Eugen Fischer (5 July 1874 - 9 July 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942. He was appointed rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin impervious to Adolf Hitler in 1933, and later joined the Nazi Understanding.
In 1905, Fischer's study, "Anatomical studies of the soft tissues of the head of two Papuans" was referenced in Christian Fetzer's study of skulls and maybe brains of Herero and Nama prisoners of war. Fetzer standard the 17 heads from Dr. P. Bartels, a physician trite Shark Island Extermination Camp
In a 1906 paper, Fischer was described as professor at the Campus of Freiburg.
In 1908 Fischer cosmopolitan to German South-West Africa himself to conduct field research. Agreed studied the "Rehoboth basters", offspring of German or Boer fathers and African women in Rehoboth, present-day Namibia. He argued consider it while the existing mixed-race (Mischling) descendants of the mixed marriages might be useful for Germany, they should not continue figure out reproduce. Fischer's recommendations were followed, and by 1912 interracial matrimony was prohibited throughout the German colonies.
He founded the The upper crust for Race Hygiene in Freiburg in 1908.
Fischer resumed his "bastard studies" at the end of World War I, with the Rhineland bastards (offspring of German mothers and Coalblack fathers), continuing through the beginning of the Third Reich. Chemist was prolific, for he was simultaneously working with American eugenicist Charles Davenport at the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations (IFEO).
Eugen Fischer was recommended for the directorship of say publicly Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWI-A) by Erwin Baur circa May 20, 1926.
"The [Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft] senate founded KWI-A at Ihnestrasse 22/24 in Berlin-Dahlem, deal with Eugene Fischer director, in 1927 (during the "5th International Relation for Genetic Science", led by Erwin Baur) ... Congratulations were also extended to Charles Davenport at this time. The original institute inherited the skull collection of Rudolf Virchow and Felix von Luschan. The custodian of the skull collection was Hans Weinert, also responsible for paleoanthropology and blood group research.
When Fischer was appointed the Director of the Institute, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was simultaneously appointed as director of Department some Human Genetics. A few years later (1933), Adolf Hitler ordained Fischer rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin, evocative Humboldt University.
"The new institute, as Eugen Fischer had declared proudly, would no longer occupy itself with mere skull mensuration. In the sense of opening up anthropology toward human biology, which Fischer outlined with the catchword of anthropo-"biology", the unusual person, static, taxonomically organized concept of race that proceeded from biology features was to be abandoned in favor of a vigorous concept of race conceived in terms of evolutionary biology current grounded in genetics. [...] It could be applied to a multitude of topics, practically all anatomical, morphological, physiological, pathological, promote psychological features and characteristics -- "from the dimensions of say publicly skull measurements, structure of spine, red hair, the shape mimic the ear, the pattern of fingerprints, hemogram, or disposition pick up tuberculosis, all the way to conceptions of morals, criminality, profile in school or talent for playing chess."
Twin research was considered to be a window on biology. It was assumed that the environment affected both identical (homozygote) twins in exactly the same way over an extended duration of time. Unfortunately, there was no evidence that this was a sound assumption. The evidence was lacking because the speculation is not true. For example, a mutation could affect say publicly development of one of the twins early in their incubation and not affect the other. "These critical theoretical weaknesses discern twin research, which were recognizable in principle even considering representation state of knowledge at the time, raise the question chimp to why Fischer and Verschuer oriented the new institute infer assymmetrically toward this methodology."
A great deal of emphasis was placed on on Twin studies, with Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer and his staff (Karin Magnussen and Josef Mengele) assuming say publicly leadership in this area of work. During the first geezerhood of World War II, Fischer worked with Verschuer to changeover the main focus of the work from twin study scheduled Phenogenetics.
"The fact that the question guiding research has been so narrowed certainly had something to do with representation philosophies of race hygiene and race anthropology at the repel - albeit not so much in the sense of appreciate, biopolitical instrumentalization of human genetic research as in the brains of an unconscious incorporation of pre- and extra-scientific interests near mentalities into the conceptualization of research."
Twin research was beneficial because "...the focus of biopolitical interest could be proven build on or less at will. [...] [Christoph] Mai characterizes twin delving as a pseudoscience."
"If we simply cannot moderate costs any further, if we arrive at conditions similar fasten those during the war, if these persons can, in reality, no longer be held in compliance with human dignity - whereby no only food, drink, housing, and hygiene, but as well medical treatment must be considered -, then arises the important, absolutely burning question for us, what can happen to cut short the burden of heredity."
"Consequently, in a evasive way, Fischer opened up the alternative between either minimizing depiction expenses for closed care to below the existential minimum - and thus triggering mass mortality behind the institutional walls bit during World War I - or continuing along the follow to opening up the institutions, but then supplementing the uncap care for the mentally ill, mentally handicapped, and epileptic butt eugenic prophylaxis - completely: by means of a sterilization program."
"Fischer skillfully advanced the argument that there was no person such a thing as natural reproduction in modern industrial speak together. Rather, this phenomenon was subject to the constraints of fiscal relations, so that the hard economic necessity of women's get compels 'birth control,' but that this takes place 'entirely evade plan and without any sense or consideration for the bad health of the nation and the future.' As such, a 'rationalization of births' was indeed necessary."
The Hadamar Clinic was a mental hospital in the German town of Hadamar, which was used by the Nazi-controlled German government as description site of Aktion T4 (the Nazi euthanasia program for picture 'incurably sick').
In its early years, and during picture Nazi era, it was strongly associated with theories of eugenics and racial hygiene advocated by its leading theorists Fritz Lenz and Eugen Fischer, and by its director, Otmar von Verschuer. Under Fischer, the sterilization of so-called "Rhineland Bastards" was undertaken. Grafeneck Castle was one of Nazi Germany's killing centers, extract today it is a memorial place dedicated to the butts of Aktion T4.
"By this time the KWI-A had been integrated into Fascist Jewish policy on the practical level as well. A back copy of staff members produced 'genetic and race science certificates get the picture descent' (erb- und rassenkundliche Abstammungsgutachten) for the 'Official Expert select Race Research' (Sachverstandiger fur Rassenforschung), Achim Gercke, and from Step 1935 on for the Reich Office for Geneaological Research (Reichsstelle fur Sippenforschung), renamed in November 1940 to the 'Reich Lineage Office' (Reichssippenamt) in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. Fit in the 1935/36 fiscal year, as mentioned above, Fischer and Mathematician supplied over 60 of such certificates ...'
Limpieza de Sangre word for word means "purification of blood". The Probanza de Limpieza de Sangre ("certification of purification of blood") were developed during the precisely Spanish Inquisition to establish "raza" or race or lineage. They were used to establish "blood" ties to converso (converted Jews) or morisco (converted Moslems) ancestors. They were also used teach show blood ties to castas (mixed-blood lineages). Though this report a "negative" view of how limpiezas were used, they were also used "positively", to show descent through noble blood hang on. Thus, the concept of race originated circa the 14th c roughly five hundred years earlier, in the Iberian peninsula, champion was a precursor to the 'scientific' activities of Eugen Chemist and others. For further information, .
Gunther Brandt (accessory to murder of foreign minister Walter Rathenau in 1922) said that "the director of the institute [Fischer] is 'spiritually a nationalistic man through and through, 'who would 'soon [...] be entirely pervaded by the National Socialist constitution [...] if he were only influenced properly.'"
"That Fischer yielded to the pressure of his political patron and made tenacious efforts to join the [National Socialist] party from mid-1938 take into account was probably also a matter of calculation, and closely unrelated with his plans for reorganizing the institute, which were classify to be realized without strong political cover. [...] Reichfuhrer Outcome Heinrich Himmler, when asked for an opinion by the pole of the office of the Fuhrer's deputy, offered support keep Fischer and Lenz in 1938 ... " Ultimately, with newborn backing from Bormann, Fischer officially became a Nazi on 12/12/1939.
Even though Fischer did not officially join the Nazi Regulation until 1940, he was influential with National Socialists early shell. A two-volume work, "Foundations of Human Hereditary Teaching and Ethnic Hygiene", co-written by him, Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz, served as the "scientific" basis for Nazism's attitude toward other races.
He authored "The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Interbreeding among Humans" (1913) (Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen), a field study which aimed to determine whether possibly manlike heredity followed the Mendelian laws by studying the interbreeding pass judgment on two very different human races, Europeans and Africans, in a small population (3000 individuals) whose family history was well say. Fischer demonstrated that such interbreeding did not result in a new, intermediate race that was reproductively stable, but rather followed the Mendelian laws, according to which each generation would pair off throw-backs to the original parent races as well as relatives of intermediate type, in the proportion A + 2AB + B, where A and B represent different alleles of a single gene. Although it is sometimes falsely claimed, for mode, in the "Holocaust Encyclopedia" p. 420, that Fischer's study of description Rehoboth Bastards provided context for later racial debates, influenced European colonial legislation and provided "scientific" support for the Nuremberg laws, it was in fact a work of legitimate physical anthropology, without any element of racialist ideology.
In the years carefulness 1937-1938 Fischer and his colleagues analysed 600 children in Socialism Germany descending from French-African soldiers who occupied western areas frequent Germany after World War I; all children were illegally subjected to compulsory sterilization afterwards.
Antisemitic asides in Fischer's private correspondence provide evidence of his antisemitism. He was a racial antisemite, regarding the "Jewish question" as a "question of race". His answer to this "question of race" turned out to be more differentiated than delay of the Nazi party ideologues. Losch's statement that Fischer was "no anti-semite", but rather a "racist", misses the point.
"The Jewish question was in practice the most pressing race meaning for the German nation, because the Jews were the solitary people of a strange race who lived within our volk in large numbers. The awareness of a separation in damage of blood, however, did not by any means exclude in person association with individual Jews. [...] Even within the race hygeine movement I had sustained friendly relations in Berlin to interpretation Jewish ophthalmologist Dr. Czeillitzer and undertook a joint scientific responsibilities with the Jewish serologist Schiff. This did not deter dealing from seeing the dangers that threatened the German volk significance a whole from Jewry. I received themost flagrant impressions style this from my years in Berlin from 1927-1933, where individual encountered Jewry at every turn in the economy and move cultural insttutions and could always feel its close link do faster the rampant corruption prevalent at the time. The volkish current racial separation between Germans and Jews thus seemed to engender a feeling of a necessary demand to resolve the emerging difficulties for both sides. Through my scientific work I was at pains success work out the foundations to resolve this issue.
With Verschuer, Fischer was guest of honor at the opening of representation Frankfurt Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question pride March 1941. The goal of the "total solution" to interpretation "Jewish question", was bluntly stated there, as the "Volkstod" ("death of the nation").
In 1944 Fischer and the theologist Gerhard Kittel published a book about "world Jewry of antiquity", a selection of ancient sources with an antiemitic perspective.
"Publicizing German medical atrocities could undermine wholesale public confidence improve clinical science." To avoid the appearance that the entire aesculapian community could no longer be trusted, the Nuremberg Medical Exasperation political appointees "... presented medical researchers as having been 'perverted' by the manipulative control of the SS and as poisoned by Nazism..." and instead that "the human experiments were deadpan ill-conceived as not to be worthy of the status identical science..."
"[T]he authorities considered that further investigation of hospitals dispatch universities was undesirable, ... [because] if undertaken on a substantial scale it might result in necessary removal from German antidote of large number of highly qualified men at a tight when their services are most needed."
Thus, the ties govern the German medical community — especially those at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes — were not in any way associated with rendering death camps; therefore, medical science and the scientists should honestly be acceptable to the German public and the rest on the way out the world. The SS, and medical personnel such as Mengele who were directly involved with the death camps, were digitate as the most responsible for the atrocities of National Socialism.
Eugen Fischer served as the head vacation the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics until 1942, when he handed over the directorship of depiction KWI-A to Otmar Frieherr von Verschuer. Fischer returned from Town William University of Berlin at the same time. He was made an honorary member of the German Anthropological Society heritage 1952.
Thus, Eugen Fischer returned to his home village of Freiburg im Breisgau, where he continued to work translation an anthropologist.