The standard textbook on racial hygiene by Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz as viewed by the psychiatric and neurological communities from 1921 to 1940
by
Fangerau H, Müller I.
Institut für Ethik und Geschichte der Medizin,
Universität Göttingen, Germany.
hfanger@gwdg.de
Nervenarzt. 2002 Nov;73(11):1019-30.

ABSTRACT

The textbook "Human heredity and Racial Hygiene" by Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz went through five editions between 1921 and 1940. In contemporary journals, it received almost only positive review articles and was considered to be the standard textbook on racial hygiene in the Weimar Republic. After Hitler's takeover in 1933, it became the "scientific" basis for eugenic sterilization programs. In that year, the Nazis enacted a law allowing the involuntary sterilization of persons with diseases thought to be hereditary, mostly neurological and psychiatric disorders. Using review articles on the book, the position of neurologists and psychiatrists towards racial hygiene is analyzed. We describe how they prepared and maintained the acceptance of eugenic politics in the medical profession by praising the standard work on racial hygiene.

Sterilisation
Personal genomics
Psychiatric genetics
Human self-domestication
Selecting potential children
Brain size/human evolution
Sterilization: the USA versus Germany (1933-45)
European eugenics, genetics, politics and sterilization laws in the 1930s

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