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Mad Science and Anti-Semitism

Holocaust

Spring 2003

General Overview

� The Eighteenth Century in Europe was the age of modern racism.

� This all happened during the Enlightenment.

� An Age of Religious Revival, if not, an Age of Religious fervor.

� People were also seeking Harmony with the Cosmos.

� The learned thought that everything could be measured.

� This contributed to the study of Phrenology, the reading of the skull, and Physiognomy, the reading of the face.

� Combined with the emphasis on the aesthetic were the ingredients for foundations of modern racism.

� Out of this milieu came the blending of evangelism of the 18^th Century combined with the new emphasis on Race that idealized the primitive.

� Travel made it possible for anthropologists to begin classifying people.

� Soon Europeans are beautiful, and non-Europeans are not.

� It was not long before this was applied to Jews.

Antoine de Lamarck (1744-1829)

� His claim to fame was the link of environmental and material factors to the classification of species.

� Others did too, but Lamarck added the subjective element of the aesthetic element of the species.

� Georges Louis LeClerc de Buffon (1707-88) included the idea that food, climate, and manners determine race as did customs.

� Soon racial judgments were being based on middle class morality.

� Here we see observation replacing critical analysis as a basis for determination of scientific truth.

Physiognomy Replaces Analytical Approaches to Anthropology.

� The leader in this field was Lavanter (1741-1801).

� He was an Anti-Semite who argued that the Jews slandered Christ.

� **He influenced the work of Sir Walter Scott and some of his ideas can be found in Ivanhoe.**

Phrenology

� Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) added a new dimension to the new discipline by adding an emphasis on Phrenology.

� Phrenology rested on three concepts: 1. The brain was an organ of the mind; 2. The Brain was composed of a variety of organs; and 3. The Brain shaped the skull.

� Gall, unlike other of his peers, was not hostile to Blacks.

� Soon Phrenology was to be used to determine racial classification.

The Birth of Racial Classifications

� Soon Anthropologists were making conclusions that that certain characteristics fit specific groups.

� Carl Gustav Caras believed that Jews had hooked noses.

� This trend took hold through out the rest of Europe.

� These views would find a home among German Nazis.

The Rise of Scientific Racism

� Gobineau was not an original thinker, but a synthesizer.

� **He made a name for himself with the publication of his book, Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853-55).**

� Everything about Gobineau was fraudulent, since he was never a member of the nobility.

� He took the title after the death of a relative.

� His works just amplified his own racism.

� Still, he based his work on the best scholarishp of his day.

� As Well as his extensive travels.

Gobineau and the Decline of Civilizations

� He thought that the modern age was one of centralization and confrontation.

� He also thought that civilizations rose and fell over issues of Race.

� He stressed that race means everything.

� He divided the world into three races � white, yellow, and black.

� He was never interested in skull measurements.

� He believed that the White Race was superior to all others because they were �Aryans,� since they provided for the elites in India and served as the basis of the Teutons.

� He felt that the white races favored nobility, freedom, honor, spirituality.

What went wrong in Gobineau�s World View?

� He thought that the race was polluted by the bourgeois ideal.

� Race mixing or Miscegenation contributed he believed.

� The Aryan ideal was weakened.

� He also thought the Jews were noble too.

� While Gobineau was not Anti-Semitic, his ideas were used against the Jews by the end of the nineteenth century.

� Particularly when Richard Wagner got a hold of them.

Richard Wagner and Pan Germanism

� Gobineau�s philosophy reinforced Wagner�s own views of Race.

� Soon, Wagner�s followers spread the ideas of Gobineau far and wide.

� Soon Gobineau�s works were translated from French to German to a wider audience.

� Soon a Gobineau Society was organized in 1894.

� Soon the members infiltrated other right-wing groups.

� **The organizer was Ludwig Scheemann who wrote The Germans and the Italian Renaissance.**

� George Mosse, himself a refugee, believed that it was the message of the Bayreuth circle that was the spark of the movement.

Metapolitics and Race

� As Gobineau�s ideas found a home in Germany, it blended in with other social movements.

� Once such idea was the concept of Metapolitics.

� The concept involved a combination of volk and race.

� To many conservatives this form of politics was seen as a secular religion.

� The word was spread by the volksgeist.

� Anthropology became the vehicle to spread the message.

Robert Knox Spreads the Message

� Knox�s dates were 1798-1862.

� His main work was Races of Men (1850).

� He believed that race was everything.

� He thought that two races were near perfect � the Greeks and Saxons.

� He thought that the Jews were a perversion.

� He stressed in his book that the Jews lacked any worthy qualities.

� The Key to Knox�s ideas was the permanence and immutability of race.

� Two groups worried him � Blacks and Jews � Blacks in the Empire and Jews on the Continent.

James Hunt (1833-69)

� He founded the Anthropological Society.

� He admired Knox and spread his ideas.

� He put racism on �scientific basis� supported by �reliable facts.�

� He, like others, argued that race determines everything.

� But he argued that �prejudices� must be rejected.

� He felt that there were three prejudices against science; 1) religious mania; 2) Obsession with the rights of man; 3) and a belief in equality.

� His views supported slavery in the American South.

General Trends

� Science reinforced European domination.

� The use of Social Darwinism, Anthropology, and Eugenics supported the European basis of racism.

� Soon studies supported these views.

� The Germans called them �Racial and Social Biology.�

� The Darwinian view of survival of the fittest was now applied to Eugenics.

� Soon Europeans were concerned about weakening the �race� or as they said, �degeneration� of the race.

Alfred Ploetz

� He believed that all races were involved in some form of racial mixing.

� Yet he felt that the Germans were the best.

� He felt that the Jews were more Aryan than Semitic.

� He denied that the Jews were a separate race.

� Some racial biologists would even claim that the Jews were actually superior.

� Those who felt this way argued that the historic persecution of the Jews made them more likely to survive.

Racial Biology wants to be Respectable

� Racialists believed that degeneration could be avoided by the use of eugenics.

� Racial Biology made racialism appear respectable.

� Despite appearing to be respectable, Racial Biologists were driven by myth and irrationalism.

� Some of these thinkers even attempted to create a genealogy of the human race.

� In this table of races, Blacks and Jews were on the bottom of the ladder.

� Soon, they took these ideas to the limit to argue to �eliminate� the unworthy.

� Euthanasia and sterilization were part of their proposals for avoiding degeneration.

The Key Players

� Paul Broca (1824-80) � argued that mixed racial groups were beneficial to society.

� **J. A. H. Perier � Wrote The Races of Europe (1899) and stressed that race and nationality did not coincide.**

� Armand de Quatreges de Breau (1810-92) � was anti-German and felt that Jews were part of the dominant racial group.

� Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902) � Did a survey of Germany and discovered that there was no clear German type in Germany.

Virchow�s Survey of Germany

� Germany was nor racially uniform.

� Blondes/Blue-Eyed types was not typical in Germany.

� Blondes made up only 31.8%

� Brunettes composed 14.05%

� Mixed hair types made up 54.15%

� Jewish Children were

� 11% Blonde

� 42% Dark Hair.

� 47% Mixed Coloration.

� How did this stack up with the General German population?

� As a result of his research he believed that there was no pure race.

Impact of Virchow�s Work

� His work hardly had any impact at all.

� The idea of pure races and racial enemies served too many political purposes.

� He was attacked on the right for being pro-Jewish.

� To Virchow, race was nothing more than a series of hereditary variations.

� By this time, science went out the window and was being replaced by myth.

The Elements that Defined Racism

� Science

� Myth

� Mystery

The Quest for National Origins

� National origins were equated with the mystical origins of a nation�s historical past.

� By 1870, the issue of racial science divided to now include the mystic origins of racial development.

� Soon this trend crossed the Atlantic to include the United States.

� The mythical origins of nationality, especially the issue of racial development, helped solve the problem of social strife.

Julius Langbehn

� Germans were the high mark of racial development, only they could understand good.

� The Volk, or people, exhibited a life force of their own.

� He felt that only the Aryans had that life force.

Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels

� He agreed with Langbehn.

� He wanted to breed a perfect blue-eyed, blonde, super Aryan race.

� He had a tremendous influence on Hitler of all people as well as other Germans.

Paul Anton Botticher, AKA, Paul Anton de Lagarde

� He believed nothing mattered but the Volk.

� He argued that Germany needed a new religion that replaced Christianity.

� He thought that St. Paul as a Jew, perverted Christianity.

� He also felt that the Germany were too influenced by nature.

� He stressed that the Jews were the natural enemy of the Volk.

� Soon he was surpassed by Richard Wagner and Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain

� He gave the movement a philosophical basis.

� **He is noted for writing The Foundations of the Twentieth Century (1899).**

Mad Science and Anti-Semitism

Holocaust

Spring 2003

General Overview

� The Eighteenth Century in Europe was the age of modern racism.

� This all happened during the Enlightenment.

� An Age of Religious Revival, if not, an Age of Religious fervor.

� People were also seeking Harmony with the Cosmos.

� The learned thought that everything could be measured.

� This contributed to the study of Phrenology, the reading of the skull, and Physiognomy, the reading of the face.

� Combined with the emphasis on the aesthetic were the ingredients for foundations of modern racism.

� Out of this milieu came the blending of evangelism of the 18th Century combined with the new emphasis on Race that idealized the primitive.

� Travel made it possible for anthropologists to begin classifying people.

� Soon Europeans are beautiful, and non-Europeans are not.

� It was not long before this was applied to Jews.

Antoine de Lamarck (1744-1829)

� His claim to fame was the link of environmental and material factors to the classification of species.

� Others did too, but Lamarck added the subjective element of the aesthetic element of the species.

� Georges Louis LeClerc de Buffon (1707-88) included the idea that food, climate, and manners determine race as did customs.

� Soon racial judgments were being based on middle class morality.

� Here we see observation replacing critical analysis as a basis for determination of scientific truth.

Physiognomy Replaces Analytical Approaches to Anthropology.

� The leader in this field was Lavanter (1741-1801).

� He was an Anti-Semite who argued that the Jews slandered Christ.

� He influenced the work of Sir Walter Scott and some of his ideas can be found in Ivanhoe.

Phrenology

� Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) added a new dimension to the new discipline by adding an emphasis on Phrenology.

� Phrenology rested on three concepts: 1. The brain was an organ of the mind; 2. The Brain was composed of a variety of organs; and 3. The Brain shaped the skull.

� Gall, unlike other of his peers, was not hostile to Blacks.

� Soon Phrenology was to be used to determine racial classification.

The Birth of Racial Classifications

� Soon Anthropologists were making conclusions that that certain characteristics fit specific groups.

� Carl Gustav Caras believed that Jews had hooked noses.

� This trend took hold through out the rest of Europe.

� These views would find a home among German Nazis.

The Rise of Scientific Racism

� Gobineau was not an original thinker, but a synthesizer.

� He made a name for himself with the publication of his book, Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853-55).

� Everything about Gobineau was fraudulent, since he was never a member of the nobility.

� He took the title after the death of a relative.

� His works just amplified his own racism.

� Still, he based his work on the best scholarishp of his day.

� As Well as his extensive travels.

Gobineau and the Decline of Civilizations

� He thought that the modern age was one of centralization and confrontation.

� He also thought that civilizations rose and fell over issues of Race.

� He stressed that race means everything.

� He divided the world into three races � white, yellow, and black.

� He was never interested in skull measurements.

� He believed that the White Race was superior to all others because they were �Aryans,� since they provided for the elites in India and served as the basis of the Teutons.

� He felt that the white races favored nobility, freedom, honor, spirituality.

What went wrong in Gobineau�s World View?

� He thought that the race was polluted by the bourgeois ideal.

� Race mixing or Miscegenation contributed he believed.

� The Aryan ideal was weakened.

� He also thought the Jews were noble too.

� While Gobineau was not Anti-Semitic, his ideas were used against the Jews by the end of the nineteenth century.

� Particularly when Richard Wagner got a hold of them.

Richard Wagner and Pan Germanism

� Gobineau�s philosophy reinforced Wagner�s own views of Race.

� Soon, Wagner�s followers spread the ideas of Gobineau far and wide.

� Soon Gobineau�s works were translated from French to German to a wider audience.

� Soon a Gobineau Society was organized in 1894.

� Soon the members infiltrated other right-wing groups.

� The organizer was Ludwig Scheemann who wrote The Germans and the Italian Renaissance.

� George Mosse, himself a refugee, believed that it was the message of the Bayreuth circle that was the spark of the movement.

Metapolitics and Race

� As Gobineau�s ideas found a home in Germany, it blended in with other social movements.

� Once such idea was the concept of Metapolitics.

� The concept involved a combination of volk and race.

� To many conservatives this form of politics was seen as a secular religion.

� The word was spread by the volksgeist.

� Anthropology became the vehicle to spread the message.

Robert Knox Spreads the Message

� Knox�s dates were 1798-1862.

� His main work was Races of Men (1850).

� He believed that race was everything.

� He thought that two races were near perfect � the Greeks and Saxons.

� He thought that the Jews were a perversion.

� He stressed in his book that the Jews lacked any worthy qualities.

� Out of this milieu came the blending of evangelism of the 18^th Century combined with the new emphasis on Race that idealized the primitive.

� **He influenced the work of Sir Walter Scott and some of his ideas can be found in Ivanhoe.**

� **He made a name for himself with the publication of his book, Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853-55).**

� **The organizer was Ludwig Scheemann who wrote The Germans and the Italian Renaissance.**

� **J. A. H. Perier � Wrote The Races of Europe (1899) and stressed that race and nationality did not coincide.**