Hans Weinert

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Hans Weinert (born April 14, 1887 in Braunschweig ; † March 7, 1967 in Heidelberg ) was a German anthropologist and director of the Institute of Anthropology at Kiel University, who worked in the interests of Nazi racial hygiene during the National Socialist era .

Family and education

Hans Weinert was the son of the middle school teacher Hermann Weinert and his wife Maria Steinkamp. He attended the Staatliche Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Braunschweig until he graduated from high school in 1905. He then began studying in Leipzig and Göttingen, where he received his doctorate on July 2, 1909 with the topic of growth and tropistic movement phenomena of the rhizoid thallous liverworts . During his studies in 1905 he became a member of the Brunsviga fraternity in Göttingen.

He then struck the runway of the Magisterium and laid on 27 April 1910, the examination for the teacher in physics, mathematics, zoology and botany from. He started teaching in Leipzig, Eisleben and Potsdam (after Degener). From 1910 to October 1911 he served as a soldier with the rank of officer candidate in Torgau . In 1912 the daughter Gertrude of the wholesale merchant C & A. Bodenstein married. From this marriage the son Hartmut (born August 28, 1918) and the daughter Hildegard (born May 7, 1920) emerged.

Military service and academic career

After the start of the war in 1914, he served as a lieutenant in the artillery , including off Verdun , and finally commanded an anti-aircraft battery . In 1917 he took up teaching again. After the war, he decided to quit school and choose an academic career. For this purpose he moved to Potsdam. From 1926 he worked as a private lecturer in anthropology at the University of Berlin and at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWI) in Berlin-Dahlem . In 1927 he was admitted as a private lecturer in anthropology. In preparation for his habilitation project, with the approval of Eugen Fischer and Theodor Mollison , he began to measure the physiognomy of students. From the beginning of 1928 he started a skull collection at the KWI. On December 23, 1932 he was appointed associate professor.

In 1929 Weinert published on crossbreeding between apes and humans. In 1931 and 1932 he took blood tests on apes , where he proposed a chimpanzee with sperm , "perhaps best one (it) primeval forest Africa Negro (s) of a pygmy (s)" artificially fertilize. Weinert became associate professor in 1932, full professor and director of the Anthropological Institute at Kiel University in 1935.

Activities in the Nazi regime

In 1934 Weinert became a member of the Nazi teachers ' association, but had only been a member of the NSDAP since 1937 . At that time he represented a family tree that rose from gibbons to orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees (as peaks of side branches) to humans - in contrast to older ideas, in which the negroes descended from the gorilla and the Mongolian race from the orangutan should. He changed his previous views only a little, but summarized them in the information promising under the new government. This applies in particular to the statements made as a professor in Kiel, where he was appointed as a substitute only in 1934, and his habilitation thesis Biological Basics for Racial Studies and Racial Hygiene . In April 1935 he was offered the professorship in Kiel, he took over the Institute for Anthropology there and promised to lead it in the National Socialist spirit. In 1935 he published The Races of Mankind:

“We are at the beginning of a new era in this area too; With the adoption of the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring, which has long been demanded by racial hygiene [...], the state government has committed itself to regard human beings biologically as living beings and to apply the biological laws recognized by research to humans as well. "

Regarding the so-called " Rhineland Bastards " (children from relationships between German women and black French occupation soldiers during the French occupation of the Rhineland after World War I), Weinert took the view:

“Our state is in full right when it prevents the further reproduction of this living memory of a sad, shameful time. [...] So there is no reason that could make further breeding of these racial bastards somehow conceivable or even necessary. "

As a result, in the summer of 1937, under the leadership of a "Special Commission 3" with the help of the Gestapo, a total of around 400 children with recorded "mixed descent" were sterilized without a legal basis .

In the following years up to 1939 he undertook various excavations in Italy and France, which should provide information about the origin of the "primitive man" and the " negro ". However, when he claimed in his publications in 1934 and 1935 that he came from the Cro-Magnon “race” and the Neanderthal “race” , he met with rejection from Heinrich Himmler . On March 12, 1939, the SS anthropologist Assien Bohmers addressed the managing director of the Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e. V., SS-Sturmbannführer Wolfram Sievers , a letter in which he certified Weinert wrong conclusions and described them as an insult, as Heinrich Himmler had noted. The Cro-Magnon was idealized in the Nazi ideology as the ancestor of the "Nordic race".

Between 1935 and 1945, Weinert was less prominent scientifically than as the director of the Anthropological Institute in Kiel as a "racial biological expert" approved by the Reichssippenamt . He drew up - against excessive fee rates - probably hundreds of expert opinions for Jews who claimed an origin other than the legally recorded ancestry, in order to better protect themselves from the National Socialist racial persecution. As a rule, mothers claimed to have conceived the children not from a Jew but from other "Aryan" men. Weinert was convinced that the German people were a mixture of races and that the race reports were scientifically worthless. A good part of his reviews were in the interests of the applicants. This is in contrast to other race experts who, with a few exceptions, found Jewish descent to the detriment of the people examined. Weinert's motives were hardly humanitarian, but financially and sexually motivated (see below).

Sievers replied to Bohmers on March 14, 1939 that Weinert's work could no longer be positively reviewed. On March 11, 1942, Sievers wrote to the curator of the "Ahnenerbes", Walther Wüst , that Weinert had personal irregularities in the employment of his daughter as his secretary and in accompanying his wife abroad. Applications for financial support should be rejected in the future. In mid-1944 Weinert's institute in Kiel was bombed out and he also lost his apartment. Thereupon Weinert recommended himself in a letter to the Gauleiter Hannover dated July 30, 1944 as an expert for "racial biological investigations", but remained unsuccessful.

In 1942, the lawyer Hans Georg Calmeyer , who headed a position in the German occupation administration in the Netherlands for deciding on dubious cases of parentage, contacted Weinert to ask if he could prepare hereditary biology reports in these cases. Weinert then traveled to Amsterdam several times and prepared numerous reports. Contemporary witnesses and historians described Weinert as dependent on morphine and corruptible. The expert work in Amsterdam was a lucrative business for the Kiel professor. He calculated between 500 and 1000 Reichsmarks per expertise, five to ten times the normal rates in Germany. These amounts were fees that Weinert had negotiated with Calmeyer. Charges to the University of Kiel, travel expenses for trips from Kiel to Amsterdam and accommodation costs were included in this "price". Calmeyer, who purposefully helped Jews, and Weinert are said to have "passed the ball". The anthropologist apparently consistently rated in favor of the applicants. In any case, there is not a single case in the extensively preserved files in which Weinert did not confirm the alleged “Aryan” ancestry. Dutch lawyers representing the petitioners also confirmed that they were “not aware of any case” in which Weinert had judged the “Aryan” or “semi-Aryan” ancestry of the respective “candidate” to be unlikely.

post war period

After the war he was able to continue teaching at the now renamed Institute for Human Heredity and Eugenics in Kiel because he declared that he had never been an anti-Semite . He continued his publications with the usual intensity. Among other things, he stuck to the superiority of the "white race". In total, he published over 250 works. His efforts to take up a new job in the Netherlands or in Göttingen failed again. So he stayed in Kiel until 1955. Allegations that during the examinations he had female subjects presented naked beyond the usual extent, examined and measured their sexual organs, now (unlike before 1945) led to reports. But he was able to fend off this, as his lawyer managed to cast doubt on the credibility of the women. Nevertheless, Weinert did not deny the incidents, but stated that he acted out of purely scientific interest. These processes show "the naturally practiced mixture of sexual abuse and corruption that characterized Weinert's expertise."

Memberships

  • since 1940 member of the Leopoldina
  • 1942: Advisory board in the Ernst Haeckel Society in Jena
  • Co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde
  • Until 1956: Editor of the Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie
  • Member of the Instituto di Paleontologia Umana in Rome
  • Lecturing member of the International Medical Academy

Fonts (selection)

  • People of the past. An overview of the paleolithic human remains. Stuttgart 1930.
  • Origin of mankind. About the closer connection of the human race to the great apes. 1932 (also: Stuttgart 1944).
  • Biological basics for race science and race hygiene. Stuttgart 1934.
  • Our ice age ancestors. Berlin 1934.
  • From the racial becoming of humanity. Berlin 1934.
  • From great apes to humanity. Berlin 1934.
  • The races of mankind. Leipzig / Berlin 1935
  • Anthropology and historical research. in: The world as history. Journal for Universal History Research (WaG) 1, 1935, p. 4.
  • The elucidation of the "oldest human finds" in East Africa. in: WaG 1, 1935, p. 349.
  • New problems in researching the cultural advances of Ice Age stages of mankind. in: WaG 2, 1936, pp. 291-302.
  • Zigzag paths in human development. Wiebelsheim 1936.
  • The ape man "Sinanthropos" from Beijing and its significance for human tribal and racial history. in: WaG 3, 1937, p. 241.
  • Prehuman finds as witnesses to the incarnation. Frankfurt am Main 1939 (= Frankfurt books. Research and life. Volume 3).
  • Africanthropus njarasensis . Pp. 252–308 in: Journal for Morphology and Anthropology, Volume 38, Issue 2, pp. 252–308, 1939 Stuttgart, E. Schweizerbart, 1939.
  • The spiritual ascent of humanity from the origin to the present. 1940 (also 1951).
  • Prehistory of man: early times of the peoples. Berlin 1940.
  • From the racial becoming of humanity. Erfurt (?).
  • Tribal history of mankind , Stuttgart 1941.
  • Origin of the human races. Stuttgart 1941.
  • Clairvoyance and fortune telling an ancient dream of mankind. Leipzig 1943.
  • Prehistoric People: An Overview of the Paleolithic Human Remains. Stuttgart 1947.
  • The giant ape-men and their tribal significance. Munich 1948.
  • Tribal evolution of mankind. Braunschweig 1951.
  • To the new alleged solution to the Piltown problem. in: Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie 66. 2 (June) 304-315 in 1954.
  • The races of mankind today. Constance 1957.
  • To conclude the Piltdown problem. in: Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie 49.1 (March) 55–60 in 1958.

literature

  • Herrmann AL Degener : Who is it ?. Berlin 1935.
  • Walter Habel: Who is who? Berlin 1955.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt / Main 2003.
  • Beate Meyer: Hans Weinert, (race) anthropologist at the University of Kiel from 1935 to 1955. in: Michael Ruck , Heinrich Pohl (Ed.): Regions in National Socialism. Bielefeld 2003.
  • Hans Weinert. In: Matthea R. Goodrum (Ed.): Biographical Dictionary of the History of Paleoanthropology. 2016. Available online at drive.google.com .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Willy Nolte (Ed.): Burschenschafter Stammrolle. List of members of the German Burschenschaft according to the status of the summer semester 1934. Berlin 1934. P. 531.
  2. ↑ Beate Meyer: Hans Weinert, (race) anthropologist at the University of Kiel from 1935 to 1955. In: Michael Ruck, Karl Heinrich Pohl : Regions in National Socialism. Bielefeld 2003, pp. 193-203 / 192.
  3. ^ A b c Beate Meyer: Hans Weinert, (race) anthropologist at the University of Kiel from 1935 to 1955. In: Michael Ruck, Karl Heinrich Pohl: Regions in National Socialism. Bielefeld 2003, pp. 193–203, here: p. 194.
  4. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 662.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-039310-4 , p. 264.
  6. ↑ Beate Meyer: Hans Weinert, (race) anthropologist at the University of Kiel from 1935 to 1955. In: Michael Ruck, Karl Heinrich Pohl: Regions in National Socialism. Bielefeld 2003, pp. 193–203, here: p. 195.
  7. ^ Horst Seidler, Andreas Rett: Rassenhygiene. A path to National Socialism . 1st edition. Jugend und Volk, Vienna / Munich 1988, ISBN 3-224-16530-8 , p. 256 .
  8. ↑ Beate Meyer: Jewish mixed race. Racial policy and experience of persecution 1933–1945. Hamburg 1999, p. 109 ff.
  9. ↑ Horst Seidler, Andreas Rett: The Reichssippenamt decides. Racial Biology in National Socialism . 1st edition. Jugend und Volk, Vienna / Munich 1982, ISBN 3-224-16508-1 , p. 238-261 .
  10. ↑ Mathias Middelberg: "Who am I that I decide about life and death?" Hans Calmeyer - "Racial advisor" in the Netherlands 1941–1945. Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1528-0 , p. 114.
  11. ↑ Geraldien of Frijtag Drabbe Künzel: Het geval Calmeyer. Amsterdam 2008, p. 153.
  12. ↑ Mathias Middelberg: "Who am I that I decide about life and death?" Hans Calmeyer - "Racial advisor" in the Netherlands 1941–1945. Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1528-0 , p. 114.
  13. ^ According to the statement of the Dutch anthropologist Dr. J. Dankmeijer, quoted from: Mathias Middelberg: “Who am I that I decide about life and death?” Hans Calmeyer - “Racial advisor” in the Netherlands 1941–1945. Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1528-0 , p. 115.
  14. ↑ Mathias Middelberg: "Who am I that I decide about life and death?" Hans Calmeyer - "Racial advisor" in the Netherlands 1941–1945. Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8353-1528-0 , p. 115.
  15. ↑ Hans Weinert: The modern races of mankind . In: Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Fritz Gessner (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Biologie . 2nd Edition. tape IX . Athenion, Konstanz 1965, p. 126-244 .
  16. ↑ Beate Meyer: Hans Weinert, (race) anthropologist at the University of Kiel from 1935 to 1955. In: Michael Ruck, Karl Heinrich Pohl: Regions in National Socialism. Bielefeld 2003, pp. 193–203, here: pp. 201 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Weinert, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1967
Place of death Heidelberg