Eugen Fischer (doctor)

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Eugen Fischer (center) as rector during a rally at Berlin University in 1934. Albert Derichsweiler on the left .

Eugen Fischer (born June 5, 1874 in Karlsruhe , † July 9, 1967 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German physician , anthropologist , hereditary biologist , eugenicist and National Socialist racial hygienist .

Life

Eugen Fischer attended the Grand Ducal Gymnasium in Freiburg . He studied medicine and natural sciences at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and received his doctorate in 1898 . In 1900 he completed his habilitation in the field of anatomy and anthropology. From 1900 to 1912 he taught as a private lecturer in anatomy in Freiburg. In 1908 he undertook a research trip to study "racial crossbreeding" to the Baster in German South West Africa . In 1910 he founded the Freiburg branch of the Society for Racial Hygiene , Fritz Lenz became its first secretary.

The building of the Anatomical Institute of the University of Freiburg, built in 1867 and destroyed in 1944, around 1910.

In the summer semester of 1912 he taught as an associate professor at the University of Würzburg , but returned to Freiburg for the winter semester of 1912/13. Between 1918 and 1927 Fischer was full professor and director of the Anatomical Institute of the University of Freiburg . From 1927 to 1942 he held the chair for anthropology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin . In 1925 he went on a research trip to the Canary Islands . In the same year he became co-editor of the new magazine Volk und Rasse . In 1927 he became a member of the Berliner Wednesday Society and remained so until his retirement and his departure from Berlin in 1942. Between 1927 and 1942, Eugen Fischer was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem. From 1933 to 1935 he was rector of the Berlin University. In 1932 he became chairman of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory and in 1937 a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In 1940 he joined the NSDAP , he was a leading member of the Nazi lecturers' association . In 1944 he received the eagle shield of the German Empire as the highest possible award in science.

Together with Carl Correns , Richard Goldschmidt and Erwin Baur , he founded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin , whose first director he was between 1927 and 1942 and which was renamed after him in 1944. In this role, he was a leading advocate of race laws and thus, according to Sheila Faith Weiss, embroiled in the crimes of the National Socialists. As director of the KWI, Fischer was a "Scientific Member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society" from 1927 to 1942. From 1933 to 1946 he was a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG). After moving to Freiburg, he was an “External Scientific Member of the KWG” from 1943 to 1948.

Eugen Fischer: The national state, from a biological point of view. Berlin 1933. The revised inaugural address as university rector, delivered on July 29, 1933.

In 1933, as rector of Berlin University, Fischer ensured the dismissal of many Jewish scientists. He signed on 4th / 5th March 1933 the call “ The Berlin University Lecturers for Adolf Hitler ”. He also supported the book burning on May 10, 1933 as a speaker alongside Minister Goebbels . In 1937, together with other professors, he enforced the forced sterilization of many so-called " Rhineland bastards " (also illegal at the time) . He was a judge at the Hereditary Health Supreme Court in Berlin, general doctor for racial biological issues at the Reich Office for Family Research and trainer for proficiency testers for the Germanization of Polish children. In 1941 he was on the advisory board of the “Research Department Jewish Question” in Walter Frank's Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany , where he was co-author of the volume “The ancient world Jewry. Facts, Texts, Images ”in the series“ Research on the Jewish Question ”(1943).

In 1934 he wrote in the Baden magazine Mein Heimatland that the fight against the Jews did not aim to “get rid of economic winners or intellectual competition”, but rather “to save the race that (has) created Germanness and to purify it Alien, racially different, which threatened to bring their spiritual development on different paths and which has partly brought it. Many personally admirable, willing and valuable people are hit hard and cruelly. Is a sacrifice too great when it comes to saving a whole people? "

At the first meeting of German anthropologists after the end of the war in Weinheim in 1948, he uttered the slogan - he was still courted as the head of the field: "We don't talk about politics here, that's behind us". The re-established German Society for Anthropology made him an honorary member in 1952. In 1952 he became an honorary member of the "Society for Constitution Research" in Tübingen under Ernst Kretschmer .

Fischer married Else Walter, which resulted in three children. After the war he lived first in Sontra , then in Freiburg im Breisgau.

research

Scientifically, Fischer dealt with the genetic variability of humans, he was one of the exponents of the human genetic direction within anthropology of that time. Among other things, he claimed that human "racial characteristics" were inherited according to Mendel's rules (this claim has been refuted). To this end, he undertook a research trip to German South West Africa in 1908 for a study of racial crossbreeding ("bastards"). In 1913 he published the results of these so-called " Rehobother Bastards ". This study was powerful into the 1960s and had been reissued in various ways up to then. He examined 300 Dutch-African mixed race .

In 1921, Fischer publicly called for human skulls and bones to be shipped from the colonies to Germany. In 2014, 14 such skulls were identified and returned to Namibia.

Racial theories

Memorial plaque for the Nazi medical crimes at the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin; with the naming of Eugen Fischer.

Fischer's static concept of race was used to scientifically legitimize racist ideologies; from 1933 onwards, with his institute, he himself supported the racial and population policies of the National Socialists and is therefore regarded as a pioneer of National Socialist racial theories . Together with Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz he wrote the work Outline of the Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene , in later editions (until 1936) Human Hereditary and Racial Hygiene . This had an influence on the National Socialist racial theories and Action T4 . The book was largely praised in contemporary specialist science - not only in Germany - and was translated into English in 1931. Also until the 1960s it was - more commonly known under the short title "Baur-Fischer-Lenz" - the standard work of anthropology, used for teaching at universities.

There were disagreements with the National Socialists on the “ Jewish question ” because Fischer judged ethnic groups differently. Fischer kept this to himself and censored himself by removing the chapter about his descriptions of individual races in later editions of Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene . In 1944 he published together with Gerhard Kittel Das Antike Weltjudentum - research on the Jewish question .

Fischer attached great importance to the fact that the racial theory preceded National Socialism. When a National Socialist speaker portrayed eugenics as an invention of the NSDAP , the angry Fischer interrupted him with the words: "It [the NSDAP] has not existed for a long time as our eugenic movement."

Honors

Publications (selection)

  • Contributions to the anatomy of the female urogenital organs of the orangutan. 1898. Archives
  • Races and peoples. 1912.
  • The Rehobother bastards and the human bastardation problem. Jena 1913; Reprint: Adeva, Graz 1961.
  • The problem of crossbreeding in humans. Speyer & Kaerner, Freiburg 1914.
  • The beginnings of anthropology at the University of Freiburg. 1926.
  • German heads of the Nordic breed. Lehmann, Munich 1927.
  • Race and race origins in humans. Ullstein, Berlin 1927.
  • with Gustav Schwalbe: Anthropology. In: Contemporary Culture. 1923.
  • with Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz: human heredity theory and racial hygiene (eugenics). Lehmann, Munich 1921, fourth, revised edition under the title Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene . 1936; Licensed editions in England (1931) and Sweden (1925), cover picture of the book: [1]
  • The Advances in Human Heredity as the Basis of Eugenic Population Policy . In: Hermann Eris Busse (Ed.): My home country. Baden sheets for folklore, rural. Welfare care, family research, heritage protection and monument preservation , 20th year, issue 7/8. Freiburg, Badische Heimat 1933, pp. 210–219.
  • The concept of the völkisch state from a biological point of view. Speech on July 29, 1933. Preuss. Printing and Publishing company.
  • The Volkish State, from a biological point of view. Speech given at the Berlin University. Junker & Dünnhaupt 1933.
  • On the race question of the Etruscans. 1938.
  • Inheritance as fate. Lecture given at the 8th Technical Conference of the Association for Mining Interests in Essen on June 20, 1939.
  • Attempt at the phenogenetics of normal human physical characteristics. 1939.
  • The human races as groups with the same gene sets. 1940.
  • with Gerhard Kittel : Ancient World Jewry. Facts, texts, pictures. 1943.
  • Race origin and oldest racial history of the Hebrews. In: Research on the Jewish question. Volume 3. 2nd edition. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1943, pp. 123-138.
  • The science of man. Anthropology in the 20th Century. In: Hans Schwerte , Wilhelm Spengler (ed.): Researchers and scientists in Europe today. Explorers of life: medical professionals […] (= creators of our time. Volume 4). Stalling, Oldenburg 1955, pp. 272–287 (The editors are former members of the SS . This essay is the introduction to the third part of the book, which consists of five articles; one of them pays tribute to Eugen Fischer).

literature

  • Otto Aichel (Ed.): Eugen Fischer for his 60th birthday. Dedicated by his students and friends as well as the publisher. In: Journal of Morphology and Anthropology. Volume 34, Swiss beard, Stuttgart 1934.
  • Eugen Fischer on the completion of the 80th year of life on June 5, 1954. In: Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie. Year 46, Issue 2, Stuttgart 1954, pp. 110-316, ISSN  0044-314X .
  • Ernst Theodor Nauck: Dr. med. Eugen Fischer on his 80th birthday. Messages on the history of comparative anatomy in Freiburg i. Br. In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine. Year 102, Freiburg 1954, pp. 390–406, ISSN  0044-2607 .
  • Léon Poliakov , Josef Wulf : The Third Reich and its thinkers. Berlin 1959; Reprint: Saur, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-598-04601-4 , p. 104 ff.
  • Bernhard Gessler: Eugen Fischer (1874-1967). Life and work of the Freiburg anatomist, anthropologist and racial hygienist until 1927 . Lang, Frankfurt 2000, ISBN 3-631-35233-6 .
  • Niels C. Lösch: Race as a construct. Life and work of Eugen Fischer. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1997, 2000, ISBN 3-631-31746-8 .
  • Peter Emil Becker: On the history of racial hygiene. Series: Paths to the Third Reich, Volume 1. Thieme, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-13-716901-1 .
  • Peter Weingart, Jürgen Kroll, Kurt Bayertz: Race, Blood and Genes. History of eugenics and racial hygiene in Germany. 3. Edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2001, ISBN 3-518-28622-6 .
  • Sheila Faith Weiss: Human Genetics and Politics as Mutual Resources. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in the “Third Reich”. Series: Research Program, Volume 17. Max Planck Society, Berlin 2004, ISSN  1616-380X , online, PDF .
  • Markus Wolter: Prof. Dr. Eugen Fischer: The Freiburg school of racial madness . In: Wolfgang Proske (Hrsg.): Perpetrators helpers free riders. Nazi-polluted from Baden-Württemberg , Volume 9: Nazi-polluted from the south of today's Baden-Württemberg . Kugelberg Verlag, Gerstetten 2018, pp. 66–91, ISBN 978-3-945893-10-4 .
  • The personal lexicon for the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945? S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003. As a paperback 3rd edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (P. 151 f.)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biography of Eugen Fischer on leo-bw.de
  2. ↑ Helmut Heiber : The General Plan East. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Documentation 6, 1958, issue 3, p. 294.
  3. ^ Klaus Scholder : The Wednesday Society. Protocols from intellectual Germany 1932–1944. 2nd Edition. Severin and Siedler, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-88680-030-X , pp. 21, 368.
  4. ↑ Helmut Heiber: The General Plan East. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Documentation 6, 1958, issue 3, p. 294.
  5. ↑ See Sheila Faith Weiss: The Nazi Symbiosis. Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich . University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 2010, ISBN 978-0-226-89176-7 , chapt. 2.
  6. ^ See Eckart Henning, Marion Kazemi: Chronicle of the Kaiser Wilhelm, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science: 1911–2011; Data and sources, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-428-13623-0 , page 966 (list of all scientific members)
  7. ↑ Götz Aly: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Equality, envy and racial hatred 1800–1933. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2012, p. 124.
  8. ↑ Eugen Fischer: Heritage. In: My homeland. 21 (1934) p. 150. Originally quoted here from Aly, p. 265.
  9. ↑ JM Kastl et al.: Disability, sociology and social experience: In conversation with Günther Cloerkes , Springer, Wiesbaden 2014, p. 32.
  10. ↑ for a detailed refutation: Loesch 1997, 65ff; Weiss 2004, 15.
  11. ^ Eugen Fischer: Request from the anatomical institute Freiburg i. B. 1921, accessed June 26, 2014 .
  12. ^ Repatriation of Skulls from Namibia. March 4, 2014, archived from the original on April 3, 2014 ; Retrieved June 26, 2014 .
  13. ↑ Hans-Peter Kröner : Fischer, Eugen. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 403.
  14. ^ Jonathan C. Friedman : The Routledge History of the Holocaust . Taylor & Francis, 2011, ISBN 978-0-415-77956-2 , pp. 49 .
  15. ^ Henry Friedlander: The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution . 1997.
  16. ↑ Weiss: The Nazi Symbiosis. P. 47f., 51.
  17. ^ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945 . Springer, 2008.
  18. ↑ The ancient world Jewry - research on the Jewish question . 1944.
  19. ^ Benno Müller-Hill : Deadly Science. The singling out of Jews, Gypsies, and the mentally ill, 1933–1945. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984, ISBN 3-499-15349-1 , p. 12.
  20. ↑ Full text readable as .pdf on a right-wing radical server.
  21. ^ Review , in: Die Zeit , October 23, 2003
personal data
SURNAME Fischer, Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medic, anthropologist and racial hygienist
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1967
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau