Madison Grant

Madison Grant

Madison Grant (born November 19, 1865 in New York , † May 30, 1937 ibid) was an American lawyer and author of racial works. He was a director of the American Museum of Natural History and co-founder of the Bronx Zoo .

Life

Grant was born in New York to an old Anglo-American family of Scottish descent. His father, Gabriel Grant, was a well-known doctor who was recognized for his services during the Civil War . His mother Caroline Manice was a descendant of Jessé De Forest, who was one of the first colonists in North America in 1623. Through his father's line, Grant was related to Robert Treat Paine , one of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence. Grant studied law at Yale University and Columbia Law School . He then worked as a lawyer; However, his main interest was in the natural sciences, where he soon turned to theTurned to eugenics .

The anthropologist Alexander Goldenweiser considered Grant's major works The Passing of the Great Race (1916) and The Conquest of a Continent (1933) to be admirable examples of racist prejudice clad in a scientific guise .

The author Jonathan Spiro (2008) calls Grant the leader of the eugenic movement in the USA. He spread the view of the blond-haired blue-eyed and as the "master race" and demanded that the state "inferior races" destroy (the descendants eliminate ) to which no "value" ( value have) to society. His works were very popular in the United States in the 1920s as they fit a wave of conservative response to social change and an anti-immigrant sentiment. Especially South and East European, Jewish and East Asian immigrants were no longer welcome. Grant worked as a lobbyist for the dissemination of his views, which led to the US Congress passing a series of laws restricting immigration in the 1920s; the best-known example of this is the Immigration Act of 1924 . The immigration of Europeans was thereby restricted, that of Asians was banned entirely. As a result of his influence, several states banned interracial marriages and passed laws to sterilize people who were labeled "unworthy" in the sense of "inferior". Ultimately, according to Spiro, thousands of people were affected.

Spiro complains that, in an inexplicable way, the archive situation on Grant's life and work has been very bad for decades; the sources have been cleaned up. All in all, the tendencies of the grant coincided: the anti-democratic thinking of the old Anglo-Saxon East Coast establishment, an early green movement for animal and other nature conservation and eco-management, and racist eugenics.

influence

Grant's ideas influenced Adolf Hitler and the emerging National Socialist movement. Hitler sent Madison Grant an enthusiastic fan letter in which he referred to "Der Untergang der Große Rasse" (published in German in 1925) as "his Bible". Hitler adopted the talk of the "inferior" races; they should disappear in favor of a strengthened "Nordic race". For Grant this was called “nordisizing” , for the Nazis it was called “northing”. The copy with the dedication that Grant then sent to Hitler is now in the Library of Congress .

In his Manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence , the Norwegian assassin Anders Behring Breivik mentions Madison Grant and sees himself as a “defender of the white race”.

Works (selection)

• The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History. Series: American Immigration Collection, Series 2. 1916; 2nd A. with a new foreword by Henry Fairfield Osborn . Scribner's Sons, New York 1918; Reprint of the 1916 edition o. O. 2009
  • German: The downfall of the great race. The races as the basis of the history of Europe. Julius Friedrich Lehmann , Munich 1925
• The Nordic Race and the Jews in the United States. In: The world front. Voices on the Jewish question. 1st episode. Ed. Hans Krebs & Eugen (Frhr. V.) Engelhardt. 2nd ext. Edition Nibelungen, Berlin & Leipzig 1935
• The Conquest of a Continent or the Expansion of Races in America. Scribner's Sons, New York 1933
  • German: The conquest of a continent. The spread of the races in America. Metzner, Berlin 1937
• The Racial Origins of the Founders of America. Reprint: Scott-Townsend, 1995, ISBN 1878465112

literature

• Jonathan P. Spiro: Defending the Master Race. Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant . UP of Vermont, Burlington & UP of New England, Hanover 2008, ISBN 978-1-58465-715-6
• Timothy W. Ryback : Hitler's Books. His library, his thinking . Torch bearer, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-7716-4437-6
• Stefan Kuhl: The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford UP, Cary, North Carolina 1994

Web links

Commons : Madison Grant  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Madison Grant in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Zubrin, Robert (2012). Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism . Encounter Books, p. 57.
2. ↑ As early as 1907 in the state of Indiana the Law permitting the sterilization of the mentally handicapped , i.e. for the sterilization of the mentally ill
3. ↑ Grant was, however, a strict lobbyist for Anglo-American world domination that was to come at Germany's expense.
4. ↑ It appears to be an unauthorized reprint without any information about the publisher or location. The country of pressure is probably India. Several US antiquaries offer the reprint at ZVAB
5. ^ Co-authors: Alfred Rosenberg ; Tibor von Eckhardt ; Wilhelm Frick ; Oswald Mosley et al. - 1st edition Weltfront-Verlag, Aussig 1926, ed . Krebs & Otto Prager, with a different subtitle: A collection of essays by anti-Semitic leaders of all peoples. , still without a grant. 1st edition readable online, link in Art. Hans Krebs