Alfred Ploetz
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Alfred Ploetz (22 August 1860 – 20 March 1940) was a German
physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...
,
biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...
, Social Darwinist, and
eugenicist Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetics, genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human Phenotype, phenotypes by ...
known for coining the term
racial hygiene The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an anim ...
(''Rassenhygiene''), a form of eugenics, and for promoting the concept in Germany.


Early life

Ploetz was born in Swinemünde,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
(now Świnoujście,
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
). He grew up and attended school in Breslau (now
Wrocław Wrocław is a city in southwestern Poland, and the capital of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship. It is the largest city and historical capital of the region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the Oder River in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Eu ...
). He was a friend of Carl Hauptmann, brother of the famous author
Gerhart Hauptmann Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann (; 15 November 1862 – 6 June 1946) was a German dramatist and novelist. He is counted among the most important promoters of Naturalism (literature), literary naturalism, though he integrated other styles into h ...
. In 1879, he founded a secret racial youth society. In Gerhart Hauptmann's drama ''Vor Sonnenaufgang'' ("Before Sunrise"), which was first performed on 20 October 1889 in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, the key figure of the journalist Loth was based on Ploetz. After he had finished school, Ploetz at first studied
political economy Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...
in Breslau, where he joined the "Freie Wissenschaftliche Vereinigung" (Free Scientific Union). Among his friends were his brother, his former school friend Ferdinand Simon (later son-in-law of
August Bebel Ferdinand August Bebel (; 22 February 1840 – 13 August 1913) was a German socialist activist and politician. He was one of the principal founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Bebel, a woodworker by trade, co-founded the Sa ...
), the brothers Carl and Gerhart Hauptmann, Heinrich Laux and Charles Proteus Steinmetz. The circle enthusiastically read the works of
Ernst Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; ; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, natural history, naturalist, eugenics, eugenicist, Philosophy, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biology, marine biologist and artist ...
and
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 â€“ 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
. Carl Hauptmann was a student of Haeckel, and Gerhart Hauptmann and Ploetz attended some of Haeckel's lectures. The group expanded and developed a plan of founding a colony in one of the Pacific states and established itself as the "Pacific Association". It planned a "community on friendly, socialist and maybe also pan-Germanic basis". In consequence of the prosecution of socialistically-minded persons in application of
Otto von Bismarck Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (; born ''Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck''; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898) was a German statesman and diplomat who oversaw the unification of Germany and served as ...
's antisocialist laws (1878–1890), Ploetz in 1883 fled to
Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
, where he continued to study political economy with Julius Platter (1844–1923). In his memoirs, Ploetz stated as an important reason for his choice of Zürich that in his studies in Breslau, socialist theories had been only incidentally mentioned. After living for a half a year in the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, Ploetz returned to Zürich and began to study medicine. In 1886, he fell in love with a fellow student, Agnes Bluhm, but he was involved with Pauline Rüdin; the last two decided to get married early in 1887. Ploetz was also seeing an American, Mary Sherwood, who was studying hypnotism.


Career

In 1890, Ploetz became a medical doctor and married his former girlfriend Pauline, but they never had children. Bluhm, however, kept Ploetz as a close friend throughout her life, and both shared similar views on racial purity and the benefits of eugenics. Ploetz and his wife lived in the United States for four years and divorced in 1898. Ploetz later married Anita Nordenholz, and they produced three children: Ulrich (called Uli), Cordelia (called Deda) and Wilfrid (called Fridl, 1912–2013). Ploetz first proposed the theory of
racial hygiene The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an anim ...
(race-based eugenics) in his "Racial Hygiene Basics" (''Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene'') in 1895. In 1904, Ploetz founded the periodical ''Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie'' with
Fritz Lenz Fritz Gottlieb Karl Lenz (9 March 1887 in Pflugrade, Pomerania – 6 July 1976 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony) was a German geneticist, member of the Nazi Party,
as chief editor, which was the first journal in the world devoted to eugenic topics, and in 1905 founded the German Society for Racial Hygiene (Die Berliner Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene) with 31 members. In 1907 the society became the "International Society for Racial Hygiene".


Nazi Germany

In 1930 he was made an honorary doctor of the
University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...
and became a supporter of the
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
, which was elected to power in 1933. Ploetz wrote in April that year that he believed that
Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
would bring
racial hygiene The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an anim ...
from its previous marginality into the mainstream. In 1933, Reich Interior Minister
Wilhelm Frick Wilhelm Frick (12 March 1877 – 16 October 1946) was a German prominent politician of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and convicted war criminal who served as Minister of the Interior in Adolf Hitler's cabinet from 1933 to 1943 and as the last governor ...
established an "expert advisory committee for population and racial policy", which included Ploetz, Fritz Lenz, Ernst Rüdin and Hans F.K. Günther. The expert advisory committee had the task of advising the Nazis on the implementation and enforcement of legislation regarding racial and eugenic issues. In 1936, Hitler appointed Ploetz to a professorship. In 1937, at the age of 77, he joined the Nazi Party.


Death and legacy

He died in 1940 at the age of 79 and is buried at his home in
Herrsching Herrsching am Ammersee is a municipality in Upper Bavaria, Germany, on the east shore of the Ammersee, southwest of Munich. The population is around 8,000 in winter, increasing to 13,000 in summer. Situated at one terminus of the Munich S-Bahn li ...
on the Ammersee in
Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
. After his death, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer praised his "inner sympathy and enthusiasm iththe National Socialist Movement". Ernst Rüdin, also a committed Nazi, had praised Ploetz two years earlier as a man "by his meritorious services has helped to set up our Nazi ideology".


Theories

In his book ''The Excellence of Our Race and the Protection of the Weak'' (1895), Ploetz coined the term "racial hygiene" (); he described a society in which eugenic ideas would be applied. The publication endorsed a Social Darwinist interpretation of race and solidified genetic determinist ideas about the "evolutionary superiority of the German ''
Volk The German noun ''Volk'' () translates to :wikt:people, people, both uncountable in the sense of ''people'' as in a crowd, and countable (plural ''Völker'') in the sense of ''People, a people'' as in an ethnic group or nation (compare the E ...
''". It would examine the moral and intellectual capacity of citizens to decide on marriage and the permitted number of children. It might include a prohibition on reproduction by the "unfit". Disabled children would be euthanized at birth, and all young persons would undergo an examination at puberty to determine if they would be permitted to marry and have children. Society would be regulated strictly to ensure
equal opportunity Equal opportunity is a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences, except when particular distinctions can be explicitly justified. For example, the intent of equal ...
, and those who failed would starve. Ploetz found the idea horrible and suggested a humane alternative of simply encouraging only "fit" people to reproduce, but he called that a weak proposal. Along with many other eugenicists in Europe and America, Ploetz believed in the superiority of the
Nordic race The Nordic race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. It was once considered a race or one of the putative sub-races into which some late-19th to mid-20th century anthropologists di ...
. His writings were a major influence on
Nazi ideology Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was freque ...
. His opinion of the Jewish question changed during the course of his life, but his view and the doctrine of the
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
were in accord by the time it came to power in 1933. In his early writings, Ploetz credited Jews as the highest cultural race after Europeans. He identified no substantial difference in "racial character" between Aryans and Jews and argued that the mental abilities of Jews and their role in the development of human culture made them indispensable to the "process of racial mix", which would enhance humanity:
The high aptitude of the Jews and their outstanding role in the progress of mankind considering men like Jesus, Spinoza, Marx has to be kindly acknowledged without hesitation... All this Antisemitism is a flop which will vanish slowly in the light of scientific knowledge and a humane democracy".
He revised that view. He stressed that the distinctiveness of Jews indicated that their mental characteristics would adversely affect Aryans by introducing individualism and lack of love for the military and the nation. Ploetz favoured the global dominance of the
Aryan race The Aryan race is a pseudoscientific historical race concepts, historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a Race (human categorization), racial grouping. The ter ...
.


Bibliography

* (Alfred Hoche, Alfred Ploetz, Alfred Vierkandt, Carl Hans Heinze Sennhenn) ''German Eugenicists'' . * (Alfred J Ploetz) ''Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen'' . * (Alfred J Ploetz) ''Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, einschliesslich Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Hygiene'' 1908, Fuenfter Jahrgang .


See also

* Ernst Rüdin *
Eugen Fischer Eugen Fischer (5 July 1874 – 9 July 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, and a member of the Nazi Party. He served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, ...
*
Eugenics Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...
* Karl Binding *
Racial hygiene The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an anim ...
* Wilhelm Schallmayer


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ploetz, Alfred 1860 births 1940 deaths People from Świnoujście Physicians in the Nazi Party 19th-century German physicians German eugenicists People from the Province of Pomerania