Victor Julius Franz
Victor Julius Franz (born April 5, 1883 in Koenigsberg , † February 16, 1950 in Jena ) was a German zoologist and a leading racial theorist of National Socialism.
Life
Victor Franz, son of the astronomer Julius Franz , attended high school in Breslau . After graduating from high school, he began studying zoology at the University of Breslau in 1902 . In 1903 he moved to Zurich for a year and became a student of Arnold Lang (1855–1914). In 1904 he continued his studies at the University of Breslau and in 1905, under Willy Kükenthal, he was awarded a doctorate with a thesis on the anatomy and histology of the shark's eye. phil. PhD. In 1906 he worked for a few months at the Zoological Institute in Halle (Saale) . In 1906 he switched to marine biology and worked under Friedrich Heincke at the Helgoland Biological Institute until 1910 .
From 1910 to 1912 he worked under Ludwig Edinger at the Neurological Institute of the University of Frankfurt . As Franz mentions in his memoir, the Frankfurt period shaped his hostility to Jews . From November 1913 he was editor of the natural science department of the Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig , which was led by Ernst Haeckel's son-in-law , the publisher Hans Meyer . He took an active part in the First World War and was deployed on the Western Front. In 1919 he accepted the offer for the associate professorship for Phylogeny at the University of Jena . In 1930 he joined the NSDAP . From 1935 to 1945 he was director of the " Ernst-Haeckel-Haus " , which at that time was known as the Institute for the History of Zoology, especially Development Studies. In 1936 Franz became a professor of zoology. Due to his previous commitment to the ideology of National Socialism , he was suspended on September 13, 1945.
In 1909 he published his work on "The Bird's Eye" in the Zoological Yearbooks , which he, as he himself writes, presented "in terms of its anatomical, histological and above all functional design". Franz 'other main fields of work were ornithology (although he was not a member of the "German Ornithological Society"), the mollusks , the biology and morphology of the acrania , as well as work on the fish brain, phylogeny and the theory of descent (which also includes " racial studies ").
Publications
- History of organisms , Verlag Fischer, Jena 1924
- Today's historical picture by Ernst Haeckel , Verlag Fischer, Jena 1934
- Biological progress : the theory of the perfection of the history of organisms , Jena: Fischer 1935
See also
- Karl Astel with another German-speaking Lit. and links to the people involved in Nazi racial hygiene in Jena
literature
- Uwe Hoßfeld , Lennart Olsson: The Road from Haeckel. The Jena Tradition in Evolutionary Morphology and the Origins of "Evo-Devo". In Zs. Biology and Philosophy 18, 2003, pp. 293-295.
- Georg Uschmann : Franz, Victor Julius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 373 ( digitized version ).
Web link
- Literature by and about Victor Julius Franz in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Franz, Victor Julius |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | National Socialist "race theorist", zoologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 5, 1883 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Königsberg (Prussia) |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 16, 1950 |
| Place of death | Jena |