Theodor Mollison

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Theodor Mollison (born January 31, 1874 in Stuttgart , † March 1, 1952 in Munich ) was a German anthropologist .

Life

Mollison studied medicine in Freiburg, received his doctorate in 1898 and then worked as a doctor for the poor in Frankfurt. From 1903 to 1905 he continued his biological education at the Zoological Institute in Würzburg with Theodor Boveri . In 1905 Mollison became an assistant at the Zurich Zoological Institute and completed his habilitation in 1910 at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zurich with a thesis on the body proportions of primates. Then in 1911 he began to work as a department head at the Zoological-Anthropological-Ethnological Museum of the Zwinger in Dresden.

Act

In 1912 Mollison became curator at the Anatomical Institute in Heidelberg, where he became associate professor in 1916. As the successor to Hermann Klaatsch , he was appointed professor for anthropology and ethnology in Breslau and in 1921 he was appointed full professor there. From April 1, 1926 until his retirement in 1939, he was the successor to his academic teacher Rudolf Martin, Professor and Director of the Anthropological Institute of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . From 1933 he was co-editor of the archive for racial and social biology and chairman of the Munich society for racial hygiene for the "perfecting of the race". In his writings, he affirmed National Socialism and the National Socialist racial ideology . So he wrote in 1934: "The untrue assertion of the equality of people gave the pretext for supporting the inferior". In 1938, the year Austria was annexed, he wrote: "With the exception of the few who are bound by Jewish or Masonic relationships, we scientists happily join in the cry: 'Heil Hitler!'"

The concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele and the racial ideological “ Gypsy researcher ” Sophie Ehrhardt did their doctorate under Mollison.

After his retirement in 1939, Mollison was provisional director of the Anthropological Institute until 1944 and was in charge of the State Anthrophological Collection. In 1944, Adolf Hitler awarded him the Goethe Medal for Art and Science .

Since 1950 Mollison was an expert for paternity reports of the German Society for Anthropology . In 1933 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

“Mollison has made contributions on the subject of race studies. With his remarks on ... racial hygiene in 1934, he was one of those anthropologists who offered the National Socialists a 'scientific justification' for their criminal conduct, who had been a member of the NSDAP from 1937 and of the NS Lecturer Association from 1941 . His attitude is evident in a letter to the anthropologist and anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University in 1938. He knew very well, wrote Mollison, what the German scientists owed Hitler to thank, 'not least the cleansing of our people from alien elements'. "

- Bavarian Academy of Sciences , German biography

Works

  • The body proportions of the primates (1910)
  • Sero-diagnostics as a method of animal systematics and anthropology (1923)
  • Anthropology (1923)
  • Phylogeny of Man (1933)

literature

  • Michael Berenbaum , Abraham J. Peck: The Holocaust and history: the known, the unknown, the disputed, and the reexamined, published in Associalion with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2002, p. 121.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 415
  • Gerfried Zeigelmayer:  Mollison, Theodor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 4 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerfried Ziegelmayer: 100 years of anthropology in Munich. In: Würzburg medical historical research. Volume 5, 1987, pp. 245-269, here: p. 256.
  2. ^ Gerfried Ziegelmayer: 100 years of anthropology in Munich. In: Würzburg medical historical research. Volume 5, 1987, pp. 245-269, here: pp. 255-258.
  3. ↑ a b c Quotes 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. 415.
  4. ^ Berenbaum, Peck: The Holocaust and history: the known, the unknown, the disputed, and the reexamined, published in Associalion with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2002, 121 .
  5. ^ Gerfried Ziegelmayer: 100 years of anthropology in Munich. In: Würzburg medical historical research. Volume 5, 1987, pp. 245-269, here: p. 256.
personal data
SURNAME Mollison, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1952
Place of death Munich