gerszon Gabriel  xix, 78 biography  115–16 Health Protection and Eugenics in the Bible and Talmud  117–18 Liebermann, Léo  201 life expectancy  529 Linders, F. J.  277 Linnaeus  333 List, Guido von  576 livestock breeding  379, 453, 465, 488, 497 Ljotić, Dimitrije  481, 496, 507, 523 Lobmayer, Géza  201 Loeb, Jacques  136 Loeffler, Lothar  17 Löhner, L.  136 Lombroso, Cesare  312 Lorković, Z.  434, 445 Lovrić, Edo  451 low birth rates, concerns over see birth rates, falling Lucius, M.  82, 86, 87 Lukács, György  197–8 Lundborg, Herman  16, 238 Łuniewski, Witold  88 Lysenkoism  89, 145 Madzsar, József  xvi, 194, 195, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202, 229 biography  215–17 615

Index

Practical Eugenics  218–19 Racial Degeneration and Racial Improvement  219–20 Maklecov, Aleksander  xviii, 374 Malán, Mihály  xii, xviii, 207, 210, 212 Maleš, Branimir  365, 373, 382, 479, 480, 481, 482 biography  502–3 Race, Nation and Nationality  504–5 Maleš, Ljubomir  503 Mallet, Bernard  245 Malthusianism  364 Malý, Jiří  xvi, 382 Manicatide, Mihail  279, 286, 292 Manliu, Ioan I.  274, 278, 279, 286, 313–14 Manuilă, Sabin  xi, 275, 276, 283, 287, 288, 289, 292, 294, 297, 316, 330 biography  320–3 Eugenics as an Agent of Population Policy  325–7 Romania’s Racial Problem  324–5 Marañón, Gregorio  287 Marczell, Mihály  208, 252 Marfan, Antoine  304 Mărgărit, O.  294 Margó, Tivadar  221 Marie, Pierre  312, 313 Marinescu, Georghe  xi, 272, 282, 284, 285–6, 287, 288, 289, 305, 337 biography  312–15 Eugenics and Romanianism  316–17 On Normal and Pathological Heredity and its Relationship with Eugenics  317–19 Marjanović, Milan  425 Marković, Svetozar  506 marriage, Christian  252–3, 257–8 ‘Marriage Act’ (‘Third Jewish Law’)  211, 212 marriage bureaux Austria  6, 57, 60 Czechoslovakia  129, 130, 176 Hungary  235, 250 Pirc (Bojan) on  406, 409 Sekla on  178 Zarnik on  449 marriage certificates see pre-marital medical examinations/certificates marriage/genetic counselling Austria  4, 6–7, 8, 12–13, 20, 43, 53 Brožek on  149 Gantkowski on  112–14 Hirszfeldowa on  109 616

Hungary  209, 211, 212, 230, 235 Pirc (Bojan) on  406–7, 408–10 Poland  84, 86, 89, 90 Růžička on  165 Scholz on  57, 60 Serbia  476 Slovenia  367 Štampar on  444 Wagner-Jauregg on  44–5 Zarnik on  449 marriage prohibition Austria  6, 8, 13, 37 Bělehrádek on  171 Benedek on  250 Brožek on  130, 149–50 Hungary  211, 246 Ivanić on  498 Krulj on  493 and mental illness  51, 89–90, 250, 374, 441, 476 Pirc (Bojan) on  407 Pirc (Ivo) on  405 Poland  83, 84, 86, 89 Romania  291, 293 Saxon eugenics in Romania  555 Serbia  476 Slovenia  364, 374 Štampar on  426, 438, 441 Sučić on  462 in the Third Reich  51 Tóth on  254 Wagner-Jauregg on  45 Zarnik on  447 marriage selection Făcăoaru on  330 Foustka on  153–4 Haškovec on  158–9 Hungary  208, 223 Janiszewski on  106 Madzsar on  220 Moldovan on  301 Růžička on  164–7 Romania  272–3 Stanojević on  488–9 Stojanowski on  99 and the Volksdeutsche  519 Wernic on  95 ‘Marshal Ion Antonescu’ Institute of Ethnoracial Biology  293, 330 Martin, Rudolf  503, 505 Mártonffy, K.  204

Index

Marxism  366, 478 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue  133, 141 Mašek, Dragutin  423 materialism  389–90, 392 maternal and child welfare Austria  13, 20 Croatia  423, 424, 427, 429 and feminism  xxii Haškovec on  160 Hungary  197, 209, 212, 216–17 Ivanić on  499 Marinescu on  316, 317, 318–19 Poland  82 puériculture  272, 273, 277, 287, 304, 313, 314, 371, 389 Růžička on  164 Romania  272, 273, 278, 289, 294, 314 Serbia  481 Slovenia  371, 389 Štampar on  438 Stefanović on  509 and the Volksdeutsche  521 Wernic on  95 Mathias, A.  558 Matič, Miodrag  369 Matiegka, Jindřich  xvi, 131, 141, 381, 382, 383 Matjuschenko, Boris  xviii May, Gerhard  368 Mayerhofer, Ernst  426–7 media coverage of eugenics Croatia  435 Hoffmann on  233–4 Poland  82 Romania  289 Sekla on  178 Slovenia  365, 368, 369, 394 Méhely, Lajos  202–3, 204 biography  237–9 Let Us Set Up a Hungarian Institute of Racial Biology  240–3 Meisner, Josef  141 Meltzl, Oskar von  552 Mendel conference (1922)  136, 137, 148, 151, 157, 163 Mendelian genetics  xiv, 76, 128, 130–1, 136–7, 147, 151, 163, 174, 181, 313, 329, 390, 404, 483 Menrath, Thomas  522 biography  542 Towards a National Community through Active Youth Welfare  543–4

mental hygiene  205 mental illness and Action T4  375 Brožek on  149 curing  42 effect on offspring  370 and exemption from military service  104 and heredity  50, 88 Ivanić on  499 and marriage prohibition  51, 89–90, 250, 374, 441, 476 Munda on  397 Pirc (Ivo) on  402–3, 404 and sterilization  84–5, 206, 247, 280, 309 Meršol, V.  370 Metchnikoff, Élie  297 Metzger, Fritz  522 migration see also immigration Csallner on  573 forced emigration  94, 99, 101 and Poland  94 Polish anti-immigration legislation  80 Saxon eugenics in Romania  551 Siegmund on  566 Mikič, Feodor  372, 373, 374, 382, 427 Mikuličić, Miroslav  445 Miler, Ernest  423 Miličić, Jakša  423 military recruitment  104, 216, 219 Miloslavić, Eduard  423, 430 biography  456–7 The Fatal Prevention of Births  458–60 Minovici, Nicolae  272, 286 miscegenation  xx, 209, 211, 239 see also mixed-race populations ‘Mitchurian biology’  145 mixed-race populations Banu on  308, 311 Bělehrádek on  173 Croatia  430, 431–3, 446 Csallner on  572 Czechoslovakia  143 Derganc on  379 Făcăoaru on  330, 333–5 generally  xx Jewish–non-Jewish marriage  40–1, 51, 77, 211, 212, 239, 290, 324, 432–3 Maleš on  504 Manuilă, Sabin  324–5 Munda on  395 Romania  290, 292, 322 617

Index

Saxon eugenics in Romania  551, 567 Serbia  478, 481 Siegmund on  564 Škerlj on  388 Stefanović on  508–9 Mjöen, Jon A.  136 Moldovan, Iuliu  xiii, xv, xvii, 274–5, 276, 279, 285, 287, 289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 305, 306, 319, 320, 328, 329, 330, 337, 339, 341 biography  296–9 Biopolitics  301–3 The Hygiene of the Nation: Eugenics  300–1 Mollison, Theodor  328 Mongol race  334, 341, 377, 379, 508 Montandon, G.  505 morality Christian morality  xxi, 86, 283, 422, 428, 451, 460 collective social morality  222 ethical foundations of eugenics  151–2, 153–5, 171, 278, 370, 379–80, 389, 392 moral qualities  392–3 responsibility ethics  20–1, 35, 134, 167, 298, 385, 387, 456–7, 459–60, 520, 540–1, 578–9 sexual morality  37, 39, 74, 95, 96, 117–18, 257, 368–9, 389, 422 and the Volksdeutsche  519 Živković on  451–2, 453–5 Morgan, Thomas H.  136, 137, 147 Morzycki, Jerzy  365 Moses  78, 117, 118 motherhood see also maternal and child welfare Austria  13 Bělehrádek on  173 and Catholicism  113, 430–1 Croatia  429 Fabritius on  579, 580 and feminism  xxi Hoffmann on  234 Miloslavić on  430 Poland  81 Saxon eugenics in Romania  557 Siegmund on  565 Sučić on  462 Motogna, A.  293 Muckermann, Hermann  10, 252, 381 Müller, Hermann J.  170 Müller, Karl V.  143 618

Munda, August  366, 368, 373, 374, 400, 401, 406 biography  394–5 The Biological Regeneration of Nations and Criminal Law  396–9 Munda, Ivan  394 Muntendorf, Otto  xix museum exhibitions Austria  13 Czechoslovakia  135 Hungary  192, 199 Romania  274 Saxon eugenics in Romania  552 Slovenia  371, 407 Naményi, Lajos  xvi, 205, 206, 212 ‘nation’ vs ‘race’  30 ‘national eugenics’ Czechoslovakia  128, 134, 135, 136, 166, 168 Hungary  195, 221 Romania  300, 322, 337 ‘National Neighbourhoods’  555–6, 568, 581–2, 583–5 nationalism Croatia  431, 462 Csallner on  567, 570–2 Czechoslovakia  128, 134 Foustka on  153–5 generally  xiv Giljum on  539–41 Halwax on  535–6 Hungary  202, 204, 222 Krulj on  490, 492–4 Maleš on  504 Manuilă on  326 Méhely on  237–8 Poland  81, 99, 100 Romania  275, 290, 292, 293, 294, 300–1, 306, 310–11, 322, 330, 336, 338, 550 Serbia  478, 480, 481 Siegmund on  553 Slovenia  366 Stefanović on  506–7, 508–9 Sučić on  463–5 Yugoslavia  394 Zarnik on  449–50 ‘natural born criminals’  273, 312, 374 natural selection Apáthy on  226 Czechoslovakia  138 Hirszfeldowa on  109

Index

Krulj on  492, 493–4 Madzsar on  218–19 Moldovan on  301, 303 Serbia  478 Stanojević on  487, 488 Zarnik on  445 nature vs nurture debate see environment, role of Nazi eugenics Austria  8, 14, 16–17 Bělehrádek on  169 Croatia  431–3 Czechoslovakia  128, 134, 137–41, 141–5 Hungary  204 in international eugenics  47 Nazi racial theory  140 Nazi sterilization laws  8, 14, 49, 50, 85, 137–8, 174, 178, 207, 256, 280, 281, 305, 329, 367 Poland  82 and Romania  281–2 Romania  290–4 Serbia  478, 480 Slovenia  366–7, 372, 375, 390 and the Volksdeutsche  524–5, 526 Živković on  451–2 ‘neam’, use of term  298 Nečas, J.  140 Necrasov, Olga  330 Nedelcu, P.  272 Nedeljković, Dušan  478 Nedeljković, Jevrem  369 Nedić, Milan  481, 496, 503, 507 negative vs positive eugenics Austria  12, 14 Czechoslovakia  134 generally  xvii Hungary  195, 200, 208 Marinescu on  317 Miloslavić on  456 Munda on  396 Niedermeyer on  53–4 Pirc (Ivo) on  401 Romania  273, 274, 279, 281, 285, 329 Škerlj on  384, 385–6 Slovenia  367 Štampar on  426, 437, 438 Tietze on  47, 51–2 Zarnik on  448 Živković on  428, 451, 453–4 Nékám, Lajos  197–8, 200, 204, 238 Nelken, Jan  88

Němec, Bohumil  137, 147 Nemoianu, Iosif  277 neo-Lamarckism  xiv, 5, 10, 21, 46, 76, 279, 313 neo-Malthusianism  82, 112, 113, 224, 320, 454 Neubauer, Robert  374 Neuber, Ede  209 ‘new eugenics’  90 Nicolescu, Alexandru  283 Niculescu, Medea  xxi, 286 Niederle, Lubor  141 Niedermeyer, Albert  xvi, 12, 14, 111 biography  53–6 Madness, Science and Truth  55–6 Nietzsche, Friedrich  154, 378, 379 Niketić, Božidar  370, 427–8 Nisot, M.-T.  80, 128, 132, 136, 274 Nobel Prizes  42 Noeggerath, Carl T.  274 Nordic race  15, 30, 50, 366, 388, 446, 504, 508, 565 ‘normalization of the race’  291 Norwegian eugenics  365, 389 Odobescu, Grigore I.  284–5, 286 one-and-two child systems  519, 531, 537, 551, 567 one-child policies  220, 224 Oražen, Ivan  377 Orsós, F.  212 Orthodox Church  284, 291, 490, 503 Osborn, Henry F.  136 Ostrowski, S.  83 Pach, Henrik  193 ‘paedogogical eugenics’  389–90, 391–3 Papilian, Victor  285, 328 Parhon, Constantin I.  xviii, 280, 285, 286, 290, 292 Parnass, Zewi  xvi, 76–7 Pasteur, Louis  312 Pastior, O.  556 paternity testing  10, 27, 36, 145 Pavelić, Ante  429, 431, 435 Pearl, Raymond  136, 163 Pearson, Karl  xxi, 128, 194, 216 peasantry  xiv, 298, 313, 316–17, 338, 426, 480, 519, 529, 566, 571 pellagra  318 Pende, Nicola  287–8, 313, 314, 337, 340 Pernkopf, Eduard  14 personality  182, 314, 318, 453 619

Index

Perţia, Mărioara  xxi Péterfi, Tibor  202 Petit, Eugen  280–1 Petrescu-Heroiu, Victoria  273 Petri, P.  198 Petrič, Karel  366, 401 Pétrich, J. M.  367 Petrini, Mihail  272, 312 Petrovič, Milan  369 Petrović, A.  374 Petrovici, Eugenia  289 Pezold, Hans von  78, 117 physical education  8, 95, 160, 372, 377–8, 392 see also gymnastics Piłsudski, Józef  99 Pieńkowski, Stanisław  76, 88 Pinard, Adolphe  272, 313 Pirc, Bojan  xi, 366, 371, 373, 405 biography  406–7 Remediation of Marriage  408–10 Pirc, Ivo  xvii, 371, 372 biography  400–1 Racial (Generative) Hygiene  402–5 Pirquet, Clemens von  46, 427 Pischinger, Alfred  27 Placzek, Siegfried  382 plant breeding  130, 147, 173, 465, 488, 497 Plato  218, 380 Plautz, O.  520, 521 Ploetz, Alfred  xi, 4, 27, 35, 36, 52, 192, 222, 272, 285, 313, 386, 478, 561 Pöch, Rudolf  4, 35 Pocrean, E.  293 Podolełski, S.  85 Polish Eugenic Society  75, 79–81, 82, 88–9, 92, 99, 104, 109 Polland, Rudolf  xi, 7, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17 biography  26–8 Heredity, Constitution and Race in their Relationship with Medical Science  29–31 Racial Hygiene in Medical Education  31–4 Pongrácz, P.  202 Popa, Augustin  290–1 Pope Pius XI see Casti Connubii (Papal Encyclical, 1930) Popenoe, Paul  47, 96, 365, 371, 382 Popović, Laza  477–8 Popović, M. Ɖ.  423 Popović, Miloš  370 Popovici, Gheorghe  277, 320 popular science magazines  290 620

‘population biology’  212 population policies Austria  5–6, 9, 11, 12, 21, 37 Bělehrádek on  170 Croatia  426 Csallner on  568, 572 Czechoslovakia  132, 142 Giljum on  539–41 Hungary  198–9, 200, 212, 217, 223, 249 Janiszewski on  104, 105–6 Manuilă on  320, 322, 325–7 Marinescu on  318 Munda on  398 Pirc (Ivo) on  401 Poland  80–1, 101–2 Růžička on  166 Reichel on  41 Romania  287, 292 Saxon eugenics in Romania  552, 554 Sekla on  174 Škerlj on  388 Sučić on  464 Tandler on  22–3, 23–5 and the Volksdeutsche  519 Zarnik on  448–9 Poszwa, Alojzy  86, 87 poverty  xv, 109, 193, 289, 308, 423, 425–6, 437 ‘practical race hygiene’ (fajegészségügyi)  222, 225–7, 229 Prášek, Emil  400 Prausnitz, Wilhelm  15 Preda, G.  276, 298 pre-marital counselling see marriage counselling pre-marital eugenic dispensary  176, 178 pre-marital medical examinations/certificates Austria  6, 13, 36–7 Banu on  308, 311 Bělehrádek on  172, 173 Czechoslovakia  129 and feminism  xxii generally  xvi Haškovec on  157, 158–9 Hirszfeldowa on  108 Hungary  208–9, 211, 235, 246 Marinescu on  314, 317, 319 Miloslavić on  459 Pirc (Bojan) on  409 Pirc (Ivo) on  400, 405 Poland  82, 84 Růžička on  165 Reichel on  39–40

Index

Romania  273, 279, 286, 289, 293, 305, 314 Sekla on  176, 178 Siegmund on  566 Slovenia  367, 370 Štampar on  426, 438, 441 Tietze on  51 Wagner-Jauregg on  45 pre-marital sex  342 press coverage of eugenics Croatia  435 Hoffmann on  233–4 Poland  82 Romania  289 Sekla on  178 Slovenia  365, 368, 369, 394 Prica, Milan  400 Prijatelj, Ivan  367 ‘Prince Mircea’ Society  273 ‘progenic constitution’  163 ‘prognosis of inheritance’  8 Prohászka, Ottokár  197, 252 pro-natalism Austria  35 Croatia  426, 429 Manuilă on  322 Niedermeyer on  53–4 Pirc (Bojan) on  407 Pirc (Ivo) on  401 Saxon eugenics in Romania  552 Slovenia  366, 367, 369 propaganda, eugenic Austria  37 Banu on  305, 309 Benedek on  248, 250 Croatia  425, 435, 459 Czechoslovakia  132, 160 Hungary  196, 205, 208, 222 Manuilă, Sabin  324 propaganda movies (Nazi)  37 Romania  278, 286, 305 Sekla on  176, 178 Slovenia  371, 374 Stanojević on  489 Tóth on  254 prostitution Brožek on  150 Haškovec on  158 Hirszfeldowa on  108 Hungary  193, 198 Lewin on  117 Poland  74–5, 80, 82, 83

Slovenia  367, 371, 389 Štampar on  441–2 Wernic on  93, 96 Protestant Church  44, 368, 523, 537, 550, 553, 555, 558, 561, 562, 567 psychiatry  42, 244–5, 247, 461–2 public health services Austria  6, 11–12, 20 Croatia  423–6, 437–8 Czechoslovakia  129, 140, 157, 158 generally  xiv Hungary  192, 193, 194, 197, 200–1, 204, 209, 217 Ivanić on  497–8, 499 Marinescu on  316 Pirc (Bojan) on  407 Poland  76, 80–1, 92, 103–4, 116 Růžička on  166–7 Romania  274, 275, 279, 292, 297, 305, 306 Saxon eugenics in Romania  558–9 Serbia  474, 475, 476–7, 478, 480, 483, 495 Slovenia  371, 373 Štampar on  440–2 Wokalek on  587 public support for eugenics  161, 178, 196, 207, 254, 302, 305 publications, eugenic Austria  10 Croatia  451 Csallner on  573 Czechoslovakia  131, 134, 141, 148, 156, 160, 163, 176 generally  xv, xix–xx Hungary  192–3, 200, 204, 208, 221, 230, 238, 250 international  174 Poland  82, 116 Romania  274, 275, 277, 279, 280, 289, 298, 305 Saxon eugenics in Romania  561 Serbia  474, 485, 490–1, 495, 506–7 Slovenia  364–6, 369, 370, 371, 372, 374, 377, 382, 383, 389, 394, 400 and the Volksdeutsche  521, 522, 528 puériculture  272, 273, 277, 287, 304, 313, 314, 371, 389 see also maternal and child welfare ‘purity’, racial Banu on  308 Bělehrádek on  173 Croatia  431, 446 621

Index

Făcăoaru on  333 Foustka on  154 Halwax on  535–6 Hungary  210 Madzsar on  218 Maleš on  504 Méhely on  243 Poland  74 Romania  287, 292, 305, 306 Saxon eugenics in Romania  558 Serbia  478, 479, 480 Stanojević on  488 Stefanović on  509 Tóth on  255 and the Volksdeutsche  520 Wokalek on  559, 587 qualitative vs quantitative considerations Austria  12, 21 Bělehrádek on  172 Croatia  427, 430 Czechoslovakia  142 Gantkowski on  113 Halwax on  535–6 Hoffmann on  200, 234 Hungary  210 Moldovan on  302 Poland  81 Saxon eugenics in Romania  551, 554 Siegmund on  553 Stanojević on  488 Sučić on  464 Tandler on  23 Wernic on  94 Zarnik on  448–9 Rabl, Carl  35 race hygiene (fajegészégtan)  221–3, 225–6 race normalization  291, 306 racial biological inventory  203, 211, 240–1 see also genealogical-hereditarian research ‘racial care’, Nazi (Rassenpflege)  17, 128, 143 ‘racial doctrine’ (Rassenlehre)  140 racial hygiene (German) Apáthy on  224–5, 225–7 Austria  5, 6, 8, 11, 12, 17, 18, 26–8, 35, 37 Banu on  306 Benedek on  244–5, 248–51 vs biotypology  180 Croatia  431, 434–5 Csallner on  568, 572–4 622

Czechoslovakia  128, 134, 136, 137–45, 169 Deisinger on  391 Fabritius on  578–9 Făcăoaru on  332 German Society for Racial Hygiene  4, 5, 9, 15, 21, 58, 144 ‘Hoffmann’ in War and Racial Hygiene (Hoffman)  232–4 Hungary  192, 199, 200, 202–3, 210, 217, 221–3, 229–31, 238–9 Ivanić on  497–8, 499 Krulj on  490, 492, 493–4 Marinescu on  313, 316, 317–18 Méhely on  240–3 Meyerhofer on  427 Munda on  395 Niedermeyer on  55–6 Niketić on  428 overview of  xi Pirc (Ivo) on  402–5 Poland  75, 82 Polland on  29–31, 31–4 ‘practical race hygiene’ (fajegészségtan)  222, 225–7, 229 Reichel on  39–40, 40–1 Romania  272, 274, 291, 300–1, 305, 324–5 Saxon eugenics in Romania  556–7, 559, 561 Scholz on  58, 60–1 Serbia  475, 477–8 Siegmund on  552–3, 561, 563–6 Škerlj on  386–8 Slovenia  365–8, 369–70, 373, 375, 378 Stanojević on  487 Stefanović on  509 Stojanowski on  101–2 ‘ten commandments of’  524 Tietze on  48, 50, 51 and the Volksdeutsche  524–5 War and Racial Hygiene (Hoffman)  232–4 and ZEWOGE  528 racial improvement Croatia  428 Hungary  198, 205, 211–12, 216, 219–20 ‘racial improvement’ vs ‘human breeding’  221–2 ‘racial improvement’ vs ‘preservation of the race’  451 Serbia  478 racial mixing see mixed-race populations racial protectionism  203, 204, 238, 239, 241–2, 277, 313, 322, 522

Index

racism Austrian eugenics societies  9, 12, 18 Croatia  431 Deisinger on  392 Eugenics and Racism (Bělehrádek)  172–3 Făcăoaru on  329 generally  xvi Hungary  238–9 and Maleš  502 Manuilă on  327 Marinescu on  317 and Moldovan  298–9 Nazi academic racism  144 Romania  290–1 Selka on  174 Serbia  478 Slovenia  365–6 Štampar on  438 Stefanović on  509 Tietze on  48, 51 Živković on  451 radio talks  xv, 10, 286, 289, 445 Rádl, Emanuel  152, 174 Radosavljević, Paja  xviii Rainer, Francisc  xviii Rajniss, Ferenc  210 Râmneanţu, Petru  xii, 275, 276, 288, 289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 296, 297, 299, 330 biography  336–9 Biotype and Fertility of Women from the Province of Banat  342–3 The Methodology of Biotypology  340–1 Ramon y Cajal, Santiago  312 Rassenhygiene see racial hygiene (German) Rasuhin, Josip  429 rationalism, scientific  215 recessive disease elimination  87, 109–10, 154, 171, 404 Reche, Otto  10, 13, 16, 26–7, 36, 57, 238 Reed, Lowell J.  320 regeneration, racial Csallner on  572 Fabritius on  577 Hoffmann on  234–6 Hungary  198, 199, 204, 211, 230 Ivanić on  498 Manuilă on  326 Munda on  396 Poland  77, 81 Romania  272, 279 Saxon eugenics in Romania  554

Serbia  477 Tandler on  23 Reichel, Heinrich  4, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 26, 27, 42, 46, 47 biography  35–8 The Main Tasks of Racial Hygiene in the Present  39–40 The Methods of Fertility Limitations from a Medical, Ethical and Population Policy Perspective  41 Racial Hygiene’s Attitude towards Hygiene and Medicine  40–1 Reister, Heinrich  522 Reiter, Hilde Isolde  521 Relgis, Eugen  xvi, 279 religion see also Catholic Church; Orthodox Church; Protestant Church Biblical bases for eugenics  117–18 Croatia  428 Giljum on  540 Halwax on  536 Judaism  77–8 see also Jewish people religion of eugenics  219, 228 religious basis for eugenics  117–18, 154–5, 233, 368 religious objections to eugenics  88 and science  253 Stefanović on  509 Živković on  454 ‘Renewalists’  522–3, 524, 525, 534, 542, 555, 575 research, eugenic Croatia  424 Czechoslovakia  xi Ivanić on  500 Manuilă on  327 in psychiatric hospitals (Romania)  297 Saxon eugenics in Romania  552 Serbia  481, 482 Škerlj on  385 Slovenia  371–2, 373, 374, 382–3 and the Volksdeutsche  528 responsibility ethics Austria  20–1, 35 Csallner on  573 Czechoslovakia  134 Fabritius on  578–9 Giljum on  540–1 Miloslavić on  456–7, 459–60 Růžička on  167 Romania  298 623

Index

Škerlj on  385, 387 and the Volksdeutsche  520 Révész, Béla  277 Rieger, Herwigh  35–6 right to reproduce  207, 256, 397, 426, 438 Robida, Ivan  364, 401 Rockefeller funding  xi–xii, 137, 147, 204, 249, 297, 320, 336, 381, 383, 406, 426, 437, 502 Roemer-Neubner, Meta  557 Röhm, Ernst  576 Rojc, Milan  423 Roma people  212, 291–2, 322, 324–5, 329, 332, 333, 432, 435 Romanian eugenics societies  276, 285, 287, 298, 314 Rónai, Zoltán  201 Rosenberg, Alfred  169 Rosenblatt, H.  279 Rösler, Gustav  xix Roth, Stephan Ludwig  561 Roux, Wilhelm  162 Royal Romanian Society of Heredity and Eugenics  286, 305, 314, 321 Rüdin, Ernst  xii, 52, 58, 143, 144 rural populations Banu on  309 Croatia  425 Csallner on  573 generally  xiv Hoffmann on  235 Manuilă on  326 Marinescu on  316–17 Miloslavić on  459 Romania  285, 298, 306, 321, 551 Růžička on  164 Siegmund on  564, 566 Štampar on  438 and the Volksdeutsche  519–20 Wüscht on  532 Ruttke, Falk  395 Růžička, Vladislav  xiii, xvi, xviii, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 148, 160, 169, 176 biography  162–3 The Biological Foundations of Eugenics  164–7 A Motion for the Organization of Eugenical Research  168 Salač, Josep  452 salary redistribution  327, 448, 540, 555, 565 624

salpingectomy  140, 171, 282, 396, 447 Sanitary Law (Romania)  283, 297 Saxon eugenic societies  551, 553, 561, 571 Schaffer, Károly  207, 245, 248, 257 Schallmayer, Wilhelm  15, 192, 222, 230, 234, 386, 478 Scherrer, Thomas  11 Schiel, Wilhelm  582 Schiller, F. C. S.  278 Schinzel, Alfred  15, 37 Schirach, Baldur von  525 schizophrenia  96, 97, 206, 280, 396 Schmidt, Andreas  555, 557–8, 559, 569, 581 Schmidt, Béla  xix Schmidt, Wilhelm  12 Schmulders’ contraceptive method  112, 113 Schöfer, Hans  7 Scholtz, Kornél  204 Scholz, Alois  11 The Basics about Racial Care and Education  60 biography  57–61 Racial Care: Our Duties towards Our Ancestors  60–1 Scholz, Lothar  59 Schönke, Adolf  395 School of Public Health (Croatia)  426 schools see also education, eugenic Austria  8, 12, 43 Croatia  444 Czechoslovakia  132 Slovenia  371 Schulz, Bruno K.  59, 143, 382 Schunn, Wilhelm  554, 555, 556, 557, 568, 575 biography  581–2 The Honouring of Large Families Among the Germans in Romania  583–5 scouting movement  95, 98–9, 525 Šebek, J.  134 Section on Eugenics and Biopolitics (Romania)  276, 298 segregation Manuilă on  322 Poland  84, 86 Romania  281, 291, 305, 311 Siegmund on  564 Slovenia  406 Wernic on  93 Zarnik on  447 Seizov, Hristo  365

Index

Sekla, Bohumil  138, 139, 141, 142, 144, 145, 163, 365, 382 biography  174–5 A Czech Eugenicist, Professor Dr. Vladislav Růžička, and the Czechoslovak Eugenic Society that He Founded  176 Eugenics in Czechoslovakia  176–8 Hereditary Health  179 selective breeding (race-based)  27, 29–31, 108, see also marriage selection ‘selective’ vs ‘adaptive’ eugenics  134 Self-Help  552, 553, 554, 555, 568, 572–4, 575–6, 577, 581 sensory disabilities  84, 89–90, 139, 173 serology (blood group typing)  203, 320, 336–7, 338, 507, 508–9 sex education  113, 164, 167, 367, 425 sexual instinct  443, 462 sexual morality Croatia  422 Deisinger on  389 Lewin on  117–18 Poland  74 Reichel on  37, 39 Slovenia  368–9 Tóth on  257 Wernic on  95, 96 sexually transmitted disease see venereal disease Siegmund, Heinrich  xi, xix, xx, 551, 552–3, 557 biography  561–2 On Saxon Racial Hygiene  563–4 The Tasks of Saxon Racial Hygiene  564–6 Simionescu, Ion Th.  286 single-child policies  220, 224 see also one-and-two child systems Škerlj, Božo  xvii, 364, 365–7, 368, 371–2, 373–4, 390, 400–1, 406, 505 biography  381–3 Eugenics or Racial Hygiene?  386–8 Social Anthropological Study on the Question of the Inferior Child  384–6 Skowron, Stanisław  76, 87 slavery, after-effects of  81, 95 ‘Slavic’ eugenics  xviii Slavic race  366, 378, 379–80, 407, 508 Slovenian eugenic societies  371, 373–4 ‘social cooperation’ models  378 social hygiene Austria  6 and Catholicism  428

Croatia  423–6 generally  xv Hungary  192, 201, 204, 217 Méhely on  240 Munda on  395 Pirc (Bojan) on  407 Poland  75–6, 99, 104, 115 Romania  274, 279, 292, 297, 307 Serbia  474, 477–80 Siegmund on  564 Štampar on  437–8, 440–2, 443–4 Stefanović on  509 Wernic on  93 and ZEWOGE  528 social reform and eugenics see also public health services Austria  4 Croatia  423–6, 437 Giljum on  540 Ivanić on  500 Poland  75–6 and the Volksdeutsche  521 ‘social therapy’  425, 426 socialism  xvi, xviii, 15, 55, 141, 170, 201, 216, 226–7, 401 Society for Racial Hygiene and Population Policy (Hungary)  201, 223, 230–1, 234 Society for Racial Hygiene (Berlin)  230 Society for Racial Hygiene in Upper Austria  9, 10, 35 Society for the Protection of Jewish Health  78, 115–16 Society of Catholic physicians (St Lukas Gilde)  12, 13, 53, 203, 252 Society of Child Enthusiasts  xx, 551, 552, 553, 555, 568, 570–2 Society of Heredity and Eugenics (Romania)  286, 318–19 sociology  93, 96, 128, 151, 287 Socrates  380 Sokol movement  377–8, 380, 381, 534 Somogyi, József  207, 208, 238 Somogyi, Z.  211 Šonka, J.  140 South Africa  383 Soviet eugenics  278 Soviet science  89, 145, 212, 294 Spencer, Herbert  153 spiritual health (mental health) Csallner on  567–8, 571 Deisinger on  391–3 625

Index

Derganc on  380 Foustka on  154–5 Giljum on  540 Maleš on  504–5 Slovenia  378 Štampar on  437 St Luke’s Society of Catholic Physicians  12, 13, 53, 203, 252 St Vitus’ dance  206 Štampar, Andrija  381, 382, 400, 406, 423–6, 457 biography  437–9 On Health Politics  443 On Social Therapy  443–4 Some Comments on the Law for the Protection of National Health  440–2 Stan, Liviu  291 Stanić, S.  519 Stanojević, Vladimir  425, 475, 483 biography  485–6 Eugenics. The Hygiene of Human Conception nd the Problem of Inheritance  487–9 State Institute for Racial Biology (Uppsala)  16, 202–3, 238, 277 statistical demographic information see also genealogical-hereditarian research Banu on  310 Brožek on  149 Croatia  424 Czechoslovakia  129, 131, 135 Hungary  211, 212 Polish census  83 racial biological inventory (Hungary)  203 Râmneanţu on  341, 342–3 Romania  318, 321, 337 Růžička on  165 Škerlj on  385 Slovenia  371–2, 401 and the Volksdeutsche  520 Štebi, Alojzija  389 Stefánia Association for the Protection of Mothers and Infants  197–8, 208, 209, 216 Stefanović, Svetislav  xvii, 365, 370, 373, 382, 425, 477, 478, 481, 482 biography  506–7 On the Question of Race as a Cultural and a National Problem in Yugoslavia  508–9 Steffan, Paul  10 Sterian, Eraclie  273 626

sterilization see also forced sterilization; voluntary sterilization Austria  7–8, 10, 13, 14, 21, 145 Banu on  308, 309, 311 Bělehrádek on  169, 171–2, 173 Benedek on  244–5, 247–8, 250 in Britain  245 Brožek on  130 castration  21, 24, 83, 138, 247, 280, 281, 282, 395, 398, 405, 428, 498 Catholic Church and  xvi, 8, 12, 13, 43, 44, 47, 49, 85, 87, 207, 252, 253, 255–7, 368–9, 428 criminals  47, 83, 150, 173, 206, 247, 255, 281, 282, 394–5, 447 Croatia  428, 430 Czechoslovakia  128, 130, 138–41, 145 European laws for  280 Făcăoaru on  329 and feminism  xxi generally  xvi The Graz Sterilization Trial  49 Hirszfeldowa on  108, 109–10 Hungary  206–8, 209, 244–5 irradiation sterilization  140, 396 Ivanić on  498 Manuilă on  322, 326 Marinescu on  314–15, 319 Munda on  394–5, 396–9 Nazi sterilization laws  8, 14, 49, 50, 53, 55, 85, 137–8, 174, 178, 207, 256, 280, 281, 305, 329, 367 Niedermeyer on  53, 55 Pirc (Bojan) on  406 Pirc (Ivo) on  401, 405 Poland  82, 83–4, 85, 87–8 Růžička on  164 Reichel on  37, 41 Romania  274, 278–9, 279–84, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 305 salpingectomy  140, 171, 282, 396, 447 in Saxony  145 Sekla on  176, 178 Serbia  498 Siegmund on  566 Škerlj on  385–6 Slovenia  365, 366, 368, 375, 377, 394–5 Štampar on  443 Tandler on  23–5, 24–5 Tietze on  46–7, 49, 50 Tóth on  252, 257

Index

in USA  150, 171–2, 195, 207, 229, 272, 274, 278, 281, 282, 385–6, 405, 447, 498 vasectomy  49, 140, 171, 279, 282, 396, 430, 447 Wagner-Jauregg on  43, 44 Wernic on  93, 95 Zarnik on  445, 447 Stevanović, Boris  369 Stigler, Robert  6, 9, 17 Stipčić, Ivo  434 Stoichiţă, Iosif  294, 339 Stojadinović, Milan  507 Stojanović, Dušan  479 Stojanowski, Karol  xvi, 75, 80 biography  98–100 Racial Foundations of Eugenics  101–2 ‘stolen children’  375 Streicher, Margarethe  8 Stroescu, Gheorghe  284, 287, 289 Stuchlík, Jaroslav  142 Stumpfl, Friedrich  17, 35 Sturtevant, Alfred H.  136 Sučić, Nikola biography  461–2 Inherited Biology  463–5 Suciu, P.  290 Sudeten Germans  xxiii suicide  137 ‘superior’ types, breeding of Banu on  308 Halwax on  535–6 Ivanić on  498 Maleš on  505 Manuilă on  326 Marinescu on  314, 317–19 Moldovan on  301–3 Pirc (Bojan) on  409 Romania  330 Serbia  479 Siegmund on  553 Škerlj on  385, 388 Slovenia  366, 378 Sučić on  463 Zarnik on  445, 448 Sutzu, Alexandru  272 Svojsík, Antonín Benjamin  132 Sweden as role model for eugenics  200, 205, 206, 245 sterilization  447 Swedish research institute (Uppsala)  16, 202–3, 238, 277

Świrski, I.  85, 87 syphilis  75, 92, 95, 96, 159, 318, 459 systemic races  387 Szabó, Zoltan  xviii, 209 Szana, Sándor  193 Szekfű, Gyula  238 Szél, Tivadar  205 Szendi, B.  246 Szumski, J.  82 T4 (Nazi euthanasia)  145, 375, 435 Talmudic bases for eugenics  117–18 Tandler, Julius  xvi, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 42, 43, 437 biography  20–1 The Dangers of Inferiority  23–5 Marital and Population Policy  22 The Psychology of the Fall in the Birth Rate  22–3 Tartar people  332, 334 Tauffer, Vilmos  197 tax celibacy/childlessness taxes  311, 319, 367, 410, 426, 427, 540 Madzsar on  220 Pirc (Bojan) on  406, 410 Poland  84 Saxon eugenics in Romania  555 Škerlj on  386 tax breaks for large families  6, 43, 54, 236, 239, 367, 427 Teleki, Pál  xv, xvii, 192, 196, 198–9, 202, 204, 216, 217, 222, 229, 230, 234, 238 Teleky, Ludwig  35 ten per cent figures (dysgenic)  164, 256, 329, 332, 447 Teutsch, Friedrich  561 Teutsch, Grete  557 Thaller, Lujo  424, 425 Theodorescu, Anibal  286 Thim, J.  193 Third Reich eugenics  49–52, 551 Thomsen, Andreas  568 Thums, Karl  xvi, 17, 35, 58, 59, 143, 144 Tietze, Felix  11, 14, 15 biography  46–52 Eugenic Measures in the Third Reich  49–52 The Graz Sterilization Trial  49 Tietze, Hans  46 Tietze, Hertha  46 Tirala, Lothar Gottlieb  395 627

Index

Tisza, István  197 tobacco  38, 60, 551, 553, 566, 573 Tomažič, Gregor  373 Tomor, E.  203 Tönnies, Ferdinand  228 Topinard, Paul  333 Torday, Ferenc  193–4 Tóth, Tihamér  xvi, 208 biography  252–8 Eugenics and Catholicism  254–8 Totis, Béla  xvi Toulouse, Édouard  337 Trifu, V.  293 Tschermak-Seysenegg, Armin  138 tuberculosis Croatia  423, 426 Csallner on  573 Czechoslovakia  132 Haškovec on  158, 159 Hungary  193, 209, 246 Ivanić on  499 Marinescu on  318 and marriage prohibition  441 Pirc (Ivo) on  402, 404 Poland  111, 115 Râmneanţu on  342 Romania  305 Serbia  476 Slovenia  369, 372 Wokalek on  559 Tuszaki, Ö  204 twins studies  58, 181, 205 Tyrš, Miroslav  xviii, 378, 380 ‘Übermensch’  366 Ude, Johann  6 Ullmann, R.  5 unemployment  391, 500 Unger, Hellmuth  37 Union of Eugenic Societies (Romania)  287, 288, 290 Union of Large Families  552, 570 universalism  383, 388 Uppsala State Institute for Racial Biology  16, 202–3, 238, 277 urban phenomenon, eugenics movement as  9, 321, 326, 521, 565 USA (United States of America) American Eugenics Society  46 Californian sterilization laws  44, 172, 229, 383, 385 628

Croatia  443 generally  xii Hungary  206, 222, 228–9 marriage counselling  406–7 marriage prohibition  438 as model for eugenics generally  43, 44, 47, 95, 130, 134, 137, 151, 195 Romania  272, 273, 274, 287, 320 Saxon eugenics in Romania  566 Second International Congress of Eugenics (New York, 1921)  xiii, 133, 135, 136, 157 Serbia  498 Slovenia  365, 381–2, 382–3, 406 sterilization  150, 171–2, 195, 207, 229, 272, 274, 278, 281, 282, 385–6, 405, 447, 498 Sučić on  465 Third International Congress of Eugenics (New York, 1932)  205 Ušeničnik, Aleš  369 Ustasha ideology  430–1 utopianism  220, 287, 303, 377, 493 Vaida-Voevod, A.  275, 319 Vámossy, Zoltán  242 Van der Aa, J. S.  282, 283 vasectomy  49, 140, 171, 279, 282, 396, 430, 447 Vasilescu- Bucium, I.  280, 282, 284, 286 Veştemeanu, Maria  289 Vejdovský, František  147 Velluda, Constantin C.  285 Velmar-Janković, Vladimir  481–2, 498–501, 507 venereal disease Croatia  423–4, 425 Csallner on  573 Czechoslovakia  132 forced treatment of  108, 109 gonorrhoea  75, 92, 96, 159 Haškovec on  158, 160 Hirszfeldowa on  108, 109 Hoffmann on  233 Hungary  193, 197–8, 200, 209, 246 Ivanić on  499 Miloslavić on  459 Pirc (Ivo) on  404 Poland  74–5, 80, 82, 83, 92 Reichel on  39 Romania  278, 289, 293, 314 Serbia  476 Siegmund on  565

Index

Slovenia  367, 369, 370 Štampar on  441–2 syphilis  75, 92, 95, 96, 159, 318, 459 Wernic on  93, 96–7 Verschuer, Otmar von  xii, xxi, 143, 144, 207, 381 Verzár, Frigyes  203, 238 Veselá, Jarmila  138, 139, 140 Vienna, University of  16–17, 20, 35, 42 Vienna international hygiene exhibition (1925)  10, 36, 46 Viennese Society for Racial Care/Racial Hygiene  8, 9, 10, 14–15, 18, 26, 27, 36, 47, 57, 58–9 Viola, Giacinto  314, 337, 342 Virchow, Rudolf  561 Vode, Angela  366, 368, 369, 370, 389 Vodopivec-Černe, Katja  366 Voina, Aurel  275, 276, 277, 279, 290, 292 voluntary sterilization Austria  7 Banu on  309 in Britain  245 Hungary  206 Marinescu on  314–15 Munda on  394–5, 396–9 Poland  84–5 Romania  280, 281, 284 Škerlj on  386 Slovenia  368 in USA  447 Von Eickstedt, Egon  382, 503, 504, 505 Von Gruber, Max  xvii, 4, 21, 230 Von Jaksch, Rudolf  296 Von Kogerer, Heinrich  14 Von Kraft-Ebbing, Richard  42 Von List, Guido  576 Von Meltzl, Oskar  552 Von Pezold, Hans von  78, 117 Von Pirquet, Clemens  46, 427 Von Schirach, Baldur  525 Von Verschuer, Otmar  xii, xxi, 143, 144, 207, 381 Vornica, Gh.  290 Vranešić, Ɖuro  434, 435 Vuia, Romulus  285, 328 Vyx, Ferdinand  217 Wagner-Jauregg, Julius  7, 11, 14, 244 biography  42–5 Contemporary Eugenics  44–5

Walluschek-Wallfeld, Walter  27 war as dysgenics  104, 205, 227, 232 Hoffmann on  232–4 and legitimacy of eugenics  223 Méhely on  237–8 and natural selection  225–6, 232 and population  21 war crimes  239, 457, 482, 496, 503 war veterans  230, 235 Weichselbaum, Anton  4 Weigner, Karel  xvi, 141 Weinberg, Wilhem  xvii, 230 Weindel, Viktor  558, 559 Weiss, Moric  422 Welfle, Tadeusz  87 Welfle, Tomasz  75 Weninger, Josef  11 Wernic, Leon  74, 75, 80, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88 biography  92–3 Eugenics: Its Social Goals in Poland and Relationship to Medicine and Other Sciences  94–5 The Role of Venereal Diseases in Biological Selection  96–7 Weszeczky, O.  203 Wickerhauser, Teodor  423 Wlassak, Rudolf  4 Wokalek, Franz Wilhelm  559 biography  586 National Socialist Healthcare  587 Wolff, Karl  575 women see also maternal and child welfare; motherhood educated women as threat  81, 99, 448, 565 feminism  xxi, xxiii, 6, 276, 389 Instructions for the Saxon Woman (Fabritius)  580 and physical education  372 Romania  319 Saxon eugenics in Romania  556–7, 580 Siegmund on  565 Sučić on  462 and the Volksdeutsche  521, 524, 525 working women in Romania  319 working classes  202, 573 see also peasantry World Health Organization  439 Woytowicz-Grabińska, W.  83 Wüscht, Johann  519, 520, 521, 522–3 biography  529–30 629

Index

The Natural Movement of the German Population in Vojvodina  531–3 X-ray sterilization  140, 396 Yerkes, Robert M.  136 Ygrec, Dr  xvi, 278, 290 youth organizations Austria  15 Fabritius on  579 Romania  276 Siegmund on  564 Slovenia  407 and the Volksdeutsche  521–3, 525, 543–4 Wernic on  95 Yugoslav eugenic societies  364, 371, 373–4, 377, 381 ‘Yugoslav man’  479 Yugoslav Union for the Protection of Children  369, 370 Zajdlicz, Alexander  86–7 Zakrzewski, Z.  83

630

Zalokar, Alojz  368 Žanić, Milovan  434 Zarnik, Boris  373, 374, 381, 423, 428, 431, 434, 435 biography  445–6 The Foundations and Goals of Eugenics  447–50 Závadová, Jaroslava  142, 170 Zay, Adele  557 ‘Zbor’  496, 507, 523, 534 Zborovszky, F.  252 Žerjav, Goregor  377 ZEWOGE (Central Cooperative for Welfare/ Zentralwohlfahrtsgenossenschaft)  520–1, 523, 524, 528, 529 Živković, Andrija  xvi, 369, 428 biography  451–2 On Eugenics from a Moral Standpoint  453–5 Živković, Ljubomir  478 Živković, Petar  491 Zollschan, Ignaz  xvi, 140–1, 169 Zolog, Mihail  275, 280, 293, 297 Zuckerkandl, Emil  20 Županič, Niko  364, 372, 377