Günther Just

Günther Just (born January 3, 1892 in Cottbus , then in the province of Brandenburg ; † August 30, 1950 in Tübingen ) was a German zoologist , eugenicist , hereditary biologist and anthropologist . His main research areas were mendelism and eugenic studies on school performance, talent and personal development. He was characterized by an experimental-genetic working method, coined and established the term " human genetics " with which he programmatically integrated human genetic biology into general genetics. The term reflected the medicalization and geneticization of German hereditary science during the 1930s. On the basis of numerous affidavits, including German and foreign colleagues, Just was judged on June 15, 1948 as an opponent of the National Socialist movement and ideology.

Life

Youth and education

Just grew up in Berlin . His mother was Helene Just, née Folte, and according to Justs came from a family of craftsmen; His Protestant father Paul Just, who came from Niederlausitz, had made it there in the service of the railroad from simple craftsman to foreman, workshop manager of a Berlin train station and chief engineer. Just had three siblings and, after finishing elementary school, attended the Humboldt Gymnasium in Berlin from 1902 to 1910 . He described himself as a nature and animal lover who was physically impaired due to a maternal inherited heart condition and, as a student, was the godfather of founding a Wandervogel group. According to his own account, Just, who suffers from a heart defect and is also inclined to play the organ and composing poetry, brought him to biology and especially to experimental genetics by reading the works of Ernst Haeckel . Since the winter semester 1910/1911 he studied zoology at the Philosophical Faculty in Berlin. At the First World War he took part since the outbreak of war as a volunteer, where he managed about two years an army Library "in the East" and in the laboratory of the Advisory hygienist of the 18th Army cooperated with experimentally-bacteriological research projects. (He later received the Iron Cross II. Class, the Cross of Honor for Frontline Fighters and the Silver Loyalty Medal .) Back in Berlin, he continued his studies, graduated there in October 1919 and was awarded a dissertation on “Evidence Mendel figures with forms of low number of offspring " doctorate .

In 1919/20 Just initially worked as an assistant at the Anatomical-Biological Institute in Berlin. He then became an assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology with the zoologist Richard Goldschmidt in Berlin-Dahlem . In November 1923 habilitation Just at the University of Greifswald with "[...] studies of the problem of exchange factors" for the zoology. As with his dissertation , he was doing research on Drosophila flies. The Rockefeller Foundation financed a teaching position in Greifswald for general biology and genetics, which he held until 1943. His inaugural lecture on “Concept and meaning of chance in organic events” was published by Springer-Verlag, with whom he then worked until his death. In 1928 he was made a non-official associate professor. He turned down an offer at the University of Santiago de Chile .

Director of the institute in Greifswald

In 1929 Just in Greifswald founded a department for hereditary science affiliated to the Zoological Institute, which on May 17, 1933, became an independent Institute for Human Heredity and Eugenics from the Prussian Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust , from September 1933 at Stralsunder Straße 10 and from December 12th under the management Justs that was expanded. The institute belonging to the Philosophical Faculty should combine general biological and experimental genetic research and teaching, but also serve racial hygiene as an applied hereditary biology. “The legal regulation of eugenic sterilization and the differentiation of our care system according to productivity and unproductivity,” says Just, “are the two aspects under which any discussion of the problem of the inferior in heredity has to be.” Just's Institute therefore focused on hereditary and constitutional biology Studies on humans in order to lay the foundations for a psychophysical assessment and positive performance selection of the individual in school and at work. His version of "genetic research in education" is considered to be "moderate" in comparison to Wilhelm Hartnacke's research . Although he described himself as a "racial hygienist" in 1933 and welcomed the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring that came into force on January 1, 1934, Just was interested less in racial studies , which he viewed as a fringe area of ​​genetic biology, than in the special hereditary pathology of humans. In Greifswald he had increasingly shifted the focus of his work to anthropology , in particular social anthropology . In 1935 he took over together with the Breslauer surgeon and cancer researcher Karl Heinrich Bauer , with whom he was on friendly terms, the publication of the Journal of human heredity and constitution doctrine that a continuation of the 1914 Julius Tandler justified Journal [Applied Anatomy and] constitutional doctrine is and had been removed from the journal for the entire anatomy . In 1936, the Greifswald institution headed by Just was renamed the Institute for Hereditary Science (the Ernst Moritz Arndt University ) .

Just joined the NSDAP in 1933. In the denazification process in 1947, he justified this step by stating that he wanted to continue his valuable work for science and the German people and to cover it externally. He worked in the Racial Policy Office of the NSDAP , was cell leader of the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), member of the National Socialist Teachers' Association (NSLB) 1940–1945, from 1937 to 1942 a member of the National Socialist German Lecturer Association (NSDDozB) and from November 1934 to September 1935 head of training Local branch of the NSDAP in Greifswald-Ost. At the same time, he and witnesses report on an NSDAP campaign in 1933/34 aimed at his dismissal as a university professor. According to his denazification files, he is said to have sharply criticized anti-Semitism at a discussion evening at the end of January 1933 and criticized National Socialist measures in his inner circle of students. One of Just's circle of friends was the Breslau psychiatrist Johannes Lange , whose wife committed suicide in 1937 as a “full Jew”.

In the Reich Health Office and professor in Würzburg

In April 1937, Just was commissioned by the Reich Health Office to head the subgroup “Hereditary Research Institute” in the “Hereditary Medicine” department in Berlin-Dahlem . On August 27th, he was appointed senior government councilor. At the same time, as required of him, he kept teaching in Greifswald. There was a close exchange between the Dahlem department and the other Berlin research institutions. From 1937 to 1942 Just was a member of the Racial Policy Office of the Reich Association of German Officials (RDB). From 1939 to 1940 he published the Handbuch der Erbbiologie des Menschen in seven volumes for Springer-Verlag . In 1942 he investigated the relationship between the distribution of papillary patterns and hereditary mental illnesses in inmates of “insane asylums”.

On December 1, 1942, he was offered a professorship at the University of Würzburg , where he was appointed professor of racial biology in 1943 . His courses included lectures, internships and instructions on the subjects of “Human Heredity as the Basis of Racial Hygiene”, “Racial Hygiene”, “Population Policy”, “Hereditary Science” or “Hereditary Science”, “Racial Science” or “Racial Science” and “Racial Biology”. He requested that the Institute for Hereditary Science and Race Research, previously headed by Ludwig Schmidt and provisionally headed by Friedrich Keiter from 1941 (since May 1939 at Klinikstrasse 6) be renamed “Institute for Hereditary Sciences” or “Hereditary Biological Institute” only after 1945 Just separated the Office of Racial Policy, which was housed in the same building and headed by Walter Groß , from the Institute of Hereditary Sciences. In 1945 the Würzburg district leader Wahl refused to relocate the institute, so that documents were destroyed in the chaos of war. In addition, Just became a member of the advisory board of the German Society for Constitution Research, which was founded in November 1942 . He was to be the director of a new Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for race-biological and settlement issues, which had been planned since spring 1942 and was supposed to carry out race research on future German settlers. From 1942 to 1945 Just was a member of the Reichsbund Deutsche Familie (RDF). His denominational “internal tensions” with regard to National Socialism , as the Main Office for Science (in the Rosenberg Office ) assessed Just in 1942, were loosened to such an extent that they would no longer influence his professional work. Just work out of inner conviction on a further development of hereditary biology in the sense of National Socialism. In Greifswald, Just's long-time assistant Fritz Steiniger took over provisional management of the Institute for Hereditary Science in 1943 .

After the end of the war

Just was relieved of his university post on July 27, 1945. In his denazification process, Karl-Heinrich Bauer, Ferdinand Springer , Karl Valentin Müller and Egon von Eickstedt expressed positive opinions about him and his attitude. Just was denazified as a “fellow traveler” on July 29, 1947, but the military government had this verdict checked again. This also delayed his appointment to the University of Tübingen , where he took second place on the list of appointments behind the even more burdened Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene). Although the first verdict was confirmed in 1948 - According to the Court of Cassation, Just had seen through the Nazi heresy in the racial doctrine and fought against it regardless of dangers and disadvantages - it was not restored by the Bavarian Ministry of Culture in Würzburg , although the medical faculty advocated reinstatement used. Considering his economic situation, he applied for reopening and was classified as an opponent of the National Socialist movement and ideology on June 15, 1948. There was credible evidence that he put up both passive and active resistance.

After Just's departure, the institute was supervised by his former doctoral candidate and colleague Liselotte Ott. From February 1, 1949 to June 30, 1954, she managed the institute largely independently as a research assistant.

For dissertations started under Just as a doctoral supervisor, for example by Wilhelm Ertz (doctorate in 1947) at the Hereditary Biological Institute in Würzburg, Jürg Zutt (1893–1980), the dean of the medical faculty and the new director of the university psychiatric clinic, acted as a speaker from 1947 to 1948. In 1948 Just accepted the appointment as full professor of anthropology and director of the Anthropological Institute in Tübingen. He held his inaugural lecture on January 27, 1949. Along with Ernst Kretschmer and Karl Heinrich Bauer, he was one of the leading members of the German Society for Constitution Research, which was re-established in 1950 . The journal for human heredity and constitution was re-established by them in 1949. (The journal was continued under the title Human Genetics in 1964 ). Just was also the second chairman of the German Society for Anthropology . In July he received an honorary doctorate from the Medical Faculty of the University of Tübingen.

Just died unexpectedly in August 1950 after a brief, serious illness.

Act

"Higher Mendelism"

Just was one of the leading German hereditary biologists of his time. When human heredity expanded to include developmental genetics in the 1930s, he took up the term “higher Mendelism ” coined by Goldschmidt in 1934 , which he transferred to humans and combined with Ernst Kretschmer's theory of human constitutional types . In doing so, he expressed the insight that the human characteristics are not simply inherited as a monofactorial dominant or recessive inheritance according to Mendel's rules , but can only be viewed in the context of a genotypic milieu, i.e. that the effect of a gene is always dependent on other genes, but also of prenatal or environmental influences depends. This brought the interactions between hereditary factors and environmental conditions into focus. Otmar von Verschuer justified, for example, with the findings of "higher Mendelism", why hereditary health court proceedings according to the " Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring " should no longer be based on a clinical diagnosis , but instead on a genealogically developed hereditary diagnosis. This should no longer just fight the hereditary disease, but rather the "pathological predisposition" behind the hereditary disease. Hans-Walter Schmuhl attributes the term “higher Mendelism” to Just; However, Ute Felbor was able to prove the term in Richard Goldschmidt's work.

The concept of "human genetics"

In this context, Just coined the term “human genetics” in 1934. He first used it in his work on factor coupling, factor exchange and chromosome aberrations in humans . In his introduction to the manual of human genetic biology , he used the term several times as a synonym for human genetic biology. This indicated a withdrawal to scientifically required basic research, while the term “racial hygiene” stood for applied science. The previously exclusively descriptive methods of human heredity and race research were not only supplemented and expanded with experimental methods around 1930, but their problems were also genetically circumscribed. The establishment of the term “human genetics” is therefore sometimes dated to 1939/40 and the manual is described as “completely free of Nazi ideology”. Just had not completely separated racial hygiene from genetics, but wanted to classify human genetic research in genetics as an overall science so that it could do its full service to both the clinic and racial hygiene by showing the fundamentals and limits of practical application. However, his handbook reflected the increasing specialization and internal differentiation of the sub-areas. From 1975 to 1979 the chair and the institute "for human genetics" were established in Würzburg.

Publications (selection)

• About the inheritance of chemical peculiarities in plants, animals and humans. In: Scientific review. Volume 2, 1913 (= Chemiker-Zeitung. Volume 37, supplement), pp. 177-182.
• Hase's research on the biology of the clothes louse. In: From nature. Volume 13, 1916/1917, pp. 217-225.
• The detection of Mendel numbers in forms with a low number of offspring. An empirical test of Weinberg's sibling and test person method based on cross-breeding experiments with Drosophila ampelophila LÖW. Philosophical dissertation Berlin 1919. Also printed in: Archive for Microscopic Anatomy. Volume 94, 1920, pp. 604-652 (first part), and Volume 97, 1923 (tables for the 1st part), pp. 397-418, as well as the archive for development mechanics of organisms. Volume 105, 1925, pp. 302-329 (second part).
• Methods of human genetic research. In: From nature. Volume 17, 1920/1921, pp. 110-124.
• In memory of Gregor Mendel. In: Journal of Sexology. Volume 9, 1923/1923, pp. 100-118.
• Practical exercises in genetics. For students, doctors and teachers […]. Fischer, Freiburg i. Br. 1923 (= Biological Study Books. Volume 1).
• Factor Exchange Studies. I. Investigations into the question of the constancy of the crossing-over values. In: Journal for inductive descent and inheritance. Volume 36, 1925, pp. 95-159.
• Factor Exchange Studies. II. Further investigations into the variability of the crossing-over values. In: Journal for inductive descent and inheritance. Volume 44, 1927, pp. 149-186.
• Studies on local movement reactions. 1. The essence of phototactic reactions by Asterias Rubens. In: Journal of Comparative Physiology. Volume 5, 1927, (= Journal for Scientific Biology. Dept. C) pp. 247–282.
• Concept and meaning of chance in organic events. Springer, Berlin 1925.
• The emergence of new genes. A critical review of recent research. In: Theodor Brugsch (Ed.): Results of the entire medicine. Volume 9. Berlin / Vienna 1926, pp. 475–504.
• Methods of Heredity. In: Tivor Péterfi (Ed.): Methodology of Scientific Biology. 2 volumes. Berlin 1928, pp. 502-605.
• Inheritance. F. Hirt, Breslau 1927; 2nd edition, ibid. 1936.
• About the phylogeny of specialized adaptations. In: Comptes rendus du XIIe Congrès International de Zoologie, tenu à Lisbonne du 15 to 21 September 1935. Lisbon 1936, pp. 35-50.
• Investigations into the question of the physiological equivalence of starfish radii. In: Archive for Development Mechanics of Organisms. Volume 119, 1929, (= Journal for Scientific Biology. Dept. D) pp. 100-142.
• as editor: inheritance and education. Julius Springer, Berlin 1930.
• Heredity, environment, upbringing. In: Günther Just (Hrsg.): Inheritance and education. Berlin 1930, pp. 1–37.
• Eugenics as a problem area and as a task area. In: eugenics, heredity, inheritance. Volume 1, 1930/1931, pp. 141-144.
• Humans and animals. In: Nature and Museum. Volume 61, 1931, pp. 2-13 and 73-88.
• Problems of upbringing in the light of heredity and eugenics. ( Presentation ) In: The coming gender. Volume 7, Issue 1, 1932, pp. 1-49.
• as editor: Eugenics and Weltanschauung. Metzner, Berlin / Munich 1932.
• Eugenics and worldview. In: Günther Just (Ed.): Eugenics and Weltanschauung. Metzner, Berlin / Munich 1932, pp. 7–37.
• Eugenics and school. In: Erblehre-Erbpflege. Edited by the Central Institute for Education and Instruction. Berlin 1933, pp. 40-65.
• The basics of eugenics (racial hygiene). In: Journal for civil registry. Volume 13, 1933, Supplement 9, pp. 9-13 and 17-20.
• Factor coupling, factor exchange and chromosome aberrations in humans. In addition to an introductory section on questions of higher Mendelism in humans. In: Results of Biology. Volume 10, 1934, pp. 566-624.
• Problems of higher mendelism in humans. In: Journal for inductive descent and inheritance. Volume 67, 1934, pp. 263-286.
• Problems of personality. Metzner, Berlin 1934 (= writings on heredity and racial hygiene. Without volume).
• Critical review of Ludwig Plate: Heredity with special consideration of the doctrine of descent and the human being, 2nd vol. 2nd edition Jena 1933. In: Archive for race and social biology. Volume 28, 1934, pp. 325-336.
• General genetics. 2nd Edition. Springer, Berlin 1935.
• Multiple allelia and human genetics. In: Results of Biology. Volume 12, 1935, pp. 221-324.
• Inheritance. In: Concise Dictionary of Natural Sciences, Volume 10. 2nd Edition. Jena 1935, pp. 187-230.
• Inheritance. 2nd, expanded edition. Wroclaw 1936.
• The work of the Greifswald Institute for Hereditary Science. Günther Just. Verl. D. German Medical profession, Berlin 1936.
• School selection and lifetime achievement. Lecture given at the International Congress for Population Science in Berlin on August 30, 1935. Hirzel, Leipzig 1936.
• Subgroup L4 (genetic research institute). In: Hans Reiter (Ed.): The Reich Health Office 1933–1939. Six years of National Socialist leadership. Berlin 1939, pp. 358-361.
• as ed. with Karl Heinrich Bauer , Ernst Hanhart and Johannes Lange : Handbuch der Erbbiologie des Menschen. 5 volumes (in 7 parts). Published by Julius Springer, Berlin 1939–1940.
  • Volume 1: The basics of human genetic biology.
  • Volume 2: Genetics of the Whole Person.
  • Volume 3: Hereditary biology and genetic pathology of physical conditions and functions. I. Supporting tissue, skin, eye.
  • Volume 4: Hereditary biology and genetic pathology of physical conditions and functions. II. Internal diseases. (2 volumes)
  • Volume 5: Hereditary biology and pathology of nervous and psychological states and functions. 1st part: hereditary neurology, hereditary psychology ; Part 2: hereditary psychiatry .
• Hereditary Psychology of School Aptitude. In: Handbook of human genetic biology. Volume 5. Berlin 1939, pp. 538-591.
• The Mendelian foundations of human genetic biology. In: Handbook of human genetic biology. Volume 1. Berlin 1940, pp. 371-460.
• with Wolfgang Abel , KH Bauer: methodology, genetics of the whole person. Springer, Berlin 1940.
• Agnes Bluhm and her life's work. Günther Just. Naumann, Berlin 1941.
• Common problems of genetic biology and child research. In: Work from the Reich Health Office. Volume 74, 1941, pp. 379-397.
• Autobiographical sketch. In: Archives of the Rectorate and Senate dr University. No. 103 (Just personnel file). Würzburg (August) 1945.
• Descent and special position of humans. In: Kosmos. Volume 47, 1951, pp. 107-110.
• posthumously: four lectures. With a foreword (pp. 5-7) by Eduard Spranger . Springer, Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg 1951, pp. 9–17 ( The position of man in the realm of the living ), pp. 18–39 ( On the assessment of intellectual performance ), pp. 40–50 ( Present-day problems in anthropology ) and p 51–64 ( Old and New Social Anthropology ).

literature

• Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945 (=  Würzburg medical historical research. Supplement 3). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-932-0 (also: Dissertation Würzburg 1995), pp. 7, 9 f., 20, 43–45, 109, 141–196 and 199–202.
• Ute Felbor: The Institute for Hereditary Science and Race Research at the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 11, 1993, pp. 155-173.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , pp. 141-146.
2. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , pp. 7, 149 f. and 164.
3. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Updated edition edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , pp. 293 . See Felbor, Rassenbiologie , p. 152.
4. ↑ Hans-Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt: Racial hygiene as an educational ideology of the Third Reich. Bio-bibliographical manual. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, p. 179.
5. ^ Eduard Spranger : Foreword. In: Günther Just †. Four lectures. Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberger 1951, pp. 5–7, here: p. 6.
6. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Würzburg 1995, pp. 152-155.
7. ^ Günther Just, Karl Heinrich Bauer (ed.): Journal for human inheritance and constitutional theory. Continuation of the Zeitschrift für Konstitutionlehre, founded by Julius Tandler. With the participation of W. Albrecht, CB Davenport, E. Kretschmer , O. Kroth, H. Lundborg , O. Naegeli , M. von Pfaundler , H. Reiter , R. Rössle , HW Siemens , O. Freiherr v. Verschuer and A. Vogt . Published by Julius Springer, Berlin 1935 ff.
8. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , p. 181 f.
9. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , p. 158 f.
10. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , pp. 154 and 170.
11. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , p. 155 f.
12. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, p. 262.
13. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Würzburg 1995, p. 187 f.
14. ↑ Ute Felbor (1993), p. 165.
15. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Würzburg 1995, pp. 9 f., 20, 24 and 43-45.
16. ^ Rüdiger Hachtmann: Science Management in the "Third Reich". History of the general administration of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, p. 982.
17. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , pp. 168–170.
18. ↑ Felbner, Rassenbiologie , p. 151.
19. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , pp. 170, 173 and 186; Hans-Peter Kröner: From Racial Hygiene to Human Genetics. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics after the war . Gustav Fischer, Stuttgart 1998, p. 151.
20. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , pp. 42 and 197.
21. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , pp. 170–177, 182 and 189.
22. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Crossing borders. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, p. 325 f.
23. ↑ ^{a b} Felbor, Rassenbiologie , p. 180.
24. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. 1995, p. 176 f. and 180 f.
25. ^ Peter Weingart, Jürgen Kroll, Kurt Bayertz: Race, Blood and Genes. History of eugenics and racial hygiene in Germany . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 557 f.
26. ↑ Alexander von Schwerin: Experimentalization of the people. The geneticist Hans Nachtsheim and the comparative hereditary pathology 1920–1945. Göttingen 2004, p. 18 f.
27. ↑ Peter Propping: What must science and society learn from the past? The future of human genetics. In: Peter Propping, Heinz Schott, Georg Lilienthal (eds.): Science on the wrong path. Biologism, racial hygiene, eugenics . Bouvier, Bonn 1992, p. 129.
28. ↑ Felbor, Rassenbiologie , pp. 182-187 and 199.
29. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Würzburg 1995, p. 141 f.