The Perils of Race-Thinking: A Portrait of Aleš Hrdlička 9789633866139

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The Perils of Race-Thinking

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CEU Press Studies in the History of Medicine Volume XIV Series Editor: Marius Turda

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Published in the series: Svetla Baloutzova Demography and Nation Social Legislation and Population Policy in Bulgaria, 1918–1944 C

Christian Promitzer · Sevasti Trubeta · Marius Turda, eds. Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945 C

Francesco Cassata Building the New Man Eugenics, Racial Science and Genetics in Twentieth-Century Italy C

Rachel E. Boaz In Search of “Aryan Blood” Serology in Interwar and National Socialist Germany C

Richard Cleminson Catholicism, Race and Empire Eugenics in Portugal, 1900–1950 C

Maria Zarimis Darwin’s Footprint Cultural Perspectives on Evolution in Greece (1880–1930s) C

Tudor Georgescu The Eugenic Fortress The Transylvanian Saxon Experiment in Interwar Romania C

Katherina Gardikas Landscapes of Disease Malaria in Modern Greece C

Heike Karge · Friederike Kind-Kovács · Sara Bernasconi From the Midwife’s Bag to the Patient’s File Public Health in Eastern Europe C

Gregory Sullivan Regenerating Japan Organicism, Modernism and National Destiny in Oka Asajirō’s Evolution and Human Life C

Constantin Bărbulescu Physicians, Peasants, and Modern Medicine Imagining Rurality in Romania, 1860–1910 C

Vassiliki Theodorou · Despina Karakatsani Strengthening Young Bodies, Building the Nation A Social History of Child Health and Welfare in Greece (1890–1940) C

Fabio Giomi Making Muslim Women European Voluntary Associations, Gender and Islam in Post-Ottoman Bosnia and Yugoslavia (1878–1941)

The Perils of Race-Thinking A Portrait of Aleš Hrdlička

Mark A. Brandon

Central European University Press Budapest—Vienna—New York

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© Mark A. Brandon, 2023 Published in 2023 by Central European University Press Nádor utca 9, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher.

Cover illustration: Aleš Hrdlička, Source: National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Cover and book design by Sebastian Stachowski ISBN 978-963-386-612-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-963-386-613-9 (ebook) ISSN 2079-1119

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Brandon, Mark A., author. Title: The perils of race-thinking : a portrait of Aleš Hrdlička / Mark A. Brandon. Description: Budapest ; New York : CEU Press, Central European University Press, 2023. | Series: CEU press studies in the history of medicine, 2079-1119 ; volume XIV | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023008747 (print) | LCCN 2023008748 (ebook) | ISBN 9789633866122 (hardback) | ISBN 9789633866139 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Hrdlička, Aleš, 1869-1943. | Anthropologists--Czech Republic--Bohemia--Biography. | Anthropologists--United States--Biography. | Scientific racism--History--20th century. | Eugenics--History--20th century. | Physical anthropology--History--20th century. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General | HISTORY / United States / 20th Century Classification: LCC GN21.H7 B73 2023 (print) | LCC GN21.H7 (ebook) | DDC 301.092 [B]--dc23/eng/20230329 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023008747 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023008748

TABLE OF CON TEN TS

Introduction

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chapter i

What are the Czechoslovaks Racially?

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chapter ii

“Public Opinion is a Powerful Weapon”

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chapter iii

The Secret History of the Hrdlička Museum of Man

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chapter iv

The Last Great Reserve of the White Race

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chapter v

Race Divination

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chapter vi

How the Czechs Became White

133

chapter vii Eugenics

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chapter viii

The Faith of Aleš Hrdlička

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Conclusion

199

Bibliography

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Index

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INTRODUCTION

In anxious dread of isolation the people scanned each other in the vain quest for some portentous mark that would tell them who belonged together.1 (Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted)

As the prestigious Smithsonian Institution’s top anthropologist for over three decades, Czech-American Aleš Hrdlička was a science celebrity whose fame reached its height in the 1920s and 30s. Featured often in newspapers, he sometimes opined on current issues like Nazi aggression or Stalin’s Soviet Union. His occasional national radio speeches brought fan mail from around the country. President Franklin Roosevelt, and hundreds of lesser officials, knew his name and sought his advice. J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI called on him to identify human remains. By the late 1930s, he was a venerable establishment scientist whose opinion mattered. The public looked to him as an authority especially on racial issues. After all, he was America’s top physical anthropologist, and part of his job description at the Smithsonian was the “biological study of the many and diverse racial elements of the American nation.”2 Hrdlička’s papers, a massive collection stored today at the Smithsonian, are full of letters from all kinds of people asking the great scientist to clear up the mysteries of race. Judges, lawyers, scientists, journalists, government officials, and barely literate private citizens sought his authoritative answers. 1 2

Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that Made the American People (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 249. Frank Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D., 1869–1943: A Chronicle of the Life and Work of an American Physical Anthropologist” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1979), 248.

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INTRODUCTION

Their questions offer a fascinating picture of what Americans hoped science could tell them about race. How many races are there? Which race is the smartest? Is racial mixing a good idea? Are Finns really White people? Are Dark-skinned people outbreeding Whites? Is it possible to tell by looking if a White person has some “Black blood”?3 What physical markers distinguish “full-blood” and “half-blood” Native Americans? Hrdlička liked being an authority on these questions and often wrote back right away with smart-sounding answers. Hrdlička, once a famous scientist, is a little known and poorly understood figure today. To be sure, specialists write about him, and his name has made its way into a few compelling books, like Ishi’s Brain by Orin Starn, which relates the intriguing story of how the brain of a Native American, called Ishi, ended up, against the poor man’s wishes, in storage at Hrdlička’s Smithsonian. Samuel Redman’s engaging Bone Rooms, which examines the once-popular fad of collecting skulls, mentions Hrdlička on nearly every page. Yet aside from a 1979 doctoral dissertation, there is no single volume dedicated exclusively to Hrdlička. The reason for this gap is that an important portion of his papers are written in his native Czech language; a language incomprehensible to most non-Czech scholars.4 His correspondence with the Czech anthropologist Jindřich Matiegka, for example, is contained in six bulging files that cover a period from 1901 to 1941. Mostly tedious manuscripts, these pages expose crucial pieces of Hrdlička’s “secret” Czech life, including the lurid story of his intrigues in interwar Czechoslovakia. Not only using the Czech language, but being Czech, was important to Hrdlička; something modern scholars have never fully appreciated. Although a prolific author, Hrdlička refused to change his difficult name, pronounced something like (ah-lesh) (herd-lich-ka). This was not an inconse3

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When writing in my own voice, I have capitalized all words relating to racial identity groups, like Black, White, Whiteness, and Hrdlička’s racial category of Yellow-Brown, just as one capitalizes terms for groupings like Czech, German, or Slavic. For many reasons, it has been difficult to apply this with absolute consistency. For example, I have not altered the capitalization in quotes from primary and other sources, although the original authors, like Hrdlička, were often inconsistent in their usage. Robert Oppenheim, “Revisiting Hrdlička and Boas: Asymmetries of Race and Anti-Imperialism in Interwar Anthropology,” American Anthropologist 112, no. 1 (2010). Until now, Oppenheim is the only scholar who has made a serious connection between Hrdlička’s “Czechoslovakian nationalism” and his other race beliefs. One sentence in this excellent article helped to inspire this book: “A fuller examination of Hrdlička’s role awaits a reader of his considerable Czech correspondence” (94).

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INTRODUCTION

quential detail; it signaled his ardent commitment to Czech identity. Among Hrdlička’s fan mail, there is a personal letter from a Czech American named Olga Vondráček, who admired the old scientist because he “retained the Bohemian spelling” of his name. Those American Czechs who “Anglicize their names” were, in her view, committing “a sort of disloyalty.”5 Hrdlička was born in 1869 in a small town called Humpolec in the Bohemian part of Austria-Hungary. His first language was Czech, but he also learned German when he was a child, so like many people from the region, he was bilingual. Nonetheless, in America he identified with Czech people and grew to dislike German and Germans. When he first came to America, he spoke no English, and while growing up in New York, he was surrounded by Czech speakers, some of whom still wrote to him after he became a famous scientist and moved to Washington. By adulthood, he had embraced his Czech heritage as a semi-religious cause. Even during his lifetime, few people knew anything about this side of his life. T. Dale Stewart, who worked under Hrdlička for many years at the Smithsonian, later recalled, “he was Czech, of course, and he lived in the Old World outside of office hours. That is, when he went home, his home setting was that of … the Czech people; and he spoke Czech with other members of the family, when they came in. They probably spoke Czech to a considerable extent.”6 Stewart also claimed that Hrdlička, who spoke English with an accent, felt uncomfortable in social situations and lacked, “awareness of how most Americans get along.”7 After settling in at the top of his field, Hrdlička used his position to help Czech people. When preparing his famous Panama-California Exposition display in 1915, he outsourced some work to Czech speakers, including the anthropologist Vojtěch Suk and the sculptor František Mička. When possible, he liked to take Czech-speakers on his famous skull hunting (or stealing) trips in Alaska. This “secret” part of Hrdlička’s life consumed much more energy than anyone has yet realized. In World War I, Hrdlička collaborated with propagandists to convince the American public to support Czech causes. In 5 Letter, Olga Vondráček, 12 January 1942, box 64, “V, 1900–1952,” Correspondence. Papers of Aleš Hrdlička, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. 6 Douglas H. Ubelaker, “T. Dale Stewart’s Perspective on His Career as a Forensic Anthropologist at the Smithsonian,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 45, no. 2 (2000): 274. 7 Ubelaker, “T. Dale Stewart’s Perspective on His Career,” 275.

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INTRODUCTION

the 1920s, he donated almost his entire personal fortune, inherited from his first wife, to establish an anthropological institute and journal in Prague. In 1938, he used his prominence to plead publicly against the German annexation of Czechoslovakia’s vital Sudeten region. He died in 1943, but after the war Czech patriots used some of his ideas to justify the brutal expulsion of their German-speaking fellow citizens from Czechoslovakia. Race-thinking was at the core of Hrdlička’s Czech nationalism, which was the beginning point for his racial description of the whole world. At the most local level, racial arguments supported his claim that Czechs and Slovaks belonged “naturally” together in Czechoslovakia. Beyond this, he believed that Czechs and Slovaks were members of the broader “biological” family of Slavs, who were locked in an age-old racial struggle against the Germans. On the global stage, Slavs and Germans, although physically different, nevertheless both belonged to the White race, which, Hrdlička thought, was superior to the “Yellow-Brown” race [Hrdlička’s phrase], and far superior to the Black race. There were several surprising twists in Hrdlička’s racial world. He hated Nazi ideas about Nordic superiority, not because he believed in racial equality, but because he thought all Whites, not only Nordics, were superior to darker peoples. Among the Whites, he thought the Slavs, not the Nordics, were the most eugenically fit biological “strain,” and this idea made him a fan of the Soviet Union, though he had no interest in Communist ideology. He thought of the United States as White too, but maybe not as White as the Soviet Union, which, he claimed, had no Black people to contend with. A central question of this book is: What did Hrdlička mean when he used the term “race”? The following pages suggest three main answers. Most importantly, the book argues that his understanding of race was wrapped around his own Czech identity. The first four chapters highlight his ideological commitment to and political activism for Czech, Czechoslovak, and Slavic racial priorities. Secondly, as a scientist, Hrdlička thought race must be traceable in measurable bodily markings. Chapters five and six elaborate on this and demonstrate how racial ambiguity muddled his attempts to establish boundaries between races, both horizontally and hierarchically. Thirdly, the book proposes that for Hrdlička, as for many other intellectual leaders of his age, race seemed to embody a “scientific world view,” which was in sync with “Darwinism,” “biology,” and “nature,” but in con4

INTRODUCTION

trast to the churchy “superstition” of earlier times. Chapter eight (and chapter seven—about eugenics) argues that Hrdlička’s racial world began with a search for a new morality to replace collapsing traditional belief. Readers who are less familiar with the specifics of Central European history should read the last chapter first. The final chapter theorizes about the meaning of Hrdlička’s race-thinking for the modern age, and this reinforces the larger philosophical significance of the earlier chapters. Race-thinking underpinned Hrdlička’s conception of both nation and race. Today, scholars see nation and race as concoctions of the human mind, not as clear biological categories. Contemporary academic jargon reinforces this by referring to the nation as an “imagined community” and race as a “social construction.”8 The opposite was true in Hrdlička’s time; he, and most of his contemporaries, did not believe that nation and race were imaginary. For him, nation and race were zoological categories demarcated by physical features. He had not yet identified these distinguishing marks, but he was sure they existed, and collecting skulls and measuring faces were supposed to reveal them. In fairness, there were other reasons—not only race—for his anthropometric research. From today’s perspective, this kind of racial-thinking is “backwards,” but Hrdlička saw himself as embracing modern science and rejecting oldfashioned superstition. For many in Hrdlička’s generation, abandoning traditional religion was an exhilarating yet traumatic leap that raised a perplexing question: What would replace the moral certainties of religious belief? Hrdlička, like many, expected science to fill this gap. Unfortunately, he, like other highly educated authorities of his day, drew some scary moral lessons from the supposedly indisputable facts of science. According to his scientific worldview, there were races, they were unequal, and they were locked in a Darwinist struggle for survival. 8

The first term comes from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983); a classic which has spawned a massive amount of historical literature. The “social construction” thesis is also ubiquitous in the literature, but, in the view of this author, less lucid. Some helpful works are: Barbara J. Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Van Woodward, ed. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 143–77; Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); Matthew Pratt Guterl, “The New Race Consciousness: Race, Nation, and Empire in American Culture, 1910–1925,” Journal of World History 10, no. 2 (Fall 1999): 307–352; Staffan Müller-Wille, “Race and History: Comments from an Epistemological Point of View,” Science, Technology, and Human Values 39, no. 4 (July 2014): 597–606.

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INTRODUCTION

Despite all this scientific bravado, it is easy to find mysticism in Hrdlička’s racial thinking. This is not surprising; he was, after all, trying to use science to fulfill the role of belief. In his new world of scientific truth, people would fashion their lives according to the precepts of “nature,” which meant race and racial struggle. When empirical evidence failed to match this gloomy worldview, a bit of faith kept it alive. For example, when the physical differences between Czechs and Germans or Blacks and Whites proved less pronounced than he expected, Hrdlička reverted to the common and baseless belief that different “blood” ran in their veins. This mystical conception of “blood” was a stunningly unfounded and ironically “Christian” way to prop up a purportedly scientific explanation of the world. Hrdlička’s mountains of anthropometric research never solidified any of the racial categories he took for granted. He believed that physical features must mark the borders between racial groups, yet he never found a way to tell for sure, just by looking, who was Slavic, German, Black, White, “full-blood,” or “half-blood.” There were always some individuals, of course, whose appearance easily matched cultural stereotypes, but these were not the problem. As America’s premier physical anthropologist, he was expected to sort ambiguous-looking people into racial categories. Hrdlička made these race prognostications, and sometimes the stakes were high in a country where race mattered in courtrooms, yet his verdicts resembled the work of the astrologer more than the scientist. The zoological identities Hrdlička promoted were a revolutionary departure from older ideals of citizenship and had grave consequences when acted out in the twentieth century. As Hannah Arendt once observed, racial-thinking made peoples “into animal species so that a Russian appears as different from a German as a wolf is from a fox.”9 This animalization of humans had dire consequences for states, borders, citizenship, and civil rights. In Hrdlička’s racial world-view, what really mattered was the “biology” of a population, not the government under which it lived. This meant that simple civil equality was not on his radar for either Europe or America. For him, the “natural” truth that Germans and Slavs were mortal enemies meant they could never live together as equal citizens and this justified the destruction of Austria-Hungary in 1918. In America, the 14th amendment could never 9

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 234.

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INTRODUCTION

make Black and White “blood” equal, so Hrdlička supported laws designed to mitigate the effects of racial mixing. The unnerving truth that Hrdlička was both a world-renowned scientist and a propagator of abhorrent racial views creates the central tension of this book. Hrdlička’s racial views were reckless and harmful, yet as a scientist, he was not a fraud. Physical anthropologists still agree that Hrdlička had a knack for correctly identifying and describing human remains, and he made lasting contributions to the fields of anthropometry and forensic anthropology. Hrdlička “got away” with his racial views because they seemed equally convincing to many other intelligent and educated people. Unfortunately, thinking in terms of race has been very attractive in the modern age. This is its greatest peril. Hrdlička’s intellectual profile is especially unsettling because on some issues he stood on what many people would consider the “right side” of history. His zeal for the “racial liberation” of his people in World War I and his strident anti-Nazi stance in World War II have even made it tempting to view him as egalitarian. Yet he never broke through the explanatory paradigm of race-thinking. The particulars of his racial world turned out differently from those of the century’s more notorious racists, but he shared the same flawed premise, as did most educated people of his age. Many people, and especially Czech immigrants, found much to admire about Hrdlička. He overcame many difficulties and worked his way up from impoverished obscurity to the summit of scientific respectability. By today’s standards, his formal education was spotty. His schooling had stopped at twelve when he left Europe. Unlike America’s more established elites, he worked instead of attending high school or college, although a friend and biographer noted that he went to evening classes “whenever possible” after working days in a cigar factory.10 Despite these difficult circumstances, he somehow managed to prepare himself for medical school by the age of nineteen and to graduate four years later.11 In these early years, he quickly mastered not 10 Jindřich Matiegka, “Dr. Aleš Hrdlička: Biography,” reprint from Anthropologie, “Dr. Aleš Hrdlička Anniversary Volume” VIII (Prague: V. and A. Janata, 1929), 2. 11 The most succinct account of Hrdlička’s early years and education can be found in Adolph H. Schultz, “Biographical Memoir of Aleš Hrdlička, 1869–1943,” National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Biographical Memoirs Vol. XXIII (1944): 305–306. The most thorough study of Hrdlička’s early years remains Frank Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” which contains a detailed discussion of his education. These two sources, and also Matiegka’s account from 1929, differ slightly in details. On the surface, Hrdlička’s official academic qualifications seem august. He earned medical doctorates at

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INTRODUCTION

Hrdlička in his office at the Smithsonian. He had a direct view of the US Capitol Building, but in this photo the window shades are apparently drawn. National Anthropological Archives

only English but also French. This enabled him to get about four months of specialized study in France under the pioneering anthropologist Léonce Manouvrier. With these patchy beginnings, he forged himself into a founding father in the fledgling speciality of physical anthropology in the United States. With so few social and academic advantages, and in a world that was probably almost as rough as Social Darwinists described it, ambition and hard work must account for much of his rise. A comment he made in his correspondence at the age of fifty nine sheds some light on his grit and determination: “I have never had a vacation in my life and am too old to begin bad habits.”12 the Ecclectic Medical College of the City of New York (1892) and at the New York Homeopathic Medical College (1894). Nonetheless, preparation for a medical career was then more amateur than it is today. Medical reformer and Hrdlička contemporary, William Henry Welch once noted that most medical schools did not even require a college degree and, in fact, demanded “no evidence of preliminary education whatsoever.” See John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (New York: Penguin, 2004), 65. Indeed, Hrdlička entered medical school with no college preparation and thus his story corraborates Welch’s observation. Even with the validation of two medical degrees, Hrdlička still felt compelled to pass the State Board examination in Baltimore in 1894 with the intention of studying at Johns Hopkins Medical School, which had just opened in 1893, and had a reputation as the most professionalized and modern medical institution in the United States. Nonetheless, after earning these medical credentials, Hrdlička abandoned the practice of medicine and started a career in the new discipline of anthropology, for which he had prepared for only about four months. I do not mean this as a criticism of Hrdlička. I only want to point out that in those times preparation for a scholarly career depended more on individual initiative and less on institutional authentication, especially for the poorer classes, who very rarely made it to college. 12 Letter, Hrdlička to Mrs. Ralston, 8 August 1928, box 54, “RA-RG, 1900–42,” Correspondence.

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CHAP TER I

WHAT ARE THE CZECHOSLOVAKS RACIALLY?

But while religion, territory, or a political creed can be more or less clearly determined, nobody has ever been able to explain what he means by a nation, in a way that could be used as a basis for practical politics. (Of course, if we say that a nation is a number of people who live or have been born in a certain state, then everything is clear; but this would mean giving up the principle of the national state which demands that the state should be determined by the nation, and not the other way round).1 (Karl Popper: The Open Society and its Enemies)

In 1933 Hrdlička was preparing a short article called “What Are the Czechoslovaks Racially” for a book commemorating the Czechoslovak Pavilion at the Chicago World’s Fair. He later took the word “racially” out of the title, but he clearly wanted to discuss race. To better illustrate what he called the “racial characteristics of our people,” he asked the editor to include photographs of all the book’s Czech and Slovak contributors. His piece should come first in the book, he insisted, because everyone would want “to know what are the Czechoslovaks before reading anything else about them [sic].”2 Their physical racial features should come first. This chapter attempts to explain what Hrdlička meant by “Czechoslovakian racial characteristics” and why they were important to him. It argues that Hrdlička’s belief in Czechoslovakian racial identity helped justify the revolutionary reordering of Central Europe after World War I. In his view, 1 2

Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1962), 55. Letter, Aleš Hrdlička to R. Jaromír Pšenka, 17 January 1933, box 54, “Pšenka, R. Jaromir, 1916–39,” Correspondence.

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CHAPTER I

racial identity was “natural” and it legitimized the destruction of AustriaHungary, the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia, and the political union of Czechs and Slovaks.

Sorting Out the Czechs and Slovaks Identifying Czechoslovakians racially was part of Hrdlička’s larger search for the physical markers revealing who belonged together “naturally.” This was a revolutionary and potentially chaotic way of organizing the world. It was comparatively easy to identify citizens of a state with official paperwork, like passports, but how could one tell who belonged to which “nation” or “race”? What made Czech and German immigrants different when all had once been citizens of Austria, especially when many were bilingual? In May 1917, one month after the United States had declared war on Germany, eight Czech immigrants working on a government ship in Baltimore were summarily fired for being “Germans.” To most Americans, being “Austrian” meant German nationality and allegiance to the Central Powers, but Czechs from Austria claimed to be on the Allied side. In a letter to a Baltimore paper, the Bohemian National Alliance complained, “the taking of Bohemians [Czechs] for ‘Austrians’ is a grave injustice.”3 The letter cited the authority of Hrdlička, who advised the government to “remove from the Bohemians this shameful brand of Austrians.”4 It was not always easy to convince governments, accustomed to the official documentation accompanying citizenship, that self-identifying Czechs and Slovaks were not “really” Austrians. Even before the war started, some Czech Americans demanded official recognition for their national identity. In 1912, initial reports from the 1910 census angered Czech Americans by classifying them simply as “Austrians.” The Chicago newspaper Denní Hlasatel (Daily Herald) complained, “Slavic immigrants are only presented according to the empire they came from: Czechs as Austrians, Slovenes as Austrians, Slovakians and Croatians as Hungarians, Poles as Germans and Austrians or Russians.”5 3

4 5

“Loyal Bohemians Should not be Classed as Austrians and Considered as Enemy Aliens,” The Baltimore Sun, 22 May 1917, box 64, “Toula, J.J., 1911–14,” Correspondence. In the early days of the war, and even after, many Czech Americans referred to themselves as “Bohemians,” from the region of Bohemia. “Loyal Bohemians Should not be Classed as Austrians,” 22 May 1917. “Jsme Rakušani!” [We’re Austrians!], Denní Hlasatel (Daily Herald), 4 May 1912, box 20, “DOS-DZ, 1904–1942,” Correspondence.

10

W hat A re the Czechoslovaks R acially?

To correct this “error,” Hrdlička wrote to the Director of the United States Census Bureau, E. Dana Durand, to inform him that Czechs, “never were, (n)or wish to be, regarded as ‘Austrians’.”6 He also complained that identifying Czechs merely as Austrian citizens left open the possibility that they could be wrongly taken for Germans. One German newspaper in Chicago, cautioned Hrdlička, was falsely “claiming” all the Czechs from Austria “as Germans.”7 Hrdlička was still complaining to the Census Office in 1918 because prison inmates in official reports were “classified by country of birth but not by race,” and there was no way “to distinguish the Czechs and Slovaks from other Austrians.”8 In December 1917, the United States declared war on Austria and the stakes rose for Czech Americans again. At this point, large numbers of foreign-born immigrants, like Czechs, were officially citizens of an enemy state, regardless of the nationality they claimed.9 Reflecting on this problem, Czech-American J. J. Toula of Baltimore wrote to Hrdlička warning that “we have to be sure that Czechs, who are not yet citizens [of the U.S.A.], will not suffer from the same laws that will apply to Germans from Austria.”10 A few days later Hrdlička wrote to his friend, Congressman Adolph Sabath, also an immigrant from Austria, and advised him: “it will be of the utmost importance that the Czecho-Slovaks are kept … distinct from the Austrians and Hungarians,” and that “recognition be afforded to Bohemia, which as you well know is as much one of the Allies as Belgium or Serbia.”11 Hrdlička, Sabath, and their Czech friends were proposing a new classification that was difficult for governments to detect. Which Austrian citi6 7 8

Letter, Hrdlička to E. Dana Durand, 6 May 1912, box 20, “DOS-DZ, 1904–1942,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Durand, 6 May 1912. Letter, Hrdlička to Frank Viktor Martinek, 18 October 1918, box 43, “Martinek, Frank V., 1918–1936,” Correspondence. 9 Joseph S. Roucek, “The Image of the Slav in U.S. History and in Immigration Policy,” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 28, no. 1 (January 1969): 29–48. According to Roucek: “The Slavs especially presented a real problem to Washington. The census showed that in 1917 the American population included about 4,662,000 people born within the borders of the Central Powers, half of them Germans and the other half a queer conglomeration of nationalities from Austria-Hungary. Altogether about onethird of America’s foreign born came from the enemy territory—and this included all the Slavs (except those from Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution). An overwhelming majority had not become citizens—and thus, technically, they became enemy aliens when the U.S. declared war on Austria-Hungary in December 1917” (38). 10 Letter, Toula to Hrdlička, 23 November 1917. 11 Letter, Hrdlička to Adolph Joachim Sabath, 14 April 1917, box 58, “Sabath, Adolph J., 1917–33,” Correspondence. On Sabath, see Burton A. Boxerman, “Adolph Joachim Sabath in Congress: The Early Years, 1907–32,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 66, no. 3 (Autumn 1973): 327–340.

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zens were Czech and which were German? A few days after the declaration of war, Hrdlička again wrote to Sabath asking him to intervene on behalf of a Czech man with an American wife and children who could not get back into the United States because U.S. consular officials were “treating them as ‘Austrians’.”12 The consular officials, more used to the tangible paperwork of citizenship than the vagaries of national belonging, were probably doing their jobs correctly. The roots of this uncertainty about distinguishing friendly Czechs and Slovaks from hostile Germans and Hungarians stretched back to Europe. Scholars of Central Europe have demonstrated that there were still significant numbers of individuals whose nationality was ambiguous.13 Alert Americans noticed this haziness at the time. Herbert Adolphus Miller told American readers in 1915 that “in centers like Pilsen or Prague, where the two races [Germans and Czechs] have lived together for a long time, it is absolutely impossible to tell them apart until they begin to speak, and then the identity may be concealed by using the other language.”14 Thomas Čapek, a Czech-American friend of Hrdlička’s, also noted, “a person cannot say confidently that his ancestry is either pure German or pure Bohemian.”15 Names that did not match the current national identities of their bearers were often an embarrassment. In Austria Under Hapsburg Misrule, Čapek apologized for the unfortunately named Czech nationalist politician Francis Reiger: “Despite his German name, an uncompromising patriot.”16 When writing a professional recommendation for the Czech anthropologist Vojtěch Schück, Hrdlička felt obliged to note that “his name is German, but he is of Slav extraction.”17 Schück, like many in Central Europe, came from a “mixed” family. To make matters more complicated, the Czech physical an12 Letter, Hrdlička to Sabath, 13 December.. 13 Chad Bryant, “Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939–1946,” Slavic Review 61, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 683–706; Eagle Glassheim, “National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945,” Central European History 33, no. 4 (2000): 463– 486; Glassheim, Noble Nationalists: The Transformation of the Bohemian Aristocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Tara Zara, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). 14 Herbert Adolphus Miller, “The Bohemian Character,” in Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, ed. Thomas Čapek (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1915), 131. 15 Thomas Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 22. 16 Čapek, Bohemia Under Hapsburg Misrule, 115. 17 Letter, Hrdlička to Edmond V. Cowdry, 4 January 1919, box 19, “Cowdry, Edmund Vincent, 1917–21,” Correspondence.

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thropologist Jindřich Matiegka speculated, with some disdain, that Schück was Jewish.18 In the early days of the republic, Schück officially changed his suspicious German name to “Suk,” which sounded more Czech.19 Matiegka and Hrdlička both praised him for this. According to nationalists, this confusion arose because there were an unknown number of latent Czechs and Slovaks who were the victims of Austria-Hungary’s alleged “Germanization” and “Magyarization” programs. Hrdlička frequently discussed the problem of “Germanization.” He argued that there had been “constant and strenuous efforts” at the “Germanization” of Bohemia and Moravia, which began as a project in the Middle Ages, continued until World War I, and resumed in World War II.20 During roughly the same period, the Slovaks in Hungary suffered from “Magyarization.”21 Because the Austrian state supposedly favored Germans, there were ample reasons to hide one’s “true” nationality. Allegedly, some of these erstwhile Czechs and Slovaks betrayed their “real” identities due to moral laxity, and Čapek claimed that many were “opportunists who everywhere go with the ruling element.”22 Others, felt Čapek, were less complicit because they were “compelled, for various reasons, to conceal their nationality.”23 The children of these recreants could be “really” Czech and not even know it. In his recent book, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, Kevin McNamara has recounted an interesting story that illustrates this mystical belief in dormant national identity. The famous odyssey of the Czechoslovak Legion through Siberia began in Cheliabinsk in May 1918, when an Austrian prisoner of war threw a chunk of iron out of a train window and killed a Czech legionnaire.24 The Czechoslovak soldiers stopped the train, identified the perpetrator, and executed him on the spot. Later, a Czech sergeant recalled, 18 Letter, Jindřich Matiegka to Hrdlička, 2 October 1912, box 44, “Matiegka, Jindřich, 1901–13,” Correspondence. 19 See Kevin McDermott, “A ‘Polyphony of Voices’? Czech Popular Opinion and the Slánský Affair,” Slavic Review 67, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 846. Around the same time, according to McDermott, Rudolf Slánský suggested that a Jewish friend change his name from a “German-Jewish name” to a “Czechized” one (846). 20 Hrdlička, “The German Race,” The Scientific Monthly 56, no. 3 (March 1943): 242. 21 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” The Czechoslovak Review 2, no. 1 (November 1918): 181. 22 Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 115. 23 Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 115. 24 Kevin J. McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation: The Mutinous Army that Threatened a Revolution, Destroyed an Empire, Founded a Republic, and Remade the Map of Europe (New York: Public Affairs, 2016), 201.

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“the name of the culprit was Malik.”25 This was a typically Czech name, and for the sergeant this meant “the man was of Czech descent, but a renegade.”26 The sergeant then reflected on Malik’s “true” identity in a way that Hrdlička and his fellow nationalists would consider entirely plausible: What turned him so violently against his blood brethren is not known … but it occasionally happened that by means of promises, bribery or force, weak Czechs and Slovaks were seduced from their natural allegiance to become mere creatures of the Austrians. Doubtless Malik had become one of these, or at least the son of such a man who, perhaps, had been compelled to send the unfortunate lad to a German school where he had learned to forget his Czech ancestry. The Austrian habit of Germanizing in this manner their Czech subjects was one of the reasons which caused us to rise up against the empire.27

To the Allied governments during World War I, these lines between nationalities were often invisible. Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, recounted that during the war it was difficult to convince the Allies that Czech and Slovak prisoners were different from other Austrian citizens. Russia, he complained, was so “legitimist” that its officials “could not comprehend that our men should be Czechs and Slovaks” and treated them instead as Austrians.28 He had similar problems with the other allied states and recalled that it took considerable diplomatic effort to convince them to recognize the “non-German and non-Magyar races” not as Austrian citizens but as allies who should be treated more leniently.29 A new problem emerged after the Allied governments officially recognized Czechs and Slovaks as separate from Austrians. Joining the Czech national cause now meant avoiding the harsher treatment that German 25 Gustav Becvar, The Lost Legions: A Czechoslovakian Epic (London, Stanley Paul, 1939), 88–90, quoted in McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 201. 26 Becvar, The Lost Legions, quoted in McNamara, 201. 27 Becvar, The Lost Legions, quoted in McNamara, 201–202. McNamara identifies the assailant as “Hungarian-speaking,” even though his own source suggests that the man was a German speaker. Tomáš Masaryk, who was well informed but not an eyewitness, remembered that the man was “a German prisoner.” See Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, The Making of a State: Memories and Observations, 1914–1918, trans. Henry Wickham Steed (New York: Howard Fertig, 1969), 254. 28 Masaryk, Making of a State, 156. 29 Masaryk, Making of a State, 264.

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Austrians endured. In expatriate communities, grumbled Masaryk, “all kinds of renegades who know a few words of Czech claimed fellowship with us, especially when the Allied governments granted privileges to our citizens and recognized us not only as a nation but as an Allied nation.”30 In the United States, Hrdlička was also aware of this problem, and in 1917 he advised his friend Toula to purge Czech nationalist circles of all Germans. Above all, he extolled, “we must all keep away from Germans now, like from an infection.”31 Just a few days after the United States declared war on Austria-Hungary, Hrdlička’s friend Toula found a symptom of the German “infection” in Czech circles. He reported to Hrdlička, “some of our people complained that Frank Novotný from Washington, who wanted to become a member of the local branch of the Czechoslovakian National Council, is a ‘DeutschBöhm,’ and that he raised a German flag whenever the Germans won (this was supposedly before America declared war on Germany).”32 Toula, however, believed Novotny to be a genuine Czech and suspected that the accusations were based merely on rumor and possible revenge.33 Whatever Novotný’s sympathies were, this episode demonstrates how the boundaries of national identity were uncertain and potentially dangerous. Any angry neighbor could challenge a person’s identity. In the next few decades, in harsher times and places, national identity became a life and death question, and citizenship afforded little or no protection.

What are the Czechoslovaks Racially? It would have been expedient if “nature” had provided clear and measurable physical traits distinguishing the various nationalities of Central Europe, yet such markings were not obvious at all. If anyone could identify them, though, it was Hrdlička, who wrote a definitive textbook on anthropometry; the detailed measurement and comparison of human body parts. Yet Hrdlička struggled to name any concrete features that visibly distinguished Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, and Hungarians from each other. In fairness, 30 Masaryk, Making of a State, 87. 31 Letter, Hrdlička to Toula, 19 May 1917. 32 Letter, Toula to Hrdlička, 11 December 1917. 33 Letter, Toula to Hrdlička, 11 December 1917.

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A 1915 postcard from Thomas Čapek to Hrdlička. In 1915 the depicted territory belonged to the sovereign state of Austria-Hungary, and “Slovakland,” as it is called here, was part of the historic kingdom of Hungary. National Anthropological Archives

Hrdlička knew, at least formally, that centuries of intermingling made defining biological borders in Central Europe difficult. Nevertheless, racial thinking compelled him to use biological language even when empirical evidence was lacking. With clever and well-chosen words, he implied that central European national groups were derived from “nature” itself. Imagining racial characteristics served to legitimize the new state of Czechoslovakia by explaining why a Czech and Slovak political union was “natural,” and why the old Austria-Hungary was “artificial” and therefore disposable. Within Austria-Hungary, sometimes called the “Dual Monarchy,” most Czechs lived in the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia, which was on the “Austrian” side of the border, while most Slovaks lived in the equally old Hungarian Kingdom, on the “Hungarian” side. This political history was supposedly incongruent with “racial history.” In the early days of World War I, Czech American author Thomas Čapek wrote that Czechs and Slovaks “are one—one in language and one in racial traditions—and nothing divides them except political boundaries.”34 Austria-Hungary was phony be-

34 Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 113.

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cause it “tore apart peoples of the same race.”35 During his stay in the United States, Masaryk carped that most Americans “found it hard to understand that the Slovaks were comprised in our race.”36 After the war, racial “nature” provided a primordial argument that redirected attention away from Czechoslovakia’s conspicuous lack of any political tradition. Nature, after all, was older even than Austria-Hungary. In a 1938 radio address, Hrdlička claimed that “Czechoslovakia is no recent creation,” but “is one of the oldest political and racial units of Europe.”37 This is a confusing sentence because in 1938 Czechoslovakia was only twenty years old, not “one of the oldest.” However, the statement makes some sense if one illogically combines, as Hrdlička did, the two “facts” that the Bohemian Kingdom (not Czechoslovakia) was politically old, and the presumed “Czechoslovakian race” was ancient. One year previously, a Czech-American professor named Victor Vraz gave a speech at Northwestern University in which he used a slightly different but recognizably similar formula for Czechoslovakia: “it is a country racially old, yet politically new.”38 These were grand theories, but what made Czechs and Slovaks racial relatives? The two groups spoke similar languages, but the idea of “race” suggested a physical, not just a cultural, similarity. President Masaryk was happy with the vague belief that “blood and speech” united them. As a physical anthropologist, Hrdlička sought something more tangible. The two peoples, he supposed, had “so much in common…physically and otherwise…that they must be regarded as one and the same people.” 39 Elsewhere he commented that Czechs and Slovaks “are closely related,” and he deliberately added that they were similar not only in language but also “physically.”40 Still, despite his specialty in physical anthropology, he failed to point out specifically which features they shared, and his most thorough somatic description of the Czechoslovakian “race” is a gargantuan disappointment. 35 Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 70; Hrdlička, “The German Race,” 242. 36 Masaryk, Making of a State, 253. 37 Hrdlička, “Address on Columbia Broadcasting System,” 9 April 1938, box 55, “Radio Talk on Czechoslovakia, 1938, Correspondence. 38 Victor Vraz, “Central Europe’s Last Democracy,” 16 March 1937, box 54, “Pšenka, R. Jaromir, 1916–39,”Correspondence. 39 Hrdlička, “What are the Czechoslovaks,” in World’s Fair Memorial of the Czechoslovak Group: International Exposition, Chicago, 1933, ed. Jaroslav E. S. Vojan and Michal Laučík (Chicago: Czechoslovak Group, 1933), 22. 40 Letter, Hrdlička to Joseph G. Pruša, 13 January 1942, box 60, “Slovak Catholic Sokol, 1936–42,” Correspondence.

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There was an original Czechoslovakian physical “type,” he asserted, which featured “good stature, strong, well-proportioned body, face more rounded than oval, physiognomy frank, smiling, intelligent and attractive, hair and eyes ranging from light to medium brown, absence of prognathism.”41 Struggling to embellish this vague list, he stumbled deeper into guesswork. Supposedly Czechoslovakians shared the extremely subjective characteristics of “cordiality, sensitiveness, idealism, valor [and] love of family, music, dance, and of everything good and beautiful.”42 In the absence of physical evidence, Hrdlička unleashed his imagination. He envisioned prehistoric Czechs and Slovaks as related tribes descending from one primal family. Far back in the mists of prehistory, the Czechs were “one of a number of closely related Slavic tribes,” which spread out “from the mother-territory of all Slavs.”43 Of these, the Slovaks were the most closely related branch to the Czechs. There had once been an “original type” of “Czechoslovak,” over 1,000 years before Czechoslovakia existed, which was “best preserved in parts of Moravia and Slovakia.”44 Imagining this family history allowed Hrdlička to think of Czechs and Slovaks as “twin brothers by origin.”45 Finding physical markers to distinguish Slavic Czechs from their Germanic neighbors was an enduring problem. From 1939 to 1945, the Nazi German Protectorate in Bohemia and Moravia also searched for differentiating physical characteristics. Especially under Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the authorities tried to collect anthropometric data to find physical traits distinguishing the “German” and “Slav” populations. In 1940 the protectorate took over the Faculty of Natural Science at Charles University and turned it into the Institute for Racial Biology, led by the physical anthropologist Bruno Kurt Schultz.46 On several occasions the institute undertook programs to make anthropometric registers of the population. Its researchers studied, for example, policemen, university students, and 41 Hrdlička, “What are the Czechoslovaks,” 24. In Hrdlička’s understanding of race, “prognathism” was a “primitive” feature common to the skulls of Blacks. 42 Hrdlička, “What are the Czechoslovaks,” 24. 43 Hrdlička, “What are the Czechoslovaks,” 24. 44 Hrdlička, “What are the Czechoslovaks,” 24. 45 Hrdlička, “Address given at the ‘Freedom Rally,’” 7 May 1941, box 55, “Radio Talk at Freedom Rally, New York, May 7, 1941,” Correspondence. 46 Michal Šimůnek and Uwe Hossfeld, “The Avantgarde of the ‘Rasse’: Nazi ‘Racial Biology’ at the German Charles University in Prague, 1940–1945,” Acta universitatis Carolinae 54, no.1 (2014): 56.

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schoolchildren.47 As might be expected, the search for clearly visible marks distinguishing Germans from Slavs remained frustratingly unrewarding, especially in the many cases of mixed identities.48

The Slavic Race Hrdlička’s language turned most racial when he described the Slavs. However, people who speak Slavic languages, like Czechs and Slovaks, are, by definition, a linguistic and not a biological group. In a lecture in Prague, Hrdlička admitted that Slavs were “people who speak Slavic languages,” but, he quickly added, this definition was “hardly satisfying.” 49 Language was not enough for Hrdlička, and he was determined to find some physical markings that united Slavs. He could only muster three wobbly indicators of Slavic racial identity: “familial” relationship, membership in the White race, and remarkable fertility. Hrdlička imagined all the Slavic language speakers as a big family with physical similarities. “Originally,” he declared, all Slavs “were but one great strain of people of the same blood.”50 These primeval Slavs had been “physically as well as otherwise” a “homogeneous or but slightly mixed group.”51 Over the years, these pure Slavs mixed with other peoples and took on local variations, yet “certain general bodily and mental similarities” remained visible.52 In the modern age, this familial solidarity produced pan-Slavism because all Slavs still felt mutual sympathy rooted in what Hrdlička imagined was their “common parentage.”53 Hrdlička was aware that over time intermarriage had modified the Slavs physically, but he insisted that there had once been an “original type” of Slav, which one could still spot in the less industrialized and more pristine regions of Slovakia, Russia, and the Balkans. While Hrdlička refrained from calling Slavs a race in “the full sense of the 47 Šimůnek and Hossfeld, “The Avantgarde of the ‘Rasse’,” 74–82. 48 Bryant, “Either German or Czech,” 693. 49 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka i budoucnosti lidstva [The Origin, development, and future of humankind] (Praha: B. Kočí, 1924), 67–68. 50 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 181. 51 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 182. 52 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 69. 53 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 181.

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word,” he still asserted that primal biological similiarities made them “relate to each other with familial sympathy.”54 It was obviously a priority for Hrdlička to class the Slavs as members of the White race. This is why he was so defensive about theories that the Slavs had originated in Asia, which questioned their Whiteness. He always responded testily that the Slavs were “derived from the same source as the rest of the European population.”55 Because the Slavs emerged from the same racial cradle as other Whites, Hrdlička claimed it would not “be expected that they would show any radical differences” from Whites in general.56 His strenuous insistence that Slavs were White, rather than Asian, raises the issue of what exactly made them distinct from other Whites, especially since Hrdlička dismissed language, the most obvious answer, as inadequate. He never reconciled this tension. Lacking any data, he was satisfied with the pronouncement that there were four “strains” of “European Whites”: the Nordic, the Alpine, the Mediterranean, and the Slav.57 Slavs were racially just like other Whites, yet they remained physically distinct, mostly because Hrdlička introduced the word “strain” to keep them so. Hrdlička’s most empirical argument for the distinct racial identity of Slavs was their high fertility rates. In general, thought Hrdlička, the Slavs noticeably out produced all “the more important European peoples.”58 However, his Czechs were an exception to the rule. Unlike their more rustic Slavic cousins, Czechs were “drained out by factories and tiring and tense modern life” and therefore “not as fresh and original as other branches of the Slavs.”59 Fortunately, Czechoslovakia still had backward baby-producing regions in Moravia and Slovakia, where the population remained “youthful, preserved, and full of strength.”60 Hrdlička failed to notice that his explanation of Slavic fertility pointed to environmental instead of racial causes: When people moved to industrial areas, they tended to have fewer children. This is not the road Hrdlička chose to go down. Instead, he theorized that high fertility rates must be a feature of 54 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 181. 55 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 183. 56 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 183. 57 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 180. 58 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 183. 59 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 76–78. 60 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 78.

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Slavs in their most “natural” state, before encountering the degenerative and “unnatural” processes of industrialization. “There seems to be something in the Slav constitution,” he chose to speculate, “which favors a high birthrate, otherwise the phenomenon would not be so general. It is a gift of nature.”61

The German: “The Inborn Antagonist of the Slav” All nations, Hrdlička contended in 1917, live by the “natural law of preservation” and “only the strongest survive the struggle for existence.”62 The innocent nation of Czechoslovaks also engaged in “everlasting struggles against invaders.”63 The “invaders” were Germans and Hungarians. In 1917 there was no such thing as Czechoslovakia, and thus it had no political history, yet Hrdlička gave it an ancient “natural history,” which he summarized as “a 1,500-year-long life-and-death struggle with the race who surround it from the north, west, and south.”64 At the beginning of the Middle Ages, Hrdlička told a Prague audience in the 1920s, the territory of modern Czechoslovakia had been “completely Slavic.”65 In the oldest Czech and Moravian sources, he continued confidently, “there is not one mention of any other people.”66 German invaders only began to infiltrate Czechoslovakia (centuries before it existed) at some point in the early Middle Ages. Hrdlička, like other nationalists, especially blamed the Habsburgs, who in 1526 founded the dynasty that eventually became modern Austria. This racialized account ignored the complicated cosmopolitanism of the Habsburgs and instead classed them simply as “Germans” intent on “Germanizing” the Czechs. According to Hrdlička’s friend, Čapek, “if there is one thing deeply rooted in the minds of the Bohemian people it is the belief, or rather the conviction, that the Hapsburgs … planned the Germanization of the nation.”67 Hrdlička’s commitment to this racial narrative blinded him to empirical realities right before his eyes. Racial beliefs compelled him to imagine 61 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 183. 62 Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” National Geographic XXXI (February 1917): 163. 63 Hrdlička, “What are the Czechoslovaks,” 22–23. 64 Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” 163. 65 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 70. 66 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 70. 67 Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 85.

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Czechs and Slovaks as “related,” but in truth, Czechs and Germans were probably more biologically intermingled. German and Czech speakers were often literally related as parents, children, and siblings. There were many, like the anthropologist Vojtěch Suk (formerly Schück), who were bilingual and might have been German, Czech, or Jewish. When asked about his uncertain nationality, Suk nonchalantly replied, “you know how it used to be, mother is Czech, father is German.”68 Hrdlička’s own mother, whose maiden name was Wagner, came from a Bavarian family.69 Despite intermarriage all around, Hrdlička chose to imagine German and Czech speakers as biologically distinct. The drama of race made excellent propaganda for delegitimizing AustriaHungary as an oppressive “German” state. Even before the war, Masaryk had aimed to “de-Austrianize” the Czechs. Since Austria was considered a sinister agent of “Germanization,” the campaign to “de-Austrianize” inevitably became anti-German. In 1912, Chicago’s Denni Hlasatel (the Daily Herald) proclaimed that “the Germans have it so good in Austria, where they rule nationally and economically.”70 In 1915 Thomas Čapek denounced the “German-made” Austrian constitution.71 According to Čapek, the Germans were the richest “race” because they enjoyed “special favors from the government.”72 Although a superb tool for beating up Austria-Hungary, after 1918 the racial narrative threatened the new Czechoslovakia by making local Germans, the second-largest group after Czechs, innate enemies of the state. They might be citizens, but there was no reason to listen to them. Masaryk, their new Czech president, scolded that “a large number” of the Germans still harbored an “intolerant demeanor” and would have to “get rid of the old habit of mastery and privilege.”73 When the Swedish scholar S. A. Arrhenius criticized Czechoslovakia in 1920, Hrdlička flippantly dismissed his grievances as “a reflection of the old feelings of the German towards the Slav element of the population.”74 “It is hard,” Hrdlička continued coldly, “for some 68 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 2 October 1912. Suk denied being Jewish. 69 Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 17–18. 70 “Jsme Rakušani!” Denní Hlasatel, 4 May 1912. 71 Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 67. 72 Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 26. 73 Masaryk, Making of a State, 387–389. 74 Letter, Hrdlička to Svante August Arrhenius, 6 June 1920, box 6, “ARN-AY, 1916–1942,” Correspondence.

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A 1917 postcard from Vojta Beneš to Hrdlička satirizing the Austrian Eagle. National Anthropological Archives.

of the people of the old regime of exploitation to get used to new conditions, under which they can be no more the favored few.”75 The racial narrative that Czechoslovakians were “indigenous” raised the question of whether Germans really belonged there at all. Supposedly, the modern Germans of Czechoslovakia were really foreigners, who, due to royal patronage, had enjoyed unfair privileges at the expense of the indigenous, and therefore more deserving, Czechs and Slovaks. A report on the Czechoslovakian census of 1930 claimed that “the Germans were introduced into the towns by the kings of the Přemyslid Dynasty, not only near the frontiers, but also in the central part of the kingdom.”76 Masaryk also believed the Germans “originally came to us as colonists” in the Middle Ages.77 Hrdlička labeled Czechoslovakia’s German citizens as “descendants of immigrants, who came mostly on the invitation of Czech rulers.”78 75 Letter, Hrdlička to Arrhenius, 6 June 1920. 76 Emanuel Čapek, “Racial and Social Aspects of the Czechoslovak Census,” The Slavonic and East European Review 12, no. 36 (April 1934): 596. 77 Masaryk, Making of a State, 387. 78 Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” 171.

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With the rise of Nazi Germany, there were good reasons to back away from racial thinking, but it was hard for many, including Hrdlička, to abandon these well-worn mental habits. Shortly before he died in 1943, Hrdlička wrote a confusing article called “The German ‘Race.’” In keeping with the spirit of the times, he tried to argue that the Germans had never really “constituted a ‘pure race.’”79 Yet, in utter contradiction to this argument, he refused to let go of the mystical belief that German speakers shared a common biological origin.80 The article awkwardly concluded that the Germans could be proud of their race (which did not exist) if they could keep their racial pride “within wholesome limits.”81 After all, Hrdlička generalized, “racial pride” is “a universal part of both our idealism and egoism, and within bounds is a potential agency for much that is beneficial.”82 Hrdlička died before the 1,500-year racial struggle finished conclusively, but his perspective helped justify getting rid of the German Czechoslovakians once and for all.83 In 1947, a Czech patriot named Viktor Palivec wrote a book in which he praised Hrdlička for demonstrating that Czechs, not Germans, were indigenous to the region. To show how recent scholars had “proven” Hrdlička’s contention, Palivec pointed to an angry little 1946 pamphlet by Metod Nečas called My před 2,000 lety [Us, 2,000 years ago].84 This combative post-war tract claimed that Slavs had occupied Central Europe for 2,000 years, long before any Germans showed up. The real point of this zealous rant comes at the end, where the author exclaims: “the Germans must be aware that we Slavs have been here from time immemorial, and that they [the Germans] are the aliens, and that the ones who have the right of domicile here in Central Europe are us Slavs!”85 Race-thinking finally triumphed as claims of racial aboriginality obliterated the civil rights of individuals. In post-war Czechoslovakia, civil rights took a back seat to racially based collective guilt. Just after World War II, all the “foreign” Germans finally lost the right, as a group, to live as citizens in Czechoslovakia.86 Between May 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Hrdlička, “The German Race,” 238. Hrdlička, “The German Race,” 238. Hrdlička, “The German Race,” 249. Hrdlička, “The German Race,” 249. See Glassheim, “National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing.” Viktor Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička [Who is Aleš Hrdlička] (Prague: Orbis, 1947), 27. Metod Nečas, My před dvěma tisíci lety [Us, 2,000 years ago] (Blansko, CZ: Karel Jelínek, 1946), 141. There was still a large number of nationally indeterminate individuals in Czechoslovakia, and there is no reason for modern historians to accept the national categories as unambiguous. See Bryant, “Either Ger-

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and August 1945, about 660,000 Germans were evicted from Czechoslovakia, and somewhere between 19,000 and 30,000 died as a result of the forced removal, many from direct violence.87 After August 1945, the Czechoslovakian government commenced an official removal program, which evicted yet another 2.8 million. According to Chad Bryant, three out of ten people living in Bohemia and Moravia before 1939 were considered German, while in 1950, the purged regions were 94 percent Czech.88 While not explicitly a “racial” policy, racialized thinking played a role. It is obvious, for example, that these punishments were more related to national grouping than to actual crimes committed by individuals during the occupation. The Czechoslovakian government’s official language conflated the categories of “German,” “fascist,” and “traitor,” and encouraged rough “people’s courts” to dish out harsh and abnormally swift punishments to all these vaguely interconnected enemies.89 Tellingly, 88,614 “anti-Fascist” Germans were also expelled.90 Czechoslovakia’s ancient “life-and-death struggle with the race who surround it,” as Hrdlička framed it, was finally over, and the state was at last in harmony with race and “nature.”

“Natural” Nations Instead of “Artificial” States Hrdlička’s premise that race was a more “natural” way to divide humans than state borders was revolutionary, widespread, and dangerous. Many writers argued, especially in the interwar period, that “nature,” biology, and race were the real motivating forces of history. The American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn thought “the racial history of Europe” revealed the true, “natural” tale of “highly distinctive racial traits” that “date back many thousands of years”91 man or Czech”; Tara Zahra, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis.” Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 93–119, and Zahra, “Reclaiming Children for the Nation: Germanization, National Ascription, and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1945,” Central European History 37, no. 4 (2004): 501–543. 87 Bryant, 697; Mary Heimann, Czechoslovakia: The State that Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 159–60. 88 Bryant, “Either German or Czech,” 683. 89 Heimann, Czechoslovakia, 156–60. 90 Heimann, Czechoslovakia, 156–61. 91 Henry Fairfield Osborn, in Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936 [1916]), viii.

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In 1921 Lothrop Stoddard agreed that “viewing world affairs solely from the angle of politics” was a “dangerous delusion.”92 States come and go, but race was primal and constant. Stoddard was almost certainly referring to the demise of Austria when he wrote: “the late war has taught many lessons as to the unstable and transitory character of even the most imposing political phenomena, while a better reading of history must bring home the truth that the basic factor in human affairs is not politics, but race.”93 In a recent book, Johann Chapoutot has shown how Nazi thinkers extended this already well-worn appeal to “nature” to its most extreme and logical conclusions. In Hitler’s thinking, “the state is only a means to an end. Its end and its purpose is to preserve and promote a community of human beings who are physically as well as spiritually kindred.”94 Hitler agreed with many Czech nationalists that one particular state, Austria-Hungary, had been “doomed to failure by biology and history.”95 The ideas of Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomáš Masaryk, help demonstrate how revolutionary and modern this worldview was. At the age of sixty-four in 1914, Masaryk was a man who conveyed deep confidence in his hard-won convictions.96 As a polyglot university professor, he was especially popular with intellectuals like Wickam Steed and R. W. Seton-Watson in Britain, and with academics of Czech heritage in the United States.97 Still, despite the complexity of his style, many average Czechs, and Czech-Americans, revered him. At a 1918 rally in Chicago, for example, he drew a crowd of at least 100,000 supporters.98 Like many Czechs, Hrdlička looked to Masaryk for moral inspiration. Hrdlička and Masaryk corresponded on a semi-personal level on a few occasions. For example, Masaryk sent Hrdlička a condolence letter when his first 92 Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 4–5. 93 Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color, 4–5. 94 Adolph Hitler, cited in Johann Chapoutot, The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi, trans. Miranda Richmond Mouillot (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 114. This citation, and many like it, can be found in the chapter called “The State” in Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, ed. and trans. John Chamberlain et al. (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941), 594. 95 Chapoutot, Law of Blood, 286. See Hitler’s bitter denunciation of old Austria, which consumes about three chapters of Mein Kampf, 85–226. 96 Joseph S. Roucek, “Thomas Garigue Masaryk as Politician and Statesman,” Social Science 6, no. 3 (July 1931): 274. 97 For example, Otto Kerner and Joseph Roucek in the U.S.A. 98 Josef Kalvoda, “Masaryk in America in 1918,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 27, no. 1 (1979), 88.

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wife died in 1918 and a congratulatory note on his 60th birthday. Nevertheless, they never met personally, they were not close, and their intellectual outlooks differed in many ways. As a scientist, Hrdlička concerned himself with identifying the supposed measurable physical details of Czechoslovakian identity. In contrast, Masaryk was more interested in religious and moral problems than in measuring noses. Of the two, only Masaryk was capable of explaining Czechoslovakian national identity in a deeply idealistic way. In a 1929 letter, Hrdlička reverently praised the aging president for his “deep moral effect on our people everywhere.”99 Masaryk’s conclusions emerged from his sincere personal struggle with the weightiest questions of his time. As a young scholar, Masaryk worried intensely about the demise of traditional religious beliefs, which he considered a “moral crisis” with stark psychological and political repercussions.100 This crisis, he reasoned, was inescapable because modern science had invalidated traditional religious authority, which had buttressed the old moral order. “Reasoned critical scientific knowledge,” wrote Masaryk, nullified “childlike faith.”101 The core issue of his day, in his words, was “the great antagonism between the Churches and modern thought.”102 This conflict with religious tradition was both unavoidable and also tragic. “Do we wish to return to the creeds and the doctrines of the Church?” asked Masaryk, “is there to be a complete return, a philosophical Canossa?”103 His answer was no, but the forfeiture of old beliefs created “spiritual and moral anarchy.”104 As a young scholar, he had argued in his doctoral dissertation that suicide rates were rising because “belief and the disposition to believe were vanquished by skepticism, criticism, irony, negations and disbelief.”105 99 Letter, Hrdlička to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, 20 March 1929, box 44, “Masaryk, Thomas G., 1918– 1930,” Correspondence. 100 Roman Szporluk, “Masaryk in Search of Authority,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 7 (1965), 236; R. R. Betts, “Masaryk’s Philosophy of History,” The Slavonic and East European Review 26, no. 66 (November 1947): 31. 101 Masaryk, Making of a State, 370. 102 Masaryk, Making of a State, 321. 103 Masaryk, Making of a State, 321. 104 Masaryk, Making of a State, 314; Betts, “Masaryk’s Philosophy of History,” 31; Alexander Gillies, “Herder and Masaryk: Some Points of Contact,” The Modern Language Review 40, no. 2 (April 1945): 120; Szporluk, “Masaryk in Search of Authority,” 236. 105 Masaryk, Making of a State, 315; Wickham Steed, “Thomas Garrigue Masaryk. The Man and the Teacher,” The Slavonic and East European Review 8, no. 24 (March 1930): 467; Masaryk, Der Selbstmord als sociale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civilisation [Suicide as a mass phenomenon in modern civilization] (Vienna: Carl Konegen, 1881).

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Thanks to spiritual vertigo, “men lost their peace of mind [and] grew restless, inconstant, nervous.”106 Masaryk’s search for a new, “scientific,” moral order eventually led him to a “religion” of Czech national identity. Wickham Steed, an English fan of the Czechoslovakian president, described Masaryk as a philosopher who hoped to cure modern disillusionment with “a new religion in harmony with science.”107 Steed portrayed Masaryk as a “prophet” whose religious quest had led to a national ideology that could fulfill modern spiritual needs.108 Near the end of his political career, Masaryk himself claimed, “I saw politics as an instrument, [but] my goal was religious and moral.”109 For Masaryk, the rise of the new religiosity synchronized precisely with the end of Austria-Hungary in 1918. In his timeline, the Great War was the historic moment when the old spiritual order, represented by Austria, crumbled, and the new era, supported by the Allies and the Czechoslovaks, began. The war had proved the emptiness of what Masaryk considered the outdated “creeds of the Churches,” but it had also stimulated the modern religious longings of people who could now grasp “the true nature of religion” and sought a modern surrogate to replace the phony dogmas of the past.110 The liberation of the “oppressed” nations after World War I was crucial to this spiritual renewal because it brought, in Masaryk’s view, a “fresh comprehension of nature” and entirely new “ethical ideals.”111 Newly freed from the older age of “oppression,” Czechoslovakians could now “work out a critical, scientific philosophy of nationality and culture.”112 This revolution would require the rewriting, now from a liberated national point of view, of “literature and art, philosophy and science, legislation and the state, politics and administration.”113 106 Masaryk, Making of a State, 315. 107 Steed, “Thomas Garrigue Masaryk,” 467. 108 Szporluk, “Masaryk in Search of Authority,” 236. 109 Karel Čapek, Hovory s T.G. Masarykem [Conversations with T. G. Masaryk] (Prague: Československý spisovatel, 1990), 130. Also quoted in Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 30. Orzoff’s book led me to the original source. I have translated the sentence for myself, but Orzoff’s rendering is almost the same: “my goal was religious and moral: politics was just an instrument” [Já jsem viděl v politice nástroj, cíl mně byl náboženský a mravný]. 110 Masaryk, Making of a State, 320, 403. 111 Masaryk, Making of a State, 303. 112 Masaryk, Making of a State, 326. 113 Masaryk, Making of a State, 390.

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Another essential part of the new spirituality was “democracy.”114 What Masaryk really meant by the term democracy was “national self-determination,” especially for Czechs. He was not very interested in democracy in the sense of “rule by the people,” with “people” meaning “individual citizens”; instead, he preferred to substitute nations for individuals.115 Assuming that nations were analogous to human individuals, he argued that “the democratic principle implies that small states and nations stand on a footing of equality with the big, just as the rights of the so-called ‘small man’ within his own community are, in theory, equal to those of the wealthy and powerful.”116 In another place he wrote that “all nations, big and small, are equally entitled to their own individualities.”117 In equating “nations” with “individuals,” he viewed national self-determination as an updated extrapolation of democracy. “Natural rights” is another term Masaryk borrowed from a previous age but refurbished for a more modern purpose. Masaryk used it to mean the primal right of nations to self-determination and “equality,” not the rights of individuals. He superficially linked his ideas to the liberal heritage of the French Revolution by admitting that natural rights implied “equality between all citizens of a state,” but he hurriedly added that the individual’s “natural right to freedom and equality” applied equally “to communities and nations.”118 He was apparently unable to see any conflict between the rights of nations and the rights of individuals. This macroscopic view of democracy and natural rights left no room for human individuals to exist outside of nations. For Masaryk, the abstraction of “mankind” only became “concrete” and “practical” when separated into 114 Masaryk’s use of the term democracy left plenty of room for further discussion. Orzoff, in Battle for the Castle, observes: “he used the term imprecisely, referring to an idealized state and society, rather [than] to legal or formal characteristics such as universal suffrage and free election” (30). See also Peter Bugge, “Czech Democracy 1918–1938 – Paragon or Parody?” Bohemia 47 (2006/07): 3–28; Szporluk, “Masaryk’s Idea of Democracy,” The Slavonic and East European Review 41, no. 96 (December 1962): 31–49. 115 Masaryk’s view can be contrasted with Woodrow Wilson’s. Trygve Throntveit, “The Fable of the Fourteen Points: Woodrow Wilson and National Self-Determination,” Diplomatic History 35, no. 3 (June 2011): 446. According to Throntveit: “Rather than the national right of self-determination, Wilson promoted the civil right of self-government, by which he meant participation, by all constituents of a polity, in determining public affairs.” See also Betty Unterberger, “The United States and National Self-Determination: A Wilsonian Perspective,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 926–941. 116 Masaryk, Making of a State, 325. 117 Masaryk, Making of a State, 371. 118 Masaryk, Making of a State, 304.

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nations.119 In order to embrace humanity, one must first belong to a nation, for “the more national we are the more human we shall be, the more human the more national.”120 This outlook explains why Making of a State, which is well over 400 pages long, dedicates only a few vague paragraphs to practical details like voting, representation, and civil protections for individual citizens, while no reader can forget its long and passionate passages on the “rights of nations.”121 Why would individuals ever want to exist simply as citizens of a state without belonging to a nation? “Nations,” after all, were “the natural organs of mankind.”122 Masaryk aligned himself with those philosophers who believed “the state is an artificial and the race a natural institution.”123 Because nations were “one of the facts of nature,” political organizations should match them; thus, Austria had to give way to Czechoslovakia and bring Central Europe more precisely in harmony with “nature.”124 Habsburg Austria’s long history was illegitimate because “nationality, as expressed in terms of race, played little or no part” in its formation.125 In what sounds like an outright renunciation of geographical reality, he insisted that the Danube River had never really functioned as a “natural link between the peoples living on its banks.”126 The rise of Czechoslovakia was a triumph of racial identity over the state. During the war, Thomas Čapek demanded new borders be drawn “according to racial, not political lines.”127 “With the destruction of the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy,” lectured Czech-American professor Victor Vraz in 1937, “came a racial triumph.”128 In the 1920s, Masaryk remembered the Czech national victory in similar terms: “having no state of our own,” he reveled, “we organized ourselves racially and set ourselves, as a people, above the Austrian state.”129 He wrote these words as president of Czecho119 Masaryk, Making of a State, 409. 120 Masaryk, Making of a State, 409. 121 Masaryk, Making of a State, 390–396. 122 Masaryk, Making of a State, 390. 123 Masaryk, Making of a State, 413; Gillies, “Herder and Masaryk,” 125. 124 Gillies, “Herder and Masaryk,” 125. 125 Masaryk, Making of a State, 385. 126 Masaryk, Making of a State, 372. 127 Čapek, Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule, 12–13. 128 Vraz, “Central Europe’s Last Democracy,” 16 March 1937. 129 Masaryk, Making of a State, 413. In 1923, only two years before, Hitler wrote: “the protection of the German race presumed the destruction of the Austrian state.” Hitler, Mein Kampf, 21. There was a vast chasm between these two former Austrians in terms of their behavior, yet the shared premise is clear.

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slovakia, when it occurred to him, perhaps with some trepidation, that this foundation myth, which he had helped to create, also “engendered a certain inclination to be anarchical.”130 Masaryk’s theory that the demise of Austria-Hungary harmonized the region with “nature” prompted some staggeringly bad predictions after World War I. Racial rearrangement of the world according to its “natural” borders supposedly resolved Europe’s most serious problems. Healing could now begin because the “division of Austria into her historical and natural elements” had been “a condition of the reconstruction of Europe.”131 Because the post-war treaties “created juster [sic] conditions throughout Europe,” Masaryk prophesized that “the tension between states and races will decrease.”132 Now that the Slavic nations had their own states (at least to Masaryk’s satisfaction), diplomacy would be “clearer and more practical than it was under Austria-Hungary.”133 The delusion of racial reasoning prompted his worst prediction of all. Now that post-war Germany was “racially more homogenous,” he forecasted in the 1920s, it would “pursue pacific, democratic aims.”134 In the first half of the twentieth century, Hrdlička joined forces with those who wanted to overthrow the existing political order and reorganize Central Europe according to racial identities presumably derived from “nature.” As a physical anthropologist specializing in anthropometry, he thought the key to racial identity must be encoded in measurable bodily features. For him, the deepest truths about human variation could be found in skull measurements, facial shapes, and skin tones. If anyone could describe the bodily marks that separated Czechs from Germans, it would have been Hrdlička. Yet in the end, his supporting evidence, what there was of it, was unconvincing, and he had to prop it up with speculation. Perhaps this was because the categories of race and nation were not measurable bodily features, but immaterial constructions of the human mind. 130 Masaryk, Making of a State, 413. Masaryk, a decent and constructive person, admitted that his racial movement was inherently “anarchical” and potentially dangerous if not balanced by some reverence for the state (and for Christianity as well). He also worried about the tendency to “anarchy” in Čapek, Hovory s T.G. Masarykem, 340. One could argue that Hitler, a nihilistic and destructive person, simply embraced the anarchy of race right up to the extinction of the state in 1945. 131 Masaryk, Making of a State, 103. 132 Masaryk, Making of a State, 371. 133 Masaryk, Making of a State, 382. 134 Masaryk, Making of a State, 378.

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“PUBLIC OPINION IS A POWERFUL WEAPON”

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies.1 (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Planting Propaganda in the Press Two months before the United States entered World War I, Hrdlička published an article called “Bohemia and the Czechs” in The National Geographic Magazine. Readers might have taken it for a dispassionate work of anthropology. Although a popular magazine, National Geographic is famous for “scientific” themes. Under the title of the article, Hrdlička was described authoritatively as “Curator of Physical Anthropology in the U.S. National Museum.”2 He did not disclose whether he was writing as an anthropologist or simply as a Czech-speaking immigrant who supported the Czech cause. A behind-the-scenes look at Hrdlička’s private correspondence exposes the real story. The article was propaganda. A discerning reader can see past the aura of scientific authority and perceive the political goal behind Hrdlička’s piece. At the time of writing, the United States was still neutral in the Great War, and its main diplomatic problems were with Germany, not Austria. Yet the article criticizes Austria and promotes autonomy for Czechs and Slovaks. The opening paragraph praises the recent French and British endorsement of the “liberation of 1 2

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1982), 63. Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” 163.

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The cover of the February 1917 National Geographic featuring Hrdlička’s article, “Bohemia and the Czechs.” Personal correspondence reveals a hidden purpose behind the article: Hrdlička was making a propaganda pitch to the American public for the independence of Czechs and Slovaks. At the time, the United States was not at war with either ­Germany (April 1917) or Austria (­December 1917).

Czecho-Slovaks from Austria-Hungary.”3 The article’s closing lines return to current events by concluding: “the true Bohemian [Czech] here as elsewhere … has nothing but the bitterest feelings toward Austria, the stranger and usurper.”4 Aside from a brief and vague description of “Czechoslovakian” physical features, the article had nothing to do with the kind of science Hrdlička practiced. Instead, it consisted mostly of unoriginal history, which he gathered second-hand from whatever sources his Czech American friends provided. Czechoslovakian history predictably demonstrated that “no evil of humanity has ever originated in Bohemia …. Few nations can boast of as clean a record.”5 A large part of the article was simply unsupported stereo3 4 5

Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” 162. Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” 186. Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” 167.

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typing and gossip, as when Hrdlička wrote that the Czechoslovakian “is not cold, calculating, thin-lipped, nor again as inflammable as the Pole or the southern Slav, but is sympathetic and full of trust.”6 Although short on plausible history, the essay offered a sweeping racial theory that Czechoslovaks were a little nation embroiled in a “1,500-year-long life-and-death struggle with the race [Germans] who surround it.”7 Hrdlička’s private correspondence with Czech friends reveals that the National Geographic article was really part of a strategically coordinated propaganda campaign. After the war, Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomáš Masaryk, bragged about how he had placed “interviews and articles in the largest and most influential daily papers” and established “personal relations with prominent writers of all opinions” to win “the favor of the public.”8 Hrdlička’s article, like many other publications, was part of this media assault. In Britain, Masaryk and his friends, Professor Robert Seton-Watson and journalist H. Wickham Steed, created an entire journal, The New Europe, to support their cause. Not surprisingly, New Europe focused singlemindedly on the national aspirations of Slavic people and, as one critical historian wrote, it “idealized subject peoples and small nations.”9 The same writer wryly observed that when the war ended, “to the average Englishman peace meant that he had survived the greatest massacre in world history. To the New Europe it meant something more: the dawn of a new Europe and the fulfilment of all the hopes of the small band of men.”10 In reality, peace meant extinction for the esoteric New Europe, which having accomplished its ephemeral aims had nothing more to say and disappeared in 1920. Within the Czech American community, there was high pressure to “place” articles and essays in influential periodicals. In this zealous spirit, Hrdlička’s friend, Thomas Čapek, a banker from New York, decided, almost as soon as the war in Europe began, that it was his duty to rally Americans for the Czech cause. In 1915 he published Bohemia Under Hapsburg Misrule to inform the public and raise money. As soon as the publication was ar6 Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” 179. 7 Hrdlička, “Bohemia and the Czechs,” 163. 8 Masaryk, Making of a State, 221. 9 Harry Hanak, “The New Europe, 1916–20,” The Slavonic and East European Review 39, no. 93 (June 1961): 381. 10 Hanak, “The New Europe,” 384.

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ranged, he wrote Hrdlička and asked, “Will you help in this missionary propaganda and buy one or more copies? You have influential friends, could you give them copies, or influence them to buy?”11 Hrdlička ordered three copies and sent Čapek $3.10 for the books and $50.00 as a donation to the “missionary” cause. There were always edgy intimations within the Czech-speaking community that everyone must do his or her part. In 1916, Lou Dongres, a Czech living in the Midwest, wrote to Hrdlička to tell him, “Vojta Beneš [brother of the more famous Edvard], my old friend from Bohemia came to see us. I was happy when he told me he spoke with you and that you are an enthusiast for Czech freedom.”12 Hrdlička responded by defensively clarifying his role in the nationalist program: “I can do little of what I would and perhaps should; and yet I feel that I am an anchor in the right place and that what I do is not entirely useless to our interests.”13 A few of the Czech leaders managing the American propaganda campaign were political operatives whose ambitions intensified the demand for patriotic contributions. Men like Charles Pergler, Ludvík Fisher, and Emanuel Voska eventually got positions in the Czechoslovakian republic after the war. Voska, an independently wealthy businessman, was especially hard-nosed. Those who shared his beliefs viewed his exploits as heroic, yet his methods involved stealing information and funding a staff of spies to feed the public salacious evidence of “Teutonic treachery.” Vojta Beneš, the brother of Czechoslovakia’s second president Edvard, was on assignment from Europe specifically for the purpose of stirring up important Czech Americans and pushing propaganda. Hrdlička later came to see V. Beneš as a power broker who doled out opportunities in the new Czechoslovakian state, with little accountability, to his inner circle of favorite Czech Americans. These men simply assumed they were disseminating truth and dispelling lies on behalf of a morally righteous cause. They were quick to criticize those who did not share their passion, even to the point of publicly shaming allegedly unenthusiastic individuals. All the evidence suggests that Hrdlička shared their zeal and contributed willingly, yet even for him there was considerable pressure to help by “placing” articles friendly to the cause. 11 Letter, Čapek to Hrdlička, 6 May 1915, box 17, “Čapek, Thomas, 1914–1943,” Correspondence. 12 Letter, Lou W. Dongres to Hrdlička, 7 March 1916, box 20, “DI-DOR, 1903–40,” Correspondence. 13 Letter, Hrdlička to Dongres, 10 March 1916.

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Dr. Ludvík J. Fisher, the head of the Czech National Alliance in Chicago, who later went on to a career in the Czechoslovakian army, could be particularly pushy.14 In 1916, he and Beneš wrote a joint letter to Hrdlička. They thanked him for some articles he had already written, but they immediately moved on to demands: “We are asking you, please, now is the most important time. You have access to magazines. Please write about our matters and Austrian questions in a magazine. Can we look forward to this?!”15 Along with all the dramatic underlining and exclamation, the letter bore the bold stamp of the Czech National Alliance in all capital letters with the signatures of Fisher and Beneš on either side of it. Hrdlička wrote back apologetically, “I would do more, but at the moment the situation does not allow it. In any case I am happy to do what I can. Just now there are some articles coming out in the Boston Transcript and several other good magazines—maybe at least some seeds have been planted.”16 Despite some initial hesitations, Hrdlička produced plenty of propaganda during the war. In 1917, Fisher wrote Hrdlička to state abruptly: “Mr. Čapek in New York wrote me that you would be able to write a 16-page English brochure about Purkyně [a Czech scientist]. Thank you for this and I look forward to it.”17 In a fortnight Hrdlička received yet another urgent letter from Fisher, who reported, “we got a letter today from Paris stating that we are involved in a great struggle over public opinion in America.”18 According to the news from operatives in Paris, Jacob Schiff, a German-Jewish-American financier, was spreading Austrian propaganda in America, so Hrdlička suddenly had a new mission. “At such a moment we have only men like you,” Fisher implored, so “could you, as an expert on domestic affairs, please take up this issue and refute these proven lies in the press.”19 Fisher’s exhortation went on: “Certainly you, so well-known in the US, will find some American, English-language paper in Washington, Baltimore, or Phil-

14 Václav Vondrášek and František Hanzlík, Krajané v USA a vznik ČSR v dokumentech a fotografiích (Prague: Ministerstvo obrany České republiky, 2008), 14; Betty Miller Unterberger, The United States, Revolutionary Russia, and the Rise of Czechoslovakia (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2000), 24. 15 Letter, Fisher and V. Beneš to Hrdlička, 13 September 1916, box 23, “FI-FL, 1903–41,” Correspondence. 16 Letter, Hrdlička to Fisher, 16 September 1916. 17 Letter, Fisher to Hrdlička, 18 January 1917. Jan Evangelista Purkyně (1787–1869) was a Czech scientist. 18 Letter, Fisher to Hrdlička, 2 February 1917. 19 Letter, Fisher to Hrdlička, 2 February 1917.

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adelphia, which will be happy to print your articles.”20 Remembering his previous assignment for Hrdlička, Fisher curtly added, “you can catch up on the work on Purkyně later.”21 It was this feverish war propaganda that produced Hrdlička’s 1917 National Geographic article, not years of careful research in physical anthropology. In fact, Hrdlička threw the article together quickly and relied on his fellow propagandists to feed him the necessary information. He started working on the article for the February issue of National Geographic in the first week of February, and it went to circulation in March. On 8 February he wrote to Čapek, “I am glad to tell you confidentially that I have just been asked by the National Geographic Society to prepare for their magazine an article on ‘Bohemia and Bohemians.’”22 He immediately viewed it as a propaganda opportunity and told Čapek, “I am anxious to make this article worthwhile.”23 To put the article together in time, he needed information, but he did not turn to research in physical anthropology. Instead, he asked Čapek, who apparently had a good Bohemica collection, to send pictures of famous Czechs like Hus, Komenský [Comenius], and Dvořák. He also needed “a list, as far as possible with the date and place of birth, of about 25 foremost Bohemians in art, music, literature, science, and … inventors.”24 Instead of even-handed analysis, Hrdlička intended to denounce Austria, so he also requested “absolutely reliable data on the persecution, executions and imprisonments, revolts in regiments, etc.”25 He also wrote to Vojta Beneš to request “a thoroughly reliable and extended record of Austrian atrocities.”26 He neither examined primary sources for himself nor looked for “reliable data” that clashed with his publicity aims. Once it was finished, Hrdlička was very proud that his article contributed to the propaganda effort and earned the respect of his friends. “Thanks for your good remarks about my article,” he wrote to Čapek, “I am getting some appreciative letters about it from Americans, so that it may re20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Letter, Fisher to Hrdlička, 2 February 1917. Letter, Fisher to Hrdlička, 2 February 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 8 February 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 8 February 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 8 February 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 8 February 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Vojta Beneš, 15 February 1917, box 14, “Beneš, Vojta, 1917–18,” Correspondence.

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ally do some good. As the magazine has over six hundred thousand readers, we must really regard it as a privilege that such an article was called for.”27 Hrdlička also wrote to Fisher in Chicago and asked, “How did you like my article in the Geographic magazine”?28 Fisher responded, “Everyone is talking about your article in the National Geographic Magazine. It is an excellent piece of work and has done a lot of good.”29 Vojta Beneš, whom all the Czech-Americans seemed especially eager to impress, also sent his thanks and remarked that “the National Geographic is an excellent journal and this is a great present.”30

Moving the Masses Beyond “placing” articles, Czech nationalist leaders in America also tried to organize mass support in the United States, and they achieved some success, at least within the immigrant community. One friendly observer wrote that American cities with large Czech populations had become “centers of zealous propaganda,” which helped to spread the “true facts of the Bohemian cause.”31 In his memoirs, Masaryk, who preferred “cultivated” propaganda, seemed almost surprised by the massive reception that Chicago Czechs gave him. “Before the war I used to denounce ‘flag wagging,’” he wrote, “but, in America, I realized that in so doing I had overshot the mark. Professor as I then was, I had failed to see that a well-organized procession may be worth quite as much as an ostensibly world-shaking political article or a speech in Parliament.”32 Hrdlička had advocated public demonstrations on behalf of Czech national issues as early as July 1915, long before the United States was a combatant. In a New York Czech-language publication he urged Czech Americans to meet publicly, draw up resolutions, and make sure the English-language press got the news. “If we raise the Czech voice across the country,” he wrote,

27 28 29 30 31

Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 31 March 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Fisher, 16 April 1917. Letter, Fisher to Hrdlička, 25 April 1917. Letter, V. Beneš to Hrdlička, [1917?]. Joseph Jahelka, “The Role of Chicago Czechs in the Struggle for Czechoslovak Independence,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908–1984) 31, no. 4 (December 1938): 400–401. 32 Masaryk, Making of a State, 207.

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“the moral result will be assured. We live in the twentieth century, in which public opinion is a powerful weapon.”33 Czechoslovakian and US aims eventually merged at the end of the long war, but until 1917 Czech-Americans who embraced the nationalist cause were pedaling a foreign agenda to a population that preferred neutrality. The United States was trying to stay out of the fight, yet the firebrands for Czechoslovakian independence were urging it to take sides. Not all Czechs and Slovaks, either US citizens or hopeful citizens, were so eager to challenge America’s official neutrality. In April 1915, for example, 3,000 Czechs assembled in New York City to display their support for neutrality.34 Other Czech-Americans, like Thomas Čapek, wanted a more aggressive agenda. Impatient with “hair-splitting contentions,” he knew from the first days of the war that the destruction of Austria and the “liberation” of Czechs and Slovaks were unquestionably just goals.35 In 1916, he criticized the Newyorský Česky Pomocný Sbor (New York Czech Aid Society) because it thought Czech Americans “should be neutral” and collected money only for food and other humanitarian aid.36 Čapek preferred the more aggressive Bohemian National Alliance, which was already raising funds to “free the country.”37 Hrdlička, a government employee, was more timid than his friend and was looking for ways to harmonize Czech nationalist propaganda with American interests. In 1915, the New Yorské listy (New York Newspaper) published a letter from Hrdlička, in which he summoned Czechs who were “citizens of this country” to public demonstrations against the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine.38 However, Hrdlička saw the protest as an opportunity to highlight alleged Austrian atrocities as well. This was a clever way to link American outrage at the German Empire to Czech animosity toward the German “race.”39 One of the editors of New Yorské listy understood Hrdlička’s tactic perfectly and explained how the demonstrations would “display loyalty to the American government” while help33 Hrdlička, “Protestujme” [We protest], New Yorské listy, [July 1915?], box 17, “Čapek, Thomas, 1914– 1943,” Correspondence. 34 Unterberger, United States, Revolutionary Russia, 24–25. 35 Letter, Čapek to Hrdlička, 5 March 1916. 36 Letter, Čapek to Hrdlička, 5 March 1916. 37 Letter, Čapek to Hrdlička, 5 March 1916. 38 Hrdlička, “Protestujme,” New Yorské listy, [July 1915?]. 39 Hrdlička, “Protestujme,” New Yorské listy, [July 1915?].

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1916 postcard from Thomas Čapek to Hrdlička. The stamp, issued by the Bohemian National Alliance in America, features the lion emblem of the Kingdom of Bohemia and reads “For the Fatherland.” The stamps were part of a fundraising effort on behalf of Czech independence. National Anthropological Archives.

ing the Czech and Slovak cause by showing “strong opposition to Teutonic atrocities.”40 The German “race,” not the German state, was supposed to be the core problem. After the war, E.[nrique] St.[anko] Vráz, a Czech patriot who lived in Chicago for many years, gave an account of his wartime activities in a CzechAmerican newspaper, which provides some insight into attempts at mass propaganda.41 Vráz recalled giving speeches and writing editorials during the 1916 elections to convince Chicago Czechs to vote for Wilson, whom they considered friendlier to Czech interests than his Republican opponent, despite his neutrality platform. Vráz also claimed that during the war he 40 J.J. Nový, “Redakční poznámky” [Editor’s Notes], New Yorské listy, [July 1915?], box 17, “Čapek, Thomas, 1914–1943,” Correspondence. 41 Enrique Stanko Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou” [An explanation for the Czech community], Svornost, 4 October 1919, box 65, “Vraz, E. St., 1917–22,” Correspondence. The original name and birthplace of this mysterious individual, who usually identified himself as “E. St. Vráz,” are not entirely certain. See Ctibor Votrubec, “E. St. Vráz stále ještě záhadný” [E. St. Vráz still mysterious], Vesmír 74, no. 583 (1995). https://vesmir.cz/cz/casopis/archiv-casopisu/1995/cislo-10/e-st-vraz-stale-jeste-zahadny. html (accessed 29.9.2019).

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“gave almost 100 lectures throughout Czech America” in which he “begged people to give money.”42 In one case, Vráz was sent to Cleveland on what the leadership considered a “sensitive” mission due to the large number of empire-loyal Czechs who lived there. Vráz claimed that he urged the Clevelanders to show “more fervent love for the old country” and scolded them “that only an undeserving son of his fatherland would hesitate to protect and defend it.”43 Of course he asked them for money. “Do your duty,” he nagged them, “those who do not contribute to the funds of the National Alliance I would call traitors, or worse.”44 If Vráz’s story was accurate, Czech Americans must have been subjected to at least hundreds of preachy lectures about their obligations to the old country. In truth, they were often willing to help. They were most generous in terms of money with one writer estimating that Czech Americans gave at least one million dollars to the cause.45 A few took the more drastic step of joining the Czechoslovak Legion. By November 1917, a contingent of volunteers was preparing to fight in France.46 By the end of the war, approximately 3,000 Czech Americans had volunteered.47 One of the very first to enlist was František Mička in September 1917. “Frank” Mička was the artist who had sculpted scores of busts designed to illustrate racial features for Hrdlička’s famed Panama-California Exposition of 1915.48 In 1917 Mička signed up as a translator for the Czechoslovakian forces and was preparing to leave for France. Mička asked Hrdlička if he would also join as a doctor or scientist. Hrdlička’s induction into the Czech American band of warriors, thought Mička, “would have a big influence on our people in America.”49 Hrdlička did not join, but the Czech American league evoked romantic words of military glory from his pen. In typically defensive mode, he prom42 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.” 43 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.” 44 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.” 45 Kevin J. McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 81. 46 Unterberger, United States, Revolutionary Russia, 60. 47 Edvard Beneš, Světová válka a naše revoluce: Vzpomínky a úvahy z bojů za svobodu národa [published in English as My War Memoirs] (Prague: Orbis, 1928), I.136; Jahelka, “The Role of Chicago Czechs,” 404. 48 Matthew Bokovoy, The San Diego World’s Fairs and Southwestern Memory, 1880–1940 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 91; Samuel J. Redman, Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 178, 235–36. 49 Letter, František Mička to Hrdlička, [September 1917?], box 46, “Mička, Frank, 1913–40,” Correspondence.

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ised to “do what I can here and especially among the Americans. Next week I have two lectures about Bohemia.”50 During the war he read Mička’s correspondence with fellow Czech Americans in his “Bohemian Circle” club. He told Mička that the group wanted “the Bohemian Army to do us honor, to be at least equal of the American.”51 Although himself a non-combatant, Hrdlička had plenty of advice for Mička: No man of the Bohemian army should ever be taken alive, to be jeered at or tortured by the Germans; and that should instill a fear in the enemy to meet them, such as the Bohemians did in the bygone ages. In order that this may be affected it will be necessary not to tolerate any weakness; to be strong physically; and above all to beat the enemy in brains. The Bohemian army must not be satisfied with a mere duty, but should do its duty plus revenge for all the wrongs of the past. Falling of individuals will not matter; the more, the more glory.52

While poor Mička was supposed to be fighting the Germans to the death, Hrdlička reassured him that the Czechs at home would not be “idle or indifferent” but would “see to it that everything our little army does will receive due publicity and appreciation.”53

Austria Must Be Destroyed Although Hrdlička and his nationalist friends were confident that the United States should be on their side, not all Americans agreed that the Czechoslovakian cause deserved their blood and sacrifice. The United States remained neutral from 1914 to 1917, and as late as 1916, Woodrow Wilson won re-election on the campaign slogan: “He kept us out of war.” During this long period of American neutrality, many foreign actors hoped to harness the power of the United States for their own aims. The most vocal foreign interest in America was Britain, which used any methods available to manipulate information and prejudice the pub50 51 52 53

Letter, Hrdlička to Mička, 24 September 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Mička, 15 March 1918. Letter, Hrdlička to Mička, 15 March 1918. Letter, Hrdlička to Mička, 15 March 1918.

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lic against Germany and Austria. Almost as soon as Britain entered the war in 1914, its navy severed direct telegraph cables between Germany and the United States. This enabled the British secretly to edit many of the European news reports before sending them across the Atlantic.54 The British capitalized on their secretive control over information by dramatizing reports of German “atrocities” and “plots.” As the war progressed, the British strategy focused on drumming up support from nationalist groups to provoke rebellion behind enemy lines.55 This program merged well with Czech propaganda aims, which imitated British tactics. Always on the hunt for Austrian “brutalities,” Czech publicists compared Bohemia to victimized Belgium. “Martyrdom, and especially blood, win sympathies,” wrote Masaryk after the war.56 The execution of Edith Cavell, a favorite British theme, served as a model for interpreting the imprisonment of Masaryk’s daughter Alice, who was held by authorities in 1915–1916. Masaryk remembered after the war that “the arrest of my daughter Alice was of great service to us in England and America.”57 As soon as the war began in 1914, some Czech Americans promptly joined the publicity campaign against Austria. In September 1914, Thomas Čapek, an outspoken Czech-American, immediately began to “familiarize the broader American public with the efforts of the Czech nation.”58 Within a few months, Čapek published Bohemia Under Hapsburg Misrule to make sure that the Czech cause was “sufficiently and generally known among influential Anglo-Americans.”59 Convincing the United States to dismantle Austria in the name of Czechoslovakian “liberation” was not easy. President Wilson did not favor wiping out Austria and was not as impressed with “national self-determination” as many have thought. As diplomatic historian Betty Unterberger has argued, “self-determination” reminded Wilson of “secession” in the Ameri54 Philip M Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Present Day (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 177–78; See also J. Lee Thompson, “‘To Tell the People of America the Truth’: Lord Northcliffe in the USA, Unofficial British Propaganda, June-November 1917,” Journal of Contemporary History, 34, no. 2 (April 1999): 243–262. 55 Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, 195; Hanak, “The New Europe,” 384. 384. 56 Masaryk, Making of a State, 92. 57 Masaryk, Making of a State, 92; See also Unterberger, “The Arrest of Alice Masaryk,” Slavic Review 33, no. 1 (March 1974): 99. 58 Letter, Čapek to Hrdlička, 30 September 1917. 59 Letter, Čapek to Hrdlička, 6 May 1915.

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can Civil War, an unacceptable precedent.60 Furthermore, his international vision for the future assumed increasing political unity, not fragmentation. According to one scholar, “Wilson was committed to the cosmopolitan state, which inherently fused people in political union.”61 The United States entered the fight against Germany in April 1917, but it waited another seven months before declaring war on Austria. When Wilson finally asked Congress to declare war on Austria on 4 December 1917, he still insisted that “we do not wish in any way to impair or rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”62 A month later, he mentioned “autonomous development” in Central Europe in his famous “Fourteen Points” speech, but he stopped short of endorsing independence movements. A disappointed Tomáš Masaryk even called the speech “pro-Austrian.”63 Masaryk’s efforts to lobby Wilson personally were not very successful. He only obtained his first official visit to the White House on 3 June 1918, when he met with Secretary of State Robert Lansing.64 President Wilson did not get around to meeting Masaryk until 19 June 1918, when the two men strongly disagreed about the important issue of the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia.65 Finally, on 3 September, just three months before the war ended, the United States agreed to recognize Masaryk’s Czechoslovak National Council as a belligerent in the war, but still without any territorial claims.66 By this time, the fearsome Czechoslovak Legion controlled most of Siberia, so raw military power might have meant as much to Wilson as national liberation. Even with these failures, propaganda was important in a more general way. Wilson eventually embraced national self-determination because it

60 Unterberger, “The United States and National Self-Determination,” 928. For a very different and compelling interpretation of Wilson, see Nicole M. Phelps, U.S.-Habsburg Relations from 1815 to the Paris Peace Conference: Sovereignty Transformed (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 219–257. 61 David Steigerwald, “The Reclamation of Woodrow Wilson?” Diplomatic History 23, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 96. 62 Woodrow Wilson, State of the Union Speech, 4 December 1917, cited in Unterberger, “United States and National Self-Determination,” 931. 63 Masaryk, Making of a State, 246; Unterberger, “United States and National Self-Determination,” 936; Trygve Throntveit, “Fable of the Fourteen Points,” 445–46: “the principle that groups bound by common language or lines of descent have a right to political and territorial independence—was not one of Wilson’s Fourteen Points.” Phelps, in U.S.-Habsburg Relations (239), has argued that Wilson’s speech could be interpreted as supporting dismemberment, but she recognizes that some Austrians, like Count Stephan Burián, agreed with Masaryk’s conclusion. 64 Kalvoda, “Masaryk in America,” 97. 65 Kalvoda, “Masaryk in America,” 91. 66 Kalvoda, “Masaryk in America,” 98.

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made good propaganda.67 Almost immediately after declaring war, Wilson used an executive order to create the Committee of Public Information (CPI), which arguably became the most sophisticated government propaganda agency in the world at the time. Like the British government, the director of the CPI, George Creel, was eager to preach self-determination to stir dissent within Austria-Hungary, but he also wanted to use it to motivate immigrants living in America.68 Tellingly, one of Masaryk’s rare visits to the White House was arranged by Creel.69 After a long period of reluctance, Wilson finally endorsed “national selfdetermination” for the first time in a speech to Congress on 11 February 1918.70 After seeing the popular response to this new terminology, he began to use it more often. Some of his advisors, and a few later historians, have argued that it was irresponsible for Wilson to let propaganda lead policy, even if it brought short-term victory.71 It produced a euphoric but short-lived “Wilsonian moment” around the world, but termination of the war quickly revealed that national self-determination applied only to select groups. The United States even resisted applying its new doctrine to Austria until the final months of the war. National self-determination was never intended for nationalist groups in Ireland, India, Egypt, Indochina, and Korea, to name a few of the most disappointed. Bolshevik leaders, equally eager to take advantage of nationalism for their own ends, were quick to point out the hypocrisy of Wilson’s propaganda.72

“Cultivated Propaganda”: Lobbying the Powerful Much of the Czech publicity effort bypassed the public altogether by taking the case straight to the powerful. Although Masaryk drew big crowds in Chicago, they startled him a bit, and most of his efforts were aimed at lob67 See Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 68 Unterberger, The United States, Revolutionary Russia, 123. 69 Cedric Larson and James R. Mock, Words That Won the War: The Story of the Committee of Public Information, 1917–1919 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939), 261. 70 Manela, Wilsonian Moment, 41; Throntveit, “Fable of the Fourteen Points,” 476; Unterberger, “United States and National Self-Determination,” 930. 71 Unterberger, “United States and National Self-Determination,” 929; Throntveit, “Fable of the Fourteen Points,” 476. 72 Manela, Wilsonian Moment, 42–43.

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bying the mighty in private instead. Later, as president of Czechoslovakia, Masaryk again sought to influence the sophisticated and let them guide the simple to the right conclusions. Instead of appealing directly to the crowd, he manipulated the press, which he viewed as “a vital instrument through which the elite could educate other citizens.”73 This is the kind of “cultivated propaganda” he pursued during the war. Andrea Orzoff, a specialist in Czechoslovakian propaganda, summarizes the war effort this way: “propaganda and cultural diplomacy were of crucial importance. Connections mattered—to academics, politicians, journalists, and elegant society hostesses alike, in Paris, London, Geneva, and Washington. Rather than trying to persuade the public, the Czechs set out to cultivate elite opinion.”74 Masaryk’s propaganda efforts in Britain can serve as a brief example of his style. “In England,” he mused after the war, “the name of Hus helped us. In a word, a policy of culture needs cultivated propaganda.”75 It is hard to imagine that the fifteenth-century Jan Hus meant much to the British public as it suffered through the world’s most bloody war, but Masaryk was more interested in reserved discussions at “universities, particularly with historians and economists” than with more populist types of persuasion.76 Masaryk brought “cultivated propaganda” to the United States, where he sought out “politicians and men in official positions.”77 While in Washington, his goal was “to cultivate the society of the Senators and Congressmen of the two chief parties and of all shades of political opinion.”78 He did not get much attention from the White House, but he still had influential friends. One of these was the affluent Charles R. Crane and his son Richard, both of whom were enthusiastic friends of the Czechoslovakian cause, and whose riches brought access to power.79 Richard, for example, became secretary to Robert Lansing and later a US diplomat to Czechoslovakia.

73 Andrea Orzoff, “‘The Literary Organ of Politics’: Tomáš Masaryk and Political Journalism, 1925–1929,” Slavic Review 63, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 298. 74 Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 44. 75 Masaryk, Making of a State, 91. 76 Masaryk, Making of a State, 91. 77 Masaryk, Making of a State, 253. 78 Masaryk, Making of a State, 221. 79 Jahelka, “The Role of Chicago Czechs,” 383; Masaryk, Making of a State, 212; McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 82; Unterberger, “The Arrest of Alice Masaryk,” 92.

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Long before the war started for the United States, well-to-do Czech Americans eagerly lobbied the powerful on behalf of these foreign interests. In 1915, Čapek reported to Hrdlička that he was busy writing letters to “distinguished men” and “begging them to plead for Bohemia’s cause publicly and privately.”80 Hrdlička, from his perch in Washington, instructed Czech nationalist leaders about how to persuade and “inform” powerful politicians. He wrote Ludvík Fisher in Chicago to alert him about “Mr. Mann, representative from Illinois,” who was allegedly “doing a great deal of harm by his pro-German activities.”81 Hrdlička warned that “everything possible should be done” to “counteract” this legislator “as promptly as possible.”82 After the declaration of war against Germany in April 1917, Czech partisans yearned to expand the conflict to Austria. In August, Hrdlička wrote to Vojta Beneš and recommended that the Bohemian National Alliance “get some Congressman or Senator to bring up the question of Bohemia in a dignified proper way openly before the Congress.”83 Just a few days before the US finally declared war on Austria, he told Fisher to contact Senator Lewis from Illinois and “reach him and set him straight” because there was too much “misinformation” spreading about Czechs and Slovaks.84 Hrdlička helped spread “cultivated propaganda” by organizing what he called the Bohemian Circle, whose meetings eventually involved around twenty to thirty people. The group was small, partly because there were not many Czechs in the Washington area, and partly because Hrdlička promoted it as exclusive. Writing to Czech-American friends from nearby Baltimore, Hrdlička asked them to recruit “first-class men and women” for the club in Washington.85 When inviting Congressman Adolph Sabath to give a lecture, Hrdlička forewarned him, “please do not be disappointed in the number of those present, it will not be very large for as you know there are only a few of us of Bohemian descent in the District, besides which we are very careful whom we accept as a member.”86 He boasted to Fisher in 1918 80 81 82 83 84 85

Letter, Čapek to Hrdlička, 2 June 1915. Letter, Hrdlička to Ludvík Fisher, 28 February 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Fisher, 28 February 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to V. Beneš, 30 August 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Fisher, 27 November 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Toula, 16 December 1916, box 15, “Bohemian Circle in Washington, 1916–18,” Correspondence. 86 Letter, Hrdlička to Adolph Joachim Sabath, 4 January 1917, box 15, “Bohemian Circle in Washington, 1916–18,” Correspondence.

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that the small group included “the best people of the city as well as a few prominent men and women in Baltimore and elsewhere.”87 Hrdlička put considerable effort into organizing the Bohemian Circle for several years. It began meeting at the end of 1916, when its members voted to join the Bohemian National Alliance, to which they sent regular dues and special voluntary financial contributions.88 It appears to have broken up sometime in 1919. It usually met at Hrdlička’s home on Sunday afternoons at 2:30 or 3:00 p.m. The meetings were a combination of lectures, discussions, and entertainment. Hrdlička often gave a short talk, for example, a half hour lecture about the “Ethnic Composition and History of the Warring Nations.”89 At one meeting, Congressman Sabath agreed to make some remarks about immigration.90 Another time, Hrdlička tried to schedule a wounded French veteran who fought at Ypres.91 Hrdlička’s friends, the Toulas, came regularly from Baltimore, and Mrs. Toula, a musician, sometimes performed for the group. One week, Ludmila Řetický, also a musician, planned to come from New York City. Hrdlička informed her that his house was equipped with a piano, and she should prepare some “high-class Bohemian songs.”92 A Czech American doctor from Nebraska named Karel Breuer stopped in one month while traveling through Washington. A few years later he reminisced to Hrdlička in a letter: “I do not know if you remember me … but during the war we were at a small meeting of Washington Czechs and we made plans for the liberation of Bohemia.”93 It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of Hrdlička’s high-level lobbying, but because of his position at the Smithsonian he had some important contacts in Washington. On at least four occasions, US Congressmen came to address the Bohemian Circle. The four legislators were Adolph Sabath, Senator William H. King (1863–1949), Congressman Thomas F. Konop

87 88 89 90 91

Letter, Hrdlička to Fisher, 16 May 1918. Letter, Hrdlička to Fisher, 16 May 1918. Letter, Hrdlička to Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Toula, 16 December 1916, box 15. Letter, Sabath to Hrdlička, 2 January 1917. Letter, Hrdlička to Meyer London, 1 May 1917, box 15, “Bohemian Circle in Washington, 1916–18,” Correspondence. 92 Letter, Hrdlička to Ludmila Řetický, 13 March 1918, box 15, “Bohemian Circle in Washington, 1916–18,” Correspondence. 93 Letter, Karel H. Breuer to Hrdlička, 13 July 1926, box 15, “Breuer, Charles, 1917–1926,” Correspondence.

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(1879–1964), and Congressman Meyer London (1871–1926). Congressman Sabath and Senator King were both important life-long politicians, and at various times during the war each used his platform to promote Czechoslovakian issues in Congress.

Silencing the Lies of the Enemy Unsurprisingly, some German Americans also hoped to influence the United States in favor of the opposite side. However, the 1915 sinking of the Lusitania largely wrecked these propaganda efforts.94 Although not responsible for the Lusitania, Austria, whose last emperor, Charles I, despised propaganda, did no better at influencing the American public.95 After the declaration of war on Germany in 1917, fear of persecution completely silenced German American expressions of support for the Central Powers.96 The Czech nationalists considered any pro-German or Austrian statements “lies” and eagerly helped to suppress them. An important part of the Czech operation involved catching and exposing German and Austrian “spies” working inside the United States. Although largely forgotten today, the man responsible for much of this work was Emanuel Voska, a wealthy Czech American adventurer who came to the US in 1894 at the age of nineteen, thrived in his new environment, and became the owner of a quarry and two marble yards.97 Although usually celebrated as a hero, Voska was essentially doing the same type of work that was supposed to be characteristic of the conniving Germans and Austrians. During the period of American neutrality, the British financed his efforts to expose German “agents” in the United States.98 Voska reportedly had 84 spies working for him, including a mail clerk at the Austrian Embassy, 94 Frank Trommler, “The Lusitania Effect: America’s Mobilization against Germany in World War I,” German Studies Review 32, no. 2 (May 2009): 245. 95 Mark Cornwall, “Rumour and the Control of Information in Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918,” History 77, no. 249 (February 1992): 50, 64 96 Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 173–205; Donald R. Hickey, “The Prager Affair: A Study in Wartime Hysteria,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908–1984) 62, no. 2 (Summer 1969): 117–134; Trommler, “The Lusitania Effect,” 241–266. 97 McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 76; Unterberger, United States, Revolutionary Russia, 27; Roucek, “Image of the Slav in U.S. History,” 37–38. 98 McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 122.

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a chauffeur to the German ambassador, and a personal maid to the ambassador’s wife.99 George Creel, head of the CPI, called Voska, “the greatest secret agent in the war.”100 A legal state of war later sanctioned Voska’s shady craft, but until that time he had been working for Britain with the intention of manipulating public opinion in the United States. With such a formidable staff of eavesdroppers willing to betray their bosses, Voska unearthed plenty of damning material. For example, he stole the briefcase of Dr. Heinrich E. Albert, Commercial Attaché of the German Embassy in the United States and saw to it that its damaging contents got into the hands of British agents.101 In 1915 he was partly responsible for the embarrassing recall of Austrian Ambassador Konstantin Dumba, who was accused of provoking labor unrest among immigrants in order to slow down American arms production for Britain and France.102 Once the United States joined the war in 1917, Voska went to work legitimately for the CPI, which made him Director of the Central European Division and the supervisor of around four hundred workers.103 The CPI continually warned that German and Austrian spies were ubiquitous. The CPI’s “Spies and Lies” advertisements in popular magazines told Americans that “German agents are everywhere, eager to gather scraps of news about our men, our ships, our munitions.”104 The same advertisements encouraged people to turn over the name of anyone who “belittles our efforts to win the war” directly to the Department of Justice.105 Czech Americans embraced the narrative that German and Austrian agents were everywhere spreading dangerous lies. An F. Kopecký, who was almost certainly the same František Kopecký who stole secrets from the mail room at the Austrian embassy for Voska, wrote to Hrdlička to warn, “German agents here still have secret post connections with Europe and are masters at getting information.”106 Hrdlička absolutely agreed and told V ­ ojta 99 McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 76. 100 George Creel, cited in Unterberger, United States, Revolutionary Russia, 124. 101 Roucek, “The Image of the Slav in U.S. History,” 38. 102 McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 122; “The Recall of Ambassador Dumba,” The American Journal of International Law 9, no. 4 (October 1915): 935–939. 103 Unterberger, United States, Revolutionary Russia, 124. 104 Larson and Mock, Words that Won the War, 64. 105 Larson and Mock, Words that Won the War, 64. 106 Letter, Kopecký to Hrdlička, 23 October 1917, box 38, “Francis Kopecký,” Correspondence. On Voska and Kopecký, see McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 76.

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Beneš, “The Austrian government will evidently try to flood this country with its usual lies about Bohemia, which must be counter-acted.”107 Hrdlička was immersed in this conspiratorial thinking even before America entered the war. In February 1917, Ludvík Fisher told him that the German-American-Jewish financier Jacob Schiff was working for Austria in “the battle over public opinion.”108 Hrdlička’s assignment was to refute Schiff’s “lies” in the press. Labeling Schiff a clandestine agent for Austria was absurd. As soon as the US joined the war, Schiff volunteered both his services and his own money to help organize the Friends of German Democracy, which worked for the CPI to support American patriotism among German immigrants.109 The CPI was especially worried about the foreign-language press, and Hrdlička was keen to help flush out its insidious German agents. From 27 August to 23 September 1917 the CPI unleashed thousands of “four-minute men” to speak on the topic of “Unmasking German Propaganda.”110 Maybe Hrdlička was responding to these motivational speeches when in the first days of the “unmasking” campaign he wrote a letter to the Department of Justice to inform on the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers, owned by Louis N. Hammerling. Hrdlička reported: Since about a year I have heard repeated references by my friends in New York to the nefarious influence exercised on certain Bohemian and other foreign papers by an advertisement trust known as Hammerling’s. This trust is said to control the advertisements for the foreign language papers, and to use its power secretly and insidiously for Germany against this country. Hammerling is described to me as a German Jew from Galicia, very crafty and in connection with the propaganda of the central powers in this country. I have heard about this from so many reliable sources that I feel justified in calling the matter to your attention. We of Bohemian descent are very jeal107 Letter, Hrdlička to V. Beneš, 30 August 1917. 108 Letter, Fisher to Hrdlička, 2 February 1917. 109 Larson and Mock, Words that Won the War, 217; Cyrus Adler, “Jacob Henry Schiff: A Biographical Sketch,” The American Jewish Year Book 23 (October 1921–September 1922): 21–64; Gary Dean Best, “Financing a Foreign War: Jacob H. Schiff and Japan, 1904–05,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 61, no. 4 (June 1972): 313–324. 110 Larson and Mock, Words that Won the War, 120.

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ous of our loyalty to and reputation in this country, and it could easily happen that a subversive agency of this sort might succeed in its machinations so far that a false light would be thrown on our people. To many of the smaller papers published in foreign languages the advertisements mean bread and butter and it is easy to understand how they could be influenced through such means. Surely no such bureau ought to be allowed to operate at the present time without some sort of government participation. The power which it uses for ill purposes might well be utilized for good ones.111

Many people complained about Hammerling’s business practices, and maybe struggling periodicals had good reasons to be angry at his American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers. Hammerling provided small foreign-language papers with advertising from big American companies, and he allegedly took advantage of the gap between what advert lines in tiny newspapers were worth compared to what big corporations were willing to pay for them. Acting as a middleman, he purportedly overcharged the companies, underpaid the newspapers, and made a huge profit from the difference.112 However, during the war, his ethnic antagonists elevated Hammerling’s rough business style to espionage. The most serious allegation against Hammerling was that he took money from the German and Austrian governments for a nation-wide advertisement and then tried to force his client newspapers, which were dependent on the regular income his advertising provided, to sign a statement supporting the ad. The advertisement in question was “An Appeal to the American People,” which ran in April 1915 and asked the public to stop supporting the manufacture of weapons for the Allies.113 It claimed to have the signatures of 450 publishers of foreign language newspapers. One Serbian-language paper charged that when it refused to sign, Hammerling withdrew advertising as punishment.114 Many Czech editors also refused to sign, and according to one source, “the Bohemian papers had sent letters

111 Letter, Hrdlička to Chief of Secret Service, 1 September 1917, box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš,” Correspondence. 112 See Robert E. Park, The Immigrant Press and its Control (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1922), 377–411; M. B. B. Biskupski, The Most Dangerous German Agent in America: The Many Lives of ­L ouis N. Hammerling (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2015), 29–45. 113 Park, Immigrant Press, 390; Biskupski, Most Dangerous German Agent, 53–78. 114 Park, Immigrant Press, 403–404.

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right away throughout the country to the other Bohemian papers that they should not sign this appeal.”115 In fact, the anger directed at Hammerling suggests that he was unable to manipulate humble foreign-language newspapers as easily as Hrdlička and other accusers claimed. Many papers apparently said “no” regardless of the economic consequences. No doubt there were bitter economic and ethnic rivalries within the foreign-language press, but war turned business rivals into “insidious” agents of “espionage.”

The Interwar Period: An Uneasy Peace In many ways the propaganda fantasy world was doomed to disappoint. There was always tension both within the Czech American diaspora and between American and European Czechs. Even during the struggle, counter-narratives about how the war was won were already brewing. Although subtle during the war, there was always some competition over who did the most for the cause. Throughout the war, Hrdlička expressed disappointment over the lack of enthusiasm among fellow Czechs. Just after the war started in 1914, he complained to Čapek, “I am almost beginning to fear that the Czechs are falling behind and missing an opportunity that will never return. There is no general organization, no mass voice, and soon it will be too late.”116 In 1915, he continued to preach, “there should be a federation of all forces, in all parts of the world, for strength and unity of purpose, with elimination of all chaff, of which there is still plenty, particularly in this country.”117 Although critical of Czech Americans, he worried even more about the apathy of Czechs back in Austria, and this was perhaps the beginning of a transatlantic rift that widened after the war. He told Čapek, “In regards to conditions in the old country, I must say I am sorely disappointed. Nothing is evident except stagnation and servility.”118 He complained to Fisher in 1916, “in Bohemia, [there is] silence. And I am starting to worry. What

115 Park, Immigrant Press, 404. 116 Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 2 October 1914. 117 Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 2 August 1915. 118 Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 19 May 1915.

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is undeserved will not happen, and if it is not bought with a price it will not be valued.”119 There was common sense in Hrdlička’s belief that only direct action would achieve the goal of Czechoslovakian liberation. Stereotypes about peace-loving Slavs and war-like Teutons have obscured the role that war and conquest, as opposed to “cultivated propaganda,” played in the creation of Czechoslovakia. Hrdlička, as already noted, thought Czech Legionnaires should fight ferociously to the death, and he told Čapek, “no one has any use for weakness, and no one will give us what we shall not have earned.”120 Indeed, it is ironic that Czech propaganda promoted expanding and prolonging the bloodbath until Austria was wiped off the map, while Austrian propaganda, what there was of it, encouraged Americans to avoid the war, stop producing so many weapons, and then, once involved in the war, to reach a settlement as soon as possible. After the war, Hrdlička’s intuition blossomed into an alternative narrative that emphasized military force, rather than fancy diplomacy, as the chief cause of victory. It was, he argued later, the Czechoslovak Legion’s conquest of Siberia in 1918 that ensured a positive result for Czechs and Slovaks.121 The possession of an army in the field in a strategic location, some have maintained, allowed Masaryk to demand official recognition from the Allies. Even from a purely propaganda perspective, the exploits of the Legion were very popular in America and exponentially accelerated publicity about Czechs and Slovaks in the press.122 Many Americans only learned about Czechoslovakians by reading or hearing the thrilling story of the Legion in Russia. Hrdlička’s contradictory narrative of the 1918 Czechoslovakian “revolution” eventually clashed with the more official view of Edvard Beneš (Vojta’s brother), the new republic’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1927, E. Beneš published his own account of how the war was won. In a personal letter, Hrdlička criticized Beneš for focusing too much on his own and Masaryk’s diplomatic maneuvers. The historiography of the war, he lectured Beneš,

119 Letter, Hrdlička to Fisher, 16 September 1916.. 120 Letter, Hrdlička to Čapek, 8 March 1916. 121 See for example, Kalvoda, “Masaryk in America,” 99. 122 McNamara, Dreams of a Great Small Nation, 241.

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was already “saturated with individuals,” but “it would be a mistake to ascribe to individuals … the deciding or even leading importance.”123 Instead, Hrdlička asserted that Czech American help and the Czechoslovak Legion in Siberia had played the deciding role in winning independence. He reminded Beneš that “if the Allies had won before 1917,” the year the United States joined the struggle, “Czechs would have gained little.”124 When Russia collapsed in the same year, and manpower and financial reserves began to run out, “the vast numbers across the sea took over [the fight], and at that time all help was golden because the internal disintegration of Austria-Hungary seemed no more than a distant hope.”125 Most importantly, the Czechoslovak Legion conquered Siberia in 1918, “and then the doors began to open to us, Masaryk included.”126 Yes, there were leaders, “who at the right moment were able to bargain on behalf of the whole,” but “without the help of the Allies and the phenomenon of the Legion, their efforts would have been paralyzed.”127 Hrdlička told Beneš to send a team of historians to America to document the real story. As is often the case, rival historical interpretations might have reflected hostile political interests. In Hrdlička’s circle, there was a post-war battle over who had been the most enthusiastic Czech patriot. One of Hrdlička’s associates, E. St. Vráz, even felt compelled to defend himself in a longwinded editorial in Svornost (Unity), an important Czech-language newspaper in Chicago. Vráz claimed that Vojta Beneš, perhaps in league with Ludvík Fisher and another patriot named Josef Tvrzický, was spreading rumors about him in Chicago and in Prague. Beneš, he said, was accusing him of not participating enthusiastically enough in the nationalist effort during the war. Although there were many subthemes to Vráz’s post-war apologia, the most important issue seems to have been his loyalty to Masaryk. Beneš reportedly told Vráz, while sitting at his kitchen table in Chicago, that after independence, “parties will disappear, there will be a complete awakening … there will not be parties, only a united Czech nation.”128 Vráz thought 123 Hrdlička to Edvard Beneš, 26 October 1929, box 14, “Beneš, Edward, 1929–38,” Correspondence. 124 Hrdlička to E. Beneš, 26 October 1929. 125 Hrdlička to E. Beneš, 26 October 1929. 126 Hrdlička to E. Beneš, 26 October 1929. 127 Hrdlička to E. Beneš, 26 October 1929. 128 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.”

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this was unrealistic and even went so far as to call Masaryk “an idealist, a dreamer, and in no way a practical politician.”129 In his post-war version of the story, Vráz admitted that he had once doubted Masaryk, but now, in 1919, he argued that he had made his remarks in 1915, the darkest time of the war, when there were real reasons for doubt. The Central Powers were winning at that time, and he had wanted the Czechs to make the best of a bad situation by trying to “get self-rule, autonomy, like the Hungarians had.”130 Now that the war was over, Beneš and others were using Vráz’s mid-war reservations as proof that he belonged to “the old school of Palacký,” which meant that he believed Austria to be essential for protecting Slavic minorities in Central Europe. Vráz denied this rumor outright: “Lie! In the entire Czech nation there is not one person who could hate Austria more than I.”131 He was shocked to learn “that the heart of Masaryk is poisoned against me by rumors from the Chicago papers!”132 He felt that his doubts in 1915 had been reasonable, but as the war progressed, he had decided that Masaryk was an astute political player after all, and now in 1919 he told the public: “I renounce my earlier criticisms of Masaryk’s political inability and professorial idealism.”133 Hrdlička had similar troubles in 1919 and wrote directly to Masaryk both to complain and to declare his loyalty. He told Masaryk that two Czech Americans, Charles Pergler and Josef Tvrzický, were “underhandedly spreading rumors” about him.134 They were saying that during the war Hrdlička had written a letter to the State Department in which he had spoken “disrespectfully” of Masaryk.135 The situation was so bad that Tvrzický was now telling official representatives from Czechoslovakia not to visit Hrdlička. At one point, a Czech American named Jaroušková, who worked at Tvrzický’s office, brought two women from Czechoslovakia to see Hrdlička. According to Hrdlička’s account, Tvrzický called one of the Czechoslovakian delegates afterward and 129 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.” 130 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.” 131 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.” 132 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.” 133 Vráz, “České veřejnost na vysvětlenou.” 134 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 5 November 1919, box 44, “Masaryk, Thomas G., 1918–30,” Correspondence. On Pergler, see Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 118; on Tvrzický see Vondrášek and Hanzlík, Krajané v USA, 14. 135 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 5 November 1919.

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told her “not to have any further involvement” with Hrdlička.136 Tvrzický also reprimanded Jaroušková, who worked for him, for taking the women to see Hrdlička, who was “the very person who denounced Masaryk in a letter to the State Department,” and then he fired her a few days later.137 Like Vráz, the fastidious Hrdlička was concerned about his reputation, so he took the trouble to get official confirmation from the State Department that it never received the disloyal letter.138 “What really hurts me,” he told the Czechoslovakian president, “is that you were induced to anger and I had no chance to speak for myself.”139 Instead, he told Masaryk, “For you, although I do not know you personally, I have had only respect since the very beginning.”140 Hrdlička told Masaryk that these attacks from Pergler and Tvrzický were revenge for conflicts that occurred during the war. He explained to the old president how Tvrzický had shown up in Washington in May 1918 to open a rival branch of the Czechoslovakian National Alliance without consulting Hrdlička. In response, Hrdlička had written a letter to the National Alliance and reminded them that his Bohemian Circle included the “best people” in Washington. He requested Tvrzický’s removal.141 Hrdlička was less certain about why Pergler was slandering him, but he told Masaryk that at the end of war, there was a conflict over Pergler’s “possible appointment as [Czechoslovakian] ambassador for the United States.”142 “Over here,” he grumbled in resignation, “it is impossible to avoid some kind of ‘revenge.’”143 Hrdlička and Vráz swapped stories in correspondence, and both felt sidelined by the movement after the war. Hrdlička told Vráz in 1919, “The triumvirate of Beneš, Pergler, and Tvrzický did not find me ‘suitable.’”144 These three men “underhandedly accuse me of nothing less than ‘renouncing’ Masaryk before our State Department.”145 While Hrdlička thought retribution was one motive for the purge, he also pointed out problems of legitimacy 136 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 5 November 1919. 137 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 5 November 1919. 138 Letter, Hrdlička to Vráz, 27 November 1919, box 65, “Vraz, E. St., 1917–22,” Correspondence. 139 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 5 November 1919. 140 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 5 November 1919. 141 Letter, Hrdlička to Fisher, 18 May 1918. 142 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 5 November 1919. 143 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 5 November 1919. 144 Letter, Hrdlička to Vráz, 27 November 1919. 145 Letter, Hrdlička to Vráz, 27 November 1919.

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and accountability that troubled the overseas Czechoslovakian leadership more generally.146 His analysis was insightful. He had wanted Czech Americans “to elect their own representatives” and had recommended “a truly democratic reorganization,” but had “little success.”147 Even if the Czech leaders were generally good men, “they are not elected, and so they can never really rely on general cooperation and trust.”148 Untied to any electoral responsibility, some of the war-time leaders turned into “usurpers,” who “use all possible weapons and means to elevate themselves.”149 Once the most ambitious obtained power, “all who did not fit into the box were silenced, and where this was impossible, they were at least bribed.”150 In 1938-39, Nazi Germany dismantled the young Czechoslovakian republic. An overdose of propaganda in World War I was one reason the Nazi threat was underestimated. Isolationism in the 1930s drew some of its strength from the public’s realization that World War I propaganda had been exaggerated. Several scholars have observed that the unscrupulous manipulation of “facts” and the exaggeration of German “atrocities” in the Great War made it difficult for Americans to believe horrific reports from Europe, this time accurate, in the late 1930s and early 1940s.151 Czech Americans, who played a large role in stereotyping Germans, stood near the center of this now slightly embarrassing melodrama. In 1938, in Czechoslovakia’s final months, Hrdlička’s friend and fellow nationalist Jaromír Pšenka had to admit, “We ourselves were plenty guilty for stupid conduct with the Germans.”152 For many, the term “propaganda” is associated with duplicitous cynicism, but Hrdlička and his friends were sincere, so sincere that they were incapable of self-criticism. Unflinching moral certainty made their story com146 Kalvoda, “Masaryk in America,” 40–41. Kalvoda suggested that Masaryk’s revolutionary movement suffered generally from a lack of democratic legitimacy: “The fact that his party was the smallest party in the country and that the other parties were pursuing different policies seemed no obstacle to his plan for organizing a Czech political and military struggle on the side of the Allies” (40). Also: “Masaryk was not concerned to reconcile the self-government of others with autocratic rule by himself; nor did he believe that the peoples’ true interests could best be ascertained by consulting their wishes” (41). 147 Letter, Hrdlička to Vráz, 27 November 1919. 148 Letter, Hrdlička to Vráz, 27 November 1919. 149 Letter, Hrdlička to Vráz, 27 November 1919. 150 Letter, Hrdlička to Vráz, 27 November 1919. 151 See Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 8; Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, 197; Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 23. 152 Letter, R. Jaromír Pšenka to Hrdlička, 20 March 1938, box 54, “Pšenka, R. Jaromir, 1916–39,” Correspondence.

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pelling. It is still popular to think of Czechoslovakia as the peace loving and innocent democracy ruined by the Nazis in 1938-39. Yet, Czechoslovakia was born out of the most vicious war the world had ever seen. Czech propaganda was not peaceful. It preached war to an American public that had already voted for neutrality; then it tried to prolong the killing until Austria was erased from the Earth. Such unwavering certainty about truth, expressed earnestly in enthralling propaganda, was widespread in the first half of the twentieth century and is not unknown today. Historians are not obliged to share its self-righteous convictions.

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THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE HRDLIČKA MUSEUM OF MAN

For many years the Czech political parties have sat around the board and split any and all political spoils with the exactitude of small boys dividing a stolen melon. Their preoccupation with the relative sizes of their share, rather than with the extent of what was there to divide, has been one of the contributing factors in the catastrophe which has overcome the nation.1 (George Kennan, 1939)

Institutional Center Today, there is still a Hrdlička Museum of Man in Prague at Charles University’s Faculty of Science, but it is a far cry from what its founder intended. Hrdlička launched the project in 1929 with a donation of one million crowns and a grandiose public letter to Tomáš Masaryk, President of Czechoslovakia. Hrdlička pitched the museum as a monument to science that neither France, nor Germany, nor England, nor America had. It would be an updated version of his acclaimed anthropological display at the Panama–California Exposition in San Diego in 1915.2 He imagined his museum housed in a stately building over 1,000 m2, yet in comparison, today’s Hrdlička Museum of Man is a mere 128 m2 closet, and, at the end of his life, Hrdlička was unhappy with it. What went wrong at the Museum of Man? George F. Kennan, “Report of March 29 1939, on the new regime in Bohemia and Moravia,” in From Prague to Munich: Diplomatic Papers, 1938–1939 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 99. I found this citation first in Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 95. 2 Letter, Hrdlička to Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, 22 March 1929, box 44, “Masaryk, Thomas G., 1918– 1930,” Correspondence. 1

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A 1924 title page of the journal Anthropologie. The subtitle reads: “A journal dedicated to physical anthropology, the study of races, demography, eugenics, and physical education; with special focus on the Slavs.” In later years, the title pages added Jiří Malý as editor alongside Jindřich Matiegka, and also noted Hrdlička as the founder.

Many things went amiss, but the foremost problem was that Hrdlička entrusted the museum’s management to men who hated each other. These were Jindřich Matiegka and his star pupil Vojtěch Suk, two of Czechoslovakia’s most prominent anthropologists. In the early 1930s, enmity between Matiegka and Suk erupted in litigation, public scandal, and anti-Semitic taunts. This is a story about arbitrary chauvinism bordering on corruption in the academic world of the First Czechoslovak Republic. The weight of evidence suggests that the older Matiegka deliberately ostracized Suk to secretly promote the career of his younger protégé, Jiří Malý. To make sense of this personal rivalry, it is necessary to understand that the director of Prague’s Institute of Anthropology at Charles University, which was founded by Matiegka, enjoyed access to significant funding provided by Hrdlička’s patronage. Starting around 1924, the Anthropological Institute controlled the so-called “Hrdlička Funds” -- an endowment of about 1.25 million crowns. Half of the yearly dividend supported publications and funded 62

The Secr et History of the Hr dličk a Museum Of M a n

anthropological expeditions; the other half financed a journal named Anthropologie, whose editor was the head of the institute. In 1929, when Hrdlička initiated the Museum of Man with a further donation of one million crowns, the head of the Anthropological Institute became its chief curator. In the early 1920s, the Hrdlička Funds constituted a sizable sum. At that time, a Czechoslovakian teacher’s salary was around 3,500 crowns per year, so to most Czech academics Hrdlička’s endowment must have seemed like a substantial funding reservoir.3 It was also an exceptional amount of money for Hrdlička, who grew up poor. A receipt from 1924 records him buying $20,000 in Czechoslovakian bonds and US Treasury Certificates for the fund, and this single transaction was about eight times his annual salary of $2,400.4 The money came from his first wife, who died in 1918.5 Reflecting the nationalism of its patron, the fund was not intended to aid the entire multinational scientific community of Czechoslovakia, but only the Czech, and to a lesser extent, the Slovak and other “Slavic” elements. According to the rules, the endowment only supported research and expeditions if the results were written in Czech or Slovak.6 The journal Anthropologie was also dedicated “first and foremost to Slavic anthropology and anthropological research from Slavic countries.”7 It published articles only in Czech and Slovak, with abstracts in French or English, but, pointedly, not German, the second most used language in Czechoslovakia. The rules also spelled out that the journal’s primary purpose was to publish articles by members of Charles University and “other,” though unspecified, “Czech and Slovak universities.”8 3

4

5

6 7 8

Petr Kostrhun, “Američtí archeologové a antropologové na Moravě v období mezi světovými válkami,” [American archeologists and anthropologists in Moravia in the interwar period] Archeologické rozhledy LXVII (2015): 597. Letter, Ambassador of Czechoslovakia in the United States to Hrdlička, 9 April 1924, Collection 2011– 30; T. Dale Stewart, “Aleš Hrdlička, 1869–1943,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 56 (1981): 349. Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 56–75. Hrdlička’s first wife was Marie Strickler. After her mother died, according to Spencer, Marie was left “a small estate consisting of a modest sum of money and property” (59). In his public letter to President Masaryk in 1929, Hrdlička reported, “she was from an old Alpine family and educated in Paris,” and “she and I, by living as frugally as possible, gathered a relatively significant amount of property, which we single mindedly hoped to use someday for ‘something better.’” He always made it clear that his endowments were made in her memory. Although popularly called the “Hrdlička Funds,” the endowment was officially the “Fund of Dr. Aleš Hrdlička and his Wife Marie.” Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 12 October 1924. Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 12 October 1924. Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 12 October 1924.

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For better or worse, the wily Jindřich Matiegka, head of the institute in Prague, became Hrdlička’s most important representative in Czechoslovakia. Matiegka’s own institutional success depended on the rise of Czechoslovakia, and to some extent, on Hrdlička’s patronage. Like Hrdlička, Matiegka was a Doctor of Medicine. In 1897 he took an unpaid position as a professor of anthropology and demography at Charles University, but he supported himself by working as a medical officer in the Health Department of the Kingdom of Bohemia. In 1908 he became a non-tenured professor at Charles University. Several secondary sources claim that he could not have tenure because he was the best anthropologist in Austria-Hungary, and “Vienna” did not want to be second to Prague. Whether or not this is true, no one has ever bothered to ask why Matiegka, like other talented intellectuals, simply did not move to Vienna to advance his career. The reason could be that Matiegka did not travel much. He had a cherished home in his wife’s town of Mělník and a flat in Prague, and most of his journeys consisted of the forty kilometers between these cozy domiciles. Unlike Hrdlička, Matiegka’s interests were parochial rather than global.9 Matiegka shared Hrdlička’s fascination with digging up grave sites and collecting bones. He hoped to use physical anthropology to describe the history and rise of the Czech nation and seems to have been rather certain what a “Slavic” skull should look like. He was especially interested in examining the skeletal material of people he considered “historic Czech patriots,” such as Jan Žižka, Jan Amos Komenský, and St. Wenceslas.10 In 1891 he published the results of his early research on skulls in a study called Crania Bohemica. Although one might suspect that physical anthropology was the wrong tool for studying cultural and linguistic groups like “Czechs” or “Slavs,” Matiegka pioneered many techniques that are today important for physical and forensic anthropology.11 Like Hrdlička, Matiegka’s skill set centered on measuring and comparing bones and body parts; he was less sophisticated when it came to unquantifiable entities like culture.12 On Jindřich Mateigka, see Jaroslav Brůžek, “Jindřich Matiegka (1862–1941),” Živa 5 (2016): cxviii-cxix; Vojtěch Fetter, “Život a dílo Jindřicha Matiegky k stoletému výročí jeho narozenin,” [The life and work of Jindřich Matiegka at the hundred year anniversary of his birth] Anthropologie 1, no. 2 (1963): 78–85; Božo Škerlj and Josef Brožek, “Jindřich Matiegka and the Development of Czech Physical Anthropology,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 10, no. 4 (December 1952): 515–19. 10 Škerlj and Brožek, “Jindřich Matiegka,” 516. 11 Fetter, “Život a dílo Jindřicha Matiegky,” 79. 12 Škerlj and Brožek described Matiegka’s style of anthropology as “narrow osteometric pursuits and ab9

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The establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918 eliminated Vienna as a competing intellectual center and at last provided Matiegka with institutional recognition and power, even without relocating. In this year, at the age of fifty-six, he finally became a full professor at Charles University. By the end of the 1920s, he was head of his own institute, the editor of Anthropologie, the central stakeholder in the Museum of Man, and the gatekeeper to Hrdlička’s patronage. As he approached retirement, the question of his successor became important. Hrdlička wanted Vojtěch Suk to replace Matiegka in the strategic position at the Anthropological Institute. He had promoted Suk’s career since 1912, and he assumed that Matiegka was grooming him for the post. In 1929, when he announced the Museum of Man project in a public letter to the president, he specifically named Suk (and his “efficient wife”) and described him as “created” to run the project with Matiegka. Hrdlička did not get his way. Instead, during the 1920s, Matiegka cunningly positioned his teenage protégé, Jiří Malý, who was 20 years younger than Suk, as his successor. Over the years, Matiegka outmaneuvered Hrdlička by ostracizing Suk to Brno, far away from the funding opportunities of Prague. Then, in May 1932, a board of professors at Charles University rejected Suk and chose young Malý as head of the Anthropological Institute, with all the opportunities the position provided. Hrdlička felt that Malý got the job unfairly, but he could do nothing about it.

Matiegka and Malý: Protekce in Czechoslovakia13 Matiegka always told Hrdlička he was grooming Suk for the position, but there are excellent reasons to doubt his sincerity. Even while Suk was officially his apprentice, Matiegka had picked another favorite, Jiří Malý, who was a teenager from Matiegka’s town of Mělník and had assisted him in the local ossuary.14 After a few years of mentoring his young aide, Matiegka stract concern with body measurements without an attempt to get at the individuality of the human organism and its relationship to environmental factors, health, and the mode of life” (“Jindřich Matiegka,” 517). 13 Protekce in Czech means something like “cronyism”—promoting one’s friends and considering merit secondarily, if it all. 14 Škerlj and Brožek, “Jindřich Matiegka,” 518; Fetter, “Život a dílo Jindřicha Matiegky,” 80.

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convinced Malý, who was only nineteen, to attend medical school. In 1923, Matiegka got rid of the forty-four-year-old Suk by persuading him to leave Prague and start his own institute in Brno. The very same year, he started planning to send Malý, then only twenty four, on an expedition to Alaska with Hrdlička. One summer spent stealing bones from indigenous people’s gravesites with the world-renowned Hrdlička boosted Malý’s career. In a publication from 1953, Vojtěch Fetter, another Czech anthropologist, specifically lauded Malý’s prestigious apprenticeship in Alaska and remarked that Hrdlička, “very much respected and liked Jiří Malý.”15 On the contrary, private correspondence reveals that Hrdlička detested Malý, and it is hard to believe that Fetter got this story so wrong. After the expedition, Hrdlička wrote an assessment of Malý to Matiegka, and although Hrdlička was not usually a gossip, he unleashed an uncharacteristic armory of abrasive language on Malý. “I expected talent,” he reported, “but found only mediocrity.”16 Hrdlička’s estimation of Matiegka’s young acolyte was unambiguously harsh: “Flexibility, independence, initiative, ideas -- only average. Not one spark after four months. He was always glued to my side until I had to run away from him. It is a pity he avoided the army.”17 Malý might one day become a good anthropologist, he conceded, “but with my personal knowledge of his weak constitution, his poor eyes, his lack of initiative, and together with all of this, his unreliability, it will be difficult to convince me.”18 When Malý went home, wrote Hrdlička, “my parting words were that if he does not finish some honorable project for the good of us all then he should not come back to me in Washington.”19 Just three years later, a board of professors in Prague chose the inexperienced Malý as head of the Anthropological Institute and rejected the older and more qualified Suk, now in faraway Brno. Hrdlička wrote to Matiegka and complained that “the changes at the institute have bothered me despite all my other responsibilities. Malý does not fill your footprints physically or 15 Vojtěch Fetter, Dr. Aleš Hrdlička světový badatel ve vědě o člověku [Dr. Aleš Hrdlička world researcher in the science of humankind] (Praha: Orbis, 1954), 15. 16 Letter, Hrdlička to Matiegka, 16 October 1929. Matiegka and Hrdlička began planning Malý’s apprenticeship in 1923, but he did not get to Alaska until 1929. 17 Letter, Hrdlička to Matiegka, 16 October 1929. 18 Letter, Hrdlička to Matiegka, 16 October 1929. 19 Letter, Hrdlička to Matiegka, 16 October 1929.

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otherwise.”20 In a letter to another friend in Prague, he made clear his conclusion that Malý was unqualified and got the job due to unfair “protection”: The situation regarding the Anthropological Institute and the two incumbents is serious and causes me anxiety. M. [Malý] is as yet unfit for the position. His whole work in America has shown him to be weak, and his ever broken promises brand him as unreliable. It would be a calamity if he was placed in a position he could not fill. It might jeopardize the development of the whole branch. M. should be given a chance to show what he can do when placed on his own, in Brno or elsewhere. He should earn the place in Prague, and not obtain it through ‘protection.’21

Hrdlička also expressed these views publicly by writing to the Ministry of Education to block Malý’s promotion. The ministry responded bluntly that the professors at the Natural Sciences Faculty had chosen Malý and “therefore it is not possible to prevent his appointment.”22 It dismissed Hrdlička’s disapproval with bureaucratic circularity because “about the qualifications of Dr. Malý for this post there is said to be no doubt.”23 Hrdlička, who doubted, could do nothing to prevent Malý from controlling the Hrdlička Funds, the journal Athropologie, and the Museum of Man. The message from the ministry also suspiciously insisted that “professor Matiegka was at first offended by the rejection of his candidate Suk,” yet “he has already come to terms with Malý and has stated that he will help in the administration of the institute.”24 Just a few months later, in September 1932, the tension between Matiegka and Suk escalated to a legal battle and a public scandal. Suk and his wife had been preparing a jubilee edition of Anthropologie for Matiegka’s 70th birthday, which would contain scores of articles by international scholars. In the middle of the process, Matiegka suddenly stopped the presses and asked all the contributors to demand their manuscripts from Suk and resend them instead to Malý, the new editor of Anthropologie. Suk was so em20 Letter, Hrdlička to Matiegka, 8 December 1934. 21 Letter, Hrdlička to B. Papánek, 7 May 1932, box 52, “Papánek, Jan, 1932–43,” Correspondence. 22 Letter, Ambassador of the Republic of Czechoslovakia to Hrdlička, 31 May 1932, box 20, “Czechoslovak embassy, 1919–1942,” Correspondence. 23 Letter, Ambassador of the Republic of Czechoslovakia to Hrdlička, 31 May 1932. 24 Letter, Ambassador of the Republic of Czechoslovakia to Hrdlička, 31 May 1932.

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barrassed he felt he had to take legal action because, as his lawyer explained, “the public will think it strange that you [Matiegka] would take away the editorship from your former student who is arranging [the publication] in your honor.”25 This demoralizing and petty battle resulted in a trial and three rambling, combative, sarcastic, and privately funded publications: two from Suk, totaling forty six pages, and a nineteen-page response from Matiegka. Both men kept Hrdlička up to date with private letters, copies of their vitriolic essays, and newspaper clippings about the brawl.

The Mysterious Dr. Suk In 1934, while still in the heat of the scandal, Matiegka and Suk self-published their mutual accusations for all to see. Fortunately, Hrdlička’s private correspondence with both men over more than two decades makes it possible to check these public allegations against long-term patterns of behavior. Taken as a whole, years of letters inadvertently verify many of Suk’s complaints about Matiegka. Most generally, Suk accused Matiegka of sidelining him while duplicitously promoting Malý. When Suk and Malý were competing for the position at the Anthropology Institute in 1932, the Prague professors rigged the negotiations by insisting that before they would even consider Suk for the job, the university in Brno, where Suk was currently working, must hire Malý to replace him. This fickle condition nullified Suk’s superior credentials and reduced his chances because the professors in Brno, who resented being pushed around by Prague, were unlikely to take Malý. Anyway, Suk wanted to be hired on his own merits, especially when competing against a less qualified man who was twenty years younger than him. Matiegka never questioned the fairness of this ridiculous precondition, and in a later publication, he even defended it as a legitimate means “to ensure that our [Prague’s] docents can get a job at our faculty,” even though Suk was as much a “Prague docent” as Malý.26 It is not easy to trust Matiegka’s double-tongued claim that Suk “would have

25 Letter, Dr. Koukal to Matiegka, 9 September 1932, box 62, “Suk, Vojtech, 1930–1938,” Correspondence. 26 Pamphlet, “Spory p. prof. Dra V. Suka. Obrana prof. Dra J. Matiegky,” [The dispute with Professor Dr. V. Suk. The defense of Professor Dr. J. Matiegka], 31 March 1934, printed by author, box 62, “Suk, Vojtech, 1930–1938,” Correspondence.

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gotten the position … even though he was not popular here, if only Brno had satisfied our wishes and taken Malý.”27 Before moving away to Brno, Suk had himself been Matiegka’s up-andcoming understudy in Prague, but there was something demeaning about this teacher-student relationship. Suk had a doctorate in Natural Science, yet Matiegka stubbornly insisted that he could never be a real physical anthropologist without a medical doctorate. Božo Škerlj, who studied under Matiegka, remembered how “Suk … had to get an MD in order to be accepted into the fold although he had received his PhD under the eminent anthropologist Rudolph Martin.”28 Škerlj thought this added chore was “deleterious, almost disastrous” for Suk and blamed Matiegka and Hrdlička, who both stubbornly insisted on this extra qualification.29 Constantly gratifying his boss’s whims embarrassed Suk, who explained to Hrdlička how he felt about preparing a special anthology for Matiegka’s 60th birthday: “It was not an easy task and not entirely pleasant because I [was] his student, then his assistant, and now a docent; and the impression can arise that I have done this out of political ‘byzantinism.’”30 In the end, Suk’s servility still failed to prevent his capricious patron from picking a new young client. Around 1923, several important changes lent plausibility to the charge that Matiegka adopted Malý while pushing Suk out. A decade later, Suk told Hrdlička that 1923 was the year he first realized he would never get the prestigious Prague position.31 In 1923, Suk moved to Brno, with Matiegka’s encouragement, and founded his own anthropology institute. In the very same year, with Suk on the way out, Matiegka began arranging for Malý to go to Alaska with Hrdlička. The “Hrdlička Funds” were also finalized around 1923–24, and the journal Anthropologie was launched in 1923, with the provision that the director of the Anthropological Institute, Matiegka or his successor, would be its chief editor. As two anthropologists later remembered, there were now new opportunities in Prague thanks to “an important subsidy from a special fund created by Aleš Hrdlička.”32

27 28 29 30 31 32

Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 9 November 1932. Škerlj and Brožek, “Jindřich Matiegka,” 517. Škerlj and Brožek, “Jindřich Matiegka,” 517. Letter, Vojtěch Suk to Hrdlička, 23 January 1922, box 62, “Suk, Vojtech, 1918–29,” Correspondence. Letter, Suk to Hrdlička, 16 January 1933. Škerlj and Brožek, “Jindřich Matiegka,” 517.

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After 1923, Suk was no longer in Prague to enjoy this bounty, and his letters to Hrdlička show that he felt isolated and unhappy in Brno. “I do not know what I will do,” he griped, “but if I can get out of here I must because this is a great humiliation for me.”33 By 1928 he was still not a full professor at Brno, and he claimed that younger and less experienced people had been promoted while he was “purposefully overlooked.”34 Without a full professorship, he could not get grants, and “this means that anthropology in Brno has been pushed fully into the back room, where the sun never shines”35 He diagnosed his problem as a lack of patronage, telling Hrdlička: “if some of my friends in Prague stood behind my just request this would not have happened.”36 Having lost support from Prague, Suk tried to get Hrdlička to sponsor him instead. Fed up with being “overlooked,” he convinced Hrdlička to write a letter to the Ministry of Education on his behalf.37 Throughout the 1920s, he was hoping Hrdlička would finance his anthropological research in an exotic part of the world. In 1926, Hrdlička hinted that he might send Suk to Northeastern Asia, but he never came through with funds. In that same year, Suk went to Newfoundland to study indigenous people. He paid his way by working as a doctor for missionaries, and his wife went with him as his assistant. Throughout 1928 he was longing to go to New Guinea. He complained to Hrdlička, “Oh the eternal problem; we are such a ‘continental’ nation without sea and without money, I would put together an expedition to New Guinea, that would be something.”38 Later that year he was writing to American missionaries in China, hoping to find some way to fund an expedition. He managed to spend a summer doing research in London in 1928, but otherwise his dreams of further foreign travel remained unfulfilled. After the public scandal erupted in the early 1930s, Suk publicly accused Matiegka of spreading rumors to discredit him in the academic community. One damaging rumor was that Suk was mentally unstable. Indeed, throughout several years of correspondence with Hrdlička, Matiegka almost obses33 34 35 36 37 38

Letter, Suk to Hrdlička, 22 January 1928. Letter, Suk to Hrdlička, 20 January 1928. Letter, Suk to Hrdlička, 20 January 1928. Letter, Suk to Hrdlička, 20 January 1928. Letter, Hrdlička to Dr. Milan Hodža, 17 March 1928, box 62, “Suk, Vojtech, 1918–29,” Correspondence. Letter, Suk to Hrdlička, 20 January 1928.

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sively questioned Suk’s mental health and sketched him as an unbalanced misfit. He seemed to relish telling Hrdlička how “unpopular” Suk was in Prague.39 With time, Hrdlička began to view Suk’s whining letters as confirmation of Matiegka’s claims. The obviously unhappy Suk openly revealed his frustration and insecurity, which Hrdlička understood as weakness. After supporting him for decades, Hrdlička gradually stopped writing to Suk until finally, in 1937, he announced: “I have not written to you because I must not mix in any of the controversies in which you are engaged.”40 The most interesting charge Suk made in his 1934 publications was that Matiegka was circulating rumors that he was Jewish. He claimed to get a barrage of anti-Semitic hate mail thanks to Matiegka’s calculated gossip. As evidence, he cited a line from a Czech school teacher who wrote to him: “now you are getting what you deserve you Jew!”41 To his credit, Suk took a public stand against anti-Semitism: “I am not a Jew,” he countered, but “in my opinion, and in that of all cultured people, it is no shame to be a Jew.”42 As late as 1938, he wrote a personal letter to Hrdlička complaining, “Matiegka and Malý spread it around everywhere that I am seriously mentally ill … and that I am a Jew.”43 Was Matiegka really spreading rumors that Suk was Jewish? In fact, the archive yields persuasive evidence that Matiegka had been brooding about Suk’s possible Jewish background for over two decades. Back in 1912, when Hrdlička was looking for a Czech researcher to collect artifacts in Africa for his upcoming San Diego exhibition, he relied on Matiegka to interview candidates in Prague, one of whom was Suk. Matiegka interviewed Suk in 1912 and sent his evaluation to Hrdlička in Washington, where it remains until today. Matiegka’s 1912 assessment, written two decades before the public scandal erupted, substantiates Suk’s later accusations. In this evaluation, Matiegka deliberately undermined Suk’s objective qualifications and focused instead on his hazy “national identity.” Suk was very well prepared; he had a PhD in Natural Science from the University of 39 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 28 July 1932. 40 Letter, Hrdlička to Suk, 8 September 1937. 41 Pamphlet, “Matiegkův sborník a moje disciplinární záležitost,” [Matiegka’s jubilee edition and my disciplinary affair], 3 June 1933, box 62, “Suk, Vojtech, 1930–1938,” Correspondence. 42 Pamphlet, “Matiegkův sborník a moje disciplinární záležitost.” 43 Letter, Suk to Hrdlička, 6 May 1938. Suk’s unedited complaint reads “that I am seriously mentally ill, that I wrote inappropriate letters to Matiegka’s daughter, and that I am a Jew.” For now, I do not have enough information to evaluate the “inappropriate letters” reference.

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Zürich and had then continued studies at the Anthropological Institute of the University of Bologna. He had traveled through the Italian peninsula, the Dalmatian coast, and the Italian African colonies. However, Matiegka brushed these credentials aside to warn Hrdlička that Suk had never been to the tropics, was not “acclimatized,” and might get sick in Africa.44 Matiegka advised Hrdlička instead to hire a pair of adventurers named Štorch and Machulka, who were both “Czechs from Prague.”45 While these men were experienced travelers neither had any scientific training. Rather than highlighting qualifications, Matiegka spent his energy ferreting out Suk’s national identity. In those days, Suk still went by his original German surname, “Schück.” Matiegka was pleased that Suk/Schück spoke perfect Czech, but language was not a definite marker of national affiliation in Bohemia, so he needed to pry further. He recounted to Hrdlička: “to the question of what is his nationality, he said, ‘you know how it was, mother is Czech, father German.’”46 Yet Matiegka still needed to investigate one further possibility. “According to his name,” Matiegka told Hrdlička, “I was uncertain if he might be a Jew.”47 Leaving nothing to chance, Matiegka looked him up: “In the address book I found one home in which there lives a former official named Schück, and they have a house in Smíchov (probably the father’s), then there was another Schück who is a lieutenant, and a third who is a merchant (maybe brothers). The first two situations would suggest (probably) the Christian faith.”48 Whatever suspicions Matiegka had about Suk/ Schück, Hrdlička hired him, and after World War I, Matiegka began training him as his successor, or so it seemed. In 1912, Matiegka believed Schück might be Jewish “according to his name.” In 1919, only a few months after the founding of Czechoslovakia, Schück went to court and officially changed his name to “Suk,” as he is remembered today.49 Suk’s inner motivations are inscrutable, but the fact that 44 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 2 October 1912. 45 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 2 October 1912. These two are surely Richard Štorch (1877–1927) and Bedřich Machulka (1875–1954), as described in Jiří Martínek and Miloslav Martínek, Kdo byl Kdo: Naši cestovatelé a geografové [Who was who: Our travelers and geographers] (Praha: Nakladatelství Libri, 1998), 283–285; 428–29. 46 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 2 October 1912. 47 The italics are mine. Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 2 October 1912. 48 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 2 October 1912. 49 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 7 March 1920.

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Schück sounded German and Jewish to his domineering boss might have influenced his decision. Matiegka told Hrdlička he liked Suk’s new name better because it was less “grating.”50 Matiegka’s letters to Hrdlička in the 1920s also reveal that he considered Germans and Jews to be “foreign elements” in Czechoslovakia.51 “The Jews and the Germans,” Matiegka complained, harmed Czechoslovakia with their audacious ideas about “the equality and concord of all nations.”52 The Germans, he felt, “are not yet mature enough for such future ideals,” while “the Jews, who claw their way into all offices and institutions, show themselves again to be a selfish and destructive element, in no way constructive.”53 In the heat of the 1934 public scandal, Suk also charged that Matiegka hated his wife. When he moved to Brno, he married a woman named Marie Liehmová. Hrdlička respected Marie and even praised her in his public letter to Masaryk, but Suk believed that his marriage irritated Matiegka. In 1933 Suk wrote to Hrdlička: “In 1923 I wrote in my diary that I will never get the job in Prague due to how Matiegka’s family behaved when I told them that I will marry my current wife.”54 It is impossible to know why Marie annoyed Matiegka, but Suk was not lying. Over the years, Matiegka frequently complained to Hrdlička that she did not “know her place.” In 1933 the chatty Matiegka wrote: “many people criticize her for meddling out of her place, and they consider her an evil soul, who pushes everything to extremes.”55 Hrdlička had once told President Masaryk that Suk was “created” to run the Museum of Man, but Matiegka and his friends in Prague exiled him to Brno, labeled him a mentally ill Jew with a domineering wife, and promoted the younger and inexperienced Malý instead. Although the patron Hrdlička dissented, Matiegka handed over the institute, the journal, and the keys to the museum (literally) to Malý. Suk resigned from his curatorial position at the museum in 1933 out of hatred for Matiegka.56 Instead of promoting science in Czechoslovakia, Suk and Matiegka spent their energy attacking 50 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 7 March 1920. See also, McDermott, “A ‘Polyphony of Voices’,” 846. Around the same time, according to McDermott, Rudolf Slánský suggested that a Jewish friend change his name from a “German-Jewish name” to a “Czechized” one. 51 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 24 September 1920. 52 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 18 November 1920. 53 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 18 November 1920. 54 Letter, Suk to Hrdlička, 16 January 1933. 55 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 9 November 1932. 56 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 30 May 1933.

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each other in privately published diatribes, which few (or perhaps no one until now) have ever read or cared about.

Political Context of the First Republic It is tempting to ignore “embarrassing” stories about the First Czechoslovak Republic. After all, Czechoslovakia’s internal feuds seem insignificant in comparison with the nightmare of neighboring Nazi Germany, which crushed the little republic in 1938-39. Around the time of the Sudeten Crisis in 1938, Hrdlička and other publicists were promoting Czechoslovakia as the innocent, peaceful, and last-standing “democracy” in Central Europe. Outside of specialized literature, this caricature has largely endured to the present.57 Yet the story of the Museum of Man is all about Czechoslovakia and has nothing to do with Nazi Germany. All the events described here happened well before the German occupation. All the men involved were Czechs, including Suk, who even gave up his family name to clarify and broadcast his Czech identity. Indeed, this little academic club was ostentatiously closed to its fellow German Czechoslovakian citizens. As they saw it, their “nation” had just won the upper hand in what Hrdlička called the “1,500-year struggle” against the German “race.” Czechs now had the power; their tribe controlled the state. What kind of lessons did this narrative of millennial racial struggle teach? There is now a persuasive revisionist historiography suggesting that Czechoslovakia taught individuals to plunder state resources for their own parochial ends but failed to create a nationally neutral identity based on citizenship. At the broadest level, the dominant nationalist narrative claimed that the new state was a just reward for “oppressed Czechs.” When discussing minorities with Karel Čapek, Masaryk contended, “the state is ours; it is ours according to historical right, according to the majority principle, and because we built it.” 58 This tale of “oppression” vindicating conquest con57 Historian Mary Heiman has criticized this overly cheery storyline as “the Whig interpretation of Czechoslovak history.” Heimann, Czechoslovakia, 324 58 Karel Čapek, Hovory s T. G. Masarykem, 341. There is now an immense amount of English-language analysis of the First Republic, perhaps due to the fresh diversity of scholars who have taken up the topic since the revolution in 1989. For succinct summaries of Czech national mythology, see Eagle Glassheim, “National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing,” 466–70. Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 11–14; Pieter M. Judson

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veyed the lesson that the state was a well-deserved prize for a single victorious nation, not the res publica of all its citizens.59 Czechoslovakia’s most famous leaders did not even pretend to value state citizenship detached from nationality. Tomáš Masaryk said much about “humanity,” but he believed that an individual could only be fully human by belonging to a nation.60 He once told Karel Čápek, “humanity is comprised of nations, and there is nothing beyond or above nations.”61 In Making of a State, he wrote: “the more national we are the more human we shall be, the more human the more national.”62 Czechoslovakia’s other founding father and second president, Edvard Beneš, similarly thought that “there is no such thing as common human culture: there are only national cultures.”63 Although Czechoslovakia contained many individuals, like Suk, whose national identity was equivocal, its leaders left little place for citizens who were uninterested in joining a particular nation. Nor did they view Czechoslovakia as a state for people who wished to be “German,” although “German” citizens, as a simple numerical fact, made up the second largest national group in the republic. The foundational philosophy that the state should be the property of the “right” people fostered chaotic struggles for loot, which began at the top. Almost immediately after the beginning of the republic, the president for life, Masaryk, created a powerful political machine known as “the Castle,” which controlled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The only serious competitor for power was a coalition of five political parties, known as the pětka [the has provided a corresponding revisionist perspective on Austria that challenges the “oppression” narrative. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016). 59 Although it describes a very different “post-colonial” experience, I have drawn inspiration from Martin Meredith, The State of Africa: A History of the Continent since Independence (London: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 156: “Politicians and voters alike came to rely on ethnic solidarity. For politicians it was the route to power. They became, in effect, ethnic entrepreneurs. For voters it was their main hope of getting a slice of government bounty. What they wanted was a local representative at the centre of power—an ethnic patron who could capture a share of the spoils and bring it back to their community.” The problem of creating a neutral state instead of satrapies for “interest groups” is old and daunting, and the classic statement on it comes from James Madison, “Federalist no. 10,” 1787, “The Federalist Papers,” https://www. congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-top (accessed 8 September, 2019). “By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” 60 Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 31–32. 61 Čapek, Hovory s T. G. Masarykem, 342: “Člověčenstvo je souhrn národů, není něčím mimo národy a nad ně.” 62 Masaryk, Making of a State, 409. 63 Edvard Beneš, My War Memories, cited in Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 52. The original can be found in Beneš, Světová válka a naše revoluce, II. 544.

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five], whose leaders eventually learned to coordinate the parliament behind the scenes with minimal democratic fuss. The president handled the country’s foreign policy and propaganda, while the parties divided up the spoils emanating from the center. According to Peter Bugge, this political arrangement diverted attention away from the wider civic community by creating “a lack of interest in the general political make-up of the state.”64 From the bottom-up perspective, people learned that good connections and protekce, not necessarily hard work and sincerity, were the quickest routes to success. In practice this amounted to a “terrible striving after sinecures,” as Vojta Beneš, brother of Edvard, remembered.65 Czechs, who were supposed to be the deserving beneficiaries of the new state, also resented the spoils system as unprincipled opportunism. Even Matiegka thought the political parties “take care that they have their favorites and representatives in the offices, without any consideration of whether they are qualified or not. These people, who do not behave decently, become autocrats in their offices.”66 Because of this, he complained about “large numbers of young people who without much education get into a ministry and a variety of useless offices and waste money in any way they want.”67 Betka Papánek, a Slovakian-American friend living in Prague, told Hrdlička in 1934: “There is a growing resentment towards the unqualified opportunists who for fifteen years have been in leading positions.”68 Because Czechoslovakia promised power to the “right” people, national demands figured prominently in the scramble for position. Eagle Glassheim has argued convincingly that the Land Reform Law of 1919, at least as administered by the State Land Office, was “a kind of affirmative action program for Czechs” as it supposedly righted the “political persecution by the former Habsburg Dynasty” by redistributing noble estates considered “German.”69 On the other hand, according to Orzoff, around 33,000 German speakers lost their jobs in the 1920s due to a new language law.70 64 Bugge, “Czech Democracy,” 15–16. This political arrangement is also described in Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, and Antonín Klimek, Boj o Hrad [Battle for the castle], 2 vols. (Praha: Tomáš Krsek, 2017). 65 Vojta Beneš, cited in Orzoff, 194. The original quote, found by Orzoff, is from Ferdinand Peroutka, Budování Státu [Building a state] (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1991), 765–66. 66 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 26 January 1921. 67 Letter, Jindřich Matiegka to Hrdlička, 30 December 1919. 68 Letter, Betka Papánek to Hrdlička, 29 March 1934, box 52, “Papánek, Jan, 1932–43,” Correspondence. 69 Glassheim, Noble Nationalists, 71. 70 Glassheim, Noble Nationalists, 140.

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Obsession with nationality warped Czechoslovakian education. At Charles University, Czech and German professors had abandoned liberal notions of human unity and decided to go their separate ways in 1882.71 In basic school education, both Czech and German nationalists had promoted national interests for decades. Historian Tara Zahra has shown how Czech nationalists, long before the establishment of Czechoslovakia, argued that children were the property of the nation and rejected liberal beliefs in parental rights, for example, to choose their child’s language of education.72 After 1918, the state could use its power to compel parents to send their children to Czech schools, and failing that, to close down German schools.73 The government usually left German schools alone, but it sometimes ruled against the wishes of parents, some of whom were Czechs with cosmopolitan hopes for their children. Zahra has cited the example of Czech writer Josef Čapek, who wanted his daughter to learn German so she could go to a world-class university. When the Ministry of Education closed her German kindergarten in Prague, he wrote a letter to protest.74 Keeping this revisionist perspective of Czechoslovakia in mind, warnings about factionalism and protekce (cronyism) begin to stand out in Hrdlička’s correspondence. Even Matiegka advised Hrdlička not to be naïve about the motivations of people in Czechoslovakia: “the biggest problems here are always particularism and egoism …. Everyone protects himself and does not care about the totality, and there is not much of a united whole here anyway.”75 Another Czech scholar named Vratislav Růžička, who was hoping to get his hands on some of the funds, warned Hrdlička, “I think that all our scholars could just work in their own fields. [But] Many are jealous of each other’s fields … we here are still very far from mutually supporting each other for an infinity of reasons.”76

71 Marta Filipová, “Peasants on Display: The Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition of 1895,” Journal of Design History 24, no. 1 (2011): 17. 72 Zahra, “Reclaiming Children,” 513. See also: Zahra, “’Each nation only cares for its own’: Empire, Nation, and Child Welfare Activism in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1918,” The American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (December 2006): 1378–1402; Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008). 73 Zahra, “Reclaiming Children,” 524–26. 74 Zahra, “Reclaiming Children,” 526. 75 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 12 March 1929. 76 Letter, Růžička to Hrdlička, 6 December 1921, box 57, “Růžička, Vladislav, 1921–25,” Correspondence.

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Betka Papánek, whom Hrdlička asked to help set up a prize of 10,000 crowns for Czechoslovakian composers of “national music,” reached a similar conclusion. Papánek’s task was to find prominent Czech women to serve as judges for the competition. She gave up the project in disgust because the Prague ladies viewed the award as a gilded credential for preselected academics instead of an honor earned through competition. “All seemed to think the only eligible contestants were the few conservatory graduates,” she recounted to Hrdlička, and “two of the prospective judges had a definite composer picked the moment I mentioned the word prize.”77 Papánek warned that cronyism would ruin the project because “everyone wants the money for himself or someone near to them.”78 She diagnosed the problem as “the character of the people,” but perhaps she was describing the normative environment created by the First Republic.79 Although generous with his money and loyal to Czechoslovakia, Hrdlička had his own reservations about life in the republic. In 1919 he refused the opportunity to work full-time in Czechoslovakia. His reasoning was that “my hard life struggles have forged my nature so that it does not easily submit to artificialities and even conventions.”80 Having worked his way from poverty and obscurity to international preeminence, he was not about to exchange his solid post in Washington for “something dependent on political changes or favors.”81 This intuition did not stop him from investing his personal fortune in the choppy waters of Czechoslovakia.

“Resistance Against the Republic and Its Exponents” In the Czech Republic today, Hrdlička is usually praised as a patriot, yet his relationship to Czechoslovakia was sometimes strained, and at least one official even branded him a threat to the new state. In part, his own inflated ego and bossy attitude earned this hostility. Yet the problem was also that he confronted a state that was insecure about criticism, especially from abroad. This tension between the strong-willed Hrdlička and Czechoslovakia’s fragile public image contributed to the demise of the Museum of Man. 77 78 79 80 81

B. Papánek to Hrdlička, 13 November 1933. B. Papánek to Hrdlička, 13 November 1933. B. Papánek to Hrdlička, 13 November 1933. Letter, Hrdlička to Matiegka, 14 August 1919. Letter, Hrdlička to Matiegka, 14 August 1919.

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Hrdlička initiated the museum project and announced his impressive donation in an extravagant public letter to President Masaryk, but one million crowns was not enough for the lavish building he imagined. He insisted that the government would have to pay for the rest. He thought he was inspiring the Czechoslovakian state to take up a noble cause, but officials more likely felt he was telling them how to spend public money. Not only did Hrdlička make demands on the budget, but he also nagged Masaryk not to cut corners because as “the highest representative of Czechoslovakian culture,” the president should do the job right.82 He even told the president exactly who should run the museum. Unsurprisingly, Masaryk did not hurry to answer Hrdlička’s preachy public letter. In the economic crisis in the 1930s, the government was not about to spend large sums on Hrdlička’s pet project. The year 1929, when Wall Street collapsed, was an especially inauspicious moment to make a large donation in stocks and bonds, and the value of Hrdlička’s investment dropped in tandem with the mounting global crisis. As the economic scourge made its way to Czechoslovakia, the government passed an “Enabling Law” in 1933, giving itself the power to make economic policy by decree. Still, Hrdlička insisted there was money for his museum. In 1933, he wrote a private letter to Matiegka about the slow progress of the museum and urged him not to be shy about asking for financing, even though times were tough. To bolster his contention that the state had the funds, he reported discussing the museum in Washington with the president of the Czechoslovakian Senate, Dr. Soukup, who admitted: “despite all the troubles, seven and a half million crowns were allocated for furnishing the offices of the Chancellor of the President, Šámal.”83 If there was enough money for Šámal’s office, reasoned Hrdlička, then there was money for the museum. This single sentence embedded in confidential correspondence with Matiegka, got Hrdlička into trouble. Somehow, Přemysl Šámal, the Chancellor of the President, found out about Hrdlička’s private comment to Matiegka and took it as an accusation. Šámal was a tough attorney and a friend of the president. He also worked closely with Edvard Beneš, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the desig82 Letter, Hrdlička to Masaryk, 22 March 1929. 83 Letter, Hrdlička to Suk, 19 August 1933.

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nated heir to the presidency. After Masaryk’s death, Šámal stayed on as chancellor for Beneš until 1938, and thus his term of service spanned the entire existence of the First Republic. During this whole period, the chancellor and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs worked for the president. Šámal’s chancellery enjoyed its own discretionary budget, control over several newspapers, presses, societies, and even its own intelligence services, which it used to spy on political opponents.84 It is not clear how the chancellor found out about Hrdlička’s critical remark to Matiegka, but Hrdlička was surprised and outraged that his private communication ended up in the hands of the state. Šámal, who did not defer in the slightest to any lofty principle of right to privacy, treated the matter as a quasi-legal question. Šámal demanded to know who told Hrdlička the rumor about the seven and a half million crowns spent on remodeling his office, and he ordered Matiegka to turn over the entire letter. Matiegka refused, or so he claimed, because the letter contained sensitive information about his upcoming legal battle with Suk. Matiegka claimed he did not know who Hrdlička’s source was, and that Šámal should ask Hrdlička directly.85 Šámal made this an international episode by sending the letter through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Czechoslovakian ambassador in Washington with instructions to pass it on to Hrdlička for a response. He commanded Hrdlička to retract the allegation about the seven and a half million crowns and reveal “from whom he picked up the rumor.”86 The Washington ambassador forwarded this menacing letter to Hrdlička and added “it seems that Dr. Šámal was very hurt.”87 The chancellor made it seem as if Hrdlička narrowly avoided criminal prosecution when he wrote that “naturally I do not want to and cannot proceed officially against professor Hrdlička. I would if it were anyone else, but in this case, I have respect for his scientific work.”88 It is not clear what grounds Šámal had for “proceeding officially,” but Czechoslovakian jurisprudence offered some menacing possibilities. According to the 1923 Law in 84 Bugge, “Czech Democracy,” 19; Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 69–76. 85 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 16 October 1933. Letter, Matiegka to Přemysl Šámal, 14 October 1933, box 44, “Matiegka, Jindřich, 1929–35,” Correspondence. 86 Letter, Přemysl Šámal to F. Veverka, 17 October 1933, box 20, “Czechoslovak Embassy, 1919–42,” Correspondence. 87 Letter, Veverka to Hrdlička, 12 January 1934. 88 Letter, Šámal to F. Veverka, 17 October 1933.

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Defense of the Republic, insulting or exposing the president or his office to ridicule was illegal and punishable by imprisonment.89 Recklessly disseminating “untrue information,” harangued Šámal, “spreads resistance against the republic and against its exponents.”90 The chancellor felt the story about his office incriminated him personally, stating that “if I had really chosen to arrange something for myself at such expense it would be a crime, and this is what professor Hrdlička is accusing me of.”91 Šámal also exploited Hrdlička’s “crime” to degrade his heroic status and remind him that the government held the power of the purse. “Even a scholar of world renown,” sniped the chancellor, “who in his own field would not make a conclusion unless it was securely proven, can succumb to the influence, god knows from where, of overheard rumors, and draw incorrect conclusions from them.”92 Although the patron Hrdlička had donated one million crowns for his project, and “expects it to be completed,” the state set budgetary priorities, and “due to the overburdened treasury,” the museum was “not at the forefront.”93 Even with Šámal’s angry bluster, Hrdlička stood his ground. He insisted that both his letter to Matiegka and his conversation in Washington about Šámal’s office were private. The story about Šámal’s office, he maintained, came from a reliable source, whose name he refused to reveal. He was sorry that the chancellor felt offended, and he unconvincingly apologized “if I have any guilt in this matter.”94 Instead of begging for pardon, however, he implied that Šámal was exaggerating the importance of this affair. When Hrdlička calculated the amount of seven and a half million crowns in dollars, “and compared it with how much recent renovations at our White House have cost, it seemed insignificant.”95 Equally concerned about Czechoslovakia’s international image, Hrdlička countered that instead of trying to quash the trivial story about his offices, Šámal should consider the museum’s positive propaganda value. “Putting off the project,” he warned, “will cost the old country important and neces89 90 91 92 93 94 95

Bugge, “Czech Democracy,” 10, 12; Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 65, 177. Letter, Šámal to Veverka, 17 October 1933. Letter, Šámal to Veverka, 17 October 1933. Letter, Šámal to Veverka, 17 October 1933. Letter, Šámal to Veverka, 17 October 1933. Letter, Hrdlička to Veverka, 13 January 1934. Letter, Hrdlička to Veverka, 13 January 1934.

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sary recognition from the world, which awaits how the new republic justifies its liberation.”96 If the government made excuses and delayed the project, it would “lose originality,” and another country might build a similar museum first. Losing “the first-place position” would be “an intellectual defeat” for Czechoslovakia, and “the damage would be irreparable.”97 This episode reveals the hyper-sensitivity of Czechoslovakian leaders, but it does not vindicate the vanity of the sixty-five-year-old patron of the Museum of Man. Hrdlička’s naïve racial worldview induced him to invest in Czechoslovakia in the first place. Yet mystical belief in his “blood” connection to European Czechs did not bring wisdom about the factional political reality in which they lived. Nor is it obvious that his museum was even a good idea. By 1934, Hrdlička’s once lauded bone display at the 1915 San Diego fair was a twenty-year-old concept, and it is understandable that the Czechoslovakian government did not view its reenactment in Prague as a priority. Suffering from a worldwide economic disaster and anxious about the aggressiveness of neighboring Nazi Germany, Czechoslovakia’s leaders probably did not pay serious attention to Hrdlička’s whining that the museum was one of his “foremost life ambitions” and rightfully so.98 Without state support for a lavish building, the only option was to place the museum on the premises of the Anthropology Institute. Hrdlička stubbornly protested that it would be “a twisting of the original beautiful plans” if “the museum is opened in the narrow and small spaces of the anthropological institute.”99 This is exactly what happened. Matiegka, despite his usual complaining, seemed all too content to locate the museum in his institute and hand it over to Malý, his youthful disciple. In 1933 he promised to open it to the public as soon as possible; it finally opened in 1937.100 Not long after, Czechoslovakia disintegrated with the Sudeten Crisis in 1938 and the dismemberment of 1939. In 1941 the German occupiers took over Matiegka’s institute and renamed it the Institute for Racial Biology.101 Maybe, at the very deepest level of analysis, it was the moral principle that mystical primal identities should be more central to careers than ob96 Letter, Hrdlička to Veverka, 13 January 1934. 97 Letter, Hrdlička to Veverka, 13 January 1934. 98 Letter, Hrdlička to Veverka, 13 January 1934. 99 Letter, Hrdlička to Veverka, 13 January 1934. 100 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 30 May 1933. 101 Šimůnek and Hossfeld, “The Avantgarde of the ‘Rasse’,” 64.

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jective personal accomplishments that led to chaos, expulsion, and extermination in the twentieth century. Hrdlička and Matiegka’s longing to reorder the world around racial identity largely came to fruition in the late 1930s, just not in the way they wanted. Many books and articles chronicle the criminal Nazis and their occupation, and all serious individuals agree that Czechoslovakia was a better place than the Third Reich. Reasonable people will also agree that Vojtěch Suk, who was accused by Matiegka of being a Jew, was better off in Czechoslovakia than he would have been in Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, it was the avidly Czech Matiegka who considered Suk’s purported Jewishness and Germanness more relevant than his experience and educational achievements. . Neither Hrdlička nor Matiegka lived to see the end of the war, but Hrdlička would not have liked what happened next. After the war, the museum moved again, this time to the ground floor of the Faculty of Science. According to the contemporary museum’s website, the display commands a meagre 128 m2. It is not entirely clear what happened to the Hrdlička Funds, but the Czech Academy of Science took over all remaining assets in 1953.102 The next four decades of Communist rule preserved the unfinished and old-fashioned Museum of Man like a fossil from the first half of the twentieth century.

102 Kostrhun, “Američtí archeologové,” 598.

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THE LAST GREAT RESERVE OF THE WHITE RACE

Few ideologies have won enough prominence to survive the hard competitive struggle of persuasion, and only two have come out on top and essentially defeated all others; the ideology which interprets history as an economic struggle of classes, and the other that interprets history as a natural fight of races.1 (Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism)

The Soviet Road to Whiteness Hrdlička adored the Soviet Union, but for all the “wrong” reasons. Freshly returned from visiting the “workers’ paradise” in 1939, the seventy-year-old scientist wrote longingly to a contact in Moscow: I wish I was still in your country, which offers so much of such genuine human interest. There is something vast and wonderful going on there, which deserves the fullest attention of every unbiased sociologist and student of man. There are still various impediments … but it all works, and there is general progress. This is already felt more or less by the rest of the world, and they are getting envious, as well as a fear of Russia.2

But Hrdlička was no Communist, and race-thinking, not class-thinking, inspired his devotion. He did not care about Marxist philosophy or the global 1 Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 159. 2 Letter, Hrdlička to Lydia Kyslova, 23 October 1939, box 57, “Russian trip, 1939–40,” Correspondence.

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proletariat of all races and nations. For him, the great Eurasian state represented the Slavs, and the Slavs were, as he told a Prague audience in the 1920s, “the last great biological reserve of the white race.”3 A 1942 publication shows how he strained to present the Soviet Union as a bastion of Whiteness despite its colorful demography: Taking the present Soviet population as a whole, it may be estimated to be roughly eight-tenths White, about one-tenth Yellow-Brown, and the rest intermediate. There are no Blacks. Even what remains of the Yellow-Brown stocks is rapidly being diluted by White admixture.4

For Hrdlička, mere politics were irrelevant to the timeless biological truth that Russians were White Slavs, whatever regime they may live under. All his writings about Russia and the Soviet Union, composed over a span of almost three decades, are remarkably consistent in presenting Slavs as a “sound, warm, and potential stock of the white race.”5 In 1919, he penned a short piece called “The Races of Russia.” In 1942 he published Peoples of the Soviet Union. Tellingly, Peoples of the Soviet Union is almost identical to “Races of Russia.” This made sense in his racial world; little had changed in two decades but the name of the state, which was incidental compared to Slavic biological continuity. In 1924 he published O původu a vývoji člověka i budoucnosti lidstva (On the origin of the human and the future of humanity), which was a printed version of popular lectures he had given in Prague in 1922. In these lectures, he attached the new Czechoslovakia, despite its large German and Hungarian populations, to the glorious racial future of Slavdom. He also published an essay entitled “The Slavs” in 1918. He discussed the topic in other venues as well, such as speeches, newspaper interviews, and correspondence. The first step in keeping the Soviet Union White was asserting that the Slavs came from Europe and not Asia. Largely forgotten today, this was a serious controversy in the “racial war” between Germans and Slavs. The Asian origins hypothesis, allegedly cooked up by the Germans, implied that the Slavs were not fully White and therefore inferior. Other writers, like Paul R. 3 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 77. 4 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1942), 2. 5 Hrdlička, Manuscript, “Notes – Slav Congress,” n.d., box 1, “Index Cards, 1927, 1931,” Miscellaneous Personal Papers, 1889–1940.

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Radosavljevic, author of Who are the Slavs?, cited Hrdlička to challenge the “German idea” that “the Russians and other Slavic tribes are an Asiatic race” and “semi-oriental.”6 On the contrary, Radosavljevic insisted, the Slavs belonged “to the great old Aryan or Indo-European family of the white race,” and Russia contained “the largest white population of any single state on Earth.”7 Because Europe was their primal homeland, the Slavs came “from the pure North European race (homo europaens).”8 Hrdlička attacked the Asian origins theory by claiming the Slavs had been in Europe for well over two thousand years, long before any Slavic writing existed. By the time of Herodotus (485–425 BC), he declared, Slavdom was already in full bloom in Europe. He identified the Slavs as one unit among the people Herodotus called “Scythians,” a name the Greeks used indiscriminately for a spectrum of populations they encountered in the Black Sea region.9 The Scythians, thought Hrdlička, were a racially diverse conglomerate, but the ones living west of the Dnieper were “from the earliest of times … of European extraction,” and “this stock could in the main have been no other than Slav.”10 These early Slavs, he emphasized, emerged from an even earlier prehistoric European population. “Like the rest of Europeans,” claimed Hrdlička, “the Slavs have originated from the more homogeneous Neolithic population of that continent,” and “they carried some of the more important physical characteristics of their stone-age forefathers … into the historic period.”11 The starting place for the Slavs, thought Hrdlička, was in the Vistula river region, where they already existed as early as 1,000 B.C., roughly five hundred years before Herodotus mentioned the Scythians. Ostensibly, some kind of skeletal remains provided evidence for Hrdlička’s narrative; how he knew that Slavic tongues inhabited three-thousand-year-old “European” crania is a mystery. Confident he had refuted the German view, Hrdlička told an audience 6 Paul R. Radosavljevich, Who are the Slavs? A Contribution to Race Psychology (Boston: The Gorman Press, 1919), 128, 135. 7 Radosavljevich, Who are the Slavs?, 84, 87. 8 Radosavljevich, Who are the Slavs?, 130. 9 Hrdlička, Manuscript, “The Races of Russia,” [1919], box 138, “Russian,” European Ethnic History, 1908–38. 10 Hrdlička, Manuscript, “The Races of Russia,” [1919]. 11 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 180. Manuscript, “The Slavs,” [1919], box 138, “Slavs,” European Ethnic History, 1908–38. Subsequent citations will refer to the published version, although this research was first based on the manuscript. There is no difference except in legibility.

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in Prague that “the Slavs are a group originally from Europe,” and this “cannot be denied by those who think they are a secondary branch from Asia.”12 The fact that Slavs spoke Indo-European languages was not enough to vindicate their Whiteness because in the race-thinking world, language was no indicator of physical race. Madison Grant, for example, pointed out that the “little swarthy native” of India spoke an “Aryan” (Indo-European) language, but “without the slightest claim to blood kinship” with White Nordics.13 Slavs, like Indians, could be Indo-European speakers inhabiting nonEuropean bodies. Indeed, the 1911 Dictionary of Races and Peoples suggested exactly this when it described Slavs as “Aryan” in language but “physically, and perhaps temperamentally,” more “Asiatic.”14 Hrdlička agreed that language was “hardly satisfying” and instead believed that bodily traits made Slavs White and European. More than just a linguistic grouping, there really was, he demanded, a “general physical and mental Slav type.”15 The “European whites,” he constantly repeated, contained four subracial “strains:” “the Nordic, the Alpine, the Mediterranean, and the Slav.”16 Since the Slavs “were derived from the same source as the rest of the European population,” he reasoned, they did not “show any radical differences” from other White Europeans.17 Yet he never clearly described exactly what physical features made Slavs White and European and, in the end, the best he could do was fall back on cultural arguments: “their languages, their myths, and traditions, their sedentary habits and devotion to agriculture are all European.”18 Having debunked the Asian origin hypothesis, Hrdlička was still sensitive about German charges that racial intermingling undermined the quality of the Soviet population.19 Long before World War II, he had worried that the world “learned of the Slav almost only through the German,” who painted a picture of inferiority.20 Russia, he conceded, was not as devel12 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 68. 13 Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 70. 14 Dictionary of Races or Peoples, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 61st Congress, Document No. 662 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911), 128. 15 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 182. 16 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 180. 17 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 183. 18 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 180. 19 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 12; see also Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 216–231. 20 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 185.

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oped as Western Europe, but the reason was “not inherent or racial, but geographic and circumstantial.”21 Russia was backward because it guarded the frontline of the White world. In the 1920s he informed a Czech audience that “Russia through all these centuries has long formed a defensive block, on which all these blows have hit; and thus for all this time has defended the rest of Europe as its shield, but it has itself suffered terribly, as it has remained culturally backward.”22 Now that the heroic era of fending off the “Yellow Peril” was over, the immense progress of the Soviet Union proved decisively “that there was no inherent inferiority.”23 Hrdlička admitted that non-White invaders had mixed with Whites in Russia but countered that they left almost no physical trace. The Lapps and Samoyeds were “Mongol-like,” but they were no real threat because “their numbers are insignificant,” and “the present-day Lapps are much intermixed with the northern Whites.”24 Both the Huns and the Khazars went away without mixing much and “left little mark on the population.”25 Similarly, the Turks and Tatars “did not colonize or mix readily … and although remnants of them and mixtures were left, they made no very great impression” on the population.26 He happily reported in a 1939 letter: “the Russians … are white people, closely related to the western Europeans. Where they have been in prolonged contact with Turkish or Tatar tribes, they have become somewhat admixed with these, but the great bulk of the people are pure whites.”27 To keep the Soviet Union White, Hrdlička also generously bestowed Whiteness upon many whose status was sometimes questionable in the United States. He thought the “original” Finns were racially “intermediate,” but modern Finns had turned White thanks to centuries of mixture with Scandinavians and Russians. Most of the people in the Caucasus region were “originally” White, for “both the Armenians and the Georgians are ancient white units.”28 Many Romanians, despite their language, “were originally Slavs [and therefore White] and preserve the same type.”29 Soviet 21 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 29. 22 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 74. 23 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 29. 24 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 18–19. 25 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 7–8. 26 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 9. 27 Letter, Hrdlička to Winfield W. Scott, 27 September 1939, box 57, “SC, 1924–1943,” Correspondence. 28 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 19. 29 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 27–28.

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Jews were White Slavs because “physically many of the Russian Jews of today resemble to a considerable extent the Russians themselves.”30 Hrdlička had an especially broad notion of who was White, which permitted him to find hidden White people deep in the Asian territories of the Soviet Union. Yes, Russian colonists had mixed with indigenous people as they encountered them over the centuries. However, amalgamation was easy because many of the people they met in Central Asia already belonged to a distant branch of the White race. The Tajiks were, according to Hrdlička, “peoples of predominantly White but non-Russian origin,” and the Turkmen “are to be counted with the Asiatic Whites.”31 “Mongoloid features” were common in the Asian provinces, yet “in Azerbaidjan [sic], Uzbekistan, and the Tatar republics (Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan), there are individuals whom it would be hard to class as other than Whites.”32 Even Koreans, he told a reporter, “have many white physical characteristics.”33 Hrdlička also employed his “liberal” view of racial mixing to keep the Soviet Union White. His meticulous sleuthing brought the White population to 80 percent, while 10 percent were still Yellow-Brown and 10 percent were “intermediate.” However, these were well on the road to Whiteness. Because Yellow-Brown people possessed 95 percent of the “mental potentiality” of Whites, Hrdlička believed they could mix well.34 He never imagined that Yellow-Browns might outbreed Whites; instead, he concluded, “even what remains of the Yellow-Brown stocks is rapidly being diluted by White admixture.” He pointedly told American readers that “there are no Blacks” in the Soviet Union. Since he felt that Blacks had only 80 percent of White mental ability, he considered them difficult to assimilate and “a drag on the progress of the Whites.”35 30 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 21. 31 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 22. 32 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 23. 33 Lili M. Kim, “How Koreans Replaced their ‘Enemy Alien’ Status: Korean Americans’ Identity, Culture, and National Pride in Wartime Hawai’I,” in From the Land of Hibiscus: Koreans in Hawai’I, ed. Yŏng-Ho Ch’oe (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 209. 34 Hrdlička, “Testimony of Aleš Hrdlička,” in “Nonassimilability of Japanese in Hawaii and the United States,” Hearings before the Committee on the Territories. House of Representatives, Sixty-seventh Congress, Anthropological and Historical Data Effecting Nonassimilability of Japanese in the Territory of Hawaii and the United States, July 17, 1922. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1922), 8. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015073367636;view=1up;seq=2 (Accessed 5.11.2018). 35 Letter, Hrdlička to Bishop John William Hamilton, 5 May 1930, box 28, “HAA-HAR, 1897–1943,” Correspondence.

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Some Soviet scholars also praised the merits of mixing, but Hrdlička’s reasons differed fundamentally. According to Francine Hirsch, the Soviets argued that more equal social and political conditions would homogenize the population and prove the different groups compatible.36 On the contrary, instead of highlighting the transformative power of socialism, Hrdlička believed fusion was possible because the population was already biologically similar: most people in Soviet territory were already White, Yellow-Browns quickly turned into Whites through interbreeding, and there were no Blacks to stand in the way of progress. He applied exactly the same racial values to the United States, where he was equally optimistic about the rapid merger of all kinds of White immigrants but viewed Blacks as largely incompatible. No one, according to Hrdlička, should think of the Whitening of the Soviet Union as imperialistic conquest. The Slavic march to the Pacific was a “natural” and leisurely “spreading out” and nothing like the “predatory … invasions of the Goths, Huns, or Teutons” in the Middle Ages.37 Unlike Germans, “the Slavs penetrate peacefully, as peasants taking empty fields and building their homes there.”38 As the Slavs innocuously wandered into new zones, “they encountered a few diverse previous inhabitants [and] these elements were to a large extent mixed and willingly Slavicized, and their blood gradually became more or less Slavic in origin, especially in the Balkans, in Bohemia, and in Russia.”39 The essence of Slavdom, after all, had never been “military glory” or “supremacy over others.”40 Hrdlička’s flexible rules about Eurasian interracial mixing had their limits. Oddly, Germans and Hungarians, although both White, could not assimilate, at least not in the right direction. Instead, they often overpowered and assimilated the Slavs. Especially in relation to the Germans, “the Slavs themselves suffered a great absorption.”41 In Western Europe, the Slavs lost significant territory to the Germans, “and sometimes their enemies interpret this as a mark of inferiority in comparison with the German element.”42 36 Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 263–66. 37 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 182. 38 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 71. 39 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 72. 40 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 77. 41 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 182. 42 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 71.

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Although Hrdlička viewed Slavs sprinkled across Siberia as heroic settlers, he considered analogous pockets of Germans in Slavic lands as “foreign,” indigestible, and unwanted immigrants. In Russia, claimed Hrdlička, “these colonies received special privileges, were practically self-governing, and fused little with the Russians.”43

Survival of the Fittest The logic of race-thinking led individuals as diverse as Hrdlička, Stalin, and Hitler to view World War II as proof of Slavic vitality. Well before the war, in 1928, Hrdlička told the New York American that the Nordic branch of the White race was “wearing out” and the torch would soon pass to the Russians, who were a “fresh” and “energy-full” group of Whites.44 In 1941 Stalin arrived at a similar verdict when he told a Polish audience that Slavs were “a young race which hasn’t yet been worn out …. The Germans are strong, but the Slavs will defeat them.”45 Of the three, Hitler was the slowest learner, but in the final days of the Third Reich even he admitted to Albert Speer: “The [German] people has turned out to be the weakest, and the future belongs to the strongest people, the Eastern people, and to it alone.”46 Others viewed the war as confirmation of Slavic empowerment, like Viktor Palivec, a Czech author who had attended Hrdlička’s lectures in Prague in 1922 and considered him a prophet. According to Palivec in 1947, Hrdlička had long ago determined that the Slavs were “the greatest unit of the white race, and they still have not had their day; they have not yet achieved their summit.”47 Although Hrdlička died in 1943, he “foresaw” that “the end of the Second World War would mean the great and victorious rise of liberated Slavdom, with the Russian people, its biggest component, at the vanguard. [This will be] the arrival of the Slavic age, the league of Slavic

43 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 21. 44 “Famous Scientist Flouts ‘Nordic Superiority’ Boast,” New York American, 13 August 1928, box 72, “News Clippings on or by Hrdlička, 1928–37,” News Clippings and Printed Material, 1893–1953. 45 Amir Weiner, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic Body in the Age of Socialism,” The American Historical Review 104, no. 4 (October 1999): 1143. Hrdlička would have considered Stalin a Slav despite his Georgian origin. 46 Chapoutot, Law of Blood, 415. See also, Timothy Snyder, Blood Lands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (London: Penguin Random House, 2010), 319. 47 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 27.

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nations.”48 At least for some, World War II confirmed rather than debunked the racial struggle paradigm, which offered no guarantee that the next millennium would be a German one. Everyone who accepted this grim moral order, including, apparently, Hitler, seemed to understand this. While the Nordics were wearing out, Hrdlička envisioned the Slavs rising as the rustic new vanguard of the White race. Undeniably, most Slavic regions were less developed than Western Europe, yet Hrdlička employed eugenic thinking to flip this seeming misfortune into a racial advantage. “Dysgenic” modernity, he theorized, weakened more advanced populations. However, medieval poverty toughened the Russians into a “physically strong and prolific stock” by leaving them “freer from degenerative conditions than perhaps any other larger European group.”49 Reflecting on his visit to the Soviet Union, he claimed: “I saw few malformed people.”50 Russia might be impoverished, but “from an anthropological standpoint … the Russian stock is well developed, virile, resistant, and full of potential force. It may truly be said to be a great human reserve of the European population.”51 According to Hrdlička’s eugenic analysis, high death rates due to impoverished conditions in Eastern Europe were a blessing because they allowed the Slavs to shed their weaklings. This made the Slavs the fittest specimens of the White world. In the 1920s, he told a Czechoslovakian audience that high mortality rates among Slavs led to “the removal of a higher percentage of the weaker ones than in other nations. This is to some extent natural self-cleansing.”52 In contrast, “in the majority of white nations medical science is able to save a great number of below-average children and adults.”53 Among the strong who survived nature’s culling, Hrdlička pointed out that there were some individual Slavs, especially in Russia and the Balkans, who lived unusually long lives of well over one hundred years. These wonders of longevity, he mused, were “a physiological expression of the relatively high grade of soundness of the race.”54 48 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 27. 49 Hrdlička, “Races of Russia” [1919]. 50 “Aleš Hrdlička Sees Russians Becoming One Physical Type,” Science Service, 22 August 1939, box 72, News Clippings on or by Hrdlička, 1938–40. 51 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 28–29. 52 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 76. 53 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 76. 54 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 184.

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He had to admit that fortuitously high death rates had not pruned the Czechs as well as most Slavs. Like Western Europeans, the Czechs enjoyed better hygiene and modern medicine but also suffered from the emasculating horrors of industrial development; they were “drained out by factories and tiring and tense modern life.”55 Czechs living in the highly developed regions of Bohemia and Moravia were simply “not so fresh and original as other branches of the Slavs.”56 Fortunately, Czechoslovakia had not entirely eliminated deprivation “in Moravia and parts of Slovakia,” where “the core of the people is still youthful, preserved, and full of strength.”57 Aside from the urbanized Czechs, however, “from a physical point of view the Slavs as a whole are in good shape, even better than many other nations.”58 In the early days of World War II, Hrdlička convinced himself that the Soviet Union was strong both due to its backwardness and, contradictorily, also to its progress. Old Russia’s widespread famines, lack of medical care, and poor transportation meant: Only the stronger and more resistant could survive under such disadvantages, but those who did survive constituted a stronger people of a higher biological value. It was thus that they were able to survive the First World War, the revolutions, and the interventionist and civil wars that followed, and the great famine that developed during these years; and it was thus that they still found strength to drive out all invaders, from a great state.59

This legacy prepared the Soviet Union of the early 1940s to “stem the attack of the greatest and most destructive military machine of all times.”60 At the same time, however, Hrdlička constantly instructed the public that the new Soviet Union was rapidly transforming itself into a cornucopia of abundance. Ignoring the artificially induced starvation of the 1930s, he only mentioned famines in Russia before 1923, the first year of the Soviet Union, which had made “a striking development” toward fixing the very deprivation that had

55 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 76. 56 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 78. 57 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 78. 58 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 77. 59 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 26–27. 60 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 26–27.

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supposedly made the Slavs so strong in the first place.61 In Hrdlička’s eugenic universe, both poverty and prosperity signified Slavic strength. Misery also made the Slavs wondrously fertile. This was due to the “relatively well-preserved physical status of the people, and the simple and often hard rural life of the vast majority.”62 He noticed some exceptions, like the industrialized Czechs, who tended to have lower birth rates, but this observation did not lead him to an environmental explanation, such as urbanization, for declining natality. Instead, he insisted that Slavic fecundity reflected more than pre-industrial lifestyles because “there seems to be something in the Slav constitution which favors a high birthrate.”63 Hrdlička, a Slav who sired no children, often meditated on the mystery of Slavic fertility, which he venerated as “a gift of nature which … would lead to far reaching consequences in the future.”64 Hrdlička thought zealous Slavic procreation would shield Whites from what Lothrop Stoddard called “the rising tide of color.” Many in the 1920s feared that the world’s Dark-skinned people were outbreeding Whites, but a 1920 brochure from the American Slav Society reassuringly explained how the White Slavs could come to the rescue: It should never be forgotten that the Slav race is the promising junior in the great Caucasian family. Its full and great contribution to world civilization is yet to come. The unhampered development of Slavdom is a world necessity for the sake of maintaining equilibrium between the white race and the awakening forces of Asia.65

When asked privately in 1930 if “colored” people would eventually outnumber Whites, Hrdlička soothingly replied that some Whites, like Russians and Balkan Slavs, “increase at least as fast as the yellow-brown or other dark races.”66 Although urbanized Whites in the West reproduced too slowly, the Slavs had “higher growth than among other branches of the white race.”67 61 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 27. 62 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 183. 63 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 183. 64 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 183. 65 “First American Slav Congress,” 1920, box 25, “GIL-GOO, 1899–1942,” Correspondence. 66 Letter, Hrdlička to Hamilton, 5 May 1930. 67 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 75–76.

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Their vast numbers were “a great human reserve of the European population,” and they comprised “the biggest unit of the White race.”68 The high birth rates of “this strong and able stock means a growing biological momentum” and insured, according to Hrdlička, that the Soviet Union “must in future be expected to exercise important world influence, both anthropological and general.”69 This thought system supported Hrdlička’s prophecy to a Prague audience in 1922: “the Slavs have reasonable hope for the future. They are as a whole the last great biological reserve of the white race.”70

Soviet Apologist The striking thing about Hrdlička is that he was as naively enthusiastic about the Soviet Union as many Communists, but for racial reasons. Later Czech authors, who soon found themselves in the Soviet zone, recalled how Hrdlička advertised the Soviet Union’s astounding triumphs. Viktor Palivec remembered Hrdlička enthusing about “the relative abundance of the inhabitants there, living in clean and spacious homes with large amounts of domestic animals and a well-managed economy.”71 In 1954, Vojtěch Fetter reported, “Hrdlička was amazed at the amount of groceries, fruit and vegetables, which were easy to get in this remote polar backwater of the U.S.S.R.”72 Newspaper clippings in Hrdlička’s papers show how enthusiastically he promoted the Soviet Union in America. As he explained in a letter, he hoped trumpeting the “accomplishments of the Soviet people” in the media might overturn unfair prejudices against them.73 He told the Washington Post, which interviewed him about his 1939 visit, most Soviet citizens “feel close to America, where there is no nobility and there is more equality than elsewhere.”74 According to a journalist for the Science Service, Hrdlička praised “the friendliness and hospitality of Russian scientists” and “found official and scientific personnel far more thoughtful … than is customary in 68 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 28–29; Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 75. 69 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 29. 70 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 77. 71 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 13–14. 72 Fetter, Dr. Aleš Hrdlička, 16. 73 Letter, Hrdlička to Oumansky, 31 January 1940, box 60, “Soviet Embassy, 1935–41,” Correspondence. 74 The Washington Post, 24 October 1939, box 72, “News Clippings on or by Hrdlička, 1938–40,” News Clippings and Printed Material, 1893–1953.

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most countries.”75 No other country, raved Hrdlička, had so many anthropology museums as the Soviet Union.76 His correspondence shows how he coordinated his media mission with the Soviet embassy. The embassy regularly sent him Soviet newspapers, and reading them, he told an official, was “a genuine solace to me in these nightmare times.”77 However, the embassy also furnished him with data for propaganda purposes. In 1939, he requested “pretty slides about the care given to Soviet children,” which he wanted to use in a public talk.78 In yet another letter, he asked for information about hostels for scientists, like the one he had stayed in, so he could present it at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society.79 In February 1941, he thanked the embassy for information detailing the rapid progress of medicine in the Soviet Union, which he wanted to present in an address to the Washington Academy of Medicine. “You may be confident,” he assured his embassy friends, “that I will endeavor to do justice to the subject.”80 Reporting back about one of his informational speeches, he claimed that his audience “could hardly believe when I told them that the USSR is sending out this summer 3,000 geological expeditions.”81 Hrdlička’s naïve fervor for the Soviet Union dulled his usually sharp attention to detail. To be fair, the Soviet Union was a big country, and perhaps he really saw peasants somewhere in Siberia living in material bliss in the summer of 1939. Yet whatever he may have seen, there were also many darker things occurring in the Soviet Union that he missed. Modern historian Sheila Fitzpatrick describes material conditions differing considerably from Hrdlička’s memories of bounty: The 1930s was a decade of enormous privation and hardship for the Soviet people, much worse than the 1920s. Famine hit all the major grain growing regions in 1932–33, and in addition bad harvests caused major disruptions in the food supply in 1936 and 1939. Towns were swamped with new arriv75 76 77 78 79 80 81

“Aleš Hrdlička Sees Russians Becoming One Physical Type,” Science Service, 22 August 1939. “Aleš Hrdlička Sees Russians Becoming One Physical Type,” Science Service, 22 August 1939. Letter, Hrdlička to Oumansky, 18 June 1940, box 60, “Soviet Embassy, 1935–41,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Oumansky, 29 November 1939. Letter, Hrdlička to Oumansky, 31 January 1940. Letter, Hrdlička to Oumansky, 12 February 1941. Letter, Hrdlička to Oumansky, 18 June 1940.

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als from the villages, housing was drastically overcrowded, and the rationing system was close to collapse. For the greater part of the urban population, life revolved around the endless struggle to get the basics necessary for survival—food clothing, shelter.82

Not only were Soviet citizens largely deprived of basic material necessities, but hundreds of thousands were murdered just before Hrdlička’s tour. According to Timothy Snyder, the Great Terror claimed 681,692 lives in 1937 and 1938.83 Again, in fairness, the killings were secretive and most of the world knew little about them. Yet Hrdlička was an anthropologist who spoke Russian and claimed to have a special interest in Soviet demography. Ironically, he was obsessed with rapid population growth in the Soviet Union, which he attributed to exceptional Slavic fertility. Mesmerized by the wonder of Slavic baby making, Hrdlička failed to detect the violent disappearance of nearly seven hundred thousand people just one year before his visit. Hrdlička refused to see the dark side of the Soviet dictatorship. In a 1939 interview with The Washington Post, a reporter asked him about the secret police, but, according to the Post, he “shook his head in annoyance” and insisted, “I know nothing about those things.”84 He had heard that the secret police might follow him, but “all the time I was in Moscow I saw just one policeman.”85 He admitted nonchalantly that Stalin was a dictator, but this was a small price to pay for progress. In November 1939, he told Ambassador Umansky, “I knew Russia before the World War, [so] it was easy to appreciate the present conditions, many of which are to a great credit of the present leaders of the Soviet peoples.”86 He told one doubter that the Soviets “may have their dictator, and a lot of faults, but they are the only great unit that strives to advance by work, and not by the madness of piracy.”87 For him it was self-evident that Stalin was benevolent while Europe’s other tyrants were “pirates.” 82 Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 41. 83 Snyder, Blood Lands, 104. 84 The Washington Post, 24 October 1939. 85 The Washington Post, 24 October 1939. 86 Letter, Hrdlička to Oumansky, 29 November 1939. 87 Letter, Hrdlička to Frederick William Wile, 2 October 1939, box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš, 1939–40,” Correspondence.

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If challenged, he stood his ground. In a private letter, attorney George Edward Sullivan, who was responding to a 1938 interview of Hrdlička in The Washington Herald, tried to call him out for tolerating Stalin. “It has recently become fashionable,” scolded Sullivan, “not to include the Soviet Union in any survey of dictatorships or world horrors.”88 It was inconsistent and naïve for Hrdlička to single out Hitler and Mussolini as villains and call the Soviet Union a demorcracy, but make “no mention of Stalin as a dictator.”89 Hrdlička responded by simply restating his assertion that the Soviet dictatorship was morally superior to Germany and Italy’s: I am quite neutral in all these matters, as far at least as it is possible under present conditions. But I see a very material difference between the men and the systems you mention. On one hand there is rapacity, violence, piracy upon free people; on the other side none of this, only a directed forceful emancipation of own people, with a protection of interests and boundaries of their country. I have just returned from the farther most Russian Asiatic possessions. We found everywhere order, peace, cleanliness and astonishing progress in education of all the inhabitants. If this is true of the whole of Siberia and Russia, then there has been wrought there, within the last ten or fifteen years, a marvelous advance in civilization. How could one condemn this?90

Sullivan wrote back to tell Hrdlička that he was deceived by propaganda, for “it is well known, of course, that tourists are shown portions of Soviet Russia as being models of order, peace, cleanliness and progress in education.”91 The following year Hrdlička traveled more extensively in the Soviet Union, and there are reasons to suspect that his hosts choreographed his visit, as Sullivan had suggested. Hrdlička was not an average tourist; he was a world-famous scientist who had been officially accepted among the ranks of the Russian academic establishment.92 This meant he rated among the intelligentsia. Even in the worst times, and especially in the 1930s, the aca88 Letter, George E. Sullivan to Hrdlička, 30 August 1938, box 58, “SU-SW, 1924–38,” Correspondence. 89 Letter, Sullivan to Hrdlička, 30 August 1938. 90 Letter, Hrdlička to Sullivan, 2 September 1938. Although Hrdlička’s most important visit to the Soviet Union was in 1939, he was in the Aleutian and Commander Islands in 1938, and this probably explains his reference to “the farthermost Russian Asiatic possessions” in this letter, dated 1938. 91 Letter, Sullivan to Hrdlička, 6 September 1938. 92 Letter, Hrdlička to D. A. Bartashov, 3 May 1913, box 13, “Bartashov, A., 1912–36,” Correspondence. Hrdlička was elected a member of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society.

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demic elite (if not arrested or murdered) in the Soviet Union enjoyed abundant food rations and other privileges compared to the general population.93 This is the community that hosted Hrdlička. Delighted with how well he was treated in Leningrad, Hrdlička wrote to a friend in Britain: “A few days after my advent they gave me a formal reception, with all sorts of things to eat and five different classes of wine.”94 For Hrdlička, there really was plenty of good food. Hrdlička was unable to indulge in these luxuries because he had suffered a small stroke on the way to Europe and had to keep a strict diet. Deeply concerned about his health his gracious hosts, as Hrdlička recounted, had him examined “by their foremost specialist in such conditions as mine.”95 Writing to a Czech friend, he explained how he was recovering “under the guidance of the foremost specialist in Leningrad.”96 He admitted that Soviet medicine still lagged behind the western countries, but “the newest establishments,” to which he had privileged admission, “are excellent with all modern furnishings and improvements.”97 If Hrdlička had stopped in Magnitogorsk on his way to the outer reaches of Siberia, he would have discovered a hospital made up of wooden barracks, which was often lacking heat, water, waste removal, and staff.98 Of course, even in this rough frontier city, there was exclusive healthcare available to foreigners and elites like Hrdlička.99 After spending a few weeks with the pampered Soviet intelligentsia, with its best doctors fawning over him, it is no wonder that he came home with happy memories for the curious American press. On closer examination, even Hrdlička saw clues of Soviet authoritarianism, yet devotion prevented him from diagnosing them as systemic. Just after his 1939 trip, he complained to the American Russian Institute about mistreatment. When he boarded a steamer in London, the Soviet travel organization, Intourist, confiscated his passport which was kept by officials until the ship reached Leningrad. Even there, they kept his passport until Leningrad officials came aboard the steamer and examined it for them93 Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 95. 94 Letter, Hrdlička to H. P. Himsworth, 23 August 1939, box 57, “Russian trip, 1939–40,” Correspondence. 95 Letter, Hrdlička to Himsworth, 23 August 1939. 96 Letter, Hrdlička to V. Myslivec, 23 August 1939, box 57, “Russian trip, 1939–40,” Correspondence. 97 Letter, Hrdlička to Himsworth, 23 August 1939. 98 Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 140. 99 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 140.

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selves. After this ordeal, customs officials examined his baggage another five times before allowing him to enter the country. “In all my travels of 50 years,” he griped, “I never saw such examinations of baggage.”100 Once checked in, there was another dispute about whether the parameters of his visa really allowed him access to sites he intended to visit, even though he had worked out everything in advance with the friendly embassy officials in Washington. To get the necessary permission, he had to waste time and spend his own money visiting several offices in Leningrad. Other travelers, he remembered, became angry, yet he “took it all charitably and smilingly.” These were only minor glitches, and once they were fixed, it would be clear to all that the “Soviet country is indeed well worth a visit of every educated man and woman.”101 He also cheered aggressive Soviet foreign policy. For Communist fans of the Soviet Union, the 1939 Soviet treaty with Nazi Germany was uncomfortable, but Hrdlička had no problem with the embarrassing new party line that fascism was “a matter of taste.”102 Unencumbered by Communist ideology, he had no need to square Soviet priorities, which he considered “Russian” anyway, with superficial political slogans. For him, the German and Soviet plunder of Poland was strategic for Russia, which was only “trying to get back its own.”103 It did not signify any real friendship with Germany. From his stay in the Soviet Union, just a few weeks before the invasion of Poland, he remembered, “the foremost slogan there is ‘Russia for the Russians.’”104 While nationalist sentiments left an impression, he recalled no stirring socialist mottos in the world’s biggest Communist state. He noticed neither Communist ideology nor the murderous Terror because they did not match his view of the Soviet Union. Ideology skewed Hrdlička’s appraisal of the Soviet Union, but he was no Communist. When discussing Soviet issues, reported the Washington Herald, “Dr. Hrdlička spoke as a scientist and not as a political observer.”105 When 100 Letter, Hrdlička to Harriet L. Moore, 5 September 1939, box 9, “American Russian Institute, 1938–43,” Correspondence. 101 Letter, Hrdlička to Moore, 5 September 1939. 102 Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party during the Second World War (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 45. 103 Letter, Hrdlička to Jan Kabelík, 18 September 1939, box 57, “Russian trip, 1939–40,” Correspondence. 104 Letter, Hrdlička to Wile, 2 October 1939. 105 “Dictators to Destroy Selves, Says Hrdlička,” The Washington Herald, 30 August 1938, box 72, “News Clippings on or by Hrdlička, 1938–40,” News Clippings and Printed Material, 1893–1953.

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asked about Stalin’s dictatorship, he told the Herald, “I am not a political man. I have no interest or knowledge of politics … I know nothing of politics.”106 Significantly, Ashley Montagu remembered in 1944 that Hrdlička enthusiastically supported the Soviet Union but at the same time “claimed to belong to no political party.”107 He convinced himself that his views amounted to unquestionable scientific truths that transcended mere politics. There is no evidence that so-called “leftist” politics motivated him. He always defended the new Czechoslovakian republic against charges of Bolshevism. In 1920 he protectively commented that “while its socialist parties are strong they are no bolshevists. There is not a single ‘soviet’ in the whole new republic.”108 In 1923 he advised a Czechoslovakian friend to avoid using the term práce (labor) in a title because the English translation of the word reminded people of “Bolshevistic experiments and tendencies.”109 He also avoided left-wing causes in America. In 1939, he refused to support a petition for republican Spain because his “position with the government” required neutrality.110 In the early 1940s, after some hesitation, he decided to allow the questionable Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born to use his name publicly. One of his friends thought this organization might be communist, but Hrdlička believed it was of a “non-political nature,” and “their use of my name was allowed only on this basis.”111 He then added that “should I ever learn anything of the nature you suggest I would ask at once that my name be withdrawn.”112 In US politics, he did not associate the New Deal with the socialist “left”; instead, it reminded him of Nazism, and both indicated a general “reversion to medieval barbarism.”113

106 “Dictators to Destroy Selves, Says Hrdlička,” The Washington Herald, 30 August 1938. 107 M. F. Ashley Montagu, “Aleš Hrdlička,” American Anthropologist 46 (1944): 116. 108 Letter, Hrdlička to Svante August Arrhenius, 6 June 1920, box 6, “ARN-AY, 1916–1942,” Correspondence. Hrdlička’s inner feelings about “mild” socialism, if he had any, remain inscrutable, but he clearly did not want to identify with “Bolshevik” socialism. 109 Letter, Hrdlička to Peter Ružek, 8 February 1921, box 44, “Masarykova Akademie Práce, 1920–29,” Correspondence. 110 Letter, Hrdlička to Robert L. Paddock, 16 January 1939, box 52, “PACAK-PELANT, 1917–43,” Correspondence. 111 Letter, Hrdlička to J.J. Zmrhal, 30 March 1942, box 20, “Czechoslovak National Council of America, 1930–43,” Correspondence. 112 Letter, Hrdlička to Zmrhal, 30 March 1942. 113 Letter, Hrdlička to Hal Downey, 26 April 1933, box 20, “DOZ-DZ, 1904–42,” Correspondence.

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Race-Thinking in the Communist World Hrdlička’s perspective provides a surprising example of how the Soviet enterprise, often viewed as the antidote to racism, could also appeal to disciples of race. Communism, it is sometimes asserted, was all about class and never about race or nation.114 Yet Hrdlička loved the Soviet Union for its racial qualities and entirely ignored its universalist-communist mission. Hrdlička’s odd interpretation raises an important question. How definitively did the Soviet Union and communist ideology in general manage to liberate themselves from race-thinking? Although the primary research of this study cannot provide any conclusions about race beliefs in the Soviet Union, Hrdlička’s unexpected opinions, described here for the first time, suggest that maybe race-thinking was so pervasive that even communists either assumed it to be true or cynically accommodated themselves to it. Despite the theoretical implications of Marxism, it is by no means clear that class always eclipsed race in practice, and recent scholarship suggests that Hrdlička’s racial values may not have been entirely out of step with Soviet practices. Since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in the 1990s, some scholars have reconsidered the role of “national identities” in the Soviet Union.115 While the Soviet state, like Hrdlička, passionately rejected Nazi-style racism, it embraced official policies founded on “racial conceptions of the nation.”116 114 After the war, according to Tony Judt, “… it was a matter of dogma that Communism had no truck with racial or religious prejudice; and once the Soviet cause was attached to the banner of ‘anti-Fascism,’ as it was from 1935 until August 1939 and again from June 1941, the Jews of Europe had no greater friend than Josef Stalin himself ” (181). Needless to say, Judt questioned the accuracy of this “dogma.” See Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005), 180–89, 215–17. For similar critiques of post-war dogma, see also Norman Davies, Europe at War, 1939–1945: No Simple Victory (London: Macmillan, 2006), 13–16; 461–472; Snyder, Blood Lands, 66–68. 115 Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity’,” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (February 2000): 1–47; Francine Hirsch, “Toward an Empire of Nations: Border-Making and the Formation of Soviet National Identities,” The Russian Review 59, no. 2 (April 2000): 201–226; Hirsch, Empire of Nations; Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review 53, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 414–452; Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 341; Weiner, “Nature, Nurture, and Memory”; Eric D. Weitz, “Racial Politics without the concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges,” Slavic Review 61 no. 1 (Spring 2002): 1–29; 116 Weitz, “Racial Politics,” 17; George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 100–101. Fredrickson’s designation of an “overtly racist regime,” in which the state officially makes race a central public concern and legislates accordingly is useful here. He identifies three such regimes, which include the southern states of the United States (“segregation”), Nazi Germany, and the “Apartheid” regime in South Africa. Other societies, observes Fredrickson, can be highly “racialized,” but they are not necessarily “racist regimes.”

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Lenin himself planted the seeds for the racialization of nationality which Stalin later nurtured. Because of his theoretical convictions, Lenin prophesied that someday all nationalism would disappear as proletarians around the world united. In 1916, however, he advised the Bolsheviks to cooperate momentarily with acceptable “national self-determination” movements. Without defining exactly what he thought a “nation” was, Lenin took it for granted that there were “oppressor” and “oppressed” nations. The nationalism of imperialist “oppressor nations” was illegitimate, but good Communists, thought Lenin, should support “oppressed” nations in their struggle for “self-determination.”117 Lenin’s ideas left the impression that some nationalism was momentarily justifiable and that some, that of “oppressor nations,” was reprehensible. While Lenin saw “national self-determination” as a fleeting step on the way to communism, Stalin’s Soviet Union treated “nations” as fixtures of the permanent natural order. Now, the Soviet leadership enthusiastically promoted national identities to the point of revering, in Terry Martin’s words, national “primordialism.”118 The nurturing of “oppressed” nations clashed with the centralizing aim of proletarian integration within the Communist Soviet Union and ultimately caused chaos and dissension. Of course, Soviet intellectuals wanted nothing to do with Nazi-style race beliefs, which seemed inconsistent with fundamental communist teachings. Racial determinism especially contradicted the Communist belief that education and environment would one day overcome racial and national identities. As Francine Hirsch has shown, Soviet propaganda, at least for a time, proudly emphasized the right of citizens to choose their own nationality on internal passports, in contrast to the Nazis, who were obsessed with “who belongs to which nation by blood.”119 Yet the Soviet government’s ostentatious attempt to distance itself from Nazi-style racism did not insulate it from the powerful race-thinking virus.

117 V.I. Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-determination,” in V.I. Lenin: Collected Works. Vol. 22, December 1915–July 1916, trans. Yuri Sdobnikov, ed. George Hanna (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), 147, “Collected Works of VI Lenin,” ttps://archive.org/stream/lenincollectedworks4/lenin-cw-vol-22#page/n4/mode/2up (accessed 25.1.2019). 118 Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, 341. See also Brubaker and Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity’,” 25–28; Slezkine,“The USSR as a Communal Apartment,” 414–452. 119 Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 293.

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In the end, the Soviet state’s assumption, nurtured by Stalin’s regime, that its individual citizens belonged “naturally” in nations, conflicted lethally with civil rights. In 1938 the NKVD terminated the individual’s right to choose their own nationality. The purpose was to ensure that members of “enemy” nations could not hide their “true” identities.120 In the end, being a member of a subjective nation according to “blood” was more important than Soviet citizenship. Now Soviet citizens of German or Polish heritage, whose families had lived in the region for generations, suddenly and irrevocably belonged to “foreign” and “enemy” nations and no longer deserved to live on Soviet soil. In its pursuit of secret enemy agents, the government, and especially the security apparatus, acted on these presumptions about nation and race, for example by targeting people with Jewish heritage or German-sounding names.121 At times, Soviet institutions adopted murderous policies founded on the assumption that entire nationalities had “natural” inclinations toward disloyalty. For instance, in the 1930s Soviet intelligence claimed to uncover a massive “Polish” conspiracy, and in 1938–39 this “discovery” culminated in the arrest and summary execution of around eighty-five thousand Poles, who were, according to Snyder, “about forty times more likely to die during the Great Terror than Soviet citizens generally.”122 While there were many differences between Hrdlička’s beliefs and Soviet race-thinking, the two matched in important ways. Like Soviet intellectuals, Hrdlička ostentatiously rejected Nazi-style racism. He concurred with Stalin that there were “enemy nations.” He likewise agreed with the NKVD, at least after 1938, that belonging to a nation was a question of “blood,” not choice. He agreed that individuals whose families, especially of German descent, had lived in the Slavic zone for centuries were “foreigners” and did not really belong there. Ultimately, he agreed that belonging to a “natural” racial identity was more important than civil rights. Had he truly understood its dimensions, he probably would not have approved of the mass murder of Poles, but by 1938 he had already trained himself not to look too closely for evil in the Soviet Union, which he believed was destined for racial greatness. 120 Snyder, Blood Lands, 110. The Soviet passports are much discussed due to their “biological” implications. See also Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 293–97; Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment,” 444. 121 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 334, 345. 122 Snyder, Blood Lands, 104.

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There is evidence that the Soviet intelligentsia respected Hrdlička’s legacy. Anthropologist Henry Field, who made a professional visit to the Soviet Union immediately after the war in 1945, reported that “on the wall of the Institute of Ethnology, Moscow, hangs, among a few distinguished Russian scientists, a large framed photograph of Hrdlička.”123 Field also claimed that Soviet scientists were preparing to publish a special commemorative book in honor of Hrdlička and Franz Boas.124 Several years later, anthropologist Vojtěch Fetter expressed pride in the fact that Soviet intellectuals esteemed the Czech Hrdlička. Fetter recalled that in 1946, “a special volume of a journal was published in honor of his [Hrdlička’s] memory in the Soviet Union.”125 Also, according to Fetter, the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow took the time in May 1945, amidst the rubble of the war, to hold a special commemoration to mark the two-year anniversary of Hrdlička’s death. Hrdlička was no Communist, but his race-thinking might have been alluring in the citadel of class-thinking.

123 Henry Field, “Anthropology in the Soviet Union, 1945,” American Anthropologist 48, no. 3 (July-September 1946): 379. 124 Field, “Anthropology in the Soviet Union, 1945,” 379. 125 Fetter, Dr. Aleš Hrdlička, 3.

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O Indra, find out who is an Aryan and who is a Dasa and separate them.1 (Rig Veda)

Racial Diagnosis In the middle of World War II (1943), “Mr. Smith” of Detroit wrote to Hrdlička because he was worried about the race of his adopted baby girl.2 The baby had been born in New York City, and the Smiths did not know the natural parents. The authorities in New York pledged that the biological parents were “a young Jewish couple” with no “colored strain in the family.”3 The Jewish Social Service Bureau of Detroit sent Hrdlička an accompanying letter supporting the Smiths. When the child was adopted, stated the bureau, “there was no question in the mind of the physicians, attorneys, or adoptive parents but that the child was Jewish and white.”4 As the child grew, the Smiths noticed her skin was “darker than usual,” and they began to discern “negroid [sic] features.”5 The Smiths’ friends were gossiping that the child must be of “negroid parentage,” or that one of her natural parents “must be colored.”6 They had written to the adoption agency in New York to confirm the child’s Whiteness and stop “the rumors and Francis Watson, “Indus Civilization and the Aryan Invasion,” in Readings in World Civilizations, vol. I., 2nd ed, ed. Kevin Reilly (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), 36–40. 2 I have changed the name because the case involves an adopted child, who would be approximately 82 years old in 2023. The documents are found in box 23, “FO-FRE, 1913–1943,” Correspondence. 3 Ibid. 4 Letter, Pauline Gollub to Hrdlička, 16 July 1943. 5 Letter, Mr. Smith to Hrdlička, 21 July 1943. 6 Letter, Mr. Smith to Hrdlička, 21 July 1943.

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talk,” but the gossip only increased.7 The Jewish Social Service vouched for the Smith’s awkward situation, telling Hrdlička: “there has always been a question in the community as to the child’s racial background. The reaction of strangers to the child is obvious.”8 Both the Smiths and the Social Service presumed science could best resolve this issue, so they wrote to the worldrenowned Hrdlička assuming he would “dissolve all doubts.”9 For a fee of one hundred dollars, Hrdlička agreed to give a verdict if the couple would bring the baby to Washington for an examination. He claimed he could decide “based entirely on the physical appearance of the child and a few other related matters.”10 The parents, he ordered, must “leave her hair absolutely natural and without any oils or lotions” for the appointment.11 Hrdlička’s judgment, dated 25 August 1943, is preserved in the archival record. It states that Hrdlička “examined [the girl’s name], 23 months old adopted daughter of [parents’ names], of Detroit, and found definitely that she has a Negro admixture.”12 There was a lot at stake for this innocent child. Hrdlička hesitated to accept the job feeling that it carried “a great deal of responsibility,” and in the case of an “untoward finding,” he wanted a guarantee that “the child’s future would not be jeopardized.”13 Everyone seemed to agree that a change was needed if the child was Black. According to the bureau, “if the child is white, the Smiths are eager to retain it and are excellent parents”; however, “if the child is not white … it is best, if possible, to find a solution in Detroit.”14 Hrdlička also thought: “should the findings prove unfavorable it would of course be best to attend to matters now, before the child becomes conscious of conditions.”15 The archive does not reveal what happened after the “untoward” finding. Like the Smiths, many Americans assumed scientific experts knew how to tell the races apart just by looking. As one of America’s premier anthropological authorities, part of Hrdlička’s job description at the Smithsonian 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Letter, Mr. Smith to Hrdlička, 21 July 1943. Letter, Gollub to Hrdlička, 16 July 1943. Letter, Gollub to Hrdlička, 16 July 1943. Letter, Hrdlička to Mr. Smith, 21 July 1943. Letter, Hrdlička to Mr. Smith, 2 August 1943. Letter, Hrdlička to “whom it may concern,” 25 August 1943. Hrdlička to Mr. Smith, 21 July 1943. Letter, Gollub to Hrdlička, 16 July 1943. Letter, Gollub to Hrdlička, 16 July 1943.

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was “the comprehensive biological study of the many and diverse racial elements of the American nation.”16 By the 1920s he had an international reputation as a specialist who could file ambiguous individuals and groups into the right categories. Accordingly, his papers are full of letters from government officials, lawyers, and interested citizens wanting him to make racial diagnoses. Hrdlička’s verdicts brought scientific authority to the notion that all humans fit into distinct racial categories. Did any “scientific” methodology guide his prognostications?

Mixed Bloods and Full Bloods Hrdlička won renown as a race diviner in the so-called “White Earth Litigation” in Minnesota from 1914–1920. This complicated series of lawsuits had its origin in the General Allotment Act of 1887, which was intended to parcel out tribal land to individual Native American owners. The story is intricate, but so much fraud accompanied the land assignments that by 1916 there were around 1,500 suits in which individuals claimed to have been cheated out of their allotments.17 In response, the courts decided the government had a special obligation to protect the land of “full-blood” Native Americans from alienation.18 The key question now became the definition of a “full-blood.” After some juristic deliberation in lower courts, the Supreme Court concluded that any mix of “White” blood meant that an individual was not a full blood and therefore not entitled to special federal protection.19 Now that “full blood” was legally defined, it was crucial for the courts to find a methodology for sorting out who was a full blood and who was not. There was a lot at stake. As Robert C. Bell of the Justice Depart-

16 Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 248. 17 Letter, Robert C. Bell to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 15 November 1920, box 22, “Department of Justice, 1916–21, 1920–41,” Correspondence. 18 On the surface, the government’s intent to protect “full-bloods” sounds noble; however, the reasoning was that “full-bloods,” because they lacked “White” blood, were less capable of defending themselves. A broader reading of the entire affair shows that unscrupulous land stealing was the practical result, despite the condescending language of “protection.” This immense injustice, which Hrdlička aided, is described skillfully by: David Beaulieu, “Curly Hair and Big Feet: Physical Anthropology and Land Allotment on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation,” American Indian Quarterly 8 (1984): 281–314; Melissa Meyer, The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1994). 19 Beaulieu, “Curly Hair and Big Feet,” 287; Meyer, White Earth Tragedy, 167.

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ment noted, the approximately eight-hundred Native Americans designated as full bloods stood to recover around 725,000 acres of land.20 There were two competing understandings of the “blood” status of Native Americans. For the Anishaanabe in Minnesota, ancestry played some role in distinguishing between “mixed” and “full” bloods, but cultural indicators and life-style choices were even more important. These features might include language, style of clothing, housing, education, or level of participation in the capitalist economy.21 Physical traits were less important. In The White Earth Tragedy, Melissa Meyer describes how a Native American grew frustrated over the court’s obsession with somatic traits and complained, “it wouldn’t make any difference if [someone] was curly headed. My hair is curly.”22 This person also nonchalantly noted that “some Indians are blacker than others, and some are lighter.”23 In fact, in the early days of litigation, there were attempts to compose lists of “full bloods” based on consultation with Native leaders.24 The courts, however, viewed Native American accounts of their own ancestry as untrustworthy. The courts rejected the Anishaanabe approach in favor of the second understanding of blood status, which purported to be clear-cut physical science. If an objective examination of physical features could decide blood status, then the courts did not have to bother with nuanced Native American testimonial. The government hired Hrdlička and another anthropologist, Dr. Albert Jenks of the University of Minnesota, to do the job. In a 1914 deposition, Hrdlička was asked whether he could, “without any knowledge of his genealogical history,” evaluate a Native American’s “physical characteristics” precisely enough to determine “what he was.”25 Hrdlička won the confidence of the lawyers, and he traveled to Minnesota to examine hundreds of Native Americans and determine which were legitimate full bloods and therefore eligible for the final “Blood Role,” completed in 1920. At the end of the process, Ransom J. Powell, a local attorney appointed by Congress to compose the Blood Role, wrote Hrdlička to tell him how 20 Letter, Bell to the Smithsonian, 15 November 1920. 21 Beaulieu, “Curly Hair and Big Feet,” 287–291; Meyer, White Earth Tragedy, 118–28, 165–72. 22 Meyer, White Earth Tragedy, 169. 23 Meyer, White Earth Tragedy, 169. 24 Meyer, White Earth Tragedy, 162. 25 Deposition, n.d. (November 1914)? Box 53, “Powell, Ransom J., 1914–1920, Correspondence. Beaulieu dates the deposition November 1914. See Beaulieu, “Curly Hair and Big Feet,” 294.

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completely the scientific approach had triumphed in the courthouse.26 According to Powell, the judge ignored the other side’s attorney, who “offered genealogical testimony” to prove that some Native Americans had been mistakenly classified as mixed bloods.27 The judge was exasperated by an Anishaanabe woman who “undertook to testify in regard to her genealogy and blood status,” and instead of listening to her, he decided “to abandon that class of testimony and resort to the scientific method of determining the blood status.”28 Robert C. Bell of the Justice Department was equally thrilled that science won out over the accounts of Native Americans, for “testimony as to genealogy on this issue was found unreliable and always unsatisfactory.”29 In retrospect, the “scientific” method does not seem to have been more accurate than simply asking Native Americans about their own ancestry. First, some witnesses claimed that the scientists mistakenly put siblings with the same parents in different categories.30 Second, in practice, the court sometimes resorted to “common sense” and ignored, and even belittled, anthropological science. According to Ransom Powell, Judge Morris of the U.S. District Court already presumed, based on appearance, that one “big Indian” named George Walters was not a full blood, “regardless of any testimony that might be presented.”31 Why even bother with anthropologists? According to the judge, “it does not need an expert to tell that that man has some White blood.”32 Third, even Hrdlička and Jenks’ scientific method used ambiguous assessments. Based on Hrdlička’s insistence that pure-blood Native American men had straight beards, the full-blood status of one man was questioned because his whiskers were “pretty curly.”33 At the time, these inconvenient details did not tarnish the celebratory story that science had settled a high-stakes legal problem by definitively placing ambiguous individuals in racial classes. In 1920, Robert C. Bell 26 On Powell, see Meyer, White Earth Tragedy, 163–64. 27 Letter, Ransom J. Powell to Hrdlička, 4 December 1920, box 53, “Powell, Ransom J., 1914–1920, Correspondence. 28 Letter, Powell to Hrdlička, 4 December 1920. 29 Letter, Bell to the Smithsonian, 15 November 1920. 30 Meyer, White Earth Tragedy, 171. 31 Letter, Powell to Hrdlička, 4 December 1920. 32 Letter, Powell to Hrdlička, 4 December 1920. 33 Beaulieu, “Curly Hair and Big Feet,” 294; Powell to Dr. Albert E. Jenks, 16 November 1914, box 53, “Powell, Ransom J., 1914–1920,” Correspondence.

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wrote a glowing letter of commendation to the Smithsonian on Hrdlička’s behalf and told his bosses, “The doctor is truly a great scientist and his expert opinion has been accepted as conclusive by opposing litigants and lawyers, and by the commissioners and the court. His assistance greatly facilitated tasks that seemed next to impossible.”34 Hrdlička’s “heroic” role in the litigation even won international respect. In a special edition of the Czechoslovakian journal Anthropologie, Jindřich Matiegka praised his Czech American friend for proving “that a detailed anthropological examination … could be of considerable assistance to the law.”35 In private, Matiegka hailed Hrdlička for showing the world how “anthropology can be applied to practical life.”36 Matiegka described how he had also used anthropology to solve a legal dispute in Czechoslovakia. Hrdlička’s role in identifying full bloods, Matiegka wrote, “reminds me of an incident in Slaný [north of Prague] when I was summoned by the court as an expert in the case of a twenty-year-old woman demanding financial support from some rich Jew, who she claimed was her father, and I was supposed to decide if he really was.”37 As an expert on Native American “blood,” Hrdlička received other requests from Americans hoping that science could settle their uncertainties. For example, in 1935, W. B. Jolls, a doctor from New York, had a patient who said she was 1/8 Native American and 7/8 White. The patient had died, but for reasons unknown, Jolls still wrote to Hrdlička to ask how to, in his words, “diagnose” an “Indian mixture.” He had found “plenty on Negro mixtures” in his local library but nothing about “Indian mixtures.”38 The patient, claimed Jolls, had a “sloping forehead, dark eyes, black hair, cheek bones somewhat prominent.”39 Hrdlička wrote back that the only way to know for sure “is for the subject to be examined by an expert.”40 Since her demise made this impossible, Hrdlička risked a judgment anyway. Without any

34 Letter, Bell to the Smithsonian, 15 November 1920. 35 Jindřich Matiegka, “Dr. Aleš Hrdlička: Biography,” Reprint from Anthropologie, “Dr. Aleš Hrdlička Anniversary Volume” VIII (Prague: V. and A. Janata, 1929), 11. 36 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 19 December 1920, box 44, “Matiegka, Jindřich, 1914–20,” Correspondence. 37 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 19 December 1920. 38 Letter, W.B. Jolls to Hrdlička, 2 October 1935, box 36, “JJ-JZ, 1911–42,” Correspondence. 39 Letter, Jolls to Hrdlička, 2 October 1935. 40 Letter, Hrdlička to Jolls, 5 October 1935.

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first-hand examination, he told Jolls he was “inclined to believe that there was some Indian blood” in the woman, “judging from your description.”41 In another case, an attorney from Tulsa, Henry Duncan, had two clients hoping to inherit property, and blood status was important for determining the success of their claims. In 1938 Duncan wrote to Hrdlička to ask for advice. He had heard that Hrdlička was “an authority on Indian characteristics,” and that he could “by seeing a person tell whether he has Indian blood in his veins.”42 Hrdlička insisted that a personal examination was the only way to be certain, but he was too busy to make the long trip to Tulsa. About two years later, Duncan sent Hrdlička photos of his clients and their parents. Hrdlička claimed that it was too risky to make a conclusion based on photos alone, but then he ventured a scientific guess. Based entirely on the photos, he concluded the mother had “certainly no Indian blood.”43 The father, in his view, had “a suggestion of an Indian,” “though if there is any such blood it is well diluted.”44

America’s Hidden Blacks In the southern states, racial “mixing” threatened the clarity of categories required by segregation laws.45 To prevent the human habit of “miscegenation,” some states passed laws preventing Whites and Blacks from marrying. Virginia took the most drastic step with its 1924 Racial Integrity Act. Under this law, anyone with any amount of non-White blood was considered Black and forbidden to marry a White.46 Although designed to keep race lines straight in the future, the law unintentionally focused attention on the past and created uncertainty about the present. If miscegenation 41 42 43 44 45

Letter, Hrdlička to Jolls, 5 October 1935. Letter, Henry R. Duncan to Hrdlička, 4 November 1938, box 20, “DOZ-DZ, 1904–42,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Duncan, 24 April 1940. Letter, Hrdlička to Duncan, 24 April 1940. Historian Gary Nash explored “mixing” in a beautiful popular format in: Forbidden Love: The Secret History of Mixed-Race America (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), and in a more academic tone in: Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2010). 46 See Peggy Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth Century America,” Journal of American History 83, no. 1 (June 1996): 44–69; Richard B. Sherman, “‘The Last Stand’: The Fight for Racial Integrity in Virginia in the 1920s,” The Journal of Southern History 54, no.1 (Feb. 1988): 69–92; Douglas Smith, “The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922–1930: ‘Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro,’” The Journal of Southern History 68, no. 1 (Feb. 2002): 65–106.

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was a “problem,” then how many Whites could be entirely sure there was no “Black blood” in their ancestry? The discovery of ancestral Black blood could potentially invalidate a marriage or consign a person to the humiliations that segregation placed on Blacks. The situation was even more complicated because the law made an exception for a certain amount of Native American blood.47 This also raised numerous problems, including the possibility that people who should be classified as Black escaped their “proper” status by claiming Native American ancestry. One of the architects of the law, Walter A. Plecker, was the Registrar of Vital Statistics for the Virginia State Board of Health, and he was determined to apply it scrupulously, even if this meant challenging the White status of some citizens. Plecker was certain there were ten to twenty thousand “near White people” in Virginia who were not officially classed as Blacks and therefore free to marry Whites.48 He also believed that most Native Americans in Virginia were mixed with Blacks and “hiding” their racial identity.49 The problem was how to identify people with even the slightest drop of Black blood. He, like many, turned to science for clarification, and in 1925, Plecker wrote to the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology for help. The Bureau referred a copy of the letter to Hrdlička, who wrote back to Plecker directly. Eager to help, he told Plecker that Virginia needed the Smithsonian’s knowhow. Finding hidden Black people was complicated. When skin tone was not determinative, for example, it was important to consider hair.50 However, there were no simple rules, and besides skin and hair, there were “numerous other features which in cases of doubt have to be taken into consideration.”51 Because of this complexity, Hrdlička reasoned, “the only satisfactory way to determine mixtures of Indians and whites or of Negroes and Indians is through expert (anthropological) examination.”52 The Smithsonian, offered Hrdlička, could help train Virginian physicians to make these challenging racial evaluations.53 Otherwise, Plecker should, when dif47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Sherman, “‘The Last Stand,’” 72–77. Sherman, “‘The Last Stand,’” 72. Sherman, “‘The Last Stand,’” 81. Letter, Hrdlička to Dr. W. A. Plecker, 12 February 1925, box 52, “PI-PO, 1924–41,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Plecker, 12 February 1925. Letter, Hrdlička to Plecker, 12 February 1925. Letter, Hrdlička to Plecker, 12 February 1925.

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ficult cases arise, call “on an expert from outside of your state.”54 Either way, race judgments could be very complicated, and the “decision in all except plain cases should be placed in the hands of an expert.”55 There is evidence that ordinary citizens also worried about White people bearing Black blood. In 1932 a woman from West Virginia named Virginia Kious wrote to Hrdlička because she believed there were “people who are classed as white, yet apparently have negro blood or resemble negroes.”56 She was interested “in learning how one can determine whether a person has negro blood.”57 She had heard of a few tests. She thought “a person with negro blood” would not have “lunar shaped markings” at the base of the finger nails.58 In fact, an “expert witness” really tried to use this test in a court case in California in 1939.59 Kious had also heard that the end of the nose of a Black person was “soft,” while a White person’s was “firm.”60 Finally, she asked, “is there a test to determine negro and Indian blood?”61 Hrdlička replied by offering a few general rules. In “ordinary circumstances,” he claimed, individuals with Black blood were identifiable by “curly hair, darker color, low broad nose and a negroid element in the physiognomy.”62 However, many cases were not so “obvious,” and “where the proportion of the negro blood is small,” the assessment “may become very difficult” and should be “the domain of the expert.”63 Did Hrdlička ever reach his own conclusions by examining finger nails or feeling tips of noses? In another case in 1931, a professor from the University of California at Berkeley forwarded a letter to Hrdlička, along with his own personal note of explanation, from the family doctor of Mr. and Mrs. “Taylor” and their adopted son “Mathew.”64 The Taylors adopted Mathew from an unmarried mother, who was supposedly of Swedish heritage. The alleged father was “of 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

Letter, Hrdlička to Plecker, 12 February 1925. Letter, Hrdlička to Plecker, 12 February 1925. Letter, Virginia Kious to Hrdlička, 6 April 1935, box 37, “KI-KO, 1914–44,” Correspondence. Letter, Kious to Hrdlička, 6 April 1935. Letter, Kious to Hrdlička, 6 April 1935. Letter, Kious to Hrdlička, 6 April 1935. The expert witness was a hairdresser, and the judge discounted her conclusion. See Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law,” 56. Letter, Kious to Hrdlička, 6 April, 1935. Letter, Kious to Hrdlička, 6 April, 1935. Letter, Hrdlička to Kious, 15 April 1935. Letter, Hrdlička to Kious, 15 April 1935. Once again, I felt it was a good idea to change the names because an adopted child was involved. He would be well into his nineties in 2021. The letters are found in box 54, “RON-RZ, 1925–43,” Correspondence.

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mixed Irish and Spanish descent.”65 According to the professor’s explanatory letter to Hrdlička, “when Mathew was adopted he was a fair-haired, fine looking baby, but later negroid characters began to appear in the child, much to the distress of his foster parents.”66 Fortunately, the mother firmly declared, “even if this child were of African descent, she would decline to give him up.”67 Mr. Taylor’s job required the family to move to Washington, D.C., where they enrolled Mathew in kindergarten. The principal of the school immediately demanded to see the child’s paperwork because Mathew had “obvious negroid features.”68 Washington was “a southern city where the race line is closely drawn,” and accordingly the principal banished little Mathew from the Whites-only kindergarten.69 The parents took Mathew for an examination to determine his race once and for all. The experts told the Taylors, “from a purely medical point of view, we cannot state whether there is or is not any negro blood in this child,” but “anyone would be justified in suspecting it from the appearance of the child.”70 One of the doctors even advised the parents to move to a northern town where Mathew could “be educated without racial prejudice.”71 Hrdlička’s verdict is unknown, but the story is another good example of the kind of racial quandaries he was expected to resolve. Americans living in the north, though relatively free from legal segregation, also worried about racial boundaries and assumed that science could set things straight. In 1938, a young woman from New Jersey wrote to Hrdlička that she had been happily dating a man until she heard there was “a mixture of negro blood in his family” and that his grandparents “were supposed to have been colored people.”72 The relationship must have been serious because she asked Hrdlička if having children with him would “have any further effect on future generations.”73 In 1939, a treasury official in Chelsea, Massachusetts was troubled by “colored people from the Azores,” who 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

Letter, W. E. Carter to Dr. Samuel Holmes, 26 March 1931. Letter, Holmes to Hrdlička, 29 March 1932. Letter, Holmes to Hrdlička, 29 March 1932. Letter, W. E. Carter to Holmes, 26 March 1931. Letter, Carter to Holmes, 26 March 1931. Letter, Carter to Holmes, 26 March 1931. Letter, Carter to Holmes, 26 March 1931. Letter, Mae Forbringer to Hrdlička, 13 February 1938, box 23, “FO-FRE, 1913–43,” Correspondence. Letter, Forbringer to Hrdlička, 13 February 1938.

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were “black skinned” and considered locally to be “Portuguese negroes,” but “are listed by the W.P.A. as white.”74 In 1942 Caswell Adams, a relatively well known sportswriter for the New York Herald Tribune, wanted to know if Hrdlička had “any expert anthropological thoughts” on the racial ancestry of Joe Louis, “based on your look at his picture.”75 Apparently Hrdlička did not consider this a difficult case and answered decisively: “Lewis [sic] is undoubtedly a mixed-blood (white and negro).”76 A contemporary historian has described Louis, a native of Alabama, as “descended from African slaves, white plantation owners, and Blackfoot and Cherokee Indians.”77

Who Is Really White? In a fascinating article, Peter Kivisto and Johanna Leinonen describe how in 1908 a Minnesota judge ruled that John Svan, a Finnish immigrant, could not be naturalized as a U.S. citizen because “being a Finn, he is a Mongolian and not a ‘White person.’”78 According to U.S. naturalization law, only a “White person” could become a U.S. citizen, and this made Whiteness a key immigration issue. It immediately raised the question of how to tell who was White. The courts, as Ian Haney López has argued, initially turned to science for definitive answers, yet after numerous test cases, it became evident to American judges that science had nothing to offer them. They hung on to their beliefs in racial categories so fervently that they rejected science and relied on popular stereotypes and “common sense” instead. As López states, “science’s inability” to establish who was really White “should have led the courts to question whether race was a natural phenomenon. So deeply held was this belief, however, that instead of re-examining the nature of race, the courts began to disparage science.”79 As the case of John Svan illustrates, there were surprisingly creative ways to question the Whiteness of European immigrants, and laws like Virginia’s 74 75 76 77

Letter, George Hederson to Hrdlička, 13 October 1939, box 28, “HAS-HEN, 1918–43,” Correspondence. Letter, Caswell Adams to Hrdlička, 10 April 1942, box 6, “AA-AL, 1903–42,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Adams, 16 April 1942. Lewis Erenberg, The Greatest Fight of our Generation: Louis vs. Schmeling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 22. 78 Peter Kivisto and Johanna Leinonen, “Representing Race: Ongoing Uncertainties about Finnish American Racial Identity,” Journal of American Ethnic History 31, no. 1 (2011): 11–12. 79 Ian Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 5.

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Racial Integrity Act fostered even more uncertainty by emphasizing “purity.” Could a light-skinned person really be Black or Brown due to ancestral mixing? After all, was not Finland on the northeastern edge of Europe and prone to occasional invasions from Asia? In 1935 a reporter wrote to Hrdlička asking: “how does science explain the fact that many people from the north of Europe have a distinct Mongoloid cast of features in spite of their fairness?”80 Similar arguments could be made about other immigrants from the frontiers of Europe. Maybe Asian invaders “polluted” the Whiteness of the Slavs on Europe’s eastern edges, or perhaps Italians and Spanish were mixed with their African neighbors to the south. There were two general ideas about who was “really” White. The first notion was exclusivist, and it insisted that the only true Whites were “Nordics” with ancestries in northwestern Europe. Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race, was the most vociferous proponent of this view in the 1920s. For Grant, generally light-skinned Europeans were made up of three unequal races. He considered Nordics, such as the “AngloSaxon” founders of the United States, to be superior. He feared that new immigrants to America, comprised of the inferior “Alpine” and “Mediterranean” races from eastern and southern Europe, were driving the AngloSaxon Nordics to extinction. As a eugenicist, he viewed the intermixture of Nordic Americans with the new immigrants as dangerously dysgenic. Therefore, he supported immigration restriction. Although not the topic of Passing of the Great Race, Grant made it clear that he also disdained African Americans, Asians, and Jews as racially inferior. There were obvious affinities, mutually recognized in the 1930s, between Grant’s Nordic racism and Nazi ideas.81 Contrary to Grant, Hrdlička embraced an inclusive concept of Whiteness. While he did not reject Grant’s categories, Hrdlička added a few, and, importantly, he viewed them as equally White. In one letter he listed five subcategories of Whites: “Nordic,” “Alpine,” “Mediterranean,” “Semitic,” and “Hamitic”;82 elsewhere he cataloged a few more: “Dinaric,” “East Baltic,” “Ar80 Letter, L. M. Dorsch to Hrdlička, 3 September 1935, box 50, “Newspaper Information Service, 1935–41,” Correspondence. 81 See Grant, Passing of the Great Race; ; Jonathan Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Press, 2008). 82 Letter, Hrdlička to Doepner, 24 May 1927, box 20, “DE, 1906–43,” Correspondence.

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menoid,” and “Turkic.”83 As already demonstrated, he viewed the Slavs as the largest and most robust “strain” of the White race.84 In opposition to Grant, he considered all the recent immigrants equally White and advocated their intermarriage with America’s Nordics. Although Hrdlička believed in a big White race, he still thought Blacks and “Yellow-Browns” were inferior. Unlike Grant, he was an outspoken opponent of Nazi race concepts. Like Finns, Armenians faced questions about their Whiteness. Before 1909, when a court deemed them White, they were considered Asian, forbidden to buy agricultural land in California, and subject to legal discrimination in several other states.85 However, doubts about their Whiteness continued, and according to Elazar Barkan, they were still forbidden to own property in the state of Washington in the 1920s because of their supposedly “Mongoloid racial characteristics.”86 The Armenians of Washington even asked Franz Boas to testify in court on behalf of their Whiteness. In 1924, New York lawyer and author of Armenians in America, M. Vartan Malcom, also approached Hrdlička because he needed “the testimony of an anthropologist.”87 He was preparing an important case in which the key question was whether an Armenian was a “White person.”88 Although Hrdlička’s response has not survived, elsewhere he classed the “Armenoid” as White. The idea that Finns were “Mongolian” was widespread, long-lived, and legally significant. In 1934, Dr. W.A. Ehmke from Minnesota wrote Hrdlička to find out “to what extent have the Suomi Finns Mongoloid blood?”89 Apparently Ehmke was not alone, and he informed Hrdlička that “there are a number of Finnish people in this community who have often asked questions about this subject.”90 In 1930 Eugene Van Cleef, a professor of geography and an expert on Finnish matters, also wrote to Hrdlička. He too thought 83 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” in Human Biology and Racial Welfare, ed. Edmund V. Cowdry (New York: Paul Heber, 1930), 172. 84 Manuscript, “The Slavs,” n.d., box 138, European Ethnic History, 1908–1938. Hrdlička’s classification of Whites was not consistent. 85 López, White by Law, 91. See also Earlene Carver, “On the Boundary of White: The Cartozian Naturalization Case and the Armenians, 1923–1925,” Journal of American Ethnic History 28, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 30–56. 86 Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 84. 87 Letter, M. Vartan Malcolm to Hrdlička, 24 January 1924, box 42, “MAAS-MARTIN, 1921–43,” Correspondence. 88 Letter, Malcolm to Hrdlička, 24 January 1924. 89 Letter, W.C. Ehmke to Hrdlička, 14 April 1934, box 22, “EA-EM,” Correspondence. 90 Letter, Ehmke to Hrdlička, 14 April 1934.

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the Finns “seem to reflect a good many characteristics of the oriental.”91 Scientific “clarification of the matter” would help, he believed, because Finnish people disliked “the theory that they may have Mongolian ancestry” and because it “arises in connection with immigration restriction.”92 An interesting ethnographic detour led Hrdlička to conclude that most modern Finns were White. Apparently because of the well-known linguistic similarities, he grouped the “original” Finns together with the “original” Hungarians. In one publication, he catalogued both as “Semimongoloids” situated between Whites and “Mongoloids.”93 In response to similar questions about Hungarians, Hrdlička explained that the “original” Magyars also came from “Finno-Ugrian tribes.”94 He believed that these “original” people were a distinct middle race, but there were only “mere remnants or traces” of them in the modern world.95 In fact, this nearly extinct group was so “thinned out” that Hrdlička had never really even seen a specimen, which raises the question of how he knew they existed.96 These elusive “pure” Finns and Magyars were nearly all gone, and the modern inhabitants of Finland and Hungary were White. The “Semimongoloids” of Europe, Hrdlička theorized, had disappeared due to mixing with White Nordics and Slavs. He told Dr. Ehmke that no “real” Finns existed, and modern Finns were the result of mixture “on one side by the Russians and on the other by the Scandinavians.”97 He told Van Cleef the same thing: “Today, of course, a large portion of the ‘Finns’ is merely Scandinavian or a mixture with these; and there surely is also some Russian blood.”98 The same was true of the Hungarians, whose “substratum” was “largely Slav.”99 Although the elusive “pure” Magyars still existed in a few remote locations, “the rest is a mixture of the old inhabitants of that region (principally Slavs),” and “the small proportion of blondness found in Hungary is partly derived from the Slavs, and partly from the Germans.”100 91 92 93 94 95 96

Letter, Eugene van Cleef to Hrdlička, 15 December 1930, box 64, “V, 1900–52,” Correspondence. Letter, van Cleef to Hrdlička, 15 December 1930. Hrdlička, “Human Races, 171; see also, Letter, Hrdlička to Ehmke, 18 April 1934. Letter, Hrdlička to Dorsch, 5 October 1938. Hrdlička, “Human Races, 172. Hrdlička, “Human Races, 172. Hrdlička admitted that he had looked for but never personally seen any “real” Finns and Magyars. 97 Letter, Hrdlička to Ehmke, 18 April 1934. 98 Letter, Hrdlička to van Cleef, 17 December 1930. 99 Letter, Hrdlička to Dorsch, 5 October 1938. 100 Letter, Hrdlička to Dorsch, 5 October 1938.

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Jews Are White Aside from the topic of racial classification, Hrdlička’s attitude toward Jews is interesting because it apparently developed positively over time. Early in his career, when traveling through Bohemia and Moravia in 1896, he told his first wife, “I shall always, always deplore the Jews and the Germans.”101 Frank Spencer, who first found this letter in the archive, claimed this was the only anti-Semitic expression Hrdlička ever made.102 There is a hint of mild anti-Semitism in a letter from 1917 to a Czech-American friend, in which Hrdlička summarized the contents of lectures he had just heard about current events in Russia with the note, “it seems that most of the disturbing elements are again Jews.”103 In another letter from 1917, Hrdlička described the advertising magnate Louis Hammerling as a “very crafty” German Jew from Galicia.104 These words convey a degree of folkish bigotry, but plenty of evidence shows that Hrdlička overcame these prejudices. In the American academic environment, Hrdlička worked with many Jewish scientists over the years, and his competitive relationship with Franz Boas provides a good example. In 1912, when Paul R. Radosavljevich, who might have held some anti-Semitic beliefs of his own, wanted to pick a quarrel by attacking Boas’ Changes in Bodily Form, Hrdlička, in so many words, warned him that he was out of his league.105 He told Radosavljevich, “I cannot but admire Dr. Boas’ many and great abilities, and I am sure that everything will be properly explained.”106 Radosavljevich refused to drop the matter, and in yet another letter Hrdlička warned him again, “I believe that Professor Boas, for whom I have a high regard, will readily be able to explain the various parts of his work to which you have referred.”107 Hrdlička trusted the judgment of Boas over Radosavljevich, who did his best to ingratiate himself as a fellow “Slav,” even to the point of closing a letter “with Slavic

101 Letter, Hrdlička to Marie Strickler, 2 July 1896, box 3, “to Strickler from Hrdlička,” Early Personal Correspondence. 102 Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,”15. 103 Letter, Hrdlička to Tomáš Čapek, 4 May 1917, box 17, “Capek, Thomas, 1914–1943,” Correspondence. 104 Letter, Hrdlička to Chief of Secret Service, 1 September 1917, box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš,” Correspondence. 105 Letter, Hrdlička to Paul R. Radosavljevich, 6 January 1912, box 55, “Radosavljevich, Paul R., 1911–16,” Correspondence. 106 Letter, Hrdlička to Radosavljevich, 6 January 1912. 107 Letter, Hrdlička to Radosavljevich, 12 April 1912.

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love.”108 During World War I, Hrdlička probably suspected Boas’ “German tendencies,” but there is no indication that he ever resorted to anti-Semitism, although others did.109 The two were rivals, but the correspondence between Hrdlička and Boas was always polite and sometimes friendly.110 While anti-Semitism in America was well known, Hrdlička encountered most anti-Semitic ugliness from his Czech and other “Slavic” associates. For example, Jindřich Matiegka’s correspondence betrays a simmering mistrust of Jews that lasted well into the 1930s, although the rise of Nazism may have changed his mind, at least publicly. It is impossible to say for certain if Matiegka’s dislike for Jews was rooted in racial theory, but he clearly considered them as “foreign elements” in Czechoslovakia.111 Hrdlička responded to Matiegka’s rancor with silence. The desperate times of World War II, when resorting to a national “survival of the fittest” mindset was most tempting, provide another test. In January 1939, a patriotic Czech woman named Gabriela Prošková-Preissová wrote to Hrdlička from Minnesota to complain that Jews fleeing Europe were using up the immigration quota at the expense of Czechs. Whether Prošková was a U.S. citizen is hard to tell, but she wrote in Czech, kept close contact with friends in Czechoslovakia, and had recently visited Prague. She was especially worried by stories from her friends in Prague about Czech intellectuals losing their jobs. “All of our professors [apparently Czechs],” she moaned, “were kicked out of Slovakia in the most savage way. What will happen to them now?”112 She was also deeply concerned about Czech professional women because “under Hitler’s new spirit, there will be no place for women except in the kitchen.”113 In order to help, she wanted to create a

108 Letter, Radosavljevich to Hrdlička, 12 May 1927. 109 See Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 633, 710–733; Lee D. Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race: 1896 –1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 148–150; Baker, “The Cult of Franz Boas and his ‘Conspiracy’ to Destroy the White Race,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 154, no. 1 (March 2010): 8–18. 110 Bokovoy, San Diego World’s Fairs, 102–103 Bokovoy sees the relationship of Hrdlička and Boas as very friendly, while Spencer emphasized antagonism between the two. In a professional relationship spanning many decades, both could be true. 111 Letter, Matiegka to Hrdlička, 24 September 1920, box 44, “Matiegka, Jindřich, 1914–20,” Correspondence. 112 Letter, Gabriela Prošková-Preissová to Hrdlička, 12 January 1939, box 54, “Proskova-Preissova, Gabriela, 1938–39,” Correspondence. 113 Letter, Prošková-Preissová to Hrdlička, 12 January 1939.

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network in America to circumvent the quota system by finding token jobs for Czech professors at American universities, before the Jews got them all. Although claiming “deep sympathy for the Jewish people,” the point of her letter was the opposite.114 At the university near her, she was certain that Jews would get all the positions because there was a “Jewish professor,” who “works with superhuman strength and by all means to save some of his own co-religionists.”115 “We should also take care of our own people,” she whined to Hrdlička, because the Jews “are so clever and powerful, and they have ties everywhere.”116 She never once contemplated the fact that Czechoslovakia was a state in which Jews were citizens, many of whom viewed themselves as Czech. While Hrdlička was also eager to help Czechs, he did not go down this ugly path of survivalist nationalism by turning against Jews. He would like to help, he told Prošková, “but I am handicapped along these lines by being a government official.”117 He gave her a list of prominent Czech Americans to contact, but otherwise he chose neutrality. In fact, at that time neutrality was the policy of the United States, and as a government employee it is understandable that he did not want to flaunt immigration laws. He answered Prošková’s surly suspicion of Jews with silence, the same way he handled his Czech friend Matiegka. Instead of turning on Jews to save Czech professors, the aging Hrdlička tried to help at least one Jewish scholar escape Europe. In fact, Prošková would probably have been unhappy to hear that Hrdlička had already done what he could to help a German-Jewish intellectual escape to America. A psychologist named Eric Mayor wrote Hrdlička from Zagreb in 1938. He had to flee Germany because his mother’s side was “half Jewish,” and he asked Hrdlička for help.118 Hrdlička wrote back and told Mayor that he had forwarded his letter to friends in New York, and that he would be happy “if help could be found for you. Do not lose courage.”119 At least one of the “friends in New York” was none other than Franz Boas. The very same day Hrdlička wrote Boas, asking: “please see if anything can be done for the 114 Letter, Prošková-Preissová to Hrdlička, 12 January 1939. 115 Letter, Prošková-Preissová to Hrdlička, 12 January 1939. 116 Letter, Prošková-Preissová to Hrdlička, 12 January 1939. 117 Letter, Hrdlička to Prošková-Preissová, 17 January 1939. 118 Letter, Eric Mayor to Hrdlička, 28 March 1938, box 14, “Franz Boas, 1930–42,” Correspondence. 119 Letter, Hrdlička to Mayor, 11 April 1938.

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writer [Mayor]. His letter makes a good impression, and I should be glad if he could be helped.”120 In terms of racial classification, there is no doubt that Hrdlička considered Jews White and equal. While he viewed Black and White intermarriage as “dysgenic,” he was entirely comfortable with unions between Jews and gentiles, even in his own family. In 1942 his niece wrote to invite him to her wedding and ask for advice about her upcoming marriage. She almost seemed embarrassed about the fact that she was marrying a Jewish man. There was an “obstacle” to the marriage, she admitted. The barrier was, “he is Jewish, and I have always been anti-Semitic.”121 Their solution, she told her uncle, was that they had “agreed not to have children.”122 The aged Hrdlička, a nominal Catholic, who was known for being stubborn and conservative in many ways, was completely at ease with the marriage. He told his niece, “The fact that you are marrying a man of the Jewish religion means nothing at all, if otherwise he is the right man. Two of the best friends of my life were Jews, and there are many high class people of that faith.”123 As tensions escalated in Europe, Hrdlička made increasingly strong statements showing his disdain for Nazi race policies. Even before the advent of the Nazi regime, in his 1930 essay on “Human Races,” he listed “Semitic” as a “daughter race” of the “White stem.” When asked about Jews in private correspondence, he always held the same opinion. In August 1943, he received a letter, signed only by “a Jew,” from a person whose brothers and father were living in Norway. The Red Cross was unable to locate this person’s relatives. The writer traced the family history, in which the “father’s grandfather was full-blooded as we say,” and then asked, “What would that make us children? What troubles me is, would there be enough [Jewish heritage] for Hitler to harass or ill-treat as I understand he’ll go as far back as he can.”124 Hrdlička’s answer is worth quoting in full because it is a very clear statement of his understanding of Jewish Whiteness: You have a wrong concept of your people. The Jews are not a separate race— they are just white people of Arab origin and Jewish faith. They have some 120 Letter, Hrdlička to Boas, 11 April 1938. 121 Letter, Lucy Miller to Hrdlička, 19 August 1942, box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš, 1941–1945,” Correspondence. 122 Letter, Miller to Hrdlička, 19 August 1942. 123 Letter, Hrdlička to Miller, 24 September 1942. 124 Letter, “A Jew” to Hrdlička, 18 August 1943, box 36, “JA-JI, 1917–43,” Correspondence.

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physical and other difference from other groups of white people, but so have these other groups among themselves. You might just as legitimately ask “what would be a one-fourth of a Catholic or a Protestant or a Mohammedan?” However, all this would not save you if you came under the influence of such arch fiends as those who have maltreated not only so many of your co-religionists, but also others.125

Racial Prognostication Although he made authoritative race pronouncements, Hrdlička never described any systematic methodology for sorting individuals into race groups, probably because he did not have one. Jonathan Marks notes that “the challenge to the scientist” at that time “was racial ‘diagnosis’—to discern from the complexities of a person’s appearance their race. And it was tricky, because one could look white and really be black.”126 Hrdlička understood that an individual might have features from any race, and “all the racial characters … appear in more or less wide ranges of individual and of group variation, and the extremes of the group variation as a rule largely overlap … with those of other racial units.”127 This was a wise observation, but it also undermined the usefulness of the very traits that he proposed as the indicators of race. In close cases, which trait was more important? Was it skin tone, eye color, stature, nose shape, hair texture, or cephalic index? Was there a mathematical formula for assessing the relative significance of each characteristic? In fact, the three main racial categories, into which he authoritatively filed individuals, were arbitrary and old-fashioned, even by his own admission. People often asked him how many races there were, but one of his typical answers was that “there is no satisfactory recent publication which would give the classification of races according to our latest knowledge.”128 In practice, Hrdlička used a tri-partite racial division simply for convenience. “Such a classification,” he told an enquirer, “is rather simple, until we come to details.”129 In 1930, he endeavored to describe these “details” in 125 Hrdlička to “A Jew,” 23 August 1943. 126 Jonathan Marks, Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995), 107. 127 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 160. 128 Letter, Hrdlička to Herman J. Doepner, 24 May 1927, box 20, “DE, 1906–43,” Correspondence. 129 Letter, Hrdlička to Doepner, 24 May 1927.

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a chapter called “Human Races,” published in Edmund V. Cowdry’s Human Biology and Racial Welfare. Instead of describing the latest scientific findings, the “Human Races” chapter openly confessed that racial taxology had not changed in centuries. Historically, Hrdlička admitted, there were “as many schemes of classifications of the races … as there were students of the question.”130 Individual scholars, he summarized, had found two, nineteen, twenty-two, twentynine, and even sixty-three distinct races. For expediency, Hrdlička favored the system of Linnaeus, who died in 1778. Linnaeus’s four main races were European, Black, Asian, and American, but Hrdlička reduced these to three by combining Asian and American as “Yellow-Brown.” Twenty-seven pages of explaining the differences in races brought Hrdlička to the summation that “the substance” of Linnaeus’s 150-year-old classification “holds true to this day.”131 This, he thought, was at least “the gist of human classification,” and “to go into further details would in this place be unprofitable, and also more or less uncertain.”132 He was right. Indeed, “more details” obfuscated rather than clarified the lines between categories, and Hrdlička struggled to define precisely which markings distinguished his three races. He claimed five broad indicators of racial differences: “physical,” “functional,” “chemical,” “mental,” and “pathological.” He specified these in an impressive table of forty-nine characteristics distinguishing the “White” (Caucasoid), “Yellow-Brown” (Mongoloid), and “Black” (Negroid) races. While some individuals probably fit easily into one stereotypical category, there was plenty of room for subjectivity in close decisions, which an expert was expected to make. For example, a White man’s beard was “moderate to rich and long, slightly wavy to loosely curly.”133 A Mongoloid beard was “scanty to moderate, straight to slightly wavy.”134 Some of the indicative characteristics were so vague and ambiguous that it is hard to imagine any objective standard of measurement. For example, the body of a White person was “shapely,” that of a Yellow-Brown individual was “less shapely,” and Black bodies had “excellent proportions.”135 130 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 165. 131 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 165. 132 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 175–76. 133 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 167. 134 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 167. 135 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 168.

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Hrdlička always warned that only a specialist could tell the races apart, not because there were precise measurements to make, but because it required highly subjective judgments requiring “experience.” Science, he was certain, was just on the verge of finding a clear physical test corroborating the racial divisions everyone already believed in. He imagined, for example, that there were “important differences” in the brains of the races. Yet he did not know what they were because they “await further investigation.”136 He guessed, but without evidence, that there were “functional” differences between the races in pulse, temperature, and “the eruption of teeth.”137 Along with these, there were “doubtless many others [differences]” on the brink of discovery, but, he had to admit, “a great deal remains to be learned through further research.”138 He speculated that there were “chemical” differences between the races in blood, sweat, and probably “various internal secretions.”139 The mysterious “internal secretions” supposedly differed between the races, but how exactly he knew this is a mystery because, in his own words, “almost nothing is known” about them.140 Later in the chapter, he confessed that science had failed to find racial differences in blood. He expressed “hope” that “agglutinin tests of the blood might be helpful, if not decisive, in racial classification, but that hope has in a large measure failed.”141 Never fear, Hrdlička reassured his readers, there were now new and better tests which “may effect more in this direction.”142 Predicting that science was just about to validate something for which he currently had no evidence was part of his rhetorical style. According to Hrdlička, there were mental differences between the races, and they were “numerous” and “important.”143 The only problem was that nobody knew what they were because they “elude thus far direct and precise specification.”144 There were “sensory differences” between races, “but their exact nature and

136 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 159. 137 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 159. 138 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 159. 139 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 159. 140 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 159. 141 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 176. 142 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 176. 143 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 159. 144 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 159.

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Hrdlička’s own sketch showing his general concept of three big races—White, Yellow-Brown, and Black. He was not always consistent in the details. National Anthropological Archives

degrees remain to be established.”145 There were “substantial differences” in “higher psychical processes,” but predictably, “they have not yet been precised.”146 How could Hrdlička know about so many racial differences that science had not yet discovered? Hrdlička’s racial classifications arose not from empirical research but from popular stereotypes, experience, and “intuition.” Hrdlička listed eleven “mental characteristics” differentiating the races, but, even by his own admission, they were gossip. He even added a warning tag for his readers: “To be taken with reservation, until more scientifically determined.”147 Not surprisingly, the “mental characteristics” were racist stereotypes and folklore. Whites, for example had “strong ambitions and passions” and a “highly developed” sense of “idealism.”148 In comparison to Whites, Yellow-Browns 145 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 160. 146 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 160. 147 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 169. 148 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 169.

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were less developed in “egoism” and “individuality.” Blacks were “active and jolly,” “not very ambitious,” good at music, and “rather careless and free from lasting worries, but ridden by superstitious fears.”149 Elsewhere in the chapter he claimed that Blacks from equatorial Africa had inferior brains simply because, “it is an old truism that a malarial region … breeds few talents.”150 Although Hrdlička never thought his way out of race, he still stumbled onto some keen insights. Sometimes his observations pointed toward the study of population groups distinguished by inductive evidence, and away from the deductive assumption that human individuals must be classed into idealistic race groups. For example, he thought pathologies, like certain blood disorders, could differentiate the races. In fact, his explanation of diseases undermined his race categories. Almost realizing the meaning of this, he noted that pathological differences “are mostly environmental, and local rather than racial,” and “correlate but little with other racial features.”151 Modern research strongly suggests that certain diseases, such as sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis, are significantly higher in population groups with ancestries from specific regions, but, just as Hrdlička noticed, they do not line up with colloquial race categories.152 This perceptive moment did not induce him give up pathology as a distinctive marker of racial categories, even though he knew, and even stated plainly, that the correlation was weak. It is also appropriate to remember that Hrdlička’s skill set allowed him to make real contributions to areas such as forensic anthropology. For identifying human remains, imagining the population as divided into different somatic groups can be useful. Since this is a highly specialized field and not the topic of this book, it is best to defer to the words of an expert. Jonathan Marks, an anthropologist with a background in biology and genetics, explains forensic anthropology and its connection to race this way: Contemporary forensic anthropologists are often asked to identify skeletal remains as to race. Here, knowing the ways in which people vary around the world can assist us in establishing the ‘race’ of an unknown skeleton. Obviously we use the word ‘race’ guardedly: we are simply saying that if we divide 149 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 169. 150 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179. 151 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 160. 152 Marks, Human Biodiversity, 211–13.

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the ancestors of living Americans into three categories, we can make a betterthan-random guess about which of them an unknown skeleton falls into.153

Smithsonian Forensic Anthropologist Douglas Ubelaker has shown, based on archival research, how Hrdlička helped American law enforcement identify human remains in several cases. According to Ubelaker, “the work of Aleš Hrdlička occupies a significant niche in the history of forensic anthropology.”154 The aim of identifying a corpse or a skeleton, which can no longer speak for itself, is very different from that of a scientist telling living, free, and complex individuals which current racial stereotype they should belong to. Although Hrdlička’s own data occasionally undermined the race paradigm, he decisively clung to it. In 1927, a college student from California wrote to Hrdlička because one of her professors caused a fuss in class by asserting “that scientists now hold that there are no races of man. The Hebrew, the Negro, the Caucasian, and other races are non-existent, there are, however, cultural differences.”155 The well-intentioned professor made a logical error by challenging students to find an “authority controverting his statements.”156 As Bertrand Russell famously said, “there are always contrary authorities to be found.” Stepping up as the controverting authority, Hrdlička told the student, “from the physical point of view there are certainly varieties of mankind, just as there are varieties in dogs, cats, poultry and other animals; and these varieties, so long as they do not constitute what could legitimately be termed species, are called races.”157 He reassured her that this was an obvious and unquestionable truth, and “there is no possibility of doing away with these facts.”158 Still, he could not stop himself from also noting that “the human races are not as clearly defined from each other as are those of most of the animals.”159

153 Marks, Human Biodiversity, 158. 154 Douglas H. Ubelaker, “Aleš Hrdlička’s Role in the History of Forensic Anthropology,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 44, no. 4 (July 1999): 729. 155 Letter, Mary E. Morgan to Hrdlička, 28 February 1927, box 42, “MODELL-MORROW, 1918–43,” Correspondence. 156 Letter, Morgan to Hrdlička, 28 February 1927. 157 Letter, Hrdlička to Morgan, 8 March 1927. 158 Letter, Hrdlička to Morgan, 8 March 1927. 159 Letter, Hrdlička to Morgan, 8 March 1927.

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Not only did Hrdlička defend traditional racial classification, but he also granted authoritative sanction to myths even when he was aware they had no empirical backing. In 1927, J.M.J. Hodges, who claimed to be writing an article on race, asked Hrdlička a series of race trivia questions in an exchange of several letters. Hodges wanted to know such things as “the smallest race in the world,” “the longest lived race in the world,” and “the most unintelligent race in the world.”160 Hrdlička pronounced “the most unintelligent contingents … are found among the various Blacks.”161 In response to a follow-up letter asking him to specify, Hrdlička did not shy from declaring “the least intelligent Blacks are probably those along parts of the Congo and along the Gold Coast with neighboring tropical regions of western Africa.”162 Once again, he knew this in spite of science, for “precise scientific observations on the subject are wanting.”163 Hrdlička’s studious racial reckoning resembled the esoteric knowledge and complex calculations of an astrologer. Although there was something quackish about race divination, Hrdlička was an esteemed scientist, not a quack, and highly educated people of his day were grateful that he could apply science to the pressing problem of racial ambiguity. There were a lot of “data” involved in this process, and there was also a kind of rationality to it. He expertly sorted ambiguous-looking individuals into idealized races, yet he left no reproducible methodology or instructions explaining how he did it. Maybe only a god could tell the races apart, but in the twentieth century, science became God, and scientists, like Hrdlička, were its high priests.

160 Letter, J.M.J Hodges to Hrdlička, 10 February 1927 box 28, “HOA-HOP, 1912–42,” Correspondence. 161 Letter, Hrdlička to Hodges, 14 February 1927. 162 Letter, Hrdlička to Hodges, 18 February 1927. 163 Letter, Hrdlička to Hodges, 18 February 1927.

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HOW THE CZECHS BECAME WHITE

The Negro Race: Fickle, living carelessly from day to day, subject to direct sensory perceptions, highly adaptable. Negro children develop a little slower than Europeans, however, development of the intellect stops at adulthood. The social sense of the negroes is small; where they live together with whites they make up almost the entire bottom level.1 (Vladislav Růžička, The Biological Foundations of Eugenics, 1923)

The Myth of the Egalitarian Hrdlička In October 1917, Hrdlička wrote to J. Toula, a Czech American friend in Baltimore, and asked him to place an advertisement for a servant in the local Czech paper. Hrdlička explained that he and his wife were “very tired of the colored help and would be very glad to have a good Bohemian woman.”2 In May 1918, Hrdlička was still looking for a Czech servant. Writing to Mr. A. B. Koukol of the Slavonic Immigrant Society of New York, Hrdlička enquired, “I wonder if you could ever send us a good Czech or Slovak servant or cook. We are entirely dependent here on colored help which is extremely unsatisfactory.”3 Hrdlička’s personal dislike for “colored help” mirrored his theoretical commitment to racial hierarchy. He believed Whites were supe1

2 3

Vladislav Růžička, Biologické základy eugeniky [Biological foundations of eugenics] (Prague: Fr. Borový, 1923), 663. In Czech this passage reads: “Plemeno negerské, nepředvídavé, bezstarostně den ze dne žijící, přímým dojmům smyslovým podléhající, značně přizpůsobivé. Děti negrů se rozvíjejí jen o něco pomaleji než evropské, rozvoj intellektu se však zastavuje dosažením dospělosti. Sociální smysl negrů je malý; kde bydlí společně s bělochy, tvoří téměř na veskrze spodní vrstvu.” Letter, Hrdlička to J.J. Toula, 1 October 1917, box 64, “Toula, J.J., 1911–1924,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to A. B. Koukol, 2 May 1918, box 38, “Koukal, A.B., 1918,” Correspondence.

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rior to Blacks. This meant that Czech maids, who were White, were also superior to Black maids. Given his earnest convictions, both in theory and in practice, about the inferiority of Blacks, it is surprising that many have depicted Hrdlička as a champion of racial equality. For example, the website for the Museum of Dr. Aleš Hrdlička in Humpolec, Czechia, describes him as “a leading representative of the idea of the equality of human races.”4 Similarly, the “Aleš Hrdlička” web page for the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that Hrdlička proved “human races have a single origin and are therefore equal.”5 This heroic view of Hrdlička has a long history. Writing in Communist Czechoslovakia in 1953, anthropologist Vojtěch Fetter of the Prague Anthropological Institute construed Hrdlička’s ideals as promoting “lasting peace and the brotherhood of all nations without regard to racial affiliation.”6 In 1979 Frank Spencer, author of the most cited study of Hrdlička’s early life and thought, claimed that Hrdlička was convinced of “the general futility of formal racial classifications and the fallaciousness of racial arguments that supposed the biological superiority of one race over another.”7 A more recent study sees Hrdlička’s views on race as partially “guided by egalitarian principles and conclusions,” although, to be fair, it also recognizes that some of Hrdlička’s ideas were still “racialist like many of his contemporaries.”8 The egalitarian portrait of Hrdlička is far too simplistic. While the previous chapter described the fuzzy borders between Hrdlička’s race categories horizontally, this chapter explores his vertical division of races. Hrdlička ranked Whites first, Blacks last, and Yellow-Browns in the middle. Although in between, the Yellow-Browns, according to Hrdlička, were closer to Whites than Blacks, whom he considered by far the most primal, unintelligent, and distant from Whites. Unsurprisingly, he included Czechs in the superior White race. Given the amount of energy Hrdlička expended demonstrating the racial superiority of Whites over Blacks, it is surprising that he has been so lauded 4 Muzeum Humpolec, “Dr. Aleš Hrdlička,” http://infohumpolec.cz/muzeum/dr-ales-hrdlicka/dr-aleshrdlicka.html (accessed 30 August 2017). 5 Ivan Dubovický, “Aleš Hrdlička,” Ministerstvo zahraničních věcí České republiky, www.mzv.cz/jnp/ cz/o_ministerstvu/historie_a_osobnosti_ceske_diplomacie/osobnosti_v_historii/ales_hrdlicka. html (accessed 30 August 2017). 6 Fetter, Dr. Aleš Hrdlička, 7, 13. 7 Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 310. 8 Bokovoy, San Diego World’s Fairs, 77

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as a hero of racial equality. Exaggerated claims about Hrdlička’s commitment to racial equality generally rest on three misleading and over-simplified presumptions about the nature of racism in general and about Hrdlička in particular. Once these suppositions are set aside, the hierarchical logic of Hrdlička’s race beliefs becomes evident. The first assumption is that hostility to Nazi-style Nordic racism is the same thing as opposition to all racism in general. On the contrary, in the twentieth century, race-thinking was so pervasive that passionate enemies of the Nazis often exhibited different symptoms of the same basic disease. Long before World War II, Czech and German nationalists regarded each other as racial opponents. As previously discussed, racial-thinking also emerged, with toxic consequences, in the communist Soviet Union before the war. The southern United States brazenly maintained its own “racial regime,” complete with detailed anti-miscegenation laws, during World War II and for two decades thereafter.9 During the war, the United States aimed racial propaganda against the Japanese, while at the very same time propagandizing the fight against “Nazi racism” in Europe.10 The point is not that the United States, Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Nazi Germany were all equally evil, but that the intellectual foundation of race-thinking produced eerie similarities even in these widely different contexts. Maybe one of the weirdest examples is that during World War II German race laws prohibited doctors from giving “Jewish blood” to Aryan soldiers, and ironically, at the same time, while claiming to fight against just such racist practices, the U.S. military also insisted on segregated White and “colored” plasma stocks.11 In this mental world, Hrdlička’s hatred for Nazi-style racism did not certify him as a crusader against more general and pervasive types of race-thinking. Furthermore, Hrdlička’s stance against the Nazis partly stemmed from his life-long chauvinism towards Germans as the primordial racial enemies of Slavs. Immediately after World War II, a patriotic Czech author named This terminology is borrowed from George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 100–101. 10 John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 4. 11 Douglas Starr, Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998), 72–73; see also Thomas Guglielmo, “Red Cross, Double Cross: Race and America’s World War II-Era Blood Donor Service,” The Journal of American History 97, no. 1 (June 2010): 63–90; Spencie Love, One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 9

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Viktor Palivec interpreted Hrdlička’s hatred for Nazi ideas more as a declaration of Slavic superiority than a statement on human equality. Palivec idealized Hrdlička’s life and work as demonstrative of the “triumphant power of the Czech soul.”12 Hrdlička’s stellar career, thought Palivec, made a mockery of the Germans, who could never admit to the “supremacy of a Czech and a Slav,” who was supposedly “a member of an ‘inferior race.’”13 According to Palivec, Hrdlička prophesied before his death that the conclusion of World War II would at last bring about the ascendancy of “Slavdom.”14 To Palivec, what really mattered most about Hrdlička was that he “never trusted the Germans.”15 In the United States, Hrdlička was an outspoken and public foe of Madison Grant’s Nordic racism, which denigrated recent immigrants, like Slavs, as racially unfit. Again, there is no reason to interpret Hrdlička’s position as a determined crusade for equality. What upset him was Grant’s narrow belief in Nordic superiority, which implied that recent European immigrants were inferior. In Man’s Most Dangerous Myth (1945), Ashley Montagu remembered how ethnic rivalry underscored Hrdlička’s attack on Nordic purity. Montague admired Hrdlička for proving that America’s “founding fathers” were not racially pure Anglo-Saxon Nordics, but he also noticed that Hrdlička had an axe to grind because “it was left to one of those scorned lowly ‘Slovaks,’ [apparently he forgot that Hrdlička was Czech] who had come to these shores as a poor immigrant boy” to debunk the idea of Nordic purity.16 Hrdlička’s attack on Nordic superiority developed from an ugly transatlantic German-Slav rivalry, not a deep commitment to racial equality. The second assumption is that Hrdlička’s emphatic support for a single human origin, or monogenesis, inevitably led him to conclude that all races were equal. Writing in communist Czechoslovakia in the early 1950s, anthropologist Vojtěch Fetter chose to highlight Hrdlička’s belief in monogenesis, which was supposedly “a redemptive and liberating idea for all humanity,” and a refutation “of all racist ideas about the inequality of human

12 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 4. 13 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 17. 14 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 27. 15 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 30. 16 M.F. Ashley Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), 108.

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races.”17 Fetter even imagined that monogenesis led Hrdlička to denounce imperialism. This assertion is entirely deductive and ignores empirical evidence found in some of Hrdlička’s most accessible works, in both Czech and English; and astonishingly, it is almost the direct opposite of what Hrdlička actually said. In lectures he gave in Prague and published in Czechoslovakia in Czech, Hrdlička very explicitly described imperialism as the natural consequence of White superiority. As an academic at the forefront of Czech physical anthropology, Fetter must have known about Hrdlička’s famous Prague lectures, yet he ignored these explicit statements and chose instead to imagine that monogenesis automatically meant racial equality and a radical critique of imperialism. This creative rendering, almost exactly opposite to what Hrdlička very deliberately said, has lived a long life. Since 1959, the Czech Anthropological Society has issued the Commemorative Medal of Dr. Aleš Hrdlička to selected scholars.18 The reverse of the medal shows a Neanderthal skull with an anthropologist’s calipers and proclaims: “All mankind is of one origin.”19 There is nothing inaccurate about this statement; Hrdlička certainly believed in the single origin of all humans. However, the standard interpretation is that monogenesis convinced Hrdlička of “the potential equality of all peoples.”20 This seemingly viral inaccuracy might have spread to the United States through Miroslav Prokopec, a Czech anthropologist and a fan of Hrdlička, who worked as a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution in 1992–93 and spent some time examining the Hrdlička Papers in the Anthropological Archives.21 As a guest on Czech radio and an author of several popular articles, Prokopec disseminated the soothing story that Hrdlička understood mono17 Fetter, Dr. Aleš Hrdlička, 13. 18 Česká společnost antropologická [Czech Anthropological Society] “Historie České společnosti antropologické,” http://www.anthropology.cz/old/index.php?page=historie (accessed 8 October, 2018); Miroslav Prokopec, “Dr. Aleš Hrdlička’s Memorial Medal,” in Proceedings of the Anthropological Congress, Prague and Humpolec, 1969, ed. Vladimír Novotný (Prague: Academia, 1971), 571–75. 19 Prokopec, “Dr. Aleš Hrdlička’s Memorial Medal,” 571–75. 20 K. Daněk, “Hrdlička’s Role in the Development of the Anthropological Conception of Diseases of Civilization,” in Proceedings of the Anthropological Congress, 1969, 39–44, ed. Vladimír V. Novotný (Prague: Academia, 1971). 21 Jaroslav Brůžek, “Miroslav Prokopec (1923–2014),” Živa 5 (2016), cxxv-cxxvi. According to Czech sources, Prokopec “had access” (Živa, cxxv) to the Hrdlička Papers at the Smithsonian, but it is difficult to see what influence the primary sources had on Prokopec’s interpretation. Prokopec, in fairness, was not a professional historian.

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genesis as a “personal creed” that “refutes unscientific racism and its notion of naturally higher and lower human races.”22 The third assumption is that Hrdlička suffered “oppression” in Austria-Hungary, which magically made him more sympathetic to other victims of racism. Frank Spencer, whose work has heavily influenced American appraisals of Hrdlička, uncritically assumed that Austrian “German” state institutions were “oppressive” and that Czech national ideals signified “freedom.” He believed, without presenting any specific examples, that when Hrdlička lived in Bohemia as a boy, Czechs “were denied sociopolitical freedom.”23 Spencer neither specified what this charge meant nor explained how it affected the pre-adolescent Hrdlička, who immigrated to the United States when he was twelve. Another author picked up on this interpretation in 2010 and claimed that Hrdlička “was less influenced than most” by “hierarchical biological” concepts of ethnicity, “probably because of his own early cultural heritage in Central Europe.”24 Elsewhere the writer explained that Hrdlička “had particularly strong feelings against German society and German science that undoubtedly were influenced by the repression of the Czechs by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”25 This is not the place to examine directly the claim that the Austrian Empire “repressed” Czechs, the Hrdlička family, or the pubescent Hrdlička, but these broad charges are, at the very least, unduly generous to a nationalist Czech narrative. Ethnic acrimony in Central Europe certainly influenced Hrdlička and his ideas about race, but it did not turn him into a crusader for racial equality, especially when it came to the world’s Dark-skinned people.

The Black Race: “A Long Way Behind” Hrdlička’s belief in Black inferiority stands out so clearly in his published writings and personal papers that it is hard to miss. He began with the as22 Miroslav Prokopec, “Osobnost a dílo dr. Aleše Hrdličky” [Personality and work of Dr. Aleš Hrdlička] in Kulturní stopou Humpolecka (Hrdličkův jubilejní sborník) [Cultural trail of Humpolec (Hrdlička Jubilee Collection)], ed. Jiří Bečvář, et al. (Pelhřimov: Jihočeské tiskárny, 1969), 10. 23 Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 24. 24 Donald J. Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička and the Founding of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology: 1918,” in History of American Physical Anthropology in the Twentieth Century, eds. Michael A. Little and Kenneth A.R. Kennedy (New York: Lexington Books, 2010), 88. 25 Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička,” 94.

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sumption that the Black race was the oldest, and therefore the most “primitive.” In a textbook chapter entitled “Human Races” from 1930, he depicted three main races diverging, like branches of a tree, at different moments in human evolution; the Whites were the most recent “stem” and the Blacks were the oldest.26 In a lecture in 1921 he explained that human racial features were about ten thousand years old, except in the cases of Blacks and some Yellow-Browns, which were surviving examples of older human types.27 This meant that modern Blacks were, “in all probability the oldest surviving offshoot of the human stock.”28 “Oldest” for Hrdlička clearly also meant “most primitive.” He believed he could see this evolutionary history encoded in the physical characteristics of “typical” modern Blacks, whose “nose and prognathy” indicated “the African negro skull is on the whole the most primitive.”29 Hrdlička’s evolutionary timeline put a permanent developmental gap between Whites and Blacks, and he made it a special point to single out Blacks as the most distant race from Whites. In contrast, the Yellow-Brown race stood between Black and White, yet still “nearer to the white than to the negro.”30 At opposite ends of humanity, Whites were the most “modern” race and Blacks the most “primitive,” therefore, “the whites and the negroes stand in general the farthest apart,” an idea that he restated often in his writings.31 Hrdlička used a kind of Lamarckian interpretation to explain the stubborn backwardness of the Black race. Lamarckism is the theory that characteristics acquired during a lifetime can become hereditary.32 Hrdlička argued that the environment imprinted physical features on Blacks, and these “many acquisitions” then became “fixed” and “hereditary” over “the course of the history.”33 With this explanation, Hrdlička allowed for environmental influence but still thought of the races as “more or less definite heredi26 27 28 29 30

Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 166. Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921, box 151, Manuscripts of Writings, 1901–1944. Manuscript, “Delimitation of Races,” n.d. box 144, Manuscripts of Writings, 1901–1944. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 162. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 167. Elsewhere he wrote, “the delimitation of the yellow-brown race from the white is less definite than is that of the negro from both the white and the yellow-brown.” Manuscript, “Delimitation of Races,” n.d. box 144, Manuscripts of Writings, 1901–1944. 31 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 167. 32 See George W. Stocking, Jr., “Lamarckianism in American Social Science: 1890–1915,” Journal of the History of Ideas 23, no. 2 (April–June 1962): 239–256. 33 Manuscript, “Changes in Races,” n.d. box 144, Manuscripts of Writings, 1901–1944.

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tary complexes.”34 An overabundance of negative features, he claimed, had become hereditary for Blacks and now held them back as a race. For some reason, Black racial characteristics had been fixed permanently for over ten thousand years and changed little over time. Before further explaining Hrdlička’s beliefs about the stunted evolution of Blacks, it is necessary to elaborate on his special usage of Lamarckism. On the surface, the idea suggests that better social conditions might improve heredity over time. For this reason, some scholars in the Soviet Union in the 1920s viewed Lamarckism as compatible with Marxist ideology because it empowered humans to alter heritable characteristics by improving the environment. However, this is not the only way to interpret Lamarckism, nor is it the way Hrdlička used it. In the Soviet Union in the 1920s, geneticist Yuri Filipchenko argued for a different, much less optimistic, interpretation. Filipchenko’s critique inadvertently describes exactly how Hrdlička explained racial inequalities. According to historian Loren Graham: This view was superficial and false, said Filipchenko, because it assumed that only “good” environments have hereditable effects, while a consistent interpretation of the inheritance of acquired characteristics would show that “bad” environments also have effects. Therefore, all social or physically deprived groups, races, and classes of people—such as the proletariat and peasantry and the nonwhite races—would have inherited the debilitating effects of having lived for centuries under deprived conditions. Far from promising rapid social reform the inheritance of acquired characteristics would mean that the upper classes are not only socially and economically advantaged, but genetically privileged as well, a result of centuries of living in a beneficial environment.35

This is precisely how Hrdlička used Lamarckism; he was not trying to make a statement about the power of humans to change themselves by improv34 Manuscript, “Changes in Races,” n.d. 35 Loren R. Graham, “Science and Values: The Eugenics Movement in Germany and Russia in the 1920s,” The American Historical Review 82, no. 5 (December 1977): 1152; See also Diane B. Paul, “’In the Interests of Civilization’: Marxist Views of Race and Culture in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas 42, no. 1 (January-March 1981): 116–120.

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ing their environment; instead, he was explaining why Blacks had fallen so hopelessly far behind Whites. According to Hrdlička, something went wrong for Blacks over ten thousand years ago and then became permanent and hereditary. He believed the Black race had formed in the African malarial regions, a bad environment that left lasting negative effects. In his own words, it was an “old truism” that a “malarial region breeds few talents.”36 Trusting his “truism,” he conjectured that Blacks in tropical regions had acquired fixed “intellectual” deficiencies.37 These unfortunate adaptations became permanent and left most Blacks with a hereditary handicap, making them “belated” in comparison to Whites. Since Whites had developed in “wholesome” environments, Hrdlička reasoned, and Blacks in a “malarial region,” there was no way for the two races to “progress equally” or “retain the same standards.”38 In Hrdlička’s scheme, environment had damaged the Black race, and these defects then became hereditary and permanent. Enduring developmental gaps, theorized Hrdlička, explained the imperialist conquest of pre-industrial people around the world. His stern conclusion was that “belated” groups would never catch up to the superior ones, and that some of the former might even be headed for extinction. Certain groups were already too far behind due to a “gap” from “ten thousand years ago.”39 While the belated races struggled to catch up, the “more advanced races” enjoyed accelerated development, so that the evolutionary chasm between the two groups was increasing exponentially. In the 1920s, this racial conceptualization helped Hrdlička explain why the seemingly “White” and industrialized states always colonized the more Dark-skinned parts of the globe: … there is nothing that … would stop these processes and would change them; that would make the white man wait upon the Japanese or the Chinaman who is only a little bit behind, or the Negro who is a long way behind; and if he will not wait, but increases his pace as he is doing today, the inevitable result will be that the white man really will have a supremacy over an 36 37 38 39

Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179. Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921.

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inferior race; a man so much more effective will be by nature’s laws alone, as he is already today, the lord of the one below him.40

He presented this stark scenario of racial conquest even more stridently to a sold-out crowd of Czech admirers in Prague in 1922: … much of humanity still might die out. As a result of uneven development over a long time, there are significant differences [between races]. And these differences are growing larger, not smaller. Already today we have … above-average and below-average races, and modern humanitarian attempts at equalizing these differences are futile. This inequality will instead grow larger, because the more advanced the group the more effectively it improves itself, whereas the lower groups almost or entirely stand still. If some misfortune at the very beginning holds them back for a long time, then they fall too far behind and cannot catch up. The distance between the two will only widen, and it ultimately will be difficult for the belated group to hold on. There will be great people and little people, mainly in terms of intellectual abilities; the weaker ones, wherever they encounter the stronger, will succumb, just as today already the Negrito, various Blacks, Australians, Siberians, and American Indians are succumbing. The superior humans, white or yellow-brown, wherever they confront a belated and therefore weaker group, even if from their own race, suppress it and make it into their servant, or violently push it out to the least hospitable regions, where it finally disappears entirely. No morality, no faith, nor any laws can avert this cruel, yet fundamentally natural path.41

Hrdlička knew that some scholars, like Franz Boas, were pushing a more environmental and cultural explanation for human variation, but he explicitly rejected this view. When dealing specifically with the question of equality in a 1930 publication, he congenially acknowledged there were “wide differences of opinion as to the equivalence of the races,” which “cannot easily be settled.”42 Although aware of alternatives, he decisively rejected them.

40 Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. 41 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 63 42 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 178.

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Racial hierarchy was so obvious that he was incredulous there were “still some benevolent minds who would like to see all men, white and black, as potentially equal.”43 In his view, the real facts of science left no room for such good-hearted idealism. “If the accumulated observations of anthropology count for anything,” he demanded, the races “are not equipotential … especially the further distant ones like the white and the negro.”44 Racial inequality was inherent and not due to a lack of “training, enlightenment, and opportunity.”45 While he agreed that the belated races might gain slightly from better education and conditions, he still alleged that their brains were so hopelessly underdeveloped they would never catch up. He pointedly rejected the thesis “that the brains of the belated human groups, such as the negro … [are] of equal potentiality with those of the Old [white] American, the English, Scotch, Irish, French, Germans.”46 This meant the future was bleak for belated groups, and in 1929 Hrdlička succinctly explained, “so far as can be discerned there is no promise of eventual equality of races, and the gulf between the front and the back ranks will probably increase rather than decrease. There will always be masters and servants, the pioneers of progress and the drags.”47 It is not easy to discern exactly what arguments for racial inequality he found so convincing. His most direct discussion of the topic, in a chapter called “Human Races,” has the tone of a desperate attempt to dredge up proofs for a foreordained conclusion. He claimed, firstly, that some people have “intuitive” feelings of “inferiority or superiority,” and that therefore the idea must have some validity, especially when held by experts with “prolonged direct experience of one group with another.”48 Secondly, the belief in racial inequality, he surmised, was a “general and most deeply ingrained view” and thus worthy of serious consideration.49 Thirdly, in evaluating the 43 Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration and Destruction with Special Reference to the American People,” in Proceedings of the Third Race Betterment Conference, Battle Creek, Michigan, January 2–6, 1928 (Battle Creek, MI: Race Betterment Foundation, 1928), 84. 44 Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 84. 45 Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 84. 46 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 180. 47 Hrdlička, “Man’s Future in the Light of his Past and Present,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 68, no. 1 (1929): 7. 48 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179. 49 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179.

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“quality” of a race, he felt it was important to consider “its relative position in regard to and esteem by other races.”50 This ostensibly means that when considering the “quality” of Blacks, the scholar should remember that “other races” did not like them much. These arguments, Hrdlička admitted, were only “circumstantial,” but he assured his readers that science had come up with still more “direct evidence” for inequality, which rested on the meticulous study of “demography, pathology, character, and potentialities of [each] race.” 51 He did not elaborate or leave a trail of footnotes to follow. Instead, he fell back on his pet “truism” that malarial environments retarded the development of Blacks. Given the climatic differences between the “northern temperate zone” and the tropics, he asserted that “the results could not possibly be equality, physical, physiological, or intellectual.”52 He knew this to be true because skulls, brains, and human heads differed significantly “between the moderate zone peoples and those of the tropics, or, more particularly, between the whites and the blacks.”53 Even if these physical differences were as striking as Hrdlička suggested, he did not explain why they should imply mental inequality. In his private correspondence, Hrdlička reflexively reverted to his “truism” that the malarial zones of Africa had permanently damaged African brains. In 1926 James Thompson wrote from Honduras to ask “if the brain of the white man and the negro is the same.”54 Hrdlička responded that “as to the brain of the white man and the negro, that of the latter is on average of somewhat lesser weight and more simple patterns.”55 In the same year, zoology professor and eugenics enthusiast H. F. Perkins wanted to know if there was “any racial difference in the convolutions of the brains of the Negro and the European.”56 Hrdlička told the Vermont professor there were “differences of importance between the brains of the negro and European, to the general disadvantage of the former.”57 Although some individual Black brains “may come up to or near the standard for individual Whites,” the gen50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179–80. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 179–80. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 180. Letter, James Thompson to Hrdlička, 25 August 1926, box 62, “TI-TR, 1918–43,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Thompson, 23 September 1926. Letter, H. F. Perkins to Hrdlička, 30 November 1926, box 52, “PELLAN-PH, 1918–40,” Correspondence. 57 Letter, Hrdlička to Perkins, 10 December 1926.

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eral rule was that in “normal whites” it would be hard to find “such primitive brains as found in some negroes.”58 When asked about the relative intelligence of races, he replied that “the most unintelligent contingents, on the whole, are found among the various blacks” from “tropical regions of western Africa.”59 At the other end of the spectrum, “the most intelligent race on the whole is the white race.”60 Superficially, some of Hrdlička’s statements seem supportive of White and Black racial mixing, but this conclusion is incorrect. Because he believed that all humans were one species, he had to admit that they could, and to some extent should, interbreed. In a 1938 letter he wrote, “racial mixture, under normal conditions and with sound human elements, has in no part of the world been found deleterious, but rather the reverse.”61 He derided the Southern “popular fallacy” that “the progeny of the white and the negro will not survive or breed beyond the quadroon or at most the octoroon.”62 Scientific data contradicted this lore and instead showed, “there is no known limit to the fecundity of the white-black progeny.”63 In a speech he claimed that even Whites and Blacks, though far apart, were “in the most important respects substantially alike” and “they freely interbreed” and successfully produce “different kinds of mixed bloods,” whose features usually “blend completely together.”64 It is important to understand, however, that for Hrdlička “successful” breeding meant that mixed-race progeny did not go extinct, not that they were fine human specimens. A closer look reveals how Hrdlička’s unwavering commitment to inequality always overrode his superficially liberal view of racial mixing. For Blacks, Hrdlička thought miscegenation was good because it improved them. As an example, he pointed to North Africa, where there was “extensive” and “normal mixture between the negro and various elements of the white race.”65 In this case, there was no evidence of either “physical or mental” degeneration. 58 Letter, Hrdlička to Perkins, 10 December 1926. 59 Letter, Hrdlička to J.M.J. Hodges, 14 February 1927, box 28, “HOA-HOP, 1912–42,” Correspondence; Hrdlička to Hodges, 18 February 1927. 60 Letter, Hrdlička to Hodges, 28 February 1927. 61 Letter, Hrdlička to Albert Johnson, 14 February 1938, box 36, “Albert, Johnson, 1921–1922,” Correspondence. 62 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 176. 63 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 176. 64 Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. 65 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 178.

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Instead, mixing was “a general improvement on the negro.”66 Yet Hrdlička found the negative results of Black and White pairing just a few kilometers away in Spain. Here, a similar racial history had the opposite meaning, and “negro admixture may have retarded the general development” of the White population.67 When viewing racial mixing from a White perspective, Hrdlička consistently held to the principle that “mixture with a poorer stock, physically or mentally, could not possibly be beneficial, or harmless. If there is added ninety to one hundred, the mean result will surely be less than one hundred.”68 He applied the same dismal math to the specific situation in the United Sates. On the surface, Hrdlička remained “optimistic” that if interbreeding remained limited, Whites would, with time, absorb and dilute Blacks. This would be good for Blacks and at least not catastrophic for Whites. In his essay on “Race Deterioration,” he explained how mixing would improve Blacks because “the limited influx of white into the colored blood is a gain to the latter.”69 He told Bishop John William Hamilton that “within three hundred years there will probably remain not a single full blood negro and the blood will be widely diffused.”70 This process, he wrote to Albert Johnson, would “take many hundreds of years, especially in the South.”71 Yet there was a downside, and Hrdlička thought that things could go badly for Whites. The coming amalgamation of Whites and Blacks was a necessary evil and therefore “nothing to be wished for.”72 As in Spain, the mixture of Blacks could become “a drag on the progress of the whites.”73 If Whiteness enveloped Blacks, gains would ultimately outweigh losses, but if “the colored stream” flowed unchecked “into the body of the larger white group,” then “it would be a bold scientist who could argue that such an event might be beneficial.”74 For this reason, Black and White race mixing was “a danger to the American people.”75 Indeed, it was the one major threat to the assimilationist 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 178. Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 84. Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 85. Letter, Hrdlička to Bishop John William Hamilton, 5 May 1930, box 28, “HAA-HAR, 1897–1943,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Johnson, 14 February 1938. Letter, Hrdlička to Johnson, 14 February 1938. Letter, Hrdlička to Hamilton, 5 May 1930. Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 85. Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 85.

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potency of White Americans, and “as anthropology sees it, is the one cloud on the otherwise clear and blue sky of the American people of the future.”76 It is almost certain that Hrdlička supported anti-miscegenation laws to prevent or at least curb Black and White mixing. In 1919 he wrote, “mixtures of colored races with the white are largely controllable by law and general enlightenment, and if found detrimental could be reduced to a minimum. In the United States we are confronted on the one side with the grave problem of mixture of white and negro, and on the other with that of white and Indian.”77 By 1928, when writing on “race deterioration,” he had concluded that Black and White mixing was mostly unhealthy, but “as long as the colored tenth is held apart, there is no danger.”78 During the 1920s he was enthusiastic about helping Walter A. Plecker, the chief author of Virginia’s notorious miscegenation law, identify people with “Black blood” in order to prevent them from marrying Whites.79 For good measure, he came up with another objection to mixing between Blacks and Whites. After all, the sort of people who usually engaged in inter-racial sex was generally of low eugenic quality anyway. Such people usually mingled clandestinely in states of drunkenness and debauchery. This meant that in practice the results of their unions could rarely be good. In most cases “affecting the whites and negroes in the United States,” the mixing was “between inferiors of both sides.”80 This was not only a problem due to the hereditary weaknesses and immorality of the parents, but it also created bad social conditions for the offspring. The children grew up with “a complex of inferiority,” which meant that aside from purely hereditary issues, mixed unions were also “complicated by prejudice, social ostracism, poverty, and other factors.”81 In Hrdlička’s understanding of racial mixing, it was better to keep the “colored” house maids on their own side of town. 76 Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 85. 77 Hrdlička, Physical Anthropology, Its Scope and Aims: Its History and Present Status in the United States (Philadelphia: Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, 1919), 24. 78 Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 85. 79 Letter, Hrdlička to Dr. W. A. Plecker, 12 February 1925, box 52, “PI-PO, 1924–41,” Correspondence. 80 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 177. 81 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 176–77. He told Albert Johnson the same thing in 1938: “Unfortunately, a certain proportion of such mixtures, and that particularly with races far apart, such as White and Negro, take place clandestinely, often in more or less of drunkenness, and mostly by low class individuals on each side; in addition to which the children born from such unions are raised generally under very unfavorable social conditions. The results in these cases are not very good.” Letter, Hrdlička to Johnson, 14 February 1938.

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The Yellow-Brown Race: “Only a Little Bit Behind” Hrdlička also viewed Yellow-Browns as inferior to Whites. In the great biological struggle for supremacy, he insisted, “the White man” would never slow down to “wait upon the Japanese or the Chinaman” who were “a little bit behind.”82 This made “Yellow Asia” a eugenic threat to White Europe. For this reason, he viewed Russia as a White “defensive block” against Asia. The Russians had dutifully stopped, absorbed, and assimilated the Yellow-Brown waves, but they had “suffered terribly” and “remained culturally backward” because of it.83 In terms of mixing, Hrdlička’s views on YellowBrowns were analogous to his ideas about Blacks. In a 1922 testimonial he told the House of Representatives: “My personal opinion is this: That just as the black people represent in mental potentiality, say, only 80 percent of the average of white people, so the yellow-brown people represent, on the average, perhaps 95 percent of such potentiality, and that 95 united with 100 will never give 100 again.”84 Although he viewed Yellow-Browns as inferior, they were still better than Blacks, and Hrdlička held out hope for their assimilation to Whiteness. They were, after all, 95 % as good as Whites. When a congressional committee questioned Hrdlička in 1922, one of the congressmen asked if racial mixing could ever make Yellow Asians White. Hrdlička answered “no,” but he added, “unless the admixture of the yellow-browns was so small that it would practically disappear by dilution.”85 This was a very interesting answer because it left room for a successful racial amalgamation of Whites and Yellow-Browns, which is exactly what he thought was happening in the Soviet Union. Writing in 1942, Hrdlička predicted that White Slavs would soon erase Yellow Asians in Soviet Eurasia. “What remains of the Yellow-brown stocks,” he remarked, “is rapidly being diluted by White admixture.”86 82 Hrdlička, Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. 83 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 74. 84 Hrdlička, “Testimony of Aleš Hrdlička,” in “Nonassimilability of Japanese in Hawaii and the United States,” Hearings before the Committee on the Territories. House of Representatives, Sixty-seventh Congress, Anthropological and Historical Data Effecting Nonassimilability of Japanese in the Territory of Hawaii and the United States, July 17, 1922. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1922), 8. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015073367636;view=1up;seq=2 (accessed 5.11.2018). 85 Hrdlička, “Testimony of Aleš Hrdlička,” 8. 86 Hrdlička, Peoples of the Soviet Union, 2.

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In Hrdlička’s racial world, the Japanese were the worst Yellow-Browns. Clearly Hrdlička did not like Japan, which he viewed suspiciously as a dangerous competitor to both Russia and the United States. “It was a great mistake,” he wrote in 1920, “of Mr. Roosevelt to have committed himself to the Japanese for interference in the Russo-Japanese war.”87 He was also very unhappy about Japanese intervention in Russia in World War I and during the Russian Civil War. In 1920, he wrote a letter to Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby to complain and warn about Japan. Based on his contacts with Czechoslovak troops in Siberia and his personal tour of East Asia, his verdict was that “Japan has not a single friend in Asia.”88 His Czech sources in Siberia provided a long list of damning accusations against Japan: The Japanese aggressively captured Vladivostok, they executed Russians, they bombed Nikolajevsk, they “demoralized China by morphine,” and they murdered hundreds of prominent Koreans.89 Hrdlička viewed this Japanese behavior through the lens of race. He told Colby, “I became deeply interested” in Japanese activities in the Far East, “principally because of the racial conditions.”90 The Japanese were duplicitous and “jealous,” he told Colby, because they knew they “will never be, and they feel it, quite the equivalent of the white race.”91 Hrdlička proclaimed his belief in Japanese racial inferiority again in his testimony before Congress in 1922. The Japanese had attained a high level of industrial development since the Meiji period, but, the committee chairman asked, had they really internalized “the spiritual and higher elements of civilization?”92 Hrdlička understood this as a question requiring a racial answer. Yes, he responded, the Japanese had improved themselves in many technical ways, “but they have not yet generally and fully caught up to the white people, and they evidently have difficulty in keeping pace, because the white man does not wait on the road but keeps on advancing.”93 Given these views, it is no wonder Hrdlička gave the Japanese a bad review before the United States House of Representatives in 1922, when he 87 Letter, Hrdlička to Bainbridge Colby, 30 July 1920, box 22, “Department of State, 1918–21,” Correspondence. 88 Letter, Hrdlička to Colby, 30 July 1920. 89 Letter, Hrdlička to Colby, 30 July 1920. 90 Letter, Hrdlička to Colby, 30 July 1920. 91 Letter, Hrdlička to Colby, 30 July 1920. 92 Hrdlička, “Testimony of Aleš Hrdlička,” 9. 93 Hrdlička, “Testimony of Aleš Hrdlička,” 9.

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appeared as an expert witness on Japanese “non-assimilation.”94 At a time when immigration restriction was a pressing topic, the Congress wanted to ask about the possibility of Asian immigrants assimilating with Whites. Hrdlička might have disappointed some of the congressmen by insisting that most Yellow-Browns could mix with Whites, even though they were only “95 percent” as good. Nonetheless, he had special reservations about the Japanese. When asked if the Japanese could intermarry and successfully assimilate with Whites, Hrdlička answered, “it is not impossible, but evidence shows that a Japanese assimilates with considerable difficulty; he is not what one would call a ‘good mixer.’”95 When World War II started, Hrdlička decided that Koreans resembled White people more than the Japanese. The war reinforced his already deep dislike for Japan, which was now an ally of Germany, the occupier of Czechoslovakia, and this might have motivated him to see the Koreans as the White people of East Asia. As Robert Oppenheim has suggested, Hrdlička might have viewed the Japanese empire in Asia as analogous to the Third Reich in Central Europe.96 This meant that he also viewed Korea as an unfairly subjected colony, something like Bohemia and Moravia. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Hrdlička corresponded with Homer B. Hulbert, a long-time resident of Korea and a respected scholar, and explained his theory of Korean Whiteness. He told Hulbert, “I have visited the country, know the people, and like them very much …. There is decidedly something in them which is nearer [than the Japanese] to the white race.”97 This was not an isolated comment. During the war, he conjectured in another text that the Koreans’ “main original components approached the white race,” and that there was “apparent white admixture in the Koreans.”98 He even went public with this theory, to the joy of Korean nationals in Hawaii. According to the Korean National Herald-Pacific, a Hawaiian publication, Hrdlička proclaimed that Koreans “have many white physical characteristics” and are “nearer white men than any other peoples of Eastern Asia.”99 94 The official title in the congressional record is “Nonassimilability of Japanese in Hawaii and the United States,” and the fact that someone took the effort to invent such a word strongly suggests a preordained conclusion to the debate. 95 Hrdlička, “Testimony of Aleš Hrdlička,” 8. 96 Oppenheim, “Revisiting Hrdlička and Boas,” 92–103. 97 Letter, Hrdlička to Hulbert, 7 January 1942, box 28, “HUL-HZ, 1904–42,” Correspondence. 98 Manuscript, “The Korean,” n.d. [1943], box 38, “Korea,” Correspondence; see also Oppenheim, 99. 99 Kim, “How Koreans Replaced their ‘Enemy Alien’ Status,” 209.

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The newspaper was eager to cite him, of course, because he was, according to his own racial logic, paying Koreans an important compliment. All the human races might be one species, but it was better to be white.

Czechs Are White Too Much of Hrdlička’s egalitarian reputation arises from comparison against Nazi-style Nordicism, which took an exceptionally strict view of who was truly White. In the United States, Madison Grant was the best-known proponent of this rigid White exclusivity. In his notorious book, The Passing of the Great Race, Grant made it clear there were not many real Whites left in the world, and they were fading away fast. In his view, the best Whites, the “Nordics,” were the “Anglo-Saxon” founding fathers of the United States who originated in northwestern Europe. While the Nordics were pure, Grant believed that much of Europe was tainted by mixture with Asians and Africans and therefore less than distinctly White. He detested the recent waves of European immigrants, whom he classified as racially contaminated “Alpine” and “Mediterranean” types, because he believed these substandard races from eastern and southern Europe would degrade America’s Nordic master race. He also viewed Dark-skinned peoples as inferior, but Passing of the Great Race is a book about Light-skinned European immigrants. Hrdlička likewise considered Dark-skinned peoples inferior, but, unlike Grant, he numbered all the European immigrants, including Jews, among the superior White race. In comparison to Grant, Hrdlička was very generous about who got to be White, which makes him appear egalitarian. Matthew Bokovoy is correctly impressed with the variety of people who made it into the “White” category on Hrdlička’s “Races of Man” chart displayed at his 1915 San Diego Fair exhibit. Among the Whites, Hrdlička included Turks, Southern Asians, Jews, Arabs, Moors, Abyssinians, Egyptians, Libyans, and Central and Western North-Africans.100 Although it is difficult to gauge reactions to the fair, Bokovoy might be right that Hrdlička’s display “made vulnerable popular notions of white racial superiority.”101 Grant certainly disagreed with Hrdlička’s list. In fact, Hrdlička was conscious of this 100 Bokovoy, San Diego World’s Fairs, 93–94. 101 Bokovoy, San Diego World’s Fairs, 95.

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Hrdlička’s sketch depicting his expansive view of the White race. He accepted Madison Grant’s categories of Mediterranean, Alpine and Nordic, but added Slavs. National Anthropological Archives

tension, and in a 1929 speech he singled out Grant by name, contending that all his “so-called races” were just White subgroups and all equal.102 When Hrdlička addressed “the radical question of equality,” he was really arguing for a big, although still superior, White race. He attacked Nordic purity by claiming that Whites were historically one big family, and “a wholesale (white) mixture has been going on for centuries in Europe.”103 All Whites came from mixed backgrounds, so “no nation of white people in the world is or has ever been racially pure.”104 This historic mixing, he stressed, had largely happened within the White race, and the same principle could be “applied equally,” although in separate spheres, “to the yellow-browns and the blacks.”105 Even while arguing for “equality” and “mixing” among Whites, Hrdlička repeatedly explained he was “disregarding the colored.”106 102 Manuscript, “Are We Truly Assimilating the Foreign Born,” 10 April 1929, box 19, “Conference on Immigration Policy, 1929,” Correspondence. 103 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 177. 104 Manuscript, “Are We Truly Assimilating the Foreign Born,” 10 April 1929. 105 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 177. 106 Manuscript, “Are We Truly Assimilating the Foreign Born,” 10 April 1929.

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Hrdlička dismissed Gant’s charge that inferior immigrants diminished the racial quality of America’s Nordics. Discussing the eugenics of immigration in 1928, he criticized doomsayers warning about “so-called ‘inferior races’ of white derivation” bringing “deterioration of the American stock.”107 Real anthropologists “would surely be grateful,” he scolded, if the press, especially when reporting on the immigration debates in Congress, would realize such claims were “bolstered up by pseudo-science only.”108 “There is no proof that the normal white immigrant,” he asserted, “has lowered the physical or mental standards of the American people.”109 Yet his eugenic optimism was for Whites only. All Whites were going to merge perfectly into “white America,” but, he added, “there is only one class of immigrant in this great country … that justifies a real concern. He is the involuntary immigrant from Africa, the negro.”110 Given these racial values, he predictably defended the White status of Czechs and Slavs. As several scholars have convincingly demonstrated, there were often doubts about the Whiteness of Light-skinned immigrants from Europe.111 There are no examples, however, of Czechs facing the same level of racial scrutiny as Irish, Armenians, Finns, Italians, and Jews. There is also no evidence, for now, that anyone in the United States tried to place Czechs in the category of Blacks.112 Nonetheless, Czechs were often discussed as part of the broader category of Slavs, which positioned them geographically on the eastern edge of Europe. For Nordic purists, these regions were racially tainted by mixing, not with Blacks, but with Asians. This is where doubts about the Whiteness of Czechs began. For example, the Dictionary of Races described the Slavs as speaking European languages but “physically, and perhaps temperamentally,” more “Asiatic.”113 107 Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 85. 108 Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 85. 109 Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 85. 110 Manuscript, “Are We Truly Assimilating the Foreign Born,” 10 April 1929. 111 See Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998); Peter Kolchin, “Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America,” The Journal of American History 89, no.1 (June 2002): 154–173; David R. Roediger, Working towards Whiteness: How American’s Immigrants Became White (New York: Basic Books, 2005). 112 The only attempt to study the path of Czech immigrants (in Texas) to “Whiteness” (by lynching Blacks) is Cynthia Skove Nevels, Lynching to Belong: Claiming Whiteness through Racial Violence (College Station, TX: Texas A&M, 2007). Only a small portion of the book is focused on Czech immigrants. 113 Dictionary of Races or Peoples, 1911, 128.

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There was at least some discussion about the Czech racial pedigree in the American public. In 1937 Hrdlička received a letter from a Nebraska university student, who informed him, “I’ve been told in my university classes that the Čechs [sic] (I am one myself) have some Mongolian blood.”114 She did not seem to mind this, but it is interesting how a racial theory, presumably introduced by a professor, changed her perception of the world around her. “Since this has been brought to my attention,” she told Hrdlička, “I have noted oriental characteristics in certain Czechs, at least, I think I have.”115 Hrdlička responded that the Mongols “were stopped in Moravia and never reached Bohemia.”116 As to her recent discovery of Asiatic features in her Czech friends, he warned, “somewhat bulky cheek bones do not alone necessarily mean any such admixture.”117 The real threat to Czech Whiteness did not come from the Mongols. It was easy to dismiss the racial influence of the Mongols, but a more volatile discussion centered on the origins of the Slavs. The insinuation that Slavs were in some way “Asiatic” raised the suspicion that their origins were less-than-White. There was speculation that the “Alpine” physical types, believed to be common in Slavic Europe, originally migrated from Asia. According to Madison Grant, “the Alpine race is clearly of eastern and Asiatic origin.”118 Although “Slavic” was a linguistic category and “Alpine” was supposedly a biological grouping, it was easy to merge the two. For example, Grant assumed that in “most Slavic-speaking countries … the predominant race is clearly Alpine.”119 Most Slavic speakers were “Alpine,” so the argument went, and “Alpines” came from Asia. Physical features, such as the cephalic index, supposedly gave away the true Asiatic essence of the Slavs. Hans Günther, who added the “East Baltic” type to the “Alpine” as a common Eastern European racial variety, agreed with the Asian origin theory. In Günther’s view, “the Alpine and the East Baltic races” were closely related to “the short, short-headed, broadfaced Inner Asiatic race; and we may suppose a migration out of Asia into 114 Letter, Emma Hejtmanek to Hrdlička, 16 January 1937, box 28, “HAS-HEN, 1918–1943,” Correspondence. 115 Letter, Hejtmanek to Hrdlička, 16 January 1937. 116 Letter, Hrdlička to Hejtmanek, 19 January 1937. 117 Letter, Hrdlička to Hejtmanek, 19 January 1937. 118 Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 134. 119 Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 64.

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Europe for both those races.”120 Kenneth Roberts, a popular journalist in the 1920s, picked up on this theory and described the Alpines as “stocky, slow, dark, round-skulled folk who inhabit most of Central Europe.”121 As specific examples, he named, “the Czechs, the Poles, the Slovaks, the Russians … and so on.”122 This is the esoteric intellectual context in which Madison Grant believed he was insulting Hrdlička by calling him an “East European round head.”123 Hrdlička responded to these doubts about Slavic Whiteness by firmly rejecting the Asian origin theory. “The Slav strain is strictly indigenous to Europe,” he wrote in “The Slavs.”124 The frequency of “short-headedness” in Eastern Europe had misled even “serious men of science,” but their musings were “mere hypotheses.”125 In a Czech publication he asserted “the Slavs are a group originally from Europe,” and this fact “cannot be denied even by those who prefer to think they are a secondary branch from Asia.”126 “The European whites,” Hrdlička proclaimed, “are divisible into four great strains, which are the Nordic, the Alpine, the Mediterranean, and the Slav.”127 The reason it was so important to win this argument was because the Whiteness of Slavs was in question. Not only were Slavs originally White Europeans, but they also looked like Whites. Hrdlička agreed with Grant that many Slavs had round heads, but he did not view this as a mark of racial inferiority. While Hrdlička agreed with Grant that skulls, such as those of Blacks, could reveal the primitive qualities of a race, he did not think the question hinged on narrowness or roundness. The big White race contained many types of skulls, both narrow and broad. There were also narrow skulls among Blacks. After the war, Viktor Palivec thought it was funny when Hrdlička taunted Germans by pointing out that their cherished narrow “Nordic” skulls were the most common among 120 Hans Günther, The Racial Elements of European History, trans. G. C. Wheeler (London: Methuen and Company, 1927), 85. 121 Kenneth Roberts, Why Europe Leaves Home (The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1922), 47. 122 Roberts, Why Europe Leaves Home, 47. 123 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 314. 124 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” The Czechoslovak Review 2, no. 1 (November 1918): 180. 125 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 180. 126 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 68. 127 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 180. Hrdlička enjoyed calling Madison Grant’s work “pseudo-science,” but he uncritically accepted Grant’s racial division of Europeans into “Nordic,” “Alpine,” and “Mediterranean.” Hrdlička added “Slav” to Grant’s three categories and always argued that the differences between these “White” groups were insignificant and not hierarchical.

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Blacks.128 Hrdlička agreed that round crania were a characteristic of Eastern Europe, but this did not bother him if they belonged to White people. Hrdlička assumed that Czechoslovakians, being Slavs, were White as well. In truth, Hrdlička, although a physical anthropologist specializing in anthropometry, had little specific to say about the measurable physical features of Czechs and Slovaks. This was fine because he was not going to be too picky about their ranking among European Whites. Czechs and Slovaks were as White as their German neighbors. Physically speaking, both fit comfortably into Hrdlička’s generous White category with “hair varying from blond to brunette and eyes ranging from blue to medium brown.”129 They possessed other, less measurable but still flattering “White” characteristics like “good stature,” “strong, well-proportioned” bodies, and “frank, smiling, intelligent and attractive” features.130 One trait not found among Czechs and Slovaks was the “prognathism,” which Hrdlička took to be the very feature distinguishing the Black skull as “the most primitive.”131 Hrdlička merits renown as an egalitarian only when it comes to people he considered White. Compared to Nazi-style Nordicists, he was very liberal with the borders of Whiteness and included many groups that Madison Grant rejected. Apart from the Japanese, his generosity even extended to Yellow-Browns, whom he considered good enough in most cases for Whitening through intermarriage. However, his liberality ended abruptly with the Black race. It is inaccurate to view Hrdlička as a critic of racial hierarchy. Instead, he was a passionate champion of a more inclusive, White master race. It is therefore not surprising that he included people like himself, namely Czechs, Slovaks, and other Slavs, among the Whites. The full story of how the Czechs became White remains to be told, but Hrdlička’s racial hierarchy is part of it.

128 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 17–18. 129 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 17–18. 130 Palivec, Kdo je Aleš Hrdlička, 17–18. 131 Hrdlička, “The Czechoslovaks: Anthropological Notes,” in Czechoslovakia: Twenty Years of Independence, ed. Robert J. Kerner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1940), 5; Hrdlička, “Human Races,”162.

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EUGENICS

There is now no reasonable excuse for refusing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenic religion can save our civilization.1 (George Bernard Shaw)

Germ Plasm Morality Hrdlička left a confusing record of statements making it difficult to map his relationship to eugenics. Early in his career, he courted wealthy eugenicists to get financial support for launching the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 1918. This suggests mere opportunism to some modern observers.2 Because Hrdlička also disliked the kind of eugenics that preached “Nordic” racial superiority, some writers have wrongly described him as an avowed enemy of eugenics in general.3 Others have argued that Hrdlička, who viewed himself as an objective collector of “facts,” always remained wary of the most speculative eugenic claims.4 It is true that as a competent scientist he found much to criticize in the shoddy work many eugenicists did. He also kept up to date on developments in his field, and he knew eugenics was quickly losing scientific respectability in the 1930s.5 However, eugenic thinking was integral to Hrdlička’s racial worldview. George Bernard Shaw, cited in Diane Paul, “Eugenics and the Left,” Journal of the History of Ideas 45, no. 4 (October-December 1984): 568. 2 Baker, From Savage to Negro, 93. Michael L. Blakey, “Skull Doctors: Intrinsic Social and Political Bias in the History of American Physical Anthropology, with Special Reference to the Work of Aleš Hrdlička,” Critique of Anthropology 7, no. 2 (1987): 13; Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 313–18. 3 Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička,” 89–93; Bokovoy, San Diego World’s Fairs, 103 4 Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička,” 97–101; Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 99. 5 Barkan, Retreat of Scientific Racism, 97–100; Redman, Bone Rooms, 122, 223. 1

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This truth is easy to miss because Hrdlička’s ideas clash uncomfortably with the prevailing stereotype of eugenics as a backward-looking “pseudoscience” leading inevitably to Nazi atrocities. Hrdlička supported eugenics in general, yet he also hated Nazi-style racism. Instead of being a crank, he was a respected scholar. Rather than clinging stubbornly to tradition, he regarded eugenics as a progressive “struggle for the cause of science” against “the forces of obscurantism.”6 Ultimately, he embraced eugenics on an idealistic level because it provided him with the hope that science, freed from old-fashioned religion, would provide humanity with new moral directives. Eugenic thinking shaped his understanding of himself and his world. The first premise, shared by many eugenicists, was that religion could no longer provide reliable moral guidance, and science must show the way instead. In 1928, Dr. Aldred Scott Warthin, a prominent pathologist, gave a talk at the Third Race Betterment Conference entitled “A Biologic Philosophy or Religion a Necessary Foundation for Race Betterment.” In his address, he claimed: Old religions are dying. There is no doubt about that. I am in intimate contact with young men, with medical students, and I know that the great majority of these students have thrown off old beliefs and that they are looking for something to supplant them. They are looking for something that is logical, reasonable, rational, [and] material upon which they can found their beliefs in life.7

Eugenics seemed equipped to become the new religion that Warthin’s smart young medical students were searching for. “Simple biology, the simple facts of life,” he promised, “can become an … adequate religion.”8 In this modern religion, the knowledge of good and evil emanated from “duty to the immortal germ plasm.”9 The highest good, wrote fellow eugenics believer 6

Paul, “Eugenics and the Left,” 573. On the modern moral attractiveness of eugenics, see also: Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 41–69; Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 134–38, 169; Brian C. Wilson, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2014), 62–68. 7 Aldred Scott Warthin, “A Biologic Philosophy or Religion a Necessary Foundation for Race Betterment,” in Proceedings of the Third Race Betterment Conference, Battle Creek, Michigan, January 2–6, (Battle Creek, MI: Race Betterment Foundation, 1928), 89; See also Wilson, 162–63. 8 Warthin, “A Biologic Philosophy,” 89. 9 Warthin, “A Biologic Philosophy,” 89. “Germ Plasm” was a hypothetical substance presumed to convey hereditary traits. Warthin treated it as an object of mystical worship. Chapter eight will discuss this further.

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Lothrop Stoddard, was “to love one’s cultural, idealistic, and racial heritage; to swear to pass that heritage unimpaired to one’s children.”10 The basest evil, Warthin preached, was “biological sin,” which meant transferring hereditary flaws to one’s offspring. In this new system, “forgiveness,” previously a Christian virtue, now became an “unpardonable sin” because it might lead a person to overlook physical or mental imperfections in a mate and thereby harm the sacred germ plasm.11 Albert Wiggam, another eugenics disciple, authored a book called The New Decalogue, which argued, in surprisingly literal fashion, that eugenic maxims should replace the Ten Commandments. Wiggam treated modern science as a new kind of divine revelation, which brought “a new religion, new objects of religious behavior, a new moral code, a new kind of education to our youth, a new conception of many of life’s meanings, a new conception of the objectives of social and national life, a new social and political Bible, change in the very purpose of civilization and the fundamental mores of man.”12 Through eugenics, wrote Wiggam, “science” established “a new ethics, a new way in which human beings will regard one another and their duties toward one another.”13 Marriage and reproduction were the most obvious parts of human life where eugenic ethics offered practical advice. In the industrial age, massive immigration, urbanization, and the decline of traditional religion were rearranging familial bonds.14 Science, some felt, could restore a sense of communal responsibility to marriage and family. For example, Warthin noted in 1928, “the old sex traditions” no longer influenced the marriage choices of educated young people, who now looked to science to help them find a suitable mate.15 There is evidence that at least some Americans seriously considered their moral duty to the germ plasm when choosing a partner. Experts like Hrdlička and Charles Davenport often received questions about the eugenic quality of prospective unions, especially in terms of race.16 In 1938 10 Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color, 275. 11 Warthin, “A Biologic Philosophy,” 89. 12 Albert Edward Wiggam, The New Decalogue of Science (New York: Blue Ribbon Boocks, 1922), 104. “If Jesus were alive,” wrote Wiggam, “he would have been president of the First Eugenics Congress” (17). 13 Wiggam, The New Decalogue, 95. 14 For a similar interpretation, see Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 68. 15 Warthin, “A Biologic Philosophy,” 89. 16 Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 56, 67.

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a women from New Jersey wrote to Hrdlička that she was seeing a man who had a “mixture of negro blood,” and she wanted to know if having children with him “would have any further effect on future generations.”17 In the same year, a teacher from New York asked if a Native American woman “mating with a white man” produces “a lower grade of child.”18 Hrdlička’s own niece wrote in 1942 asking for his advice because she was planning to marry a Jewish man. She viewed his Jewishness as a racial “obstacle,” which the couple agreed to overcome by not to having children.19 In 1928, there were 376 eugenics courses being taught in American universities to thousands of students, and popular publications openly discussed “eugenic” and “dysgenic” marriages.20 Loosening the constraints of tradition presumably brought new freedoms, but the moral principles of eugenics also spawned new worries. Because propitious reproduction was the chief good and passing on biological flaws was a sin, choosing a healthy partner became a societal obligation with eternal consequences. Duty to the eternal germ plasm encouraged a new kind of moral austerity reminiscent, as Jonathan Spiro put it, of “Calvinist pessimism.”21 Eugenically, there could be all kinds of “biological sins” hidden in the ancestral past that might leave a shameful legacy of addiction, criminality, poverty, and epilepsy to one’s heirs. Instead of seeking religious counsel, eugenically minded young people needed to “study the family history” of their potential mate for any hint of “insanity” or “incurable forms of disease.”22 In terms of race, few individuals were entirely certain about the purity of their ancestry.23 Rigid personal devotion to eugenic reproduction and puritanical fear of ancestral impurities might explain why so many eugenicists remained

17 Letter, Virginia Kious to Hrdlička, 15 April 1935, box 37, “KI-KO, 1914–44,” Correspondence. 18 Letter, Mary L. St. Dennis to Hrdlička, 30 August 1938, “STA, 1928–1942,” Correspondence. 19 Letter, Lucy Miller to Hrdlička, 19 August 1942, box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš, 1941–1945,” Correspondence. 20 Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 57–69; Steven Selden, “Transforming Better Babies into Fitter Families: Archival Resources and the History of the American Eugenics Movement, 1908–1930,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 149, no. 2 (June 2005): 204. 21 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 173. Kevles suggests that Charles Davenport swapped his austere childhood Protestantism for Eugenics: “Davenport had rejected his father’s piety, but he replaced it with Babbitt-like religiosity, a worship of great concepts: Science, Humanity, the Improvement of Mankind, Eugenics,” Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 52. 22 Warthin, “A Biologic Philosophy,” 89. 23 See Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law,” 44–69, and Smith, “The Campaign for Racial Purity,” 65–106.

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childless.24 Did true eugenics enthusiasts scour their familial records, like Puritans looking frantically for signs of election or damnation, in search of “biological sins”? Tellingly, one fan of eugenics, the Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was happy he had no children because he considered himself very “abnormal.”25 The list of heirless eugenicists is striking. It includes Madison Grant, Harry Laughlin, John Harvey Kellogg, Albert Wiggam, Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, Walter Ashby Plecker, who was the architect of Virginia’s 1924 racial integrity law, Albert Priddy, the director of the institution that housed Carrie Buck, and the journalist Kenneth Roberts, to name a few.26 Hrdlička, who was married twice, also never had children.27 There is evidence that Hrdlička internalized eugenic thought and judged his own lineage through its unforgivingly deterministic lens. Sometime in the 1920s, he composed several hand-written pages which he labeled “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička.” He probably prepared this brief sketch for the Committee on Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences sometime in 1926-27.28 In 1926, the committee, directed by Charles Davenport, America’s premier eugenicist, sent out a circular to academy members asking them to write up a short autobiography. The assignment clearly had a eugenic tenor; Davenport asked them to describe relatives and ancestors who had “traits” resembling their own, including “any mental or temperamental peculiarities.”29 Expecting complete honesty, the letter requested the members to report “fully and frankly … as one might describe 24 Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck (New York: Penguin Books, 2017), 86; Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 240. 25 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., cited in Cohen, Imbeciles, 225. 26 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 240. Spiro’s list of childless eugenicists includes the following: Madison Grant, Harry Laughlin, Charles W. Gould, Wickliffe P. Draper, Henry H. Goddard, C. M. Goethe, A.E. Wiggam, Frederick Adams Woods, Kenneth Roberts, Seth K. Humphrey, Francis H. Kinnicutt, John Harvey Kellogg, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Charles Stewart Davison. 27 There could be an explanation other than eugenic angst. Hrdlička’s niece claimed that his first wife, Marie Strickler, was twenty years older than him and beyond menopause, but there is some uncertainty about her age. However, Hrdlička remarried after Marie died in 1918. Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 56–59. 28 Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d., box 1, “Autobiographical handwritten notes,” Miscellaneous Personal Papers, 1889–1940. There is no date on the manuscript, but it must have been written after 1920 because it mentions Gustav Habrman as the former Minister of Education of Czechoslovakia. Habrman was the Minister of Education from 1918–1920. 29 Letter, Committee on Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences to Hrdlička, October 1926, box 21, “Davenport, Charles B., 1925–1940, Correspondence.

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an object of natural history.”30 Whether or not he crafted this document for Davenport, Hrdlička’s “Biological Data” emphatically highlights his eugenic virtues. There was, certainly, no criminality in his blood. Always curious about links between criminal pedigree and physical features, he had, earlier in his career, paid special attention to measuring “children of the intemperate, criminal, insane or dissolute.”31 In contrast, he described himself as descended from “a wholesome, healthy family, free from hereditary taints (no defectives, crime, tuberculosis, insanity, or blood infections).”32 On his mother’s side, he restated, “there were no defectives.”33 This meant he was “normal” in every way. While he remembered that as a boy he liked to read fiction, his choice of material was pointedly “not sexual.”34 Further elaborating proof of his “normal” sexuality, Hrdlička remembered that as a young man he had displayed “no mischievous perversity …. No cruelty. No eccentricity. Nothing domineering, nothing abnormal sexually, though soon attracted to the feminine beautiful. No abuse. Never any stronger desire for alcohol, for coffee, or tobacco.”35 Not only was the Hrdlička family germ plasm free from degenerates, but it also conveyed physical prowess and sharp intelligence. On his paternal side, his grandmother was “a woman of fine physique.”36 His father was “a strong fine-looking man,” and his uncle was a high ranking soldier with a “fine physique.”37 As the heir to all this fitness, young Hrdlička was of course a “strong healthy boy” who was rarely ill and “always vigorous,” and even urban New York could not degrade his hereditary vitality.38 Not surprisingly, the Hrdlička bloodline also bore extraordinary intelligence. Despite little education, both his grandfather and his great uncle were “men of a rather outstanding intellectuality.”39 His uncle Joseph was also “highly intelligent and judicious.”40 All on his mother’s side were also “above the average in 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Letter, Committee on Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences to Hrdlička, October 1926. Manuscript, “The Criminal,” [1939], box 155, “1939,” Manuscripts of Writings, 1901–1944. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d.

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intelligence.”41 Even as a child, Hrdlička himself had a “remarkable memory” and was “first in the class.”42 He had “good facility with languages,” and was a “great and omnivorous reader,” except, of course, of erotica.43 Hrdlička’s private correspondence also displays a eugenic self-image. Czech Americans with similar names occasionally wrote him asking about his background, thus giving him an opportunity to praise the Hrdlička pedigree. For example, in 1938 he told Joe Hrdlicka of Texas that they both came from a “mentally and physically” sound family, whose “escutcheon is remarkably clean.”44 The Hrdličkas, he continued, had “produced good many men and women of more than average worth and prominence.”45 In 1940 he wrote to A. Turtledove, whose name is an English translation of Hrdlička, and told him “the family was one of the most wholesome both morally and physically.”46 He informed a woman whose mother’s maiden name was Hrdlička that the family was “a good stock, which gave a good many outstanding men and women in different fields of activity.”47 When writing about his family to Charles Pichel, a representative of the American Heraldry Society, he beamed, “to this day I am glad to say there was never known to be a criminal or defective in the family. It was a sound stock, many individuals of which were marked by above average intelligence and humanity.”48 He proudly informed his niece that the family “was one of the cleanest families both morally and physically that I know of.”49 Not only did eugenic beliefs shape Hrdlička’s appraisal of himself, but they also influenced his understanding of entire populations. He presented Slavic people as a eugenic reserve of strength and fertility. Their birth rates were high because their attachment to the soil had preserved most of them from the degeneration of urban civilization. In their pure and agrarian environment, they maintained a “relatively well preserved physical status,” and, furthermore, there was “something in the Slav constitution which favors a 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d.” Letter, Hrdlička to Joe B. Hrdlicka, 12 February 1938, box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš, miscellaneous, 1926– 1939, Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to J. Hrdlicka, 12 February 1938. Letter, Hrdlička to A. Turtledove, 8 June 1940, box 62, “TS-TY, 1899–1943,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Olga Vondráček, 12 January 1942, box 64, “V, 1900–1952,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Charles L.T. Pichel, 22 May 1929, box 52, “PI-PO, 1924–1941,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Miller, 19 September 1927.

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high birthrate.”50 In correspondence from 1935, he wrote, “Serbs are a sturdy people, and full of potentialities for the future. They are strong physically and capable mentally.”51 In response to the fear that Dark-skinned people were multiplying faster than Whites, Hrdlička reassured Bishop John William Hamilton in 1930 that some White groups, like Russians and Balkan Slavs, “increase at least as fast as the yellow-brown or other dark races.”52 During the world wars, Hrdlička strived to convince the American public that Czechs were a deviant-free population of innately good citizens. In an April 1938 radio speech, he extoled the fine qualities of American Czechs. They were, he claimed, “among the best citizens,” “stand among the highest in education,” and “have the lowest percentage of heavier criminality and pauperism.”53 In a personal letter to President Roosevelt in March, 1938, he described Czech Americans as, “order lovers,” “home owners,” “among the best people of this country,” and having “the lowest percentage of heavier criminality and pauperism”54 Hrdlička’s main aim in 1938, as the political situation in central Europe deteriorated, was to show Americans that Czechoslovakians were worth defending against German territorial expansion. In doing so, he perpetuated the stereotype, popular among many Czechs, that they were an “innately democratic and patriotic people” with “inherent liberality and sound moral qualities.”55 Hrdlička also repeatedly used eugenic ideals to argue that war was good. During World War I, he countered the notion that war was dysgenic by asserting there was “no scientific basis” showing that “nations … degenerated physically as the result of their wars.”56 He predicted that after the war had killed off the “weak” and the “dullards,” women would “have a greater chance than before to select physically superior partners.”57 In the 1930s, he expressed the same views both in the press and in a private but well known 50 Manuscript, “The Slavs,” n.d., box 138, “Slavs,” European Ethnic History, 1908–1938. 51 Letter, Hrdlička to Fred Atkins Moore, 29 August 1935, box 42, “MODELL-MORROW, 1918–1943,” Correspondence. 52 Letter, Hrdlička to Bishop John William Hamilton, 5 May 1930, box 28, “HAA-HAR, 1897–1943,” Correspondence. 53 Manuscript, “Address over Columbia Broadcasting System,” 9 April 1938, box 55, “Radio Talk on Czechoslovakia, 1938,” Correspondence. 54 Letter, Hrdlička to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 17 March 1938, box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš,” Correspondence. 55 Manuscript, “Address over Columbia Broadcasting System, 9 April 1938. See also Andrea Orzoff, Battle for the Castle), 219. 56 Hrdlička, “The Effects of the War on the Race,” Art and Archaeology 7, no. 7 (November-December 1918), 404. 57 Hrdlička, “The Effects of the War on the Race,” 407.

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essay called “War and Civilization,” which he sent to several important figures in the US government.58 In the troubled 1930s, he mustered his fiercest eugenic arguments against the “isolationists,” who, in his view, believed naively in “peace at any price.”59 Instead of retarding human development, most wars, Hrdlička felt, had advanced the “progress of mankind as a whole.”60 First, war keeps humans “fit and strong,” but “assured peace” leads to “excesses in indulgence and enfeeblement” of man’s “general virility and propulsive power.”61 Secondly, war weeds out the weak and spares the finest. He puzzlingly decreed that while “bullets … have no selectiveness,” somehow “the strong and intellectual will avoid them more than the weaker ones or the dull.”62 Presumably, he thought only dullards went to the front lines, where they would be liquidated, to the benefit of humanity. Thirdly, and partly in contradiction to the other points, he claimed war is not really that deadly anyway. Appealing to a favorite modern comparison, Hrdlička reassuringly remarked that more people died each year in automobile accidents than in World War I.63 It is worth remembering that Hrdlička, despite his insistence on inherent Slavic peacefulness, had “racial” reasons for supporting war. In World War I, he advocated a war to crush Austria, even when the United States was neutral and primarily at odds with Germany. When there was a chance for a separate peace with Austria, he still wanted to keep up the killing until Austria was crushed and Czechoslovakia could be established. Again, after 1938, Czechoslovakia’s liberation from Germany depended on the outbreak of another world war.

The Future: Perfection Through Human-Guided Evolution Hrdlička envisioned eugenics harnessing evolution to bring about human perfection. He predicted that, although still imperfect, eugenics was blos58 Manuscript, “War, Is It a Curse or a Blessing? Does It Cause Human Progress?” 21 April 1935, box 151, Manuscripts of Writings, 1901–1944; Manuscript, “War and Civilization,” 1939–41 (?), box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš,” Correspondence. 59 Manuscript, “War and Civilization,” 1939–41 (?). 60 Manuscript, “War, Is It a Curse or a Blessing? Does It Cause Human Progress?” 21 April 1935. 61 Manuscript, “War and Civilization,” 1939–41 (?). 62 Manuscript, “War and Civilization,” 1939–41 (?). 63 Manuscript, “War and Civilization,” 1939–41 (?).

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soming into “one of the greatest manifestations of humanity.”64 In a 1921 lecture, he prophesied that soon humankind would “assist intelligently in its own evolution,” and “evolution will no more be left to nature.”65 Instead of nature tediously lumbering forward, scientifically directed evolution would “do away with immense waste” and therefore “speed on the processes for the best possible results.”66 This technique “is known today under the name of eugenics,” which is “merely applied anthropological and medical science.”67 Other eugenicists shared this eschatological vision. For example, Wiggam also wrote, “eugenics is simply evolution taken out of the hands of nature and managed at least as well as, and if possible, better than, nature managed it.”68 Madison Grant likewise felt that eugenics would allow humanity to control its “own destiny and attain moral heights as yet unimagined.”69 This millennialism explains how Hrdlička could embrace eugenics as an ideal yet maintain a long list of complaints about its contemporary shortcomings. One problem was that the world’s “social institutions” and “material conditions” were not advanced enough to utilize “the facts which eugenics … can bring to bear.”70 Also, eugenicists still needed to establish their field as reputable. In 1930, he complained to the American Eugenics Society that the discipline lacked “a proper treatise” to garner support from medical professionals.71 Some eugenicists, he complained, speculated too ambitiously, and in 1936, he praised a well-known article that criticized eugenics, admitting that “matters have been much overdone.”72 In 1940, he privately remarked that eugenics still suffered from “the fact that there have been advanced, as dogmas, various opinions and claims, before they were fully elucidated and sustained by science. The subject has become the prey of popular writers, and also of some scientific propagandists rather than researchers.”73

64 Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. 65 Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. 66 Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. 67 Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. 68 Wiggam, The New Decalogue, 104. 69 Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 85–86; also quoted in Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 135. 70 Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. 71 Letter, Hrdlička to Stuart Mudd, 8 December 1930, box 7, “American Eugenics Society, 1923–1940,” Correspondence. 72 Letter, Hrdlička to J.P. Scott, 10 September 1936, box 57, “SC, 1924–1943,” Correspondence. 73 Letter, Hrdlička to R.C. Bertheau, 25 January 1940, box 7, “American Eugenics Society, 1923–1940,” Correspondence.

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Finally, he also thought that many contemporary eugenicists were too deterministic and too classist. Hrdlička’s line between heredity and environment was always murky. He thought biological inheritance played a heavy role in criminality, illness, and mental health, but he also insisted that social conditions and environment were important as well. He also did not like eugenics when it placed too much emphasis on class. He was no Marxist, but having risen from poverty himself, he did not appreciate eugenic attempts to isolate “the poor” as inferior “because of poverty alone.”74 Nonetheless, he criticized eugenics as practiced in the imperfect present, not its visionary role in human destiny. He admitted data were still missing, but in 1921 he predicted that “as people learn more and more of what is right and what is not … this particular branch of applied science [eugenics] will increase, and its efforts will be better rewarded.”75 In 1930, he believed that it was already advanced enough to justify sterilization. In that year, in a letter to the American Eugenics Society, he agreed that in the case of “defectives … beyond restoration,” the application of “scientific sterilization of every individual will be a distinct and undeniable service to humankind.”76 By 1936 eugenics was taking serious criticism, but while he willingly admitted that much about it was “overdone,” he also immediately added that “there is much prospective good in eugenics.”77 By 1940 eugenics was a largely discredited field of study, but the aged Hrdlička still thought that new, “young blood” might shape it into “a thoroughly high-class scientific procedure.”78 Although the movement was in disrepute, Hrdlička still imagined that eugenics could become “acceptable in our colleges and schools, so that it may be inculcated into the progeny, which I regard as of the foremost importance.”79

Slavic Eugenics Hrdlička strongly opposed Nazi-style eugenics and its American version, represented by Madison Grant, but he did not reject eugenics altogether. He criticized books attached “to the wagon of Mr. Madison Grant with all 74 75 76 77 78 79

Letter, Hrdlička to Mudd, 8 December 1930. Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. Letter, Hrdlička to Mudd, 8 December 1930. Letter, Hrdlička to Scott, 10 September 1936. Letter, Hrdlička to Bertheau, 25 January 1940. Letter, Hrdlička to Bertheau, 31 January 1940.

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his bias,” as “extremely harmful” because they “create prejudice which it takes a long time to eradicate.”80 However, as an immigrant from Slavic Central Europe who viewed the rivalry between Czechs and Germans as an eternal racial struggle, Hrdlička had obvious reasons for detesting Nordic fantasies which, in his words, “exaggerate the ‘superior’ classes or races.”81 This was not a plea for racial equality; it was a repudiation of the specific brand of eugenic belief that Nordics were racially superior to other White groups like Slavs. In fact, Hrdlička thought that removing the Nordic element would make eugenics more popular in the United States. In a short undated essay called “Eugenics and Democracy,” he examined ways to promote eugenics. One element that turned people against eugenics, he complained, was “the unwarranted claims of those who work for the restriction of immigration” and distort the “biological and dysgenic” facets of the discussion.82 At a 1929 speech sponsored by the Conference on Immigration Policy, he clearly revealed that his denunciation of “superior and inferior races” was for Whites only. His task at this meeting was to address the “biological” aspect of assimilation of the foreign born.83 In his address, he attacked eugenic “alarmists,” such as “the Grants or Stoddards,” who think “that the American people through mixture with immigrants are in danger of degeneration” and “physical or mental degradation.”84 Instead, Hrdlička cited research showing no inferiority in “white immigrants” in comparison with America’s “old stock.”85 Grant and Stoddard were wrong, insisted Hrdlička, and the melting pot was eugenically sound; there simply was no serious racial differentiation between Nordics, Slavs, and other White immigrants. While defending the eugenic equality of European immigrants, he was deliberately “disregarding the colored,” whom he considered “the real problem before the American people.”86 In eugenic terms, Blacks had “a widely

80 Letter, Hrdlička to Kellogg, 13 April 1918, box 37, “Kellogg, John Harvey, 1917–1919,” Correspondence; Letter, Hrdlička to Kellogg, 6 April 1918. 81 Letter, Hrdlička to Mudd, 8 December 1930. 82 Manuscript, “Eugenics and Democracy,” n.d., box 144, Miscellaneous Research Notes, 1887–1942. 83 Manuscript, “Talk on Immigration,” 10 April 1929, box 19, “Conference on Immigration Policy,” Correspondence. 84 Manuscript, “Talk on Immigration,” 10 April 1929. 85 Manuscript, “Talk on Immigration,” 10 April 1929. 86 Manuscript, “Talk on Immigration,” 10 April 1929.

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different and not desirable physique” for mixing with Whites.87 His correspondence reveals even more about his perspective. He told Bishop John Hamilton that White and Black “admixture” was a “danger” and “a drag on the progress of the whites.”88 He framed the results of this interbreeding in biblical language: “The future generations in this country will pay for the sins of their fathers who imported the negro into this country.”89 In 1938, he again drew on scriptural phraseology to tell Albert Johnson that the “amalgamation” of Blacks and Whites was due to “‘the sins of the fathers,’” which “will affect their progeny to the ‘nth’ generation.”90 Never fear, he counseled, the resulting “mulatto,” “has not the brain and other qualities” needed to “dominate or control.”91 Eugenics suited Hrdlička better when it served the interests of the new republic of Czechoslovakia, which he assumed should be primarily Czech and Slovak, and decidedly Slavic instead of Germanic. In the early days of the first republic, he wrote excitedly to fellow physical anthropologist Jindřich Matiegka that the “establishment of eugenic propaganda” should be a top priority for the new state.92 He connected this task to other essential national projects, including demographic studies and expeditions to trace “the origins of the Slav people.”93 To advance these aims, Hrdlička established endowments for anthropological research and publications in Czechoslovakia, and some of this money was allotted for eugenic research. In 1923, the profits from the so-called “Hrdlička Funds” were also used to launch the previously mentioned journal, Anthropologie, which listed eugenics as one of its themes.94 Hrdlička’s interest in Czech eugenics becomes more visible in his correspondence with Vladislav Růžička, a biologist at Charles University, vice-president of the Czechoslovakian Eugenic Society, and a founder of the Czechoslovak Institute of National Eugenics. Růžička also authored 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Manuscript, “Talk on Immigration,” 10 April 1929. Letter, Hrdlička to Hamilton, 5 May 1930. Letter, Hrdlička to Hamilton, 5 May1930. Letter, Hrdlička to Albert Johnson, 14 February 1938, box 36, “Albert, Johnson, 1921–1922,” Correspondence. Letter, Hrdlička to Hamilton, 5 May 1930. Hrdlička to Jindřich Matiegka, 13 May 1919, box 44, “Jindřich Matiegka, 1914–1920,” Correspondence. Hrdlička to Matiegka, 13 May 1919. See Miroslav Prokopec, “O Časopisu Anthropologie od žačátku,” [About the journal Anthropologie from its beginning] Anthropologie 4, no. 1 (1966): 49–56.

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the weighty, 780-page tome, Biological Foundations of Eugenics (Biologické základy eugeniky), an important text for Czech eugenicists.95 In the early 1920s, Hrdlička hoped Růžička would help “unite as closely as possible scientific eugenics in Czechoslovakia with anthropology,” which were “two interdependent branches” of the same discipline.96 For unclear reasons, their cooperation never materialized, but Hrdlička did not think Růžička’s field was unimportant. In 1924, Růžička wrote personally to ask Hrdlička to patronize a Slavonic Archive for Eugenics and Genetics. Hrdlička did not want to fund the project directly, but he also did not disqualify it. Instead, he instructed Růžička to apply for money from the already existing “Hrdlička Funds,” which allocated some money for “eugenic work connected with anthropology.”97 Believing that the whole world looked to Czechoslovakians as “the most advanced people of central and eastern Europe,” he thought Czech scholars should represent their new state in the international eugenics community.98 When Růžička and Ladislav Haškovec, president of the Eugenics Society of Czechoslovakia, lacked funding to attend the Second International Eugenics Conference in New York in 1921, Hrdlička personally wrote to the Czechoslovakian legate in Washington, urging the government to support the Czech professors.99 In the end, the Czechs never attended the conference, but Hrdlička dutifully represented both the Eugenics Society of Czechoslovakia and of the Medical Faculty of Charles University. Looking out for his homeland, he arranged for Czechoslovakia to be one of the countries with the privilege of nominating permanent members to the committee overseeing future eugenics conferences.100 To further strengthen the 95 Vladislav Růžička, Biologické základy eugeniky [Biological foundations of eugenics] (Prague: Fr. Borový, 1923); Michal Šimůnek, “Eugenics, Social Genetics and Racial Hygiene: Plans for the Scientific Regulation of Human Heredity in the Czech Lands, 1900–1925,” in Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900–1940, eds. Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling, 134–36 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007). 96 Hrdlička to Vladislav Růžička, 9 May1924, box 57, “Růžička, Vladislav, 1921–25,” Correspondence. 97 Hrdlička to Růžička, 9 May 1924. 98 Hrdlička to Matiegka, 13 May 1919. 99 The assumption has always been that the two Czech eugenicists attended the congress. See Michal Šimůnek, “Czechoslovakia (Bohemia and Moravia),” in The History of East-Central European Eugenics, 1900–1945, Sources and Commentaries, ed. Marius Turda (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 135. This assumption is almost certainly wrong: “I am very sorry that either you or Professor Růžička could not have found it possible to attend the Congress in New York.” Letter, Hrdlička to Ladislav Haškovec, 27 August 1921, box 30, “Haškovec, Lad., 1904, 1921,” Correspondence. 100 Hrdlička to Růžička, 30 September 1921.

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role of Czechoslovakia in the eugenics movement, he and some of his Czech colleagues hoped to host the Third Eugenics Conference in Prague.101 Some scholars think they can discern an anti-eugenics bias in Hrdlička’s editorial policies at the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, but this view seems unwarranted, especially in comparison with his role in Czech anthropology.102 In the early days, when he was founding the Journal and seeking financial support, he placed famous eugenicists Madison Grant, Charles Davenport, and John Harvey Kellogg on the editorial board. There was a degree of calculation in these appointments, but this does not prove Hrdlička or his journal were insincere about eugenics. Although Grant was sidelined before the first volume came out in 1918, Kellogg and Davenport remained.103 While the Journal sometimes published articles critical of eugenics, Hrdlička also personally solicited articles and other material from the most zealous eugenicists, including John Harvey Kellogg, Harry Laughlin, and Charles Davenport.104 As late as 1928, Hrdlička was enthusiastic about publishing an article by Davenport’s understudy Morris Steggerda, even though his work was already considered inept by many in the field.105 Hrdlička’s role in the Czechoslovakian journal Anthropologie further supports this interpretation. This journal was published with the proceeds from his endowments, and although Czech anthropologist Jindřich Matiegka was the editor, Hrdlička played a role in shaping its content. The two scientists viewed Anthropologie as a Slavic complement to the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. On its title page, Anthropologie claimed to be a journal “dedicated to physical anthropology, comparative human anatomy, the study of races, demography, eugenics, and physical education.” When planning the journal with Matiegka in 1922, Hrdlička specified that it should be devoted “primarily to the Slav and secondarily to World Anthropology in the broadest sense, including Eugenics, which latter is of course one of the

101 Růžička to Hrdlička, 26 May 1923. 102 See Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička.” 103 Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička.”98. 104 Hrdlička to Harry Laughlin, 9 September 1918, box 22, “EN-EZ,” Correspondence; Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička,” 89. 105 Hrdlička to Charles Davenport, 14 May 1928, box 21, “Davenport, Charles B., 1925–1940,” Correspondence. On Steggerda, see Barkan, Retreat of Scientific Racism, 162–68.

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main practical aims of anthropology.”106 He and Matiegka even toyed with the idea of naming it Slav Anthropology and Eugenics.107

Opportunism or Belief? Some scholars have suggested that Hrdlička’s interest in eugenics was merely opportunistic, and it is easy to see why. He sometimes had mercenary motives for supporting specific eugenic organizations and their leaders. Although no one has ever accused him of enriching himself personally, he probably cultivated relationships with wealthy eugenicists to direct funds and attention to his pet projects. Around 1918, when he was looking for money to launch his most beloved project, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, he was noticeably friendlier with rich eugenicists like John Harvey Kellogg and Madison Grant. These complicated relationships illustrate how careerism, patronage, and personal animosities could sway scholarly judgment behind the scenes. This ambiguity especially hangs over Hrdlička’s relationship with John Harvey Kellogg. The most recent scholarship of Kellogg portrays him as an accomplished surgeon, who professed and propagated a philosophy of healthy living that addressed serious dietary issues.108 His concern with digestive problems eventually led to the development of Kellogg’s cereal products, which made John’s younger brother Will a millionaire. To propagate his healthy living ideas, John founded a “Sanitarium” in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where famous people from all over the world came to relax, undergo surgery, recover, and eat healthily. Apparently, in 1919 Hrdlička also convalesced at the Sanitarium, where Kellogg’s doctors inspected his colon and gave him a clean bill of health.109 Kellogg eventually became a major supporter of eugenics by hosting three “Race Betterment Conferences.” Kellogg was also a patron of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, which gave him a privileged role in the convention today known as 106 Hrdlička to Matiegka, 20 February, 1922. 107 Hrdlička to Matiegka, 20 February, 1922. 108 For recent and generally sympathetic appraisals of Kellogg, see Howard Markel, The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017); Wilson, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. For a more critical and “tongue in cheek” evaluation see, Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 250–52. 109 Letter, Dr. M.A. Mortensen to Aleš Hrdlička, 13 October 1919, box 33, “Hrdlička, Aleš, 1912–23,” Correspondence.

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“peer review.” In 1918 Kellogg urged Hrdlička to publish a critical review of William Sadler’s Long Heads and Round Heads, a Nordic-racist eugenics treatise. Kellogg had unknown personal reasons for insisting on a negative review of the book. Sadler had worked for many years as a doctor at the Sanitarium and was married to Kellogg’s half niece.110 The reason for Kellogg’s animosity is not clear, but it is well known that he could be vindictive and petty toward family members, especially his brother Will. Whatever his reasons, Kellogg was adamant that Hrdlička should publicly denounce Sadler’s work by writing a vicious review to preempt any favorable reception of the book. In his words, Hrdlička’s “authoritative criticism” would “prevent commendatory notices by a considerable number of journals, the editors of which are as ignorant as the author.”111 Hrdlička agreed with Kellogg that Sadler’s book was “a mess of trash,” but, fearing he “would only make an enemy,” he refused to write the review.112 Kellogg persisted. He reassured Hrdlička that Sadler had “no influence in circles that will do you or the Journal of American Anthropology any harm whatever.”113 While painting Sadler as an impotent foe, Kellogg promised to be a valuable friend, and to close the deal, he sent a “pledge” of one-hundred dollars, promised to send two-hundred dollars more, and added, “do not worry about finances. I am sure I can pick up all you need.”114 A few days later, Hrdlička changed his mind and told Kellogg he would ask the Library of Congress for a copy of the book for review. Too impatient to wait, Kellogg cunningly wrote to Sadler and asked him to send a copy of his own book straight to Hrdlička for a review, that is, a negative review, secretly paid for by Kellogg. This seamy affair does not mean that Hrdlička’s relationship with Kellogg was merely opportunistic. While offering an interesting glimpse of how personal rivalries, patronage, and corruption can influence academic conclusions behind the scenes, this event was peripheral to Hrdlička’s conception of eugenics. In requesting a critical review of Sadler, Kellogg was asking Hrdlička to do something he essentially agreed with anyway. Sadler’s book, which emulated Grant’s Passing of the Great Race, espoused the Nordic rac110 Markel, Kelloggs, 367. 111 Letter, Kellogg to Hrdlička, 8 April 1918, box 37, “Kellogg, John Harvey, 1917–1919,” Correspondence. 112 Letter, Hrdlička to Kellogg, 6 April 1918. 113 Letter, Kellogg to Hrdlička, 8 April 1918. 114 Letter, Kellogg to Hrdlička, 8 April 1918..

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ism that Hrdlička detested.115 Indeed, Hrdlička thought this type of racism damaged the reputation of eugenics. Sadler’s Nordicism, not necessarily his eugenics, was the most objectionable component. The two doctors discussed their shared interests in eugenics and cooperated even when no funding was at stake. Hrdlička genuinely believed bodily measurements of the eminent people who stayed at Kellogg’s sanitarium might reveal deeper truths about heredity and intelligence. T. D. Stewart, Hrdlička’s successor at the Smithsonian, remembered many years later how “he measured all the members of the National Academy” because he thought “these were superior people.”116 Hrdlička and Kellogg also planned to measure the features of the “really highly prominent persons” relaxing at the Sanitarium.117 These data, he told Kellogg, “would be of permanent genealogical and eugenic value” and “could be published … in our journal.”118 Kellogg was elated and told Hrdlička he was “very glad indeed to encourage any line of research work which will tend in the direction of race betterment.”119 Friendly cooperation between the two continued in 1928, when Kellogg hosted his Third Race Betterment Conference in Michigan. Hrdlička could not make the trip, but he still wrote a paper entitled “Race Deterioration and Destruction with Special Reference to the American People,” which Kellogg published with the conference speeches.120 By this date, it is unlikely that Hrdlička needed Kellogg’s patronage. He was an internationally famous scientist, his position at the Smithsonian was secure, and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology was a success. After inheriting money from his first wife in 1918, Hrdlička had himself become a patron and donated over two-hundred thousand Czech crowns to support physical anthropology in Czechoslovakia.121 Hrdlička often criticized sloppy scholarship in the field of eugenics, yet he praised Kellogg’s conference proceedings as “a volume you may be proud of” thanks to the “caliber and value of the work accomplished there.”122 115 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 169–79. 116 Ubelaker, “T. Dale Stewart’s Perspective on His Career,” 273–74. Hrdlička also corresponded about the project with Charles Davenport, see: Letter, Hrdlička to Davenport, 1 April 1926. 117 Letter, Hrdlička to Kellogg, 18 April 1918. 118 Letter, Hrdlička to Kellogg, 18 April 1918. 119 Letter, Kellogg to Hrdlička, 15 April 1918. 120 See Hrdlička, “Race Deterioration,” 82–85. 121 Kostrhun, “Američtí archeologové,” 597. 122 Letter, Hrdlička to Kellogg, 2 March, 1929.

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At the deepest level, Hrdlička and Kellogg held similarly religious views of eugenics. As medical doctors, the two shared a professional outlook that pushed them to find spiritual meaning in the physical sciences. Both men questioned the solutions offered by traditional religion. Hrdlička began his education with a religious vocation in mind and ended as a high priest of science. Kellogg, after being excommunicated from the Seventh Day Adventist Church, searched for a more scientific version of spirituality.123 They were not alone. Like Grant, Wiggam, Kellogg, and others, Hrdlička felt that scientific principles must replace traditional beliefs as a guide to living. This burdened science with furnishing moral directives to replace those once derived from religious belief. Eugenics fulfilled this quest by purporting to distill useful precepts directly from biology without deferring to traditional religion. In terms of practical guidance, eugenics helped Hrdlička evaluate himself as an individual. In social life, it equipped him with a moral vocabulary for evaluating race, international politics, and war and peace. Finally, it inspired him with a vision of human perfectibility through controlled evolution. Eugenics was crucial for morality in Hrdlička’s racial world.

123 Spiro, Defending the Master, 251; Wilson, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, 162–68; The appropriate Seventh-day Adventist term is apparently not “excommunication” but “disfellowshipment” (Wilson, 112).

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THE FAITH OF ALEŠ HRDLIČKA

It is as if our age has been created for the rise of a new religion.1 (Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk)

The rejection of traditional religion had itself, paradoxically, become “religious.”2 (Paul A. Carter, The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age)

Science as the New Savior In September 1941, seventy-year-old Thomas Bate heard Aleš Hrdlička speaking on the radio and immediately recognized an intellectual companion. Hrdlička’s radio presentation was called “The Material Causes Underlying the Present World Troubles.” In this talk, Hrdlička, now an aging worldrenowned scientist, wanted to suggest solutions to the emerging evils of World War II. Science, counselled the wise old anthropologist, was the only moral antidote to these terrible times.3 To critical readers, it might be hard to understand what was so exciting about this short and vague radio presentation, yet it inspired Bate so much that he wrote personally to Hrdlička the very same day. 1 Masaryk, Sebevražda [Suicide], 335.This is my own translation from the Czech version. In Czech, it reads: “Naše doba jest pro nové náboženství jako stvořena.” Masaryk originally published his dissertation in German as Der Selbstmord in 1881. The exact same quote is found on page 234: “Unsere Zeit ist für eine neue Religion wie geschaffen.” 2 Paul A. Carter, The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971), 19. On the “spiritual crisis” in Europe, see also Carlton J. H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism, 1871–1900 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941). 3 Manuscript, “The Material Causes Underlying the Present World Troubles,” 28 September 1941, box 55, “Radio Talks: ‘Meaning of Freedom Program,’” Correspondence.

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What stirred Bate was that Hrdlička looked to science, not religion, for ultimate answers to the world’s moral problems. Long ago, Bate had had a conversion experience that led him to the same conclusion. Now seventy, he had once been, in his words, an “extremely doctrinal” and “fanatical” Methodist preacher.4 When he was forty, his religious ardor turned cold, but his “critical faculty was awakened and began to function.”5 The good preacher used modern scientific standards to evaluate his faith, found it wanting, and discarded it. Bate did not regret abandoning his faith, but he remembered the event as a genuine spiritual crisis. For many today, it might be hard to understand the loss, emptiness, and uncertainty that doubters like Bate experienced. Yet Reverend Bate was not alone. Much later, in 1971, one scholar wrote an entire history book, titled Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age, about how Americans in the nineteenth century struggled with this dilemma. Back in 1881 in Vienna, perhaps near the epicenter of the “spiritual crisis,” Tomáš Masaryk, a young doctoral student and the future president of Czechoslovakia, wrote a dissertation theorizing that loss of religious certainty, in other words “spiritual crisis,” was triggering rising suicide rates in Europe. Jettisoning his faith brought Bate emotional turmoil that only ended when he found salvation in science. At first, disbelief “nearly drove me insane,” he wrote, and “for a long time I was completely suspended and was unable to contact anything to satisfy my mental hunger for reality.”6 Not all the pain was intellectual; Bate had surrounded himself with a like-minded religious community for most of his life, but now he lost friends and family who could not accept his irreligious views. Looking back with the tranquility of a survivor, he recalled that the tumult finally ceased when he discovered a new “scientific attitude,” which “reorganized” and “established” him in “a new faith in the natural laws and processes of the universe.”7 After his crisis, he never looked back to his old faith, and he told Hrdlička that ever since that time: “I have regarded the view point of religion and the churches as absolutely futile and headed for the scrap-heap.”8 4 5 6 7 8

Letter, Thomas Bate to Hrdlička, 28 September 1941, box 55, “Radio Broadcast: ‘Meaning of Freedom’ Program,” Correspondence. Bates’ anti-conversion would have taken place around 1911. Letter, Bate to Hrdlička, 28 September 1941. Letter, Bate to Hrdlička, 28 September 1941. Letter, Bate to Hrdlička, 28 September 1941. Letter, Bate to Hrdlička, 28 September 1941.

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Hrdlička did not describe his own conversion so dramatically, but he also depicted himself as a man who had escaped religion to find new certainty in science. His childhood education in Habsburg Europe, as he later narrated, had been intended to culminate in a religious career.9 However, when he immigrated to America at twelve, he left behind his Catholic-oriented schooling forever. In the tough surroundings of New York City, poverty forced him to work as a child laborer in a cigar factory, and education, religious or otherwise, had to wait. Instead of taking Latin at a European gymnasium, he now studied English at night school after work. Eventually, a friend helped him enroll in medical school, and the rest of his career focused exclusively on the physical sciences. Looking back, the mature Hrdlička mused that his career had turned out unexpectedly religious after all because he was now “teaching the people,” but as a scientist, not a priest.10 While he never officially gave up Catholicism, Hrdlička had essentially found a new religion. By the time of his 1941 radio speech, it was an article of faith for him that “science” could somehow save humanity from the moral calamities of his age. Hrdlička’s new faith expected science to fill the vacuum left by discredited religious beliefs. In the nineteenth century, modern science had made powerful criticisms of conventional faith, and for many, like ex-Reverend Bate, such comprehensive disenchantment was disorienting and frightening. Without the reassurance of religious values, what was right and wrong; what was meaningful? Tomáš Masaryk, in his previously mentioned dissertation, thought modern skepticism produced moral hollowness and increased suicide because “the great mass of people simply does not have any replacement when they give up their religion.”11 In a 1936 essay called “Human Welfare and Science,” Hrdlička also worried that the world was confronting a “critical period” because as traditional beliefs decayed, “there is nothing provided to take their place,” leaving many people “bewildered.”12 It is not certain if Hrdlička had read Masaryk’s study on suicide, but both 9

Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d., box 1, “Autobiographical handwritten notes,” Miscellaneous Personal Papers, 1889–1940. 10 Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. 11 Masaryk, Sebevražda, 123. 12 Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?), box 39, “LE, 1901–1942,” Correspondence. The date of this composition is almost certainly 1936. See Hrdlička to Henry Leach, 11 September 1936, box 39, “LE, 1901–1942,” Correspondence.

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men worried about the need to replace the religious bulwark wrecked by modern thought. The solution to this dangerous “bewilderment,” proposed Hrdlička, was science, which he considered the “safest guide and savior” in the modern age.13 Many agreed. Biologist Aldred Scott Warthin also claimed in 1928 that a “new faith” grounded in biology must replace what he considered the “superstitions” of old-fashioned faith.14 Looking for a modern kind of divine revelation, eugenicist Albert Wiggam declared in 1922 that God no longer revealed himself in “tables of stone, burning bushes, prophecies and dreams,” but through “the microscope, the spectroscope, the telescope, the chemist’s test tube and the statistician’s curve.”15 In 1931, entomologist William Morton Wheeler wrote, “where, indeed, with the disintegration of traditional religion and ethics, can we hope to find the means of correcting our mental, moral, and physical maladjustments, except in a biologically renovated ethics …?”16 Popular author Lothrop Stoddard insisted “the new biological revolution” required “sweeping idealistic adaptations.”17 Tomáš Masaryk agreed that the coming new religion must be “in harmony with science.”18 Hrdlička professed that only science could “save” humanity. “The old order of things,” he insisted, could no longer help, and “old props, reliances [sic], ideals, have seemingly given away or threaten to do so.”19 There were no other possible saviors; if science could not redeem humanity, he pronounced, “then nothing can.”20 Modern science, some argued, had uncovered “laws of nature” that could become the substructure of an entirely new moral system. In a 1931 paper called “Hopes in the Biological Sciences,” William Morton Wheeler predicted that by the end of the twentieth century theology “will have no more cultural value than astrology,” and “moral codes shall be based on life and not life on moral codes.21 Herbert Spencer Jennings also elevated his field of biology to the level of moral wisdom in a book published in 1930: 13 Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). 14 Warthin, “A Biologic Philosophy,” 89. 15 Wiggam, New Decalogue of Science, 11. On Wiggam, see Steven Selden, “Transforming Better Babies,” 204–05; Brian C. Wilson, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, 163–65. 16 William Morton Wheeler, “Hopes in the Biological Sciences,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 70, no. 3 (1931): 237. 17 Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color, 301. 18 Steed, “Thomas Garrigue Masaryk,” 467. 19 Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). 20 Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). 21 Wheeler, “Hopes in the Biological Sciences,” 236.

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It has come to be recognized that man is a biological specimen, as much as are snakes and newts; his affairs are biological affairs, and must be carried on in accordance with sound biological principles. The uplifter hastens to secure the endorsement of the biologist for his particular remedy for human ills. The man in the street recognizes that if his practices are not biologically sound, they are not sound at all; the biological expert must set the seal of his approval upon them. Profound changes in practice are urged upon the world as pronouncements of biological science.22

Hrdlička shared these idealistic expectations for science, which, he declared, brings “true human progress.”23 What he meant by “progress” is vague, but he was thinking of something spiritual. This progress, for example, was far more meaningful than the mere invention of time-saving gadgets. Such inventions were useful, but the true transcendent purpose of science was not “progress in wealth, or ease, or mechanization,” but the development of “true subjective human values.”24 Only the morality of science would turn humans into a “higher order of beings,” making them “more perfect, mentally as well as organically.”25 Even Hrdlička occasionally questioned whether science possessed the tools for this spiritual task. In the 1920s, he reminisced that his original plan had been to study theology and law after finishing medical school. Now, having never got around to theology and law, he conceded that medicine “does not satisfy” because it “does not solve the highest human problems, the enigma of life, of soul, of future,” and it “entails too much empiricism.”26 These were only temporary moments of doubt; most of the time he glibly assumed that answers to the “highest human problems” would emerge from copious records of cranial measurements. Hrdlička placed daunting responsibilities on science, but he also restricted its scope by insisting that it involve as little theorizing as possible. He generally viewed science as the description of tangible objects, like bones, which he could measure and compare. Steven Conn, a historian of 22 Herbert S. Jennings, The Biological Basis of Human Nature (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1930), 203; Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 69. 23 Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). 24 Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). 25 Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). 26 Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d.

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museums, has described this understanding of science as “object-based epistemology.”27 Hrdlička simply trusted that accumulated observations of physical, or “somatic,” characteristics would eventually unravel the “enigma of life.” According to one well known historian of anthropology: Hrdlička naively assumed, like so many others, that the reality of the human condition would be miraculously revealed after an undetermined amount of data collection. Even to the very last field trip to Alaska in the late 1930s, Hrdlička would remain convinced that from the skulls and artifacts he so carefully carried to his boat, to add to the thousands he had already amassed in Washington, such solutions would eventually emerge.28

Hrdlička’s disrespect for theory left him very good at measuring crania but not so adept at explaining why it was important to do so. Members of the next generation of scientists were quick to criticize this. Anthropologist Ashley Montagu wryly remembered how Hrdlička “was passionately interested in bones, particularly in the external details of their variation, details which he would record in paper after paper, without any real attempt to indicate the reasons for their recording or to interpret their significance.”29 Adolph H. Schultz, who honored Hrdlička’s life with a respectful yet critical (and funny) obituary, quipped that his works were of a “purely descriptive nature,” and “a large share consists of little besides tabulations and catalogues of data.”30 Schulz thought of Hrdlička as a collector, who “left the secondary, though more fascinating, questions, beginning with how and why, to his successors.”31 In fairness, critics like Montagu and Schultz still praised Hrdlička’s contribution to their field. Hrdlička was an explorer in the early days of physical anthropology, and his collections and precise techniques laid vital foundations for specialties like anthropometry and forensic anthropology. Notwithstanding his valid contributions, it is difficult to see how Hrdlička’s kind of science could ever rescue humanity from the modern moral abyss. What great wisdom did endless drawers of bones and tables of 27 Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 4. 28 Spencer, “Aleš Hrdlička, M.D.,” 49. 29 Montagu, “Aleš Hrdlička,” 115. 30 Schultz, “Biographical Memoir of Aleš Hrdlička,” 312. 31 Schultz, “Biographical Memoir of Aleš Hrdlička,” 311.

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anthropometric measurements offer the world? He tried, clumsily, to tackle this problem in an essay he wrote in 1936 called “Human Welfare and Science.” The subtitle of this short and awkward foray into the philosophy of science was “Can Science save us? Can Science show the way?” The basic argument was that yes, science can save the world, but only if “society” figures out how to make use of its endless data. Unfortunately, the essay never quite explained what “society” was supposed to learn from science. Hrdlička told his readers science was simply the “organized search for facts” by impartial scholars.32 Far from saving the world, Hrdlička’s scientists robotically churned out “facts,” and most worked their “whole life without discovering a single fact that by itself could in any material way benefit or direct society.”33 He was sure all the answers were buried in the data, but science could save humanity only if society would “make due use of what will be furnished.”34 Hrdlička thus irresponsibly shirked nuanced moral discussion about how “society” should prioritize the infinity of “facts” for bettering humanity. “Society” should learn the right lessons from science, he lectured, and if it did not, “society” was just stupid. If things went wrong and nobody learned anything useful from the data, then “the society itself is far more at fault” than the scientist.35 Scientists, in his estimation, were heroic and innocent generators of “facts,” but choosing the most useful facts, evaluating their moral significance, and applying them to save the world were somebody else’s problems. Unfortunately, he did not stick to this restricted role. Instead, he sloppily passed off his own poorly examined “subjective human values” as objective scientific axioms. This is how he helped turn race into a bleak modern morality.

The Scientific Racial World Modern science, as he understood it, taught the foundational truth that humans belonged primarily in physical groups like “races” and “nations.” According to “natural law,” these biological groups are unequal and compete 32 33 34 35

Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?). Manuscript, “Human Welfare and Science,” 1936 (?).

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against each other in a merciless struggle to survive. Because these zoological groupings are the most “natural” form of human belonging, no “artificial” political or cultural system could ever overcome them.36 Quite the opposite, states must be destroyed, and borders redrawn, to accommodate primal racial identities. Constitutions and the rights of citizenship were only as good as the biological quality of the population, and no rule of law could ever unite races and nations who did not belong together “naturally.” Hrdlička was wrong to view this set of alleged “facts” as amoral; in truth they were stark principles whose enactment had horrifying consequences. Hrdlička spelled out these dark doctrines of science in a lecture in Prague, when he reasoned that according to the “laws of nature,” superior races inevitably conquer or exterminate inferior ones, and “no morality, no faith, nor any laws can avert this cruel, yet fundamentally natural path.”37 This style of reasoning, which dodged moral obligations by appealing to “nature,” was not unique to Hrdlička, and it underpinned racial-thinking in the twentieth century. In the 1920s, Lothrop Stoddard also preached in Rising Tide of Color that racial conflict between White and Dark-skinned people was “natural” and inevitable because “self-preservation is the first law of nature.”38 Most insidiously, the Nazi regime, liberated from “outdated” moral constraints, finally followed this “natural path” to its horrific logical end.39 People like Hrdlička uncritically hailed this worldview as scientific by contrasting it with Christian “superstition.”40 Not only was Christianity considered old-fashioned in general, but Christian universalism stood in the way of a world organized more “naturally” around race. Many public figures authoritatively preached, using the rhetoric of science, that the “facts” of race nullified the superstition of Christianity. One of these was Madison 36 I have put “nature” and “natural” in quotation marks because I am not sure what “nature” is, or, more importantly, whatever it is, why it should uncritically be equated with goodness. 37 Hrdlička, O původu a vývoji člověka, 63. In a speech at the American University in 1921 he proclaimed, this time in English, that the White man was “far ahead of the Negro who is a long way behind,” and “the inevitable result of this will be that the white man really will have a supremacy over an inferior race; a man so much more effective will be by nature’s laws alone, as he already is today, the lord of the one below him.” See, Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921, box 151, Manuscripts of Writings, 1901–1944. See also chapter 4. 38 Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color, 275. 39 Johann Chapotout, in his excellent study of the Nazi intellectual world, suggests where such ethical insights derived from the “scientific laws of nature” could lead. Chapoutot, Law of Blood, 23–63. 40 Chapoutot, Law of Blood, 64–111. Chapoutot convincingly shows how the century’s most dedicated racial enthusiasts generally despised Christianity and the Enlightenment’s egalitarian vision.

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Grant, America’s most notorious racist author whose book, The Passing of the Great Race, impressed Hitler. “Religious and social doctrines” teaching human equality, sneered Grant in 1916, had weakened Nordic racial purity, but in the face of modern science, he gloated, these silly beliefs were “happily becoming obsolete.”41 This contrast between “sentimental” Christian equality and scientific racial realities is an unmissable theme in the early twentieth century. In the 1920s, journalist Kenneth Roberts derided his “sentimentally inclined readers” who ignore “racial differences” because they think “all people are equal in the eyes of St. Peter.”42 Things were different “here on earth,” lectured Roberts, where “there are certain biological laws which govern the crossing of different breeds.”43 Lothrop Stoddard proclaimed that the racist “White Australia” immigration policy “is gospel” and “counts for more than religion.”44 Insisting that science was on the side of anti-miscegenation laws in the 1920s, Virginia’s Walter Plecker urged his readers to “turn a deaf ear to those who would interpret Christian brotherhood to mean racial equality.”45 Madison Grant detested Roman Catholicism because the church “used its influence to break down racial distinctions.”46 Aldred Scott Warthin felt that Christian teachings like “the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins” had “done more harm, biologically, than almost any other thing in the human race.”47 For Hrdlička, Christianity was “backwards” and oppressive because it stifled authentic expressions of “natural” racial characteristics. In Eastern Europe, Christianity was a foreign ploy, imposed mostly by Germans, for suppressing Slavic identity. If modern Czechoslovaks freed themselves from the racial tyranny of Germans and their phony Christianity, the innate Slavic spirit would produce a more “natural” religious and moral code. The question “Who is a true Christian?” which had been central in pre-mod41 Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 4. 42 Roberts, Why Europe Leaves Home, 113. 43 Roberts, Why Europe Leaves Home, 113. 44 Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color, 267. 45 Walter Plecker, cited in Sherman, “’The Last Stand,’” 73. 46 Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 85. See also John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992). Higham concurred that Grant “assaulted Christianity for its humanitarian bias in favor of the weak and its consequent tendency to break down racial pride” (157). 47 Warthin, “A Biologic Philosophy,” 88.

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ern ages, was insignificant to Hrdlička, who spent his entire career asking: “Who is a Slav?” and “Who is White”? After Christianity, the liberal ideal of human equality, which scientific racists blamed on the Enlightenment and the eighteenth-century revolutions, was another favorite target.48 For men like Grant and Stoddard, the scientific “facts” of “nature” required a firm rejection of America’s Enlightenment heritage, especially the statement of equality in the Declaration of Independence. According to Grant, “the basic truth [is] that inequality and not equality is the law of nature.”49 Grant derided “the brotherhood of man” as a mistake that came from “the loose thinkers of the French Revolution and their American mimics.”50 Stoddard took a similar view: “A little while ago we were taught that all men were equal …. Fortunately we know the truth … we have been vouchsafed clear insight into the laws of life. We know that men are not, and never will be, equal.”51 The British race pundit Houston Stewart Chamberlain likewise thought documents like the French Declaration of the Rights of Man belonged in “the waste-paper basket,” and that Enlightenment-style human equality was a “foolish humanitarian daydream.”52 Hrdlička does not seem to have thought much about the Enlightenment, yet he readily agreed, “from the scientific point of view there is no such prospect as mental and physical equality among peoples”; it was simply a fact that there were “retarded races” and “advanced races.”53

The Meaning of “Race” One glaring flaw should have wrecked this pretentious race-based ethics from the beginning: No one could explain what race was, how many races there were, or how to tell them apart. In the United States, the dramatic story of African Americans is the central race motif, but Native Americans, European immigrants, and Asians were also seen through the lens 48 Chapoutot, Law of Blood, 64–111. See also Mark Brandon, “From Mum Bett to Franz Boas: Race and Human Equality in American Intellectual Culture,” in Assimilation in American Culture – A Good or Bad Word: Proceedings of the 20th International Colloquium of American Studies, 46–56, ed. Michal Peprník (Olomouc, CZ: Palacký University Press, 2016). 49 Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 79. 50 Grant, cited in Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 155. 51 Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color, 305. 52 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, cited in Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 111. 53 Hrdlička, Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921.

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of race. As one historian has recounted, W. E. B. Dubois reported seeing a full “fifty races” present at the First Universal Race Congress in 1911 in London.54 A famous 1899 book entitled The Races of Europe divided Lightskinned Europeans into distinct racial groups.55 It was once commonplace to discuss the Irish and Slavic races. Hrdlička talked about the Czechoslovakian race in the 1930s, and he thought it was in perpetual competition with the German race. Most notoriously, many considered Jews a race. To the surprise of many, something very much like race concepts turned up in the Soviet Union, where they were, theoretically at least, not supposed to exist.56 Although invented by Europeans and Americans, race-thinking traveled around the world in the twentieth century, with horrible results.57 If race was such a certainty of science, why did it show up in so many differing formulations, and why were races so hard to count and describe? Hrdlička, who spent his life literally measuring races, used the term as recklessly as anyone. All that is certain is that he defined it as something physical, not cultural, “imagined,” or “socially constructed.” For Hrdlička, one of the key aims of physical anthropology was elucidating “physical knowledge” of “races” and “their subdivisions.”58 He cherished anthropometry, the precise measurement of body parts, and he hoped to use it to distinguish races and nations. He thought cultural anthropology, as it would be called today, was a waste of time. He complained, for example, that Franz Boas spent so much energy on “linguistics, mythology and general ethnology” but never devoted himself exclusively to physical anthropology.59 The 54 55 56 57

Guterl, “The New Race Consciousness, 351. William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1899). See Weitz, “Racial Politics.” A few works that tackle race in “non-Western” contexts are: Frank Dikötter, “Culture, ‘Race,’ and ‘Nation’: The Formation of National Identity in Twentieth Century China,” Journal of International Affairs 49, no. 2 (Winter, 1996): 590–605; Dikötter, “Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the History of Eugenics,” American Historical Review 103 (1998): 467–78; Dikötter, “Racial Identities in China: Context and Meaning,” The China Quarterly 138 (June 1994): 404–412; Alexander Laban Hinton, Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Dower, War without Mercy; James Leibold, “Competing Narratives of Racial Unity in Republican China: From the Yellow Emperor to Peking Man,” Modern China 32, no. 2 (April 2006): 181– 220; Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79 (Yale University, 1996); Gérard Prunier, “Frontline: Prunier Interview,” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ shows/rwanda/etc/interview.html; Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Vladimir Tikhonov, “The Race and Racism Discourses in Modern Korea, 1890s-1910s,” Korean Studies 36 (2012): 31–57. 58 Hrdlička, Physical Anthropology, 17. 59 Hrdlička, Physical Anthropology, 102.

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study of race, whatever it was, was only about “research into man’s anatomical and physical variation.”60 Aside from his assertion that race was physical and measurable, it is hard to find consistency in Hrdlička’s usage. He never claimed certainty about how many races there were. He was sure they existed, and he once reassured a college student “there is no possibility of doing away with these facts.”61 Yet he could not enumerate these races he believed in. He knew there was no consensus about racial categories, but when he had the opportunity to correct this inadequacy in a biology textbook, all he could do was confess there were “as many schemes of classifications of the races of man as there were students of the question.”62 Abandoning the scientific endeavor, he opted for a “common sense” tripartite division simply because it was convenient. Technically, he considered all Europeans as part of the White race, yet, when he felt like it, he still treated European groups as if they were separate races. He hated Madison Grant’s insistence on Nordic superiority but copied Grant’s division of Europeans into Nordic, Mediterranean, and Alpine physical types. He avoided calling them separate “races,” but he agreed with Grant that physical differences distinguished them.63 To Grant’s three groups, he tacked on the Slavs as a fourth and distinct class of European Whites. He also invented an armory of euphemisms to discuss physically distinct human groups without labeling them “races.” He was fond of terms like “unit,” “stock,” “stem,” “branch,” “strain,” “type,” “sub-race,” “secondary race,” “daughter race,” and “nascent race.” For example, he did not usually like to call the Slavs a race, so he considered them a “unit” of the White race. He never explained what made these imaginative categories different from races. Sometimes he complicated things further by calling national groups races. He described nations in racial terms but usually stopped short of the word itself. In a 1930 article, he dealt with modern nations as “nascent races.”64 If people lived together for a long time in a state, he theorized, they 60 Hrdlička, Physical Anthropology, 8. 61 Letter, Mary E. Morgan to Hrdlička, 28 February 1927, box 42, “MODELL-MORROW, 1918–43,” Correspondence. 62 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 165. 63 Hrdlička clearly believed there was such a thing as a “Nordic” physical type, which he considered a “strain” of the White race. But he did not believe the Nordics were superior to Slavs and other Whites. See, “Famous Scientist Flouts ‘Nordic Superiority’ Boast,” New York American, 13 August 1928, box 72, “News Clippings on or by Hrdlička, 1928–37,” News Clippings and Printed Material, 1893–1953. 64 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 158.

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would gradually “show ever more of physical resemblances.”65 Examples of these “new types” were “the Spanish, Italian, French, German, English, and even the American.”66 Elsewhere he wrote: … although the different European nations are all very much mixed, although many of them consist of practically the same fundamental elements, although they all spring from one type in the Neolithic Period, nevertheless each one of them, and that within the last few hundred years, has acquired a sort of national physiognomy by which the majority of the people of that particular group can be told, can be picked out by an intelligent observer. There is no question but that there is an English, a Scotch, a French, a Russian, a German, and an Italian as well as a Spanish physiognomy.67

Sometimes he threw caution to the wind and simply used the term race when discussing nations. In the 1930s, for example, he explicitly referred to the “Czechoslovakian race.” This is especially perplexing because many considered Czechs and Slovaks separate nations. They clearly were two different linguistic groups, and they had no history of living together in their own state, yet Hrdlička melded them together as a “race.” Throughout his life, he referred to Germans as a race. His lifelong tendency to call the Germans a race did not prevent him, however, from writing a confusing article in 1943, which purported to show that Germans were not really a race. However, the very same article bizarrely concluded that even Germans, although allegedly not a race, had a right to a certain amount of “racial pride,” so long as they did not overdo it.68 For such an indisputable biological “fact,” race always seemed to elude empirical precision.

The Mystical Racial World Notwithstanding all the bluster, these overconfident declarations of “scientific truth” produced an edifice of superstition as egregious as the one science had toppled. This is not surprising, considering what Hrdlička ex65 66 67 68

Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 158. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 159. Hrdlička, Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921. Hrdlička, “The German Race,” 238–49.

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pected science to yield. He insisted science must do far more than come up with clever “inventions,” and despite his obsession with measurable objects, he criticized philosophical materialism, claiming instead that the “highest human problems” were “the enigma of life, of soul, of future.”69 Therefore, he burdened science with providing new answers to these old riddles, which philosophers had struggled with for thousands of years. Hrdlička’s philosophy of science was riddled with “humanities envy.” Since he was busy traveling around the globe measuring people and collecting skulls, he had neither the time nor the vocabulary for reflecting on knotty philosophical questions. Forcing science into a spiritual role, he sloppily stretched his assumptions about the biological “laws of nature” into moral edicts. What he came up with, like many others, was shoddy speculation about race, nation, and eugenics. These “scientific” creeds, ironically, demanded a great deal of old-fashioned faith and flirted with “superstition.” In the end, was Hrdlička’s racial world any less “superstitious” than traditional religion? Highlighting the superstitious aspects of Hrdlička’s race beliefs is not the same as flippantly dismissing them as pseudo-science.70 Racial science is considered untenable today, but this does not mean that it was uneducated, stupid, or disingenuous; on the contrary, it was often erudite, complicated, and earnest. In this way, racial science resembles supernatural beliefs in Early Modern Europe, especially the esoteric arts of astrology and alchemy.71 For those who saw the world in racial terms, there was a kind of “sys69 Manuscript, “Biographical Data of Aleš Hrdlička,” n.d. 70 I am uncomfortable with using the term “pseudo-science” too confidently. Jonathan Marks comments more directly on the idea of pseudo-science when writing about eugenics: “It is a consequence of the movement’s popularity within the scientific community that eugenics was science, not pseudoscience. If all the relevant scientists believed it, how could eugenics possibly be pseudoscience?” Marks, Human Biodiversity, 86. Understandably, many people are eager to mock racial science as “phony,” and while I agree with them in some way, I think it is extremely important to find out why it once seemed so convincing to the world’s smartest people. 71 Of the many books and articles discussing the “rationality” of the Early Modern “system of the sacred,” especially stimulating is David Gentilcore, From Bishop to Witch: The System of the Sacred in Early Modern Terra d’Otranto (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992). The incredible story of John Dee, one of Europe’s best educated men who specialized in communicating with angels and recording his conversations, is skillfully analyzed in Deborah Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabal, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). An important reminder that witch hunting was not “crazy,” is found in Brian P. Levack, “The Great Witch Hunt,” in Handbook of European History: 1400–1600, ed. Thomas Brady et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), 607– 633. A few scholars have fleetingly compared race beliefs to astrology and alchemy. For example, Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (New York: Verso, 1991),

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tem” with its own logic. Heaps of data seemed to support the cryptic racial system, and there were complicated “rules” to it as well, even if inconsistent. As with alchemy and astrology in the 1500s and 1600s, highly educated people did not usually reject race-thinking as silly; instead, they wrote bestselling books about it. The fact that its major presumptions eventually became unsustainable does not diminish its explanatory power for the highly literate people, like Hrdlička, who believed in it.72 Even Franz Boas treated race as a hypothesis worthy of empirical testing. Boas, just like many of his contemporaries, spent plenty of his time laboriously measuring peoples’ skulls to see if there was anything to popular race beliefs.73 The fact that so much of his lengthy career was dedicated to challenging race ideas, which, by the way, he never claimed to refute definitively, is itself a testament to how convincing they seemed to his equally capable colleagues. What makes Boas a hero is his unwillingness to join the crowd by accepting racial categorization as an unquestionable law of nature.74 Race theory especially resembled astrology when used to “diagnose” ambiguous looking individuals. Like an astrologist, Hrdlička possessed arcane knowledge, but instead of using it to read the stars, he deciphered intricate corporeal markings to place neutral-looking individuals into racial categories. There were even charts, like the one he published in 1930, which shows forty-nine physical features differentiating the three races.75 Only an experienced professional could decide how to balance these contradictory clues to reach a verdict. If an individual’s skin pigmentation was indeterminate, should skull shape, lip size, eye shape, height, or hair texture (or forty

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19; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). Although the word alchemy appears in the title of Jacobson’s book, he does not make a literal comparison with the historic practice of alchemy. Thomas S. Kuhn’s analysis of the tendency in the history of science to ignore or deny the explanatory potential of older paradigms is appropriate: “Why dignify what science’s best and most persistent efforts have made it possible to discard? The depreciation of historical fact is deeply, and probably functionally, ingrained in the ideology of the scientific profession, the same profession that places the highest of all values upon factual details of other sorts.” Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 4th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 138. Clarence C. Gravlee, H. Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard, “Boas’s Changes in Bodily Form: The Immigrant Study, Cranial Plasticity, and Boas’s Physical Anthropology,” American Anthropologist 105, no. 2 (2003): 326–332. Stephen J. Whitfield, “Franz Boas: The Anthropologist as Public Intellectual” Society 47, no. 5 (September 2010), 435; Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991): 68–83. Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 167–170.

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other variables) be more important in assigning a race category? “For all its apparent objectivity,” wrote Keith Thomas in his classic study of magic practices in early modern England, “astrology left everything in the last resort to the judgment and common sense of the practitioner, and the system, far from being exact, was highly flexible.”76 Racial diagnosis worked on similar principles. For a range of unscientific reasons, Hrdlička’s race decrees were convincing. Like an astrologist, he was an expert, who understood the mysteries of race better than a layman. With the priestly authority of science on his side, he applied the highly subjective rules of race, like an astrologist using complicated calculations, to achieve a prognosis that was acceptable to most people. He was not a fraud; like an astrologist, he knew his data. Hrdlička also had real skills; having carefully examined thousands of people, he was probably pretty good at guessing ancestral backgrounds. In addition, his racial diagnoses, like astrological assessments, probably “worked” much of the time. Many people displayed enough stereotypical features to wear their label believably, maybe even willingly. In case of error, there was always an explanation. Hrdlička continually reminded his clients that even an expert could easily misread the signs. Like heavenly bodies, racial features sent mixed messages. After all, any individual might have a latent strain of “Black,” “White,” or “Yellow-Brown” blood that Hrdlička failed to detect. Similarly, people with Czech “blood” might be outwardly “Germanized.” Thus, any contradictory data could be dismissed as an exception to the rule or reinterpreted to fit the racial paradigm as needed. For both astrology and racial science: “Ambiguity was an essential feature of these prognostications, which were usually contrived ‘so cunningly and equivocatingly that, be the event what it will, still the words shall be capable of intimating it.’”77 No matter how many credible scientists endorsed it, and no matter how much it “made sense,” sooner or later believing in the racial world required an outright rejection of empirical observation and a creative re-imagining of data. When disturbing “anomalies” challenged the race paradigm, many, like Hrdlička, leaned on mysticism to keep their imperiled theory intact.78 The 76 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 283–385. 77 Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 336. 78 The idea of “anomaly” is from Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 52–65.

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ubiquitous use of the word “blood” in connection with race yields the clearest example of this.79 The science of race required racial traits to be passed down from generation to generation, but no one could yet pinpoint the physical substance that transferred them. More cautious scientists hypothesized the existence of “germ plasm,” which some authors, like Aldred Warthin, treated with worshipful reverence. In the absence of any tangible evidence, however, many simply assumed that blood conferred racial traits upon the next generation. Faith in race, although wrapped in scientific jargon, required belief in blood’s genetic function, even when no evidence suggested it had one. This led to some ludicrous ideas. Ironically, those writers who most shrilly insisted on the scientific “fact” of race also used imaginary “blood” in the most other-worldly fashion. Taken together, Grant’s Passing of the Great Race and Stoddard’s Rising Tide of Color, both of which claimed to be on the cutting edge of scientific enlightenment, mention blood as a conveyor of racial traits approximately two hundred and fifty times.80 Stunningly, not once did these authors describe blood as red. Instead of the obvious empirical observation that blood looks red, they asked their readers to see blood as: White, Black, Yellow, Brown, Brunet, Colored, Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, Asian, Northern, Oriental, Slavic, Latin, Arab, Celtic, French, Dutch, British, Saxon, Anglian, Norse, Danish, Jewish, Hindu, mixed, good, bad, inferior, northern, and so on.81 Some of Lothrop Stoddard’s passages about blood could challenge the fervor of Jonathan Edwards, such as the following: As a matter of fact we are confusedly aware of our evil plight, and legion are the remedies today proposed. Some of these are mere quack nostrums. Others contain valuable remedial properties. To be sure, there is probably no one curative agent, since our troubles are complex and magic elixirs heal only in the realm of dreams. But one element should be fundamental to all the compoundings [sic] of the social pharmacopoeia. That element is blood. It is clear, virile, genius-bearing blood, streaming down the ages through 79 See Brandon, “Black, White, and Yellow Blood: Race and the Rhetoric of Scientific Authority,” in The Foundations and Versatility of English Language Teaching, 261–70, edited by Joel Cameron Head (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018); Guglielmo, “Red Cross, Double Cross,” 63–90; Love, One Blood; Starr, Blood. 80 Brandon, “Black, White, and Yellow Blood,” 264–66. 81 Brandon, “Black, White, and Yellow Blood,” 264–66.

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the unerring action of heredity, which, in anything like a favorable environment, will multiply itself, solve our problems and sweep us on to higher and nobler destinies.82

Neatly encapsulating this new scientific, yet astonishingly mystical meaning of blood, a Nazi ideologue explained in 1940, “instead of celebrating the blood of their redeemer, we will celebrate the blood of our people.”83 It is tempting at this point to dismiss Grant, Stoddard, and the Nazis as crazy quacks, but this misses the important reality that almost everybody, including Hrdlička, who was a world-renowned scientist, tried to salvage the science of race by trusting in “blood.” Although their beliefs about blood were as mystical as transubstantiation, those who wrote this way pictured themselves as smartly scientific individuals laughing at old-fashioned Christian superstition. One might suspect they were only referring to blood metaphorically, but plenty of evidence suggests these luminaries truly imagined real blood containing race-bearing qualities. In the first half of the twentieth century, mysticism about blood led to bizarre rearrangements of the everyday world. At the most literal level, the American Red Cross really kept “Black” blood and “White” blood reserves in segregated containers throughout World War II.84 In Germany in the same period, it was illegal to mix literal “Aryan” and “Jewish” blood through transfusions.85 In court, “blood” determined who was a pure Native American and who was not. Anti-miscegenation laws throughout the United States alerted the public to the dangers of even “one drop” of “Black blood.” Hrdlička was certainly thinking about literal blood. In the 1930s, he was still anxiously awaiting a blood test that could objectively tell the races apart. No such thing existed, but he told the public that science, which was supposedly learning new things about race every day, was just about to provide one.86 “Faith,” as the author of Epistle to the Hebrews observed, “is the evidence of things not seen.” After race, the nation was also modern religiosity enjoying the sanction of science. Writing about Central Europe in 1914, Herbert Aldolphus Miller 82 Stoddard, Rising Tide of Color, 305. 83 Hermann Rauschning, cited in Chapoutot, Law of Blood, 188. 84 See Guglielmo, “Red Cross, Double Cross.” 85 Starr, Blood, 72–78. 86 Hrdlička, “Human Races,” 176.

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claimed no “particular religious form” was ever “so strong as the spirit of Nationalism.”87 The spiritual journey of Tomáš Masaryk illustrates this. Early in his academic career, Masaryk was deeply troubled by “the antagonism of the Churches towards science.”88 In the end, his replacement for what he considered theocratic superstition turned out to be the nation’s mystical “kinship of blood and speech.”89 In a fascinating essay written in 1945, Alexander Gillies compared Masaryk to Johann Gottfried Herder: The theme of the two men was fundamentally the same—the diagnosis and cure of modern ills. Both were tirelessly engaged in a battle against skepticism, both saw that their respective ages were tormenting themselves in agonies of doubt and despair, clutching at straws, muttering shibboleths, indulging in empty dreams and restless yearnings in a hopeless effort to make up for the insecurity that loss of faith had engendered.90

Describing the phases of Masaryk’s spiritual efforts to rebuild lost faith, Roman Szporluk described “national philosophy” as Masaryk’s final answer to “the problem of a declining traditional authority.”91 Masaryk himself admitted in old age that his life’s mission since the beginning had been about religion, not politics. As with race, religious belief in the nation demanded impractical and sometimes injurious restructuring of the temporal world. Most dangerously, the political map in Central Europe had never harmonized with the nationalist imagination, so Hrdlička and his Czech friends demanded a revolutionary rearrangement of borders. Thus, they encouraged both the expansion and prolongation of World War I to ensure the destruction of Austria-Hungary, so that the world would be properly aligned with race and therefore “nature.” Messy linguistic reality also stood in the way of nationalist virtue. In December 1914, Herbert Miller asked why Czechs in Bohemia stubbornly refused to speak German despite all the material advantages it brought. His 87 Herbert Adolphus Miller, “Nationalism in Bohemia and Poland,” The North American Review 200:709 (December 1914): 882. 88 Masaryk, Making of a State, 322. 89 Masaryk, Making of a State, 380. 90 Gillies, “Herder and Masaryk,” 120. 91 Szporluk, “Masaryk in Search of Authority,” 246.

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answer was that their linguistic piety flowed from self-sacrificing religious commitment to the nation: It has unquestionably been a disadvantage for a people of seven millions to cut itself off from the opportunities of the environing German culture, science, and commerce, but even those who have seen this most clearly have deliberately made the sacrifice in their struggle for freedom of the spirit. When we remember that the prestige is on the side of the Germans, we realize in this movement the same indifference to personal success that characterizes the religious enthusiast.92

Miller likewise thought the Poles had “made the preservation of language a religion and martyrdom for it a glorification.”93 For Hrdlička, sincere religiosity reflected innate racial qualities. He speculated that primal Slavs, still untainted by the artifice of Christianity, had been “naturally pious.”94 This was not the same as Christian piety; instead, it referred to “the ideal component of faith,” which “finds no happiness in materialism” and “is and will remain a part of Slav nature.”95 Hrdlička saw Christianity as a foreign and phony tool of German oppression. Before the arrival of Christianity, the Slavs had already created a “high class” and “inspiring naturalistic religion” of their own.96 They had a thunder god and numerous other “poetically conceived” deities and spirits, all oriented around “the air, groves, lakes, and rivers.”97 Hrdlička’s beliefs resemble the Nazi idealization of “Germanic” tribal religion, as outlined recently by Johann Chapoutot.98 To this way of thinking, freeing racial instinct from artificial suppression led organically to “natural” behavior, which was assumed to be the equivalent of “good.” To the obvious objection that the Slavic world was overwhelmingly Christian, Hrdlička had a ready response. The Slavs were forced to accept Christi-

92 Miller, “Nationalism in Bohemia and Poland,” 882. The work of Tara Zahra has shown that many Czechs, to the chagrin of more dedicated nationalists, wanted their children to learn German. See Zahra, Kidnapped Souls. 93 Miller, “Nationalism in Bohemia and Poland,” 883. 94 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 95 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 96 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 97 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 98 Chapoutot, Law of Blood, 64–71.

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anity by “non-Slav influences.”99 Only the Poles “voluntarily accepted Catholicism,” but this served their national needs because it was “closely identified with their state institutions.”100 The Russians and the Southern Slavs grudgingly accepted the Greek Church, but on their own terms. They were only interested in the “beauty of the ceremonial” but not at all in “dogma.”101 The Roman Church, thought Hrdlička, “was imposed … by force” on the Czechs.102 “Today,” wrote Hrdlička, “the tenets of dogma have lost much of their power among the Slavs.”103 They no longer needed Christianity because sublime spirituality was encoded in their Slavic essence, and “to this day there are traces” of their pre-Christian piety.104 Making his own moral choice but calling it “nature,” Hrdlička elevated racial particularism over Christian universalism. Finally, eugenics, often linked to race and nation, was a scientific expression of religiosity. Eugenics explained the mystery of life, provided guidelines for living, and explained how to achieve perfection without resort to Christian “superstition.” Daniel Kevles, a historian of eugenics, describes the religious side of the movement this way: Like Francis Galton, literate Americans and Englishmen, conservative as well as reformist, had undergone their religious crisis, cast off biblical religion and—some with enthusiasm, others by default or despair—had embraced a religion of science. Galton had expected eugenics to provide a secular substitute for traditional religion, and in the opening decades of the twentieth century, amid the turbulence of Anglo-American urban industrial life, it was said to do just that.105

Eugenics told scientifically minded individuals where they had come from and where they were headed. Along the way, it explained the existence of all evil, criminal tendencies and debilitating illness. For private life, it gave 99 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 100 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. Miller, in “Nationalism in Bohemia and Poland,” written in 1914, had a similar perspective: “The Poles think that their love for the church is piety, while in reality they are good Catholics because their religion is Poland, and Catholicism is a Polish protest against Orthodox Russia and Protestant Prussia” (884). 101 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 102 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 103 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 104 Hrdlička, “The Slavs,” 186. 105 Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 68. On the religious qualities of eugenics see also: Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 41–69; Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 134–38, 169; Wilson, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, 62–68.

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middle-class young people, freshly emancipated from the chains of religious delusion, practical assistance in choosing a partner. In social and political life, it appeared to lay a scientific groundwork for major decisions about immigration, racial segregation, and war and peace. Coupled with race and nation, it justified war, imperial conquest, and zany laws regulating that mysterious racial substance of “blood.” Eugenicists preached that private life and public policy should be determined by the simple “facts” of modern biology, and anyone who disagreed with them was branded a naïve sentimentalist standing on the wrong side of history. Perhaps most importantly, eugenics pledged to use science for the salvation of humankind. According to historian Jonathan Spiro, it promised its followers “significant steps taken toward achieving human perfection—not through the action of some unseen god but through the proper selection of (equally unseen) genes.”106 As Diane Paul argued, eugenics appealed to the scientifically smart set from all political viewpoints because “the geneticists of the early decades of this century [twentieth] agreed on nothing except the proposition that the salvation of mankind was to some extent bound up with the improvement of its genes.”107 Given his quest to find morality in science, it is not surprising that Hrdlička viewed eugenics as the means for humanity to “assist intelligently in its own evolution” toward moral and physical perfection.108 Hrdlička’s racial world was a modern moral system claiming to be built on the foundation of natural science and freed from the ignorance of traditional religion. In it, race, nation, and the unforgiving struggle for survival were simply facts of “nature.” Ironically, this scientific worldview was riddled with belief. First, empirical evidence never quite validated the racial world, so it had to be propped up with mysticism. Second, these views were loaded with poorly examined moral assumptions. When tested, postChristian, science-based morality did not work out well; race and nation animated the “religious wars” of the modern age. The title of a book attacking “the fallacy of race” and published in the middle of World War II perfectly describes the racial worldview that Hrdlička shared. The author, Ashley Montagu, called his book about race, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth. It is hard to imagine a more apt title. 106 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 135. 107 Paul, “Eugenics and the Left,” 588. 108 Manuscript, “Lecture 27,” 27 May 1921.

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The principal task of this book has been to find out what Hrdlička meant by “race.” Although this aim has been very specific, the preceding pages have touched on some of the most important general themes in twentieth-century history. Rather than try to resolve all these big issues, the goal has been to let readers see things from Hrdlička’s perspective. Hrdlička’s racial worldview illustrates the hazards of race-thinking in the modern era. The term “race” does not entirely capture the essence of “race-thinking.” The specific meaning of “race” is contingent to historical contexts; this is why the word has been used in various and contradictory ways. People once spoke not only of three main races, but also of the Irish, Slavic, and even “Czechoslovak” races. On the other hand, many terms other than “race” have conveyed the same mode of thinking, such as “volk,” “nation,” “stock,” “type,” “strain,” etc.1 What unites these words is an urge to see humans as “animals,” which are best organized into “biological” categories. These categories are supposedly nested in “nature” itself and are therefore primal and authentic. What then, was Hrdlička thinking when he used the concept of “race”? This book provides three main answers. First, Hrdlička’s commitment to Czech identity provides the “logic” that supports most of his racial thinking. Starting at his center, he needed Czechs and Slovaks to be one “race” to support the unprecedented idea of a united Czechoslovakia. Moving outward from this center, he imagined 1

I like Dikötter’s discussion of Chinese “race” terms in “Racial Identities in China:” “Racial discourses and practices … cannot be reduced to the mere appearance of the word ‘race’” (405); and, “there is, however, a common thread to different forms of racism in that they all primarily group human populations on the basis of some biological signifier, be it skin colour, body height, hair texture or head-shape” (406–07).

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Slavs as a biological “race” category. In Europe, Slavs jostled with another distinct group, the “Nordic” Germans, whereas at the global level, Slavs were part of the White race, which was superior to “Yellow-Browns” and far superior to Blacks. There is no reason for modern scholars to over-intellectualize this typology by demanding too much consistency. Hrdlička “moved the goalposts” and highlighted racial difference or similarity when it suited him. When he wanted to accentuate the “racial” struggle between Slavs and Germans, he underscored their differences. At other times, when countering Nazi-style claims of Nordic superiority, he preferred to emphasize their similarities to show that both groups were White, and therefore “equal.” He followed the same pattern when comparing Blacks and Whites. To make fun of the Nazis, he explained that their prized narrow “Aryan” skulls were frequently found among Black African populations. But to uphold White superiority, he sometimes preferred to emphasize the supposed evolutionary chasm between Black and White skulls. Secondly, Hrdlička considered “race” a physical and measurable thing. Although he claimed he opposed “materialism,” in practice he felt the mysteries of humanity would be found in physical features. He publicly chided Franz Boas for spending too little time on physical anthropology and devoting too much to “culture.” Although his somatic descriptions of racial groups, like Slavs, were not very precise, he nevertheless insisted that physical similarities, even if not yet discovered, were the distinguishing features, not cultural traits like language. Soon, he prophesized in the 1930s, scientists would even come up with a blood test for distinguishing the races. Thirdly, Hrdlička’s understanding of “race” was part of a modern and “scientific” worldview, which had a religious tone and was intended to support a new morality. He was ostentatiously a Darwinist, yet his Darwinism went beyond a simple description of evolutionary biology; it was a moral prescription for human behavior. Humans were animals and animals belonged in zoological groups. These biological groups engaged in “struggle,” in which the stronger triumphed over the weaker.2 Instead of admit2

For a provocative critique of this world view, see Mitchell P. Chalmers, Evolution and the War (London: John Murray, 1915): “Even if the struggle for existence were the sole law that had shaped and trimmed the tree of life, it does not necessarily apply to the political communities of men, for these cohere not because of common descent but because of bonds that are peculiar to the human race” (p. 64). I came to this stim-

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ting that this was a moral system of his choosing, he evaded responsibility by insisting that there was no choice at all; he was only stating undeniable “facts of nature.”3 I wrote this book because I strongly disagree with Hrdlička’s racial world view. Race-thinking was full of flaws from the very beginning. There was no “test” that could tell if an ambiguous looking person was really Black, White, Yellow, Slavic, or Nordic. Certainly, some individuals looked like the stereotypes, but the job of the professional scientist was to classify the difficult cases. Indeed, this is what the US legal system required, and the public requested. This book has argued that racial diagnosis, even when done by a world-class scientist like Hrdlička, was not much more than modern astrology. According to the logic of race-thinking, White-looking people in America might have some “Black blood” and features, while German-speakers in Czechoslovakia might secretly be “Germanized” Czechs. It was up to the expert to weigh the “evidence,” and Hrdlička did so, yet he left no clear and repeatable formula, probably because one never existed. Applying such a vague way of thinking to the practical world of politics was bound for disaster. Whereas citizenship in a state was a relatively clear matter, membership in a “nation” or “race” has always been ambiguous. Viewing the world as a collection of primal race groups superior to the state undermined the civil rights of citizens and left them vulnerable.4 In the United States, emphasizing “biological” groups instead of citizenship primarily harmed African Americans, although Native Americans, Asians, and immigrant groups also suffered. In Central Europe, the violent project of wrecking states and recreating them in the interests of “racial communities” brought discrimination, expulsions, and genocide in the twentieth century. This perilous project reached its extreme in 1933–45, but nowhere has

3

4

ulating source via: Richard Weikart, “Darwinism and Death: Devaluing Human Life in Germany, 1859– 1920,” Journal of the History of Ideas 63 no. 2 (April 2002): 323–44. For a good critique of the modern appeal to “nature,” see Popper, Open Society and its Enemies: “The choice of conformity with ‘nature’ as a supreme standard leads ultimately to consequences which few will be prepared to face; it does not lead to a more natural form of civilization, but to beastliness” (I, 72). I generally agree with Jonathan Marks (and Hannah Arendt), What it Means to be 98 % Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and their Genes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 186: “… the tenets of liberal democracy since the Enlightenment hold that citizens should be entitled to equal rights. Of course, as philosopher Hannah Arendt noted, the Enlightenment had it backward in arguing that ‘all people are created equal,’ which entitled them to citizenship under the law. Actually, however, citizenship is neither an act of God, nor a fact of biology, but an endowment by the state. It is specifically the conferral of citizenship that makes people equal. The state decides who its citizens are and makes them equal.”

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the revolutionary desire to promote racial belonging over citizenship been a good thing for the civil rights of individuals. Though my approach has been very critical, some might still object that this book has been too kind to Hrdlička. He hurt many people by using his authority as a scientist to make race-thinking acceptable. By sorting out “full-bloods” and “half-bloods,” he helped defraud Native Americans of land and rights. According to his correspondence, he promoted segregation even within his own home, where he plotted to dismiss his “colored” maid and replace her with a White Czech servant instead. On yet another level, his racial assumptions about White Slavdom deluded him into propagandizing for the Soviet Union and thereby abetting, either naively or knowingly, the murder of hundreds of thousands. His theorizing that Germans were eternal “racial” enemies and “foreigners” who did not really belong in Czechoslovakia was later used, after his death, as an excuse to deprive them of citizenship, expel them by the millions, and murder them in the thousands. Still, in other ways, Hrdlička exemplified the ideal modern scientist and public intellectual, and this is exactly what makes his portrait so disconcerting, and important. There are plenty of anthropologists who can list his many valid contributions to the field. To many people, he represented the victory of modern science over religious superstition. In the age of the Scopes Trial, he energetically supported Darwinism over Creationism. His personal outlook was not provincial; rather, he was a cosmopolitan polyglot and a world traveler. Today, he is remembered by many as an advocate of “national liberation” for his people. He was a public and outspoken enemy of Nordic-style racism, which he denounced as “pseudoscience” (his exact word). In the 1930s, he used radio and newspaper interviews to condemn Nazi Germany, fascism, and anti-Semitism. Hrdlička’s unsettling intellectual profile perfectly illustrates the perils of race-thinking. For modern people, race unfortunately has had a seductive explanatory power as a “scientific” world view with a “religious” tone. This mix has been and, unfortunately, continues to be extremely attractive and difficult to resist. It was so alluring that it could even show up in places like the Soviet Union, where the official ideology positioned itself as the enemy of racism. Racial thinking was, and in some places still is, presented as an educated, scientific, and modern way to view the world. Its elite and elegant purveyors specialized in bullying their enemies by calling them super202

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stitious, old-fashioned, and incapable of accepting “biological facts.” Like Hrdlička, the prophets of race were often globally respected scientists and experts in their fields. Although his race beliefs were fanciful, contradictory, and dangerous, Hrdlička was not a fraud. Race-thinking was a terrible idea, yet its greatest peril was that, to many people, often to the most educated and influential ones, it seemed like a good idea.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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218

INDEX

Africa, 71­­­­–72, 116, 118, 129, 131 African Americans, 118, 186, 201 Alaska, 3, 66, 69, 182 alchemy, 190–91 Alpine race, 20, 88, 118, 151, 154–55, 188, 193 American Eugenics Society, 166–67 American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 157, 171–72, 174 American Red Cross, 194 American Russian Institute, 100 American Slav Society, 95 Anglo-Saxons, 136, 151 Anishaanabe, 110–11 anthropology, 8, 17, 33, 38, 97, 112, 143, 147, 187, 200; Czechoslovakian, 62–64, 68–70, 82, 137, 170–74; forensic, 7, 64, 129–130, 182 anthropometry, 7, 15, 31, 156, 182, 187 anti-Semitism, 71, 121–22, 202 Arendt, Hannah, 6, 85 Armenians, 89, 119, 153 Arrhenius, S. A., 22 Aryan, 87–88, 107, 135, 194, 200 Asia, 20, 70, 90, 95, 118, 148–151 Asian origins (of Slavs), 20, 86–88, 153–55 assimilation, 146, 148, 150, 168 astrology, 180, 190–92, 201 Anthropologie, 63–67, 112, 169, 171 Armenians, 89, 119, 153 Austria-Hungary; 3, 21, 28, 33, 56–57, 60, 138, 165; citizens in Allied states, 10-15; propaganda against, 33–34, 37–38,

c­ ategorization of, 107–9, 113–117, 125– 126, 129, 152; inferiority of, 119, 129, 131, 134, 138–48, 200 blood, 17, 19, 88, 113, 119, 120, 124, 127, 145, 154, 162, 192, 200, 202; black blood, 2, 7, 114–17, 146–47, 160, 194, 201; Jewish, 135; modern mysticism about, 6, 82, 192–95, 198; Native American, 109–113; Slavic, 91; in Soviet Union, 104–5 Boas, Franz, 106, 119, 121–23, 142, 187, 191, 200 Bohemian Circle, 43, 48–50, 58 Bohemian National Alliance, 10, 40, 48–49 Bokovoy, Matthew, 151 Bolsheviks, 104, 102 Breuer, Karel, 49 Britain, 26, 35, 43–44, 47, 51 Brno, 65–70, 73 Bryant, Chad, 25 Bugge, Peter, 76 Čapek, Karel, 74, 75 Čapek, Thomas, 12–13, 16–17, 21–22, 30, 35–38, 40, 44, 48, 54–55 cephalic index, 125, 154 Chapoutot, Johann, 26, 196 Charles University, 18, 61–65, 77, 169–170 Christianity, 184–86, 196–97 citizenship, 6, 10, 12, 15, 74–75, 105, 184, 201–02 civil rights, 6, 24, 105, 201–02 Chicago, 9–11, 22, 26, 37, 39, 41, 46, 48, 56–57 Colby, Bainbridge, 149 Committee of Public Information (CPI), 46, 51–52 communism, 103–104 Conn, Steven, 181 Crane, Charles R., 47 Creel, George, 46, 51 Czechs, 3–4, 6, 26, 29, 33, 38, 64, 72, 74, 76–77, 82, 170; enemies of Germans, 21–25, 31, 168, 195; industrial advancement of, 94–95; oppression of, 138, 197; racial identity of, 15–21, 189, 199, 201; treated as Austrians, 10–15; war-time

40, 43–44, 50–55; racial arguments against, 6, 10, 16–17, 22, 26, 30–31, 195; US policy toward, 45–46, 48

Balkans, 19, 9, 93 Barkan, Elazar, 119, Bell, Robert C., 109, 111 Beneš, Vojta, 36–39, 48, 51, 56–58, 76 Beneš, Edvard, 55–56, 75, 79 biology, 4, 6, 25–26, 129, 158, 175, 180, 188, 198, 200; See Institute for Racial Biology Black race, 4, 6, 153, 155–56, 168–69, 192; absence in Soviet Union, 86, 90–91,

219

INDEX

politics in US, 39–43, 47–49, 54–57, 122– 23, 164; whiteness of, 134, 153–56, Czech Anthropological Society, 137 Czech National Alliance, 37 Czechoslovakia, 2, 4, 14, 102, 112; and Slavs, 86, 93–94; anthropology in, 61–65; anti–Semitism in, 72–73; dismemberment of, 59–60, 150, 164–65, 122–23; eugenics in, 169–72; factionalism of, 74–78; Germans of, 20–25, 201; Hrdlička’s quarrels with, 57–58, 78–83; propaganda for, 34-37, 40, 47, 50, 55; racial justification for, 9–10, 16–18, 20, 30, 187, 189, 199, 202 Czechoslovak Institute of National Eugenics, 169 Czechoslovak Legion, 13, 42, 45, 55–56 Czechoslovak National Council, 45 Czechoslovakian Eugenic Society, 169

Günther, Hans, 154 Habsburgs, 21 Hammerling, Louis N., 52–54, 121 Haškovec, Ladislav, 170 heredity, 140, 167, 174, 194 Heydrich, Reinhard, 18 Hirsch, Francine, 91, 104 Hitler, Adolph, 26, 92–93, 99, 122, 124, 185 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 161 Hungarians, 10–15, 21, 57, 91, 120 Hrdlička Funds, 62–63, 69, 169 Hrdlička Museum of Man, 61 Hulbert, Homer B., 150 Humpolec, 3, 134 Huns, 89, 91 immigration, 49, 122–23, 150; and eugenics, 153, 159, 168, 198; and whiteness, 117– 19, 185 imperialism, 137 Indo-European, 87–88 Institute of Anthropology, 62 Institute for Racial Biology, 18, 82 interbreeding, 91, 146, 169 isolationism, 59 intelligence, 145, 162–63, 174 Intourist, 100

Darwinism, 4, 200, 202 Davenport, Charles, 159, 161–62, 171, democracy, 29, 52, 60, 74, 168 Enlightenment, 186 equality, 4, 6, 29, 73, 96, 134–38, 142–45, 152, 168, 185–86 eugenics, 153, 157, 165–67, 172–174; as a moral code, 158–161, 175, 190, 197–98; in Czechoslovakia, 167–172 evolution, 139–141, 165–66, 175, 198, 200

Japanese, 135, 141, 148–50, 156 Jenks, Albert, 110–11 Jews, 73, 90, 118, 120–25, 151, 153, 187 Jewish Social Service Bureau of Detroit, 107

famine, 94, 97 Fetter, Vojtěch, 66, 96, 106, 134, 136–37 Field, Henry, 106 Filipchenko, Yuri, 140 Finns, 2, 89, 119–20, 153, Fisher, Ludvík, 36–39, 48–49, 52, 54, 56 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 97 Fourteen Points, 45

Kellogg, John Harvey, 161, 171–75 Kevles, Daniel, 197 King, William H., 49 Kivisto, Peter, 117 Konop, Thomas F., 49 Koreans, 90, 149–51 Lamarckism, 139–140 Lansing, Robert, 45, 47 Laughlin, Harry, 161, 171 Lenin, Vladimir, 104 Leningrad, 99–101 Liehmová, Marie, 73 Linnaeus, Carl, 126 Leinonen, Johanna, 117 London, Meyer, 50 López, Ian Haney, 117 Louis, Joe, 117 Lusitania, 40, 50

germ plasm, 157–160, 162, 193 Germans, 3, 43, 50, 59, 120–121, 143, 155, 189, 196; as foreigners in Czechoslovakia, 21–24, 73; as racial enemies, 4, 6, 24, 35, 86, 91–92, 135–36, 168, 185, 200, 202; Czechs mistaken for, 10–15, 19, 31; eviction from Czechoslovakia, 24–25 Germanization, 13, 21–22 Glassheim, Eagle, 76 Graham, Loren, 140 Grant, Madison, 88, 118–19, 136, 151–52, 154– 56, 161, 166–68, 171–75, 184–88, 193–94

Magnitogorsk, 100

220

INDEX

Magyarization, 13 Malcolm, M. Vartan, 119 Malý, Jiří, 62, 65–69, 71, 73, 82 Marks, Jonathan, 125, Martin, Terry, 104 Masaryk, Alice, 44 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue; 22–23, 74–75; and democracy, 29; Hrdlička’s loyalty to, 55–58; and the Museum of Man, 61, 73, 79–80; and propaganda, 35, 39, 44–47; and race, 14–17, 30–31; and religion, 26–28, 177–80, 195 Matiegka, Jindřich, 13, 62, 64–73, 76–77, 79–81, 83, 112, 169, 171–72 McNamara, Kevin, 13 media, 35, 96, 97 Mediterranean race, 20, 88, 118, 151, 155, 188, 193 Meyer, Melissa, 110 Mička, František, 3, 42–43 Miller, Herbert Adolphus, 12, 194–96 miscegenation, 113, 135, 145, 147, 185, 194 Mongols, 154 monogenesis, 136–37 Montagu, Ashley, 102, 136, 182, 198 morality, 5, 142, 147, 157, 175–184, 198, 200 Moscow, 85, 98, 106 mysticism, 6, 192, 194, 198

paradigm, 7, 93, 130, 192 pathology, 129, 144 Paul, Diane, 198 Pergler, Charles, 36, 57–58 Plecker, Walter A., 114, 185 Poland, 101 Powell, Ransom J., 110–111 Prague, center of anthropology, 61–73, 134, 171; Hrdlička’s lectures in, 19, 21, 86, 88, 92, 96, 137, 142, 184, prognathy, 139 Prokopec, Miroslav, 137 propaganda, 44–46, 54–55, 59–60, 76, 81, 169; Austrian and German, 50, 52; Hrdlička’s role in, 33–41, 48–50; racial, 22, 135; Soviet, 97, 99, 104, Pšenka, Jaromír, 59 pseudo-science, 153, 190 race; as a physical essence; 107, 109, 113, 115–17, 125–31, 134–47, 154–55; and Czechoslovakian identity, 21–25, 35; and Slavic identity, 19, 87, 92, 95; as a worldview, 25–26, 30, 103–5, 183–95, 201–03 Race Betterment Conference, 158, 172, 174, Racial Integrity Act (Virginia) 113, 118 racism, 103–105, 118, 135–37, 158, 174, 202 Radosavljevic, Paul R., 87, 121 religion, 5, 28, 124, 157–59, 175, 177, 179–80, 185, 189–198 Roberts, Kenneth, 155, 161, 185 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 1, 149, 164 Russia, 14, 19, 45, 55, 56, 85–101 Růžička, Vratislav, 77, 133, 169–70

Native Americans, 2, 110–113, 114, 186, 201–202 nation, 5, 9, 15, 20–21, 31, 35, 57, 64, 70, 77, 79, 104 National Geographic Magazine, 33–39 National Academy of Sciences, 161 national self-determination, 29, 44–46, 104–5, 152, 194–95, 198 nationalism, 4, 46, 63, 104, 123, 195 nature, 4, 6, 15–21, 25–31 Nazis, 58, 83, 102, 104, 122, 135, 194, 200 New Deal, 102 New Europe, 35 Nordic race, 4, 91, 118, 135–36, 151–53, 168, 173, 185, 188, 200

Sabath, Adolph, 11–12, 48–50 Sadler, William, 173–74 Šámal, Přemysl, 79–81 Schiff, Jacob, 37, 52 Schultz, Adolph H., 182 Schultz, Bruno Kurt, 18, 182 science, 1, 2, 5–6, 27–28, 34, 108, 110–118, 127–28, 131 Second International Eugenics Conference, 170–171 segregation, 113–116, 198, 202 Seton-Watson, Robert W., 26, 35 Siberia, 13, 45, 55-56, 91, 97, 99, 100, 149 skulls, 2, 5, 64, 144, 155, 182, 190–91, 200 Slavs, 120; biological unity of, 18–19, 200; fertility of, 19–20, 95–96, 98, 16; and Germans, 6, 18–19, 24, 86, 91– 92, 135– 36; religion of, 196–97; Whiteness of, 4,

Oppenheim, Robert, 150 Orzoff, Andrea, 47, 76 Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 25 Palivec, Viktor, 24, 92, 96, 136, 155 Pan-Slavism, 19 Panama-California Exposition, 3, 42 Papánek, Betka, 76, 78

221

INDEX

20–21, 55, 86–90, 92–96, 118–19, 148, 153–56, 164, 168, 188 Slovaks, 4, 10–24, 33, 40, 55, 136, 155–56, 189, 199 Smithsonian Institution, 1–3, 49, 108, 112, 114, 130, 137, 174 Snyder, Timothy, 98, 105 social construction, 5, 187 Soviet embassy, 97 Soviet Union, 1, 4, 85–86, 89–94, 96–106, 135, 140, 148, 187, 202 Spain, 102, 144, 146 Spencer, Frank, 121, 134, 138, 180 Spiro, Jonathan, 160, 198 Stalin, Joseph, 1, 92, 98–99, 102, 104–05 Steed, Henry Wickham, 26, 28, 35 Steggerda, Morris, 171 Sterilization, 167 Stewart, T. Dale, 3, 174 Stoddard, Lothrop 26, 95, 159, 168, 180, 184–86, 193–94 Sudeten Crisis, 4, 74, 82 Suk, Vojtěch (also Schück), 3, 13, 22, 62, 65–75, 80, 83 superstition, 5, 180, 184, 189–90, 194–95, 197, 202

United States House of Representatives, 148–49 Unterberger, Betty, 44 Voska, Emanuel, 36, 50–51 Vraz, E. St., 41–42, 56–59 Vraz, Victor, 17, 30 Warthin, Aldred Scott, 158–60, 180, 185, 193 Washington, D.C., 3, 15, 37, 47–49, 58, 66, 71, 78–81, 101, 108, 116, 170, 182 Washington Post, 98 Washington Herald, 99, 101 Wheeler, William Morton, 180 White race, 4, 6–7, 126, 128, 137, 164, 168, 184–86, 188, 192–94, 200–2; and Blacks, 113–17, 133–34, 139–47, 169; and Czechs, 151–56; and Finns, 2, 117, 119–20, and Jews, 107–08, 124–25; and Native Americans, 109–13, 160; in Russia and Soviet Union, 86–96; and Slavs, 19–20; theories about, 118–19; and Yellow-Browns, 148–51 White Earth Litigation, 109–12 Wiggam, Albert, 159, 161, 166, 175, 180 Wilson, Woodrow, 41, 43–46 World War I, 7, 28, 59, 149, 195 World War II, 7, 13, 24, 88, 92–94, 107, 122, 135–36, 177, 194, 198

taxology, 126 Toula, J. J., 11, 15, 49, 133 Tvrzický, Josef, 56–58 Ubelaker, Douglas, 130 United States, 8, 26, 137–38, 149, 168, 186, 201; diplomacy in World War I, 10–12, 15, 33, 39–40, 43–51, 56, 58, 165; in World War II, 123; Whiteness in, 4, 89, 91, 118, 135–36, 147, 151–53, 194

Yellow-brown race, 4, 95, 152, 164, 192, 200; traits of, 126, 128; in the Soviet Union, 86, 90–91; and Whites, 119, 134, 139, 142, 148–151, 156, Zahra, Tara, 77

222